Wickedly Dangerous (Baba Yaga, #1)(52)
“I think I’m going to need more coffee,” he said. “A lot more coffee.”
*
BABA WANTED TO beat her head against the table. Barring that, she’d be willing to settle for someone else’s head. There were four names on her short list already. It was bad enough to come back from the court with the queen’s threat still ringing in her ears, but to discover that the Riders and Chudo-Yudo had allowed the already curious sheriff in, just in time to watch her walk through a doorway from nothing . . . well, that made her night perfect.
“Try the pie, Baba,” Mikhail suggested with a gentle smile and no visible sympathy at all. “It’s practically magical.”
She dug her fork in, more for an excuse to avoid looking at Liam than because she had any appetite for dessert, but once the creamy-smooth bittersweet chocolate melted on her tongue, she had to admit, it was pretty amazing pie. “Bertie’s?” she asked, finally daring to meet the sheriff’s gaze.
He nodded, not taking his eyes off her. “Yep. Now, about that explanation . . .” He tilted his chin up, clearly not going anywhere until she answered him.
“Fine,” she said, resigning herself to the inevitable. “But I’m warning you, you’re not going to believe me.”
Broad shoulders shrugged, and she was distracted again by the sheer male presence of him. The tiny cleft in that stubborn chin, almost covered by the late hour’s stubble; the strength in his arms; the powerful line of his shoulders as they moved under his slightly muddy uniform jacket. The back of one calloused hand was curled around her favorite coffee mug, revealing a line of thin new scratches that looked red and sore. She wanted, just for a moment, to reach out and heal them with her touch, wishing she could save him that small amount of pain, if nothing else. It seemed unlikely, at this point, that there was much else she could protect him from.
“Barbara?” Liam’s slightly impatient voice called her back to reality. “Or should I call you Baba?”
She sighed. “Sorry, it’s been a rough night. I was . . . daydreaming . . . there for a moment. Sorry.” She took another bite of pie, chewed, and swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Yes, you might as well call me Baba. My real name is Baba Yaga, although in this world, most know me as Barbara Yager.”
He raised a dubious eyebrow. “This world?”
“Yes,” Baba said. “There is this, what some call the mundane or Human plane, and the Otherworld. The Otherworld is a place where magic exists, and it is home to creatures out of legend, many of which you might recognize and some which are beyond your comprehension.” Tired, she rubbed a hand across her face, wishing she could have had this conversation some other time. Sometime when her head was clearer, or her heart less muddled. Or never. Never would have worked for her.
Liam’s hazel eyes stared at her as though wondering if she was making fun of him, or merely out of her mind.
“And you’re dressed like something out of a Renaissance Faire because that’s how everyone dresses in this Otherworld of yours?” he asked, pointing at the jewels in the net restraining her usually unruly hair. “It must be a pretty fancy place.”
“You have no idea,” Mikhail said, pushing Baba out of the way so he could get another piece of pie. “She’s actually somewhat underdressed. But she doesn’t like to stand out, our Baba.”
“I don’t know how she could avoid it,” Liam muttered, the sideways compliment making her heart skip a beat. But then he shook the stray thought out of his head and added, “So you’re trying to tell me that you just went through your closet to visit a magical land, like Alice through the looking glass?”
“More like the kids going through the wardrobe into Narnia,” Baba replied, hoping that they’d at least read some of the same books, even if she hadn’t seen his movies. “But yes, something like that.”
Liam was abruptly on his feet, moving past Mikhail and yanking the closet door open. He stared at black leather and red silk, his face an almost comic mix of satisfaction and disappointment, like a kid who finally proves to himself that Santa doesn’t exist.
“Uh-huh,” he snarled. “Pull the other one.” He walked back over to stand in front of Baba, arms crossed over his chest, muscles tight. “How about now you tell me what is really going on?”
Baba ran out of reasonable, which was bound to happen eventually. It was never her best thing anyway. “Fine,” she snarled back at him. She rose from her seat and said to the others, “Better make room.” Three sets of faces looked alarmed and tucked themselves into the corners of the trailer the best they could.
Liam just looked confused. “Make room for what?”
“Chudo-Yudo,” she said, and gestured at the dog.
As Liam turned to see what she was talking about, Chudo-Yudo moved into the middle of the lounge area, which was as close to a clear space as the Airstream allowed, and shook himself, as if shedding water. Instead, he was enveloped in a greenish-purple mist that sparked and glowed, letting off an odor like charred meat, cold starlight, and eternity. When the mist cleared, the dog was gone, and instead there was a large dragon with scalloped iridescent black scales and blazing red eyes curling in on himself to take up as little room as possible. Still, his tail rolled out onto the tiled kitchen floor, and one leathery wing poked Alexei in the stomach until the burly biker moved a little to the left with an oof.