and spun, thinking an escape out the back would be much easier. The paparazzi always lurked out front. And while she was no A-list celebrity, she didn’t want to risk photobombing any shots with her distraught tear-streaked mug. She could walk down the street and hail a cab.
Weaving through the coat-check area and then down a darkened hallway, she passed a few waiters who informed her she wasn’t authorized to be in this area of the building. Flipping them off, Indi mumbled something about not feeling well and needing to be away from the crowd. Finally, escape loomed ahead.
Pushing the back doors open, she wandered through what must be the loading area. Filing around a parked truck that smelled of diesel fuel, she clutched her skirt so it wouldn’t skim the ground. She’d spent last Saturday afternoon adding the red chiffon poppies to this dress to give color and interest to what had been a crop of beaded green leaves growing up from the hem.
Finally making the cobblestone street, she looked both ways. La rue Joséphine was to the left; that’s where all the cabs would be parked. Yet the promise of bright streetlights and neon revealing her tears to all made her turn to the right.
She’d walk a bit. Even if her heels were much too high for a comfortable stroll and the uneven cobblestones made walking with some decorum a joke. She inhaled deeply, as she thought it would help, but instead, the sudden influx of stale air only increased her tears. And she started to sob. The champagne made her head swim.
Who was she kidding? She was drunk. Which was probably why she hadn’t toppled over yet. The drunkeness was counterbalancing the wobbly-heels-to-ground ratio. Ha!
She wandered by a homeless man sitting on a piece of cardboard. He cast her a wide-eyed look.
“What?” she said testily. “This is Paris. Haven’t you ever seen a woman in a ball gown wandering the streets in the middle of the night?”
She just needed to find a quiet place to break down and bawl. Loud and long. To let the goddess who had been standing at the top of the steps feeling so pretty and special exude the pain of such a sharp and cruel rejection. And then she’d find her way home to curl in on herself.
At the very least, Todd could have texted her before she’d left for the soiree tonight. The bastard!
“Melanie,” she muttered, and wandered forward. The woman sounded high-maintenance. And like she’d go down on a man on the first date.
What was wrong with her? She was a nice person. Reasonably pretty. Not too big and not too thin. She had always agreed to whatever Todd wanted to do. She ate at the restaurants he’d chosen, and she even wore the tight red dress that pushed up her tits to her throat when he’d asked her to. What had she done wrong?
“Wasn’t I good enough for him?”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. Indi pushed forward, wandering mindlessly, then turned down another, narrower street. She knew this neighborhood from girls’ nights out with her BFF. Maybe?
Pausing, she thrust out her arms to balance as her heel wobbled in a crack between cobblestones. Where in Paris was she?
“Who cares?”
Unable to fight the call to release her hurt, Indi released her tears, loudly.
* * *
Ryland James stood in the center of a dark, quiet street in FaeryTown. The sword he held in his right hand curved like a scimitar, and was bespelled to kill faeries. He’d found it in a tree years ago, guarded by a dryad, and had claimed it as his own. Of late, Sidhe Slayer was the whispered title he’d been hearing about himself.
He didn’t need a label. Someone had to stop the collectors who snuck in at midnight from Faery through this, a thin place insinuating FaeryTown. It was smack-dab in the middle of the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris. The collectors arrived in pairs and, if they could get past him, would seek the first human they could find and assume control of that person’s body, then steal a human baby and take it back to Faery.
Not on his guard.
Checking his watch, he noted four minutes until midnight. FaeryTown was normally bustling this late at night, but when Ry walked onto the scene the residents scattered, shuffling behind doors and peering out windows to witness the slaughter.
Lifting his chin, he sniffed the air. His werewolf senses were attuned and he picked up the usual odors of faery presence and very little from humans. FaeryTown overlay this part of Paris. Humans could walk through and would never know faeries occupied the same space only on a different dimension. Humans hadn’t the ability to see faeries, such as he did.
The sudden sound of a human voice—crying—alerted Ry. He swung about to spy a woman in a fancy pink gown wandering along the brick wall that fronted a human-owned bakery, yet the faeries, in their altered dimension, used it as a dust den that lured in vampires addicted to their ichor. Hair pulled up and looking like a princess, the woman choked out tears and sobs. He noted the sparkly ears on her head. And the streaks of mascara running down her cheeks.
Why was he seeing her now? When he focused on the FaeryTown layer of this area, he saw only the sidhe and their ilk. Any humans present slipped away into the background. She was so vivid. Almost as if she treaded FaeryTown herself. But she wasn’t faery. Even though her gorgeous breasts sparkled above the pink fabric. That wasn’t faery dust, just glitter that women loved to dust all over themselves. No, she smelled human—coppery and tinged with the earthy presence of skin and bone and yet also a delicious overlayer of perfume and soft woman.
Ry shook his head. He shouted at her. “Hey! Get out of here! You can’t be here right now.”
She dismissed his worry with a swinging gesture of her hand and plopped down to sit on the curb. Her skirts fluffed around her, the hem edged with dirt, and...she was missing a shoe.
She should not be able to see him.
She sniffed loudly, then muttered, “Can you call me a cab? I seem to have gotten lost. My phone is here—” she patted her fluffy skirt “—somewhere...”
“I don’t have time for that.” Two minutes until midnight. Gripping the enchanted sword firmly, Ry swung it behind him, pointing toward the main street that edged the border of FaeryTown. “Get out of this area. It’s not safe. I’ll call you a cab later.”
“He dumped me!” she announced.
Ry winced at the woman’s utter lack of recognition for the imminent danger. There was no way she could be in FaeryTown unless she also had the sight or had somehow gained admittance. Humans couldn’t simply enter FaeryTown unless they could see it. And it appeared that she was merely wandering the streets...
Why was this gorgeous princess wandering about alone?
“Listen, Princess Pussycat,” he hissed. “Bad things are going to happen. Right now. So run!”
As he spoke the final word, the fabric between Faery and the mortal realm glimmered. The gray night sky above a two-story building tore and shimmered along the edges of that tear.
Ry swore. The woman on the curb still sobbed, her head caught against her open palms. He felt a moment of compassion for her. What asshole would be so cruel to such a pretty woman?
But really? Things were about to get rough.
Swinging his sword arm, Ry prepared as the first of the collectors entered this realm. The creature’s body was long and wispy, barely holding the form of a human. It was black, so black it was like peering into a void in the shape of the creature. And yet it sparkled with so much faery dust it was as though that void formed a black hole speckled with stardust.
Not about to become enchanted by the sight, Ry swung toward the approaching collector. It floated nearer, and when it spied him, it stretched its maw wide to reveal a piranha row of vicious teeth.
“What the hell is that?” the woman called.
“I don’t know how you can see this, but you need to listen to me and run!”
“I