Time Slipping Read Online Free Page B

brain power I’m functioning with these days?” And I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.
    “No, it’s just that…”
    I paused my journey back to the car, but he expected it this time, stopping right along with me. “It’s just that what ?” I narrowed my eyes at him.
    He glanced nervously over at the car. “Everyone’s waiting for us.”
    “Let ‘em wait. You were saying…?”
    He shrugged and looked at the ground. “It’s just that, you know … you sometimes do stuff that doesn’t make sense to me.”
    I crossed my arms over my chest, getting cranky and maybe a little bit defensive. Scrum was a great guy, don’t get me wrong, but no one would ever accuse him of being the brightest star in the sky. So why was he able to make me feel like an idiot so easily? “Oh, yeah? Like what?”
    “Well, like when you tell Samantha to drop spells on you, when you know she could really mess you up. And when you, you know, sleep with Spike even when he’s ready to eat you alive. And stuff like that. You take risks that seem like … not good ideas to me.”
    I slapped him on the shoulder, glad to know that was all that was bothering him. “That’s your daemon brain talking, Scrum. You know I work with Samantha to get better at fighting off the bad guys. And Spike is my boyfriend. What do you expect me to do? Kick him out of my room every time his eyes go goofy red? He’d spend six out of seven days out in the forest if I did that.”
    “You guys have sex six times a week?” Scrum asked, his eyes bugging out of his head.
    I put my hand on my dagger and pulled it halfway out, the weird, charmed steel of the blade making a sound like some kind of otherworldly snake coming out to sink some fangs into someone. “Are you friggin kidding me? You’re speculating on my sex life now, Scrum? Since when did that become part of your job description?”
    “No! No, no, no! That wasn’t what I was doing!” He had his hands up and he was backing away with something in his eye that looked a lot like fear. But I didn’t care. How dare he? My business was my business, protector or not.
    “Sounded like it to me.” I walked closer and leaned in, fixing him with a stare. “Dude, you might be my daemon, but that does not give you the right to comment on my love life, you got it?”
    “Yeah, I got it. I got it.” He was almost whispering and very possibly peeing his pants.
    People walking up to the rest stop store were staring, so I backed up and let the knife slide back into its tiny, shrink-rayed scabbard. “Good. Then we understand each other.”
    As I walked away, Scrum’s voice hit me in the back of the head. “You never used to get mad at me like that, Jayne. I’m sorry I said anything.”
    That tone of his was like a blade in my heart. Scrum had come a long way since finding his fae family, but not so far that I didn’t remember where he used to be — neglected and abused by his grandmother, living out in the middle of nowheresville, dropped on his head probably one too many times. Washing his shoes in a lake, for shit’s sake. All he wanted was for someone to love him, and there I’d gone and shoved him away again. When was I going to learn?
    I stopped and waited for him to catch up. “I’m sorry, Scrum. I’m an asshole sometimes.”
    “It’s okay. You were right. I don’t have any business questioning your authority.”
    I sighed heavily. “It’s not my authority to tell you what to do as a daemon or how to do it, okay? I get what you’re saying. I take risks I probably shouldn’t. But that’s who I am, and I’m probably not going to change, so you either have to learn to deal with that or find a new fae to protect.”
    “But I don’t want to protect anyone else.”
    I shrugged. “Then I guess you’re stuck with me being a pain in your ass.”
    “You’re not a pain in the a-word, Jayne. You’re just challenging. But Jared says we always need to be challenged or we grow complacent, so I