Sometimes, though, I felt as if we were worlds apart. Small, yes, but the pixy had saved my life more times than I had spell pots in my kitchen. I wanted to give him a hug, but he was only four inches tall. “I’m not good at this,” he whispered, becoming melancholy as he remembered Matalina. Jenks’s wings dropped in pitch, and his shoulders slumped. “But if you make everything the same color, you’ll wind up back in the seventies.”

“I do,” I explained, thinking that breaking up a pop bottle for floor tile was ingenious. “Brown?” he said, looking at it doubtfully. “Well,” I hedged, not any more confident in this than he was, “the green goes with the floor, but I’d go with the taupe. I thought it odd that a pixy able to fend off an entire team of assassins was worried about the color of his drapes. His shoulder-length curly blond hair-uncut since his wife’s death-was tied back with a bit of twine to show his angular, pinched features. Two bundles of fabric were draped over Jenks’s arms, spider silk most likely dyed and woven by one of his daughters. June, sunbathing, and Cincinnati normally didn’t go together, but today was my last day to get a tan before I headed west for my brother’s wedding. I can’t see,” I said as I shifted in the webbed lounge chair, and he drifted back, his dragonflylike wings humming fast enough to spill a red- tinted pixy dust over my bare middle. The sun was hot, and I didn’t want to move, even if his wings provided a cold draft. Jenks’s voice slid into my dozing state, and I opened an eyelid a crack to find him hovering inches from my nose.

Pale demon by kim harrison