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crazy, man?” one of them said. “Go!”
    Inside his bedroom, Sinclair closed the door behind us. I unbuckled my belt and let it fall to the floor with a heavy clunk. I didn’t want him to get frostbitten.
    “Daisy.” He laid his hands on my shoulders. Unable to help myself, I traced a line on his bare torso with one finger, between his pecs down toward his navel. He caught my hand and removed it, although he laced his fingers through mine. “Whoa! Slow down, girl. Mind if I ask what happened out there to turn a night hanging with the boys into a booty call?”
    “No.” I shook my head. “Rutting satyr-funk. It set off an orgy. But it’s okay. We defused it.”
    “So this is about some funky satyr?” he asked slowly. “Not you and me?”
    “A little,” I admitted.
    “I’m not sure how I feel about that.” Sinclair’s face was unreadable in the dim light. “This isn’t how I wanted it to go down between us.”
    “Yeah, me either,” I said. “This was a mistake. I should go.”
    “Probably.” There was a certain lack of conviction in his voice. “I guess.”
    Neither of us moved. “So . . . do you want me to go?” I asked him. “’Cause if you do, I think you’re going to have to tell me. Like, in no uncertain terms.”
    “I’m thinking.”
    “Okay, well, before you make up your mind, there’s one other little thing I haven’t told you.”
    Sinclair raised his brows. “What?” I shifted his hand around to place it firmly on my butt, untucking my tail in the process and letting him feel it wriggle. His eyes widened and his body went rigid, but he didn’t pull away from me. “What the fuck?”
    I watched his face, trying to gauge the degree of freak-out. “Look, as tails go, it’s pretty small. You should have seen the satyr’s.”
    He gave me a blank look. “How is this something I never noticed?”
    “I tuck.”
    “You tuck.”
    “Yeah.” I laid my palm flat against his chest, feeling it rise and fall. His dark brown skin was warm, as though it retained the heat of the sun on the docks. Afraid of seeing rejection in his eyes, I lowered my gaze and kept it there, centered on the groove between his pecs. “Look, I really do like you. I like you a lot, Sinclair. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. As strange as it might sound, I wouldn’t trust myself with someone I didn’t care about right now. And I wanted to try the whole normal boyfriend/girlfriend thing. But the truth is, my father’s an incubus, I’m a hell-spawn and Hel’s agent, and this is Pemkowet. Normal’s not really in my wheelhouse. There’s always going to be an element of weird. Maybe a lot of weird. So—”
    “Daisy.” Sinclair interrupted me. Removing his hand from my ass, he reached for the pendant I wore.
    It was a silver whistle in the shape of an acorn and it had been given to me by the Oak King, a member of genuine old-school eldritch pagan royalty, as a means to summon him at need. Sinclair had been there when it happened. Both of us had been touched by the wonder of it.
    And then I’d been stupid enough to leave it at home in my jewelry box when the ghoul rebellion went down, which is why after that I’d had it strung on a chain of dwarf-mined silver so I could wear it around my neck.
    Anyway.
    “Remember?” Sinclair asked me.
    I nodded. “Of course.”
    He smiled. “For a memory like that, I can handle a lot of weird.” He slid one arm around my waist, pulling me closer. “So I guess what I’m saying is, what the hell. If this is what you want, let’s do it.”
    It wasn’t the time or the circumstances I would have chosen, and it shouldn’t have been good, but in fact it was good. Even knowing what had almost happened with Cody that same night, even knowing that the Mamma Jammers were right outside the bedroom and that sooner or later I’d have to face the walk of shame past them. It was still good.
    “Let me see it,” Sinclair said after he’d undressed me, his voice low and