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huge architectural column by a single hand, hugging me against him with the other. His fae eyes blazed bright with the burn of draíocht. “Don’t like heights either?”
    Spiders spilled over the sill behind me and rained down onto the street. Fear seized my muscles tight, prompting Reign to suck in a sharp breath. “Only one way down.” He let go of the building. My stomach tried to jump into my throat and we fell. I definitely screamed. I might still have been screaming when I opened my eyes to find us standing on top of the trailer of a parked truck. “I feel sick.” I groaned, and then we were moving again. He leaped. Eyes squeezed closed, I held my breath, and prayed that any second we’d be back on terra firma.
    Reign landed with a grunt, bearing my slight load with ease. His grip loosened, allowing me the space to shove out of his embrace. I staggered back, shaking my head. There’s only so much crazy a person can take at one time. This was too much. Organized spiders, scaling buildings … I stumbled away, voice lost.
    “Hey …” Reign called.
    I waved a hand, gesturing for him to stay back.
Nope. Not yet
.
I can’t deal with this yet.
My heart hammered so fast I thought it might punch through my chest. With each step my legs threatened to give up. Springing from the fourth floor of Northcliff House in the arms of a celebrity fae to escape a flood of talking spiders was most definitely not normal.
    “Alina …”
    He was following. Sure enough, a glance behind me confirmed it. Coat flaring, strides long and powerful, he’d be caught up to me in seconds and he wasn’t even out of breath.
    “Just … just give me a minute.” I was probably going to throw up. I sped up my retreat, turning my stagger into a jog. He wasn’t the cause of my nausea. It wasn’t even the spiders. Blood raced in my veins. My hand itched, as though something inside was trying to crawl from my skin. Dizzy, disorientated, I just needed space to breathe, to think, to steady my feet on solid earth. The last twenty-four hours had finally caught up with me.
    I stepped off the sidewalk, my thoughts a whirl and my vision blurred, when the sudden blast of a horn and too-close dash of a car brought me to a jarring halt. Reign’s hand landed on my shoulder and spun me around. For a second, his eyes slitted and his skin seemed to stretch tighter over cheekbones, drawing his face back, lending it a sharp, hardened edge. My breath hitched and my body tried to reel back, but he clutched at my top and yanked me toward him as a taxi passed close behind me.
    I shoved against him, landing the balls of my palms against his chest, but he no more moved than stone would. “Back off, fae,” I growled.
    He plucked me off my feet, turned me around, and gave me a shove, just enough to gain some distance between us. “What did the spiders want with you?”
    I scowled back. Who did he think he was shoving around? “This is your doing. You owe me answers.”
    “I don’t owe you anything, American Girl. You should thank me. I just saved your ass back there and stopped you walking out in front of traffic.”
    I should thank him?!
“You’re so full of shit, you know that? The only reason I’m here at all is to figure out what’s going on
with you.
” Damn it, I’d left all but one sheet of the research with the spiders. After all of that, I’d only managed to grab the guest list. I checked my pocket,
yup, still there.
That was something, at least. Rubbing my arms, as though trying to sweep off the goose bumps, I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Will the spiders still be there? Will someone find them?”
    “No,” he said, more softly. “They were there for you. They’ll have dispersed by now.”
    “The window? We should warn someone.”
    He gave me a less than impressed look. “You want me to walk into the head office of London’s press and declare I scaled their building, broke in, and rescued you from a cluster of spiders? I’d be