To be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure what would happen. It was my first banishing. When Stefan banished members of the Outcast who rebelled against his leadership last summer, I’m pretty sure they just picked up and left town.
But then, they weren’t fey dreamwalkers with a complicated relationship to corporeal reality. Well, actually that last part isn’t exactly true, but they definitely functioned more like mortal humans than like fey. The Night Hag pulled a slow vanishing act, crumpling into an even tighter ball, the contours of her body fading. Her eyes were the last thing to go, crimson orbs filled with fury hanging in the air above Cody’s pillows like the Cheshire cat’s grin, only creepy as hell.
I was glad when they finally blinked out of existence. Now that it was over, the adrenaline rush that had sustained me drained away, leaving me wobbly and shaken. I sat down abruptly on the edge of Cody’s bed.
“Good job, Daisy,” Cody said quietly. “How are you, really?”
“I don’t know.” I glanced down at my trembling hands, gouged and scratched by the Night Hag’s teeth and nails. “A little shaky.”
“Damn, she really got you,” he said. “Let me go get some disinfectant. God knows what you could catch from a Night Hag’s bite.”
I shuddered. “Good point.”
Cody left and came back with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a bag of cotton balls and a tube of antibiotic ointment. I took off my belt, setting dauda-dagr safely aside while he administered a little basic first aid. “No offense, Daise, but from what I could make out of it, that must have been the least sexy girl-fight ever.”
“No kidding.” I watched hydrogen peroxide bubble and fizz in a long furrow on the underside of my right forearm, gritting my teeth against the sting of it. “You try tying a single strand of hair around a Night Hag’s throat.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll leave that to you if it ever happens again.” Cody rotated my left arm to examine it. “You’re the seamstress’s daughter.”
“Do you think more are coming?” The prospect dismayed me. I could subdue another Night Hag if I had to, but I wasn’t sure I could stand to revisit that nightmare.
He glanced up at me. “No, not really. There’s no reason to think so. Especially not if they read Gruoch’s TripAdvisor review.” Despite the comment, his expression was serious. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I looked away, knowing full well he wasn’t talking about eldritch tourism. “You heard what she said.”
Cody smeared ointment on a bite mark. “Yes.”
“I watched myself do it, Cody.” Tears filled my eyes. “There wasn’t even a reason for it! I just . . . did it.”
His hands went still on mine. “You invoked your birthright?”
I nodded, unable to answer, my body jerking with the effort of holding back sobs.
“Daisy, it’s okay.” Setting down the antibiotic ointment, Cody slid onto the bed and put his arms around me. “It’s okay. It wasn’t real,” he murmured against my hair. “It was just a dream. And you’re right, people do terrible things in their dreams all the time. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Cody, it felt so good,” I whispered. “Before I realized what I’d done. That scares me. It scares the shit out of me.”
“I know.” Cody tightened his arms around me. I clutched his shoulder blades, yearning for even closer contact, my nails digging into his skin. “But I promise you, it wasn’t real. You did what you had to do, Daisy. And it worked. It’s over.” Lifting his head, he gave me a fierce look, eyes shimmering green. “You did it. You caught the bitch, bound her, and banished her. It’s done.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
There was a moment, maybe as long as it takes for a heart to beat four or five times, where one or the other of us could have withdrawn, could have disentangled ourselves. Neither of us did.
And then Cody kissed me savagely, his fingers sliding through my hair. I kissed him back with equal fervor, squirming to kneel astride his lap. He found the hem of my tank top and yanked it off. Placing my hands on his chest, I shoved him down onto the bed and straddled him.
“I need to be on top tonight,” I informed him. The memory of waking with the Night Hag crouched on my chest was a little too fresh. “Understand?”
He flashed a wolfish grin. “Totally.”
It was enough. I didn’t think about my dream or the Night Hag. I didn’t think about anything but this moment, here and now. About Cody’s mouth on my breasts, suckling my nipples to aching points. About working my way down his lean, muscled torso, nuzzling the treasure trail of wiry bronze hair that led from just below his washboard abs to the waistband of his pajama bottoms. I untied the drawstring, easing them over his hips and freeing his erection—and no, for the record, neither boxers nor briefs. Cody watched with narrowed eyes while I took him into my mouth.
“Enough!” he growled after a minute. “Come here.”
My tail twitching with anticipation, I wriggled out of my own pajama bottoms and crawled back up the length of his body, wrapping one hand around his throbbing cock and fitting it to me.
Cody let out a deep, guttural sound of satisfaction as I sank down onto him. I might have, too.
“Are you okay?” he asked me.
I leaned down to kiss him. “Uh-huh.”