Griffin Days and Pixie Nights by Bailey Bradford
Book 3 in the Fire & Flutter series
General Release Date: 3rd January 2023
Word Count: 51,143
Book Length: NOVEL
Pages: 212
Genres:
COMEDY AND HUMOUR,EROTIC ROMANCE,FANTASY,GAY,GLBTQI,PARANORMAL
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Book Description
The kingdom’s most focused griffin shifter and its slackest pixie. It’s a match made in what the hell?
Gage is the most dedicated of the kingdom’s powerful griffin shifter Guardians. He’ll do anything to close a case…even if his commander says not to. Now Gage is fuming. Being reassigned to the World Magic Convention is bad enough. Babysitting the keynote speaker is worse. But the absolute pits? He has to work with a good-for-nothing pixie!
Daire the pixie is a lazy ne’er-do-well chancer…one who’s failed to charm his green-eyed, pointed-eared way out of trouble this time and is on his last chance. Being given community service is crap. Doing it as local liaison at some stupid convention is even crappier. But the crappiest of all? He has to work with a stick-up-his-ass griffin!
Sparks blaze, the pair get into a heated fight…and have the hottest sex ever. And that’s just their first meeting. Morning brings not just shock and remorse, but the loss of the VIP they were guarding, kidnapped while they were…busy. Hells! But Gage has never failed on a mission yet, and Daire doesn’t want a prison stretch, so there’s only one thing to do.
Form the unlikeliest partnership ever and solve the case themselves.
And try not to have sex or kill each other along the way…
Reader advisory: This book contains scenes of slightly off-page body piercing, med fet, and the use of hypnosis and spells.
“Come close, come close! Don’t be shy there!” Daire the pixie took one hand off the pfeife he was playing and beckoned the trickle of crowd nearer. Calculating how many of them were out-of-towners, he resumed his tune, holding the small woodwind instrument across his mouth to make it trill and sing.
He liked the thready, breathy sound of a pfeife and how quickly it gathered people, swaying and clapping along to the music…and generally distracted.
He wasn’t the best player ever, but the tiniest hint of compulsion he’d puffed over himself helped. It made the music more compelling, put a brighter twinkle in his glass-green eyes and gave a shinier gleam to his wavy chestnut-brown hair. He shook his shoulder-length locks back, revealing his pointed ears, which got their own gasp from those of his audience who’d never been this close to a pixie before.
Daire wished he could enhance things more, but he’d had to use the smallest charm he could get away with…without attracting attention. Well, the wrong kind of attention. He didn’t have a license to make music for a crowd, for one thing, and would never be granted one, for another. Authority tended to be as suspicious of him as he was disdainful of it.
“That music is spellbinding,” sighed a blonde woman listening. She blushed when Daire winked at her.
Today’s marks were here in the capital for some event or other, Daire supposed. Good. He stamped a foot, thickening the compulsion to the point he could safely work a second charm. He wasn’t the best spellcaster either, but he made out all right. Usually. His enchantments didn’t tend to last that long, reflecting the level of effort he put in—low—the degree of study he went in for—minimal—and the quality of the raw ingredients he used—the lowest that would function.
Well, the price of herb and roots these days. He wasn’t a brownie, grubbing around in the dirt for what he needed, so had no choice but to pixie up the gelt for it, but tried to keep costs low. Or nonexistent.
The echo charm he used now trapped his image and sound, so that to onlookers, he still stood against the wall near the marketplace, small and slim, one foot bent up behind him to rest on the white stone, his arched red-brown eyebrows and uptilted nose denoting his species just as much as the color of his eyes or the tips of his ears did.
He didn’t quite have the length and slimness of fingers considered ‘pure’ pixie, but his were good enough…to pickpocket the crowd he now wandered among, relieving purses and coin-bags of their contents. Small items in pockets that caught his curiosity were lifted out too. Oh, the blonde, at whom he’d winked, carried a tube of red luststick, that aphrodisiac for lips, did she? One kiss from her and a guy—or gal—wouldn’t just be back for more. He or she wouldn’t go away.
Best of luck to her. He just hoped she used it sparingly. At least he had no need to remind himself not to pucker up for her, not when his tastes ran a lot taller, broader and shorter-haired. He tried his luck with the fatter woman next to the blonde one and— Shit!
He bit back a screech just in time at the rawdent that he’d disturbed in her bag and that had now emerged, clinging to his finger—by its teeth. A pocket shrew? Who totes one of those around? They were the worst. Gods, they weren’t the new purse pet, were they? That could crimp his plans. He’d almost prefer that caterwauls made a comeback. He finally shook the savage furball off him and moved on quickly, because it looked like it was getting ready to try his ankle next.
Hm, what does this rather rough-looking gent have tucked away here? Something small and round, but not a coin. Daire’s imagination boggled, coming up with everything from a magic wishing stone to a gold piece that returned to the spender after each use. A pixie could dream…
Daire eased the item free of the man’s fanny-pack, reflecting that the mark was one of life’s born victims, if he wore one of those. When he saw what the wooden token was, Daire risked breaking his spell by exclaiming out loud. A pass to enter the dog-racing tracks!
“You little beauty,” Daire breathed. He raised the pass to his lips and kissed it, tears in his eyes. Sainted stars and holy heavens, this is my lucky day!
Or so he hoped. He must be due for some, surely? He wasn’t a betting addict. More of an enthusiast. It wasn’t like he had a gambling problem. More a losing problem, just lately. It happened, to the sort of pixie who couldn’t pass an oddsmaker’s without going in, or one who’d take any bet going. But this—it was a sign that he should get himself to the races!
He dashed back and dived into his image, managing not to squeal at the resistance he had to pass through, like breaking the surface of icy water. Taking over, or retaking his place, he brought his tune to a loud, shrill roll of completion.
“Well, how about applauding?” he demanded into the silence that hung thick in the square once his reedy notes died away. “Wouldn’t kill you now, would it?” Grinning, he snatched up his floppy hat from the ground before anyone went to look for coins to throw in it. Shouting, “I’ll be back at sundown, people!” he clapped the hat on and ran to the tracks.
There, he enjoyed so much brandishing his pass to barge through the gate instead of waiting in line and handing over coins, or in his case, trying to talk his way in. One of the security giants bit into his pass to check it.
“Careful, you’ll get splinters,” Daire warned, snatching the token back. Inside, he turned sharply away from the gate and rubbed his hands in glee, taking a minute to drink in the sights, sounds and scents he loved before looking for the listing of which wind-hounds were running in the two o’clock.
He eased through the crowds, sniffing the fried food and stopping for a fish cracker, but wrinkling his nose at the beaver tails in the kiosk next door. Most pixies loved that delicacy, but Daire thought it a little much to cut the rawdents’ tails off and fry them, even if the beavers did grow a new one every month.
He reached out to slap Lyam on the back when he passed the spelt-wheat-beer tent. His greeting startled Lyam, making him slop beer from a tankard onto the customer he was serving. The customer leapt up and yelled, clouting poor Lyam around the head.
“Sorry!” Daire called over his shoulder. He couldn’t stop and try to get a beer when the owner wasn’t looking, not when he had to find an oddsmaker who’d let him bet. Fine, he’d admit he had a fondness for games of chance. Not a weakness. He wouldn’t go that far. Ooh, Oddsmaker Aldon was right there, with a group of Daire’s friends clustered around his chalk board. Daire shook his head again at the track accountant’s slogan—You’re All Done With Aldon. It was one of the worst.
“Daire?” Clove caught sight of him and laughed. “Who let you in?”
“I have a pass, actually.” Daire flicked it into the air and caught it. Quickly. He couldn’t be too careful with the types who frequented this place. “So stick that up your pixie pipe and pass it.”
“Best offer he’s had all day,” Brackish said of Clove, slapping him on the shoulder.
Clove slapped him back. Harder. “Got a lead on an invisibility stone,” he told Daire. “You interested?”
Daire considered. He did like getting his hands on amulets and charms, and Clove had sold him a few things over the years. “Maybe,” he replied. “If it works better than that so-called love potion.”
“That worked!” Clove protested.
“Yeah, the other way round!” Daire had been horrified to find himself sighing and panting over that young fairy for a whole weekend.
“You didn’t use it right—I told you!” Clove insisted. “Hey, you betting on the favorite?” He pointed at the track.
“Fiends’ Fancy?” Daire pulled a face. “Nah.”
“Mage’s Girl?” Brackish asked, running his finger down the list of entrants.
“As if. No, my friends. I’m a firm believer in Lady Miracle.” Daire jingled his bag of coins, making his friends’ eyes bulge. He placed his wager with Aldon then rubbed his race slip between his palms and blew on it for luck.
“Be a miracle if that lady even places.” Clove fancied himself an expert. On a lot of things. Funny, he was the opposite to Brackish, who tended to get the wrong end of the wand. Daire knew them well and they knew him. They’d been coming here for years. A decade or so. And he couldn’t see things changing, imagine himself getting a partner. Daire squashed down the loneliness that had been bubbling up more and more in him. Things, his life—it was all…fine, wasn’t it?
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Bailey Bradford
A native Texan, Bailey spends her days spinning stories around in her head, which has contributed to more than one incident of tripping over her own feet. Evenings are reserved for pounding away at the keyboard, as are early morning hours. Sleep? Doesn’t happen much. Writing is too much fun, and there are too many characters bouncing about, tapping on Bailey’s brain demanding to be let out.
Caffeine and chocolate are permanent fixtures in Bailey’s office and are never far from hand at any given time. Removing either of those necessities from Bailey’s presence can result in what is known as A Very, Very Scary Bailey and is not advised under any circumstances.
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