Death Charmed, page 4
She walked to the far wall and adjusted bottles on the shelf that she had fixed. “I can see, you know. Or did you come here just to insult me?”
“No, I came because I need your help.” It didn’t matter that I had to swallow my pride to admit that. I would have done just about anything to get out of here.
She shook her head. Bitter laughter erupted from her throat as she suddenly left her straightening. With jerky side-to-side movements of her head, she stalked to the back of the store. I followed.
When she made it to the back counter, she plucked a dried bat from the ceiling. She brushed her teal hair back from her forehead with the bat in her hand. I fought back the urge to gag. You’d never see a dead anything that near to my face. Unless I was eating it. The thought made me think of cheeseburgers again. When was the last time I’d eaten a cheeseburger had it been days? Weeks?
Iris brought the bat back to the counter. She set it on a wooden-checkerboard pig on the counter. With quick movements, she pulled a knife out of her apron. The sunlight didn’t reach this far back, and it glinted in the dim interior.
With quick movements, she slapped the bat onto the board. “Isn’t that rich? You want my help? You’re clearly dumber than you look.”
I laughed, a dry laugh. There were very few times I would sit somewhere and be insulted. If I was a lesser person, I’d insult her back and say that if her precious Tristen was such a catch, we’d still be together. I’d storm off and tell her and her whole too-perfect family to go fuck off.
That would just be to hurt her, though. It wasn’t true. Before this whole thing with Tristen, I’d like her. And Tristen really was a...decent person; we just weren’t meant to be together. Maybe I could make this about the one thing she really wanted.
In case she changed her mind about the knife, I stepped out of her range and continued. “Look, the only reason they brought me back here is because of these damn wings. If I can make them go away, I can split this joint like a bad dream. But short of cutting them off- and no, I’m not into self-mutilation, I can’t do that by myself. I need your help.”
She brought the knife down with more force than I would have said was necessary because the bat’s head flew off and hit the far wall. “Oh, isn’t that too bad for you. Why don’t-” She stopped her arm in the middle of bringing the knife down again onto the bat and asked, “Wait- did you say you would leave?”
“Yeah,” I deadpanned.
“Why didn’t you say so?” She said. “Anything that gets you out of my face, I’m all for.”
I leveled her an unamused look. It didn’t sit well with me that she hated me so much. I liked to think of myself as a likable person. Ok, I was a little rough around the edges, but I was still a good person. Wasn’t I?
She ignored my look and dropped her knife onto the counter with a clatter. The dried meat of the headless bat stared at me as she went behind me. I didn’t know what she planned until she started tugging at my wings. It didn’t hurt, but it grated my nerves.
She pulled and pushed. Just when I thought I was going to have to say something, she stopped. After a moment, she came back around behind the counter. She held the knife, but this time it rested in her hand as if it were an afterthought.
With a grimace, she said, “Yeah, they’re on there pretty good, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, on as in they’re part of my body.” I rolled my eyes.
Her free hand reached out to me and then stopped. “You’re serious. You have wings.”
My wings started to beat with my irritation. I struggled to keep them still, so I wouldn’t make a mess of Iris’ store.
My jaw was tight as I asked, “Why would I make something like that up?”
She ignored my question. “But how is that possible?”
I laughed and raised my hands. “You tell me.”
Her eyes took on a far off look. After a few moments, she focused back on me. Shrugging, she shook her head.
“Yeah, you are never going to be able to leave if you have those,” she said, holding the knife more firmly and going back to cutting. The steady drum of my heart in my chest pounded in my ears. No. I couldn’t stay here. The pressure of being Princess with a capital P was too much, never-ending. I wasn’t good enough. I never would be. I felt the tattoo on my wrist burn. Danu, forgive me.
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” I asked Iris.
I didn’t like the way my voice wavered, but I didn’t care. I needed to get out. I needed to be free to be me. And that wasn’t here. I would give anything to make that happen, including embarrassing myself in front of one of my worst enemies.
At first, she didn’t answer me. Then the cutting slowed to a stop. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. She set the knife down and then stared into space. A sheer black liquid painted her arm as she stroked it absently. Suddenly, she dropped the blade with a clack that was loud enough to make me jump.
Before my heartbeat had time to slow back down to a just-chatting-with-your-friendly-sociopath pace, she’d disappeared through a velvet moon-patterned curtain behind the counter. Loud scrapes and thumps made me wonder. I debated whether or not to go back there when the curtain flung to the side, and she came back through it carrying a large book. The size of it made me stop. The top of it almost touched her chin, and the bottom of it fell halfway down her thighs. She staggered under the weight of it. She’d just made it to the counter when it fell out of her grasp. It boomed as it fell. Even though I’d seen the whole thing, it still made me jump.
With a frown, she flipped through the pages, mumbling under her breath the whole while. “Forked Tongue…Endless Love…Sonic Split…Where is it? I could have sworn it was here.”
Goosebumps ran up my arm, chills sweeping through me. All of those sounded scary as hell. And what exactly was a Sonic Split?
After a moment, the furrows smoothed from her brow. “Ah, here it is. Nevermore.”
“Nevermore?” I repeated to make sure I’d heard her correctly.
She nodded, with her head still buried in the book, she read aloud, “Never is forever, but sometimes it is the only solution. If you find you want your troubles to disappear from your mind, never to be seen again, drink me. Never will your troubles bother you again unless you speak from the never. Only then will never be at your door. Otherwise, they will be gone forevermore.”
Goosebumps crawled up my arm. Gone forevermore. That’s what I wanted. Wasn’t it?
The frown crept back onto her face. “Odd. It doesn’t say anything about partial.”
“Partial?” I echoed, feeling like a parrot.
This time she did look at me. Her expression said she thought I was about as bright as a parrot too. “Right, as in it might make you vanish entirely.”
That wasn’t something I liked the sound of.
“What would happen if I… ‘vanished entirely?’ Where would I go?” I tried to wrap my head around the concept. “Would I be able to come back?”
She just gave a shrug and a half-laugh. “I have no idea. This is an ancient spellbook. It’s not used much anymore because it has a history of being sort of…unstable. I don’t even have most of these ingredients anymore.”
Unstable? I didn’t like the sounds of that at all. Not to mention the little part about me possibly disappearing and not being able to come back. My wings started to beat in the small space. I took a couple stabilizing breaths. It wouldn’t do any good for me to lift off right now. I had more pressing matters to deal with.
I gestured at the giant book she was almost on top of and asked, “Isn’t there another…spell we could use in there?”
“Nope, this is all I have that’s even close”, she said as she slapped the book’s page.
Dust plumed up from it, in a beeline straight for my mouth. Staleness gagged me. I coughed.
“What about the...newer books?” I asked around the layer of dust coating my mouth.
She looked at me like I’d suggested there might be a one-eyed monster in the back. “Just how often do you think it comes up that someone wants a piece of their body to go away?”
Ok, when she put it that way. But still…did I want out of Knockaine that badly that I was willing to disappear entirely? I didn’t even know what that meant. Maybe it meant I would be roving the Earth, invisible to all. I wiped at my upper lip, which had suddenly felt hot and sweaty.
Iris seemed oblivious to my inner turmoil as she scratched flourishes onto a piece of paper. She finished with a dot and tore the list from her ratty pad of paper. She thrust it in my face.
I looked down at the paper. What amounted to a shopping list was scrawled there.
“Thieves’ Hair, Goblin Bone, Werewolf Blood, Dragon Scale, and Demon’s Hoof?” I asked as I read off the unbelievable list.
Iris didn’t bat an eyelash or even say a word for that matter. She just smirked.
“What’s this?” I asked, even though I was afraid I already knew the answer.
“It’s the ingredient list. Like I told you, I don’t have those ingredients.” She said.
I laughed and shook my head. “What am I supposed to do about that?”
“Those are the ingredients I need for your potion. If you want the potion, you’ll have to go get them.” She said simply as she closed the book with a snap.
I laughed some more. This time I’m sure my laugh sounded a tad hysterical. But I couldn’t help it. Did I seem like a superhero to anyone? I couldn’t just waltz out and grab a dragon scale and a demon’s hoof. I might as well just slit my own throat.
“Look, I don’t know how you expect me to get these things. They aren’t exactly at the corner market.”
She waved her hand in the air. “You’ll figure it out.”
Right, like it was a math problem. We weren’t talking about two plus two here. We were talking about what probably equated to life or death. Not to mention there was the little matter of the potion possibly not working anyway.
“But what if it doesn’t work…like it should?” I asked, not quite able to put words to the idea that something could wipe me from the planet with such ease.
She shrugged her shoulders as she hefted the book back into her frail arms. “Well, do you want to get out of here or not?”
Of course, I did, but not at the expense of my existence. I adjusted a potion on the counter in front of me.
“Isn’t there any other way?” I asked.
I know I sounded weak, but this was way out of my league.
With a grunt, she staggered toward the backroom again. “If there’s another way, it’s beyond me. Trust me. If I could think of a better way to get you out of my face, I would do it so fast you’d think it was The Mother’s birthday.”
Trust her. How could I trust her? Ten minutes ago she’d wanted to kill me. My gut told me she wasn’t trying to kill me, though. That she really did think this was the best way. Could I do it, though? I could die getting the ingredients. The potion could damn me to a fate worse than hell on Earth. Just how much was I willing to sacrifice to be me?
Chapter 5
A little boy balanced a giant ornament in his small hands as he ran past me. His eyes strained to see over it. It was a wonder he could hold it at all.
His wasn’t the most oversized ornament, though. Even bigger ones were being hefted into the trees by groups of faeries who were flying them high into the branches. They glittered like small suns in the warmth of the sunshine.
I wandered through the courtyard. My mind phased out the activity. I was numb to it, numb to everything but the thoughts racing through my head. Just how was I going to get out of here? If I didn’t do it legitimately and narrowly escaped again, Mother would just hunt me down. Again. I couldn’t be on the run forever.
Absently, I passed under a willow tree. My feet carried me as relief coursed through me. Sweet Danu, the shade felt good. My feet crunched on the path as I stared, unseeing. A shift in the crunch of the path to cushy grass beneath my feet made me look up. A clear green pond shimmered in the afternoon sun. I blinked. Somehow, I’d found myself at the spot where Celeste and I had come to talk when we were young. Flowering lily pads and cattails now rimmed the edges of the small pond. Not surprising since it had been some time since it had been swam in. I walked to the pond, drawn to it. I flopped onto the grass at the edge.
I couldn’t just sit here and allow myself to be molded into someone I didn’t recognize. Could I? That answer was easy: no. I had to be me. And I knew from before, I couldn’t do that here. There was no choice but to leave. Being the natural heir to the throne didn’t leave me the luxury Tristen had. It simply wasn’t allowed for royalty to reside anywhere but the mound of their family. On the surface, it made sense. It kept the chances of a takeover down. Before the peace of the mounds, the fae had been just as intent on expansion as humans were. We’d used all the same tactics too: political sabotage, military conquest, you name it. So I didn’t blame them for not wanting me there. It landed me in this impossible position, though. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t exactly go to another mound for help either. It would get back to Mother quicker than pixies fly. Then she’d have me back in the Tearmann so fast my head would spin. I’d heard the only reason I hadn’t landed there yet was Court politics. I laughed without mirth. This was the only time Court politics had actually benefited me.
Were my best options really possibly vanishing or being in my own personal hell for the rest of my life then? I swallowed past a lump in my throat.
Pulling the crumpled paper from my pocket, I smoothed out the creases. The words stared back at me, stark and foreboding: Thieves’ Hair, Goblin Bones, Werewolf Blood, Dragon Scale, Demon’s Hoof.
Talk about a shopping list from hell. How did I even go about getting half of these things? Not to mention I would be lucky if I didn’t die just trying to get them. So basically, I could die now, or I could die later. Just great.
That didn’t seem fair. What did living mean really? After everything I’d been through, I started to think it had less to do with the beat of a heart and more to do with the way someone felt inside, the person they chose to be.
The person they chose to be. That was a sobering thought. Sven hadn’t exactly proven himself to be the most stellar of people. Not by his actions anyway.
And there was the feeling again. A heaviness. It was the same heaviness I’d had when I thought of Sven. It pulled at my heart. I knew he’d hurt me, but the rudeness of it perplexed me. I let it wash over me this time. There was more to it than hurt. There was...worry? That was odd. I wasn’t worried. Upset? Trapped? Betrayed? Sure. I was battered by all of those feelings, and a handful more I didn’t want to examine too closely. But worried wasn’t one of them.
Isolating that emotion, I let myself feel it. Really feel it. I freed my mind, following it down the path. Only then did it hit me. This wasn’t my emotion; it was Sven’s.
My eyes flew open in shock. I shook my head. But once I’d felt it, I couldn’t make it go away. The feeling was so strong, so real. It was as tangible as if he were next to me right now.
I know I looked crazy, but I reached a hand out to the empty space next to me. Not surprisingly, my hand didn’t meet anything. He and I weren’t together anymore. His presence did nothing but bring me more pain. My chin trembled as I pushed him out of my thoughts. To my surprise, it did go. It left like the removal of a physical thing. I pressed a shaking hand to my forehead.
A shadow blocked the warmth of my sun and shadowed my hands. I dropped them. I watched the black blob shift on the water from side to side. It was a familiar outline. Anthony. A smile twitched my mouth. I was so used to Anthony popping in and out whenever he pleased, seeing him walk up was strange.
It was so good to have him around. He brought a measure of comfort that was so rare in my life. I turned and raised my gaze to him, grazing over his drool-worthy pecs. I’m pretty sure you could bounce quarters off those. At least he’d put on jeans again.
I looked away. Why was I admiring Anthony? For that matter, why was I happy to see him? I was still mad at him for taking me against my will to Knockaine a couple days ago. Sure, we’d been best friends. But that was a long time ago.
I popped up off the grass. The hurt look on his face almost made me wish I hadn’t. Almost. I headed back down the dirt path from my private oasis.
I didn’t have to ask Anthony how he’d found me. After Celeste had died, I’d brought him here, to keep my connection to the place alive. My connection to her alive. It was as if I thought that if there was still laughter in this special place that she couldn’t really be gone.
When we passed back from under the willow tree into the Courtyard, I faltered. Not really sure where I was going. Uncertain, I shot him a look. His expression was unreadable as he looked down at me. I scowled and shifted my eyes away.
“I don’t know why you’re even here right now,” I grumbled, making sure he knew I was still mad about the other day.
He ignored the comment and looked out over the grass. Following his gaze, I connected with the ever-present group in the dirt circle. Punches and kicks punctuated the air. Muay Thai. It was a different group than the last time I’d come through. There was a rotating schedule. Every faerie in Knockaine was required to join the groups, at some point. Even I had.
It was such a silly mandate. A well-placed Superman punch was all fine and dandy if we were up against a human. Still, it would be the equivalent to bringing a daisy to a sword fight when you traded that human for a vampire. And they were our most deadly predators. Shouldn’t we equip ourselves, so we were protected against them?
Weaponizing our abilities would put us on the same level. Well, mostly. Ok, it would at least make it a fair fight. I wasn’t faulting anyone for not doing it. Tor Mór, I hadn’t even realized how big of a deal it was that we hadn’t weaponized our abilities until last night. Last night it had been an equalizer. A big, hairy tarantula of a deal once you realized any other battle of that size would have ended in a slaughterhouse.
