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Authors: J. A. Kazimer

Tags: #Fantasy

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BOOK: Curses!
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Chapter 28
I
wandered the streets of the marketplace replaying the last hour in my head. Why would Miss Muffet steal the bluebird receipt? It didn't make sense. Was the union in on Cinderella's murder? I doubted it. For one thing, what was their motive? The union gained nothing from her death. That's not to say villains didn't kill on a whim. In fact, most of our dastardly deeds lacked any planning at all.
And that was the problem.
Whoever killed Cinderella did so with absolute calculation and cunning, which meant the killer must've gained something from her death. Money? Fame? Revenge? Who knew, but one thing was certain. I was clueless.
A gaggle of Snow White's drunken dwarfs staggered by me. The tallest one, his face red from booze, pointed at me. “Hi hoe,” he said with a slur. His shorter friends laughed, slapping him on the back. I rolled my eyes.
“RJ, son, is that you?” the king's voice boomed from behind me. “Just the man I need.”
That didn't bode well for either of us, but I turned around anyway. “Sir?”
“Help me with these bags.” The king tossed two paper sacks with wide green lettering on the front at me. I caught them, grunting under the weight. Each sack weighed at least fifty pounds and smelled like old shoes. Unless the king had started collecting feet, I deduced the bags contained fifty-pound blocks of cheese. That, honestly, didn't make much more sense. Who eats that much cheese?
“Rats,” the king said as if I'd voiced my question aloud. “The castle is full of them.”
Didn't I know it.
“I've devised a trap.” He pulled a jumbo-sized mousetrap from another sack. A lighter sack, I had no doubt. “I load a piece of cheese here. The quee—I mean the rat steps here.” The king's finger pressed the lever. “And snap. Off goes her head.”
I glanced from the trap to the deluded king and shook my head. This would not end well. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than a loud snap rang from the trap.
The trap had sprung, crushing the king's porky finger beneath hundreds of pounds of pressure. His scream of pain nearly burst my eardrums.
“Ow. Ow. Ow.” He danced around, trap and finger mercifully intact. I stepped back to avoid his flailing arms, a smile hovering on my lips.
When the king paused in his litany of acrobatic tricks, I reached for the trap and yanked his hand free. The villainous part of me enjoyed it more than a man should. As did the other less desirable part, the same stupid part who agreed to find Cindi's killer and break my damsel's curse.
“Thank you, son,” the king said, rubbing his mangled fingers.
“You're welcome, sir.” I paused. “But in the future, you might wanna rethink your ‘rat' traps.”
“It wasn't rats I was after.”
“Really? I would've never guessed.”
“Let me tell you a story, son.” His bruised and bloody hand reached around my shoulder, leaving streaks of red on my shirt, and pulled me close. “When I was a wee lad, my father pulled me onto his lap and offered me a bit of advice. And this advice I will give to you.”
“How nice,” I said with a smirk.
“He said, ‘son, nobody likes a smart-ass.' ” The king's unmangled hand smacked the back of my head. “Now, do you want to win back Asia or not?”
“I do.”
“Good.” The king smiled, showing off stained teeth and swollen gums. Apparently, the king of all the land never heard of dental floss. The king added, “Go back to Charming's and wait for my signal.”
“Signal? What kind of signal?”
“You'll know it when you see it. Have faith.”
I snorted. Villains believed in faith as much as we believed in truth, justice, and the Neverlandian way. The king frowned. When I didn't respond, the old guy frowned even harder, so hard I worried his bottom lip would disappear forever.
Finally, I rolled my eyes and nodded. “All right. I'll wait for your ‘signal.' ” I added finger quotes for effect. “But tell me this, why the sudden change of heart? Yesterday you threatened to boil my bollocks in oil.”
“People change, son.”
That was it? Somehow I doubted the king's sudden epiphany on the merits of villainy. More likely, he found a way to use my villainous skills against the missus. The joke was on him, though. Until Miss Muffet reinstated me to full villainy, I couldn't use my villainous skills to boil an egg.
I followed the daft king to a bright blue moped with training wheels. He climbed aboard, strapping on a matching blue helmet. His beard tangled in the strap, causing his face to resemble a troll doll. “Listen, son,” he said. “One day you will look back on this moment.”
“And?”
He kick-started the moped's engine. It buzzed to life like an angry fairy. “How should I know? I'm the king, not psychic.”
I shook my head. If anything, I hoped that one day this damn conversation would make a lick of sense. The king revved his engine. “Hey,” I said. “Did your father really sit you on his lap like that?” If so, it might explain a few things, especially if the child-king had fallen off and landed on his noggin.
A frown creased the king's mouth. “I don't think so. My biological father died when I was a wee lad. But I was lucky, son.”
“How so?”
“The king took me in.” The current king smiled. “Raised me as his own son.”
“That was nice,” I said, nearly choking on the most hated word in the villainous language. That and “G-spot.”
The king nodded. “King de Wolfe was a good man.” With that, the king hit the gas and took off into the late-night traffic at a top speed of fifteen miles per hour.
 
For the next six hours of my life, I sat in the most dreaded institution in all the land. A place whose very name caused lesser villains to beg for mercy. A place that catered to the most depraved of degenerates.
The Maledetto Public Library.
The library was open twenty-four hours a day. Unlike 7-Eleven, it served a greater purpose, enlightenment rather than just overcooked hot dogs. Of course, like 7-Eleven, it did offer a fine selection of beers and slushies. Unfortunately, the enlightenment as well as the beer was watered down.
I walked into the library at a little after one in the morning. A cold wind swept inside after me. I shivered, glancing around the dark wood-paneled room that smelled like dust and decaying bookworms.
My face ached from Miss Muffet's tiny fists, but not nearly as bad as my side hurt. Getting shot sucked. But getting shot by the woman you ... lusted after really blew. Not only did my side burn, but the spot just left of the center of my chest did as well. I let out a loud burp that my cursed self quickly apologized for, even though the library appeared empty.
A muskrat-faced librarian wearing hair rollers and granny glasses shot me a dirty look and raised her hairy finger to her hairy lips. “Shhhh!” she shouted in an earsplitting screech.
I looked around the room and laughed. Who was I disturbing? The book fairy? Not a soul stood inside the library, or near the library, or even in a mile radius of said library.
“Quiet!” The librarian pounded her fists on the countertop until my chuckles subsided.
“Sorry,” I whispered, which seemed to mollify her, or at least it stopped her from chewing on my limbs. “Can you help me find a book?” I asked with my most charming smile. A smile I'd stolen from the dim-witted prince himself.
“No.” Muskrat-face pointed her finger at her chest. “Do I look like the reference librarian to you?”
“Ummm ... no?”
She nodded. “Reference section's in the back, past the self-help section. If you get to the self-mutilation section, you've gone too far.”
Tell me about it.
I nodded my thanks and walked through racks of books, all neatly arranged by Dewey himself. I passed the nonfiction section, pausing for a second in front of
Grimms' Fairytales
. I picked up the weighty tome. The cover showed the dark (incredibly handsome) outline of a terrifying villain towering over a distressed damsel.
Those damn Brothers Grimm. For years, I did the dirty deeds and they reaped the rewards. Maidens swooned at their overly large feet. Size fifteen in socks! What kind of abomination wore boots that big? It just wasn't natural.
I glanced down at my own size twelves and smiled.
With a shake of my head, I returned the book to the shelf and continued on my quest for information about the Maledetto lineage. The name de Wolfe kept repeating in my brain, sort of like the soundtrack of a bad three little pig-on-pig porno.
Someone had used the name Nigel de Wolfe to purchase Gretel, the killer bluebird. It was time to find out who and why.
My journey took me through the cookbooks and into the fiction section. Rows and rows of books offered faraway adventures, romance, and the occasional STD. I lifted a book titled
My Life As a Slipper Addict
from the shelf at random. Cinderella's face stared back at me, her eyes and teeth as sharp as I remembered from the picture in Charming's living room. Was it censure or warning in her pale gaze? Was I finally on the right path? A path led me to a killer and eventually back into Asia's panties.
After a sojourn through the gay and lesbian ogre section, I arrived at my destination. The reference section. Thick books, maybe three feet in size, sat on a bowing bookcase. The titles ranged from
Maledetto: The Early Years
to
The End of an Earl
. Damn. Without knowing where to look, my search would take an era.
I rang the bell sitting on top of a desk with the word REFERENCE on it. The bell chimed, sounding more like a scream than a ding.
From behind a stack of towering dictionaries stepped the muskrat-faced librarian. But this time instead of granny glasses, she wore green tinted contacts and a pink wig.
“May I help you?” she asked in the same sour voice.
“Ummm,” I motioned to the front of the library, “weren't you ...” I shook my head. “Never mind. I need some help.”
“Self-help is two stacks up. I recommend
The Joy of the Female Orgasm
.” She looked down her nose at me. “Or in your case,
Are You There, G-Spot? It's Me, Man
.”
“No. Not that kind of help.” Not today at least. “I'm looking for some information on Nigel de Wolfe.”
“Should I know that name?”
“I'm not sure.” I scratched my chin, my fingers coming away rust-colored from dried blood. No wonder the librarian didn't want to help me. I must look like an escaped little piggy from the crazy hospital. “I believe he might be related to the former king, de Wolfe.”
Her eyes widened, causing her tinted contacts to slip. The dark brown of her iris bubbled from underneath the greenish tinting. She blinked them back in place. “This is the reference section, not information. If you're looking for Nigel de Wolfe, try four-one-one. The library can't help you.” She twisted on her heel and vanished behind a row of yellow pages.
“Wait,” I called, but to no avail. “Darn it.”
I slapped the desk. The stack of reference books next to me started to topple. An avalanche of fonts crashed to the floor, choking me in a whirlwind of book dust. The noise was loud enough to wake the Book of the Dead, but the weasel-faced librarian didn't return to admonish me. Must be her crazy break.
Swiping my hand in front of my face, I cleared the air, only to discover a book as old as time itself. Or at least it looked that old. Smelled that old too. Sort of like that elderly lady with all those kids who resided in size-eight housing.
I picked up the book, examining the cover. The text had no title, only the imprint of a paw and the name de Wolfe etched in the worn leather.
Cracking open the book, I choked on years of dust mites and papyrus. Tiny lettering greeted my bruised eyes in an Old English font with lots of Thous, Thees, and Yeas. Oh Yea!
I skipped the foreword (does anyone really read them?), past the early years of Maledetto history (yawn), and into the last century. The de Wolfe name appeared prominently. In fact, it appeared every fifth word or so, sort of like Old MacDonald's manifesto, but without the racial slurs. Then, about fifty pages and years later, the name Nigel de Wolfe finally graced the yellowed pages of the book in my hand.
With the final clue to solving Cinderella's murder hidden inside the book, I plopped down on the reference desk, popped open a beer, and began to read a story as old as time itself, filled with revenge, love, lies, and the occasional reference to lusting after one's mother.
What was wrong with royalty?
Chapter 29
T
he following morning, bleary eyed and stinking of hops, dust, and knowledge, I stumbled through the front door of Prince Charming's bungalow. My brain swirled with clues, some of which made no sense. Okay, most of which made no sense. Like the fact the current king wasn't the original heir to the throne. His older brother, Prince Nigel de Wolfe, was, until one fateful day when Nigel and his little brother went into the woods to fetch, as near as I could tell, a pail of water. Nigel apparently fell down and broke his crown, after being shot in the chest. The king came tumbling after, scooped up the broken crown, duct-taped it together, and presto, long live the new king.
There were whispered suspicions and accusations of foul play, but no one came forward. They must've been chicken. For the most part, though, the kingdom rejoiced at Nigel's passing. Dear old Nigel wasn't well liked by friend and foe alike. The old tome suggested Nigel was actually madder than the Hatter and smelled worse than the Cheshire Cat, not to mention his proclivity toward siring offspring like a Catholic school rabbit.
But what did it all mean?
I wasn't sure, but one thing was clear.
The rabbit hole went deeper than I first imagined.
The book provided a big clue, however, in the form of an artist's rendering of Nigel de Wolfe. The image captured de Wolfe's arrogance perfectly. Nigel looked like royalty, his face tilted toward the heavens as his white-blond hair flowed around his broad shoulders, his tail wagging in the wind.
Nigel looked familiar, as if I'd recently seen him.
Inside the palace.
Nigel de Wolfe, former prince of Maledetto, currently graced the tiled floor of the palace library, his white blond hair wrapped around a set of rollers, his broad shoulders and shaggy tail hidden inside a flowered housecoat.
The Big Bad one himself, the king said.
I guess it was true.
I had two theories as to why Nigel de Wolfe's signature was on the bluebird receipt. Either Nigel de Wolfe had mastered the art of reincarnation, or someone had used his identity and his fur ... coat to commit murder.
And that someone had easy access to the palace, which left me with about a couple thousand suspects, including my sweet, murderous princess. Damn.
With the exception of my unscheduled and brain-damaging. . . naps, I hadn't slept in twenty-four hours. I was exhausted, burned out, and ready to call it quits. This detecting shit was for the bluebirds. I was no closer, was in fact further from solving Cinderella's murder than I had been yesterday. Damn Miss Muffet and her nimble fingers. Without the bluebird receipt, even if I unmasked the killer, I couldn't prove it.
Like lack of evidence had ever stopped a villain before. Remember that trial with the ill-fitting mitten? Those kittens got away with murder according to their recently released biography,
BTW, I Did It!
Yawning, I staggered inside Charming's bungalow. The soft sound of snoring filtered through the house. Prince Rotten dreamed the dreams of the moronic while I spent hours searching for his fiancée's killer. Which one of us was the idiot?
As I closed the front door, a tiny slippered foot with a bell on top wedged itself between the door and frame. The door flew back open, smacking me in the head with a dull thud.
“Ow!” I rubbed at the newly formed bump that matched perfectly with the four or so other dents I'd recently acquired. With all the new lumps and bruises, I was starting to resemble the ugly duckling before all the plastic surgery.
“What the heck?” I said to the dwarf standing in the doorway. He wore green tights and a green and red jester collar. The outfit should've looked cute, but instead, he looked down on his Rice Krispied luck.
Snapped, as I'd nicknamed him, shoved a clipboard full of papers at me. “Sign here,” he said in a high-pitched squeak.
I glanced down at the paper, my eyes too blurry to read the first line. “Fine, but if you're the devil bargaining for my soul, I don't come cheap.”
Snapped pointed to a patch on his shirt. “Fey-Ex. Rain, sleet, snow, the dark of night, I'll get your package there in thirty years or less.”
“A point of pride, I see.”
Snapped pressed the clipboard toward me once again. “Just sign by the
X
.”
I did so with a flourish reserved for parking tickets and autographs at the airport. Snapped barely glanced at my signature when I handed the clipboard back. “So where's this package?” I asked.
“It's on the truck,” he said.
“Okay.”
He frowned. “It's pretty big.”
“Uh-huh.”
He rolled his tiny eyes. “Heavy too.”
“Oh,” I said. “You better lift with your legs, then.”
“Stupid ... villain ... ,” Snapped muttered as he turned on his heel and headed to a white truck barely big enough to fit a unicorn. The words “Fey-Ex” covered the side in large red lettering.
Rather than wait for his return, I strolled into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. If I was to survive the day, I needed caffeine, and lots of it. As the smell of boiling coffee beans filled the air, Snapped returned with a cardboard box half his size. The dramatic dwarf grunted under the weight as he hefted it onto the kitchen table.
“Well, here it is. Came all the way from the Orient,” he said, reading the delivery slip affixed to the top of the box.
The Orient, huh? I'd always wanted to visit, but never found the time. A villain's work was never done.
“It sure was heavy,” he said, his tiny pink Vienna sausage–like fingers wiggling expectantly.
I slapped him a high five. “Thanks.”
He frowned and then frowned some more. Finally, he turned for the door, his belled feet jingling all the way.
“Hey, wait a second,” I called.
“Yeah?” He quickly turned around, his hand extended for a tip.
“Close the door on your way out,” I said, pouring a cup of coffee into Charming's World's Greatest Prince mug. What a tool. Like anyone would give him an award. Try to kill him in his sleep, yes, an award, not so much.
Hell, I bet the jerk bought the mug for himself.
The front door slammed shut, reminding me of the mysterious cardboard box. I assumed the delivery was for Charming, but what if it wasn't? What if the package was the king's “signal,” or better yet, my subscription to
Sprites Illustrated,
the Nymph Issue? I set my coffee down and picked up the box. The damn thing wasn't that heavy, maybe two stone. Attached to the box was an envelope.
I opened it and read the words aloud: “To a villain among princes.” I glanced toward the staircase where Prince Rotten slept. Yep, that was me, a villain smothered by a flaming prince.
Grabbing a knife from the kitchen drawer, I peeled back the edge of the packing tape. The sticky residue clung to the edge of the knife. The faint sound of ticking reached my ears.
A bad sign on the best of days.
Snapped was right. The package was from Asia, just not the continent. Damn it! I chucked the box toward the door. The room exploded into a wall of blue flames, licking at everything in its path, including me. My Levi's quickly ignited, aided by my chicken dance around the room.
“Hot ... hot ... hot ... ,” I muttered, flapping my arms, which only enraged the flames. My skin bubbled underneath my smoldering clothes, smelling faintly of roasted villain and marshmallows. Overhead, a fire alarm blared the chorus to “It's Raining Men.”
Get out of the house, my mind screamed.
Through the thickening black smoke, I found the front door, half my body consumed in a fireball. Like a ballerina after one too many drinks, I did a jerky pirouette off the front porch and onto the dew-soaked lawn. I dropped and rolled, but forgot the most important part. I failed to stop. Instead, I rolled onto the middle of the street. A Fey-Ex truck bore down on me as Prince Rotten chased me around, beating me with a wooden spoon.
“... twit ... house ... fire ... idiot,” Charming yelled, emphasizing each word with a paddle to my skull.
In the distance, a siren screamed, moving closer and closer. But it was too late. Charming's bungalow was now a towering inferno. I, on the other hand, had stopped smoking like a kielbasa. Thanks in part to my new best friend, Snapped, and his Fey-Ex truck. When the truck struck me the first time, it smothered the flames with its tiny tires, but not completely.
Blue flames flickered up my boots, threatening to ignite the unblackened patches of skin left on my thighs. Being a pal, Snapped shoved the truck into reverse and backed over my flaming body once again.
Disaster adverted.
Or so I thought until Snapped's Fey-Ex truck engine again revved in my ear. That was my last coherent thought before, like the sky, my world turned black.
BOOK: Curses!
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