Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale (16 page)

Luc squeezed Corinne’s hand, as if encouraging her to keep silent.
As if she had yet recovered the power of speech.
Ha.
The man clearly didn’t understand the potency of his own kisses.
“We appreciate this, Mr.
Hibbish.
Can you start by…?”

“Whoa, wait a second there.”
The man held his hands out in front of him and backed up half a step.
His friendly expression closed down like a Popsicle stand in October, and he shook his head.
“If you’re here lookin’ for Walt, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

That managed to yank Corinne out of her lust-induced fog.
She frowned.
“What?
I thought
you
were Walter Hibbish.
I looked it up.
The Pink Pillow is owned by Walter M.
Hibbish.”

“And Harvey Weitzel.
They’re partners.
We’re partners.
I’m Harvey,” Weitzel explained.
“But I haven’t seen Walt in nearly a week.”

“Have you reported him missing?”
Damn, that news threw Corinne for a loop, but her instincts were kicking in now.
Maybe this assignment had caused her to stumble on to real story.
“Do you know where he was last seen?”

“Yeah, I reported it, since he hasn’t returned any of my calls, but I’ll tell you the same thing I told the police.”
Weitzel turned away to begin breaking down his equipment from the shoot.
The models reached for their robes, still watching Luc out of the corners of their eyes.
“I don’t know nothing about where he might be.
Walt and I never lived in each other’s pockets, and when one of us wanted to take a little break, we never felt the need to explain it.
He could be anywhere.
Chances are he’ll turn up in a week or two.
You can try back then.”

“I won’t need to try back then.
I’m working on a story, and I need to talk to him now.”

“Then I hope you got a nose like a bloodhound, ’cause I can’t think of any other way for you to find him.”
Weitzel gave a regretful shake of his head and zipped his lens into a protective case.
“Sorry I can’t tell you more.
But if you wanna do an article on the store instead of just on Walt, I’d be happy to have a sit-down.
The publicity would be great.”

Corinne blew out a frustrated breath and shoved her notebook back into her bag.
“Sorry, but I have to run that by my editor first.”

Weitzel looked disappointed for a minute, then shrugged it off and offered her a smile.
“Oh, well.
That’s how it goes, I guess.”
He picked up a can of Kissy Kreme and handed it to Luc.
“Here.
Take a freebie.
Just for coming.
Tell your friends about it, too.
We’ll be all stocked up by Wednesday.”

By Wednesday, Corinne sincerely hoped she could forget The Pink Pillow had ever existed, but she just nodded and left the thank-yous to Luc.
He seemed to be good at them.

“Look, I’m sorry you went through all this trouble for nothing,” the shopkeeper said.
“Unless you change your minds about the photos it’s like you wasted a trip.
Why don’t I walk you out and tell my girl out front to give you a special discount.
Anything you want, twenty percent off.”

“Thanks, Harvey, that’s very generous of you,” Luc said, taking Corinne by the elbow and guiding her forward.
“We appreciate all your help.”

Weitzel shrugged as he set aside a soft-sided camera case and led the way toward the doorway they had entered through.
“No problem.
I wish you luck on your story.
Sorry I couldn’t give you more information.”

“Yeah, me too,” Corinne muttered under her breath, stepping back into the shop with Luc right behind her.
They exchanged pleasantries with Weitzel, but when the curtain fell closed behind them, she crossed her arms over her chest and immediately dropped them back to her sides.
She gave a frustrated sigh.
“Fabulous.
Just what we needed.
Now we’ve got a great big blank from what was supposed to be our likeliest source.
What now?”

“Well, we could always pick out a few things to…console us until we decide what to do next.”

Luc’s suggestion startled a laugh out of her.
“I suppose that’s one way to make lemonade, but before we, ah, stop for refreshments, what do you say we put in a bit more than an hour of hard work for the day and see what else we can find out about Walter Hibbish?”
Her eyes slid back to the display of chocolate tattoos she’d noticed earlier, and her smile turned wicked.
“Then if you’re a very good boy, maybe we can take a break later on.”

She snagged a box and sashayed over to the cash register.
“After all, we’ll need to keep our strength up.”

Luc’s mind was filled with two primary thoughts as he bustled Corinne away from the shop and down the street.
On the one hand, they needed to figure out what it meant that one of the last mortals to make contact with Seoc had disappeared without a trace; on the other, he needed to understand why the taste of Corinne D’Alessandro went to his head faster than Faerie wine.

He knew she was his heartmate.
Even if he’d wanted to deny it, that part had become abundantly clear when she’d seen through his glamour last night.
Still, just being his perfect match didn’t explain why the one little taste of her in the back of the sex shop had nearly snapped his control.
He hadn’t touched anything more intimate than her shoulder.
Heartmates were said to possess a strong, elemental attraction to each other, but could this really be what the stories were talking about?

For a man who’d learned the finer points of sex from nymphs and dryads, a man known as one of the most desirable warriors in Faerie, Luc couldn’t fathom why one human woman should be able to seduce him simply by breathing.
For Goddess’s sake, he’d spent the entirety of last night having her as many times as he could manage.
He should be sated, but he’d wanted her again the minute he’d woken, and the desire had only increased with each passing second.
How in
Ithir
was he supposed to function like this?
If this was how all heartmates felt for each other, it amazed him that he’d ever seen any of them outside their bedchambers.

“Luc?”

The sound of her voice surprised him.
He’d been so caught up in thinking about her, he’d almost forgotten about her.
She stared up at him with those wide, earth-colored eyes, and he felt his blood head back south.
“Sorry, what?”

“I knew you weren’t listening.
I asked what you think it means that Hibbish has gone missing.
I saw the look on your face when Weitzel first mentioned it.
You have some sort of theory.”

He weighed his words for a moment before he answered.
“Not so much a theory as a whole lot of questions that I’d really like answers to.”

She frowned.
“What do you mean?”

“I think it’s a pretty odd time for Hibbish to go missing, don’t you?”

“I think
odd
is pretty much at the root of this whole situation, but then I’m still trying to accustom myself to the idea of there being a Queen of Faerie, or a place called Faerie itself, so I don’t think I’m one to judge.
I’m more interested in what you think is odd.”

He sighed.
“I think it’s odd that Hibbish has disappeared so soon after sighting Seoc.”

“Explain.”

It must have been nearing lunchtime, because the sidewalk had begun to fill up with pedestrians, and Luc had to pull Corinne out of the way of a small gaggle of young people who seemed oblivious to the fact that they were expected to share the world with anyone else.
He grimaced.
“Come on.
We can’t stand here and chat all day.
I saw a coffee shop down on the corner.
Let’s grab a table and swap theories.
And maybe some more of that foul brew you love will put you in a better mood.”

“My mood is just fine, but I never say no to a cup of foul brew.”
She let him guide her down the block and inside to the table a harried waiter indicated.

“Fine, is it?
I suppose that’s why we had to have that little relationship talk in the middle of that atmospheric shop.”

She had the grace to look abashed.
“Okay, so my mood is greatly improved.”

“And think how much further it will improve after a cup of coffee.”
Personally, he didn’t see what humans liked so much about the dark, bitter liquid, but if it made Corinne happy, he’d be delighted to provide it.

He thought he heard her murmur something about torture, revenge, and Altoids as he helped her into her seat, but when he took his own and glanced across at her, she just smiled sweetly.
The expression gave him the willies.
Talk about unnatural.
He gave her order to their waiter, along with a request for a pot of Darjeeling with lemon and turned back to their conversation.

“So what’s your theory about the weirdness?”
she asked as soon as they were alone again.

He paused, taking a moment to weigh his answer.
It wasn’t so much a matter of deciding how much of the truth to tell her as deciding how to tell her so she would understand without getting freaked out.
“Have you ever heard of a Changeling?”

Her eyes widened.
“Oddly enough, I have.
A few months ago, I would have assumed that when you asked about a changeling—small
c
—you were referring to the folktales about how fairies—small
f
and one
e
—used to exchange their sickly or malformed offspring for healthy human babies, whom they then raised as their own children back in fairyland.
But last summer, another friend of mine actually met a guy who calls himself a Changeling, so I’m going to assume you’re talking about the kind with the capital
C
.”

“Definitely a capital
C
.
The other sort haven’t happened in a long, long time.
Not since the very beginning of our time out of
Ithir
.
These days, the term always refers to the offspring of mixed parents—one Fae parent, and one human.”

“Really?
Danice just said it meant half human and half Other.
She never mentioned the Fae, even when she married the guy.
The jerk.”

“Last night, when I first explained what I was doing here, I mentioned that the only way to travel between here and Faerie, and vice versa, is to use a magical doorway.
Remember?”

She nodded.

“Good.
The thing is, that wasn’t always true.
It used to be that the Fae could build a kind of portal, using magic, and do it anytime and anywhere they wanted.
But having that power led to abuses, like stealing human children.
So a long time ago, that power was stripped away; from then on, the only paths between the worlds were the doorways.
That’s one of the reasons why taking human babies back to Faerie stopped, because in order to make the trip, the Fae would have to not only find the right baby and make the switch, but also find the nearest door between the worlds and get the baby through before getting caught.
It just got too tough.
And since the Queen could hardly afford to seem like she approved of the whole practice, she didn’t exactly make those doors easy to find.”

He closed his mouth as their server approached and wáited until he was done before leaning forward to continue his tale.
“But some Fae continued to find them.
Worse than that, some humans found them, too, and a few came into Faerie looking for the lost children.
Once, a human man managed to convince some of his neighbors that the Fae were responsible for the death of their crops and their cattle, and they formed a small army to attack us.
That was an extreme example, but it made an impression on the Queen.
Eventually, she decided to close almost all the doors between the worlds so she could control the passage of anyone into and out of Faerie.”

“Sort of like the Berlin Wall of alternate realities, then.”

Luc gave an amused snort.
“Well, I suppose there are worse analogies.
Anyway, all but five of the doors in
Ithir
were permanently sealed, and the five that were left were all charmed so that while they exist at different corners of the world in
Ithir,
in Faerie they all open into the Queen’s palace.”