Pink Princess Fairytini (Fairy Files #2) (16 page)

In a boozy, buzzy haze I walked out of the bar and into the warm night. The street was crowded with people who’d come out to smoke or chat or head home. I loved the night in Sarsaparilla, it was so alive, so vibrant. A woman rushed into an alley and emptied her guts in a smelly, effusive flow. So trashy. I dropped a dollar in the guitar case of a man outside the bar. He was playing an old Phil Och’s anti-war song, which seemed oddly fitting as I went off to try to make peace with my ex-best friend.

“Where you going?” Frost asked, stepping out behind me. Count on him to know I’d left. He’d never let me walk anywhere alone at night.

“To see Buddy,” I said. “Probably to get a drink thrown in my face.”

“I’ll come with you. Wipe the booze off your face.”

“Your funeral,” I said. “I’m sure he hates you, too.”

“It’ll do him good to tell me so,” Frost said. “He gave me the cold shoulder at Evelyn’s funeral.”

That stopped me. “You were there?”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“You didn’t need me by your side.” He looked at me and something like admiration lit his eyes. “I figured you wanted your space.”

“I would have liked to have you by my side,” I said in a low voice, hating to admit a weakness, but needing him to know the truth.

He nodded, and we walked the five blocks to Buddy’s sports bar in silence. It was a comfortable silence, and I realized I was glad to have Frost with me. Maybe we were friends after all.

Humility is unattractive on most people
. –Chloe Frangipani

Admitting you are wrong is unnecessary if you are always right
. –Althea Frangipani

I’d have turned around as soon as I saw the warm light from Buddy’s club if Frost hadn’t been there. But Frost was there, and I wouldn’t back down from any challenge while he was watching.

I swallowed hard and marched into that loud bar, over-hot from so many bodies in such close proximity, all of them shouting at televisions and players who’d never hear a word they said. Buddy was behind the counter, telling a story to a handful of rapt listeners. I was glad to see him happy and well, looking like himself. And that was enough.

I turned to walk out of there, and Frost turned with me, not questioning me, not giving me a look to suggest I was a coward.

“Chloe,” Buddy’s shout carried over the crowd. I couldn’t tell if it was an angry shout or a welcoming one. Frost gripped my shoulders and turned me to see Buddy making his way through the crowd. He barreled into me and wrapped his arms so tight around me, I almost couldn’t breathe. “Let’s go in the back,” he said, low in my ear. “The wolf can stay here.”

He let me go and looked at Frost. “Drinks are on me,” Buddy said. “I’ll bring your Chloe back to you in less than an hour.”

“You’re Chloe?” I asked, when we were in Buddy’s office, the door closed behind us. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“It’s in the way he looks at you,” Buddy said. “And the gatekeeper is a bigger gossip than a brownie in a brothel.”

“Yeah, well, the gatekeeper won’t tell
me
anything,” I said wanting to keep up the banter as long as I could, because I was scared of what Buddy would say when we got serious. “And I don’t belong to Frost, he just said that to keep the gatekeeper from drinking my blood again.”

Buddy gave me a long look. “You might not belong to him, but he already belongs to you, whether you admit it or not.”

I stared at Buddy, and realized our falling out was the safer topic. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorrier than I can ever say about Evelyn and…I’m just so sorry.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry for pushing you away, Chloe. I understand why you did what you did, and I’ve found I can be grateful to you for trying to help me.” He paused and looked away with an expression I knew well.

“It’s me, Buddy. Lay it all on the table. I deserve whatever you hit me with.”

He looked up at me, tears glimmering in his eyes. “I just miss her so damn bad. I know you didn’t kill her, that the very last thing you wanted was for her to die, but I can’t stop feeling that if you’d just left everything alone, she’d still be alive.”

A lump formed in my throat and tears rose to my own eyes. “I feel the same way. Every day, Buddy. Every day I wish I could go back and do something differently.”

He stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t do that, Chloe. Don’t blame yourself.”

I smiled through my tears, but it was a wry smile. “You just said that you blame me.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “I just…I just…I should have told you what was going on. If I’d explained everything, hell if I’d even explained half of everything, to you and to Evelyn, she still might be alive.”

“You can’t do that,” I said. “You have to accept that you did the best you could with the information you had at the time.”

He gave me a wry smile. “I would say the same to you. What I’m trying to say and doing it very badly, is that when I got home and found out she was dead, I wanted someone other than myself to blame and you were there, blaming yourself. I was so angry and, even after my rational brain took over and I knew you weren’t to blame, I was still angry. I’ve been waiting for the anger to fade, but then you showed up here. I miss you, Chloe, and I want you back in my life. I just need you to understand that a part of me is still angry. You’ll have to forgive me if I lash out at you again.”

I took a moment to digest all of that. “So you mostly forgive me, but you apologize in advance in case you hate on me again.”

He nodded. “Yes, you put it much better than me. Can you accept that? Do you still want to be friends with a crazy, miserable, over-worked, old troll?”

“You didn’t look miserable behind the bar tonight.”

He nodded. “The bar has saved me. I’ve always fed off the energy here. And my beautiful daughter, Sunshine. She is light and beauty and joy.”

“And late night feedings, poopy diapers, and inexplicable bouts of screaming.”

He nodded, chuckling. “And then she looks at me with trust and joy, and it’s all worth it.”

I smiled, something in my chest cracking and re-forming. “I always knew you’d be a wonderful father.” I was so grateful to have him back in my life.

He pulled out his phone and showed me a million pictures and invited me to visit her some time. I’d just started to tell him about my club, when Frost knocked on the door.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But we’ve got another missing kid.”

“A missing kid?” Buddy asked, his craggy features deepening.

“Fae kids, recently migrated to the Non, have been going missing the past two weeks. We’re not sure if they’re running away, joining gangs, or being kidnapped. You heard anything?”

“No,” Buddy said. “But I’ve been a bit busy with a baby and a bar. Why don’t you let me come along and see what I can do?”

“We appreciate that,” Frost said. “But there’s nothing you can do. Chloe?” He gave me a look that I supposed meant wrap this up and let’s go.

“They’re calling you, not the police,” Buddy said. “Which means they don’t trust humans. I’m closer to Rubalia than either one of you, and I’m better at reading people than the both of you put together. I’ve got a decade behind a bar top’s experience.”

Frost shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I’m willing to try anything at this point. It’s up to Chloe.”

And how could I say no to Buddy after he’d just forgiven me for getting his wife killed. “I think he should come.” Buddy might not be a detective, but his presence had always calmed me and he might just see something we couldn’t.

So the three of us got a cab into the heart of downtown, the same neighborhood where the first kids had vanished. Buddy walked with us into a shabby, but clean one-bedroom apartment and greeted the elderly pixie who offered us tea and a seat on her floral couch.

“Thank you for coming out so late,” she said. “My granddaughter is always home by midnight and when she didn’t show …”

“We’re happy to do anything we can to help,” Frost said. He looked at me and shook his head, which I took to mean either the woman didn’t smell like the shadows or not to drink the tea in case she poisoned it. “Can you tell us a little bit about your granddaughter? Where are her parents?”

She sighed and dropped her gaze to her hands. “They didn’t want to leave Rubalia, but Livvy and I, we felt that something dark and dangerous was twisting the very land beneath our feet, and we chose to leave before it was too late.”

The woman had missed her calling as a poet. “And how did her parents take it when you told them you were leaving?” I asked.

“Oh, they were furious. They raged and they screamed. But they hadn’t been themselves for several days, and we ignored them.”

“The shadows had changed them,” I said, taking a chance that she’d reveal something if she thought we already knew.

Her eyes widened in surprise, before she took a sip of tea to giver herself a moment. “Yes,” she said. “The shadows started creeping in from the nightmare realm as soon as that woman killed the fairy king and took over.” She looked at me and gasped. “I’m so sorry, child. No offense to you, but I have never cared for your mother.”

“None taken,” I said. “Do you know what the inhabitants of the nightmare realm are like? Could they be coming into the Non, too?”

“I don’t know,” the woman said. “I heard that they’d tried to take over Rubalia during the last war, but only those who’d seen them knew what they were like, and those who had seen them didn’t talk about them. Those who had seen them returned home, much changed.”

“Like Livvy’s parents?”

She shook her head. “Nothing so drastic. More like what you humans would call PTSD.”

“How long have you lived here?” Buddy asked, his expression guarded.

The old woman looked up at him and it appeared to Chloe that her eyes narrowed the tiniest bit, and her smile drooped. “Long enough to know that I don’t have to talk to trolls who aren’t investigators.”

“How do you know I’m not an investigator?” Buddy asked. I wished I had asked Hieronymus or Vin some questions about how the different species of Rubalia got along, but they had both seemed more interested in teaching me how not to piss anyone off and how to keep myself from owing some fae a life-long debt.

Frost waved Buddy off. “He’s here as a friend,” Frost said. “To help us find your granddaughter, and his question is a good one. How long have you and Livvy been in the Non?”

“Ten days,” the old woman said. “But I’ve lived in the Non before, if you’re wondering how I’ve heard of PTSD. I was a huge fan of the Grateful Dead in the seventies, and I followed them around for two years.”

I bit my lip to keep from smiling at the image of this old woman as a Grateful Dead groupie. I wondered if she might know Petra, another aging pixy who’d stayed with me for a week, but decided it wasn’t a good time to ask.

“Did your granddaughter have friends here?” Frost asked. “How are you two financially?”

He held up a hand when the woman looked as though she might be mad. “I ask only because at least one of the missing kids we’ve been looking for ran off to try to find another source of income for her family.”

The old woman shook her head. “Livvy’s quiet, but people are drawn to her. She looks young for eighteen, and she’s very sweet, so people tend to look out for her. We didn’t bring any money with us, but the gatekeeper gave us a loan and set us up with this place, so we’ve been doing alright. Now that Livvy’s got a job as a waitress, she’s been making good money in tips.”

“Where does she work?” I asked.

“Bedazzled,” the old woman said. She held up a hand at the look I gave her. Bedazzled was a strip club, though it was one of the classier ones. “I know what you’re thinking, but Livvy was only waiting tables, and she was making good money.”

“But the patrons there,” I said. “They tend to be somewhat handsy and, though Bedazzled doesn’t have the roughest crowd, I’m sure there are some rude, mouthy guys who might harass a young, innocent girl like Livvy.”

The old woman nodded. “I had the same concerns, but like I said people get protective of Livvy. She knows how to take care of herself, but she also has the bouncers, the bartender, and her boss ready to rip off heads if anyone causes her any trouble.”

I nodded. It wasn’t ideal, but Livvy was eighteen, and it sounded as though her grandmother had a good handle on what her job was like.

“Does she have any friends outside of work?” Frost asked. “What does she do in her off hours?”

“She wants to be a dancer,” the old woman said. She must have caught the look on my face, because she quickly added. “Not an exotic dancer, an actual dancer. She’s quite good, and she’d been checking out dance studios in her free time. Yesterday was her first day as a dance instructor in exchange for lessons at a studio about five blocks from here. She hasn’t had time for much else.”

I felt sad for the girl who was such a hard worker and had so much going for her. Frost made a note of the dance studio’s address and we headed to Bedazzled.

“What did you think?” I asked Buddy as soon as we got outside.

“She’s an elitist bitch, but I don’t think she lied about anything,” he said without meeting my eyes.

“What was the deal with that anyway?” I asked, as Frost flagged down a cab and we climbed inside.

Buddy shrugged. “Pixies have always thought they’re better than everyone else.” I figured there was more to the story, but the cab driver was already looking at us suspiciously, so I didn’t question Buddy farther.

“Did you see the lawyer today?” Frost asked.

“I did,” I said. “He was nice enough to fit me in, but he only had a few questions. He asked if I had security footage from Ephemeral and I told him I’d get him everything I could. He said the burden of proof is on the mayor, and he doesn’t think the mayor’s got a leg to stand on.”

“Do you keep the footage that far back?” Frost asked. “I didn’t see anything on what you gave me from the night you were robbed, it was almost like someone had tampered with it.”