Pink Princess Fairytini (Fairy Files #2) (27 page)

I was only going to get one shot, and trolls have tough skin. As soon as he ducked his head in the door, I shoved up with the fork and hit him in the eye. He crumpled like a house of cards, screeching in pain. Trolls were strong, but they were huge babies about any sort of pain. I pulled the fork out and stood over the screeching man.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, but you’re going to have shut up. I bent over and squeezed my hands around his massive throat to get him to be quiet. He bucked and screeched louder, and my hands kept slipping off his massive neck. I was running out of time and he was not going gently into that good sleep.

“Fine,” I said. “Have it your way.” I leapt to my feet and ran down the hallway, not encountering another guard until I reached the next doorway at the end of a long hall.

“Princess?” the guard said. “What the fuck?”

I kicked him and, judging by the way he hit the ground and grabbed his knee, he was human.

I leapt over him and grabbed the doorknob, but the door didn’t open. The sound of feet slapping the ground and yelling behind me hurried me along as I bent over the guard and started searching him for a key to the door. He grabbed me around the knees with one strong arm and brought me down on top of him so hard he let out a loud grunt of pain. “Didn’t think that one through,” he muttered.

“Give me the key.” I punched him hard right between his legs, and his eyes crossed and got teary.

“That was low,” he gasped. “But you really don’t want to go through that door.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” I finally found the keys in his front pocket. I leapt to my feet again, and started trying keys in the door.

The shouts were getting louder behind me, and I fumbled the next key. “Shit.”

“Princess,” the man on the floor said, his voice gaspy. He swept his legs toward me, but he totally telegraphed the move, and I leapt over them. The lock clicked and I pushed open the door, not daring to look back. I stepped inside and slammed the door behind me, ready to keep running.

The six men and women, two of them with dragon heads, seated around a conference table stopped me. As did the fairy wings that sprouted from my back. I’d just stepped into Rubalia.

Intelligence is relative.
–Chloe Frangipani

You’re either with me or against me. If you’re against me, you’re an idiot
. –Althea Frangipani

One of the dragon heads growled and I forced an innocent smile. “Oops, wrong room,” I said. I shoved back through the door I’d just entered and found myself face-to-face with the human guard I’d just punched in the groin. Behind him were three more guards, all trolls.

“Sorry,” I said. “I got lost on my way to the bathroom.”

I tried to look sweet and innocent, but I knew I had to woman up. If I went back to my cell, I wouldn’t be given another chance like this to escape. I had to work with what I had.

Moving with fairy speed, I kicked the human in the knee I’d already hurt and jammed my fork into the eye of the troll directly behind him. The other two trolls, slow to realize what had just happened, stared at their howling friends for a moment too long. I yanked the fork out of the troll’s eye and spun around and up, hitting the next troll in the throat with the side of my hand and stabbing the last troll in the eye with the fork.

Unfortunately, my hit to the throat wasn’t hard enough to injure, just to piss off, and my fork missed the eye of the last troll by about an inch. Gripping my fork hard, I tried to leap over the troll on the ground and away from the other two pissed off trolls, but one of them grabbed me by the waist as I tried to flee.

Using my fairy skills, I shifted to tiny and flew up above their heads, wondering why I hadn’t thought to go tiny sooner. I remembered why when I soared away and made the mistake of looking down. The ground was about two miles down. I swallowed hard and tried to focus my gaze on the wall ahead of me and not think about death by falling. Unfortunately, batting my wings about a hundred times didn’t get me very far and they caught up to me in about two troll steps. I dodged their attempts to catch me, getting a bit winded and thinking I might need to add flying to my exercise regimen.

Timing it as well as I could, I shifted to human and dropped, kicking out hard with both legs. I hit one troll right in the temple and he went down hard. The other, I hit in the nose. He looked stunned for a moment, but there was no gush of blood and he recovered almost immediately.

He tried to grab me, but I leapt out of his reach and ran. I raced down the long hallway, the troll lumbering after me, and looked for a door. Any door. There were none. The hallway seemed to go on and on. I raced past the door to my room, still open, and wondered why there weren’t more guards coming for me. I ran until my lungs gave out, and I figured the hall must be enchanted, because no hallway in the history of hallways had ever been as long as this hellish hallway seemed to be.

I was about to stop running and just let the troll have me, when I saw an ornate door. It was ajar. I ran hard for it, pushed it open and fell inside.

“You haven’t seen her, huh?” A familiar voice asked. I looked up and saw Frost, Buddy, Vin, Sandra, and Brace facing off against about ten burly trolls and Benny the dragon.

The troll who’d been chasing me stormed through the door, grabbed me around the waist and shouted, “I got her, boss.”

Benny cleared his throat and shifted on his feet. “Put her down, Gerald,” Benny said. “Her friends have arrived to take her home, and we’re going to allow them to do so. I will not keep the princess here against her will any longer and incur the anger of her mother and her fairy troops.”

Even I felt a little disappointed by that anticlimactic ending as the trolls around Benny sighed and pouted. I guess Benny decided there were now too many witnesses for plausible deniability if my mother accused him of kidnapping me.

“I apologize for the misunderstanding,” Benny said. “I invited Clarinda here to discuss a business opportunity. I lied about her whereabouts because I wanted to give her more time to come to a decision.” He looked at me. “Have you come to a decision, my princess?”

“Answer’s still no, Benny.” I walked over to stand next to Frost and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. It felt so good to be among friends again, I may have turned my head and breathed in his scent. Damn, he still smelled good.

“Ah, well,” Benny said. “Take some time to consider. I think you will find that I have more to offer than your mother. I will allow you to live your life as you choose, as long as you are loyal to me. She won’t make the same concessions.”

“Sorry, Benny,” I said. “Still no.”

“We’re leaving now, Benny,” Frost said. He pulled me toward a door on the other side of the room and stopped. “We will require an escort out.”

“Of course,” Benny said, his tone condescending. “Gerald, show them the way.”

Gerald led us through a maze of doors and hallways, giant rooms, and small rooms, until we were back out on the street in front of Benny’s house. He disappeared back inside without a word to us.

I tried to step away from Frost, but he wouldn’t let me go. “Sorry it took us so long to get to you,” he said. “We got lost.”

“I can see how,” I said. “But I believe it was me who came to you.”

“Brace said he knew how to sneak in,” Buddy said, throwing Brace a glare. Brace just shrugged. “But he was doing a pretty good job of sweet talking them into letting you go.”

“I’m pretty sure the magic shield he threw up helped, too,” Sandra said, patting her boy on the back. Brace put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.

“So we saved you,” Frost said. “Again.”

“Pretty sure I saved myself,” I said, smirking up at him. “But thanks for trying. Since Brace is here, I’m guessing he and Vin have already been to see Missella?”

“Yeah,” Frost said, his expression darkening. “We’ll discuss it at the office. Vin’s waiting for us there.”

Vin stood and ran to me as soon as I walked in. She threw her arms around me and hugged me tight. “Ah, Vin,” I said. “I didn’t think you really liked me.”

“Of course I like you,” she said. “That’s why I went to see Missella alone, when Buddy called and said you’d been taken by Benny’s goons.”

I looked at Buddy and he shrugged. “I heard you holler my name, so I ran to the window in time to see you getting thrown in the car by two massive trolls. I thought they were Benny’s but I called Frost and had him run the plates to confirm.”

“Because there was no rush or anything,” I said, taking a seat in front of Frost’s desk and throwing my feet up on it.

Frost walked by and shoved my feet back to the floor. “I called in a favor and had the plates run in less than an hour. If we’d gone to the wrong place, we’d have lost a lot more time than that.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, but I couldn’t stop grinning. “Good thing they didn’t want me dead.”

Frost shrugged, but his expression hardened, belying his attempt to be casual. “If they’d wanted you dead, there wouldn’t be much we could do.”

I turned to Vin. “What did Missella say?”

“First, I want to hear how these guys rescued you from Benny the dragon,” she said.

“I rescued myself.” I ignored the protests and snorts from the guys and filled Vin in on what had happened.

“And he just let you go?” she asked, eyes wide. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure, but it would be a lot of bodies to disappear. And, if word got to my mother, he’d be in deep shit. Plus, he seems to really want me to join up with him. He said something about us ruling the city together.”

“The obvious explanation,” Brace said. “Is that he realized he was outmanned.”

Frost nodded his agreement, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Sure he did. What did Missella say?”

Vin shook her head. “She recognized the guy from the description Buddy gave me. He really needs to tame those wild curls and hide his tats if he wants to pursue a career as a criminal.”

“Did she order him to kidnap my daughter?” Buddy asked, his voice tight.

“No,” Vin said. “She claims he left the rebellion and moved to the Non two months ago. Last time she talked to him, he was going to see Benny and get set up with a new identity and a job. Said he wanted to make some cash and gain some real power in the world. She says he was lazy and looking for a quick and easy buck.”

“Do you believe her?” I asked.

Vin shrugged. “She made it clear to me that she had enough ‘children’ to babysit without kidnapping literal children. I tried not to take it personally, but either way it makes sense. She wants a peaceful and safe Rubalia. I don’t doubt she’d like to rule Rubalia in some form, but she’s all about keeping a squeaky clean image and kidnapping kids would certainly tarnish her reputation.”

“Could she give you a name? An address?”

“His name’s Ward Boulder, and he was living in the apartment building next to Buddy’s the last time he went to see Missella.”

“What did he see her about?” I asked as I stood, ready to go get the guy.

Vin chuckled. “Life in the Non wasn’t as profitable as he’d hoped, and he wanted his old job back. Missella told him she didn’t have any openings, but to give her his address and she’d be in touch if anything opened up. She had a feeling he’d get into some sort of trouble and wanted to cover her own ass.”

“Smart woman,” I said.

Vin nodded. “She didn’t get to be the rebellion leader without watching her back.”

“Okay,” Frost said, stepping up next to me. “Chloe and I are going to try to nab this guy. The rest of you can find something else to do until we’re in touch.”

“That bastard took my daughter, and I’m going to be the one to bring him in,” Buddy said.

“Nope,” Frost said. “You aren’t in the right emotional state to be of any help. You go home to your sister and wait to hear from us.”

“I can’t just sit around and wait anymore,” Buddy said. “I’m going to lose my mind.”

“I could ask Brace to put you to sleep,” Frost said. Brace nodded, and both men looked at Buddy.

“No,” Buddy said. “I’ll go. Just…give me a minute with Chloe first.”

Frost nodded and ushered everyone out of his office.

“Buddy,” I said. “I promise I’m going to do everything I can to find your daughter. I won’t let you down again.”

Buddy gripped my shoulders in his hands. “I know you won’t, because you never have before. What I said to you earlier was wrong, and it was untrue. I know you have a heart as big as the world beating in your chest, and I’m sorry I ever suggested otherwise. I’m just so worried about my baby …” he broke off as tears filled his eyes. I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him against me.

“I know I can seem cold sometimes.”

He pulled away and looked me in the eyes. “No. You hide it well, but I know you care. Go find my daughter, and keep yourself safe.”

I gave him one more hug. “Try to hold it together. I’ll call you the second we find out anything.”

He nodded, and I headed out to join Frost. I found him on the phone and realized I didn’t have mine. I waited while he talked.

“That was Harvey,” he said, after he’d hung up. “He’s interested in working for me.”

“What?” My first reaction was to reject the idea. The work I did with Frost was separate from my relationship with Harvey, and I didn’t like the idea of them merging.

“Yeah, I guess he’s been thinking about it for a while. He feels constrained by his department’s refusal to admit the existence of supernatural creatures and events. Says he could solve more cases if his boss would accept that a victim’s wounds matched up to a werewolf’s bite, for example.”

“What did you tell him?” I could understand Harvey’s reasoning, and I thought he’d make a great PI, but I was pretty sure Frost wouldn’t want to work with him.

Frost shrugged. “How would you feel about it?”

“Me?”

“I admit I was opposed to you partnering with me in the beginning but, with more fae moving into the Non, I think we’re going to be working together more and more often. You might have to work with him on occasion. Would you be okay with that?”