Pink Princess Fairytini (Fairy Files #2) (9 page)

You make your own good, baby girl. Sometimes that means pushing the bad off onto someone else
. –Althea Frangipani

Pierson looked over my shoulder as I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter inside. I scanned its contents and Pierson cursed behind me. I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, trying to make sense of what I’d just read. “Can he do that?”

“Sure,” Pierson said. “Anyone can sue anyone else for any crazy reason they can come up with.”

“But he can’t possibly win,” I said. “He can’t have any proof of prostitution here and the letter says that he’s suing me for breaking up his marriage when I had nothing to do with his marital problems. He should sue Dale.”

“He’s the mayor, Boss. He can sue whoever he wants. It won’t matter if he wins if he ruins you in the process.”

“Ruins me …” I turned and looked back at my club. Pierson was right. The mayor might not win the case, but he could ruin my reputation and force me to spend a lot of money and time fighting him. “Do you think he had anything to do with …?” I waved back at the club.

“It makes sense,” he said. “Maybe you could ask Frost to investigate—”

“No. I can’t afford Frost right now. Just…could you bring the staff in for a meeting, see if any of them know anything? I would do it, but—”

“But you’re trying to find a missing kid,” Pierson said. “I’ll do it tomorrow. They’ll probably feel more comfortable talking to me anyway.”

“Okay.” I tried to sound confident and sure, since I needed to be in charge, but the pity in Pierson’s expression suggested I’d failed.

“How you holding up?” Frost asked when I met him the next morning outside the warehouse-like building that housed a night club and a portal to Rubalia. He looked at ease and gorgeous in jeans and a t-shirt.

“I’m great,” I said with forced cheer. “Just tired.” Worrying about Ephemeral and my chances of saving it had kept me up most of the night.

“You looked exhausted,” he said, his voice gentle.

I narrowed my eyes, pretty sure Pierson had gone behind my back and told Frost what had happened to Ephemeral. “Where’s the guy who’s going to let us in? And what lie did you tell him this time?”

“I want to help, Chloe. Let me help.”

“I can’t afford you. And I thought we were going to Rubalia, not discussing my club.”

He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something else, then he shook his head and pushed the door open with one finger.

“Breaking and entering?” Frost was as straight-edge as they came and I couldn’t imagine him committing a crime.

He shrugged, mischief dancing in his eyes. “The door was open when I got here.”

“Right,” I said, dragging out the vowels as I followed him into the empty club. “What a lucky coincidence.”

He gave me a smile so bright I stumbled over my own feet. “I am a very lucky wolf.”

I watched him walk away from me, and tried to figure him out. Every time I thought I had a bead on the guy, he did something unexpected and out of character and I was thrown off again. He reached the portal before I’d answered my own question, and I hurried to catch up to him. I stopped when he started stripping out of his clothes next to the portal. I averted my eyes until he’d gone through, and then I followed.

The portal threw us into a night club in Rubalia and the faun DJ looked at us with wide eyes that got wider as wings popped out of my back and Frost bent and shifted into a horse-sized wolf. “Hey folks,” the DJ said, his voice shaking. “You have clearance to be here?”

Frost growled at him and the DJ raised his hands. “Go on in. Welcome to Rubalia.”

Frost and I made our way through the busy, bouncing night club and onto the street of the small faun village where the club was located. Unlike the last time I visited Rubalia, the night club was filled with fauns instead of a heterogeneous mix of all the species of Rubalia.

Since we had misjudged and arrived in Rubalia in the middle of the night, we had a few extra hours to kill. We strolled through the faun village, looking for any signs of change or trouble, but saw nothing. Once on the road to the fairy castle, walked in silence for about the first twenty minutes, and I tried to work out how to approach my mother and what attitude was most likely to get answers from her. As we continued to walk, I started to notice that the landscape had changed, the forest seemed denser and darker than the last time we’d traveled that path. It might have just been a darker night, but the moon shone full and bright and the shadows remained deep everywhere I looked.

“Is it just me, or is this forest a whole lot creepier than last time?” I asked.

Frost’s hackles were raised, his wolf body tense. He nodded his head, but didn’t look at me, he scanned the path before us and the forest to either side.

“Do you smell anything that should concern us?”

He nodded, shook his head, and then nodded again, which I took to mean he had no fucking clue what he was smelling.

“Great. Just growl if trouble approaches. If you hit the deck, I’ll drop, too. Deal?”

He whined low in the back of his throat and picked up his pace. I hurried to a slow jog to keep up with him and wished I’d come armed.

A full moon stretched its rays through the dense branches above and kept the wide, well-trodden path lit, but off the path the shadows were dark and thick. Too dark to be natural and, if any darkness edged onto the trail, I stepped around it, my curiosity about it not outweighing the primal, gut-deep urge I had to stay as far away from it as possible. Frost must have felt the same way, because he didn’t touch the shadows either.

We reached the edge of the forest as the first rays of dawn lit the sky, creating a gorgeous sunrise. I looked back the way we’d just come and shook my head as I calculated. “Does the forest seem bigger to you?”

Frost growled in response, and I turned to see three people, two women and a man, all fairies, in our path. Each of them held a bow, arrows pointed at us.

“I’m Clarinda Jessamine Rose blossom Regalia Frangipani, and my mother Althea is your queen. This wolf is my friend, Frost, and we’ve come to speak to my mother.”

The fairies did not lower their bows, but looked at each other as though they might be communicating telepathically. “How can we be sure you are who you say?”

“You can’t.” I could show them my wings and my faun tail, but I couldn’t be the only fairy faun mix in all of Rubalia.

“Then we will escort you to the queen,” the woman in the center said. “We must keep our weapons on you as a precaution. Dark things have come from that forest and we have found it is best to be careful.”

“Dark things?”

No one answered, the conversation part of our morning was concluded. The three fairies walked with us, one behind, two flanking, all with arrows trained on us as we walked up and down the hilly landscape the last three miles to my mother’s castle.

When we arrived, my mother wasn’t yet up, so our fairy escorts locked us in a dungeon cell and brought us a warm and rather delicious breakfast. Whatever they thought we might be, they didn’t want to risk treating us too badly and earn my mother’s ire. They were hedging their bets, and it only made me more curious to find out why. What sorts of things came out of that dark forest?

Frost ate the same human food they brought me and then paced the small cell until I felt dizzy. “Please, stay still for just a bit.”

He collapsed on the floor with a short growl of annoyance, but he couldn’t stay still. His padded feet and his nails tapped out a rhythm on the floor.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You just don’t like being caged?”

He nodded, his whole body twitching.

“Fine, then, do whatever it takes to make yourself feel better.” I wanted to ask him so many more questions as he pushed to his feet and resumed pacing, but my questions required more than just yes or no answers.

After about another hour, we were released and escorted, again under armed guard, to see my mother.

She sat regally on a throne in a silvery dress that swirled around her like mist and barely covered her naughty bits, revealing the smooth skin of her lithe and well-toned body. It felt odd and uncomfortable to see my mother dressed like that. She looked younger and fitter than me, or at least not as tired and world-weary. She smiled brightly as I was brought before her.

“What was your favorite toy as a child, Clarinda?” my mother asked.

“What?”

Annoyance flittered across her face. She’d never been patient. “Just answer the question, dear, so that I may dismiss the guards. Your favorite toy.”

“I didn’t have a favorite toy. You said such sentimentality was dangerous and would make me dependent on something that was inherently undependable.”

Frost growled and my mother glared at him. “Toys break, wear out, I wanted to save my daughter some pain.” Her expression hardened and she returned her attention to me. “Not that it’s his business. I was a good mother. Now, just one more question, dear. The name of your club in the Non?”

“Ephemeral,” I said. “Why are you asking questions you already know the answers to? Does this have to do with the forest?”

“The forest?” She forced a confused look onto her face, but she wasn’t such a good liar that she could hide from me. She knew exactly what I was talking about.

“The forest we walked through to get here, it’s different, denser and larger.”

My mother waved her hand and our contingent of guards dispersed and left the room. “When a new ruler takes the throne, the surrounding landscape often changes, responding to the new magic in power.”

“So then what’s with the questions?”

She frowned. “Why are you here, Clarinda? Why not address your questions to Hieronymus as you should?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you, Mother. There are more refugees coming into the Non since before you took the throne and—”

“How do you know this?”

Her words stopped my train of thought so quickly that it took me a moment to realize what she’d said. “Frost knows. He’s seeing more refugees than ever before and we—”

“Has he taken a census? Has he kept records? How does he know that these new refugees are more and not less? Perhaps the earlier refugees settled in other areas and these new refugees want to be close to the princess.”

“Do you think—?”

“I don’t think anything, dear. I don’t concern myself with those who leave. The Non is none of my concern.”

“But Rubalia is your concern, and we’ve heard talk.” I barreled over her when she tried to interrupt me again. “Talk that the people of Rubalia fear another war because of the contention between you and the faun king. Now fae children are going missing from the Non, possibly kidnapped, and I want you to quit bullshitting and tell me what’s really going on over here.”

“There is no reason for you to involve yourself with the state of affairs in Rubalia.”

“I am the princess. The heir. If I shouldn’t concern myself, who should?”

“As long as I am your queen, you will leave such matters to me. Now I really must—” She stood as though to leave.

“Then how will I learn? How will I learn to rule if you shut me out?”

She sat back down and studied me for a long moment. “When I am sure of your loyalties, Chloe, I will share the secrets of this fairy land with you.”

“I’m living in the apartment you chose for me and wearing the clothes you paid for, what more do you want from me?”

“I want you to choose me over your friends in the Non. To choose blood over the silly distractions of the human world. How can you suggest your loyalty is not split when you are dating a human? Or is your involvement with him just a ploy to achieve a larger goal?”

“You’re watching me?”

She emitted a fake tinkle of a laugh. “Of course, I’m watching, Chloe. You are my heir and you must be protected. I must know where your loyalties lie before I can entrust certain information to you. Right now, your loyalties lie with those people in the Non.”

“Mother, don’t you care that your people are leaving Rubalia? They are streaming into the Non in massive waves, greater than when your father ruled and massacred people.”

She shook her head. “If they don’t want to stay, I’m not going to force them. Maybe that’s what my father did, maybe that’s why there’s more leaving now. Either way, I have things to do, so unless you’re here to declare your undying loyalty, you should go back to the Non.”

I watched my mother leave the throne room, and then our cadre of guards returned. At least this time they weren’t pointing their weapons at us.

The fairy guards left us at the edge of the woods. “You may continue on alone,” one of the women said, but she glanced back over her shoulder, her whole body tense with nerves.

“And if I tell my mother you failed to escort us all the way back to the portal?” I didn’t particularly want their company all the way back, but I did want to know how afraid they were of that dark forest. “You think she’ll be okay with that?”

Not one of the three fairies met my eyes. They all seemed to find an area over my left shoulder fascinating. “Fine,” said the blonde woman. “But we’ll go around the forest, not through it.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’s in there?”

“We’re not to speak of—” One of the men started.

The woman glared at him. “We’ll go around.”

So we all walked around the forest, which seemed to go on forever, the dark shadows stretching out into the grassy meadow that bordered it in several places. “What are those shadows?” I asked as we made our way through the taller grass of the meadow to avoid them. The sun beat down hard and I was pretty sure my pale skin would be burned when we got home, but I preferred that to testing the shadows.

None of the fairies answered me and I knew that if I wanted to get any answers, I’d have to talk to someone else, someone who’d be more willing to talk. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anyone in Rubalia. “We’ll be okay on our own from here,” I said to our guards. “I promise I won’t tell my mother you failed to see us all the way back to the portal.”

“No,” the woman said. “We’ll follow her orders.”