Pink Princess Fairytini (Fairy Files #2) (21 page)

“A sleep spell?” I asked. “What are you?” My inquiry probably wasn’t polite or well-timed, but I’d been wondering for a while and it just came out.

He shrugged. “I honestly have no idea, but maybe we could talk about it later? Can you help me drag her family out of here?”

“Won’t they just come back?”

He shook his head. “I used an extra strength sleep spell. If it worked properly they won’t remember anything before three hours ago. So, if we remove the tracker they put on Sandra’s truck, they shouldn’t remember where we live.”

“Wow,” I said. “Neat trick. What were they all fighting about anyway?”

“The usual.” He walked over and grabbed the feet of the old lady. I grabbed her wrists. “They want Sandra to give them money, especially after they saw the swanky place we’re living.” We lifted the old lady and started carrying her to the door. “Sandra says we don’t owe them anything and then everyone starts screaming.”

We put the old lady down, opened the door and carried her to the elevator. It was early enough that we might run into someone, so we propped her up on her feet between us. “Where are we taking her?”

“I’m hoping her car is parked in the garage on the bottom level,” he said. “Otherwise, we might have some explaining to do to the doorman.”

Grandma slipped a bit on her feet and I had to use all of my strength to right her.

“Maybe we can get him to help us move the bodies.”

The elevator landed on the bottom level and we stepped out. We hobbled over to the nearest wall and leaned Grandma against it. “I’ll go look for her car,” Brace said. He pulled Grandma’s keys from her purse and took off at a run.

A rusted out heap of a truck spun around the corner a moment later. We squeezed Grandma into the passenger seat and parked the truck in the closest open spot to the elevator. “I got the tracker they put on our truck,” Brace said, when he’d rejoined me. “We’ll put it on some other car after we get them all out of our hair.”

“Good plan,” I said. “Let’s go get the others.”

“Thanks for your help, Chloe. I’d say this qualifies as going above and beyond.”

“Sure. And what about you? Is her family always like this?”

He sighed. “They’ve gotten worse since Chloe made manager at the club. They feel she owes them for taking her in after her father died and her mother disappeared.”

“How old was she when that happened?”

“Thirteen,” he said, with a scowl. “And they made sure she earned her keep. She cooked and cleaned for them, and she waited tables to make money to help them out. She left as soon as she turned eighteen and could afford a place of her own.”

There was such pride and love in his face when he spoke of her. “How did you meet?”

He smiled. “I was DJing at the club where she was bartending. I saw her and I just had to know her. As soon as I knew her, I loved her. I never looked back.”

The elevator arrived at my floor and dinged. We stepped out into the hallway. “No doubts once you met her family the first time?”

He grinned. “Not a single fucking one. I love her for her, and her family can’t touch that. Never have and never will. She tried to push me away, saying if I got mixed up with her they’d never leave me alone either, but I stuck around and, eventually, she got that I wasn’t walking away.”

Back in my condo, I took the wrists of the smallest cousin and Brace took the ankles. We lifted, but the main bulk of the man didn’t move. “Try again,” Brace said. “Give it everything you’ve got.”

I dropped the oaf’s wrists, shook out my arms, took a deep breath, and lifted when Brace did. We managed to lift the cousin about a millimeter off the floor and make it two steps with him, before my arms gave out and he hit the floor. “We’re going to need some help,” I said. “Let me see who’s here.”

I knocked on Mercury’s door and roused Mercury and Vin, sleepy and naked, to help us. I went found my own room empty. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket to see a text message from him.

Harvey: Too much shouting at your place. I went home to sleep. See you tomorrow.

I shook off my disappointment. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to get a restful sleep, but his text had seemed curt to my own exhausted brain, and I was annoyed that he’d gotten annoyed about something out of my control. So I sent him a text back that may have sounded grumpier than I intended, but I was grumpy and I wished I’d just gone out dancing.

Me: Sorry you couldn’t sleep at my place. See you around.

That was the problem with letting more people into my life, I ended up sending grumpy texts I’d probably later regret and moving the comatose bodies of leeching rednecks when I could be enjoying a night of dancing or more carnal pleasures. The upside, I thought as I dialed Frost’s number and he answered, was that I could recruit my other friends into my problems.

Frost showed up as we were trying to get the next largest cousin out the door of the condo. With the help of Vin and Mercury, we’d gotten the smallest cousin downstairs and into their rust bucket, but the next largest cousin was considerably heavier and my arms were starting to shake.

“Need a hand?” Frost asked with a smirk. He was dressed in dark jeans and a button-down blue shirt that made his amber eyes glow. He’d even put a little product in his hair to keep it from flopping into his eyes. The bastard had been on his way out for the night when I’d called.

“’Thanks for coming over,” I said. “I hope your mate won’t mind us tearing you away from your plans.” Yes, I was fishing, but there’s nothing wrong with being curious about the social life of the man I’d spent most of my hours with over the past week.

Frost grinned, his jaw clicking in a way that I thought meant he might be trying not to laugh. “She’s very understanding.”

“Good.” I imagined his mate as a supermodel who spent hours on her hair and make-up and fainted at the sight of blood. “Grab a limb and help us out here.”

Frost eyed the cousin. “He’s not dead, right?”

“No, smartass,” I said. “He’s not dead, which I’m sure you already know since you can hear his heart beating with your freaky wolf ears. Get over here and help us.”

Frost chuckled, pushed me and Mercury out of the way, slid between the cousin’s legs and grabbed his knees, lifting his mass several feet off the floor. He and Vin and Brace maneuvered the cousin through the door and to the elevator at a fast pace.

“That’s what I call help,” Brace said with a hoot. “Thanks, man.”

An hour later, we had all of the hillbillies loaded in the rust bucket and Brace was driving them out of town, taking the tracker with him to place under some other car and lead them as far away from him and Sandra as possible.

Mercury and Vin stumbled back to bed, and I found myself alone with Frost in my living room. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and his hair had flopped out of its styled precision, making him look even more delicious. If I liked that sort of thing, which I didn’t. “Thanks for your help.”

“Sure,” he said, starting for the door.

“Are you going to meet your mate?”

He stopped and turned, his gaze intense. “No. I’m not meeting anyone.”

“But you’re going out? Dancing?”

His lips curved up in the hint of a smile. “I’d invite you to join, but I’d imagine Harvey is waiting for you.”

“No,” I said, biting back a scowl. “He needed to get some sleep.”

He took a step back. “Chloe, I’d love to go dancing with you, but you’re with Harvey and the way we end up dancing whenever we get together …”

“You’re right,” I said. “Bad idea. I’ll just…I’ll get some sleep and see you in the morning to go talk to the Elderwoods.”

“Good night, Chloe.” He left without a look back.

I got a glass of milk and went back to my room, intending to go to sleep. Only I couldn’t seem to settle down. I paced and stretched. I stripped to my panties and let my wings fly free, planning to go to sleep, but I just lay in bed with my eyes wide open. The knock at my door was the sweetest sound I’d heard in a long, long time.

“Come in,” I yelled, pulling the comforter up over my breasts as I sat up in bed.

The door opened and Sandra walked in. “Do you want to tell me what the hell …?” She stopped and gasped. “Are those real?”

I nodded.

She made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a curse. “Can I touch them?”

I nodded again and she came over and sat down on the bed next to me.

“They’re so soft,” she said. “Can you fly with them?”

“Only if I shift to bug size,” I said. “You don’t have wings?”

She shook her head. “Just a tattoo of them on my back.”

I smiled, both at the wonder on her face and the joy I was about to give her. “Take off your shirt.”

She hopped off the bed, hands raised. “Look you’re gorgeous, but I’m not into girls and I’ve got a fia—a boyfriend.”

“A fiancé, huh? When are you going to tell him you want to marry him?”

She sighed. “When I’m convinced my crazy family is out of our lives for good. Can you tell me why I was asleep on the couch out there? I can’t find Brace anywhere and he’s not answering his phone.”

I explained what had happened. When I was done, she sat back down on my bed and shook her head. “I swear, every day I discover something new about Brace. He’s crazy magical, but all he wants to do is play music.”

“What is he?”

She shrugged, unoffended. “No fucking clue. He lived in Rubalia until he was ten, but his parents said he was adopted and nothing like them. Nothing at all.”

“Wow, and they never told him where he’d come from?”

“I’ve never met them, but they sound a bit crazy to me. They told him he came from the shadows.”

My heart stopped and I fought the urge to warn Sandra to stay away from Brace. Wherever he’d come from, he loved her with all of his heart and he’d proven himself to be nothing but a good guy. She had to be right and his adoptive parents were just crazy. No way was he from the nightmare realm. “Weird,” I said. “Now, take off your shirt.”

“Chloe …”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said with a playful sneer. “I just want to see your tattoo.”

Sandra took off her shirt and displayed a tattoo that filled most of her back and was as intricate and carefully drawn as mine.

I wished my wings back into my back and showed her my own tattoo.

She gasped and I turned to see her face aglow with hope. “How?”

“You just wish them out of your skin,” I said, popping my wings back out.

She closed her eyes and wings, smaller than mine but vibrantly colored with every hue of the rainbow, unfurled slowly from her back.

She twisted her head to look over her shoulder and tears spilled down her cheeks. “Oh, my god, I have wings.”

“And you can shift,” I said.

So Sandra and I spent the next hour shifting into different sizes and animals, and ended up on the floor in a heap laughing when she transformed into a bunny and I transformed into a tiger. Like me, she got the hang of shifting almost immediately. “Well, this is a sight,” Brace said from the doorway.

I’d pulled on an oversized, backless sleep shirt, but Sandra was still topless and I could only imagine what he thought we were doing. But, when I looked at his face, I saw only happiness reflecting Sandra’s own joy.

Sandra wiped her eyes and stood, turning her back to him. “Babe, I’ve got wings.”

He stepped toward her, his gaze reverent. “They’re amazing,” he said. “Are they real?”

She nodded. “I’ve always had them. I just needed to learn how to release them from the tattoo.”

“Astounding,” Brace said, grinning. “This calls for a celebration. Let’s get dressed and go party.”

Sandra and I agreed to Brace’s plan and we decided to go wings out. We decorated out faces with sparkly makeup and left our hair long and free, so that we’d look like two women dressing like fairies for the night and not actual fairies. I lent Sandra one of my back-less dresses and took her and Brace out to one of my favorite clubs, where we danced until dawn.

The original fairy tales never ended happily
. –Chloe Frangipani

You make your own happy ending, and you never let anyone take it from you
. –Althea Frangipani

“I don’t get it,” Frost said, as we left the Elderwoods’ apartment and started toward his bike. “How does someone take a child and leave no scent?”

“I just saw Brace put seven people to sleep for three hours by chanting a few words,” I said. “Anything’s possible.”

“You really think he’s from the nightmare realm?” He swung his leg over the bike. He froze suddenly and put both feet back on the pavement.

“You got something?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Just stick with me.”

I followed him down two blocks and over five before he stopped in front of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. The door he stopped in front of was locked. “This is where it stops,” Frost said. “We should get the police here.”

“And how do you explain why you think they should check out this warehouse?” I asked, as he pulled his phone out of his back pocket.

“Anonymous tip,” he said. He dialed and put the phone to his ear. We walked back down a block as he talked on the phone. I yawned and stretched my arms over my head. I’d had fun last night, but I’d only gotten about an hour of sleep and was having a hard time staying alert. I sat down on a pallet in the alleyway and waited.

“The private eye business isn’t as glamourous as I thought it’d be,” I said, after he hung up.

He chuckled and sat down on the pallet next to me. “No? You wanted gun fights and car chases?”

“I just thought it would more clues and less waiting, less running around with no direction.”

He sighed. “It can be a frustrating job, but if we find these kids, it’ll be worth it.”

My phone rang as we waited, and I answered when I saw it was Harvey. “Hey,” I said, not sure how I felt about him walking out on the chaos in my apartment the night before. “How’s it going?”

“Good. Sorry I bailed last night. Who were all of those people?”