Hex and the City

by Sarina Dorie

  Fabric rustled, and the light grew brighter. The warmth of Elric’s hand left mine as he stood.

  “You said you would save the odd-numbered dances for me,” Vega said. “Instead, you snuck off with Clarissa and left me to dance with Thatch. That wasn’t very gentlemanly.”

  “You didn’t have to accept his offer to dance with you.”

  “That isn’t the point.” She sounded petulant, childish.

  “Vega, my darling, I will dance with you, but I need you to be patient. It’s not as if Clarissa is having a good time out here with me.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Show her, Clarissa.”

  “No, I don’t want her to see.” I sounded like Pinky. My voice came out high and nasally too.

  The light burned brighter. Vega crouched beside me. I tried to turn farther away, but it was too late.

  “Oh, I see.” She laughed. “How’d you do that to yourself?”

  I shook my head, the leaves rustling. “None of your business.”

  Elric rubbed her arms. “Please, Vega, go inside. I don’t want you to catch a chill. We’ll be back inside as soon as I get this mess sorted out.”

  She hesitated. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Her concern touched me. He kissed her cheek. “Keep an eye on Thatch.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Too late for that.”

  He tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

  “Quenylda took him aside, probably to torture him with boring conversation. He didn’t see you leave and when he inquired where you could be, she told him you probably whisked Clarissa off to your bedroom to have your way with her. He tried to enlist my help in searching for you, but I told him to stop being such a fucktard.”

  Elric waggled a finger at her. “Remember what we said about using period language tonight.”

  “He’s probably wandering about the castle, lost.” She made a face. “Oh, and your wife keeps asking after you, as if I’m your keeper.”

  “Try to keep Quenylda occupied for me, won’t you?” he asked. “She can be such a jealous wife.”

  Vega rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She gazed at me one last time before smirking. “This is actually an improvement to your face.”

  She winked at me and left. I didn’t doubt she would tell everyone at work about this either.

  Elric sat on the bench beside me. He studied me a long moment.

  “Do you know how to remove the curse?” I asked.

  “Why don’t we ask Felix Thatch to remove it?”

  “Because he didn’t curse me.” My nose grew. That wasn’t fair! I had no reason to believe he had cursed me. Then again, perhaps part of me believed he would do something annoying and hurtful to make me ugly because he didn’t want Elric’s attention cast onto me. I amended my previous statement. “We can’t ask him because we don’t know where he is.”

  Elric turned his body to stare into the shadows. “Actually, we do know where he is. Mr. Thatch, would you please make yourself visible.”

  I covered my nose, or tried to, but leaves poked out between my fingers.

  Thatch stepped out of the shadows, scowling. “I will have you know, I didn’t hex or curse Miss Lawrence.”

  “No? And your reason for spying?”

  “I was waiting to see if you hinted at how you did it so I could find a cure.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “I’ve already seen your nose. You don’t have to hide it from me.”

  I lowered my hands.

  Elric crossed his arms. “So what did you do this evening to make Clarissa so vexed? You hurt her in some way, I take it. Pain magic?”

  “No,” I said quickly. My wooden nose lengthened and sprouted more leaves.

  Thatch stared at me. “I didn’t use pain magic. Why would you think I used pain magic on you?”

  I shook my head. The end of my nose split in two. The weight sank the front of my head down.

  “I don’t understand why my nose thinks I’m lying. I’m not.” I held up my nose so it wouldn’t sink my head down. As I spoke, the bark stretched and widened.

  Maybe it wasn’t growing when I lied—it grew every time I spoke.

  Elric turned my head toward him. “Here, rest that on my shoulder. And don’t answer any more questions. We don’t need that thing getting any longer. He can answer my questions instead.”

  I positioned the branch across his shoulder.

  Thatch paced, speaking slowly as if thinking out loud. “Your answer was a lie, but not to the second question. You were lying in response to Elric’s first question, that I’d hurt you. Is that correct?”

  I hesitated, afraid anything I did would make my nose worse.

  “You don’t have to answer,” Elric said.

  “If we are to determine the manner of this curse, and if it is a truth curse, then I believe she does.” Thatch looked to me. “Well? Am I correct?”

  “You hurt my feelings when you were crabby with me earlier walking to the Devil’s Pint,” I admitted. “And then when you were rude to me there.”

  The leaves rustled. My nose felt lighter.

  “Why were you so careless with Clarissa’s feelings earlier?” Elric asked Thatch.

  “I don’t need to tell you. She already knows.” Thatch nodded to me. “What is the natural color of your hair?”

  “It’s bright auburn, what people call ‘red.’” A little bit more of my nose shrank. “Wait, so you’ve been out here all this time watching us?”

  Thatch coughed. “No. Ahem, I used an eavesdropping spell. I only cloaked myself with an invisibility spell when Vega came out.”

  “Diabolical,” Elric said, though he sounded more impressed than angry.

  “What else did you lie about tonight?” Thatch asked.

  “I said nothing was wrong, but. . . .” The wood quivered as if deciding whether I was about to lie or tell the truth. I hurried on. “I was upset that you’ve been distant and moody and won’t even be my friend. Then you’re nice when you choose to be. It hurts my heart to look at you. That’s what’s wrong.”

  “Thatchy, you’re a monster.” Elric harrumphed.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Elric’s brows rose. “Thatchy?”

  “It wasn’t what you did to me at the Raven Queen’s castle that hurt,” I said. “It was how you treated me—”

  “The Raven Queen? Vega said she tortured you both at her castle. What did you do to Clarissa?” Elric stood up.

  My nose still rested on his shoulder. The quick motion set me flying back into the railing. I caught myself and held up my nose.

  “If you were a little more mindful, you wouldn’t cause accidents,” Thatch scolded Elric.

  “You are avoiding the question,” Elric said.

  Probably Vega didn’t know the full story, and if she did, it wouldn’t surprise me if she withheld details for her own reasons.

  I held a cluster of leaves away from my mouth so I could speak. “The Raven Queen took Felix there. And she sent her servants to collect me. They told me if I didn’t go with them, they’d kill him and my fairy godmother. He did use pain magic—but he was forced to. She would have killed me if he hadn’t. Or him. Or tortured us.” My nose shrank a little more. When I patted the branch, I only felt two leaves now. “And then when we got back, Thatch withdrew into his own little world. He broke up with me. It was that one night you and Vega were busy celebrating your engagement.”

  Elric placed a hand on his heart. “Oh, Clarissa, you should have told me.”

  Thatch sat beside me, taking my hand in his. “I avoided you, yes. I didn’t want to hurt you. That’s the problem. I never wanted to hurt you.”

  Thatch smoothed a hand over mine, his fingers a gentle caress. “I don’t like who I am when I use pain magic. I don’t want to enjoy your pain. The Raven Queen has been watching the school, spying on you and me. I can’t allow her to see us together. She can’t learn she can hurt me
through you. If she finds out, I don’t know what she’d do to you. Do you understand now?”

  “You act indifferent to my feelings. You compare me to Vega and Josie, how I fawn over you like I’m stupid—” My nose grew, and I cried out in pain and surprise. I hadn’t lied.

  “Yes, I’ve behaved indifferently. I apologize for hurting you. But I didn’t say you were stupid, and I didn’t say you were like Josie. What I said about her wasn’t . . . charitable. I shouldn’t have said it. In any case, I wasn’t saying you were like her or Vega. I didn’t want to be in a relationship with either of them. I do want to be in a relationship with you. I just can’t. There’s a difference.”

  “According to Vega—” Elric began.

  “No one wants to hear Vega’s twisted version of the world at the moment,” Thatch said. “And I don’t want to know your opinion either.”

  “But you were trying to push me away, just like you did to them when you didn’t want to date them.” I wasn’t sure if I was stating a fact or asking a question.

  “Yes, I was pushing you away. I said many hurtful things to you in order to try to make it easier for you to hate me. Perhaps it wasn’t the best tactic.”

  “Hurtful true things? Or hurtful lies?” I demanded.

  He hesitated. “Some of both.”

  I fought the urge to punch him. “You couldn’t just communicate with me like a normal person does?”

  “No.” A small smile laced his lips.

  “You had to tell me I looked like my mother and implied you were still in love with her. Is that a truth or a lie?”

  “A lie.”

  I wasn’t certain this wasn’t a lie.

  “You aren’t at all like Alouette. I only said that to push you away. I didn’t wish to hurt you, but I didn’t know what other way I could convince you it was in your best interest to break up with me.”

  I opened my mouth, about to ask about the next bomb he’d dropped on me.

  Elric snorted. “He didn’t really say that, did he?” He felt the tip of my nose. “Oh, you haven’t grown. He did that? To use one of Vega’s terms, what a fucktard.” He made a face at Thatch. “Now you expect her to forgive you after being such a prig and so cruel?”

  “No, I don’t expect anything.” Thatch squeezed my fingers. “I simply wanted to explain myself and apologize. This is the only place we might finally be free of spies who have infiltrated Womby’s.”

  That was assuming the Raven Queen had been the one spying on me. I didn’t think she was.

  “So if I hadn’t been punched in the face tonight, you would have kept on being cruel?” I asked.

  “Indeed.” Thatch swallowed. “But I had a change of heart after seeing you almost die. Again.”

  Elric laughed. “Pain brings out the best in you, eh, old chap?”

  Thatch kissed my fingers. “When I saw you tonight with blood covering your face and your soul trying to leave your body, I thought I had lost you for good. I did everything I could. I feared I was too late. I did the only thing I could think of.”

  I put up a hand to stop him, afraid he might say more.

  He barged on. “When I couldn’t resurrect you with electricity, I summoned Elric. I kept thinking that our last conversation would have been of me hurting you, and not knowing why—”

  “Wait? You called me? Not Clarissa?” Elric asked.

  H-E-double hockey sticks!

  “Didn’t you know?” Thatch asked.

  Elric turned to me. “Another lie?”

  I shook my head. My nose grew again. I hadn’t even spoken it. “Yes,” I admitted. “I was trying to protect him.” The wood receded again.

  “It looks like Felix Thatch owes my husband a boon,” Quenylda said from the door.

  Yep, we were in deep doo-doo.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Into the Fire

  This wasn’t going well. So far, I’d managed to find out my boyfriend had dumped me for supposedly noble reasons rather than indifference—which didn’t feel any different. I still had a Pinocchio nose. And now Elric knew Thatch had called him, and not only did Thatch owe him a favor, but Elric’s wicked Fae wife knew this as well.

  Quenylda stepped as lithely as a deer across the balcony. “What shall we do with these two?”

  A scream cut through the night air.

  Elric sighed dejectedly. “What now?”

  “Sasquatch!” a woman screamed. “There’s a sasquatch in the parlor!”

  “What? How would one of them get in?” Quenylda rushed back inside.

  “Merlin’s balls. They’ll kill Pinky,” Thatch said, his eyes growing wide. “Clarissa, stay here.” He ran back toward the parlor, pausing at the door. He pointed at Elric. “Stay with Clarissa.” Thatch disappeared inside.

  “It’s not even midnight,” Elric said. “My spell isn’t supposed to wear off until—”

  Women screamed. “Spider! Spider!”

  I didn’t think Fae were afraid of insects. I’d seen Fae dressed in pretentious and extravagant gowns made of cockroaches and bees. Their fear made more sense when I heard the next words.

  “It’s a jorogumo!” someone else yelled.

  I stood, teetering off balance from my nose. “Don’t let anyone hurt Josie.”

  Elric gently sat me back on the bench. “I will be right back. Promise me you won’t go anywhere.”

  “Use magic to contain the vermin!” someone shouted.

  “Are you talking about the spider or the sasquatch?” someone else asked.

  I waited on the bench. My nose was shorter than before all the lies, but the additional weight strained my neck. I curled my knees up to my chest and rested the wood on a knee.

  Elric had accused Thatch of cursing me, and Thatch had accused Elric. They’d both been intent on helping find a solution. I didn’t think either of them had turned me into Pinocchio. That left someone else as the culprit. A female Fae had been the presence I detected, the one who had coerced Vega. I knew that had been the Princess of Lies and Truth. She’d cursed the red shoes, soaked my dress in formaldehyde, and sent me a toxic bouquet accompanied by morbid poetry. She probably had created the golem both times.

  It all felt like a fairy tale. Even Elric’s idea for Josie and Pinky’s attire to only last until midnight had been a fairy-tale ending—even if it hadn’t turned out to be a happy ending for them.

  The Princess of Lies and Truth was supposed to be the Raven Queen’s ally. The princess was also someone who had deceived her, someone who had plotted to kill Alouette Loraline almost twenty-five years ago.

  Vega had snuck glances at Quenylda during dinner. Elric had said his Fae wife was jealous. But the Silver Court were not allied with the Raven Court. They were supposed to be enemies. Rivals.

  But sometimes rivals worked together for the same goals. Or betrayed each other when it was in their best interests.

  I closed my eyes and stretched my awareness beyond my body. I projected myself beyond the curtains of the balcony into the chaos of the room. I wasn’t trying to “see” as much as sense the presence I had felt watching me in Womby’s. Josie shifted around the parlor in her jorogumo form, throwing furniture as she tried to protect Pinky from the attacking Fae. Thatch stood before them both, trying to ward off the Fae. Elric shoved people out the door and called for servants.

  I didn’t feel the ominous soul I’d sensed before.

  Not in the room anyway. She was outside, gliding up the stairs toward me. She watched in the shadows, a black hole not so different from the Raven Queen’s soul, only hers was camouflaged with light. Her hands and arms were blackened with burns where I had used electricity on her weeks before, though it had been remotely. I had thought I incapacitated her with that damage. I could see I was wrong.

  I reached out for Thatch and shook him, trying to warn him that evil was near. He looked around, but I couldn’t tell whether he felt me or he was distracted by all the Fae magi
c.

  I shot back into myself, suspecting I was going to have to face the danger alone.

  I opened my eyes and stared into the shadows of the stairs. “I know you’re there,” I said, pretending to be calmer than I felt.

  Quenylda strolled over to the bench and sat down. I’d assumed the gloves were part of her Regency costume, but now I knew they hid her burns. She chuckled, her voice so soft I almost didn’t hear her over the chaos in the room nearby.

  Here was the Princess of Lies and Truth.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Truth or Dare

  Quenylda seemed far too smug for someone whose party had just been ruined. But then, that was assuming the party hadn’t gone as planned. She glowed as brightly as an angel, only that bright light was clouded with dark intent. I recoiled my awareness from her, not wanting to touch the poison of her soul.

  “You did that, didn’t you?” I asked. “You undid Pinky’s glamour and Josie’s spider dress.”

  She grinned, her smile stretching tight across her face, revealing too many sharp teeth. “Elric isn’t the only one with great powers of magic.”

  Great magic? More like greatly disturbing.

  “Does the spell you used on my nose amuse you?” That’s what the Fae liked, a good laugh at some else’s expense.

  “It’s a curse, child. A Fae curse. One of my more creative ideas.”

  Like most Fae, she was a copycat. She didn’t have an original idea in her imagination. I didn’t mention it, though. There was no reason to piss her off. She was already unpredictable enough as it was.

  “How could you curse me without Elric finding out? He was with me every moment after my nose was broken. He fixed it, but he knew something wasn’t right.” Realization dawned on me. “You cursed me before Elric fixed my nose. You cursed me in the tavern.”

  She slid closer to me on the stone bench and plucked a leaf from my nose.

  I jerked back. It felt like she’d just pulled a hair.

  Her eyes twinkled with delight. “I gave the curse to the golem. All he had to do was plant it on your nose. I knew if he made the situation dire enough, you would be forced to call upon Elric. I hadn’t planned on how the golem would almost foul up my plan. He used too much force and almost killed you. I was unexpectedly surprised when Felix Thatch asked for Elric’s assistance instead. It’s been a diverting evening.”