Inside, the room appeared to be exactly what it said it was. A few tables and chairs. A microwave. A faded OSHA poster on the wall. The only unusual thing was that there didn’t seem to be anyone in it, which Keith found strange, given that he’d just seen one man and one cat step into the room that appeared to have no other exit.
“How are we doing, Inspector?” Taylor’s too-loud voice broke through Keith’s concentration. “No violations, I hope?”
“Everything seems to be in order here.” Keith deliberately avoided lingering at the break room door. He’d have to find a way to get in without Taylor dogging him.
Because there was definitely something going on here and he aimed to find out exactly what. What had started as a fairly childish attempt to harass Mage Melchior’s company might turn out to yield a real result. Excitement bubbled up inside as he felt himself gravitating toward discovering what Taylor wanted to keep hidden.
Unfortunately, Taylor seemed dedicated to personally escorting him off the property. He walked them straight to the front door and offered Keith a firm handshake then bent down to address to Carrot Top. “See you in the funny pages big guy.”
Keith stopped to leaf through the papers on his clipboard to buy himself some time. If only he could get Taylor to leave him alone for five minutes, he was sure he could get back to the production floor.
“It’s too bad you don’t have a list of your flavoring additive ingredients,” Keith said, glancing up from the meaningless remarks he was writing on the inspection form. “I could certify you right now.”
Taylor seemed to weigh this before giving a shrug. “I’m sorry, but the IT guy says it will be at least another week before he can get the backup restored.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for it then.” Keith smiled and started ambling slowly toward the two security guards flanking the front entrance. Both eyeballed them with bland interest. Behind him he heard Taylor answer a phone call. Then the man’s voice faded as the elevator doors closed behind him. Keith knew he had to think fast. His shoes squeaked loudly against the tiled floor of the big foyer, while Carrot Top padded along silently beside him.
“We need to get back to that production line,” he said under his breath.
“I know that,” Carrot Top growled.
“If you have any ideas, now’s the time.” Keith glanced around again, trying to decide if he could just make a break for it.
Suddenly, Carrot Top loudly announced, “Daddy, I have to pee.”
Keith stopped in his tracks. He didn’t know the leprechaun’s game, but at least this gave him an excuse to stop walking toward the exit.
“I thought you said you didn’t have to,” Keith replied. Was this some kind of code? Was he talking about using a portal?
“I have to go!” Carrot Top squirmed and pressed his hands to his crotch in a very authentic display.
Still adrift, Keith said, “Can’t you hold it?”
“There’s a bathroom right there!” Carrot Top pointed back down the long hall that they had traversed. Indeed, there was a bathroom.
“Oh for God’s sake,” Keith seized Carrot Top’s hand and headed back down the hallway. Once they were out of sight of the security guards, Carrot Top yanked his sweaty palm free of Keith’s grip.
“Quit holding hands, you queer.”
Keith snorted. “You wish your tiny fae ass was good enough for me to want.”
“Are you actually a queer then?” Carrot Top asked. “I’d have never thought it. You look so manly with your dainty little clipboard and lack of weapon and all.”
After considering a couple of ways he could turn his clipboard into a weapon and use it against the leprechaun, Keith decided to ignore the comment. He did not want to risk any onlookers intervening, as he would appear to be beating a child. Plus, he just didn’t have the time.
He seized Carrot Top’s hand again and hissed, “Shut up and follow me and look bored.”
He headed back to the production floor and reentered the big, cavernous room without fuss. He didn’t walk too fast or too slow. He kept a determined look of vague annoyance on his face, which ensured that he would be noted, then disregarded, by most employees. After all, they had just seen him there performing normal duties. Carrot Top tagged along behind him. His expression of petulant-child ennui verged on perfection.
They made it into the break room without incident. The space was still void of people as well as felines. Two vending machines stood against one wall. One sold Primal Thunder drinks and the other contained a variety of energy bars as well as a single apple.
“Ah, the old break room.” Carrot Top turned in a slow circle. “It seems smaller than it used to be. Or maybe I’m bigger.”
“No, it’s definitely smaller,” Keith said, checking the floor plan. “They’ve moved this back wall up twenty feet or more. That would mean there’s a twenty-by-twenty-foot space behind it?” Keith ran his hand over the wall, feeling for seams or some kind of hidden door. The wall was smooth as could be. He kept going around the room; then he noticed something odd. The Primal Thunder machine wasn’t plugged in.
Not only were vending machines approximately the height and size of a door, they were engineered for the entire front to open so that the machine could be filled and serviced. He suspected he had found his door. Now all he needed to do was get through it.
Carrot Top drifted over, watching as Keith felt up and down the side of the machine for any kind of latch.
“You trying to break in? You should use the code.”
“What code?”
“The access code.” Carrot Top reached up and pressed 54321, then hit the button. The door popped open. “Those cheap bastards couldn’t make us pay for drinks that we made.”
“Quiet!” Keith whispered. With great care he pulled the door open and found exactly what he expected—not cans of beverages, but a narrow corridor leading toward the back of the room.
“That’s new,” Carrot Top remarked.
The air flowing out of the corridor was thickly scented with leaves and earth, as though it were a greenhouse filled with exquisite blooming flowers. Automatically, Keith reached for his mage pistol, then cursed himself for doing it.
As quietly as he knew how, Keith called for backup. Or attempted to anyway. As the dispatcher endeavored to patch him through to Bismarck, Carrot Top seized his arm.
“Pixie dust! I smell it in the air.”
Then from down the corridor he heard the yowl of a cat, followed by a tiny, high-pitched shriek.
Keith instantly started forward. Carrot Top caught him by the arm, but Keith shook him off easily. The leprechaun’s hands grew smaller and smaller in his hand as the creature reverted to his normal small, bearded form. Oddly, as he did this, his strength seemed to increase exponentially, weighing Keith down like a sinker.
“Let go of me,” Keith hissed.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
The voice Keith heard did not belong to Taylor, but that gave Keith scant comfort. He now had two choices—go forward and reveal himself or retreat and wait for backup.
Keith spent exactly half a second considering his options. He felt the chances of making it out of the facility without being caught were slim. So he reached into his inside coat pocket and got out his badge.
He strode decisively into the room. There, on rows of steel tables, with rubber hoses feeding into them, stood ten of the largest aquariums he had ever seen. Each was easily as big as a coffin. But they didn’t hold water. Lush, low-growing plants carpeted the bottoms while chicken wire covered the tops. Nestled among the foliage, Keith made out a small plastic fixture that had once hidden the bubbler. It had been fashioned into a treasure chest spilling out plastic pieces of eight.
Keith wondered if these could be the coins that Gunther had described.
The man in the white cleanroom suit that he’d spotted before stood next to one of the aquariums. Now in addition to the cleanroom suit he wore a respirator and held the ora
nge cat. Keith could see dozens of colorful moths fluttering right at the bottom of the terrarium—though as Keith drew nearer, their movements seemed strange. They almost flickered. One moment he’d see a moth and the next a cowering little female figure with candy-colored hair.
He’d found the missing pixies.
“Blood of Menses! They’ve enslaved the wee women!” Carrot Beard exclaimed. “This is worse than hiring them as scabs. This here is an insult to all fae creatures!”
“Quiet.” Keith started toward one of the aquariums, trying to assess the health of the pixies trapped inside. They looked terrified.
“Look out!” Carrot Beard yelled. “The bastard’s brandishing a cat!”
Keith turned his attention back to the room’s lone attendant.
“I’m Agent Keith Curry from NIAD.” He held up the badge as if it were itself a magical amulet instead of a piece of silver-plated brittanium. “Put the cat down and put your hands up.”
Though the man’s eyes were shielded by thick goggles, Keith could see the panic in them. Suddenly he hurled the cat at Keith. While Keith sidestepped the incoming missile of claws and fur, the man lunged to the side and hit a large, red button on the wall.
An alarm began to sound. As the cat came to a skidding landing on the tile near them, Carrot Beard leaped from the floor to the top of the nearest terrarium. He curled his now-tiny fist around the twisted wire, yanked it free and wriggled into the terrarium through the opening to the plants below.
“I’ll just be bunking up with you all in here so long as there’s a ferocious orange moggy n the loose,” Carrot Beard told one of the moths.
Keith kept his eyes on the man in the cleanroom suit. He didn’t seem to be armed, but it was hard to be sure given the amount of pixie dust in the air. He positioned himself between the man and the hallway.
“I repeat! Put your hands in the air!” he bellowed over the siren. The man complied; then, as suddenly as it had begun, the alarm stopped. The man in the cleanroom suit dropped his arms to his sides and stared at something just beyond Keith’s shoulder.
That did not give Keith a good feeling about who, or what, might be standing behind him.
“You know, Agent Curry, for a minute there I actually thought you were really an inspector,” Taylor’s voice sounded from behind him.
Keith slowly raised his hands and turned to face him and his bwana mustache.
Of course he was holding a pistol, what had Keith expected? A crossbow? Taylor looked disappointed, but not angry.
“I am really an inspector today,” Keith said.
“What happened to your so-called son?” Taylor craned his neck, scanning the room.
“I told him to wait in the bathroom.” He hoped Carrot Beard had the good sense to hide.
“He had a leprechaun with him,” the employee chimed in. “I didn’t see where he went.”
Taylor leveled his gun at Keith’s head and said, “Show yourself, or he’s dead.”
“Piss off, dickhole!” Carrot Beard’s voice seemed to be coming from everywhere in the room.
Taylor turned to Keith and shrugged. “Can I assume that was your so-called son? Looks like you’ve failed as a father. Turn around and get down on your knees.”
Keith knew that if he turned around it would be the end. Taylor would shoot him. They’d hide the body and wash the blood out with an industrial hose. Maybe Carrot Beard would report the crime, or maybe he’d just be glad to be free of that unspoken wish.
The wish—he still had it!
He wanted to be careful, but he didn’t have time.
“I wish—” Keith said, then stopped. What could he say? He felt the pressure growing, almost as if the magic itself was urging him on. Despite his dire situation he felt the strange need to giggle. The whole world took on a surreal and comical tone, as if the air had been replaced with laughing gas.
“You wish?” Taylor repeated. “Is this your last request?”
“I wish you were the worst shot in the world,” Keith blurted out.
“I guess you’re out of luck,” Taylor said. “Now turn around.”
“No.” Keith stood firm. “If you’re going to kill me you’ll have to look me in the face.”
“No problem. I was just trying to keep the janitorial hours low.” Taylor pulled the trigger.
Keith stayed still as a statue as the deafening crack of the pistol firing less than a foot from his face split his right eardrum. A high-pitched whine replaced all other sound. In his left ear only, he could hear the rapid-fire rat-a-tat of the bullet ricocheting all around the room. Strange laughter filled the air as the bullet went on and on for what seemed like a full minute, shattering the aquariums, hitting the ceiling and the floor. Then the cleanroom suit guy grabbed his leg and fell, cursing.
Freed from their cages, the pixies zipped and zinged into the air by the dozens, flying like rainbow-colored confetti, all the while being cheered on by Carrot Beard.
Taylor’s mouth hung open in astonishment. He raised his arm to fire again and the fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling creaked, then one end swung down, smacking him directly in the face. He fell straight back to the floor. Keith rushed forward, kicked the gun away, then knelt to check his pulse. He was unconscious but still breathing.
As Keith reached for his handcuffs he saw Carrot Beard trot up alongside Taylor’s head.
“What a wish, my boy! The magic loved that one! True spirit of comedy.”
Epilogue
“So the special flavoring in Primal Thunder was pixie dust after all?” Gunther asked. He sat at their kitchen table patiently waiting for Keith to put the finishing touches on his vegetarian shepherd’s pie. After spending so much time with the little people, he’d found himself wanting to take a crack at the wholesome, sturdy fare of the Emerald Isle. He had spent the last five days in Bismarck, overseeing the seizure of Taranis and the Primal Thunder Bottling Company, and taking statements from everyone involved. When he came home he found that he’d just missed saying goodbye to Gunther’s parents, which saddened him more than he’d thought it would.
“Even worse,” Keith said. “It was grade B sorghum syrup given a glamour via the use of pixie dust. The system was ingenious, really. They got a cat, slapped an enchanted collar on it and made it into a good little menace for the pixies. Then they’d have a pixie cast a glamour on the sorghum, giving it whatever flavor they wanted. Apparently, this service used to be provided by the leprechauns at extortionate prices.”
“Then Taylor figured out a way he could cut costs,” Gunther finished. “But wait—doesn’t that mean that the leprechauns knew all along the pixies were being held captive there?”
“They knew the pixies had stolen their jobs, not that they were being kept against their will. They thought Buttercup had rented them out as scab workers during the labor dispute.”
“Why didn’t any of them report Taranis? You’d think they’d have done it out of spite alone.”
“Well, because that kind magical food adulteration is supremely illegal, mostly.” Keith slid his hands into his oven mitts and transferred the bubbling casserole to the table. Then he returned to the stove to give the six lamb sausages he had in his skillet a good shake. Just because he was a vegetarian didn’t mean Gunther had to be. “I think they’re going to cut a deal for immunity in exchange for testimony.”
“That would be smart.” Gunther folded his hands and mumbled the few quick words that comprised the goblin version of saying grace. His right hand was still supported by a cast, but the bulky bandages had gone. “But I still don’t understand how the attacks on NIAD agents figure in.”
“They weren’t attacks at all.” Keith slid the sausages onto a plate, retrieved his half-empty beer from the countertop and seated himself at the table. “One of the pixies, Lorraine was her name, was sometimes able to work little spells into the pixie dust she dispensed that allowed her to send messages. The problem was that they were incomprehensible. She was onl
y able to press her immediate feelings into the dust.”
“So I really was possessed—sort of. Possessed by a memory.”
“Exactly.” Keith helped himself to a serving of salad, then to the buttermilk dressing.
Gunther served himself a paperback-sized portion of the shepherd’s pie. He topped this with two sausages, then asked, “So why is there a cat in my parents’ bedroom?”
Keith couldn’t help but smile. It was so like Gunther to wait until halfway through dinner to ask about the cat.
“Well, it took a while to catch it, but we did. After we removed the enchanted collar that allowed Taranis to control it, it turned out to be pretty friendly. The pixies wanted it tried as an accessory but dropped the charges once we explained that it was acting against its will. I couldn’t find a no-kill shelter in Bismarck so I was going to take it to the rescue shelter in Arlington, but it was already closed.” Keith took a more modest portion of the casserole and gave it a taste. The French lentils had melded well with the mushrooms, he decided.
“So you brought it home?” Gunther forked shepherd’s pie into his mouth, heedless of the scalding temperature.
“Until tomorrow,” Keith replied.
“Then why did you buy it all those toys?” Gunther asked.
“It seemed like a pretty nice cat, deep down. I thought it would be bored in there by itself.” Keith kept his eyes down. In truth the cat had charmed him right from the second the enchanted collar came off. It had a pretty face and a sweet, chirpy meow. It had kept him company in his motel room in Bismarck. On the second day Keith had named him Cheeto.
Gunther regarded Keith for a long moment, then rose and went upstairs. He heard the door to the spare room open. Seconds later the cat came slinking down, followed by Gunther.
“It’s no use keeping him up there all alone.” Gunther reseated himself. Immediately, Cheeto jumped up onto his lap.
Keith shook his head. “You better watch out. You don’t want to get too attached. You have a weakness for scruffy things.”
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