The Fairyland Murders

by J. A. Kazimer

  Jamming another round in the chamber, I fired again, this time into the midsection of Licker Boy, who’d joined the fray midpummel and was currently using my organs as a piñata.

  Festive sure, but it also hurt like hell.

  “This ain’t over. Count on it,” Licker Boy yelped, vanishing, trench coat and all, in a wisp of smoke. The remaining four—or rather three and seven-eighths—Shadows disappeared as well, leaving me on the floor covered in blood, mostly theirs, and toe jam.

  Izzy knelt down next to me, a frown pulling at her mouth. “Are you done playing around?”

  I waggled my head to clear the tiny blue buzzards circling my skull and stared disbelievingly at the winged pain in the ass. Did she think I got off on getting my ass kicked by a bunch of smoke clouds? I should walk away, forget all about the crazed half fairy, her dim-witted uncles, and the assassin stalking her. But no one, not even when I went full-on, bug-zapper light, had ever called me bright.

  “If you don’t mind,” she glared at me, “I’ve had enough drama for one night. I want to go.” Something flickered across her face. Fear? Concern? Boredom? Who could tell? When I failed to snap to attention, she added, “Now. Before they come back.”

  “Smartest thing you’ve said all night,” I mumbled. My head felt like a lead weight and discarded peanut shells clung to every inch of my backside. The aroma of moldy beer drifted from my clothes. Just another Thursday night.

  Izzy reached out her hand to help me up, but I refused, slowly staggering to my feet under my own volition. She followed me toward the door. We passed the Ferns, who cackled with delight at either my sorry appearance or, much more likely, at Izzy’s nagging screech.

  “What were you thinking, taking on those Shadows?” Izzy shook her head as we left the bar. “Do you have some kind of death wish?”

  Until this morning I would’ve answered with a definite no. But I was quickly seeing the advantage of a dirt nap. For one thing, if dead, I wouldn’t have a five-foot fairy threatening to lift me in a fireman’s carry.

  “Damn it.” I shoved at her shoulders with my leather-clad hands when she stepped too close for comfort. “I can walk all on my own.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  To prove it I started to do just that, and then promptly fell on my ass. Some days it wasn’t worth getting out of bed. “Not one word.”

  With an eye roll, she plopped down on the sidewalk next to me. I focused my energy on staunching the flow of blood from the wound on my forehead. An intense light began to burn in my chest, growing hotter and bluer with each passing second, and then, like a soldering iron, my flesh bubbled over the cut, fusing my skin. Izzy fluttered closer to the light, a frown on her lips. I ignored her, adding a little more power to annoy her.

  Ten minutes later I was fully healed and only slightly mortified. “Well, I’ll say one thing for you,” the pink-winged fairy said. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

  “Isabella.” I grinned, wiggling my eyebrows like a supervillian. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  CHAPTER 11

  About an hour later, with only a few minor glitches—namely a run-in with a Zen-spouting troll on the sidewalk begging for change and a brief altercation with an overcompensating unicorn—Izzy and I arrived at my apartment building. It was a shabby and nondescript brownstone on the wrong side of the tracks known as Greenwitch Village.

  My neighbors were an eclectic mix of down-on-their-luck princes, fairy-dust addicts, and other assorted commoners commonly referred to as riffraff.

  I fit right in.

  Up until two years ago the neighborhood had catered to Old Mother Hubbard types. Then, of course, I moved in, and after a rash of destructive lightning strikes, the mothers moved out and the degenerates replaced them.

  I personally blamed the New Never Knick Knack Paddy Whacks. They’d been on a steady losing streak since the season started, which burned me up. Every couple of days it was the same old story, Whacks down by five with two seconds to go, and me with the power to toss bolts of electricity across a city block.

  You do the math.

  Thankfully, the season had ended last week.

  Without bloodshed.

  Or any major fires.

  Isabella licked her lips, as if uncertain about the wisdom of sharing quarters with a lightning rod.

  “You’re safe. I promise.” I motioned her forward, careful not to touch her as we climbed four flights of rickety stairs. Yellow peeling paint covered the walls, at odds with the beautiful pink-winged woman in front of me.

  I tried to ignore the sway of her hips as she climbed the steps, but the temptation was too much to resist. The torn black habit molded to her thighs, showing off every toned inch of her backside.

  When I couldn’t take the exquisite torture anymore, I said, “Clayton and Peyton don’t know where I live so no one will find you here.”

  On my rental application for my office space, I’d listed my residence as the Electric Company. Those two winged freaks never raised an eyebrow. “You’ll be safe,” I added inanely.

  Her stance remained rigid, but she no longer looked like she’d bolt at any moment. When we reached my front door I yanked my key from my pocket and slipped it into the lock.

  Once it opened with a small groan, I checked my security system, which consisted of two rows of Peter Piper Pickle cans strung across the threshold and a single blue hair strategically placed on the handle of the door.

  I walked inside, careful to wipe my feet on the electrostatic mat covering the threshold. It crackled with static, illuminating the room like the Fourth of July. Every single light in my apartment, as well as a good portion of the apartments below, exploded with light.

  “Wipe your feet.” I motioned for Izzy to enter. She did but with some hesitancy, her face pale in the bright light. She stood on the electrostatic mat for a few seconds, all but naked underneath my leather jacket. Don’t think about it, I ordered my brain. But I did anyway. A lot.

  Her gaze explored every inch of my apartment, from my lopsided, stained sofa to my milk-crate bookcase filled with electrician manuals and worn physics books. A white curtain hung across the exposed bedroom and dirty clothes lay scattered over the couch, coffee table, and single chair.

  I shrugged. “Maid’s on vacation.”

  “I can see that.”

  While I’d expected disgust to appear on her beautiful face, when her eyes finally met mine, she looked relaxed, at peace. My suspicion immediately rose. What was going on? Why the sudden mood swings? Was Izzy one of those split-fairy personalities? “Before we bunk down,” I said, “promise I won’t wake up being roasted over a spit or in a bathtub with only one kidney.”

  A frown marred her forehead, but before she could answer a knock sounded at my door. I glanced through the peephole and rolled my eyes. Gizelle, my nosy next-door neighbor, gave me a small finger wave from the other side. With a sigh, I opened the door. “Hi, G. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  Gizelle held up a pair of Levi’s much too small to fit me and a sweatshirt. Odd, since in my six months of living next door to her, I’d never seen her wear anything but a gauzy white dress that made her look like Glinda the Good Witch after a drunken night in Munchkinland.

  “I’ve brought you some clothes.” She pushed past me and stopped in front of Izzy. She held up the clothes, as if measuring them against the fairy. “I think they’ll fit.”

  “How’d you—” Izzy frowned, her gaze bouncing between Gizelle and me. The look she shot me suggested I’d ratted her location out.

  I quickly stepped in front of the older woman before my suspicious fairy overreacted. “Gizelle’s my neighbor.” I paused, hoping to avoid further explanation. I knew I’d failed when Izzy folded her arms across her chest. Wincing, I added, “And one hell of a soothsayer.”

  “I prefer psychic.” Gizelle motioned to the red bindi dot on her forehead, where her invisible third eye rested. It looked much as if a kinderg
artener had drawn it on with a crayon. “I had a vision.”

  Blah. I had visions too. Usually they ended with me naked in a vat of Jell-O with a group of maids a milking, but I’m sure neither Izzy nor Gizelle wanted to hear about those.

  Isabella grabbed the clothes from Gizelle’s hand and pushed the psychic toward the door. “Thanks. Nice meeting you.”

  I raised an eyebrow, surprised by Izzy’s sudden rudeness.

  Gizelle froze, as if entering a trance, when Izzy’s fingers touched her. The older woman began whispering in some exotic tongue that sounded a hell of a lot like a yowling cat. Her vague, screechy chants impressed no one. I’d seen her shtick before—lots of mysterious incantations and a fortune cookie–like message from beyond. Like that was going to do me any good. If the dead were so eager to speak, why not send a text like the rest of the world?

  “I see lies.” Gizelle rubbed her forehead, smearing her dot.

  I glanced at Izzy.

  But Gizelle wasn’t done. “And wings.”

  My eyebrow arched.

  “And . . .” Gizelle frowned.

  “Well,” Izzy pressed her middle finger into Gizelle’s third eye and shoved her through the open door, “this has been fun. Have a good night.”

  “But . . . I—”

  Izzy slammed the door on Gizelle’s words and whirled to confront me. “I’m starving. Got anything to eat?”

  “Want to explain what that was about?”

  She shrugged. “Not really.”

  “But I’d really like to know.”

  Her sigh would’ve felled a lesser man. Good thing I was made of tougher stuff. She smiled at me, her teeth bared. I winced, but she didn’t bite. Instead, her grin widened. “I don’t want to know my future and I think it’s damn rude when someone else thinks I should.”

  “So you tossing her out had nothing to do with lies or wings?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Do you believe the future is set?” She rubbed her hands together. “That a prophecy of some kind rules our every action?”

  Not really, but I wanted to know where she planned to go with this. “Sure. Why not?”

  “Idiot,” she whispered under her breath loud enough for my highly trained investigative ears to pick up. “I’m guessing you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny too?”

  “As a matter of fact I’m the president of their fan clubs. We’re accepting new members.” I grinned. “Of course the application process is a bitch.”

  “Everything’s a joke to you, huh?”

  Not everything, but I wasn’t about to share my darkest secrets with a fairy I’d met less than five hours earlier. “Forget the fate talk and I’ll make us something to eat. Do you like fish sticks?”

  “As long as it’s not that fish.” Izzy motioned to the fish tank on the center of my coffee table. My pet goldfish, Felix, who I’d won at a kingdom faire when I was eight, lay upside down in the tank, his tiny fish fins unmoving.

  Again.

  “Damn.” I threw off my gloves, crossed the room, and stabbed my finger into the cold water. The water in the tank crackled with electricity. Felix flew into the air, reanimated for the sixty-seventh time since our relationship began.

  He landed facedown on the crusty carpet, his fins swimming furiously against the plush fabric. Unable to do anything to save him with my gloves off, I watched my poor fish try to stroke his way back home.

  Izzy ran over, scooped Felix into her hand, and dropped him into a half-empty cup resting on my couch. Felix kicked once, then twice before sinking to the bottom of the glass. “What’s wrong with him?” She frowned at the drowning fish.

  “That’s not water.” I picked up the glass and carefully dumped Felix into his tank. “It’s vodka.”

  “Oh.”

  Felix perked up a bit, swimming a few drunken laps around his tank. “Great,” I said. “I now have the only goldfish in town that needs AA.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Tell that to Felix in the morning, when his bug eyes are red and his mouth tastes like sushi.”

  “Speaking of morning,” she said, “what is the plan?”

  “Plan?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t play dumb. The sooner we figure out who tried to kill me tonight the sooner I can go back to having a real life. I’m guessing the twins are a good place to start. So, I repeat, what’s the plan?”

  While she had a point, dragging her to the twins’ place sounded like a bad idea. If they were behind the assassination attempt tonight, showing up with Izzy at my side would be like serving her up as a main course at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

  She tapped her finger to her lip. “I think we should hit Clayton and Peyton bright and earlier, before they get a chance to dust off.”

  Every fairy, the Tooth Fairy included, spent a good portion of their morning hours shaking fairy dust from their crevices. Pounds of the stuff accumulated on them during the REM cycle of sleep, making it impossible to do much of anything until they dusted off. I had to give it to Her soon-to-be Toothiness. Early morning would be the perfect time to strike, catching Clayton and Peyton unaware. “Not a bad idea.” I rubbed my blue goatee. “But I have a better one.”

  She smiled encouragingly.

  “You stick to the girlie stuff like baking cookies and leave the investigating to me.” Her eyes blazed, turning almost violet in color. But I continued on. “I’m good at what I do. Trust me, in a few days the bad fairies will be smitten and you’ll be back to doing whatever it is soon-to-be Tooth Fairies do on their nights off.” I shot her a wicked grin. “I’m guessing it involves dental floss and a safe word.”

  CHAPTER 12

  My security system woke me at seven in the morning. “Damn it,” I muttered, reaching for my really big gun, which lay tucked under my pillow. The cold metal offered some comfort after too little sleep and a wealth of surreal dreams, all featuring a certain redheaded fairy with bulletproof wings.

  I pushed open the shower curtain that hung across my bedroom doorway, aiming the gun in the general direction of the front door. Nobody was there. However, Peter Piper Pickle cans were scattered across the floor, some oozing year-old pickle juice into the burn holes in my carpet.

  “Sorry about that,” Izzy said, poking her head out of my kitchen. “I went out to grab a coffee and knocked the cans over when I came back in.”

  I raised an eyebrow, not sure if I believed her. “Coffee?” I glanced at the coffee table with a surprising amount of hope. Hope turned to annoyance when the only thing I saw on the table was a fish tank with a green-gilled goldfish inside. “Listen,” I began, “you don’t leave this place without me. Got it?”

  “Fine.” She disappeared into the kitchen, and a few seconds later my sink gurgled. Buttoning my jeans, I followed her into the kitchen. She stood at the sink, pouring the last dregs of an extra-large coffee with the name BLUE emblazoned on the side down the drain. When she finished pouring she snatched another, smaller cup of coffee from the countertop and took a sip.

  My stomach growled with caffeinated desire.

  “Yum.” She licked her plump lips. “Decaf. You might wanna try it sometime. Then you won’t be so cranky in the morning.”

  Closing my eyes, I counted to ten before addressing this fairy pain in the ass. “I’m not cranky,” I wailed like a four-year-old. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

  “And I appreciate it.” She fluttered her long auburn lashes at me. “Really. I do.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And now that you’re up . . .” Her face warmed, whether from excitement or the coffee I didn’t know. “I’ll get changed and we can stop off at the rectory to get my things and then pay the twins a visit.”

  “You can’t come with me.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  Her other flame-colored brow rose, matching the first.

  We stood like that in silence for a
few minutes. Neither speaking nor moving an inch. I would never give in. I was Blue Reynolds, damn it. She would do what I said, when I said, and like it.

  Two minutes later, when a cramp started in my left calf, I snatched the coffee from her hand and drank it in one gulp. “Fine. You’ll do exactly as I say.”

  “Of course.”

  Yeah, right. “And you’ll keep quiet.”

  “Anything else?” Her eyes grew a darker shade of sapphire. “Shall I walk ten paces behind you? Spit shine your boots? Maybe toss rose petals at your big, dumb feet? Whatever your wish, I am here only to serve.”

  I glanced down at my bare feet. “Glad we’re on the same page.”

  About an hour later, after we picked up Izzy’s suitcase from the church, I knocked on the door to the twins’ apartment. “Clayton? Peyton?” I called out. No answer. Izzy stood behind me. Her warm, innately minty breath tickled the back of my neck. It was both erotic and distracting; neither helped our plight.

  I knocked again, this time with more force.

  Still no answer.

  Those two winged pests were inside; I could feel it. Feel their devilish glee. I kicked the door for good measure. “Damn fairies,” I said.

  “Hey—”

  I grinned. “No offense.”

  “A lot taken.” She closed her eyes and then slowly opened them, as if trying to hold her temper. “So what now? Do we sit here and wait for them to come home? Or leave a note?”

  I chuckled. “A note? What’s it going to say? ‘Please call at your earliest convenience as Blue plans to break your tiny kneecaps’?”

  She laughed. “Probably not the best approach. So what’s your idea?”

  “It’s a good one.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “Is it now?”

  I glanced up and down the empty hallway before lifting my foot high enough to kick the flimsy lock on the twins’ door. My boot struck wood with a loud bang. The door crashed inward, exploding from its hinges and landing on the floor.

  Ever the gentleman, after I quickly scanned the room for danger, I bent at the waist, motioning her inside. “After you.”