She smiled, stepping inside the apartment. I followed behind, my forehead scraping along the five-foot-high ceiling, removing a few layers of skin.
I surveyed the tiny apartment. The single room was trashed. Furniture lay broken and scattered across the living area. Bits of glass and tiny ceramic fairy figurines crunched underfoot.
“Clayton?” I searched the room, seeing nothing but violence and destruction. Either the twins hated housecleaning or the bad guys had worked overtime this morning. One never knew with them. “Peyton?”
Isabella inhaled sharply. “Oh my God.”
I spun to face whatever had drawn her attention and swallowed my own girlish cry. A piece of green wing, the same shade as the twins’ wings, poked out from the refrigerator door. I pulled my really big gun and slowly maneuvered my way toward the fridge.
“Don’t open it,” she said, her voice shaking.
“Go stand by the front door,” I ordered, and without checking to see if she complied, I jerked the refrigerator door open. A piece of what looked to be a strap-on pair of glittery wings, the same kind I’d seen at Barry’s shop, fluttered to the floor, along with a cascade of bruised vegetables and a nearly empty bottle of ketchup that oozed a river of red.
“Is that blood?” she whispered from across the room, her gaze locked on the red puddle growing at my feet.
“No. Ketchup,” I said, lifting the fake wing up to show her. “What do you make of this?”
Slowly she came forward, her eyes narrowing on the green bit of glittery wing. “I don’t understand. Why would the twins have fake wings?”
I scratched my chin, my gaze focused on her face, then dropping to the broken wing. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“What?”
I spun the torn wing around, tearing a tag from the back. A tag that read BARRY’S COSTUME SHOP. The same shop where Izzy had purchased her nun’s habit. Too much of a coincidence for my peace of mind. “It’s time to come clean. What’s going on here, Isabella?”
Her lips pinched into a frown, which oddly did nothing to detract from her beauty. “You think I’m somehow involved in this . . . whatever this is? Are you crazy? I’ve been hiding from the twins and the rest of the Fairy Council for weeks. Why would I do that if I was in on whatever this is?” She gestured about the battered apartment.
Not sure if I could trust her let alone believe a word coming from her glossy lips, I shoved the fake bit of wing into my pocket. Then I began a systematic search, sifting through every cupboard, drawer, and cookie jar, looking for some clue as to the twins’ whereabouts or what those two winged devils were up to. Something didn’t smell right and, surprisingly, it wasn’t the twins’ cabbagey aroma.
I did find a suspicious splatter of blood in the bathroom shower but no other sign of foul play. Maybe one of the boys cut himself while shaving. Izzy stood behind me, staring at the bloody tile. “Do you think they’re . . .”
“Dead?” I gave a small laugh without much humor. “Probably.”
“But why?”
“I’m not sure, but I have a theory.”
“I’m all atwitter.”
I grinned at her sarcastic tone. “You’ve met the two of them, right?”
CHAPTER 13
“Swindling little bastards,” I said, slamming the phone down hard enough to crack the hard outer plastic of the receiver. Izzy raised an eyebrow. I wondered, thanks to those two sawed-off fairies, how the hell I’d pay my water bill, let alone the rent on my apartment this month. “Clayton’s check. The one he gave me to find you. It bounced.”
Izzy didn’t respond; instead, she gave me an apologetic smile from her seat in my office chair behind my desk in my cramped office. The desk nearly swallowed her small frame, but oddly, she looked more at home than I ever had while I stood by the window looking like a blue-haired alien invader. A broke one at that. I sighed. Story of my life.
We’d just returned from searching the twins’ apartment. The smell of sugar plums and cabbage clung to me like a stalker after a one-night stand. “What the hell am I going to do? I need that money.”
She kicked her feet back and forth, out of a nervous habit or something more, I wasn’t sure. “You could—”
Before she could finish her sentence my office door flew open, slamming against the wall. Plaster and year-old dust rained down from the ceiling. I leaped up, ready to protect the pink-winged fairy at any cost. Or rather any cost up to and not including extreme bodily damage to my delicate parts.
I couldn’t afford the hospital bill.
When an unarmed, well-dressed, and quite beautiful woman appeared in the doorway, my heartbeat returned to normal. “Oh, excuse me,” said the young woman. “I was looking for Reynolds Detective Agency.”
Damn it. Just what I needed. “Are you a bill collector?”
She took a step back. “Of course not.”
“Cop?” As I said it I knew she wasn’t. She was too well bred, upper class, and untouchable—even with the deep, dark circles rimming her stark blue eyes—to be a public servant. She looked more like a princess, even in the drab interior of my office.
“You’ve found the right place.” I flashed her a quick smile. “I’m Blue Reynolds.”
The woman gave a halfhearted grin. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, her eyes locking on mine for a second too long. A swell of heat that had nothing to do with my electrical curse burned up my spine.
I stayed silent, waiting for her to either serve me with court papers or stab me. In my business it only went one of those two ways.
From her seat behind me, Izzy asked, “How can we help you?”
We? What the fuck? One day in and Izzy and I were a “we”? I’d better explain the facts of life to her. My life. Blue Reynolds wasn’t the “we” kind of guy. The “thanks for last night; I hope your hair grows back after that nasty electrical beard burn” sure, but . . .
The woman cleared her throat, once again gaining my attention. “My name is Penelopee. I need to speak with Mr. Reynolds about a personal matter.”
A personal matter? I frowned, studying her closely. I was almost positive we hadn’t met before, so brilliant detective that I was I quickly deduced two things: 1) she wasn’t carrying my blue-haired baby, and 2) I wouldn’t have minded getting to know her a whole lot better biblically.
Until I recognized her name; then I wanted her the hell out of my office, and soon. “Princess Penelopee Andersen?” Crap. I’d done a few jobs for King Andersen back in the day. The days before the old king tried to chop off my head after I’d accidentally roasted his favorite stallion.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Reynolds. My father speaks very highly of you.”
I grinned, surprised the princess was able to get that lie out with a straight face. “I’m sure he does.” I paused, wondering how to get rid of Penelopee without injuring her tender feelings. “What brings you by, Princess?”
“Please call me Penelopee.” She smiled at me, showing off flush and what I assumed were very expensive teeth. Rich people loved veneers, whether it was the toothy type or ones that covered worse things. I wondered what sort of rot Penelopee hid behind her shiny teeth and fresh, innocent face.
“Penelopee,” I said. “What can I do for you? Follow your cheating husband perhaps?”
“I’m not married.”
“Run a background check on your ladies-in-waiting then?”
She shook her head.
“Dissuade an amorous suitor?” All of the above were typical jobs for the princess and the PI. I wouldn’t enjoy any of them, but they would pay the bills.
“Certainly not.” She frowned, rubbing her hands together. “What I am going to tell you . . . it must stay between us.”
I guess she hadn’t noticed the half fairy behind me. Not that it mattered. Izzy wasn’t in any position to be spreading secrets.
I slowly nodded at her demand. Most of my clients made similar requests, though not so eloquently put
. They more often than not sounded more like, “Blue, you breathe a word of this and you won’t be breathing no more.”
I held up my hand in a Boy Scout salute, a salute I’d learned two days before a much-too-touchy scout master had a run-in with an exposed electrical wire. “Whatever you say to us . . .” I glared at Izzy, “won’t leave this office. You have my word.”
Surprisingly, my word seemed to appease the princess. She smiled, reaching for my hand. I pulled from shock range just in time. Her grin faltered, but she recovered quickly. “I might be in some trouble.”
Considering most people avoided PIs unless they were in trouble, her sitting in my office suggested as much, but I kept my observation to myself. “What kind of trouble?”
“I need your help to find . . . something . . . something very important. . .” She paused, wiping a tear from her eye.
My reluctance to help her vanished as two more tears fell. Maybe I was being a little hasty. She really seemed to need my help. I grabbed a tissue from my desk and pressed it into her hand. A part of me wanted to comfort her, to make everything all right.
Izzy let out a snort and then rolled her eyes. I shot her a heated glare and returned my attention to Penelopee. “Please, have a seat, Princess.” I dumped Izzy out of my chair, pushing it around the desk as I brushed off year-old crumbs. The half fairy squeaked, fanning her wings out with displeasure, but I ignored her.
Penelopee froze, her gaze on Izzy’s glorious wings, before shaking her head and taking a seat on my chair. However, she did make a point to brush it off first. Izzy took offense to the action, if the look of violence on her face was any indication.
I stepped between the two women before Penelopee found out what pink wings tasted like. “What sort of object did you lose?”
“I didn’t lose anything exactly.” She ran a finger over her bottom lip. “Here’s the truth. I was dating this prince.... He . . . we . . . I’m afraid he took . . . something from my apartment while I was out. A tape of sorts. I need it back before the press gets wind of it.”
Sex tape. I wondered what sort of kink the princess was into. Mé-nage à troll? I shivered with disgust at the thought. But I was intrigued. Penelopee looked like the princess next door type, but a sex tape would prove otherwise.
The princess frowned. “I don’t know how he got in to steal it. I live on the top floor of a secure building. No one gets upstairs without my approval and he didn’t have it.”
“Which means you have a security breech,” I said with a nod. “What is it you want me to do?” I’d dealt with my fair share of ex-boyfriends. For my clients. One fifty-thousand jolt of electricity usually cures the most adoring boy toy.
“Blue,” Izzy interrupted, “can I have a word?”
“Tooth decay,” I said with a grin. “There are two words. No extra charge.”
Her smile tightened, showing off sharp little teeth, all the better to bite me with. “It will only take a second.” She smiled politely at the princess, who up until this point had acted as if the fairy didn’t exist. “If you’ll excuse us, Princess.”
Before Penelopee could answer, Isabella walked out of my office, her wings fluttering in the breeze behind her. I followed but at a more sedate pace, wondering what exactly she so desperately wanted to talk about.
When she didn’t pause at the end of the corridor but rather shoved the fire door open and motioned me inside the stairwell, my suspicion grew. “What’s going on with you?” I asked, stepping inside the concrete bunker.
“You can’t take this job.”
“Why the hell not?” I reached for her arm but dropped my hand before burning her delicate skin. “It’s easy money, and God knows I need it after Clayton stiffed me.”
Her mouth opened and then closed, but no sound emerged. I tilted my head, waiting for whatever madness might come out of her mouth. Instead, tears formed in her eyes. She sniffed once and then a tidal wave of waterworks ran down her face.
Guilt overwhelmed me. I was a selfish ass, not taking her tender feelings into consideration. She didn’t want me to take the job. Was that too much to ask?
I reached out to comfort her and then stopped. What the hell? Was Izzy actually playing me? Using her tears as a weapon after she noticed the effect Penelopee’s had?
My focus narrowed on Izzy’s face. Her weeping looked real enough. Puffy red eyes. Snot. The whole nine yards. I didn’t buy it for a minute. Izzy wasn’t the tearful type. So what was going on? The answer came to me in a flash. “Whoa, Izzy, I get it,” I said.
She gazed up at me through wet, spiky lashes. “You do?”
“You’re jealous.”
“What?!” she asked, affected tears drying up instantly.
“It’s okay, Isabella.” I shot her a crooked smile. “You’ll always be my number-one gal.”
Her tiny fist came out of nowhere, socking me in the nose. My head jerked back, but I somehow managed to stay on my feet. For a chick who weighed less than a hundred pounds, she sure as hell packed a heck of a wallop.
“You hit me!” I wiped my nose, surprised by the lack of blood pouring from my nostrils.
“Love tap, sugar,” she said through clenched teeth. “I just couldn’t control myself. My jealousy got the better of me, I guess.”
I laughed. “What’s really going on here? Why don’t you want me to take Penelopee’s case?”
She ran her teeth over her bottom lip, watching me closely. Her sudden vulnerability worried me. Whatever was going on in her fairy-sized brain wasn’t good. I waited for her to tell me all her troubles. Silence filled the stairwell.
Finally, she spoke, barely above a whisper, “I’m afraid, Blue. Afraid that—”
“It’s okay,” I promised. “You don’t have to be scared.”
“Is that so?”
“Keeping you safe is job number one.” I gave her a soft smile. “Penelopee’s case won’t interfere with that. I promise.”
She bit the side of her mouth. “But . . .”
“Trust me, Isabella. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Um . . . thank you,” she said when the silence between us lengthened to the nearly uncomfortable. “I won’t let anything happen to you either,” she added in a whisper.
CHAPTER 14
Ten minutes later I had a signed client contract in hand, as well as a good-sized retainer, enough to pay the rent on my apartment in addition to the water and electricity bills. While I should’ve been on top of the world, all I felt was regret. Maybe taking Penelopee’s case wasn’t such a good idea after all.
I needed to focus on keeping Izzy alive. But, much to my disgust, when it came down to it I couldn’t say no to either woman, princess or fairy. Fucking tears.
Women were the downfall of every great blue-haired man.
With a sigh, I dropped down into my office chair, still warm from the princess. Kicking my feet up on the desktop, I flipped open a book on the history of New Never City.
“What are you reading?” Izzy asked from her seat on the windowsill.
I held up the book for her to see.
“Huh. I didn’t picture you as a history buff.” She grinned. “In fact I’m quite surprised you can read at all.”
“Funny.” I set the book facedown on the desk. “In truth you’re not far off. I hate history. And therefore am doomed to repeat it. But in this case my reading is background research.”
“Research for what?”
“A case.”
She tilted her head. “What kind of case?”
I gave a long drawn-out sigh. “You’re not going to stop talking until I tell you, are you?”
“Probably not.”
“Fine.” I motioned to the book. “Highly trained investigators like myself often find ourselves embroiled in the darkest, most dangerous of cases. Cases filled with femme fatales willing to do anything to get what they want . . .”
Excitement filled her voice. “This is one of those cases?”
&nb
sp; My gaze locked on hers. “Not even a little bit.”
Her shoulders slumped and she let out a loud sigh. “Oh.”
“Buck up, Isabella,” I said with a laugh. “While this case isn’t death defying it will pay the bills.” Eventually, I added silently, once I found the missing magic pea. I gestured to Izzy and her pink wings. “In my experience searching for a magic object beats getting strung up with dental floss by some crazy fairy.”
“My hero.”
I grinned again. “Now, now, it isn’t that bad. I’m on a quest for a missing relic, one that hasn’t been seen in a hundred years. Me. Blue Reynolds. I feel kind of like Indiana Jones, but better looking.”
“What sort of relic are you searching for?”
I winced. “A pea.”
“A pea?” She laughed so hard her wings shook. “Are you kidding me? Someone actually hired you to look for a hundred-year-old tiny vegetable?”
“Fruit.”
“Excuse me?”
I shook a finger at her. “Peas are in the fruit family. Not a vegetable. It’s a common misconception.”
“For nerds.” She laughed again. “Okay, who hired you to find a hundred-year-old fruit?”
“Magic fruit,” I corrected, doing my best to look stern but failing.
“Oh, that makes it better.” She shook her head and chuckled again. “Sorry.” She waved her hand for me to continue. “Please go on. I’m riveted. Really.”
I smiled too. “I’ve done a couple of jobs for Mervin; that’s my eccentric albeit rich pea-seeking client. He collects objects with certain . . . infamous histories.”
“And this pea is one of them?”
I leaned down, my voice barely above a whisper, “Some say it has the power to control the will of thousands with merely one wish.”
She fingered the pendant on the necklace around her slender neck. “That’s one powerful pea. How close are you to finding it?”
I shifted back in my chair, motioning to the history book. “I’m in what the professionals call the research phase of the investigation.”
“And how long have you been in this phase?”
I shrugged. “I’m narrowing in on its location as we speak.”
The Fairyland Murders Page 6
