Nik and Josh pounced while I sat in awe of the wavering little lights. They slammed glass jars over the new arrivals—Nik capturing one, Josh the other two. With his hand still on the jar, Nik bent over it and peered inside. The light flashed brightly. I could almost read the cursing in the flashing light. Nik smiled, much like he did when I cursed at him.
“Will you stay and answer all my questions if I let you out?” he asked the captured lights. They flickered twice. Josh repeated the question ceremoniously and received the same response. Slowly, they both removed the glass jars. The tiny specks of light shimmered and grew until they were about the size of a rabbit. Suddenly I could see detail within the lights.
They were three little men with translucent wings. Tinkerbell's boyfriends! The first one wore a seashell on his arm like a shield while carrying a rusted pole with a tiny shark’s tooth attached to the tip. His companions carried similar weapons. Their clothing was made of seaweed, with seashell armor over the top. Their skin held a strange bluish tint, fainter than the light around them.
“Thalassa,” Nik said by way of a greeting.
The tiny man gave an epic bow in acknowledgment that nearly brought his forehead to his shins.
“We are looking for a collection of antiques that once belonged to Charles V. He was a human emperor.” Boy, Nik was not one for pleasantries. “It included this breastplate made by Drake.” He held up a picture of the Holy Roman Emperor in his Sunday-best.
“Ha!” squeaked the tiny man. “We was there!”
The other two fae echoed their leader's statement in shrill little voices, raising their tiny weapons with the chant. Thalassa's followers danced around in a little jig, their seashell armor clanking softly over the sound of the nearby boats bobbing in the water. They raised and lowered their weapons in time with their prancing feet while they quivered with excitement and chanted: “We was there!”
“You were where?” Nik demanded, cutting into their display of excitement.
“When the things is taken… when they is taken!”
“When was that?” I asked.
“Don't bother, they don't keep track of time the way we do,” Nik said in an aside. “Who took it?”
“The man!” Thalassa's followers announced.
“A man? A human?”
“No, no! The queen's man!”
I frowned. I was totally lost. Josh didn't look any more knowledgeable.
“Which queen?”
“Orithyia,” said Thalassa, waving his soldiers to be quiet. They did, but continued to prance about in their strange, rhythmic dance. To my surprise, despite their gyrations, their tiny seashell armor ceased to clank. It looked as though someone had clicked mute on the remote.
“Orithyia's man stole from the Louvre Museum?” asked Nik, clearly putting the pieces together. Now that he had spelled it out, it made perfect sense.
“Orithyia?” I asked.
“Queen of the Winter Court,” explained Josh.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” the three tiny fae chanted together, their armor still bouncing silently with each prance.
“Would he still have the stuff?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“Who was the man?” Nikolai asked.
“The man! The man! The man!” They chanted with more stomping, each one taking turns jumping in the air, while maintaining the beat of their dance.
“We're not getting anything more coherent out of them,” Josh said.
“We hardly have enough to go by,” Nik added. The small fae shrunk to the size of fireflies and flitted away. “What do we do next?”
“Why not go try the Internet?” I suggested.
“Why don't you leave the investigating to the adults,” said Nik with a sneer.
Without giving it a second thought, I punched him in the face. Nik was in a squatting position and completely unprepared for my strike. My vamp-powered punch sent him flying off the dock and into the bay. He bobbed to the surface, a glare already in place.
“Here endeth the lesson!” I spat, not even trying a Sean Connery imitation. I sprinted down the dock and up the metal stairs, all the hurt and anger that had been slowly building since Nik first suggested I had been the cause of his people's death reaching its limit. And now, after a few days in his company, he had even more reason to want me dead.
“Go get her,” I heard Nik say from the water. Josh caught up with me at the car.
“Don't mess with me, Josh,” I demanded.
“Just want to make sure you weren't running again.”
“I know better than that.”
“I heard what Nik said to you yesterday… before the attack.”
I grimaced.
“It's not true, you know,” Josh added.
“Don't pander to me… ” I trailed off. There was so much more I wanted to say, but saying it wouldn't change anything. It wouldn't bring those people back; it wouldn't take away everything that had happened this week. I think I would have spilled my guts to Josh, but before I could figure out what to say, Nik appeared, dripping wet.
To say he looked angry would be like saying a nuke goes boom.
“Get in the car,” Nik snapped, his Russian accent peeking through his careful façade and garbling his words. I was beginning to recognize it as a sign. The only time he failed to hide the language of his origin was when he was fuming mad. Nik jerked the driver side door open and squeaked his way onto the leather seat. I silently obeyed, knowing there was no point in being obstinate with a three-hundred-plus-year-old vamp who could wipe the floor with me. I heard Josh take his place in the back seat.
“I think…” began Josh in a pensive voice. “Ashley might be on to something.”
“What?” snapped Nik, slamming his foot down on the accelerator with his question.
“If you were actually in sync with this generation, you'd know the Internet is full of information,” I taunted.
“What can the Internet tell us that we don't already know? The loot was at the Louvre then it got stolen.”
“We won't know until we look,” Josh, the only calm person in the car, pointed out.
Nikolai glared at me for a moment, the car continuing to screech away from the docks.
“Fine.”
We continued at his usual, crazy speed out of town. I eventually realized where he was taking us—his mansion. The memory of what I had done there, and what had happened despite my efforts, came rushing back. Though we had been attacked many times since the initial werewolf invasion, it was the event that had started all our troubles. It was then that my involvement in people's lives started causing them pain, death even. I tried not to imagine what I honestly expected to see—blood and rotting bodies. The worst part of all my imaginings was that I suddenly felt very thirsty. Gore didn't used to give me a craving; usually a commercial for Taco Bell was enough.
Nik parked the car in such a sudden stop that I was thrown against the seat belt. Had I been human, I would have endured whip lash. Before the engine could begin ticking, he was out of the car and opening the front door of his mansion. Josh and I followed a bit more slowly. We found Nik in his enormous living room, drinking straight from a large bottle of brown liquor. To my astonishment, the large room that was most of the main floor had been cleaned. There wasn't a trace of the bloody skirmish. The carpets were clean, the smashed furniture either repaired or replaced, and the window had new glass installed. Evidently the seethe had fast-working repair men on standby.
“Get her started on this fool’s errand. I'm going to change,” he added, setting the bottle on the small table and sweeping out of the room, his wet shoes making a sloshing noise that ruined the effect of his dramatic exit.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Josh and I watched Nik storm out of the room, leaving a trail of wet footprints. I struggled not to laugh. One glance at Josh showed he was having the same problem.
“Fool’s errand, eh?” I asked in an almost nonchalant tone. Josh didn't really buy it.
He let his small grin grow into a large, dimpled smile.
“C'mon.”
Josh led me up to Nik's study. It too had been cleaned from the blood splatter on both door and carpet. Did he have little fairy cleaners? If so, I had to get me some. I went to Nik's enormous desk and flipped open his very thin and fancy-looking laptop. He had very fast Internet. It would have made Bill Gates weep with joy.
I began my search while Josh went downstairs to get us something to eat and drink. To my surprise, he not only brought back blood, but also potato chips. When was the last time I'd eaten human food? That ill-fated date with Isaac? Seafood. At least my last meal had been a good one. I watched Josh as he crumpled a few chips into his tall glass of blood.
“Makes it more salty and chunky,” he explained with a glint in his eyes.
“I think I'll pass,” I said as I grabbed a chip and popped it into my mouth. It was good; the blood was better. Gosh that's annoying, I thought as I scrolled through my search results.
Just when I was beginning to lose hope, I stumbled upon an article about the original break-in. As I neared the end of the article, Nik joined us, dressed in non-sea-smelling clothing. He glowered at me before turning his gaze on Josh. Evidently it was a hint… or a command, because Josh quickly found a reason to leave.
Nik glared at me in silence for a few seconds, his arms twined across his strong chest. A tiny trickle of fear ran down my spine. Was he really that angry that I punched him and caused him to fall into the ocean? I was just about to speak when he prowled around the desk and lifted me by the shoulders. I dangled half a foot from the ground.
A new kind of fear tightened around my stomach. I swallowed while the fear pressed up against my lungs, making it hard to breathe. His lips compressed into a scowl, while his green eyes slowly began to glow with his barely controlled fury. I felt his hands shake as they held me up.
“Don't you ever strike me again,” he stated, pronouncing each word carefully.
“Or what?” I asked stupidly. “I'm not your minion to control. Nor am I your friend.”
I spotted a brief glimmer of pain in his green eyes. A second later it was gone, so quickly I almost doubted I’d seen it. It was easier, more comfortable, to believe he hated me like I hated him.
He set me down.
“You need to learn respect, child.”
“Respect? Did you respect me when you suggested killing me, or when you made your feeling oh so clear? The pipsqueak who got your people killed,” I snapped.
“I didn't mean that.”
“Oh yes you did!”
“You said you sometimes say things before you think. I do that too. My mouth got away from me.”
“That doesn't mean you don't feel that way! Those slips, where you don't think, are when your true thoughts and feelings come out.”
“Fine. You want to know my true feelings? Here they are. I blame Isaac for turning you. I blame Josh for finding you. I blame Mikhail for dumping you on me. And I blame you for being so damn obstinate that you can't let things go. But the fact is I'm stuck with you.
“And as much as I want to dump you in Richard's lap, I know that would be a mistake. I can't just give him what he wants. I can't screw over humanity like that. As much as I might like to, I still know right from wrong. And it would be wrong for me to give into his schemes. So how about this: you start obeying me and I won't have any reason to kill you myself.” He paused. “Now, have you found anything?”
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat and willed myself not to cry. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. “Yes,” I said in the firmest voice I could manage. It was little more than a whisper. I noticed Nik's eyes soften slightly before he turned his gaze the computer, gently nudging me out of the way. He scrolled down to the bottom of the article where a picture of a man caught briefly on a security camera was wedged into the text.
“It can't be,” breathed Nik.
“What?” I asked, the new subject providing a great distraction from my own emotions. I leaned over his shoulder to have a better look at the picture. Though it was in gray scale and very pixilated, I could make out the man's basic features, which included an eye patch—kinda like a pirate. Weird. “A one-eyed thief?”
“He's not missing an eye. The eye patch is named Gyges. It was made by Hephaestus. It makes the wearer invisible to the human eye, but not to modern technology, it would seem.” Nik waved his hand toward the grainy image.
“So who is that?”
“If I'm not mistaken, and I rarely am, that is Periphetes, son of Hephaestus.”
“Who?”
“A fae lord in the Winter Court… though I believe he has been out of Orithyia's good graces for many years, even decades. He's a thief. A damn good one. Periphetes could steal an entire collection from the Louvre and not get caught.” Nik fell silent as he reread the article, pointing out key factors, such as the sudden and unexplainable failure of their advanced security systems. Evidently this was the only picture captured by the cameras before the system went kaput.
“So does this mean the Winter Court has it?”
“I don't think so. Periphetes is a renegade. I've never known him to abide by the rules, especially Orithyia's.”
“But what if this stuff was the ticket to his reconciliation with Orithyia?”
“Then he would have returned to the court by now and I would have heard about it,” said Nik in a tone that suggested I was very dense for not getting it. “Besides, Orithyia is not a very forgiving queen. One of the main reasons she’s stayed in power for so long.”
“What do you mean?”
“The queen’s position is not passed on generationally. In fact, it’s not always a queen. The leader of each fae court is based on whoever takes over. But Orithyia has been the Winter Queen for as long as I’ve been a vampire. Longer in fact.”
Nik scrolled through the article one last time.
“Not a fool’s errand after all,” I said with a wave of my hand toward the computer screen. I tried to drag the words back down my throat. For once, I didn't want to fight with Nik.
“Don't get cocky.”
“Ha! Says the king of cocky.”
“Let's go get Josh and move on.”
“Wait… move on? What's your plan?”
“Steal it from Periphetes, of course.”
“You want to piss off a lord of the Winter Court when they're already trying to take me?”
“I am honor-bound to get these things for Emma, not to mention Mikhail’s expectations. Once I get her off our backs, we can take care of your issue… ssss,” he hissed, adding the plural at the last second. “This would all be easier if Mikhail would just let me leave you at the seethe. Besides, I doubt Periphetes would tell his queen that we stole from him; he'd be too ashamed of a mere vamp getting the best of him.”
“I don't think this is a good idea.”
“I didn’t asked you.”
“You never do!”
“And for good reason.”
I felt another fight coming on, despite my efforts. I still had a knot in my stomach from our last argument. He looked up at me. With him sitting at his desk, I was barely taller than him.
“For good reason?” I asked. “Wasn't the whole Internet idea a pretty good one? And yet you still consider me nothing but baggage.”
“Now you're putting words in my mouth.”
“And yet they ring so true.”
“You have got to be… the… most…”
“Most what? Beautiful and intelligent woman you've ever met? Yes, I agree!” I stated, trying to keep the discussion from turning into anything too nasty.
“Let's not get ahead of ourselves!”
“Well, you accused me of putting words in your mouth; seemed like a good idea.”
“I was thinking more like the most annoying, pig-headed child I've ever met!”
“Pig headed… me? Look who's talking.”
Before he could respond, a soft cough rever
berated from the door way. We both tore our eyes away from each other and glared at Josh.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nik and I stared at Josh with equal annoyance written on our features. We had just be in the middle of… something before Josh intruded.
“If I'm not interrupting anything too important… ”
“No, nothing important,” sighed Nik, taking a step away. I suddenly realized we had been standing too close for comfort. I backed away too.
“You know it's not polite to eavesdrop.” I smirked at Josh.
Josh rolled his eyes. “Then try not having your 'cough' arguments within the same state as anyone.”
“What do you mean by 'cough' argument?” I asked, feeling the need to be affronted.
“Nothing, he doesn't mean a thing,” said Nik. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Nik give Josh a look that was clearly intended to convey a message. What was going on? And they say women are confusing. “Let's get going,” Nik added.
“Wait! Am I the only one who thinks this is an insane idea?”
“No,” said Josh. “I'm not thrilled with attacking a fae lord myself.”
“Look, compared to the Louvre, his house will be easy to steal from. His magic keeps him from being able to use any form of electronic security systems. We just have to… you know… be quiet. Besides, we have Josh.”
“Josh… really? He's your secret weapon.”
“Oh, shut up!” Nik snapped.
Half an hour later we were in one of his cars and heading toward Seattle. Evidently Periphetes lived in a historic house in the posh Queen Anne District of the Rainy City. I sat in the back, flipping through our notes from the library, trying to memorize what it was we needed to take. I didn't want to get caught simply because we had trouble recognizing the loot. We were looking for a breastplate, a dagger, a few silver bracelets, a book, a helmet, and a codpiece.
By the time we started winding our way up the hill near the fae's home, I was growing nervous about the time. At five in the morning, the night sky was still pitch black, but I didn't know how long that would last or how dense the clouds would be when the sun did rise. I voiced my concerns to Nik, who scoffed at them.
The Series that Just Plain Sucks: The Complete Trilogy Page 14
