“Mom? Dad?” I asked.
“Almost.” Iris pivoted and darted behind the donation box.
“Almost?” I followed much more slowly. How could it almost be our parents? Maybe I read her lips wrong.
I spotted Iris behind the red donation box. She stood on the rough lip of the shelf and beside her were the last fairies I expected.
“D!” I exclaimed, zipping down too fast and knocking over the Home Depot fairies like dominos. I snatched D up and hugged him like I’d never hugged anyone in my life. My tears ran down his soft brown hair and soaked into his overalls. He looked up at me with the blank, slightly confounded expression the Home Depot fairies always had.
“Where have you been?” I asked, wiping the tears from my cheeks. “Where’s Mom and Dad?”
“We’re from the Home Depot,” said D.
I laughed so hard I got light-headed. “I know. I meant why haven’t you come to Vienna before?” I looked around the shelf. There was no one but Gerald with us and Gerald was oddly quiet. “Where’s everyone else? Why’d you take so long? Didn’t Tess tell you where we went?”
“Prison.”
I gasped. “Tess is in prison?”
“No.”
Iris stepped in front of me. “Never mind that. It’ll take forever to get it out of them again. Mom and Dad are in prison with Lucrece and Roberto.”
I turned to D. “Are they okay?”
“They’re in prison.”
It was a stupid question, I guess.
“Are Lrag, Daiki, and Bentha in prison, too?” I asked.
Iris’s lip twitched and she erupted into wails. I couldn’t understand a word she said. I grabbed her by the shoulders as her legs buckled and sat her against the donation box. I watched her for a moment, trying to gather my thoughts but they absolutely refused to gather. Finally, I turned to Gerald, who stood still and silent beyond the Home Depot fairies. Not like him at all.
“They’re dead. How’d it happen?” I surprised myself by not bursting into tears, too. Honestly, I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t know it before that moment, but I had expected everyone to be killed. It was Paris after all and we’d been in Vienna waiting for months.
D and J trotted off to a pair of long toolboxes. They undid the clasps of the biggest one and Gerald started looking around fearfully. When he was satisfied, he said, “It’s okay. No one’s around.”
D flipped open the lid and gazed at me, just as blank as ever. I walked over, slowly, heel toe heel toe, feeling the gritty dust shift beneath my feet. I took a deep breath and peeked over the lip of the toolbox. Instead of tools, I found a body. Bentha. He was folded up and looked like a dried-out corn husk.
I dropped down beside him and gripped the side of the box. “Oh, Bentha.” My throat would barely release the words, but I still didn’t cry. Where were my tears? Had I used them all up?
“When did it happen?” I asked D.
He stared at me, impassively blinking.
“Gerald, did you get it out of them?”
“Not exactly, but they told me the trains they took and the time they were on them, so I think about a week ago.”
“A week?” I looked at the Home Depot fairies. “You’ve been toting around a dead body for a week? Why?”
“Lrag said to,” said J.
I looked back at Bentha’s desiccated body. Lrag told them to take Bentha’s body out of France? How weird was that? “Wait. How did you escape?”
“We’re from the Home Depot,” said D.
“We fix things,” said J
Gerald stepped up. “I think they were in the prison with Mom and Dad, but they weren’t imprisoned.”
“Oh,” I said. “They were fixing things at the prison. That’s what they do.”
“Right. D said there was a fight at the prison and Lrag told them to take Bentha to you. Nobody paid any attention to what they were doing because…well…you know.”
We looked at the Home Depot fairies and found them assessing the cathedral with their fix-it-guy eyes.
“This place is broken,” said D.
“We will fix it,” said J.
I shook my head. “You’ll have to get permission.”
“We fix things.”
“I know, but this is a cathedral, not a dishwasher. You have to ask.”
The Home Depot fairies huddled up, presumably to discuss their first project and Gerald knelt beside me. Iris was still crying into her hands. I kept thinking of the Paris massacre the fairies at Heinrich’s place had been talking about.
“So Lrag was alive and told them to take Bentha to me. What about everyone else? Were they still alive?”
Gerald shrugged. “I think so. They keep saying that they’re in prison.”
I leaned on the toolbox and shook my head. “Why would Lrag do it? I know that the Home Depot fairies are weird and nobody pays much attention to them, but there had to be risk. What if they’d been caught?”
Gerald put out his hand towards the body and sharply drew it back. “Do you think there’s something about the body that’s important? Maybe some kind of clue hidden under it or…inside?” He shuddered.
“What kind of clue?”
“I don’t know. But Lrag wanted you to have Bentha’s body. There has to be a reason.”
That was right. Lrag didn’t just want the body out of the prison for burial or whatever ponderosas do. He wanted me to have it. Me specifically. There was only one reason he’d do that. Bentha was less dead than he appeared.
I sucked in a breath, reached in, and moved Bentha’s arm. Gerald gasped and jumped back and Iris raised her head. “What are you doing?”
“I’ll let you know in a minute.” I eased Bentha’s arm off his chest. I half expected it to snap off, it was so dry and brittle, but it didn’t. I got it to the side and put my hand on his heart. No. That wasn’t right. Ponderosa had three hearts. What did Bentha say? Ponderosa could appear dead after a grave injury. I pressed my hand down and felt nothing. Then I moved to the lower right hand heart. Nothing again. Last heart. Last chance. But the left hand heart was the same.
My hopes were still up. I couldn’t help myself. Lrag wouldn’t risk the Home Depot fairies’ lives if Bentha was totally dead. Of course maybe he hadn’t been at the time and he’d died en route to Vienna. A week was a long time to be mostly dead.
“Iris, I need you to do something,” I said.
She looked at me fearfully. “What?”
“I want you to listen to Bentha’s hearts.”
“I can’t touch him. He’s dead and all grody.”
I pointed at her. “This is Bentha we’re talking about. Even if he was dead, he’d never be grody.”
“What do you mean if?” asked Gerald. “He looks pretty dead to me.”
“Bentha told me in Paris that ponderosa can appear dead after terrible wounds.”
“Well,” said Gerald, “if he’s faking, he’s really good at it.”
“Bentha’s good at everything,” I said. “Come on, Iris. Take a listen. It’s for Bentha. He risked his life to get us out of Paris. We owe him.”
Iris sucked in her lips and crept over. The Home Depot fairies followed.
“You’ll fix him?” asked D.
“Am I supposed to?” I asked.
“We can’t. We’re from the Home Depot.”
I reached out and brushed a damp curl off my sister’s cheek. “Did you hear that? They brought him because he’s alive. I just want you to confirm it and tell me which heart is working.”
“Okay,” she said, weakly as she bent over and stuck her head into the toolbox. She grimaced as moved her head around listening intently. Then all of the sudden her eyes popped open. “I hear it. Super faint but the right heart is beating.”
“What’s the beats per minute?” I asked. Bentha’s heart was supposed to beat super fast like a hummingbird’s.
“Really slow. I almost didn’t catch it. Maybe twice a minute.”
“Twice a minute? No wonder
Lrag had to get him out of there. They would’ve buried him alive with a heartbeat like that.”
“You can’t blame them,” said Gerald. “He couldn’t look more dead.”
“Except that he’s not, you know, rotting.”
Iris wrinkled her nose. “Don’t say rotting.”
“Sorry.” My hand went to my chest to the amulet Daiki had given me with the Horen antidote from the antique mall. It was empty. Gerald had used it all on me after I’d taken Percy’s wounds into myself after the battle in the apartment and the remaining horen venom in my ankle had been reactivated. If I had some and a horen did this to Bentha…no, it didn’t help to ponder what I didn’t know or have.
“We have to get him back to our rooms quickly. I assume no one’s seen them yet?” I asked Iris and Gerald.
“I don’t think so,” said Gerald with a smug look. “I was first to see them next to the altar.”
“No, you weren’t,” said Iris.
“Yes, I was. You were too busy jabbering about the cardinal’s boring meetings.”
“They weren’t boring. They were fascinating.”
“Yeah, right. You just think you’re special because you got to go. Obviously, the cardinal isn’t aware of my superior intelligence.”
“Quiet,” said Iris. “It’s Rickard. He’s asking about Matilda and he’s coming this way. We have to get out of here.”
But it was too late.
Chapter Fourteen
RICKARD FLEW AROUND the side of the donation box so fast he was a blur. I spun around and pushed Bentha’s toolbox back until it bumped into the donation box.
Please don’t notice it. Please don’t notice it.
My heart was pounding as Rickard jolted to a stop in front of me and pointed a finger shaking with indignation. “You!”
“Me,” I said.
“You have disobeyed for the last time.”
“Haven’t you got anything else better to do than to follow me around, looking for supposed crimes?”
Rickard crossed his arms and tilted his head back, so I got an unfortunate view of his crop of nose hairs. “I don’t follow you. I don’t have to. Everyone saw them with your sister.” He pointed at the Home Depot fairies, who paid no attention to him as they were drawing a complicated plan on a pad of paper.
“So what?” I asked as a blush crept up my neck. So much for hiding.
“So the cardinal only authorized the dragons and your family.”
“He also said she could have her gargoyle,” said Gerald.
He sneered. “And that thing. So how many—”
“And the fire lizard.”
Rickard growled. “I know. The point is—”
“I wish you’d get to that,” I said.
“If you’d let me finish.”
I’d rather not, you pretentious pain in my wings.
“Hurry up,” said Gerald. “Mattie has to go speak to the master secretary.”
“I’m trying to—” stuttered Rickard.
“You should really think it through before you speak,” said Iris. “That always helps me.”
Rickard flew up to my sister and poked her in the shoulder. “I don’t need advice from the likes of you.”
Gerald stepped between them and knocked Rickard’s hand away. He was shaking like he did when he saw blood, but he got right in Rickard’s face. “Don’t do that.”
“You should respect your betters, boy.”
“When I see one, I will.”
“I will be reporting this insubordination to the master secretary immediately,” said Rickard.
I pulled Gerald away and pushed them both back in front of Bentha’s toolbox. “Let’s go now. I need to speak to him anyway.”
“You…you want to go see him?”
“Certainly. I need to tell him about the Home Depot fairies,” I said.
“The what?”
I turned to D and the others. “Them.”
“What exact species are they?”
“You mean you’ve never seen their species before?” I asked with an expression of feigned surprised. “I can hardly believe it.”
Rickard gritted his teeth. “What are they?”
D turned and said, “We’re from the Home Depot.”
“What does that mean?”
I rolled my eyes. “Hello. It means they’re from the Home Depot.”
Rickard straightened up his jacket. “Oh yes, of course. Um…are they coming?”
“No. They’re already planning. Let’s leave them to it.”
“Planning what?”
“The repairs, naturally,” I said.
A smile tickled the edges of Gerald’s mouth, but he managed to keep a straight face. “Iris and I can take the toolboxes back to the tomb and get them settled in.”
“Is the master secretary expecting them?” asked Rickard.
“He’s been waiting to have the repairs made to the kitchen equipment. It takes twenty minutes to get a cup of tea for His Grace and the stained glass has all kinds of weak spots, not to mention the squeaking doors and rickety chairs. I’d say he’s been waiting long enough.” The words rushed out so fast, I was only half aware of what I was saying and I wasn’t entirely sure it made any sense at all.
“All right then. Flutter to it.”
I flew off the shelf and pivoted in the air to see Rickard eyeing the toolboxes, especially Bentha’s.
“What’s in there?” he asked.
“Everything to fix anything,” I said.
“Do you think they can fix the heating?” He shivered. “Fifty degrees is rather chilly.”
“If it’s broken, they can fix it. Are you coming?”
He straightened his shoulders and flew past me. He probably said something snotty, but I didn’t care as long as he left. I waved to Iris and Gerald and pointed to the toolboxes. “In my room.”
They nodded but looked doubtfully at the heavy boxes. Neither Gerald nor Iris were particularly strong, but they’d just have to manage.
I shrugged and flew after Rickard straight to the master secretary’s office inside the pulpit on the floor above the cardinal’s apartment. He knocked on the door and then walked in in front of me. I’d never been in his office before and it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. The room had all the luxury that the cardinal’s apartment lacked. There was gleaning walnut woodwork and silk tapestries on the walls. We walked over a Persian carpet so thick I was bouncing.
The master secretary took one look at us and put his head in his hands. “What now? Has she been hired by the Pope?”
“Sir?” asked Rickard.
“Never mind. I assume this interruption has merit.”
I started to speak. I had no idea what I was going to say, but I’d learned that saying anything fast seems to help, so that was my plan. Lucky for me, Rickard had a much better one. He held up his hand to cut me off and said, “I, sir, have found the solution to the cathedral’s difficulties.”
Huh?
“Have you?” asked the master secretary. He couldn’t have been more doubtful.
“Indeed, sir. A cadre of Home Depot fairies has arrived and they are willing to make all the repairs we need.”
The master secretary frowned. “Home what fairies?”
“A special species of…” Rickard looked at me with a hint of panic.
“Fixers,” I said.
“I assume they have all the necessary testimonials,” said master secretary.
“Yes, sir. They were repairing in Paris when the tensions got too high.”
He rubbed his eyes and I realized how tired he looked, if he wasn’t so bent on getting rid of me, I would’ve fixed him up some tea. “What’s their price?”
We’d never paid the Home Depot fairies. They did everything for free. I wasn’t even sure they were aware of the existence of money, but I didn’t think the master secretary would understand their love of fixing, so I said, “Fifty euros a week, plus food and lodging.”
He
waved his hand and bent back over his parchment. “Yes, yes. Fine. Get them working on the kitchens first. I would like hot tea sometime in this lifetime.”
I bobbed a curtsy. It still felt completely unnatural. “I’ll tell them right now.”
As I turned, Rickard started going on about how he found the Home Depot fairies and how it was a good thing he kept a sharp eye out. I contained a snort and rushed out the door. Let Rickard brag as long as they got to stay. Our family was reforming and I didn’t care who took credit.
D and his crew walked into the kitchen like they owned the place, which was pretty much how they acted everywhere. Aoife got all into a tizzy when they swarmed over her favorite malfunctioning stove. She put off so much of her green glittery powder, it hung in the kitchen like fog. The rest of the kitchen staff put their arms over their noses and edged toward the door as Aoife exploded, “Who let these creatures in here? Messing up my kitchen and touching things with their grubby hands. Stop that! That stove is lit! Don’t touch that! It’s hot!”
I coughed into my elbow and tapped her on the wing, which came out and smacked me in the head. I stumbled backwards into Lonica, who’d followed us in. She caught me easily and pulled me toward the door.
“We have to go. We’ll choke,” she said.
“I can’t.” My throat was getting raw, but I couldn’t leave the Home Depot fairies. Aoife was opening her knife drawer. “Aoife!”
She brandished her favorite carving knife. D glanced at her and reached behind the stove and there was a big pouf. A black cloud of soot filled the room. I’m sure, if I could’ve seen her, that Aoife was shrieking or possibly stabbing someone. I ran into a wall and felt along it, holding my breath until I found a window and flung it open. I turned and used my wings to fan the cloud out and in a few seconds the room began to clear. Thank goodness for big wings. Aoife’s were so tiny they would’ve taken two days at least. When I could see, my first sight was Aoife standing in the center of the kitchen, knife poised to strike and completely black with soot. In front of her were the Home Depot fairies and they had used those seconds to take apart the stove. It lay apart on the floor in pieces. The still burning coals in the center, heating up the stone floor.
I edged around Aoife’s left side, away from the knife, to see her stunned face.
Wicked Chill (Away From Whipplethorn Book Four) Page 13
