by Jessica Grey
“I do not know what you mean by ‘genetically,’ but I am demi-fae.” At their blank expressions she elaborated, as if talking to small children. “Demi-fae, in other words I have one full fae parent.”
“You are a FAIRY?” Becca squeaked. “As in a magical woodland creature that flits about and sprinkles pixie dust? Oh my god, can you fly?”
“No, I cannot fly, what a silly question. I also have never heard of pixie dust. And as I said, I am not full fae, only half. I, of course, do not practice magic as a vocation, but I know enough to weave a disarming or sleeping spell.”
“You didn’t think this would have been a good thing to mention to us before?” Alex pushed her glasses up and pinched the bridge of her nose. The world really had gone mad. She wasn’t even arguing with this half-fairy, out of time princess about the existence of magic or what she had heretofore assumed were mythical creatures, but instead on the appropriate timing for such revelations.
“I told you I was sensitive to nature magic,” Lilia said defensively.
“I don’t think either of us understood that meant you actually were magic,” Alex sighed. “I think from now on maybe you should explain things to us even if you think we should understand. Don’t be afraid of over-explaining.”
Becca nodded her head vigorously in agreement. “It’s just kind of shocking to us, we’ve never seen actual magic done before, so you know, warnings or something would be good.”
“Not just warnings, I think we need to discuss in what circumstances you should even be using magic—” Alex broke off as the sound of the employee door opening and closing echoed down the hallway. “Oh crap!” she whispered fervently. “What are we going to do?”
“I suggest we hide him somewhere.” Lilia was still operating with a level of calm that defied logic, as if she was discussing what to have for breakfast instead of stashing a comatose man somewhere. It made Alex wonder how many guys she’d leveled before.
“We could put him in with Luke,” Becca suggested quietly. “Like maybe on the floor behind one of the other crates?”
“Let’s stick him in B-24, the storage room that’s attached to Luke’s room. I don’t want Nicholas waking up and being in there with Luke.”
“How are we going to move him?” Becca whispered a little more frantically. Alex was beginning to feel the time pressure as well; they hadn’t heard any footsteps headed in their direction yet, but that could change at any minute.
“I guess we just grab his arms and pull? Lilia, why don’t you hold the door open for us?” Alex stepped over Nicholas’s prostrate form and stood by his head. “Geez, he looks heavy.”
He was heavy. Both she and Becca were sweating profusely by the time they’d dragged him through the first door and into the storage room with Luke. Nicholas was over six feet tall. She and Becca put together probably only outweighed him by twenty pounds or so. On top of which, he was completely dead weight. They’d made the journey into the first storage room inch by painstaking inch, trying to be as quiet as they could. It was with a vast amount of relief that they realized they had Nicholas far enough into the room to be able to close the door.
“They make this look so much easier on CSI,” Becca panted. “How does anyone get rid of a body?”
“I think the trick is to kill someone who weighs significantly less than you,” Alex replied, wiping her forehead with the sleeve of her hoodie. She and Becca met each other’s eye over Nicholas’s inert form and they both collapsed into helpless giggles.
Lilia looked at them as if they’d gone mad, which caused them to laugh even more hysterically.
“Oh my lord,” Becca managed frantically wiping at her eyes. “We are dragging Nicholas Hunt around the museum.”
This seemed as inordinately funny to Alex as it did to Becca. She couldn’t even reply. The giggles were so violent now that they were causing her stomach muscles to spasm. “I can’t. I can’t,” she gasped helplessly.
Nicholas emitted a soft snore, sending the two girls even farther over the edge. Alex doubled up and leaned against the wall for support.
“I’m going to wet my pants!” Becca gasped out. “Oh my gosh!” She did a funny little jig and Alex sputtered in hilarity.
“Are you both quite finished?” Lilia asked sounding both bored and annoyed. “I fail to see what is so funny.”
“It’s not so much that it’s funny.” Alex tried to calm her nervous laughter. “More like absolutely bizarre.”
“Are we leaving him then with your friend, or moving him farther?”
That sobered Alex up.
“Well, he is hard to move,” she admitted wiping a few stray tears from the corners of her eyes. “How long is this sleeping/disarmament thing supposed to last? I don’t want him walking up when we aren’t here and causing any havoc.”
For the first time Lilia looked slightly unsure of herself. “I am not entirely sure. I have not worked a disarmament spell on a live person before, only practiced; and I wove the sleeping part in at the last minute.” She looked thoughtful. “My best guess is anywhere from twenty-four hours to five days.”
“Your best guess?” asked Alex incredulously.
“Magic is an art,” Lilia replied a bit huffily. “It is not precise. A spell depends on so many things—what is woven into it, the person weaving and the person on the receiving end, as well as what the elements are making available to you when are working it. Even the strongest of the fae have to work with what the magic gives them.”
Becca tried to soothe her. “It’s not that we are questioning your abilities. We’re just concerned about not knowing what to do with Nicholas and what we need to plan for. That is kind of a big range.”
“The five days would sure give us a heck of a lot more time to work on figuring out how to wake up Luke,” said Alex. “But honestly, if Nicholas goes missing for five days there is going to be some serious crap going down here.”
“I can’t think that Luke could just disappear for that length of time either without questions being asked,” Becca pointed out.
“No kidding. If he’s not home by tonight I’m sure his mom will have the police out looking, if she hasn’t already. We don’t even know if she’s noticed yet that he didn’t come home last night.” Alex glared at Nicholas’s outstretched form. She figured it was probably unfair to blame him for the whole situation, but right now it felt good to be able to assign responsibility to someone. The thought of locking him up for five days or so sounded quite appealing.
“Okay, here’s my plan,” Alex said, futilely trying to lift her straight hair from the back of her neck where it was beginning to get plastered down by sweat. “I vote we stick him in B-24 and lock the door.”
“B-24 has a lock?” Becca asked, surprised. “I thought the adjoining storage rooms didn’t, only the ones with hall doors.” She stepped over Nicholas, skirted around the bed and examined the door. “Oh it does! How handy for our nefarious purposes!”
“Yeah, B-24 and 28 both do.”
“Alex, have you considered the possibility that you spend way too much time around here?”
Alex snorted. “I have considered that, yes.”
“I hate to be the one to point this out, but this is at least another twelve feet, just to get him right inside the door here. It nearly killed us to get him half that distance. Unless,” here Becca looked hopefully at Lilia, “you have some sort of transporting spell or maybe you could levitate him and we could sort of just push him as he floats?”
Lilia shook her head. “I can levitate some things, but nothing of his size.”
“Bummer.”
“I don’t think we should just be using magic willy-nilly,” Alex said. “We don’t really have any idea of the side effects of any of this.”
“You make a good point, but just thinking about moving him makes me tired.” Becca assessed Nicholas’s position on the floor. “What if we rolled him?” she offered. “That strikes me as a heck of a lot easier than dragging,
and at this point I don’t really care if it hurts him or not. If it’s a few bruises for him or throwing out my back, I’m all for the bruises for him.”
The rolling was indeed a lot easier on both girls, although it did make it a little awkward getting Nicholas through the doorway. In the end, they bent his legs up under him, rolled him onto his knees with his face pushed down into the floor and pushed him through the doorway with a satisfying thud.
“Maybe we should get some stuff from the vending machine and stick it in here with him in case he wakes up before we get back,” Becca suggested.
“That’s a great idea. Do you have any change? I’ve only got like two bucks cash on me.”
Becca fished in her jeans pocket and came up with a couple of bills. “Yeah, looks like four bucks or so. Give me your two and I’ll run down to the vending machine.” She paused by the door. “If anyone asks me, I should probably say I haven’t seen Nicholas since yesterday. Should that be our story?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah, and same goes for Luke. We haven’t seen either since we left here yesterday.”
“Back in a flash.” Becca stuck her head out of the doorway, looked both ways down the hall, and then slipped out.
Alex puffed out a breath as the door closed gently behind Becca. Moving Nicholas had taken it out of her and she suddenly felt exhausted. She crossed over to the bed and gingerly sat down on the edge about even with Luke’s waist. She was careful not to touch any part of the metal or the gemstones. She had no desire to repeat her strange out of body experience. She had successfully sat next to Luke earlier that morning though, so she figured the magic must be confined to the actual frame of the bed.
Lilia was still standing near the door leading out to the hallway.
“Do you want to sit too?” Alex asked.
“I do not want to be anywhere near that bed. I think nearly nine hundred years on it is plenty.”
“You have a point there.” Alex studied the rise and fall of Luke’s chest for a few moments before asking, “When you were asleep, did you know? Were you aware at all? Of the passage of time or anything?”
Lilia’s smooth forehead wrinkled in thought. “I was aware I was asleep, you know how often in dreams that you know you are dreaming? It was like that I suppose. I knew I was asleep and why, of course. I have grown up with the curse hanging over me, so it was somewhat expected, even though my parents had done everything they could to prevent it. I knew it was taking a long time for me to be awoken, but I had no idea it was as long as it was.”
Alex nodded. “But there wasn’t any pain or fear or anything?” She idly brushed a strand of hair off Luke’s forehead.
“No. None of those things.” Lilia looked closely at Alex. “He is more than your friend, yes?”
“What?” Alex stared up at her.
“This Luke. He is more than just your friend. For Becca he is not. He is just a friend, and barely that, I can tell. But for you, he is more than that. You love him?”
Alex snatched her hand off Luke’s forehead as if it had been scalded. “No, not at all,” she denied, hot color infusing her face, “we’re hardly even friends.”
“That is not how you act towards him. You are very protective of him.”
“We’ve known each other a long time, from when we were kids,” Alex explained getting quickly up from the bed, although she tried to make it look like it wasn’t too quickly. “But that’s it. Just old friends. Before—when we were young that is. Not now.”
Lilia looked skeptical.
Alex had a sudden, horrifying thought.
“When you were asleep, could you hear what was going on around you?”
Lilia laughed her bright, tinkling laugh. “You are quite funny sometimes Alex, and very transparent.” Alex clenched her jaw at this. She could actually hear her teeth grinding together. “But the truth is, I am not sure,” continued Lilia. “I might have heard some things, but it is all very hazy and distant in my mind. It is not quite like going to sleep at night and waking up the next morning, but not all that different either.”
The door swung open, and both girls jumped in response.
“Just me,” Becca said apologetically when she saw their expressions. “I got some good stuff.” She indicated the bottles of water, several bags of chips and candy bars she was juggling. “This should hold him for a little bit if he wakes up too soon.”
Alex followed Becca into the other storage room and watched as she deposited her cache of vending machine survival supplies near Nicholas’s head.
“So I guess we just lock him in?” Alex asked. “And then I guess we’ll have to come up with a concrete plan.”
“Yeah, that might be the difficult part,” Becca said grimly as Lilia walked into the room behind them.
“We should take his credit card,” Lilia said.
Alex was pretty sure her jaw hit the floor. There may have even been an audible clunk. “Wh-what?” she sputtered.
“You said earlier that Nicholas had money, and a credit card, to use to buy things. I want new clothes.”
“You know, it’s not a horrible idea,” Becca piped up.
“We can’t just pick his pocket and take his credit cards!” protested Alex.
“Why not? He pretty much has gotten us into this mess. I don’t think either you or I have a ton of extra funds. I think Nicholas should be financing Lilia’s new wardrobe while we try to figure this out.”
“No, I don’t have much money. I mean, I have some in a savings account for school, but it’s not much and I have to go into the bank to actually access it. My checking account is kind of pathetic. But using Nicholas’s card would be stealing.” Alex bit her lip uncertainly.
Becca crossed her arms and glared at Nicholas’s sleeping form. “I repeat, this is all his fault. Plus, we are locking him, unconscious, in a storage room. We are already in for a penny; might as well go for the whole pound.”
“I don’t think I can just take someone’s credit card. Maybe he’s got cash on him?”
“How’s taking his cash less stealing than taking his credit card? I’m making the executive decision here. If he needs to get paid back we’ll figure out how to do it. Later. Right now we’ve got a girl wandering around in an eight-hundred-and-fifty-year-old dress. Making her less conspicuous is a lot higher on my priority list than worrying about Nicholas’s finances.”
Alex debated with herself for about thirty seconds before realizing Becca was right. She didn’t have a lot of money at her disposal. Lilia was definitely going to need to be clothed, fed, and lodged. It wasn’t fair for Becca, who had been dragged into this debacle just because she was nice and had some knowledge of the main players, to have to front any money.
“Okay,” she agreed. “We will take his credit cards, and whatever cash he has on hand, but we will try to be as responsible as possible with it.”
“Relax, Alex. It’s not like we are planning on going on some insane shopping spree.”
The three girls stood looking at each other for a moment.
“Oh crap. Fine then, I’ll do it,” Alex muttered with a huff.
The wallet was in Nicholas’s back pocket. Alex tried not to think about the fact that she was basically feeling up the man she’d had a crush on for the better part of three years. She was just grateful it hadn’t been in his front pocket.
“Okay, it looks like he’s got about $40 in cash, an American Express, and a bank card—although probably if we run it through as a credit card we will be fine. We just have to go somewhere they won’t ask to see i.d.”
“My sister works at a boutique, they all know me there. Anyway, nobody asks anymore, it’s really kind of scary, what with all the credit card fraud—” Becca broke off at the look on Alex’s face. “This isn’t really fraud though. We are just borrowing it! If he hadn’t been such an ass we wouldn’t have to stoop to these measures!”
Alex tried desperately to keep from hyperventilating. She fought against visions of being convict
ed of credit card theft and spending her freshman year of college in the slammer.
“If all of this ever comes out, the last thing on anyone’s mind is going to be us using Nicholas’s cards, right? I mean, the magic, and the sleeping princess, and the fairy stuff, that sort of trumps a little bit of credit card theft,” she reasoned a bit frantically.
Becca nodded in agreement.
“All right, ladies.” Alex took a fortifying breath and snagged Nicholas’s keycard out of his wallet, stuffing it, the credit and ATM cards, and cash into her jeans pocket before sliding the wallet back into his pocket. “Let’s lock him in and get a move on.”
They also locked the door to the storage room containing Luke and the bed. Not that it would stop anyone who wanted to go in; anyone who worked at the museum could easily use their keycard to unlock it.
“Lilia,” Becca whispered as an afterthought as they stood uneasily in the hallway after locking the door. “Is there any way to, I don’t know, protect this room, or make it so no one can unlock the door, you know, magically.”
Alex bit back a protest. She was highly uncomfortable with Lilia’s use of magic, and she wasn’t sure how much more of it she wanted injected into the situation. On the other hand, she really didn’t want anyone discovering Luke either. And right now, his safety trumped her comfort levels.
“I can weave a protection spell. I’ve only ever done small ones though, just to protect people from injuries. However, I am good at distraction spells; I often used them to get out of my studies. If I weave that kind of spell for the door, then whoever thinks of going in it would be distracted by something else.”
“That sounds good, definitely do the distraction one,” Becca nodded encouragingly.
“Maybe do the protection one too,” Alex added.
Lilia laid her hand on the door, her eyes once again taking on the otherworldly unfocused look Alex had noticed before. This time though, her words had an even more musical quality, as if she were reciting a rhyme and slipping halfway into a disjointed song.
The door shimmered around Lilia’s hand, almost as if the molecules of the door were shifting and rearranging themselves. Then a soft haze obscured the door for a few seconds before fading.
