Jocelynn Drake - [Asylum Tales 02]

by Dead Mans Deal

  I dropped my hand from Trixie’s stomach and allowed her to enter first. The guard moved back to the entrance behind me as I stepped before the queen. Seated on a bench with white and pale yellow cushions, she appeared to be quite young, with soft blond hair piled high on her head with jeweled clips. She had the same green eyes as Trixie, but the queen’s were cold as they looked us over, while Trixie’s seemed to twinkle with laughter. Her wispy dress was an ice blue, lending her a cold air. Was she as cold as she seemed? Had she been like this before her husband had started chasing after Trixie? It would explain a few things.

  Trixie deeply curtsied before the queen while I dipped into an awkward bow that caused her to give a little giggle as she picked up a delicate cup and saucer from a little table near her knee. “How refreshing! A warlock paying me court,” she said before taking a sip of her tea. “I’d almost be willing to brush this all aside to have you wait on me every day for the rest of your life.”

  I clamped my mouth shut, tapping down a dozen different comments, ranging from informative to snide. None of them would help and Trixie didn’t need more problems heaped onto her.

  The queen took another sip of tea before placing the cup and saucer on the table again. She turned her gaze on Trixie, her eyes narrowing as she examined her from head to toe. Trixie had chosen to wear an ankle-length floral skirt and long-sleeved blouse that made her look extremely delicate and feminine. It was the most conservative outfit I had ever seen her in and she looked beautiful. Unfortunately, I didn’t know if that would help or hurt her.

  “You’ve gotten lovelier,” the queen announced, folding her hands in her lap. “I think I shall take some pleasure in seeing my dear husband’s face when I tell him that I not only saw you but that you’ve gotten even more beautiful since you were last with the court.”

  “Please, Your Majesty,” Trixie said, tightly grasping her hands before her. “You must believe me. I don’t want him.”

  “Oh, I believe you,” she said with a cold little smile. “It’s the only reason I haven’t sent my own guards to kill you. Allowing you to live out of my husband’s grasp is a far more exquisite torture for him than him believing you dead.”

  “Don’t you think enough lives have been disrupted and destroyed by this little game?” I demanded before I could stop myself.

  The queen looked up at me, her smile growing even frostier. “I bow to your wisdom on that point. Only a warlock would know what is enough when it comes to destroying lives.”

  I inwardly cursed myself, the Towers, and the elves. I should have kept my mouth shut, but it had become apparent that I was going to have to answer for the crimes the Towers had committed on the elves.

  As the queen turned her attention back to Trixie, her smile dimmed. “You realize I did not have to agree to this meeting. I could have killed your brother when he requested it. When you arrived, I could have had you killed, and that would have ended my headache after too many long years. I still might.”

  “Ah . . . but you have agreed to the meeting,” said a man as he leisurely strolled past the guards and into the gazebo. “And at such a horribly early time of day.” I twisted to watch him walk behind Trixie and me before stopping next to the queen’s little bench. His dark blue eyes drifted over me for only a second before settling on Trixie. He gave a small, distracted smile. “Hello, Ro.”

  “Hello, Lori,” Trixie said with a soft catch in her voice. Tears shimmered in her eyes and it looked like she was struggling to stay standing still when she badly wanted to launch herself at the newcomer.

  I took another look at him. He didn’t look like an elf. While their paleness seemed healthy and glowing, his was powdery. His pale blond hair was fine, almost like feathers on the top of his head. He was also soft and round, where the elves were all slim and elegant. But there was a grace to him, as if he were trapped in perpetual slow motion. He wasn’t an elf, but I was willing to bet that he was fey.

  Despite the growing heat of the day, he wore brown slacks and a pale yellow shirt under a heavy green corduroy jacket, while a blue-and-black scarf was wrapped loosely around his neck. He was reminded of pictures of bohemian artists lounging along the Seine in Paris or even the descriptions of the old Romantics who were troubled with the same soul-weary ennui as Byron.

  “It’s good that you could join us,” the queen said a bit frostily.

  Lori shrugged, unperturbed by her mood. “When I heard that little Rowena was stopping by, I knew that I had to get a peek at her.” He tilted his head to the side a little as he looked at Trixie. “You haven’t changed.”

  “Nor you,” Trixie said, her voice growing firmer.

  “You seem eager to help Rowena with her little problem,” the queen interjected into the conversation, her crisp tone chilling as she fixed her narrowed gaze on me.

  “Yes.” I waited, wondering what price I would have to pay for the slaughter of her people by the Ivory Towers. And while she was busy taking her pound of flesh from me, would she punish Trixie as well for the trouble caused by her husband?

  “Then, since I was so pleased with the feeling of you bowing to me, I think you will be my servant for the day,” she announced with a growing grin. My eyes darted to Lori, weighing his sudden appearance at her side, standing close at hand like a servant waiting to do her bidding. Was that how he had gotten ensnared? Promising to serve the queen for a day?

  When I looked back at the queen, her smile was positively sharklike, as if knowing where my thoughts were traveling. Trixie grabbed my hand, squeezing tightly, but she didn’t argue. Not too reassuring, but at least I didn’t have to fight anyone. “What are my tasks?” I asked.

  “Nothing much,” the queen said. Her small hand drifted back to her teacup, her finger sliding around the rim. “I’ve decided that I would like some mint for my tea. You will fetch it.”

  I nodded, stopping myself from thinking that the task sounded easy enough. “Fine. I know a shop not far from here that sells fresh mint. I’ll—”

  “No need to travel so far,” she purred, her voice seeming to warm for the first time. “I have a friend who lives in a house at the edge of the park. She grows many useful herbs. You will fetch me some fresh mint from her.”

  I hesitated, meeting Trixie’s wide eyes. My heart pounded at the idea of leaving her alone with the elves. She had spent so much time on the run from them, surviving on her own. I hated the idea of abandoning her in their midst with no one to watch her back. “And Trixie will be safe?”

  “No one will touch a hair on her head while you are gone.” The queen was too eager to agree to Trixie’s safety, which only failed to reassure me. But there was nothing I could do. I had to play along with her little game if we were going to reach any kind of agreement that would end the pursuit of my girlfriend.

  “Where’s the house?” I asked.

  The queen gave a little wave of her hand. “Lori will escort you.”

  The pale man sighed but ambled around the gazebo and down the steps. He paused, and stared up at the sky with a grimace at the sun before reaching into one of his jacket pockets and pulling out a folded, floppy straw hat. Plopping it on his head, he continued across the park.

  I gave Trixie’s hand one last squeeze before I followed after Lori. A couple jogging steps allowed me to catch up with him and then I had to reduce my natural pace since the man walked so damned slow. It was as if nothing in the world could make him want to rush.

  “You’ve known Rowena a long time?” I said after several minutes of silence as we cut across the large open area in the center of the park.

  “I saw her born,” he said, and then smiled a little. “She was my student for a time. She loved watching the stars with me.”

  “You’re an artist?”

  For the first time, his features crumpled a little as he looked over at me. “Of course.” He said this as if that was the only thing he could possibly be. His face smoothed out again like glass and his voice returned to its dreamy
state. “She spent years drawing vines and curling leaves, trying to breathe life into her art.”

  “Are you an elf?”

  “No. My people are called Lorialets.”

  “Fey?”

  “Not really,” he said with a slight shake of his head as he paused at the edge of the sidewalk. He looked both ways and waited for one distant car to pass us before he continued across the street. “But we prefer to be with the fey. They understand us.”

  “I’ve never met a Lorialet.” But I had heard of them. I had thought they were a faery tale, a crazy myth. Lorialets were also called Lunatics, but with the current connotation of the word, I didn’t think he’d take the other name as a compliment. Lorialets were supposedly the children of Selene and Endymion. They were moon gazers, dreamers, poets, musicians, and seers of the past and future.

  “There aren’t many of us.”

  “Because of the Towers?”

  He paused in the middle of the sidewalk and tilted his head a little to the side in thought. “No,” he slowly said. “There were never many of us to begin with, and the Towers have never taken much interest in us.”

  I could guess why. Every time he spoke, his voice was soft and distracted, as if his mind were only half on where he was at and what he was doing. He’d drive any warlock or witch insane within a few minutes with his slow, plodding ways.

  “Will the queen keep her word and not allow Rowena to come to harm?”

  “She has no plans to physically harm our little Rowena,” he said on a sigh.

  His choice of words didn’t reassure me.

  “At the moment,” Lori continued as he stopped in front of a large two-story home of dark red brick with black shutters, “our lovely queen is telling Rowena who you are getting the mint from.”

  “You know whose house this is?”

  “Oh, yes. Her name is Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy and I think you will find her quite interesting.”

  “I don’t care about this lady. I need to get back to Trixie,” I said in a strained voice, glancing over my shoulder toward the gazebo. Regardless of what Lori said, I didn’t trust the queen.

  “You should definitely care,” Lori said. I looked back at my companion and there was something in his eyes as he glanced from me to the house that made me pay attention to my surroundings.

  A cluster of magpies roosting on the roof and in the trees in the little front yard had grown silent the moment we stopped before the house. I could feel all their eyes trained on us, watching and waiting. The house looked like any other, but there was a faint tang of magic in the air. It was old, as if years of magic use had settled into the earth and danced on the wind like particles of dust.

  Lori sighed and frowned. “She will not be pleased with me,” he muttered to himself as he reached inside his trouser pocket. He pulled out a little glass vile with a cork stopper and handed it to me. “Dab a little on each eyelid. Quickly. Do it now.”

  I pulled out the stopper and sniffed the liquid. “Dandelion water?”

  “Yes, please hurry.” Despite the intensity of his words, his tone retained its usual dreamlike quality.

  I spread a little over each eyelid, smearing it in so that it didn’t drip into my eyes. Blinking a few times, I shoved the stopper into the bottle and handed the vial to Lori. As I looked around, I found that everything looked . . . exactly the same. Dandelion water was supposed to help you see through glamour and keep you from being ensnared by the fey.

  “Nothing has changed,” I said.

  Lori smiled and gave his little shrug. “I am as you see me. Nothing more. But it will help with her. Don’t tarry too long. The sooner you’re back, the better it will be for everyone.” I opened my mouth to ask about Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy but Lori held up a hand, stopping me. “I can say no more. I’ve already helped more than I should.”

  That’s what I was afraid of. I was lucky that he’d helped me this much. His fondness for Trixie was forcing him to give me what little assistance he could, and I appreciated it. With a brittle smile, I turned down the walk and approached the house. The magpies watching me erupted into loud chatter, as if excited that a new fly had fallen into this mystery woman’s web.

  The lawn was neatly trimmed without a single stray branch or fallen leaf in sight despite the trees being full of birds. Mums bloomed in the beds along the house and the walk was edged with chest-high hedges. I paused before the front stairs, my right hand hovering over the hedge nearest me. There was a tingle against the palm of my hand and I almost laughed. Noire de Gruchy had hawthorn hedges. How convenient. My wand was made of hawthorn.

  Kneeling down, I carefully reached in past the long thorns and broke off a branch. I quickly pulled off the excess shoots and thorns, before shoving the stick in my pocket. It wouldn’t be half as strong as my own wand, but it would give me a little bit of a boost and more control, which I was sure would be helpful against whoever this bitch was.

  Armed with a pseudowand and dandelion water, I mounted the stairs and knocked on the front door. A gust of frigid air swept out of the house and bit into my bare arms as the door swung open. I flinched, falling back a step. The day was warm for early September, but not warm enough to have the air conditioner cranked to late-July levels.

  “Please, come in,” said a woman’s soft voice. She had stepped back and was hidden within the interior darkness and behind the door.

  Wishing I had brought a winter coat along, I stepped into the cold foyer and turned back to face my host as the door closed. Blinking against the darkness, my eyes took a moment to adjust after my walk in the bright afternoon sun.

  When my eyes focused, I felt like I had been hit in the gut. The woman standing in the golden sunlight pouring through the slender window beside the door was stunning. Her skin was pale but perfectly flawless as it stretched over high cheekbones on a lovely oval face. She had dark eyes that could have been either dark brown or dark blue, but I couldn’t tell in the shadows. Her exquisite mouth spread into a warm smile when I realized that I had been staring, but even with that knowledge I couldn’t stop myself.

  A black silk tank top clung to her breasts and revealed long, white arms. Her black pants hugged her long legs and were molded to her shapely hips. Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy was not a thin, waiflike creature like so many that filled fashion magazines and action movies. She was lush and curvy, leaving me aching to fill my hands with her.

  I cleared my throat loudly and jerked my eyes from her, if only so I could get the blood to flow back from my pants to my brain. “Are you Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy?” I asked.

  “Yes, I am.” Her voice was silky smooth and left a slow burn in my chest like good Kentucky bourbon. A part of me wanted her to go on talking, but the little sane part that wasn’t my libido was screaming to never let her open her mouth again.

  “I’m Gage. The queen . . . the queen of the Summer Court sent me.”

  “Oh, yes. She’s in town, isn’t she? Is she well?”

  I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath. There was a hint of something in the air. Almost like flowers. Soft and cloying. I couldn’t identify it without getting a stronger whiff, but I didn’t want to draw more of it into my lungs. Something was off in this house.

  With my eyes closed, some of the fog was clearing from my mind and I could think a little better. I was becoming more aware of the slight tingle of magic in the air. It was nothing aggressive and may have been nothing more than a defensive spell or two, but I hadn’t even known the magic was there when I had stared at the woman. I tried to focus on the feeling of the magic, see if I could identify the spell. Was the spell muddling my thoughts, making it impossible to think about anything beyond this woman and sex?

  A whisper of fabric was my only warning that Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy had moved closer to me.

  “Oh, you poor dear,” she cooed in that intoxicating voice. “You’ve got something in your eyes.” A hand as cold as ice slid along my cheek, chilling my skin while sending
a fresh shot of hot lust straight to my dick, which was now rock hard.

  I jerked away from her touch, slamming against the nearest wall. My breath exploded from my throat in hard, jerky gasps. She had been about to wipe off the dandelion water. Holy shit, if this was how I was reacting without falling under her glamour, I was totally fucked without it.

  “Mint! The queen needs mint!” I shouted at her, sounding like an idiot, but I didn’t care. I needed to get the mint and get the hell out of there before I lost control. I didn’t know what it was. Her beauty, her smile, the sound of her voice, the scent in the air, the magic—maybe all of the above—but whatever it was, it was driving me toward one thing. Even with my eyes squeezed shut, all I could think about was pinning this woman to the floor and fucking until we both died of pleasure.

  With some effort, I pulled up a pleasant memory of Trixie and clung to it like a life raft bobbing helplessly in the middle of the ocean. I loved Trixie. I wouldn’t betray Trixie with this woman. Trixie was my happiness. Trixie was my sanity. Trixie . . .

  Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy gave a little laugh, proving she wasn’t disturbed by my idiotic shouting. “Of course. Come to my greenhouse and I’ll get some for you.” I wanted to tell her that I would wait outside on her front porch in the warm sunlight and fresh air. There were other things I wanted to do to give me some physical relief, but I didn’t want to do them with her. Never with her.

  Regardless of what my brain was screaming, I found my body following her through the opulently decorated house to an open, two-story room filled with windows. Sunlight poured in, seeming to glint over her pale skin, but there was no warmth in this room either.

  As she picked up a pair of pruning shears, I watched her out of the corner of my eye, but was careful not to look at her directly. My thoughts were sluggish, but at least my mind was working now. Despite my reaction of mindless lust, I knew she wasn’t a succubus. I had a good friend who was an incubus, which meant that I’d met a few succubi in my time—I knew the difference. Noire de Gruchy was perfect in every way but ice cold to the touch. Both incubi and succubi were warm, their body temperatures naturally running a little higher than humans, like most shifters.