Fairest 02 - The Frog Prince

by Adrianne Brooks

  “Is this something we’re going to talk about?” he asked.

  “We should probably skip it for now.”

  He knew enough about magic that he could connect some of the dots. Something, probably the fairy dust, was protecting Rachel from her own curse. Shielding her. If that were the case, the magic had to go somewhere. Which meant that everyone else who couldn’t fight it were going to suffer from the rebound. Only one man was still standing in the building by the time they reached the front door and he looked mildly confused by the sea of bodies.

  “Sam,” the woman called out. The man looked at the three of them and his eyes got wide.

  “Didn’t do it.”

  “Sam,” she said in warning.

  “Not my fault,” he said stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Nobody’s blaming you, sweat pea.” The woman said fondly, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek as she passed. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Maleficent loved men in uniform.

  They were so cute with their little weapons and their tiny little badges.

  If they hadn’t all been bitch slapped by Rachel’s sleeper spell, Maleficent would have had an interesting time on her hands with a certain Officer Terrance. As it was, she’d have to get back to work. Other humans would begin to notice the trail of sleeping bodies that Rachel had left in her wake during her mad dash through the city. It was like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, leading anyone interested right to her location. She’d have to clean that up too. Danielle would figure out that Rachel and Chris were back soon enough, thanks to this little stunt. Even so, there was no point in alerting her sooner than necessary.

  With that in mind, Maleficent moved quickly, stepping delicately over splayed limbs and peacefully sleeping faces. She snorted. Poor Rachel felt awful about this. She had no idea that thanks to her, these men had gotten off lucky. So what if they were doomed to sleep for the rest of eternity? It was better than being poisoned by a Toadstone. Right now it was only physical contact that transferred the venom, like what had happened to Miss Muffet. Soon, however, he’d be leaking poisons into the very air. It would be death to meet his eyes, feel his breath, touch his skin. Rachel should enjoy whatever interaction with him that she could, while she could, because in a few days their boy would be too toxic for her to stand.

  Sad really, but not her concern at the moment.

  Oh no, her main concern were dreams.

  She loved playing with sleepers. They had such a mastery over the ether, over dreams. They could even step inside another person’s dreams and bring them to life under the right circumstances. Maleficent wasn’t trying for anything as fancy as all of that. She simply wanted to check on something.

  Or to be precise, someone.

  You don’t wake a sleeper. Not ever. Not for any reason. Their curse was supposed to be broken naturally or lifted by the Widow that cast it. The only thing that could have woken Rachel so prematurely and set off this epidemic of narcolepsy was fairy dust. Since there was only one place to find the stuff, it wasn’t hard to figure out where, and more precisely who, the mischief was coming from.

  This whole thing was turning into a lot of unnecessary work. She was only supposed to save Chris. Since his match was Rachel, it had only made sense to kill two birds with one stone. But too many enemies were scheming in the background. It was making keeping her charge safe and happy a hell of a lot more complicated. She was supposed to be working doubles all this week at the Hungry Kitty. She didn’t have time to save Chris from the ones who would take his Stone.

  Mal sighed when she finally made it to the cell where Rachel had been held overnight. She could smell the Dreams in the air. They stank up the place like burning cotton candy. Fried brain cells sent off in a fiery barge towards the afterlife. Her eyes narrowed, focus shifting so that she could pull up her second sight and see into the ether. Alex’s magic was a gathering storm by the door, turning the ether a nasty shade of blood red, thanks to her Widow’s magic. If she could have saved the girl from it she would have, but there was no escaping an oath. She’d made a promise to Danielle to learn whatever she could about being a Widow and she’d have to keep that promise or suffer the consequences.

  Luckily, there was a loophole.

  Mal was pretty sure that sweet Alex couldn’t be expected to learn anything from a dead bug, which is exactly what Danielle would be once Mal got her hands on her. When she realized that she was gritting her teeth, her eyes literally glowing in rage, she shook her head and tried to remember why she’d come here. She knew how Zaran worked because his methods weren’t all that different from her own. Find a vulnerable patsy and manipulate them into doing all your dirty work. If he’d given Rachel fairy dust, he’d want some sort of repayment. Now that they were in the real world and no longer in that in-between hell the Fairies had built, he couldn’t visit her in person. Which meant that dreams would be the only way they could communicate until someone summoned him to the human world to make a contract.

  Mal moved to one of the thin cots on a metal frame that had been shoved into one corner. The smell of burning candy was even stronger here, and her nose wrinkled in distaste even as she crouched beside the bed and reached for the pillow. She smoothed her hand over the length of the cotton and smiled.

  “Tell me what you saw, darling.”

  Rachel’s dreams, absorbed as they were within the pillow gave their cautious assent and Maleficent called her magic forth to give them depth, color, and substance. The events of Rachel’s dream unfolded around her in a glimmering 3D wave, and she sat back and watched them with a jaundiced eye. Eventually she shook her head at the lavender eyed demon smiling down into Rachel’s eyes.

  “So that’s what you’re up to,” she muttered. She bit her lip, and for the first time in centuries felt fear stir to life within her. “Son of a bitch.”

  ***

  Rachel never thought it would feel so good to sit on Alex’s crappy couch in the middle of her messy living room. She wanted desperately to get up and clean, but didn’t want to ruin the moment. The essence of reunion. It was lovely. She and Alex had spent the last hour catching up and she was trying to find a good moment to transition into the whole long lost brother thing. Chris and Alex’s fiancé, Sam, were in the kitchen talking about manly things. Unfortunately, she could feel him glancing their way every now and again and she knew without checking that he was eyeing Alex.

  Surprisingly enough, she wasn’t the one who brought the subject up.

  “Soo,” Alex said slyly. “Is your nudist buddy the reason you were missing for a year?”

  “He’s not a nudist.”

  “Well non-nudists don’t play peek-a-boo during mini-golf.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Rachel,” Alex said, growing suddenly solemn. “Talk to me. Who is he?”

  During her recounting of her latest adventures, she’d avoided the topic of Christopher very carefully. She wasn’t sure how to mention a single part of it without having to talk about all of it. But Alex, despite her oddness, had always been a sharp woman. She paid just as much attention to what Rachel said as she did to what she didn’t say. Rachel sighed and began picking at the cotton of the throw pillow she held in her lap.

  “So this is going to sound crazy,” she warned.

  “Try me.”

  “Well, you know how you always wanted a brother?”

  Alex frowned. “No. Not really.”

  “Oh. Well…you have one.” Rachel jerked her head in Chris’s direction and his conversation with Sam abruptly ceased as both men realized that they were being acknowledged. Alex’s jaw dropped and Rachel’s brows shot up in an exaggerated show of amazement. “Surprise!” she said.

  Alex looked away from her slowly, turning to lean on the backrest of the couch so that she could stare at Chris with all of her might. Rachel glanced at Sam and he gasped.

  “Damn,” he
said suddenly. “I forgot I have this…this thing that I…um…do. So I’m going to go do that. That thing. Cause it’s important…Bye.” He took off for the front door and Rachel climbed over the arm of the couch to launch herself after him.

  “I’ll go with you,” she said quickly, and he held the door open for her, his expression slightly panicked as he ushered her out into the hallway.

  ***

  “Hey.”

  “Hi.”

  They stared at one another and the silence in the apartment grew thick and uncomfortable. Chris shifted from one foot to the next and tried to smile.

  “You look good,” he said finally. “Healthy I mean. Robust,” he winced. “Do women like being robust? Is that a compliment?”

  “In light of all the jelly doughnuts I ate this week?” She shook her head, “No. Not especially.”

  “Ah.”

  They stared some more.

  Little Alex. Whoever would have thought that he’d see her again?

  She favored their father more than Danielle, and that was somewhat of a relief. He would have loved her either way, but he found it easier to relax since he didn’t have to look into the spitting image of the woman who had single-handedly ruined his childhood. As it was, he found himself staring at the female version of his father. The brown hair with hints of red, eyes the color of fine wine and chocolate. Because he could see his father in her, he could also see bits of himself. It was easy to see that they were related, and the knowledge filled him with a sense of belonging that he’d never felt before.

  “You have a good face,” she said suddenly, and he found himself grinning.

  “Thanks,” he responded. “Yours is cool too.”

  “Sooo,” she drew the word out and twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “A frog?”

  “Yup.”

  They nodded together.

  “I hear you have some mad pheromones,” Chris commented.

  “They get me out of my fair share of parking tickets.”

  “I’d imagine.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “You hate Danielle?”

  His answer was immediate. “With all my heart. Do you?”

  “I dislike her intensely,” she answered slowly, then shrugged. “But she’s my mom.”

  His throat felt tight, but he managed to nod anyway.

  Her eyes filled with compassion and he could have hugged her. She looked so much like his dad that it made his chest ache and it was a struggle not to flash back to the last time he’d seen his dad, laid out on the ground while Danielle ate his heart.

  “Do you want to get drunk and watch Adventure Time?” she asked gently.

  He nodded, relieved.

  “That’d be nice.”

  She scooted over and patted the empty space beside her on the couch. He grabbed a bag of chips and a six pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade from the kitchen and sat beside his sister as she flipped through channels.

  His sister.

  It had a nice ring to it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It had been a while since she’d interacted with anyone besides sociopaths and Chris, so it was a little awkward at first hanging out with Sam while Alex and Chris cleared the air. Sam seemed nice enough, and even took her to a little computer café a block from Alex’s apartment. They sat across from one another and Alex tried to relax. The shop was cute, comfortable. There was a stage along one wall where performers could come and sing or do slam poetry. The fans that decorated the ceiling had been custom made. Someone had taken three or four desk fans, connected them at their bases to form a circle, and used them like blades so that there was more than one source of air from a single mechanism.

  Rachel was trying to figure out how to make one for her own house, assuming she hadn’t lost it by now due to unpaid bills, when the barista stepped up to set down their drinks. Like all the other patrons, the young man seemed tired and he swayed on his feet as he sat down their things. A man at the table next to him had already fallen asleep on his girlfriend’s lap, while the girlfriend in question was in danger of nodding off in her bowl of soup. Rachel shifted uncomfortably. This was all her fault. On their way over, even the men and women who passed them had begun to yawn and blink. Her only consolation was that at least none of these people had been driven into a coma just yet. The only thing that she could think of is that the cops had been exposed to her for hours before succumbing fully to the curse. Maybe these people would be alright if she didn’t stay for too long.

  Feeling a bit better, she pulled her plate closer and nodded her thanks to the barista as he shuffled away again. She’d ordered a smoothie and a slice of New York cheesecake. Sam, meanwhile, had ordered some sort of flavored cocoa that she could smell from where she sat. The barista had used the cream to make a floating design on the surface of the liquid and Rachel smiled as she eyed it.

  “That’s pretty impressive,” she said. “I can’t even do the tree design and this guy made a whole dragon.”

  Sam grinned.

  “I come in here a lot. The first time I requested it, but now they do it for me without having to be asked.”

  “You like dragons?” she asked curiously, taking a sip of her fruit smoothie.

  There was a secret in his eyes, and he leaned back in his chair, cradling his mug close.

  “They speak to me,” he said, strange colored eyes swirling. “It’s like the dragon is my spirit animal or something.”

  Rachel nodded. She’d never given much thought to Native American customs like that. Though she supposed having a spirit animal would be cool.

  “How long have you and Alex been seeing each other?” She’d never imagined that she’d see her best friend so happy. Especially given what the curse had down to her. For a while she was convinced that Alex would end up dying alone in that damned apartment. But from what she’d gathered, Zaran had actually come through and helped her. Rachel wished that the genie could do the same for her, but it gave her some comfort to know that she hadn’t sacrificed all she had for nothing. Sam grew thoughtful, taking a long sip from his drink and swishing it around in his mouth.

  Finally, he shrugged.

  “It’s hard to say,” he said finally.

  “How so?” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to say something sappy about how you feel as if you’ve known each other forever are you?”

  He laughed.

  “No. But we’ve been together for more lifetimes than I can count and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “You’re happy?”

  He inclined his head. “Even better. I’m content. Happiness can be a fleeting concept. Contentment will keep you going even through the hard times. Through the moments of restlessness and doubt that would have destroyed any other relationship. It will bring peace to any storm. Alex and I? We’re going to be in it for the long haul.”

  Rachel ducked her head so he wouldn’t see the tears gathering in her eyes. She wanted that, she thought. She wanted what Sam and Alex had. As soon as the thought entered her mind she closed her eyes. An image of Chris came to her immediately and she took a deep, shaky breath.

  “How did you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That she was the one. The person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with.”

  He shrugged. “I kissed her,” he said simply, and Rachel shook her head, feeling both hopeful and bemused. Their seats were situated against a wall right next to a window. All of a sudden, Sam lifted his head and glanced out the glass his body growing rigid with tension.

  “What is it?”

  “Go. Go to Alex,” he said stiffly.

  “What are you-?”

  “Now!” he roared, slamming both hands down on the table so that their plates bounced and condiments rolled about. His eyes blazed purple for a heart-stopping moment and Rachel threw herself from the booth. She didn’t know what she expected, but she’d barely made it past their table when the wall of windows that they sat among
st exploded in a glittering inferno.

  There hadn’t been a lot of people in the café, but the few had been there screamed as the flaming glass shards shot across the width of the room. Several pieces embedded themselves in a woman’s face and she collapsed without making a sound, one eye still open wide with terror and the other a bloody mess. Rachel pressed her face against the ground, her arms going over her head in an attempt to protect herself. The building groaned and shook, and she looked up towards the ceiling as the sound of screaming support beams and cracking cinder blocks deafened her.

  The roof of the building was ripped away and Rachel gazed up in horror at the dragon that stood over the building, smoke seeping from his nostrils. It was Diedric. Half of his body was melted like hot wax, but his good eye was bright with rage and agony. He must not have healed fully after their last confrontation. She tried to scramble away as he reached his arm down for her.

  “Hey.” Sam hadn’t risen from his seat or moved at all when the first assault had occurred and Rachel was surprised he was alive. In fact, when she inspected him, she found that there wasn’t a scratch on him despite the damage to his clothes. “Leave her alone.”

  Diedric hesitated, and Rachel had the chance to wave frantically for Sam to escape.

  “Will you shut up? What’s wrong with you? You should be running.”

  Sam sighed and pushed his abandoned cup to one side as he came to his feet. Meanwhile the dragon lunged forward, mouth ready. Rachel didn’t really see Sam move, but he must have. One moment she was looking into the back of Diedric’s throat as he moved to consume her, and the next Sam was there. Grabbing the massive head within both arms. The muscles in his shoulders and arms bulged as he snapped Diedric’s jaws shut and Diedric sent out a muffled roar that shook the ground and brought the remaining walls tumbling down.