“I wanna see!” The little girl next to her crowded up to the easel. “It looks just like you, Manda,” she announced. “Miss Swan, will you do me too?”
It wasn’t bad if she said so herself, Cass thought with satisfaction. It was amazing what having a live subject did for her art. “Sure I will,” she said, handing Amanda back her brush and turning to the next little girl.
“Me too! Me too!” Soon the other kids were crowding around, all wanting personalized stick figure portraits.
“Okay, okay. One at a time!” Cass got into it, going from easel to easel, finally enjoying herself for the first time that day. Maybe there was something to this teaching thing after all, she thought. She just wished that Albert at the I.C.U. gallery was as easy to please as Amanda and her classmates.
It didn’t take long and after a matter of minutes there was only one child left Cass hadn’t helped. He was a soft-spoken little boy named Derek who was working quietly at the corner of the table, his small face a mask of concentration.
“Derek?” Cass came up behind him, expecting to see the standard house/sun/tree combo along with a few crudely painted smiling figures. What she saw instead surprised her.
At first glance, Derek’s sheet of paper was a smear of black and purple—just a disorganized mess. But looking closer, Cass thought she could see a pair of yellow eyes glaring out at her. For some reason the picture gave her the shivers.
“What is this?” she asked, keeping her voice light. “Is it some kind of monster? I thought you were going to paint a picture of your family, Derek.”
“This is my family.” The little boy continued to paint, his brow furrowed in concentration. “This is my big brother.”
“Oh.” Cass was at a loss. “Well, he’s not a very, uh, good looking guy, is he?”
“No.” Derek put down his paintbrush and looked at her seriously. “He’s a doody-head. Can you help me make his mouth right, Miss Swann? He needs big sharp teeth.”
“Okay, sure.” Cass picked up the paintbrush, thinking that this was taking sibling rivalry to a whole new level. She and Phil and Rory had had plenty of disagreements growing up but they always stuck together in the end. Maybe it was simply the difference between brothers and sisters.
She had just finished dabbing on some bright, sharp teeth under the big brother monster’s glowing yellow eyes when a shriek from the other end of the classroom made her drop the brush.
“Magic! It’s magic!” Amanda Simms was dancing around like a crazy thing pointing at her easel.
“What? What’s going on?” Cass demanded but she had a sinking feeling in her gut that she already knew.
“Me too, mine too!” the girl beside Amanda started yelling. “Look, it’s the picture Miss Swann made and it’s moving!”
Oh, God, Cass mentally groaned but there was nothing she could do. As she watched, the little stick figures she’d painted for each child began to scramble off the paint splattered papers. None of them was bigger than a Barbie doll and most of them were smaller than that. Some scaled the easels like sailors crawling through the rigging of a ship and some jumped down to the center of the long rectangular table and began to play and fight just like real children. The students stared in fascination and Cass in horror as the brightly colored 3-D stick figures cavorted like kids on a playground.
Cass felt frozen to the spot. Why oh why had she just assumed that her fairy godmother’s awful wish only extended to the portrait of Brandon? She’d wished to be able to get some life in her paintings and apparently the FG’s magic took her literally in every way. Now how was she going to clean up this mess before another adult came in and saw it?
Take it easy, she told herself. They’re kids and kids are always making up wild stories. Nobody is actually going to believe that their pictures came to life and started playing tag on the art table.
She was just beginning to think of the best way to catch the tiny paint figures and wondering if all of them would fit in her purse when she heard a low, choked cry of terror. Looking down she saw that Derek’s eyes had gone as round as baseballs.
“What is it, Derek?” she asked, wondering if the sight of the stick figures come to life was too much for him. He seemed like a sensitive little boy and she hoped her stupid fairy godmother’s magic hadn’t scarred him for life. “Derek?” she said again but Derek only shook his head and pointed to his own easel. With a sinking feeling, Cass remembered the last thing she had painted—the big brother monster with evil yellow eyes and sharp white teeth.
Oh please, she thought wildly. Not that! This isn’t fair—I didn’t even paint all of it, I just added the teeth. Oh my God—I gave it teeth!
She was almost afraid to look but before her eyes the yawning maw of the monster Derek had started and she had finished gaped open, revealing the sharp white fangs Cass had painted.
The monster was much bigger than the other stick figures—it filled the entire page Derek had been painting on and now it began to overflow the edges of the easel like spilled ink.
“No!” Cass yelled and slapped her hand down on the still wet paint, trying to keep the awful thing in place. It was about the size of a small dog and thanks to her it had choppers that put Jaws to shame—no way was she letting it loose in a classroom full of first graders.
The next thing she knew a blinding pain shot through her hand and she looked down to see that the bright white fangs she had painted for the monster were buried in her palm.
“Son of a bitch!” Cass shouted, forgetting she was supposed to watch her language around the kids. Instinctively she yanked her hand away from Derek’s paper and before she could stop it, the painted monster had flowed off the page and onto the art table.
“No! He ate her! He ate my little paint girl!” It was Amanda, now crying every bit as hard as she had been laughing a moment earlier. Cass looked up from her hand which was dripping blood and watched in horror as the monster gobbled up another stick figure and another and another. The tiny 3-D paint figurines scattered in every direction but the black and purple monster was frighteningly fast. The students watched the carnage in horror as the white teeth Cass had painted gnashed and tore. Bright primary colored paint ran down the monster’s chin as it consumed its victims.
Guess that takes care of the problem of what I’m going to do with the stick figures, Cass thought numbly, still nursing her bleeding hand. But it still left her with the very real problem of what to do with a monster the size of a medium sized dog that had extremely sharp teeth and a big appetite.
Wait a minute—a medium-sized dog? Hadn’t the painted monster been the size of a Chihuahua when it escaped from Derek’s page? Cass did a double take. Sure enough, the monster was more the size of a Pit Bull now and it was rapidly moving into Great Dane territory. With every stick figure it ate, it grew larger. And then all the stick figures were gone.
Derek shrieked as the monster lunged forward, and Cass barely yanked him out of the way in time. Suddenly her problem had gone from having her students tell their parents they’d seen their paintings come to life to having them all gobbled up like Children McNuggets.
Crap! Cass looked around wildly. Her first instinct was to send the students out into the hall to safety but the monster was between them and the door. What could she do?
“Everybody to the corner of the room,” she shouted as the black and purple paint monster began to eye the other children hungrily. “Now—I mean it!”
She didn’t have to tell them twice. Every single first grader ran to the corner of the room and huddled there while Cass looked for some kind of weapon.
Her hurt hand throbbed as she grasped one of the wooden easels and yanked on it, heedless of the way the brightly colored paint pots spilled everywhere. She knew that if the monster got a chance at her now it wouldn’t bother with gnawing on her palm—it would probably bite her hand off. Hell, it would bite her head off.
Got to keep it on the table, away from the kids! she thought grimly, sta
nding back and taking aim with the wooden easel.
The easel had been made to withstand generations of kids and it was so heavy just lifting it nearly broke her wrists but adrenaline gave her strength. The monster had its mouth open and Cass could hear a low, evil hiss coming from inside the dark cavern of its maw. By now it took up most of the table top and she could see that its black and purple painted hide was flowing in long octopus-like tentacles to the floor.
“Stop growing and hold still you son of a bitch,” Cass muttered through clenched teeth.
The monster hissed again and she drew back awkwardly and swung the weighty wooden easel at its head. The blow landed hard and she saw a gout of dark paint splatter like blood when the wood connected.
There! Got it! Die, you evil painted bastard!
But Cass’s hope that she had killed it was short lived.
The monster howled and its glowing yellow eyes turned blood red. Then it jerked the easel from her hand and crammed the entire thing, fluttering white paper pad, wooden frame, empty paint pots, and all into the yawning cavern of its mouth.
Cass watched in horror as, with a few grinding crunches, the painted monster chewed up her only weapon. And as soon as it had swallowed the easel it grew even bigger. It was definitely overflowing the table now and taking up one whole side of the art room—the side where the door was located.
Oh my God, what am I going to do? Should I shout for help? But who would hear?
The art room was located at the far end of a disused wing of the Titus Academy which was doubtless why no one had come running to find out what all the commotion was about. Cass’s mind was a jumbled mess as she stared at the angry, hungry monster that looked like it wanted to make her the next course of its feast. And after it finished her, of course, her students would make a nice dessert.
The last thought she’d had stuck in Cass’s brain.
Call for help—that’s right, there’s someone I can call for help—Jake O’Shea.
Only that morning she’d been telling Rory that she’d rather shoot herself than ask the arrogant, irritating court-appointed elf for help. But shooting yourself and having your head chewed off by an angry monster are two different things. Cass decided it was time to swallow her pride and dial the fairy equivalent of 911.
She opened her mouth to scream for help and the monster chose that moment to lunge for her. Cass grabbed another easel and shoved it between the jagged teeth which were now almost as long as her arm. Hoping that O’Shea could hear her over the crunching as the monster turned the thick wood to matchsticks she shouted for help.
“Jake!” she yelled, trying to keep herself between the chewing monster and the children. “Jake, where are you? My birthday wish went wrong and I need help!”
She looked around hopefully, but he didn’t appear. Where the hell was he? Was he somewhere listening to her, waiting to hear her beg? The bastard!
“Jake,” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “I mean it—if you want me to beg, I’m begging! My, uh, hour of need is near. Like right now!”
Cass looked around. Still nothing and now the monster had finished the second easel and was so large the entire table and the rest of the easels had been engulfed in its inky black sides. There was nothing left to fight with, nothing left to do but try to shield the children as long as she could.
Cass backed up with her arms outspread, trying to protect the cowering, crying first graders who were standing behind her. From the sharp smell of ammonia hanging in the air she was fairly certain that over half of them had wet their pants. Cass didn’t blame them a bit. Even if they somehow got out of this alive every single kid in her last afternoon art class was going to need massive amounts of therapy so a few pairs of wet pants was no big deal.
I’m about to literally die for my art, she thought as the monster gathered itself for a final lunge. I wonder if it’s going to hurt much. Despite her fear she was also incredibly angry at Jake O’Shea.
That stupid, arrogant man…elf…whatever he is, she thought. He swore up and down that all I had to do was say his name and he’d come help me. Well serves me right for believing an irritating uptight prick like him.
“Jacobin O’Shea,” she muttered under her breath as the monster surged toward her in a hissing roil of black paint tentacles and dagger-sharp teeth, “I hope you rot in Hell—or the fairy equivalent of it, anyway.”
The foot-long, jagged white teeth were inches from her face. Cass closed her eyes, not wanting to see the moment of her own doom. She could feel the damp furnace of the monster’s breath on her cheeks and smell its inky hide.
But just as she was tensing for the final bite that would no doubt take her head off, everything stopped.
Fifteen
Cass couldn’t believe it. The screaming of the children, the hissing of the monster, the hot breath on her cheeks, even the sharp reek of frightened first grader pee that was hanging in the air was suddenly gone.
Had she already died? Had the monster killed her so quickly and painlessly that she hadn’t felt a thing? Somehow Cass didn’t think she’d get that lucky. Suddenly she became aware that a low, intense voice was muttering something that sounded like Gaelic and there was a warm smell of leather and pine needles and masculine spice all around her.
“You can open your eyes now, Cassandra.” Jake O’Shea’s clipped, almost British accent sounded distinctly exasperated.
Cass did as he said and nearly screamed. The paint monster was still directly in front of her, its foot-long fangs barely an inch from her face, but it was frozen in place. She backed up hastily to get away from it and nearly ran into the students behind her which were also frozen to the spot.
“What…what the hell is going on?” she demanded, staring around the art room where nothing and no one but she and the tall elf were moving.
“I might ask you the same thing,” O’Shea said grimly.
He was wearing a fashionably cut charcoal suit with a pale green shirt that brought out the color of his flashing eyes. Cass could see a muscle clenching in his strong jaw and the set of his broad shoulders was tense.
“Why the bloody hell did you conjure a soul-sucker into a classroom full of human children?” he asked in a low, angry voice.
Cass drew herself up to her full height and lifted her chin.
“I didn’t,” she said, glaring at him. “Or at least, I didn’t do it on purpose. One of the students started it and I just added the teeth and things got out of hand from there.”
“Excuse me?” O’Shea raised one pointed black eyebrow. “So you’re saying that you helped a child to conjure this thing up from the pit?”
“Pit? What pit?” Cass asked, exasperated. “Look, this was a total accident. My fairy godmother screwed up my birthday wish and now everything I paint comes to life. Only I didn’t know it until it was too late.” She gestured at the frozen tableau of the monster and the children.
“It almost was too late for you.” O’Shea sounded angrier than ever, as though her explanation wasn’t good enough for him. He stepped forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, staring down at her with ferocious intensity. “You could have been killed, Cassandra. Why didn’t you call me sooner, before things got to this stage?”
Cass wrenched away from him. “I did call you, you big jerk!” she hissed. “I screamed and shouted and you didn’t show.”
“What?” A look of confusion flitted across his strong features and his brow furrowed. “Just a moment ago when you said you hoped I rot in Hell was the first time I heard you say my name and I came at once.” He frowned. “I had to leave in the middle of court, in fact. No doubt I’ll incur a heavy penalty for that.”
Cass shook her head. “I was screaming my lungs out!” she insisted. “I was yelling, ‘Jake, I need you!’ and you never showed.”
The wrinkles in O’Shea’s forehead smoothed out and he nodded.
“That explains it. As I tried to tell you earlier, ‘Jake’ is not my name and you canno
t summon me by it. Didn’t I tell you that names, true names, have power in the Realm of the Fae?”
“Well you could have at least noticed that I was in trouble,” Cass muttered rebelliously, unwilling to give ground. “I mean, I thought you were supposed to keep an eye on us—on me especially.”
“I am,” O’Shea growled. “But when I took on your case I didn’t imagine that one of my clients would take up conjuring daemons for fun.”
“Fun? Fun?” Cass stalked forward and poked him in his broad chest with one finger. “Does this look like fun to you, you bastard?” she asked, nodding at the frozen monster and the children whose faces were filled with terror. She was glad that she was wearing her professional ‘teaching’ clothes of a black pencil skirt and blouse instead of facing him in a tattered nightshirt this time. And it didn’t hurt that her heels made her two inches taller, though he still loomed over her.
“It doesn’t look like fun at all, Miss Swann, which is precisely my point.” O’Shea’s deep voice was so cold it might have had icicles hanging off of it.
His sudden withdrawal into formality pissed Cass off even more.
“Look at them,” she said, indicating the children. “They’re going to be emotional basket cases for the rest of their lives. And as for this classroom, it’s a total mess. And I told you I didn’t conjure that thing, that soul-sucker up myself—it was one of the students that painted it and I just helped him and…”
She became aware that she was babbling and tried to stop but somehow her mouth wouldn’t turn off.
“It just got out of hand,” she heard herself say. “I thought I could stop it but suddenly it was the size of a Pit Bull and then a Great Dane and then it kept growing and growing and I thought it was going to eat…eat the children and me the same way it ate the little stick figures and I…I…” She shook her head helplessly as the last word ended in a sob.
“Shhh.” O’Shea cupped her cheek, the ice in his green eyes melting abruptly. “It’s all right, Cassandra,” he murmured. “Everything is going to be all right.”
Be Careful What You Wish For (The Swann Sisters Chronicles Book 2) Page 12
