One of the hostesses surged forward. “Please, I don’t know what’s going on here, but everyone needs to get back to their rooms. We don’t want any trouble. If you’re going to be disruptive, we must insist that you leave. All of you.”
“That’s just what we’re doing,” Jessup asserted. “What I was doing when these three gentlemen decided to detain us. I don’t know what’s usually on the menu here, but I can assure you that we are not!”
The woman shook her head. “Who are you? And who are you here with?”
Corvin stepped forward, raising his hand and giving an apologetic shake of his head. “I’m afraid that would be me. Some people… you just can’t take them anywhere. I’m sorry for the disruption. I believe arrangements were being made for a vehicle, and then we will be on our way…”
The woman with the backless dress who had first let them into the club arrived as Corvin was giving this explanation.
“Your car is ready, we have just been waiting until you were done. It would seem that your friends are… impatient to be on their way.” The woman looked around at the other people watching the scene. “Everything is fine. I would ask everyone to return to their activities. It’s all taken care of…”
The man with Reg’s handprint impressed on his arm in red groaned, holding it against himself. “These people attacked us!”
The woman’s eyes were quick as she took in the flushed faces of the man and his companions. “That is unfortunate. If you would go with Marnie, we will have someone look at that for you…”
The hostesses moved smoothly and efficiently to separate the two groups and restore the curious onlookers to their rooms. Corvin was reunited with Jessup and Calliopia, the young escort excused to deal with the next patron.
“You couldn’t wait for me?” Corvin asked. “This isn’t the kind of place you want to be wandering around without an escort. I was only gone for a few minutes. I haven’t held you up.”
Jessup scowled. “I think it was longer than you realize.”
Corvin looked at his watch and frowned. “Regardless, you should have waited. Taking off on your own is just asking for trouble.”
“I’m capable of taking care of myself.”
“You didn’t have just yourself to take care of. And by the looks of his arm,” Corvin nodded in the direction the tall man had been taken. “You weren’t the one who took care of it. Regina was.”
“Reg helped,” Jessup admitted. “But even without her, I would have managed.”
Corvin raised his hands palm-up. “I’m glad it all worked out for you.”
Without him arguing the point, Jessup decided to let it go. “So are you finished… whatever it is you’ve been up to?” she asked, looking him up and down.
He had the look, Reg thought, of the cat that got the cream. Her stomach twisted when she thought of how Corvin had looked the morning after he had tricked her out of her powers. He wasn’t glowing quite as much as he had then, but the shadows of fatigue she had previously noticed under his eyes had vanished and he looked thoroughly pleased with himself.
What did the club offer him that satisfied his hunger? Did they offer magical objects like Jessup did, which retained the power they had been imbued with? Or did they offer him living subjects, who he could glamour like he had Reg, charming them into giving him their gifts?
The thought of vulnerable girls being offered to sate Corvin’s hunger made her feel nauseated. Her heart raced and she wanted nothing more than to punch him right in the middle of his smug face. And the face of anyone who enabled him, too.
Corvin looked in her direction like he could hear what she was thinking, looking amused. He looked back at Jessup, suppressing the smile. “Yes, I’ve had my injured hand looked after and have had a chance to refresh myself. I think we’re ready to go on.”
“About time,” Jessup growled.
The woman in the red dress took Corvin’s arm. “This way, then.”
Reg followed, watching the woman curiously. She was the first woman she had met who didn’t appear to be affected by Corvin’s charms. Even those like Sarah and Jessup, who knew the danger Corvin presented and fought back against his charms were still affected by him. Watching them, Reg could still see how they were affected, but fought their attraction to him. With the woman in the red dress, Reg could see no sign that she was affected by him. Was it because she knew him so well? Maybe she had been around him for long enough that she had become immune to his charms? Or was there something else that protected her?
They were led to an underground parking structure, which started Reg’s heart racing and sweat trickling down her back. She wasn’t prepared to spend any more time underground. She looked at Calliopia, who was also looking uneasy about having to go below the surface. Corvin and the woman in red seemed to be oblivious to this and Jessup’s attention was more on them than it was on Calliopia.
Their shoes echoed in the emptiness of the parking structure. Reg just hoped they would all move quickly and not make any extended goodbyes or inspection of the vehicle.
They reached a black luxury vehicle. Maybe a Cadillac; Reg wasn’t much of a car person. The woman handed Corvin the key fob and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Just bring it back when you are done, Mr. Hunter. I look forward to seeing you again.”
Corvin watched her retreat before turning his attention to the car and clicking the remote to unlock the doors. They got in. Jessup watched Reg’s feet and didn’t close her door until after she was in. Corvin started the car. Reg could barely hear the engine purr to life.
“Now, where were we going?” he asked, faking uncertainty. “Chick-a-Fil? Did you want to go get something to eat?”
“To my home,” Calliopia insisted.
Corvin laughed. “Oh, yeah.”
Calliopia turned her eyes back to Jessup, frowning. “He’s kidding,” Jessup advised. “It’s juvenile. Just go with it.”
⋆ Chapter Thirty-Two ⋆
C
orvin definitely knew his way around the neighborhood, as he claimed. He took the twists and turns out of the dismal neighborhood with confidence. Then they were finally out of the slums and Reg felt buoyed up. As long as they had remained close to the pixies’ domain, she had not been able to shake the worry that they were going to be attacked again. That it couldn’t possibly be over.
But they were finally on their way to getting Callie home. All smooth sailing. Starlight stood on the seat to watch out one of the windows. Calliopia took a few deep breaths.
“Soon,” she told them. “I can smell it.”
“Not far now,” Corvin agreed.
Reg tried to relax. Soon they would have finished the job of returning Calliopia to her parents. They could take Reg home, make her visible, and she could go to sleep and recover from all that had happened. Her bed was calling her.
Starlight paced restlessly across the seat. If Reg had been in the visible world, she would have patted or held him to calm him down. But being in the shadow world, any time she reached toward him, his fur stood up in a crackling, staticky puffball and he looked at her crossly.
Reg recognized the bend in the road and knew that when they went around it, the Papillon castle would be visible.
Callie gave a happy sigh.
Corvin drove the big car up the winding drive, until he finally reached the house. Calliopia jumped out of the car. She didn’t wait for the butler, but threw open her door and ran into the house. Reg followed with Corvin and Jessup, but Jessup insisted that Starlight remain in the car.
“It will only be a few minutes and he would just cause trouble inside.”
Reg was unable to protest. She would have to set Jessup straight once she was part of the real world again. Starlight was a good cat; he wouldn’t have caused them any problems with the fairies.
At the door, the butler shook his head when he looked at them.
“You may go in for a moment,” he told Jessup, “so that the family can express their appreciatio
n. Then you must go. They need this time to be alone with their daughter.”
“Where does that leave you?” Corvin teased.
The butler looked at him with icy eyes. “You, however, may not enter. You are banned from fairy households.”
Jessup looked at Corvin, raising her eyebrows. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I… wasn’t exactly aware of it.”
“What have you been up to?”
“We’ll discuss it another time.”
“Sounds like you’d better go back and keep Starlight company for now.”
“I’m not sitting in the car with a cat.”
“You rode with him on the way over.”
“Yeah, but that’s not the same.”
Jessup shrugged. “Suck it up.”
“I brought you here. And Calliopia. I think I deserve a little of that appreciation.”
“You did the job you’re being paid for. Sorry you don’t get the warm fuzzies.”
He glared at her, but Jessup didn’t back down. Corvin turned around, shaking his head, and walked back toward the car.
The butler was looking in Reg’s direction. “And you brought… a pixie?”
“No. No, she’s a human. One of our consultants. But we had an unfortunate run-in with a pixie spell. Do you think your masters would have the spell to countermand it?”
He considered for a few moments, then finally nodded, and stood back to allow them in. Reg trailed behind Jessup.
They followed Calliopia’s excited voice to the atrium-like seating area they’d been brought to before. But no one was sitting down. Calliopia hugged both of her parents, something Reg hadn’t expected with how reserved the fairies normally were.
“Oh, I’m home,” Calliopia declared. “I’m home, I’m home, I’m home.”
“Yes,” her mother agreed with a reserved smile. “You are home once again. We are most grateful.” Her arms were empty, but her face still showed the weariness from having carried the changeling for so long. Reg wondered what had happened to it. Had the baby vanished in a puff of smoke? Mrs. Papillon aimed a smile in Jessup’s direction. “Thank you for all that you have done.”
“I do have some questions for you,” Jessup said, guarded.
“Calliopia is back. I think the time for questions is over.”
“No, there are still some blanks that need to be filled in. For instance, how you came to have Calliopia in the first place?”
“She is our daughter.”
“Your kidnapped daughter.”
“Yes. She was kidnapped.”
“I mean you kidnapped her. As a baby. You kidnapped her from the pixies.”
Mrs. Papillon just looked at Jessup. “She was our daughter.”
“But you kidnapped her from the pixies.”
The woman spread her hands wide. “How Calliopia became part of our family is no one’s business.”
“It is when you break the law.”
“It does not break fairy law.”
“But it breaks human law, and you asked the state to step in and intervene when the pixies took her back.”
“She is not a pixie.”
“Not anymore.”
Calliopia leaned in and kissed her mother on the cheek. “I’m a full fairy now,” she declared.
“Yes, you are,” her mother agreed. “You have come into your own.” She turned to Detective Jessup. “Thank you for all that you have done. If you would go… Calliopia needs to get some rest. This has been a long ordeal.”
Jessup recognized that she had been dismissed. She searched for something to say. Calliopia turned around to face her.
“Where is my dagger?”
“The dagger is evidence,” Jessup said.
“But it is mine!” Calliopia argued.
“If you have something that belongs to Calliopia, you must return it,” Mr. Papillon interposed. “You cannot be allowed to leave here with something that belongs to her.”
“It isn’t here,” Jessup said, which was only a partial truth. She had left the dagger in the car, perhaps anticipating the situation. “How did Hawthorne-Rose get it in the first place?”
Mr. Papillon’s eyes went to his daughter. “Children are not always careful with their possessions.”
“She didn’t drop it or give it to a friend. Tell me how a police officer got it. And not just any policeman, but a dirty one, one involved in dark magic in this community.”
“There is no dark magic,” Calliopia said. “Only magic.”
It sounded like a catechism. Something that had been repeated to her many times.
“How did you learn the blood spell?” Reg asked Calliopia in her head. “Who taught that to you, Calliopia?”
Calliopia and her parents all looked in Reg’s direction at the question. Jessup caught the looks.
“What just happened? Did something happen? Reg?”
Reg had no way to talk to Jessup, except through Callie, and she wasn’t sure Calliopia was going to want to be a translator for her. There was silence as they all looked at each other, though Jessup couldn’t find a place to focus on for Reg.
“Well…” she covered a yawn. “I guess I should be getting out of here. Only… I can’t go until Reg has been restored. I thought that you might be able to help me with that…”
The fairies looked at Reg. Whether they could see her clearly or not, Reg didn’t know. But they at least knew where to focus their eyes.
“If you bring me back from the land of the shadows, Detective Jessup won’t have any more reason to stay,” Reg coaxed Calliopia.
Callie looked at her parents to see what they wanted her to do.
“You know how to restore her,” Mr. Papillon said. “But it is not a very pleasant process.”
“Maybe there is another way?” Callie suggested. “A potion or incantation?”
“It is ancient magic,” her father told her. “This is the way it is done.”
“This is the way it is done,” Calliopia repeated. She walked across the room to where Reg stood and reached out both of her hands. Reg had already seen it done, and she wasn’t in any great hurry to go through the pain; only she wanted everything to be back to normal so she could go home and relax and get some rest.
“This is the way it is done,” Calliopia said in song-song, forcing her hands and Reg’s closer together. Reg gritted her teeth and did her best to push toward Calliopia, until finally the opposing forces gave way and they could touch, skin to skin. Even prepared for the shock and the pain, Reg wasn’t prepared. She still jumped and screamed and tried to pull away from Calliopia
“Look into my eyes,” Calliopia said. She was blinding white. Reg had never known anything solid could be so bright before. It was like staring directly into the sun. Reg did her best, squinting, trying to see Calliopia’s face in the middle of the halo of white light.
The burning continued to grow in intensity, as if Reg had put her hand on a hot stove and left it there. She tried desperately to writhe away. How had Jessup and Corvin managed to hold on for so long?
“Keep looking,” Callie urged, when the burning started to slacken and Reg figured it was okay for her to let go and look away.
Then finally, the pain had disappeared and Calliopia dropped Reg’s hands. Reg looked down at them, astounded that her fingers were not blistered to the bone. They were red, but not as bad as the man Reg had touched at the club. Maybe not even as bad as the hand Corvin had been complaining about.
“Wow,” Jessup said. “Corvin and I didn’t light up like that, did we?”
“No,” Reg agreed hoarsely. “You didn’t light up at all.”
“Must be a fairy thing.”
“Now you can return to your homes,” Mr. Papillon urged.
“I just want to know who taught Callie the bloodline magic,” Reg repeated. “That’s not the kind of thing you learn in fairy school, is it? Somebody wanted her to know how to find out what her heritage was.”
“There are
many ways to learn these things.”
“So you taught her?”
He blinked at Reg’s leap in logic. “I did not say that.”
“You didn’t say she learned it at school, or at the library, or from your wife or some other relative or teacher. You could have said any of those things. That tells me that you were the one who taught it to her.”
“That does not make logical sense.”
“Not to you, maybe, but then, I have other gifts. I can see things that no one tells me.”
“Callie will need a rest now. And so, I think, will you. You have worked very hard today. You are getting very tired.”
She tried not to respond to his suggestion, but couldn’t help yawning. This provoked the tiniest hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth.
“We could always ask Hawthorne-Rose,” she told Jessup. “If we offered him the right deal, he’d tell us how it was that he was able to leave this house with a possession that wasn’t his. Or how the pixies managed to kidnap Calliopia without anyone else in the household hearing anything.”
“Magic,” Mr. Papillon hissed. “You simply don’t understand magic.”
“You’re right. I don’t. But I am very good at detecting lies. Or the truth, when it occasionally peeks its head.”
Everyone just looked at her.
“Calliopia… did you give Detective Hawthorne-Rose your dagger?” Reg asked.
Callie stared at Reg. Her shining expression dimmed.
“Why did you?” Reg demanded. “What was the plan?”
No one answered. Reg looked around the room and tried to sort it out in her own head. She knew Hawthorne-Rose was a smuggler of poached animals and magical artifacts. He hadn’t confessed, but they hadn’t needed a confession from him. He’d attacked Reg in her own home, and not a lot of evidence was needed to prove that charge. Reg didn’t see a lot of artifacts around the Papillon house, but she imagined they must be there. Fairies collected treasure, didn’t they? Or was that dragons? Leprechauns?
“Something rare,” she mused. “The dagger itself was rare. Blades are unmade after they shed fairy blood. That would make it very rare. Dangerous and valuable. Wouldn’t it?” she asked Jessup.
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