Broken Heart 05 Over My Dead Body (6 page)

I traced the jagged burn. I had no idea what had caused the damage. It was as if it had been zapped. Lightning? That made no sense. Magic. I knew the Family Ruadan had some ability to create orbs and other objects from fairy magic. But I’d never seen anyone, not even an Ancient, just . . . kapow something. I peered down the broken top. The light I’d seen on my first examination was still there, but much fainter. So was the buzzing noise.

I didn’t want to split it open or cut it in half. It might be possible to save the internal electronics, either to build another Invisi-shield pole or some other kind of electro-whatsit. I couldn’t stick my hand down all the way to the bottom and pry out whatever was lodged there.

Crap.

I grabbed a mini flashlight (I had several) and pointed it down into the post. The tiny glow and its buzzing stopped. I turned off the light—and they returned. Weird. As much as I didn’t want to mess up the delicate internal electronics, I was itching to know what the hell was going on.

Usually, I’d get out my plasma cutter, but Velthur had taught me a trick or three. I could use my Family power to create a water “laser” that was faster and more accurate (and okay, more fun). I kept a bucket of water near the worktable, and in no time I’d created a thin ribbon of water that sliced the post like a hot knife through a cold stick of butter (Mmm . . . butter . . . on fresh baked bread with a dollop of jam).

The post dropped into two pieces. I propped the bottom half up and peered into it. The light at the base was easier to see and the buzzing easier to hear. I couldn’t quite figure out what was flickering. It wasn’t the electronics. They glowed blue, and this light was goldish.

Then I noticed a thin red string stuck on the far side. I plucked it from where it had snagged and followed the material down. My forefinger pressed something pointy.

“Ow!” I yanked my hand out, and up came the string. The tiny cut on my finger healed instantly. My attention returned to the thread. Dangling at its end was a big, black thorn. I looked at it in amazement. “What the hell are you?”

“Pixie trap,” said a tiny voice. “Thank Brigid you figured it out. And I thought humans were dumb.”

I looked down. The gold light was perched on the edge of the work table. I could just make out a humanoid shape—and only because I had vamp vision. To human eyes, it probably looked like sunshine glinting off a spinning coin. “Um . . . hello?”

“Now, don’t go makin’ me change me mind about humans.” The voice was so small, I couldn’t determine if it was male or female. The light rose from the table and hovered in front of my nose. “You saved me life,” it announced, “and so I am yours until I can return the favor in kind.”

“What?”

It sighed. “I’m sidhe, okay? And you saved me. I’m bound to you until I save your life. That’s how it works.”

“How what works?”

“The baking of delicious cakes and fruit pies,” said the fairy in disgust. “Magic, you idiot. And here I thought bein’ beholden to a human wouldn’t be so bad—not like the giant. Always steppin’ on me, and once the bastard accidentally swallowed me. We’re immortal, for the love of Brigid! I don’t die just because I have to sit for a day or two inside a giant’s gullet. Only one way out, y’know. They don’t have pixie therapy. I have to live with the trauma of being shit out the pimply ass of—”

“I get it,” I interrupted. “So, are you sidhe or a pixie?”

“Same difference. Sidhe aren’t just one kind. There’s lots. Is this where we live?” It buzzed around, then returned to hover by my nose again. “By all the saints! You love dirt like the giant loved his brick cake. Tsk, tsk. I may be bound to you, but I refuse to live in squalor. Even the giant made me a nice nest, with lots of shiny things, and brought me honey every day. You do have honey, don’t you?”

I wanted to ask Do you ever shut up? But instead I mumbled, “You got a name?”

“Spriggan.”

Knowing its name wasn’t helpful in determining gender, but really, did it matter? I had no intention of keeping it around. First, it was annoying. Second, it was giving me a headache. And third, it was annoying.

“Okay, Spriggan. You’re free. I hereby relinquish you of all obligations to me. Go on. Shoo.”

“I don’t do shoo.” It rose about an inch, directly in my line of sight. I crossed my eyes trying to stay focused on it. “You are never to shoo me again. Magic can’t be bossed around. You can’t change the rules. What would the world be like if there weren’t rules?”

“Free of pixies?” I ventured.

“A comedian, are you? Gah! I should’ve never rescued the giant. If’n I hadn’t rescued him, then I’d still have my nest and my shinies and my honey.”

“And the possibility of another ride on the Colon Express.”

I heard the tiny indrawn breath of indignation. “Goin’ to be a sassy one, I see. Tell you what. You go on and get into life-threatening danger and I’ll rescue you. Then we’ll be free of each other.”

“Is that really the only way to get rid of you?”

“O’ course not. I just keep secret all the easy ways to end my bleedin’ curse.” He (er, she?) sighed. “I’m a pixie. Part of bein’ a pixie is repayin’ a kindness. It’s not a choice, mind you. It’s just the way it works. I’ve accepted it, and so should you. Now, where are you going to build my nest?”

“On a rocket ship to the moon,” I said. I waved it away. “Just go flit around somewhere else so I can think.”

“You can think?” it said. Then it spun away, giggling. I bet the giant had eaten the damned thing on purpose.

I probably should’ve called Damian or Doc Michaels to let them know sabotage wasn’t the cause of the pole’s malfunction. Instead, I dialed Zerina.

Zerina was a foul-mouthed, badass fairy, or sidhe, who had tried to open her own sort of beauty shop. She didn’t get much business because she followed her own creative muse when it came to hairstyles. If you saw someone walking around wearing a scarf over their head, then they’d probably gotten a Zee do.

She was not the vampire kind of sidhe. Maybe she would know more about my little problem—like how to make it disappear.

She picked up on the first ring. “Bloody hell! What do you want?”

“Hello to you, too.” Was the natural disposition of fairies to be cranky and insulting? “I need your help.”

“I agree. You need a makeover, and fast. You still wearin’ those overalls and trucker’s caps?” Her British accent was thick with censure.

I refused to be judged by a woman who looked like a magician’s drunken assistant on her normal days. “I don’t want a makeover. I want you to get rid of a pixie.”

“I’m not a pest removal service.” She paused. “Did you say pixie? Here, in Broken Heart?”

“No, in France, because I thought, What the hell? I like the Eiffel Tower and croissants and French accents. Of course it’s in Broken Heart!”

“No need to get your knickers in a knot,” she muttered, although she sounded more bemused than irritated. “It said it was a pixie, then?”

“Yeah. Well, it also said it was a sidhe.”

“Blimey. I’ll be right there.”

“Look, I just wanted advice—”

The phone went dead. Argh! I snapped the cell phone shut. My skin prickled, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a spurt of pink sparkles. I spun around and watched Zerina pop into view. She looked like she was in her early twenties, with a neon pink haircut, pageboy style. Her eyes were pink, too. Today, she wore a neon pink bustier, black miniskirt, and zippered black calf boots with pink skulls on the sides.

“What’s its name?” Her gaze was glued to the twirling and zipping and flickering gold dot.

“Spriggan.”

She looked at me and grinned. “They’re all called spriggan. It’s what the Celts named the little buggers. Gold means it’s a male. Females are silver.” She glanced at me. “I haven’t seen a pixie for almost a hundred years. Used to be you couldn’t walk through a field without kicking up a cloud of ’em. They like nature. Really good at makin’ things grow. Sorta like bees on steroids. Only they use their magic.”

Aw, man. I didn’t want a Pixie 101 class. Still, I found my curiosity peaked. “He said pixies were immortal. If they can’t die, then what happened to all of them?”

“All sidhe are immortal,” said Zerina. “Nobody knows why the pixies vanished. They just did. Why did this one pop up here? And why now?”

I didn’t know the answers to either of those questions, and wasn’t sure they mattered, anyway. I’d seen so much weird shit in Broken Heart in the last year that it was really hard to surprise me. After watching a dragon swoop out of the sky and destroy a Mercedes, pixies weren’t all that impressive.

I showed Zerina the red string with its dangling black thorn.

She frowned. “Where did you find that?”

“Inside one of the Invisi-shield posts. Spriggan was stuck inside, at the very bottom. He said it was a pixie trap.”

“Part of one.” She looked up. “Oy! Get your sparkly ass down here.” She took the string and dangled it in front of Spriggan. The little blur darted backward. “How’d you get to Broken Heart?” demanded Zerina. “And do tell, oh ye of tiny brain, how’d you get trapped?”

The gold dot zoomed to Zerina. “You can’t just boss me around, you know. I’m not bound to you, only her—the one who saved me. And even then, I’m not required to put up with bad behavior. I refuse!” He paused, presumably to take a breath for another verbal berating, and then he cried, “Brigid save me! The outcast!”

Spriggan zipped to me. Outrage bristled from him; his gold light blinked furiously. “Remove her from my presence immediately.”

Zerina and I weren’t exactly pals, but right now, I liked her better than Spriggan. “Everyone’s welcome here,” I said. “What’s your problem?”

“She is an abomination!”

“Well, in this town she’s in charge of the beauty shop, and if you don’t pipe down, I’ll let her do your hair.”

He issued a tiny “Hmph!” Then he shot to the ceiling, the epitome of pissed-off fairy. I heard his teeny mutterings and rolled my eyes. I looked at Zerina. “You wanna tell me how to make another pixie trap?”

“That’s your question?” She laughed. “I don’t know what to make of you, Simone Sweet. He tells you I’m an abomination and you don’t even blink. Aren’t you curious about his accusation?”

“I make my own judgments,” I said, “and no assumptions about folks. Besides, words are just words.”

“You’re wrong. Words are power. That’s why he won’t tell you his name. If you know it, he’ll have to do all that you say—because if you did save him, then he’s your shiny little slave until he repays that kindness.” Her pink gaze assessed me. Then she nodded, as if she’d made some sort of decision. “Sit down. I’ll tell you a story.”

I had a sofa tucked into the corner. I led her to the beat-up old thing, then curled into one corner of it. She sat on the other side and crossed her legs. Her leather boots rubbed together as she adjusted her position. She didn’t look at me. Instead, her gaze was on the agitated pixie.

“I’m more than four hundred years old. That’s very young for my kind. Most fairies have been around forever. The gods created them, just the same as they created oxygen and amoebas and mountain ranges.”

I knew the story of Ruadan, the first vampire. Even before he was Turned, he was sidhe. More than four thousand years ago, he’d died on a battlefield and his mother, the goddess Brigid, begged her own mother, Morrigu, for the life of her eldest son. I’d met Brigid once. And even though I knew she existed, I couldn’t quite shake my own belief system. I’d been raised a Christian, although there’s not much room in Christianity for vampirism. Not in a good, demon-free way.

“But Ruadan . . .” I muttered.

“Yeah. His dad, Bres, was half-human. His human blood made him weak. He died trying to take over Eire. That stupid war killed him and his sons. If Brigid hadn’t made a bargain with her mother, Morrigu, who is older than time and scary as hell, he wouldn’t be walking around. Neither would any other vampire.” She waved her hand dismissively. “The sidhe are many. And they’ve bred with humans and other creatures. Pixies, however, aren’t born. They’re magic incarnate. A gift from the gods to the Earth. Until they disappeared.”

“Maybe it’s like the honeybees,” I said. “They’re disappearing, too. It’s called colony collapse disorder. The adult worker bees just . . . fly away. And you know the weird thing? Predators like the wax moth don’t go into the CCD hives and take the honey. I think it should bother us. The bees disappearing like that.”

Zerina’s pink eyebrows nearly touched her hairline. “You must watch the Discovery Channel a lot.” She smiled to show she was joking. I smiled back, but truth was, I watched the Discovery Channel all the time. “But yes,” she said, nodding, “maybe it is like that. Maybe the pixies removed themselves from the world.”

I pointed to my new friend. “Except him.” Spriggan had zipped to the far end of the garage, presumably to stay as far from Zerina as possible. “He said he was bound to a giant.”

Zerina’s expression was pure shock. “There aren’t any giants. Not anymore.”

Wasn’t that what happened to species over the course of time? They either died out or evolved to fit the changing world. Then again, paranormal creatures didn’t really fall into the same categories as the rest of Earth’s creatures.

“As I was sayin’,” continued Zerina, “pixies were made by the gods. It’s one of the reasons the little bastards are so arrogant. Blessed with noble purpose by their makers, and all that rot.” She snorted. “But me? I was made by humans.”

My mouth dropped open. I snapped it shut, but I couldn’t stop staring at Zerina. She wasn’t a real fairy? She sure acted like one. “How is that even possible?”

“Alchemy.” She stretched her arms over her head and yawned. I knew better than to believe she was bored. I had never heard this story. I bet no one in Broken Heart knew it, except maybe Gabriel. Zerina had been part of the group who’d arrived with him last November. They’d all been outcasts, for one reason or another. Now they weren’t.

At least, I’d thought that was the case. It never occurred to me that Zerina might still feel out of place. Not that she tried very hard to fit in or make friends.