Darkness & Light (War of the Fae: Book 3) (7 page)

“Chase, my daemon, and Becky, my friend.”

“Lie!” spat Maggie.
 
She’s like a fae lie detector or something.
 
She detests lies.

“Bullshit!
 
She’s my friend.”

“Truth!
 
But the other part ... lie!”

“Chase being my daemon?”

“Yes!”

I was confused by that
.
 
Of course he was my daemon, my protector.
 
That was his job and he took it seriously.
 
That’s how he ended up with an arrow in his back in the first place.
 
But I didn’t have time to argue semantics with her right now.

“Whatever.
 
Just let us in.
 
I have Tim with me.”
 
I held up the box for her to see.

The door opened and she beckoned us in, croaking out, “So?
 
What else did you bring me,
hmmmm
?
 
Anything green perchance?”

“No.
 
I’ve already brought you a
buttload
of that stuff.
 
I need your help this time with nothing in return.”

“Nothing in life comes for free.
 
You must offer me a trade to fix your friend.”
 
She peered into the box I had opened for her.
 
“
Hmmmm
.
 
A pixie wing, perhaps ...
”
 
She
smiled her nearly toothless grin at me, making me cringe.
 
The few teeth she had left were brown and
rotten-looking
.
 
I hated making her happy because her smile was truly nauseating.

I looked at her in disgust.
 
“He’s practically dead from having one wing burned off, and you want to take his only good one?
 
Are you sick in the head?”
 
I kind of already knew the answer to that question, but it didn’t hurt to point it out, even though she didn’t take the hint now and never had in all the other hundred times I’d mentioned it.
 

Maggie shrugged her shoulders, shuffling away.
 
“Up to you ...
”
 
Then
she started humming her favorite tune, breaking out in lyrics I knew only too well, but now enhanced with an extra line she came up with just for the occasion.
 
“Green things, green things, beautiful lovely green things; pixie wings, green and sparkly things, oh my lovely green things.”

“You’re
batshit
crazy, Maggie, you know that?”
 
I turned to my friends, speaking quietly as she puttered behind me.
 
“I don’t know what to do.”

Becky peered into the box.
 
“Oh, ouch.
 
That looks so painful.”
 
She looked at me, concern marring her features.
 
“She’s going to take the bad one off, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“So will he be able to fly with just one?”

“No, he has to wait for it to grow back.”

She shrugged slowly at me, a questioning look on her face that was shared by Chase.
 
“Well, if she took both of them off, would it make a difference to Tim?
 
I mean, him being able to fly and do the stuff ... I don’t know ... that pixies do?”

I thought about it for a second, Maggie cackling behind me.
 
Old bitch was probably listening to everything we said.

“I guess not.
 
But how pissed is he going to be when he wakes up and finds himself wingless?
 
And realizes it was me who gave his wing away?”

“He did it for you once before,” reminded Becky, gently.

“Yeah, but that was different.
 
He volunteered.
 
This would be me
taking
it.”

“To save his life,” said Chase.
 
“He will understand.”

I thought of going out into the forest to try and find something else green to trade, but I knew she had scoured this part of the forest and picked it clean.
 
I was only able to find her green things in Light Fae territory, far from here.
 
And Tim didn’t have enough time for me to go looking; his breathing was getting shallower by the hour.

I turned to her, frustrated.
 
“Fine, you old bat.
 
His good pixie wing for a
complete
healing.
 
Deal or not?”

“Deal!”

“And you have to promise they’ll both grow back – that’s part of the definition of complete healing.”

“I said
deal!”
she screeched at me.

“Shit, okay, okay – don’t get your undies in a bunch.”
 
Good lord, I hoped she wore undies.
 
I shuddered as I fought to get those horrific images out of my head.
 

She shuffled over and grabbed at the box.
 
I held it up above her head.
 
“Easy now.
 
This is my friend.
 
I expect you to treat him carefully.”
 
I gave her my most threatening look.
 
“Hurt him, and you have me to deal with.”

She cackled at me.
 
“Truth!”

I rolled my eyes, shaking my head.
 
“What is
with
you and the lie detector shit, anyway?”
 
I lowered the box and gently handed it to her.

“Wait outside.”

The other two didn’t argue.
 
They got out of there in a hurry, the door slamming behind them.

Maggie didn’t even look up at me.
 
“What do you want?” she demanded in a softer voice.

I wasn’t sure exactly.
 
I just looked at the box with Tim in it.
 

“Get out,” she said in gentle tone.
 
“I’m not going to hurt your precious pixie, even though he deserves it, believe me.”
 
She walked over to her kitchen table, setting the box down next to her black brew pot.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She raised her eyebrow at me as she threw pinches of various things from nearby canisters into the black pot on top of her table.

“Tim has not told you of our previous ... liaisons?”

“No.
 
He doesn’t like talking about whatever relationship you used to have.”

“Guilt!” she barked out.

“What did he do?”

She snorted.
 
“Do you mean, what did he
try
to do?”

“Okay, sure.
 
What did he
try
to do then?”

She began stirring her concoction, eyeing it carefully.

“He tried to
pixie
me.”
 
She shouted the word pixie as if it was totally unbelievable that he’d try something like that.
 
But I could totally see his reasoning.
 
If anyone needed a good cheering up, it was Maggie.

I raised my eyebrows at the news, though.
 
I know pixies liked it when other fae were happy and dancing all over the place, which is why they pixied them if they weren’t – sort of in a misdirected sense of giving the gift of happiness – only it eventually drives the person mad and they end up dying from it, so it’s more a curse than a gift.
 
The pixies didn’t quite get that part, but I’d convinced Tim it was true.

“Actually, I can see why he’d do it.”

She scowled at me.
 
“Truth.
 
Explain yourself.”

“Well, you seem kinda grouchy all the time, even when you’re happy.
 
I’m sure he was just trying to cheer you up.”

“You truly believe this, I can see.
 
But that was neither his purpose nor his motivation.
 
He was trying to steal from me.”

That didn’t really sound like Tim.
 
He was mischievous, sure, but he wasn’t a thief.
 
“What was he trying to steal?”

“A pixie.”

“A pixie?”

“I do not repeat myself.”

“You had a pixie ... and he was trying to free the pixie ... is that it?”

“The pixie was my willing captive.
 
And yes, he was trying to steal her.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to ask him.
 
I don’t read pixie minds.
 
Wouldn’t want to ... ” She went over to her shelves, pulling down two canisters and setting them down on the table, muttering, “... empty-headed pests.”

“Did he know the pixie?”

“Of course.”
 
She opened one of the jars and pulled out a pinch of something that went into the pot, causing a poof of smoke to rise up.

“Why ‘of course’?”

“I suppose most people know their mates.”

And that’s when I found out for the first time that Tim had a girlfriend or maybe even a wife.
 
But who was she and where the hell had she been for the past month?
 
And why hadn’t Tim mentioned her before?

I went outside and joined the others while Maggie did her thing on Tim.
 
After about a half hour, she came out of the door holding the box in her hand.
 
Tony’s pillowcase was still in there; Tim was now lying on top of it, wingless.

The sight of him with no wings and two mangled stumps where they should be made me feel sick to my stomach.
 
He looked like a regular man who’d been shrunk down to dragonfly size and then struck with a horrible illness.
 
His skin was white, not its normal pink.
 
He didn’t look like Tim at all.

“Is he going to be okay?” I asked hesitantly, trying not to show the weepiness I felt inside, as I looked at him.
 
He was obviously still very sick.

“We had a deal.
 
He will live.”

“What are you
gonna
do with his wing?” asked Becky, before she realized she was actually talking to a crazy witch about using body parts in
weirdass
magic.
 
Her eyes bugged out, and she snuck a scared look at me, probably searching for assurance that she wasn’t about to be cursed.

The old witch leaned in towards Becky with a sly grin on her face.
 
“Would you like to see?”

Becky tittered nervously as she answered.
 
“Uh, heh heh, no, that’s okay.
 
No thanks.
 
But it’s so nice of you to offer ... ”

“Humph,” said Maggie as she turned, shuffling towards her door.

Becky breathed a sigh of relief, her eyes crossing with the stress of what might have happened.

“Thank you, Maggie,” I called out.

All I received was a cackle in response.

We got back to the compound as fast as we could, luckily encountering no one on the way.
 
We split up at my door, promising to meet outside my room in ten minutes.
 
I put Tim in our room, gently laying him face down on his bed with his head to the side so he wouldn’t suffocate in his pillow.
 
I covered him with his tiny quilt, doing my best to spare the spot on his back where his wings used to be from suffering any additional pain.
 
It was so weird touching his tiny body like that.
 
I was worried I was going to break him.

His entire bedroom set, a miniature duplicate of mine, sat on top of my dresser.
 
I wrote a note and put it on the floor next to his bed, telling him we’d be meeting with Dardennes – the head of the council – and the council members.
 
I wrote as tiny as I could to make it easier for him to read.
 
I knew he’d be mad when he woke up, because without his wings he’d be stranded in my room.
 
But it was safer having him on the dresser at this point because being on the floor and that puny made it too likely he’d get stepped on.
 

I opened my top dresser drawer a little, the second drawer a little more, the third one even more and finally the last one all the way.
 
If Tim really wanted to get down, he’d be able to by climbing down the stairs I’d just made; but I was hoping he’d stay put until I got back.
 
Last time he lost a wing, when he voluntarily gave it up to save Chase, he was in serious pain for a couple days and it took a month for the thing to grow back.
 
So even though I doubted he’d climb down, I wanted him to know he had the option.
 
Tim was tiny, but he could get mighty cranky when he wasn’t happy.
 
He had a condition I termed ‘pixie complex’ which meant he had a chip on his shoulder about being little –
kinda
like Napoleon, but much worse.