Fair Peril (10 page)

“But what's the harm?” Fay asked with honeyed malice. “You don't believe those silly stories.”

Emily was getting up from the rug. “You're a mean witch,” she told Buffy, so passionate her young voice shook. “You're a total user. Ogress.”

“Sweetie—” Buffy meant to tell the child that she was trying to protect her. It was true, she was trying to protect her.

But from what? A talking frog?

“Fairy Godmother!” Adamus yelped, deflating so suddenly that Buffy nearly lost her grip on him. “Help me!”

“You wanted mortal love,” she told him, folding her gold-clawed hands serenely atop her enormous purse. “Live with it.”

Love?

But there was no time for Buffy to think. Emily was in her face. “Get out of my house. Don't you ever come near me again.” Emily, like a spear, pale and defiant—Buffy hadn't thought there was that much passion, that much spirit, in the child. “You're not my mother. Go.”

This was a bit much. Buffy protested. “Honey pie—”

“You've got
your
frog. Go away.”

Oh, for heaven's sake. The youngster would get over it. Buffy took her frog and went.

“Addie,” Buffy tried to explain, “I couldn't let her kiss you. I just couldn't. She's too young.”

Adamus did not answer. Slumped in the kitchen sink (Buffy had made the silver pizzle pee in the silver pond for him), not looking at Buffy, he had not spoken since Emily's party. It's hard to read a frog's facial expression, but to Buffy he did not seem to be entirely sulking. Rather, he seemed defeated.

“She's my daughter,” Buffy said. “I worry about what might happen to her.” All right, damn it, apparently she did believe—something. Something might happen. And she did not want Emily to make the same mistake she had, expecting Prince Charming to take care of her. And to lead the same hellish life her mother had, wed way too young, enslaved body and soul to a well-respected tyrant of a man—what was a so-called prince if not a tyrant? Addie seemed sweet at times, but hadn't her father been sweet, too, when he wanted to? And Prentis? Until he got what he wanted? Even nice men were raised to be pricks. And that was today. Addie had been raised to be a
medieval
prick—if Buffy could believe what she was thinking.

She said to him, “I want Emily to have a life. Have some freedom. Not buy into some fairy tale. Not give herself away when she's still just a baby, when she's too young to know what she's doing.”

Adamus gave no indication that he was listening. Buffy sighed.

“Do you want something to eat?”

“No.”

At least it was speech. A monosyllable.

“Can you understand? At all? If she went to kiss a boy from her school, I wouldn't worry so much, I'd figure it was something she could handle. I'd trust her judgment. But when it comes to this fairy-tale thing—”

Okay, damn it, Fay was right. Fairy tale was potent, puissant, inconceivably powerful. You didn't mess with it.

“You have an unfair advantage, Addie. A fairy-tale prince, for God's sake.”

Silence.

Timidly Buffy suggested, “Would you like me to tell you a story?”

His head swiveled heavily; he gave her a hard golden stare. “No.” Sluggishly he swung his head toward the TV. “Make sing the box with shining gods in it.”

TV instead of her stories? If he had bitten her to the bone, he could not have hurt her more.

But he had a right to want to hurt her. Silently she got up and turned the boob tube on for him. It looked like it was Kevin Costner and some babe in the Saturday Night Movie. Adamus rested his chin, or the part of him that should have resembled a chin, on the edge of the sink to watch. His body softened, his sleek green flanks relaxed, his gaze grew rapt.

Damn him. He was just like all the rest. Buffy muttered, “I'm going to bed.”

She left her frog lolling in the sink, mesmerized by Hollywood dialogue. Didn't have the heart to shut him in the bathroom. It wasn't like he was going anywhere. He was stuck with her and he knew it.

Although she felt bone tired, she found it difficult to get to sleep; Adamus was not croaking. The silence, broken only by bursts of ominous music when nasty-bads came on screen, oppressed her. But after a couple of hours she dozed off.

Some very dark time later, she was awakened by the glockenspiel crash of breaking glass.

“Addie?” Her first thought was that the frog was flouncing around the house and had bumped into something or knocked something over. Maybe he had cut himself. She had to go see if he needed help. But a cynical, motherly inertia kept her from getting herself moving real fast; as the mom of three, she had been awakened out of a sound sleep a few times too many, and no kid had died on her yet. Her reactions had slowed proportionately as her age and mass and angst had increased.

“All right, I'm coming,” she mumbled as she heaved herself upright, nudged her feet into their cow-nosed slippers, and shuffled toward the bedroom door.

The intruder, in brief, was a lot faster than she was. A quite fetching intruder dressed with cat-burglar élan in black, butt-hugging jeans, black turtleneck, and an utterly charming black velvet French hat.

Emily.

Trust Emily to do this thing in style. Emily, who had smashed a window even though she should have known the spare key was right there by the bushes in a hyperrealistic plastic dog-poop key hider Buffy had brought home from work. Emily, swooping like Ms. Musketeer through the night, buckle that swash. Emily, frog-rescuer and savior of an ensorcelled prince.

All of this Buffy comprehended afterward, when she had time to feel ruefully proud of the kid. In the actual event, her attention, from the moment she waddled around the corner into the kitchen, was entirely taken up by the tableau.

Emily, embracing Adamus tenderly, kissing him.

Prince Adamus d'Aurca. Standing there in human form.

Over six feet tall and buck naked, with the sheen of supernatural glory on every consummate inch of him. Sleek ballet-dancer legs and bunched buttocks exquisite with muscle, tapered torso, broad shining shoulders—he lighted up the kitchen with the glow of his transformation. Though his bare, beautiful feet touched the floor, he did not seem to stand; rather, he manifested, too perfect and otherworldly to be quite human, too lusty to pass as a naked angel lacking wings, much too sweetly flesh. Emily—even though the spell was unmistakably broken, Emily was still kissing him.

Buffy stood struggling for breath at the sight of him. Then she found it and screamed.

Shrieked, rather. An embarrassingly Victorian ululation, useless except that it startled them apart. She caught a freeze-frame glimpse of their two faces, Emily's rose-colored gasp as she noticed her prince's unclad midsection, Addie staring back at Buffy with no more expression than a wild thing and with beauty that threatened to stop her heart. That old Queen of Fair Peril sure knew what she was doing when she shaped him. Wide pagan mouth. Greek brow. Golden eyes—she saw them from across the room, those glittering gold-dust eyes pooled with midnight black. Addie: she would have known him anywhere.

Standing there with the brand of faerie lips hot on his brow.

The next instant the two of them, Emily and Adamus, fled like a pair of deer.

Hand in hand, they darted out the door into the night. Buffy screamed again and stumbled after them, getting to the door just in time to hear the car roar away, speeding God knew where. No, probably God did not know. God had no place in that amoral kingdom. And Buffy could tell herself and tell herself that she would call the police, the National Guard, the President, and Oprah, that she would do whatever it took to get Emily back, but in her heart she knew: she was talking all the king's horses and all the king's men. No use. Emily belonged to the Realm of Fair Peril now.

Six

Free! By all the gods and little red devils, how joy to fill a million hearts ensouled that one simple word.
Free! She set me FREE.
How the power had filled him, the power of a paradise of angels in her kiss. With awe, adoration, joy, Adamus gazed upon her as she sent the mechanical chariot scudding at dizzying speed through the night. Such power. This, then, at last, was his fated princess. Princess Emily. How beautiful she was in the half-light that kept flashing past from the tall lamps. Up until the moment she had lifted him in her hands, when the touch of her soft lips had flashed through him like lightning and turned him inside out, up until that moment he had not known, he had not understood—she had been just the daughter to him, the pale shadow, the second choice. His focus had been all on the mother, the thunder woman who fascinated and appalled him. But now—

She felt his gaze and glanced at him, the soft contours of her face shaky in the changing light.

“Princess Emily,” he said, his voice shaky also.

“Shhhh.” She turned back to the large dark glass, the speeding lights. “I've got to concentrate or we'll wreck.” But she kept talking. “I can't believe it.” He could hear the delight and terror in her voice. “I mean, I believe it, but I can't believe it. You're real.”

Did she mean he had a soul now? Could this be? Possibly—because the potency of her kiss was like lightning and larksong, like nothing he could have expected, like nothing he had ever experienced before. The transformation from hostage child to faerie prince did not rival it. The branding fire of the kiss that had made him a servant of the Queen of Fair Peril, that was only a bad dream by comparison. Even the rigors of becoming a frog did not compare with the shock of this metamorphosis. Even the helplessness of falling to death was as nothing compared with this helplessness, this—this naked falling, this becoming a—a hostage to her. This falling in love.

Her kiss had made him her captive.

Not free.

The realization put a keen and painful edge on his joy, but joy remained. He adored her. His terror and unhappiness ran through him like wine. He whispered again, “Princess Emily.”

“Shhhh. I can't look at you. We have to find you some clothes before the cops stop us.”

He said, “I love you.”

“Hush. Please.” Her voice trembled. He saw a shivering smile. He saw her rosebud chest heave.

She must not have meant, Adamus decided, that he had a soul, because a soul was a constant, was it not? It did not seem possible that he could have a soul when everything about him could be transformed so quickly and completely. When he had been a frog, his thoughts had been green and watery, his dreams informed with algae and the flitting of winged insects, his lusts founded upon the laying of eggs. But now that he was a prince, his thoughts had transformed as much as his body. Just the thought of her small, round breasts under the thin cloth made his—made him cover a salient part of himself with his hands. And his thoughts had a new texture. Blue velvet in them, and smooth bedsheets, and the whisper of silk on skin. And that wine-red heat in his heart, his blood. And the color of gold, her hair. The weight of gold in his thoughts. Crown. Circlet. Wedding ring.

He loved her. He loved her. Heady joy. Yet—how could he say he loved her? He knew he did not yet have a soul.

Only one thing seemed constant: he was still in thrall.

“Nine-one-one.”

“Yes, my daughter just ran away with a naked fetch.”

“A naked what, ma'am?”

“Fetch. Frog, fairy-tale prince, stud muffin, crotchthrob frog fairy—”

“Name-calling won't help us, ma'am. You say his name is Tayell Prinz?”

“No, his name is Prince Adamus d'Aurca, and he just took off in the altogether with my daughter!”

“And your daughter is how old, ma'am?”

“Sixteen.”

“And how long has she been gone?”

“About a minute and a half now.”

The dispatcher's tone of professional boredom never varied. “Call us if she hasn't come back in twenty-four hours, ma'am.”

“But she's likely to do anything! She broke my window, stole my frog—”

“She broke a window? I'll send an officer to take a report, ma'am. Your name and address?”

Buffy hung up without answering, her thoughts reserving a hot spot in hell for people who considered that a broken window was more important than a missing child, Emily, who had already been gone for two minutes. God damn it that time had been wasted. Buffy grabbed her car keys and headed for the door. Her slippers slowed her down; broken glass be damned, she kicked them off and ran out barefoot into the night. The Escort, with the nearly supernatural perversity routinely demonstrated by inanimate objects in times of stress, stalled the first three times she tried to start it, then bucked as she backed down the driveway and shimmied like a belly dancer when she pushed it to sixty before the first traffic light. Goddamn car. But at least no cop saw her run the light. Buffy accomplished a one-car stampede to the edge of town, back Main Street to the commercial strip at the other end, and around the bypass before a cop stopped her. Speeding. Driving without a license. A ticket for $297. He did not ticket her for hysteria, driving barefoot and in a nightgown (cerulean-blue flannel with glow-in-the-dark stars, planets, and crescent moons), or asking goofy questions. No, he had not seen a metallic-mauve Probe with a teenage girl and a naked fetch in it.

Forty-five minutes later, Buffy, still barefoot, flannel-gowned, and hysterical, stood at the door of the Prentis Sewell stately residence, pounding and leaning on the loathsome door chimes.

After an inordinate interval, Prentis opened the door a crack and peered out with his cute little dresser-drawer weapon in hand. Prentis, in sweats, jaw set, trying to look tough on crime, as if there might be a TV crew on his doorstep at three in the morning. Turning his hair-implanted head slightly so that the light caught his best angle. Seeing his ex, he opened the door fully yet seemed not at all sure he might not need the gun. “Buffy, for God's sake—”