Faery Moon

by P. R. Frost

  “My name’s Tess.”

  “Lady Tess.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Are you an escapee from Faery, too?”

  “Where’s Faery? Bulgaria my home.” His accent suddenly thickened.

  “Okay, so how does Gregbaum treat his dancers?” The look of terror on Mint’s face came from somewhere. And she’d said, “You know what he’ll do to us if you are late again.”

  “No word. No gossip. None of his dancers speak English. They live in a dormitory in basement of hotel. Never leave building.” Mickey sounded bitter.

  But they did speak English. Or at least I understood them to speak English.

  “How come you know so much?”

  “I auditioned and got rejected. Asked around. I’m a good dancer and gymnast. One of the best. They should have hired me. But no, Gregbaum hires each one personally. Brought in the entire cast from somewhere else. Should be some loyalty to people who already live here,” he grumbled. His accent grew thicker.

  I missed the flash of white teeth in his smile.

  “So you are stuck driving a taxi instead of dancing.”

  “Yeah. Driving taxi for prettiest lady in Las Vegas. You still want to see Valley of Fire tomorrow?”

  Did I? Was I connecting dots or following red herrings here. Maybe I needed to wait on that and check out Gary Gregbaum and Lady Lucia instead.

  Maybe I needed help.

  “Let’s wait on that, Mickey. I’ll call you.”

  “No problem. But you really should see the Valley of Fire before you leave. Is most spectacular at sunrise and sunset.”

  The times of transition in folklore. The times when magic is strongest. When portals to other dimensions open . . . ?

  “Two days from now, when the quarter moon is rising and the sun setting. Mickey take you.”

  A waxing quarter moon, when demons most often breach their portals and invade our dimension.

  Whooee! Time travel is such a rush. Back and forth to the Citadel twice without Tess or Ginkgo being aware that I’ve been gone for hours drains me. I really need some beer and OJ. Some mold would be better. Not easily found in the desert. Vegas is drier than the Citadel, if you can believe that. Not given to mold. In Vegas, they have tons of air conditioners that breed my favorite restorative in abundance.

  But I don’t dare leave Ginkgo while he sleeps off our heavy exertions. Now that he realizes he really likes boys better than girls, I must cement our relationship.

  At last I have found the perfect lover. He’s younger than I by a good fifty years, and already full sized. Such strength and stamina!

  I could wax poetic on my lover’s attributes for, like forever. Unfortunately duty calls. Duty in the form of Tess, my beloved Warrior.

  Life in the Citadel stifled her. But now that Ginkgo and I are an item, (ooh, I like the sound of that) I wish Tess would visit more often. I’ll have to suggest a refresher course in being a Warrior of the Celestial Blade.

  “Psst, Ginkgo.” I rouse my stud from his snoring slumber. An imp snoring is a beautiful song of love and life affirmation. Yet I must regrettably end it.

  “Ginkgo, have you spoken to Gayla?” Gayla is his Warrior.

  “Gayla.” He smiles dreamily.

  “Did you ask her to call Gollum?” Someone has to make use of that telephone she installed at great cost and near rebellion from the ranks of traditionalists. I mean, really, they use very modem pickup truck to run into town for supplies and make lightning raids on rogue portals. You’d think they’d wake up to changing times and get some electricity and indoor plumbing out here!

  “My Gayla made the call. This Gollum person wings his way toward your Tess, though how he can fly in one of those mechanical contraptions I do not understand. Now where were we?” He reaches for me.

  He draws circles around the warts on my bum with his talons. Blood wells in the track of his tracing. I wrap my tail around his neck. Not quite domination, not quite subjugation with my backside in his face.

  I’ll check out Faery in a bit.

  My cell phone chirped a phrase from “A Night on Bald Mountain,” just as I entered the casino across from Mom’s stage. The blame thing changed ring tones on its own every day or two. I tried for a discreet and anonymous chirp. The universe wanted to summon me with music geared to the weird.

  I glanced at the caller ID and smiled. “Gollum, what’s up?” Ten o’clock here. One AM at home on Cape Cod.

  “I am. Or I will be in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m in Chicago, on my way to Vegas.”

  “Huh? Don’t you have classes?”

  “None on Friday. Remember, we set up my schedule with the community college so I could have weekends to take you to cons when you need company.”

  “Oh, yeah. Listen, I’m glad you’re coming. I hope you have your laptop with all your interesting databases.”

  “I figured you might need your archivist when Gayla called me and told me you needed help.”

  “Gayla?” Either I was missing something or all the smoke and noise of the casinos had fried my brain.

  Off to my left, Donovan shuffled in by another door. His eyes looked heavy and his shoulders slumped. He’d been drinking.

  Well, what did I expect. I’d be drunk, too, if he’d done to me what I just did to him. I turned my back on him, not ready to deal with that little problem just yet.

  That little movement put me in line of sight to Mom crooning her way through “Foggy Day In London Town.” No sign of Penny and Ed Stetson.

  But Sancroix stood on the fringes of her audience staring at her in fascination.

  Or was he studying her like a cat studies its prey? His big imp sat heavily on the man’s shoulder. Fortitude had folded his wings, covering his head in sleep.

  Except that imps rarely slept.

  Was that an imp eye peering out surreptitiously spying on the room for Sancroix? Why the subterfuge if I was the only one in the room who could see the imp?

  Because I was the only one in the room who could see the imp.

  Junior sat at a table beside him, twisting a paper napkin to shreds. Still nervous and twitchy. A squarely built woman sat beside him, back to me. Something in the angle of her head looked familiar.

  I pushed aside the images of stalker and prey. Sancroix had to be one of the good guys, or his imp wouldn’t stay with him; Gayla wouldn’t have sent him to assist me last month against a little problem with my mother’s half-blood Damiri demon husband and a grieving widowed Windago—there was that crazy book title that kept haunting me. Next book. I had two newly under contract already.

  “I’ll book a room for you here at The Crown Jewels,” I told Gollum.

  “Already done, love. Don’t wait up for me. I’ll see you in the morning.” He made a kissing sound.

  Huh?

  Gollum? Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe the pedantic professor. My dear friend and archivist. My confidant and the one I trusted almost more than myself.

  I really had missed something.

  Donovan sloshed up to the bar.

  “I’m glad Gollum is coming. He can provide a buffer between me and my ex-stepbrother,” I said to myself. I kept reminding myself of all the reasons why I had rejected Donovan. I had to. Otherwise, my hormones and my greed for that diamond might make me do something even more stupid than sleeping with him last night.

  Chapter 14

  Las Vegas means “The Meadows” in Spanish. The name appears on maps as early as the 1830s. Las Vegas was officially founded in 1905 when the railroad came to town.

  MOM ENTERTAINED A LARGE crowd in the lounge with a vibrant rendition of “Seventy-Six Trombones.” The song provided a nice balance to the moody torch songs. The audience sang along on the chorus. Some even got up and marched around their tables. She knew how to work an audience.

  “Amazing! When did she learn to do that?”

  Barely ten thirty. She’d keep them going for hours y
et.

  I took my cell phone back to our room. No signal.

  Back to the lobby. No signal.

  Outside in the parking lot. No signal.

  I growled something very impolite.

  “Is there a problem, Ms. Noncoiré?” a shaky tenor voice asked from behind me.

  I whirled about, automatically en garde. No sign of Scrap. I sent out a mental call for help.

  “Oh, it’s you. Junior Sancroix.”

  He still twitched nervously, his gaze darting right and left, across the street, and back to my feet. Not my eyes. He looked firmly at the pavement.

  “Is there a problem?” He grimaced like he should be embarrassed by my language, but wasn’t.

  “No cell service.”

  “That happens sometimes.” He shrugged. “You can always use the hotel landlines.” His smile turned greedy.

  “And pay exorbitant connection fees as well as inflated long-distance charges.” I wondered if he had magnets or something inside the building to block service. Or maybe he used his empathic talent to convince people they had no signal when they did. I wouldn’t put it past him. He didn’t have an imp to lull my distrust.

  “Such is life in Vegas.” He shrugged again.

  “I’m curious. How’d a man in his early thirties come to own a hotel, casino, and convention center?”

  “I have connections.” He grinned at me. For half a moment in the glaring lights on tall poles his eye teeth looked elongated and extra sharp, his eyes tilted up and his ears pointed on the upward lobes.

  “Connections to Lady Lucia?”

  “Where’d you hear that name?” Immediately, he clamped his mouth shut, hunched his shoulders defensively, and scanned the skies as well as the parking lot. His hands twitched, and so did his neck.

  “The Contessa befriended me with tickets to ‘Fairy Moon.’ I saw you and your uncle there tonight.”

  “You will have a full signal on your cell phone by morning.” He turned on his heel and fairly ran back into the safety of the casino. He ran as if a vampire followed on his heels.

  Stop that! I nearly slapped my face to shake off the imagery. I really needed to get back to work and channel my overactive imagination into my books.

  But first, I had another way of contacting my Citadel for information about Breven Sancroix and his nervous nephew.

  Too many lights and distractions in my room. I headed to the one place I might find quiet and privacy in this town. The roof.

  I didn’t obey the “Employees Only” signs on the doors or the chain and padlock across the last bit of stairway. My legs were too short to easily climb over it, but I was limber enough to duck under, even in a fancy dress and heels.

  Huge, humming barrel units on the nearly flat roof ran the air-conditioning. I found a shadowed place between two of them, letting their constant and monotonous drone mask the roar of traffic that never ended on the streets. When Scrap decided to come home, he’d find me here, right next to his favorite feeding ground.

  I had to clear a space of gravel bits and blown debris before trusting the fine layers of my skirt to the dirty surface. It tilted just a little toward a gutter and filter system to drain the infrequent but heavy rainfall. I suspected somewhere in the maze one of these barrel units contained a cistern for maintaining the extensive landscaping.

  Then I sat cross-legged, wiggling a bit to find maximum comfort.

  Meditation is not my strong suit. Restlessness and muscles that need to keep moving plagued me as I tried to find an inner stillness. I could almost hear Gollum’s voice in my ear, whispering “Breathe. Breathe deeply. Concentrate on breathing.”

  I smiled inwardly that he was winging his way to me even now. But I didn’t let that tiny bit of joy distract me. Instead, I used it to conjure images in my mind of the good times I’d had at the Citadel. There weren’t many. But a few.

  Sister Serena, laughing with me as she made jokes about our scars. Sister Paige saluting me the first time I felled her in arms practice. Sister Gayla’s exuberant shout as she and three pickup loads of Warriors joined me in battle against a band of Sasquatch. We fought for possession of an ancient native artifact, an unfinished blanket that held honor, dignity, honesty, justice, and a few other noble characteristics for all mankind woven into its design.

  We Warriors of the Celestial Blade did some good.

  My thoughts traveled all the way north to my Citadel and my friends. I imagined a tiny bit of candle flame sparking a light inside any receptive mind within the high stone walls in that hidden ravine between here and there, ’twixt light and shadow, only a part in this dimension and partly in the next.

  I felt a connection, another mind rousing from slumber to acknowledge the brush of my thoughts. Serena, always the most sensitive to communication from near or far. She slept lightly, a requirement for a physician.

  But this was not a medical emergency and Serena was tired. Her sisters had fought long and hard against another incursion from the Sasquatch trying to open a new portal.

  I let her sleep. My questions would wait.

  Something awakens me. I’m too groggy to recognize the weak call not directed to anyone in particular.

  My Tess.

  Duty calls. Duty calls. I can sense Tess getting anxious about me being gone so long. I’m so tired I don’t dare manipulate time to return to her earlier in the day.

  I can’t linger any longer though I want to stay. Sleeping next to my lover has to be one of the greatest joys in life. I cannot imagine such intimacy with any other than my soul mate.

  I crawl away from Ginkgo’s bed, limp and sated. My legs feel heavy. At the same time, my wings keep carrying me higher and higher.

  First, I need to check out Faery. What I left Tess to do in the first place. My visit to Ginkgo and his Warrior Gayla was supposed to be just a quick side trip. But then Ginkgo started throwing pheromones at me like there was no tomorrow.

  And for most of the night and half the day, there was no tomorrow. Only us.

  Ahhhh!

  I duck into the chat room and pause by the doorway back to Earth.

  I can see the portal to Faery, just two doors down. A little thing with a haze in front of it. One of the easier barriers to breach, if you know how or have enough willpower. Which I do.

  The big, red-scaled monster faeries are still on duty. What is this? The guards are supposed to change every day. Different demon tribes rotate the watches to keep everyone in their proper dimension.

  Three days running I’ve had to dodge these guys.

  Maybe, if I make myself real small and keep close to the edge, I can avoid detection. One step. Then two. A third and a flit and I’m right in front of the door I need.

  A quick peek inside. The stream that chuckles down the hillside runs clear and clean again. The grass is vividly green and the flowers splash brilliant color. Just like it’s supposed to.

  Last month, when faeries disputed the succession of their king and that king’s murderer still ran loose around Earth, Faery did not look so lovely.

  But what is this? The big oak tree with clumps of mistletoe has fallen. The grass beneath its rotting trunk is brown. The upper branches are damming the creek. Water backs up behind it and floods the meadow.

  I set my wings in motion to carry me through the portal for further investigation.

  And bounce right back into the path of the ugly demons on duty.

  “Faery is closed,” an ugly male says. “No imps in Faery. No imps outside Imp Haven.” He reaches a hairy paw with an opposable thumb for my neck.

  Demons with opposable thumbs? Gods and Goddesses, what is this universe coming to? Next thing you know the Powers That Be will give opposable thumbs to cats.

  Cats, the most cunning, malicious, and evil of all demons!

  I dodge the monster and dive right back to Earth. I need to tell someone about this. But who? Who can help? Who can restore the balance to Faery?

  And the balance must be restored. So
mething is draining energy from Faery. That energy is building up somewhere, raw power an unscrupulous being can tap and manipulate for evil.

  Chapter 15

  “The Strip” is actually Las Vegas Boulevard, a section of US Highway 91.

  A LOT OF THE “WORK” of a conference takes place at the breakfast buffet or in the bar. Since Mom had the main bar tied up most of the evening, writers, agents, and editors congregated in the small dining area adjacent to the casino. Everything is adjacent to or connected to the casino even in small hotels that cater to conventions and conferences.

  I’d just settled next to the mystery writer Jack Weaver with a plate full of waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon, juice, and the watery brown stuff they called coffee in this town when Junior Sancroix elbowed a romance editor aside to take the chair on the opposite side.

  Damn. I wanted to talk to that editor. I had some ideas about a contemporary paranormal romance I wanted to discuss with her.

  “You’re that ringer the conference brought in to draw more people,” he announced to the table at large.

  “I’m a published writer who has had some success,” I corrected him. “So’s Mr. Weaver here.”

  “I want to write a book,” Junior said quietly. He looked directly at me.

  “The only way to write a book is to write it,” I replied.

  “Hear, hear!” Jack raised his glass of juice in toast.

  Everyone else at the table joined him in the salute, including the editor.

  “There’s lots of weird things that happen in Vegas, a lot of connections that don’t make sense until you start unraveling them, take them back to the source. I need to write about them,” Junior insisted. He picked up a stray knife from a cutlery set and began tapping the table with it.

  “Then write about them.” I tried to ignore him.

  “I’ve never written before. I’ll need help. But I think I’ll make it a romance. That can’t be too hard. After all, bored housewives do it for fun. And make a lot of money at it.” He flipped the knife to balance between two fingers and waggled it back and forth.