(702) 555-1212.
Frog! All this time I’d had the answer to my problem tucked away in my pants. Sadly, the opposite was usually true. I pulled out my p-Phone and quickly punched in Spindle’s number. My luck was changing. I could feel it. The phone rang once. Twice. Then a voice answered. A very familiar voice.
“The Rose. This is Lollie. How can I help you?”
Chapter 15
“Frogging bitch!” I stabbed the End button on my phone and turned toward the Rose, intent on doing Ms. Bliss incredible amounts of bodily harm.
A noise clattered behind me. I swung around to face the sound. Yet before my eyes could adjust to the darkened night, something heavy whacked me in the back of the head. I hoisted my arms to ward off another brutal hit to my noggin, but my feet tangled in a discarded newspaper.
I was falling, grasping at anything to steady myself. My fingers caught something. Something silky. Something soft.
A flash of metal caught my eye a few seconds before it also caught the side of my head. I dropped to the sidewalk, my vision growing gray and then black.
“Sir? Sir!” a voice patty-caked through my head.
I winced, trying to focus on the sound, struggling through layers of darkness to reach the words. I knew they were words, formed by tongue, lips, and vocal cords. Words with meaning. Even if, at that moment, I had no concept of anything other than pain. It tore at my sense, ripping me from the soothing blackness of unconsciousness.
Something cold touched my face, forcing me to jerk my eyes open, a task that took a great deal of willpower. Every movement hurt from my eyebrows to the tips of my littlest piggy. I vowed never to take blinking for granted again.
Like a cartoon, bluebirds with extremely large teeth flew in a circle above my head. A huge pink orb loomed in and out of my vision, growing slowly into focus. Karl. My manservant. And his really big, bald head.
What was he doing here?
And where exactly was here?
I couldn’t remember anything, let alone how I’d ended up in a garbage-strewn alley with my head pounding like a diddled fiddle. My last memory was of arriving at the Rose. I raised my hand, glared at the piece of torn black leather fabric in it, and then gently stroked the teacup-sized lump on my temple.
A fuzzy memory surfaced.
Someone had hit me!
I said, “Someone hit me,” to Karl.
“What did you do to deserve it?”
“What!?” I nearly shouted, causing my head to throb even more than the bright sun burning overhead. I considered puking on Karl’s shoes, mostly out of revenge.
Yet my malicious manservant was far from finished. Crossing his arms over his chest, he made tsk, tsk sounds through his teeth. “Well, sir, it’s not surprising when one considers your personality. Heck, I’m amazed it doesn’t happen much more often.”
“Hey,” I protested.
“If you lie with sleeping dogs—”
“What’d you say?” I grabbed Karl’s arm and he helped me to my feet. The world spun and then righted itself.
Karl’s lips thinned. “I said, if you lie—”
“That’s it!” Without waiting for my manservant, I rushed forward. Everything came back to me in a flash. Ms. Lying Bliss. The matchbook. A flash of metal. Pain and finally blackness.
“Sir,” Karl shouted from behind me. “Wait.”
I didn’t slow. I had to find Lollie. She was the key to this whole sordid thing. When I located her, I’d force her to call Spindle off, thereby saving my bride. If she refused, well, I’d call on a power greater than myself, Elly, my all-knowing and all-seeing fairy godmother, as long as you caught her before happy hour—otherwise she was just a gin-soaked bar slut with wings.
“Sir,” Karl yelled again.
“I don’t have time for a lecture right now.” I kept walking, weaving back and forth like the drunken woodsman from last night. Something stirred in the back of my brain. Something about the woodsman . . .
“But, sir,” Karl insisted.
I stopped and spun to face my argumentative servant. “What?”
Karl lowered his gaze.
I stomped my foot. “What is it?”
“Um . . . sir . . . ,” he started.
“Spit it out already.”
“Your pants,” he said.
“Frog it, Karl, this is hardly the time to discuss my wardrobe.” I pulled at my sweatshirt. “We have to save Sleeping Beauty from a certain death.”
“But, sir,” he said. “You’re not wearing any.”
I looked down, and sure enough, my pants had vanished, along with my wallet and my p-Phone, as well as the only piece of evidence against Lollie Bliss, the matchbook. “Shit!”
Karl motioned toward the black limo at the edge of the alley and sighed, as if my lack of pants was a foregone conclusion. “Don’t worry, sir. I always carry extras in the car.”
After pulling on a pair of Levi’s from Karl’s secret stash of trousers, I explained how Lollie had lied, manipulated, and ultimately tried to murder me last night.
“Maybe we should see a doctor about your head injury,” he said, waving two fingers in front of my face. Apparently not satisfied by my growl of warning, he poked at the lump on my head.
I pushed him away. “I’m serious. Lollie played me. I bet she was the one who hit me too.”
“Didn’t you say she was inside the building at the time?” His lips puckered as if he didn’t believe a word I said. “How could she possibly strike you, sir?”
Fucking Karl and his use of logic. I rubbed the back of my neck. “I don’t know. Maybe she slipped outside after our . . .” I stopped. The less Karl knew about my attraction to Lollie and our botched kiss, the less time I’d have to listen to him lecture me about my lack of moral fiber. I ate a bran muffin for breakfast each morning, what more did Karl want?
“After your what, sir?”
“Never mind.” I waved him off. “Just trust me on this. Lollie Bliss is the spawn of a wicked witch. I’m sure of it. If she didn’t smash my head in, she damn well knows who did.” My guess was Spindle.
I was really starting to hate that supposedly imaginary guy.
Karl patted my hand. “Sure, sir. That’s what happened. Now, why don’t you have a nice lie-down on the leather seat?” He motioned to the backseat of the limo.
While the soft, plush seat looked mighty inviting, I couldn’t give up now. “Forget it.” I closed my eyes and gathered my strength. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Karl said.
I glanced in the rearview mirror, noting the Humpty-shaped lump on my forehead and the greenish bruise surrounding it. Thankfully, rather than detract from my good looks, it merely gave me a more rakish, rapscallion sort of appeal that played well with the demented princess crowd.
“I’ll live,” I told my concerned servant. “Now, take me to the Rose. And hurry.”
Karl elevated an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. Instead, he hefted his pudgy frame into the driver’s seat and took off, throwing me against the sun-warmed leather of the backseat. Two seconds later, the limo screeched to the curb. I flew forward, mashing my face against the privacy screen.
“We’re here.” Karl hopped out of the vehicle and opened my door. “Watch your step, sir,” he said with much too much glee.
Stifling a few choice curses, I staggered from the car, wiping away a trail of blood leaking from my nostril. “You might’ve mentioned we were across the street.”
He nodded. “I might’ve.”
I ignored him in favor of far better game. My sights were set on Lollie Bliss. Nothing could deter me, except, apparently, the locked front door of the Rose. I knocked on the glass. “Hey! Open up.”
On the other side of the glass the red-haired midget, looking much too chipper for eight in the morning, beamed and waved. Ever the idiot, Karl waved back. I pounded harder, rattling the door frame.
The midget tilted her head to one side and cupped her ha
nd over her ear as if she couldn’t hear me.
“I said open the damn door.”
Rather than do what I asked, she closed the blinds in my face.
“Shit!”
“I believe the establishment is closed, sir.”
“Really?” I glowered at Karl. “And what gave you that bright idea?”
Rather than shrink under my sarcasm, he grinned. “The sign, sir.” His finger pointed to a red and white Closed sign hanging in the window.
Before I could pummel Karl for his mockery, Tweedle, the overgrown biker from last night, came around the corner. He stopped when he saw me, his eye darting back and forth. “Hey,” he said as if just recognizing me, “you’re that guy.”
I nodded.
“Man, you pissed Red off bad last night,” Tweedle said, shivering in the burning-hot sun. “After you left, she called you all sorts of names.”
“Charming.”
“That ain’t one of them.”
No doubt. In all fairness, I’d called her employer much worse, and I’d meant every utterance. I focused my attention back on Tweedle. “Have you seen Ms. Bliss today?”
“What’s it to you?”
Plastering a sincere smile on my face, I took a step forward, all unassuming frog prince. “We were supposed to meet. Here. A few minutes ago . . . to . . . ah . . . finish my tattoo.” I tapped my chest for show. “I guess I missed her.”
Tweedle nodded, his triple chins bobbing with every movement. “Yeah, Lollie met with some guy and then took off on a bike.”
Spindle, I bet. “How long ago?”
“Like, an hour ago.”
“Any idea where she went?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “She said something about a job in that gated community on the hill.”
A lump of fear formed in the back of my throat. Beauty lived in the Old MacDonald gated community; her palace overlooked his farm to be precise. Prime Cin City real estate, if one could stand the stench of heated baa baa black sheep shit all summer. “Did she say what the job was?”
“Nope,” he paused to scratch his blubbery chin, “but she brought her gun.”
Chapter 16
“Are you sure?” I asked Beauty’s butler, Marvin, for the tenth time in the last thirty seconds of our phone conversation. “Sleeping can look a lot like dead.”
“Yes, sir,” Marvin again reassured me as to Beauty’s continued breathing. “I checked the lady myself. She is fast asleep. No need for worry.”
“Are you sure?” I asked one more time, my heartbeat finally slowing to normal. Marvin answered by disconnecting the call, leaving me listening to the harsh buzz of a dial tone.
“So what did the butler say?” Karl asked, wringing his hands against the steering wheel as we flew through the streets of Cin City on our way to save Sleeping Beauty.
Not that she’d appreciate it.
I took a deep breath. “Beauty’s fine. She’s been fast asleep since she called me last night.” Apparently, Marvin was under strict orders not to disturb her, so he’d flatly refused to let me speak with her to verify that she wasn’t worm food. Yet.
“Thank God,” Karl said.
“Karl,” I said to my faithful servant, “we have to hurry. If anything happens to her . . .”
“Don’t fret, sir,” Karl said. “Sleeping Beauty will live a long, happy life.”
I grunted. As long as she said “I do,” and I didn’t revert to my froglike state, I couldn’t care less about Sleeping Beauty’s happiness. In fact, once we were officially married, I’d send her off to live out her sleepy days locked in the tower.
Just like dear old Dad had done.
Hell, give her a blanket and a pea-less mattress and Beauty would probably be as happy as a clam.
A few minutes later the limo pulled up the yellow winding brick driveway that led to Beauty’s palace. The hot desert wind whipped along the valley below, and an eerie sound, almost like E-I-E-I-O, reverberated around us.
Groundskeepers and gardeners tended to the overgrown bushes lining the drive to Beauty’s home. Roses, gardenias, and lilac bushes spouted from the landscape like a plague of wicked witches. Oddly, there wasn’t a cactus in sight. The lush, emerald grass mocked the dry heat. Thank God I wasn’t the shmuck paying the water bill.
“Sir, we’re here,” Karl, manservant of the obvious, said from the driver’s seat.
“I can see that,” I said, not moving.
“Shouldn’t you rescue Princess Beauty now?”
“Right.” I nodded, but still didn’t move an inch. What the hell was I going to say to Beauty? If I told her the truth, she was bound to break our engagement. Even the king wouldn’t stand for his future son-in-law plotting the murder of his bride.
Karl cleared his throat. “So . . .”
“I’m going.” I rolled my eyes, pulling open the passenger-side door. The hot desert air blasted my face. I blinked, trying to restore moisture to my now-sandpaper-like eyeballs. Slowly, like a condemned man, I headed up the golden walkway and knocked on the diamond-encrusted front door.
Marvin answered quickly enough, barely sparing me a glance; instead he nodded up the staircase and then disappeared down the hall, his boots clicking on the highly polished floor.
I stepped through the door, struck again by the opulence surrounding me. Gold and jewels sparkled from every surface. Million-dollar pieces of art hung along the walls, lit by the glow of fairy butts. From the wealth around me, one thing was clear; the Vaniteuse family loved money. I had my doubts the same could be said for each other.
And the bastard king had stuck me with the dinner check.
I supposed that explained the king’s desire to marry Sleeping Beauty off to the highest bidder, sight unseen. After all, the La Grenouille name resembled an unlimited credit card. You could buy anything, anywhere. No questions or credit check required.
Sometimes I hated having gazillions of dollars.
Not often, mind you.
Really only on tax day. All those forms to sign. It was exhausting.
“Jean-Michel.” Pretty, her olive eyes and blond hair sparkling in the sunlight, appeared in front of me. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m here to see your sister, of course. I’ve missed her.” I forced a smile to my lips.
Pretty shook her head and curls danced around like Old King Cole on a fairy-dust binge. “I don’t think so.” Apparently the sisters shared rudeness as well as their looks.
I tilted my head. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.” Color stained Pretty’s pretty cheeks. “It’s just . . . Can I ask you a question?” She took a fortifying breath after I nodded my agreement. “Why Beauty? I mean, I love my half sister . . .”
“But?”
“Well, she’s not,” her voice turned as silken as whey, “exactly queen material.” The “unlike me” part of her statement hung in the air between us.
True enough, but for some reason Pretty’s words annoyed me more than I cared to admit. Beauty wasn’t that bad. I’m sure, under all that flannel, there lurked the heart of a queen. A really annoying and tired queen, but a queen nonetheless. “Yes, well,” I began. “Beauty is special.”
“So the psychiatrists say,” she said.
“Be that as it may.” My tone grew cold. “Mademoiselle, if you’ll excuse me, my bride and I have much to discuss about our upcoming nuptials.”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “I apologize for my rudeness. It’s just . . . you’re so . . . perfect, and Beauty’s so . . .”
“Sleepy?”
“Exactly.”
“I understand.” I bowed slightly. Poor Pretty, she was another victim of my frog prince charm. Eventually, after a few years of therapy, she would be all right. I patted her shoulder, wincing as she stared up at me, her heart in her bright eyes. “Yes, well . . . I should go find Beauty.”
Her face fell, but she managed to utter, “Yes, of course.”
Taking a deep breath, I headed up the staircase, Pretty’s intense gaze burning into my back.
Once I reached the second floor, I stopped, my eyes fixed on Sleeping Beauty’s bedroom door at the end of the corridor. Less than a hundred feet separated me from the woman who could end my curse or damn me for eternity.
Given my luck over the last couple of days, the latter seemed much more likely. With a sigh, I took one step toward my future, my heart thundering in my chest.
“Ow!” I yelped as a sharp pain radiated from my foot. I glanced down, surprised to see Jimmy Cockroach, his top hat askew and the umbrella in his hand bent at an odd angle.
Glaring up at me, he brandished his tiny, bent umbrella at me. “Watch where you’re walking, you dolt.”
Dolt? Really? Who talked like that? I grimaced, lifting my foot to examine the damage left by his umbrella. A small hole dotted the insole of my shoe, a handmade loafer designed by an old woman who sure knew what to do with shoe leather.
Without further comment or apology, Jimmy Cockroach scurried down the hall, pausing at the top of the stairs to glare at me.
“Nice to see you again too,” I said with a wave, which caused him to spin on his tiny heel and murmur something about the sorry state of eligible princes these days.
I shook my head and continued on my path toward the woman I would soon call my wife. Or a corpse. Sadly, I wasn’t sure there’d be a really big difference between the two.
A door two rooms away from Beauty’s stood open. I peeked inside as I passed. The room was empty with the exception of an industrial-sized sewing machine with an extremely long needle threaded with yarn, yarn the same golden color as Beauty’s hair. Murky sunlight crept in through a fogged window. Cobwebs covered the sewing machine, yet the rest of the room looked freshly dusted. I sniffed the air. It smelled faintly of decay, as well as something sweet and familiar, something I couldn’t place. A shiver ran down my spine.
The sooner I got Beauty away from this place and tucked safely away in a tower somewhere, the better.
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