A Monster's Paradise (Away From Whipplethorn Book Three)

by A W Hartoin

  Lonica tapped me again. “There he is. Returned at last.”

  I followed her finger and finally spotted who she was talking about. A fairy and his entourage were flying up the nave in a V-formation towards the ornate stone pulpit.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” whispered Lonica as if the fairy could hear her. Even my sister, Iris, with her amazing Whipplethorn ears couldn’t have heard her at that distance.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Archduke Franz-Joseph. He was in Italy asking His Holiness for help dealing with the French rebels. He must be here to talk to the cardinal.” She clasped her hands together and sighed.

  The archduke was impressive in his three-piece suit of silk, and his white wings tinged with blue, but he flew through St. Stephen's magnificence like he was in a common butcher shop, not stopping a wingbeat to admire the glow or notice the fairies who’d stopped to stare. The cathedral was always filled with tourists, fairy and human alike. Of course the humans didn’t notice the archduke or any of the fairies hovering around their heads. A fact that made me feel a tiny bit bitter. I’d been seen. It was a great feat for a fairy to be seen by a human and I’d managed it quite a few times, but not in Vienna. I couldn’t get a human to so much as blink in my direction. If I had, we’d probably have known where Mom, Dad and the rest of our friends were. I could’ve gotten the human to call Tess or Judd, the young humans who were seers. They would know where our family was. At least I hoped they would. I hoped they were okay, too. Tess and Judd had been caught up in our battle to escape Paris and had been attacked by rebels. Fairies were able to kill humans and the fate of Tess and Judd wasn’t any more certain than my parents.

  “Maybe we can go down and meet him,” said Lonica, straightening her stained apron. Lonica was the cook’s assistant and she was always covered in flour and flecks of sauces.

  I shook my head. “I seriously doubt it.”

  Just as the archduke landed on the checkered floor, and a dwarf emerged from under the stairs leading to the pulpit. The cardinal’s master secretary stayed for a moment beside the pulpit’s sculptor, Anton Pilgram’s self-portrait. The servants’ entrance to the cardinal’s apartments was beside Anton’s stone neck. The master secretary’s expression was stern and unwelcoming, normal for a Mannheim dwarf, but he hesitated before he climbed down to bow before the archduke.

  “He doesn’t look pleased to see him,” I said.

  “The master secretary isn’t pleased to see anyone,” said Lonica. “I suppose you’re right we’d better get back to work. Did you get rid of the klitzeklein trolls on St. Catherine’s altar?”

  I groaned. “No. I sprayed and sprayed them, but they won’t leave.”

  “Did you try Frau Snigglebit’s Troublesome Troll remover?”

  I held up my hand and she sniffed, making a face. “Maybe something else will work.”

  “I’m going to have to throw them out by hand and they bite,” I said, showing her the tiny teeth marks on my wrist.

  Lonica made another face. “That’s not all you’re going to have to throw out.”

  I turned and saw my next job creeping down the wall behind the skull font. About three dozen gargoyles were hissing at me. Fidelé hissed back, his claws biting into my shoulder. Fidelé was a gargoyle, but he was nothing like the ones that infested St. Stephen's. He looked a bit like a dragon but with bat-like ears and a horn on his snout. The gargoyles in St. Stephen's were more like scaly dogs and were feral.

  “Do you think the master secretary has noticed?” asked Lonica.

  “What that gargoyles are following me around?”

  “No. That there’s a lot more of them since you got here.”

  “I hope not. I need this job.”

  Lonica crossed her slender arms. “I wish I knew why.”

  “Why does anyone need a job?” I said, avoiding her frank gaze.

  “You’re not the average maid,” she said, lowering her voice if I went by head position. “That much I know.”

  I laughed, but I’m sure it came out weak and false. “What do you know?”

  “You’re not eighteen for one and where are your parents for another.”

  “I told you we got separated in Paris during the riots. They’ll get here when they can.”

  “You’ve been working here for two months. How long does it take to get on a train? What about the rest of your family? You’ve got a spriggan and dragons. Nobody has dragons. They’re practically untamable.”

  “Apparently not,” I said. “Iris tamed them just fine. They’re not family, more like…pets.”

  Lonica snorted. “Pets? I don’t believe that. And then there’s Penny and Della. If they’re your aunts, I’m a noggle-fisted troll.”

  “I always thought there was a little troll in you.”

  Lonica stomped her foot, not much of a display of frustration. If I could’ve revealed my true identity, I’d have shown her some frustration. My fire would’ve filled the nave with such brilliance, they’d be talking about it for two centuries. But I couldn’t. The rebels in Paris knew of my existence and worse, so did the horen. I dreaded the moment when I saw another horen with their cat’s eyes and claws. Their stunning beauty made them all the worse and I’d had enough of their venom to last two lifetimes. The horen considered me some sort of rival and they’d already killed my friend Gerald’s parents to get to me. I couldn’t risk the family I still had. I’d leave them before I did that.

  “Mattie, please. You can trust me.”

  “I trust you. There’s just nothing to tell,” I lied. There was so much to tell I’d have worn out her ears.

  I picked up my buckets and spread my wings, momentarily surprised by the lack of glow on the stone wall. Since we’d come to Vienna I’d disguised myself with a couple of handy spells I’d found in Ibn Vermillion’s book. My wings were now dull with no Whipplethorn glow at all. I wasn’t sure what bothered me the most, my wings or my hair. My black hair that usually reached my waist was chin-length and platinum blond. It seemed a good idea to disguise myself, but a huge part of me wanted to scream out and be known for what I really was, a kindler.

  Lonica sneered at the hissing gargoyles and hopped off the side of the font. A second later, I saw her dashing across the nave toward the pulpit, going for a meeting after all. The master secretary wouldn’t be happy if she got near the archduke but, like she said, he was rarely happy about anything.

  A rush of wind brushed my new blond hair in my face and the holy water font trembled under my feet as Percy, one of the Moroccan spice dragons, landed on the font. Miss Penrose was on his back with a worried frown on her face. She used her wings, now pale blue, to steady herself, but she lurched to the side as Percy spun around and stuck his fat purple tongue out toward the holy water.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  Percy froze, his stank dragon breath making ripples in the water.

  “This water is for everyone,” I said. “Nobody wants to drink dragon spit.”

  Percy tucked his head under his leathery wing and Miss Penrose shook a finger at me. “You hurt his feelings.”

  Oh, please. I didn’t hurt his feelings. Dragons had feelings, but they weren’t easy to injure. Dragons were difficult, and prickly. A lot like the miniature trolls I’d been trying to get rid of all day. They also liked to bite.

  “Say you’re sorry, Matil…Mattie,” said Miss Penrose, catching herself just in time.

  I’m sorry, you fire-breathing pain in my wings.

  “I’m sorry, Percy.”

  Percy peeked out at me and his pupil contracted.

  “And you’re a good dragon that never ever drools in the holy water.”

  Percy’s head popped back out and he began preening as if he would never have dreamt of drinking right out of the font.

  Miss Penrose’s expression didn’t soften after my apology, but changed to something more akin to dread. She didn’t look good, pale and wan, but she always looked that way. Her new brown hair acc
entuated her almost translucent skin, but that couldn’t be helped. I’d been able to cure her congestive heart failure, but she took forever to recover and was brilliant at catching absolutely every illness that came her way. She was just getting over a bout of bristletail bronchitis. It took me two weeks to get rid of the spines on her rump. If she was sick again, I quit.

  I was so afraid to ask, but I said, “What’s wrong?’

  “She can’t stop it anymore,” said Miss Penrose.

  A little chill went down my arms. “It’s certain this time?”

  Oh please say no. Please.

  Miss Penrose pursed her lips and couldn’t seem to make herself say the words I dreaded her saying. We’d kept the commander’s egg hidden for months. It had tried to hatch on the train from Paris, but Iris had talked the baby out of it. I hadn’t thought that was possible, but Iris, with her great gift of love, had talked and talked and the baby had stayed in the shell for her. We’d originally thought we would be home in the States quickly, but that hadn’t happened. So Iris had kept talking because in Austria the phalanx were considered traitors to the realm for their support of the revolution in France. What was I supposed to do with a baby phalanx? Those little weirdo warriors were strange to the extreme with their razor-sharp shells and appetite for flies. Weird and yuck.

  Miss Penrose leaned over Percy’s long skinny neck and said, “I believe so. The egg will hatch now, whether we want it to or not.”

  Read the rest in A Wicked Chill.

  Available now.

  A.W. Hartoin is the author of the Mercy Watts mystery series and the Away From Whipplethorn fantasy series. She lives in Colorado with her husband, two children, and six bad chickens.