Keys and Curses (Shadow Book 2)

by Nina Smith

  Krysta gave her an odd look. “You remember that? You don’t look much older than me.”

  Flower laughed. “Oh, I’m-” she stopped. She couldn’t tell the girl how old she was, humans didn’t live past their eighth or ninth decade. Krysta would. There was no telling if she’d live for thousands of years like the muses, but there was little doubt she would barely age while those around her grew old and died. And she didn’t know.

  Krysta pushed aside her plate, leaned her elbows on the table and gave Flower her undivided attention. “You’re what?”

  “I’m older than I look.”

  “It’s so weird, but I could swear we’ve met before. There’s something familiar about you.”

  Flower smiled. “I know.” She studied the pink-haired girl, trying to fix the moment in her mind. She still couldn’t quite believe she was face to face with one of her humans. Even if this one wasn’t the least bit human. “I believe you’re a writer?”

  Krysta shrugged and broke eye contact, suddenly busy with clearing away their plates. “I wouldn’t say that.” She took the plates to the sink and washed them. “To be a writer you’ve got to be published.”

  “No.” Flower was on surer ground now. “To be a writer you have to write.”

  Krysta shoved the plates onto the drying rack as though they were weapons, then paused to run her hand along a shiny glass. She was definitely more Bloody Fairy than muse.

  “I just can’t!” The words forced themselves out as though they’d been chained in her throat. “I have all these ideas for this story, and I know it would be the best, but every time I go to write even a word I just can’t do it!”

  “Why not? What do you think about when you try?”

  A pout settled on her lips. “Everything. Everyone gets so twitchy when I tell them my ideas. I mean, I want to do something based on the stories Mum always used to tell, I don’t see the harm in it, but all I can think of when I try is everyone telling me not to.”

  “Honey don’t worry about everyone else.” Flower went to her and laid her fingertips over Krysta’s forehead. The jolt of energy she felt when she touched her nearly knocked her off her feet. “You write what you want to write. That’s the most important thing you could possibly do right now. More important than you could ever imagine. Just write, and consequences be damned.”

  Krysta stared at her. For a split second her whole face lit up.

  Flower could almost hear the electricity popping and sparking through the girl’s brain cells, ten thousand ideas in a mad race to be the first words to fall from her pen. She smiled. She’d done what she came here for. She dropped her hand. “Goodbye, Krysta.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find your father.” Flower left the room without a backward glance.

  Flower stood outside the front door of the house and breathed in Dream air. It was so strange to be here, where she’d been so many times, in her physical body. She wondered if the king would approve of her going to such lengths for one writer. No ordinary writer though. The daughter of the king. The very idea bewildered and frightened her for reasons she did not want to investigate. All she knew was this girl could change everything.

  She headed for where Nikifor and Clockwork packed boxes into a van on the roadside. She tried to observe everything, in case she never got another chance to come here. The hard concrete under her feet, the bitter undertone to the air she breathed, the distant noise of traffic, the wind through the leaves. It wasn’t so very different to Shadow City. The world of the humans was just safer, perhaps, than the place their inspiration came from.

  Hippy appeared from behind the van. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and put on a big smile. “There you are. Did you talk to her?”

  “I did.” Flower smiled down on the Bloody Fairy and experienced a dizzyingly vivid image of her looking barely more than a child, spear twice her size in one hand, standing by the muse king and looking at him as though he were the world. She rubbed her forehead. She didn’t know what terrible thing had happened to Hippy to make her hate the king so much, but maybe, just maybe, things could be made right.

  “Are you alright?” Hippy patted her arm.

  “Yes, yes, just a headache.” Flower gave her a light, impersonal hug. “Look after that daughter of yours, Hippy. Maybe things in Shadow will get better and you can bring her home soon.”

  “Flower.” Hippy pulled away from the embrace and looked at her very seriously. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone about her. Especially the king.”

  “Of course.”

  Hippy’s eyes flashed and she looked every bit as fierce as her sister Ishtar. “Swear it. Swear it on that.” She pointed at the still-broken key.

  “I swear!” Flower laid a hand over the key. “Hippy you have nothing to fear from me.”

  “Good.” Hippy stepped away, satisfied, and gave her a cheery smile. “Feed up Nikifor, will you? He needs fattening up, he looks like a starving giraffe. So do you, for that matter. It was good to see you, Flower.” Then, with over-bright eyes, she threw her arms around Clockwork when he came around the side of the van. “You be careful over there. And be quick. I don’t want you staying in Shadow too long, or getting hurt. And make sure you bring back some fairy dust in case we get another vamp infestation. And don’t-”

  Flower hurried away to leave them to their goodbyes. She joined Nikifor in the back of the van, closed the door and found herself a seat amongst the numerous boxes. “What’s in the boxes?” she whispered.

  “Seeds.” Nikifor watched the house as though leaving would tear him apart. “For the Bloomin Fairies to start their new lives.”

  The drive was long, and the novelty of covering so much distance in so little time quickly wore off. Drowned in his own thoughts, Nikifor ignored the one or two attempts Flower made at conversation. Clockwork paid them no attention at all while he drove.

  She gave up and watched the scenery fly by. She didn’t like the busy, sweeping, noisy highway at all. Cars sped past them so fast she was sure they would lose control or blow up. Grey, battered towers fought with sprawling tin warehouses for what little space they could choke, leaving her wondering how Hippy and Clockwork could possibly want to live in such a place. Even Shadow City, dangerous and crowded and dirty as it was, was not like this.

  Then the greyness and the sprawl dwindled. They crossed a bridge over a vast, sparkling lake. Scrub took over the edges of the highway until finally they came to the end, turned and turned again onto a long, winding, empty black road that cut through vast paddocks where cows grazed peacefully on emerald green grass. This landscape she understood. All the weeks of travelling with Nikifor had got her used to wide open spaces.

  The van crunched onto a long, winding gravel track and plunged into the shadows of a very pretty forest. Some of the trees had white trunks and pink flowers, while others were small with long, thin blades of grass sprouting from their crowns. Big black birds with flashes of red in their tails swooped the road, causing Clockwork to slam on the brakes more than once.

  The forest gave way once more to grassy paddocks. The van went through a brand new steel mesh gate with a sign on it that Flower thought probably said keep out, but she was rusty at reading human script, so she wasn’t sure.

  A series of hairpin bends forced the van to a crawl. They bounced over potholes and rocks that shook the vehicle like a pebble in a bucket. She was bruised all over from being thrown against the window by the time they splashed through a small lake and finally pulled up at a cluster of wooden buildings.

  Flower was only too happy to stumble out of the van and stretch her cramped muscles. It was really a very nice spot. The air was much fresher out here and the sunshine warm and inviting. Grass and trees stretched for miles, which would surely suit the Bloomin Fairies nicely. A hubbub of noise swelled from the other side of the buildings.

  “This way.” Clockwork passed her with the two terse words and set off for the noise.

  The
fairies congregated in a seething circle on an unplanted patch of garden, bare feet churning up the dirt and voices spiralling in indignation. In the centre, seated on her pile of blankets, the Lord of the Gourd looked right royally displeased. Mudface scowled in front of her, clutching her book to her chest.

  Fitz pushed his way through the fairies. “Finally, you’re here.” He gave his beard an agitated tug. “It’s been like this all morning. Flower, couldn’t you talk some sense into Mudface? She listens to you.”

  “What’s the problem?” Flower eyed Mudface’s scowl. She hardly needed to ask.

  “Mudface wants to go back with us, but the Lord of the Gourd says she has to stay with the tribe. I tried to convince her it was too dangerous, but she won’t listen.”

  “Well of course she won’t. She wants more out of her life than this.” Flower gestured around. “Why not let her come back with us? Surely it’s her choice?”

  “As if a Bloomin Fairy would know what’s good for her,” Clockwork said.

  Flower’s temper cranked up a notch. “You’d be surprised at the things Mudface knows!”

  Fitz threw up his hands. “Don’t you two start arguing. Flower, you’re the diplomat, sort it out either way and on your head and hers be the consequences.” He stalked away.

  Flower sighed and wondered just when it was she’d agreed to be a diplomat for the Invisible Army. She strode into the circle. “What’s going on here?”

  The Lord of the Gourd gave her an evil look. “Giant freakin dead muse, you tell her! Tell her she can’t go!” She turned to Mudface and shook a shrivelled finger at her. “Bloomin Fairies don’t leave the tribe! Not for anything, and especially not to go running off with freakin dead muses!”

  “Who says?” Mudface’s words were fierce.

  The Lord of the Gourd lifted the shrivelled gourd from her blankets and held it aloft. “Gourd says!” she yelled, so loudly her eyes bugged out. “Gourd says you stay with us and get married to-” her finger travelled over the crowd for a minute, wavered, then settled on a fairy with a wiry red topknot. “Him!”

  The redhead went pale. “Me?” he shrieked. “I’m not marrying the freak!”

  “I’m not getting married!” Mudface yelled. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!” She punctuated the last words by jumping up and down. “I’m going to be an investigative journalist!”

  “You don’t even know what a vestagate journalise is!” the Lord of the Gourd bawled.

  “Yes I do but you don’t!”

  “That’s right I don’t! You stay here and get married and have babies like a normal Bloomin Fairy!”

  The pitch of their voices increased with every word until they screamed themselves into silence. Mudface and the Lord of the Gourd glared at each other, nose to nose. The redhead tried to sidle away and not be noticed.

  “Madame Lord of the Gourd,” Flower said in her most respectful voice.

  “What?” The Lord of the Gourd maintained her glare.

  “Mudface is young and needs to spread her wings. May I humbly suggest you allow her to come with me for a little while, then return to her clan when she’s ready to settle down?”

  “No way freakin dead muse. Bloomin Fairies don’t leave. Ever. Never. Have any of you others left?”

  The watching crowd shook their heads vigorously.

  “I’m going,” Mudface said. “You can’t stop me. And I probably won’t ever come back.” She straightened, looked about the fairies with frozen dignity and inclined her head. “You all think I’m a freak. You don’t want me around anyway since I was dead.” She marched out of the circle.

  “Stop right there!” the Lord of the Gourd screeched.

  Mudface pushed her way through the fairies, who tried to block her exit.

  “Come back or I’ll–I’ll-”

  “You’ll what?” Halfway through the crowd, Mudface turned to face the Lord of the Gourd.

  “I’ll curse you!”

  Mudface narrowed her eyes. “Be worth it to leave.” She turned her back.

  Flower backed toward the edge of the crowd. She didn’t like the way this was going at all. One friend with a fairy curse was quite enough for a lifetime. “Mudface maybe you should think about this.”

  But her words went unheard. The Lord of the Gourd raised her finger in the air, twirled it around three times and then pointed at Mudface with deadly intensity. The fairies around her threw themselves out of the way.

  “I curse you pink and overgrown!” the Lord of the Gourd yelled.

  Mudface went flying as though she’d been hit in the back with a physical force. She sprawled face first into the grass. Her book sailed out of her hands.

  Their snub little faces mortified, the other fairies hurried away from her and busied themselves with digging up clods of grass with any tools that came to hand.

  The Lord of the Gourd settled onto her blankets and gave Flower a grim stare. “You’d better look after my granddaughter.” Then she lay down and closed her eyes. Seconds later she began snoring.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Nikifor’s boot heels slipped from the top of blunt spikes and hit wood. He skidded down a sheer wall on his backside, hit his shoulder on a post and then free fell, arms flailing, into thin air for a dizzying ten seconds before landing with a thump on thick grass, the wind knocked out of him, in the middle of a fight. Mudface and Clockwork landed evenly beside him. Flower hit the ground near his head, rump first, and said an incredibly foul word. Fitz rolled on his side when he landed and bounced straight to his feet with the dexterity of a man well used to stepping through doorways between the worlds where unexpected ten foot drops lurked.

  Flower’s swearing faded into the background noise when Nikifor realised Ishtar Ishtar and a Moon Trooper were staring down at him, frozen in mid-fight.

  Around them a fierce battle between Ishtar’s band of Bloody Fairies and at least twenty Moon Troopers went on under a blazing sun.

  “Vampires out in the sunlight!” Nikifor boomed. “We’re all doomed to die horribly!”

  “Vamps!” Ishtar roared. “Where??”

  The Moon Trooper aimed a vicious low blow at her while she was distracted. Nikifor reacted instinctively by swinging one leg in a wide arc to dent the Moon Trooper’s mask. The kick brought him to his feet in a movement so acrobatic he wished he’d managed it in front of the pink-haired girl.

  The Moon Trooper clutched his mask. Black smoke curled from his long, high-collared shirt.

  Ishtar grabbed a handful of fairy dust from a pouch at her belt, leaped on the Moon Trooper, knocked him to the ground and ripped off his mask. “You are a vamp!” she yelled, then shoved the dust into his face.

  Nikifor took a cautious step away while the Moon Trooper blackened and turned to sparkling dust.

  Ishtar stood up, dusted herself off and kicked the remains. “You know what happens to vamps who come out in the daylight?” she screeched at the continuing battle. “They sparkle! And then they die!”

  “Er-” Nikifor decided now was not the time to ask her anything, and looked around instead for his companions. His brain, already knocked about by the fall, only just had time to take in the high wooden walls they’d fallen from when a sharp blow to the back of the head knocked him to the ground again.

  Ishtar leaned over him and glared. “That’s for interfering in my war. Just as I was starting to have fun, too!”

  Nikifor closed his eyes and passed out.

  “What do you mean, interfered? We didn’t know you were going to be here! And come to think of it, what kind of a damn fool place was that to cut a door into Shadow, Fitz Falls? It’s amazing we weren’t all killed!”

  “Amazing for some, pity about others,” Clockwork muttered nearby.

  “I’m afraid it’s an educated guess where we’re going to come through at the best of times.” Fitz’s tones were calm and unruffled. “There, is he coming around?”

  Nikifor had no idea how long he’d been out. His head was
on Flower’s lap and Ishtar was leaning over him. Still. Or again? She grinned. She had a nasty bruise near her nose and a new scar running down one cheek since they’d seen her last. “Hello Curse Boy.”

  Nikifor groaned and rubbed his thumping head. “Ishtar.”

  “I see you got your memory back.”

  “Don’t try to move too much,” Flower cautioned. “She’s probably done serious damage.”

  Nikifor moved anyway, because it was frankly dangerous resting his head in Flower’s lap when she was obviously in one of her moods again. He sat up, held his head in his hands until it stopped spinning and then looked around.

  Ishtar’s band sharpened their spears, tended wounds and talked excitedly about dead vampires. More Bloody Fairies than he could count bustled around a campsite consisting of rough wooden huts and a fire pit with a huge cooking pot over it. Children ran and dived and fought under their feet.

  Fitz appeared quite at ease in the village, unlike Flower, who was red with fury, and Clockwork, who looked like he expected to be mugged at any moment. Mudface sat close to Flower, dejection and fright written in her downturned mouth and wrinkled forehead. There was a faint, indefinable tinge of pink about her.

  “What happened?” Nikifor asked, since nobody seemed inclined to volunteer the information. “Where are the Moon Troopers?”

  “All dead.” Ishtar mimed blowing dust from the palm of her hand. “No thanks to you lot falling out of the sky at an inconvenient moment. I don’t like distractions.”

  “But why were they out in daylight?”

  “Oh, that.” Ishtar grinned. “We came on a whole nest of `em sleeping in the forest over there. So we carried them out into the sunlight, real careful, then woke `em up for a fight.”