Sapphire grinned. “I never actually agreed to that. Shopping is my therapy, Chloe, and I’ve needed it lately.” She patted her growing baby bump, but she looked happy, not stressed. She was nervous about being a parent, about failing her child in the same ways her parents had failed her. She was holding it together and I wasn’t going to complain about anything she needed to do to de-stress. I took the bags from her and Knuffington just as Frost walked in. He looked heart-stoppingly gorgeous in tailored slacks and a polo shirt that clung to him in all the right places. He was also carrying bags filled with gifts.
“We agreed to no gifts,” I said, as he stepped up next to Sapphire and Knuffington, greeting them with hugs.
Frost shrugged. “Technically, I never agreed to that.”
“Well, I did,” I said. “So don’t expect any gifts from me.” I had a gift for Frost of course, but I’d left it at the condo.
“We don’t want anything from you, Chloe,” Sapphire said. “You’re throwing this wonderful party. That’s a gift in itself.”
I did my best to frown, but a smile kept creeping in at the corners of my mouth. I loved these people so much. Even if they were terrible at following rules.
Rube and Indigo walked in. Rube carried a Christmas tree over his shoulder like it weighed no more than a small child, and Indigo was carrying two large bags.
“What is all that?” I asked.
Indigo frowned. “Is it not traditional in the Non to have a Christmas tree for this holiday celebration?”
I hadn’t gotten a tree. Christmas trees weren’t cheap and I’d been focused on getting the club presentable enough for the party. “Yes,” I said. “It is traditional. Thank you.”
I set the bags on the nearest table and helped Rube find a spot to set up the tree. Indigo’s bag was filled with ornaments and we used them to decorate the tree. The tree was beautiful and its pine scent filled the club and made it really feel like Christmas.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Buddy hollered as he stomped in with his daughter Sunny in his arms and his sister May by his side. “Merry Christmas.” Thankfully, he had no bags of gifts. He walked over and passed Sunny to me. She was six months old and very squirmy. I supposed she was cute, but I had little idea what to do with her. I pecked her cheek, wished her a merry Christmas and passed her back to Buddy before I broke her.
He gave me a sad smile. “You should come around more often, Chloe, get more comfortable with her.”
I knew I should. I knew I was a bad friend. I’d been busy, and Buddy had been busy, but I also couldn’t help feeling guilty every time I looked at Sunny. It was because of me that she was growing up without a mother.
“I don’t blame you, Chloe,” Buddy said, as though reading my mind. “And neither will Sunny. But I will never forgive you if you refuse to be a part of her life. She needs as much family as she can get.”
Damn it, his words made me feel like the worst person ever. And I knew he was right. “I’m sorry, Buddy.” I reached for Sunny and he handed her back. I bounced her in my arms and talked to her. She really was cute, with big blue eyes like her mother and floppy, troll ears like her father. She gripped my finger with her tiny hand and smiled and cooed. Maybe she wasn’t quite as scary as I thought. Still, after five minutes, I passed her back to Buddy and went to the kitchen to see how Brace and Sandra were getting along with the cooking.
CHAPTER TWO
Every good moment can be ruined by the intrusion of reality.—Chloe Frangipani
I have never seen anything more beautiful than Chloe surrounded by Christmas.—Aiden Frost
Mercury and Vin arrived just as we were finishing up our party. We’d eaten and laughed and exchanged gifts. I’d gotten a fun piece of kitschy jewelry and a scarf from Sapphire. The arrival of Mercury and Vin meant it was time to say goodbye.
Our guests understood what was going on, because our imminent departure for Rubalia had been the sole reason behind our Christmas party being held a week before Christmas, crammed in between what we needed to do to get ready to leave and the meeting we needed to have to prepare for our journey into Rubalia and our war against the nightmares. Vin mouthed the word ‘sorry’ and gestured toward the door, asking me if she should come back later. I shook my head.
“Thank you all for joining us for this party,” I said to my friends, my family. “We hope to see you all again at the new year. Hopefully, we’ll have reason to celebrate and can have another party here.”
Buddy picked up Sunny from the floor, where she’d been playing with a dollhouse Sapphire had gotten her. May packed up their gifts and they left with goodbyes and good wishes. Lilith, Pally, and Ransom also left with smiles and waves. Indigo hugged me and promised to take care of any new immigrants who ventured into the Non from Rubalia. The recent strife in Rubalia had stopped the influx of immigrants, but I hoped our journey to fairy land would change that. She left with Rube’s arm around her shoulders.
“Chloe.” I spun to face Pierson and he wrapped me in a strong hug before I could escape. “I’ll have the club ready when you get back.”
“Hopefully, we won’t be gone that long,” I joked, pushing away from him and fighting the emotion welling up.
He didn’t laugh or even smile. “I don’t want to run this place alone, Chloe Frangipani. You come back to us.”
“I’ll do my damnedest.”
He shook hands with Frost and left. I wished I could leave, because Sapphire and Knuffington were walking over to say their goodbyes and I couldn’t handle it, my throat was tight and I already had tears in my eyes.
I wanted to run, but I stood my ground. “Thank you for the kitsch,” I said.
Sapphire took both my hands in hers and smiled. “Don’t worry, Chloe Frangipani, I’m not going to get all sentimental and teary on you. I know how much you hate that. I’ll see you when you get back.”
“Yeah, okay.”
She didn’t hug me, but she squeezed my shoulder as she passed. Knuffington smiled. “Remember the royalty non-requirement clause.”
“The what?”
“They might want you to be queen. They might even say you have to be queen, but you don’t. Once you’ve been queen for ten days, you can choose your successor and step down.”
“That sounds like a rule the mad hatter would invent.”
Knuffington shrugged. “It’s an archaic rule, but one that will be honored. Very few kings or queens have chosen to give up their power, so it hasn’t been used in several generations.”
“How do you know about it?” Rubalia didn’t keep records of their past. They preferred to pretend bad things never happened.
“Laws of days past are one bit of history our peoples kept.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That little piece of information might just be my ticket out of Rubalia.”
I watched Sapphire and Knuffington leave and then Frost and I joined Mercury and Vin at the table closest to the door. Mercury was a big guy, a faun, and he wore a severe frown. Vin, also a faun, though smaller, curvier, and altogether sexier, also had a melancholy expression. “Sorry to break up your party early,” Vin said.
“No,” I said. “It’s fine. How are the moms?” Mercury and Vin’s mothers had both moved to the Non several months ago and, though they had individual names and personalities, I thought of them as ‘the moms.’
“They think we should stay in the Non and let Rubalia deal with its own problems,” Vin said.
“You could.” It wasn’t the first time I’d given them an out, but I couldn’t resist trying again. Mercury had hit a dead-end in his search for the source of a drug that gave some humans fae powers but killed others. He had discovered a lab in Georgia that he believed had produced the drug, but it had been abandoned and the owners didn’t exist. Every bit of evidence he’d found suggested the drugs had been made by humans. Maybe they wanted to make humans as powerful as the fae, or maybe they’d seen magic and thought it’d be cool if everyone had it. It was likely we’d never know fo
r sure.
Mercury sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I do have to stay in the Non,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
I just stared at him, waiting for the punch line, but he didn’t smile and the frustration on Vin’s face indicated he wasn’t joking.
“It’s my daughter, Chloe. Galena hates living in the city and she’s…She’s had a hard time holding onto a job. They were evicted from their apartment last night and they need…I need to stay until they’ve settled into a new place and Galena’s found a new job. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Of course you have to do what’s best for your daughter.”
He gripped my shoulder with one large hand. “Thank you, Chloe. Some people are not as understanding as you.”
Judging by the way Vin rolled her eyes, I gathered he was talking about her.
“Do you need to go to them now?”
“Yes,” he said. “I have little to contribute to the meeting, anyway.”
“Then you should go.” I would miss Mercury, but I understood the obligations of family. He was a good dad.
He nodded, pressed a brief peck to Vin’s cheek and left.
Vin’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears, her mouth set in a hard line.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She sighed and swiped at her eyes. “Galena is just playing her helpless victim game again and I can say nothing without him reminding me that he has obligations to his daughter and her mother. I understand obligations, Chloe, but she will call in the middle of the night because she heard a strange noise and expect him to run over there and check it out.”
“And he does.”
She nodded. “And he does. I don’t want to be a witchy step-mother, but it can’t be a coincidence that, after begging Mercury for three days not to leave the city again, she loses her job and gets evicted.”
“Do you think Galena is that manipulative?”
Vin narrowed her eyes. “It’s just a hunch, but yes I do believe she’s that manipulative. She honestly hates the city and is really struggling, but she’s making no real effort to try. She’s made it no secret that she wants Mercury back, that he should be living with them as a family.”
“But he’s matched to you,” I said. “Doesn’t Galena understand that’s an unbreakable bond?”
Tears slipped from Vin’s eyes and she swallowed hard. “It is usually unbreakable, Chloe, but if anyone can break it, Galena will be the one. Mercury adores their daughter. He would…He would do anything for her.”
“But he loves you,” I said. “He doesn’t love Galena.”
Vin was silent, clearly trying to get herself under control. “I believe he loves me, Chloe, but our relationship has never been easy. I’ve often wondered…” She shook her head and forced a smile. “Now is not the time for this conversation. We’re to go into battle soon. My relationship troubles can wait.”
“Vin,” I said. “If you want to stay, or skip the meeting to talk to Mercury, I—”
“No,” she said, almost too forcefully. “At the end of the day, a man’s actions make it clear where his priorities lay. Talking will solve nothing. Besides, I have information you’ll need. I managed to track down one of Missella’s people this morning.”
“You went to Rubalia?”
“No. I put out feelers a couple weeks ago and one of them got lucky. The person I spoke to was working for Missella in Rubalia, but fled here three weeks ago. When she left, things were bad. The nightmares had rounded up fae from all over the realms. Missella and her group of rebels used their extensive spy network and discovered that some of those taken by the nightmares were being used as slaves and one of the jobs they had was to care for and, when necessary, slaughter the fae who were being kept as food.”
My stomach roiled with the horror of what she’d just told me. Vin didn’t look disgusted, though, she looked furious and ready to fight.
“And Missella?” I asked. “Do you know where she is? She’d probably be our best hope of getting into the fairy castle.” Because our “army” was so small, we didn’t have a hope of success in a war against the nightmares, so we were planning to go after Ludwiggia, the nightmare empress. Our hope was that, once we killed her, the nightmares would be lost without their leader and would return to the nightmare realm.
“I’m your best hope of getting into the castle,” Hieronymus, chief adviser to my mother and my liaison to her before she died, said. He strode to the table and took a seat next to me. “I know all of its secrets.” Hieronymus was dressed for the Non in a human-style suit with a tie and fancy shoes. He was all formal all the time and he took everything about his job seriously. He basically approved of nothing I did, but I didn’t hate him and I suspected he didn’t really hate me either.
“Great,” I said. “So, we’ll just pop through the portal and land in the courtyard and then you can show us the secret passages. It’ll be fun. We can borrow Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.” I don’t know why, but it delighted me to push Hieronymus’s buttons and annoy him. Maybe it was because he was always so calm and collected, or maybe it was because neither of us were good at the whole friendship, sharing emotions thing, or, most likely, it was because I needed a distraction from whatever bad news he was delivering. And he was always delivering bad news.
Hieronymus would never do anything as human as rolling his eyes, but he did narrow his gaze a bit. “Once we get to the castle, I can help you get in without being seen. I don’t know who this Harry Potter is, but I don’t trust any magic that comes from the Non, and I’ve never heard of an invisibility spell that actually works.”
“And what’s the closest safe portal to get us there?” I asked.
Hieronymus’s face reddened. “I haven’t figured that out, yet.”
“Missella is in an abandoned troll enclave in the far Northwest of Rubalia,” Vin said. “At least, my best contacts say that’s where she last was. There’s a portal three miles from there, but no one is quite sure what to expect when we step through it.”
“Anyone got any better ideas?” I asked.
No one replied.
“So, we take our chances with the portal and run like hell for Missella’s camp?” Frost said.
“Missella? Fuck Chloe, you didn’t tell me we’d be working with her. I hate that do-gooder.” Pippi’s words were punctuated by the clomp of her boots across the floor. Pippi, or Evangeline as she preferred to be called, was the leader of the fae mafia in the Non. One of the fae mafias. She had red hair that she often wore in two braids, though tonight it fell around her shoulders in thick waves. She had pale skin and pink eyes, she was built like she trained for several hours a day, and she enjoyed chaos, violence, and things that exploded.
“Pippi,” I said. “Who do you like?”
She scowled. “I’m not going to like you if you don’t stop calling me Pippi.”
I called her Pippi because, when I’d met her, she’d been wearing her red hair in two long braids that reminded me of Pippy Longstocking. I stared her down, like her words had just proved my point.
“I don’t like people who are incompetent,” she said. “And sensitive. Everyone takes everything so fucking personally these days.”
“Yes,” Vin said, answering Frost’s question like Pippi and her freight-load of drama hadn’t just entered the room. “I don’t have any other contacts in Rubalia, so our best plan is to go through the portal and hope we can make it three miles to Missella’s camp.”
“And hope she’s still camped there,” Frost said. He turned to Hieronymus. “Have you been able to get any information that might help?”
Hieronymus shifted in his seat. “I haven’t been able to get through any portals to reach my contacts but, once we’re in the fairy palace, I know people who can help.” He paused, looking sad. I’d rarely seen any emotion at all cross his face, so I knew he really had to be hurting. “If they’re still alive. I’m afraid Rubalia will be nothing like what it once was.”
“It’s not an ideal plan,” I said. “But it’s the best plan we’ve got. It’s going to be extremely dangerous, and I want everyone who joins our cause to understand the very real risk they’ll be taking by joining us.”
“We get it,” Pippi said. “And I’ve got thirty-two redcaps and nineteen trolls who also get it and want to join us.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s great. Will they be taking orders from me or from you?”
Pippi scowled. “Fuck off with your beating around the bush, Chloe. You don’t need to tiptoe around me or my fucking feelings. I’ll take orders from you and I’ll pass them on to my people. As long as your orders aren’t fucking idiotic, we’ll be good.”
“O-”
“We want to go with you.”
Fairy, Neat (Fairy Files Book 6) Page 3