“No you.”
He’d conceded the point with a kiss.
“And the doppelganger?” I’d asked after we’d separated once more.
His eyes had hardened and I could have sworn that there was the faintest trace of purple edging the blue before it disappeared. “The doppelganger wasn’t really a choice at all. She was a test. Choosing her would have trapped you in that world and left her free to take your place in this one. I doubt she was even supposed to be there in the first place.”
I shivered at the memory of his words and once again gave myself a mental pat on the back before returning my attention back to Sam.
“She says Rachel is still asleep.” I said, getting back to the conversation at hand. “I asked to see her, but she won’t even tell me where she is and Mal stopped showing up when I summoned her few weeks ago. If I try she just snaps at me about how she’s busy with her other clients.”
Sam yawned, still tired but unwilling to go back to bed. “Makes sense. I can’t even imagine what a bitch her workload must be.”
“I guess.” I grumbled, still unhappy with the situation. The need for answers concerning Rachel had quickly become an obsession and even now the urge to get up and do something other than search for a job and try to get back into school left me feeling frustrated. My concern for Rachel had gotten to the point where I’d even broken down and called my mother. The only thing I’d gotten out of the conversation was the assurance that the spell on Rachel could be broken, no she could not find it in her heart to break it, and that she expected me at her house for training before the end of the month.
Quality time with mom.
Fun, fun.
Something about all of this bothered me though and the longer I sat there, chewing over it all, the unhappier I became. Soon I found myself just looking over at Sam, my brow furrowed. I didn’t say a word. Simply sat there and scowled and he met my gaze with a raised brow.
“What did I do now?”
“A missing girl.”
“She seemed willing at the time—” I waved away his disgruntled explanation, not sure I wanted the details, and ticked off my fingers as I spoke.
“Rachel,” I clarified. “Who’s trapped in an enchanted sleep. Diedric, a dragon who’s currently MIA. And Maleficent.” Unfortunately, my Godmother needed no further explanation. I waved my fingers in Sam’s face. “Any of this sound familiar?”
The look on Sam’s face morphed from blank confusion to disgruntled horror and he sat back in his chair with a curse.
“I’m getting too old for fairytales.”
My sentiments exactly.
Epilogue
“Well, my, my. So you have a new pet, Malora. What a sweet little frog, what a dear little frog, what a familiar little frog.”
-Tales from Muppetland: The Frog Prince
(One year, three weeks, and nine hours ago)
Christopher Greyson had never been a fan of strip clubs. Something about the thought of watching some stranger gyrate and sweat in front of him for cash simply didn’t appeal. Now as he stared down at the stripper known as Seraphim he couldn’t help but wonder why he’d even bothered to come here in the first place. He’d known from the beginning that it was useless, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave.
Not just yet anyway.
“Can you help me or not?” he asked, deep voice growing deeper still as he tried to control his temper.
“I’m not sure what you expect me to do, pup?” Maleficent said, sounding much too cheerful considering the topic of their conversation. “If your mother—”
“Stepmother.” He corrected harshly.
She rolled her eyes. “If your stepmother really is a Black Widow then I’m afraid there’s not much either one of us can do to stop her from killing again.”
Angry, Christopher turned away and rubbed a shaking hand down his face. He couldn’t go on like this for much longer. Chris had lost his mother at a young age, so when his father had told him that he was going to remarry, Chris had been ecstatic. He’d loved the thought of having someone knew to call family and at first Danielle had been like a dream come true.
There were homemade meals on the table at night and someone to help him with homework when his father was away at the office. He had a companion. Someone to rely on and bandage his scraped knees when he fell.
He didn’t really remember his birth mother, but Danielle had seemed to genuinely love him and for a few years he imagined that this is what it must have felt like before the car accident that had taken Josephine Greyson from her then three year-old son. But everything changed once Danielle realized that she was pregnant. Suddenly she wasn’t nearly so understanding of nine year-old Christopher and that love he thought she’d felt for him slowly became hate.
When Alexandria was less than two months old Chris had wandered into his father’s study just in time to watch his stepmother reach into his father’s chest and yank out his heart. He’d been too horrified to move but even if he had, she’d been too enamored with the heart in her hands to look at him. He’d watched her, horrified and sick as she ate Jeremy Greyson’s still-beating heart.
The wrinkles that had begun to appear not long after she’d arrived filled in, the streaks of gray in her hair faded away, and when she turned to smile down at a trembling Chris, she looked no older than she had when his father had first met her six years before.
He’d tried to run, tried to get to his sister where she lay sleeping in her nursery, but something hit him in the back and flipped him through the air. The world grew bigger, or he grew smaller, and everything was agony. When he’d crawled from the crumbled pile of his clothes, his stepmother had been kind enough to hold up a mirror so that he could see exactly what he’d become.
‘A frog.’ he remembered thinking, young mind spiraling with panic but never disbelief. ‘She turned me into a frog.’
He’d wanted to scream, but the only sound he could make was a high pitched little chirrup that did nothing to express what he felt. Growing up he’d learned a few things about his curse and the woman who’d given it to him. He knew that the Greyson line was one ripe with magic, and when she’d killed his father she’d taken that magic for herself and stoked the fires of her own power. Power that had died after she’d been banished to this world. The only way she could keep that power was through the continuation of the Greyson line.
Or by eating the heart of another Widow. Chris had no idea where to find another widow, or even how he’d go about immobilizing it long enough to cut out its heart. He was sure that Danielle had run into the same issue. In addition to all of that, she hadn’t been sure if Alex had enough Greyson in her to count. It was why she’d kept him alive instead of killing him.
Which is why he was currently standing in the middle of a place called the Hungry Kitty and begging a sparkly stripper to either break his curse or tell him how to defeat his Stepmother.
“Please.” He said again, despising how lost he sounded. “Clarabell said you’d be able to help me. She said you’re the best when it comes to things like this.”
Seraphim preened at the compliment before admitting,
“I may have an idea. There’s another client of mine, a woman, whose going to need some help of her own. You help her, she helps you, badda bing, badda boom, you’re cured.”
It sounded too good to be true, and her use of the phrase ‘badda bing, badda boom’ made him instantly suspicious. “What sort of help did you have in mind?”
Her eyes grew distant and they both turned as the door to the club opened and a woman wandered in. There was something familiar about her, but the how and when of where he could have seen her before escaped him. He turned away only to see Maleficent staring across the room at the woman, her face practically glowing with affection.
She turned back to Chris and smiled. “Nothing too daunting, love. Just a little sleeping spell. And maybe a dragon or two.” She caressed his chest and he slapped her hands away. “Easy
enough for a big lad like you to handle.”
Right. Chris wasn’t sure if she’d noticed or not but there was a significant difference in size between a frog and Dragon. Hell, there was a size difference between a Chris and a Dragon. He doubted his 6’1 frame would do much good against beasts the size of football stadiums.
“I don’t think that’s such a great—”
“Sorry, pup.” She interrupted. Not sounding sorry at all. “It’s time for my set. Come by tomorrow and we’ll work out some of the details.”
With no other choice, he nodded and watched her hurry away.
He stayed a little longer after that, milking his drinks at the bar and thinking. He thought about how he’d been trapped as a frog up until a few months ago when the spell on him had begun to weaken. He’d escaped the house where his mother had kept him prisoner and had been on the run ever since.
From what he’d gathered she’d need to start feeding again in order to keep her strength up. So until she found a new victim, Christopher was stuck in a sort of limbo where he could masquerade as a normal man by day only to turn into his other form once the clock struck twelve. He was as much a slave to the rules of twixt and twain as the witches themselves were.
Once she started feeding again, the spell would snap back full force and he’d go back to being a Frog all the time. But until that time came he would gather as much information as he could and see if maybe, just maybe, he couldn’t find a way to free himself.
His musings were interrupted by the first ripple through his abdomen. A sign that he was about to shift. He paid for his drink and was going to try for the door, but out of nowhere a bouncer tackled one of the patrons, the excited crowd surging around the struggling pair and effectively blocking his way.
Growing desperate, Chris hurried to the bathroom. Locking himself inside one of the stalls and trying to breathe past the cramping muscles and shivering skin. Denying the change for too long was painful, and all too soon he found himself in a shivering ball on the floor.
It felt like forever before he was able to drag himself to his feet, and even then he still struggled just to make it out of the bathroom and into the club. That was when he noticed something strange. All around him the men and women were winking out. Disappearing to their respective planes one by one until there was nothing but a handful of humans here and there. The humans in question didn’t even look at him, but instead went about their business as if nothing at all strange was happening.
That more than anything is what made him finally stop fighting. He realized that he wouldn’t have been able to make it out the door anyway. The clock struck twelve and he allowed the curse to take him over.
His world shrunk and all too soon he found himself in the familiar cavern of his own clothes. He struggled within the confines of his own jeans for a moment, trying to find the way out, when something jostled his current hiding place. A young woman crouched down and lifted up his pants, and finally glimpsing a chance at freedom from the denim, Chris jumped free to land in her lap.
She screamed, but she didn’t try to fling him away or jump up. She just looked at him, growing increasingly embarrassed the longer the two of them stared at one another. The longer he examined her, the more it came to him.
This was her. The troublemaker from earlier.
The one that had seemed to fascinate Seraphim.
“He—” She tried again, “Hello.”
“Hello.” Chris replied in a croak. He was strangely pleased when she not only seemed to understand what he’d been trying to say, but obviously appreciated the response. He looked at her for a moment longer, before leaping from her lap, and jumping away. – END -
The Dragon King and I Page 21