The cottage cheese in her stomach had turned into a lump of lead and all she could do was pray she didn’t get sick all over their court-appointed elf’s crisp white shirt. Thank God she hadn’t had time for breakfast!
“Cass, are you all right?” she heard Phil ask anxiously from the other side of O’Shea but she didn’t dare look up. If she looked up again she was going to puke—she just knew it.
“She’s fine—just a little frightened. I’ve got her,” she heard O’Shea rumble.
Pressed up against him as she was, Cass could feel the vibrations of his deep voice through her entire body. He smelled like leather and that same exotic but undoubtedly masculine spice she couldn’t put a name to.
She wanted to slap him—it was excruciatingly embarrassing to be put in this position with a man (or elf) that she had disliked almost from first glance—but she didn’t dare. They were too high up in the air for her to show her true feelings. The best she could do was concentrate on not heaving her guts.
“She’s a very headstrong girl. It takes quite a lot to frighten her.” Nana sounded worried.
“I don’t think she likes heights,” Rory said doubtfully.
“Will you please stop talking about me like I’m not sitting right here?” Cass’s voice was still hoarse but she managed to make herself heard.
Taking a deep breath to calm her spinning stomach, she forced herself to sit up on the swaying couch. The left inside pocket of O’Shea’s jacket was pricking her again and she shrugged her shoulders irritably.
“I’m fine,” she said with as much dignity as she could manage. “I’ve just got a little motion sickness—that’s all. If I had known that Jake here was going to insist that we ride in this flying nightmare, I would have brought some Dramamine.”
“I have no idea what ‘Dramamine’ is or what it does, but I have asked you not to call me that, Cassandra.”
O’Shea frowned at her but didn’t loosen his grip. His arm was around her waist now and he had one large hand firmly planted on her right hip. There was nothing sexual in the touch—it was purely a safety measure to keep her from falling, she could tell. His arm felt like an iron bar—completely immovable.
Cass wanted to tell him to take his hands off her but though the couch was beginning some kind of descent, they were still high in the air. Like it or not, she would have to put up with Jake O’Shea’s hands on her for a little while longer.
“Too bad,” she said tersely. “As long as you call me by my first name, I’m calling you by yours.”
“But that is not my name,” O’Shea objected, still frowning.
“Cass, could you maybe not insult our attorney right before we go to court?” Phil snapped with uncharacteristic irritation.
“Look, this whole thing wasn’t my idea in the first place,” Cass snapped back. “It was your bright idea to sue our fairy Godmother not even twenty-four hours before my birthday. I was just forced to come along for the ride.” She glanced at O’Shea. “I just hope like hell I’m not expected to testify.”
“Cassandra, really—” Nana began but O’Shea shook his head.
“In all probability Judge Greenvine will require your older sister to do most of the talking since she’s the one that brought the suit in the first place. You should be prepared to answer in a respectful tone of voice, however, if he asks you a question,” O’Shea answered stonily.
“Or she’ll be held in contempt of court?” Rory, who was a big Court TV watcher, asked eagerly.
O’Shea smiled grimly.
“You could call it that. But our court system is somewhat different from yours. Being held in contempt of court might mean receiving second degree burns over most of your body if your judge is a firedrake or being submerged in a vat of icy water up to your chin until hypothermia sets in if they are one of the water fae. And those are some of the milder punishments for angering one of our judges.”
“What?” Cass couldn’t help the startled look she gave him. “But that’s…that’s crazy! You can’t do that to people!”
“They can and they do, Cass,” Phil said from the other end of the couch. “The fae courts don’t use a jury system like we do. The judge has absolute power over the cases he or she sees and they rule according to their professional opinion.”
“But…but how do you know you’re getting a fair ruling?” Cass asked. “What if the judge has a personal preference or a prejudice against one of the parties, or—”
“That rarely happens,” O’Shea cut her off a little too quickly. Cass had a feeling that her question had struck a nerve. “The main thing to remember,” he said, frowning down at her, “Is that you should only speak when spoken to. I’m here to argue for you—it’s part of my job. So just answer any questions addressed to you and leave the rest to me.”
“You’re asking us to put an awful lot of trust in you considering that we never saw you before this morning,” Cass pointed out in a hoarse whisper, glaring up at him. “How do we know you really have our best interests at heart?”
Jake O’Shea’s face looked like it was carved out of granite.
“I guess you can’t truly know that, Miss Swann,” he said icily. “If the fact that I have saved your life twice in the time since I met you this morning hasn’t induced you to trust me, then I suppose nothing will.”
His pale dangerous eyes clashed with hers for a moment and then Cass looked away, biting her lip. He was right—he had saved her life, first from the trows and just now from plunging to her death from the flying couch. But damn it—something about him just got under her skin. She had no idea why she wanted to bait and insult him, she only knew he irritated her until she felt compelled to irritate him back.
And there was something else, too. His cool use of her last name instead of her first didn’t make her feel better at all. Not in the least.
“Look,” she began haltingly. “I didn’t mean to—”
“We have no time for apologies now, although I will happily accept them later,” O’Shea remarked in that cool, maddening tone of his.
Cass glared up at him with renewed irritation. Jerk!
His pale, leaf green eyes bored into hers, daring her to say anything else. Cass stared back but somehow, when she looked into his strong features her words deserted her.
After a moment the intensity of his gaze became too much. Though she didn’t want to lose the little staring contest she found herself in, Cass couldn’t help but look away.
Trying to take her mind off the big elf, she glanced down, watching their spiral descent into a different part of the huge city. The sight made her stomach go lumpy again and she swallowed uneasily.
Damn but she’d be glad when this whole thing was over with! It seemed amazing that her biggest worries this morning had been finishing her portrait of Brandon for the I.C.U. show and teaching at the Tight-Ass Academy tomorrow. She just wanted to see the last of Jake O’Shea and get back to her nice semi-normal life and her art.
But she had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
Eight
The couch sat them down in front of a large pale peach building that seemed to rise into the sky forever. At last O’Shea loosened his grip on her hip and they all got off.
Cass thought she had never been so happy to plant her feet on solid ground, even though one foot was bare. Deciding that she looked ridiculous in just one slipper, she took the Ernie slipper off her foot and chucked it in a nearby trashcan.
The trashcan surprised her by standing up and waddling away on short stumpy legs, apparently to keep her from tossing anything else into it. As an afterthought, it spit the Ernie slipper back in their direction and Rory caught it reflexively and handed it back to her.
“Hey, what the—” Cass turned to O’Shea to demand an explanation only to see him paying for their ride.
He had a handful of thick heavy coins that looked like real silver in one palm and he was dropping them onto the couch’s red velvet cushions, righ
t where she had been sitting. As she watched, the cushions parted to reveal a wide-lipped mouth with many sharp white teeth that gulped and swallowed the coins enthusiastically.
Cass thought she might be sick.
My God! That thing’s mouth is right where my ass was not two minutes ago! she thought. What if it had gotten hungry while we were cruising at ten thousand feet?
O’Shea turned and correctly interpreted the sick look on her face.
“Don’t worry,” he said, a slight smile tugging at one corner of his stern mouth. “It rarely happens. And now, we have only fifteen minutes before our court date. Let us proceed and please be sure to follow correct courtroom protocol at all times.” He gave Cass a warning glare. “Which means keep your hands in your pockets and your mouth shut. All right?”
Cass opened her mouth to snap out a reply but he had already turned and was striding up the steps to the large peach building leaving her, Nana, Phil, and Rory to follow behind him like a line of ants following the leader.
Arrogant prick! Earlier Cass had been almost ready to feel ashamed of herself for giving their court-appointed elf such a hard time but watching his broad shoulders in the crisp white shirt as he climbed the stairs to the court house she felt a fresh surge of annoyance. Just who the hell did he think he was ordering them around like that?
‘Keep your hands to your self and your mouth shut.’ What an asshole! Well, at least he wasn’t leading her around like a dog on a leash anymore, she consoled herself as they entered the cool, dim interior of the huge peach building. And hopefully, she would never have to see him again after today.
The inside of the fairy court didn’t look anything like what Cass had been expecting—not that she had much experience with this kind of thing. She had only been in court once in her life before to fight a speeding ticket (she had lost) but it was nothing like what she was seeing now.
They were standing in a large, central lobby with a high vaulted ceiling that seemed to arch upwards into infinity. Cass saw several full-blooded fairies coolly flying from floor to floor and there were hovering footstools of various sizes, obviously the cousins of the flying couches, to transport the fae who were without wings. Branching off from the main lobby were doors which Cass assumed led to courtrooms with attendants standing guard outside them. Many of the door guards were handing out confusing equipment to the people that entered the courts.
To her left, she saw an impossibly tall, thin guard with a pale freckled face reaching down to give some visitors pairs of protective goggles. Another guard, a woman with purple skin and tiny, non-functional wings that stuck out the back of her pale blue uniform, was passing out inflated innertubes and life vests to the people entering her court. Yet another, a creature that looked like a dog walking on its hind legs and wearing the standard pale blue uniform, was helping to fit visitors with silver protective jumpsuits that looked like they might be insulated against either heat or cold, she wasn’t sure which.
“What’s going on?” she asked Phil, since her older sister had obviously done her homework on the Realm of the Fae. “Why are all those guards passing out that weird equipment?”
“The courtroom is configured for whatever judge is presiding,” Phil said in a low voice. “The people getting innertubes and life jackets are probably going into a court where the judge is a water fae of some kind. The insulated suits are either for people going into extreme heat or extreme cold—the judge might be a firedrake or an ice daemon. The dark goggles are probably for the court of a salamander.”
“A salamander? Like a lizard?” Rory, who had been quiet and unhappy since meeting the phooka horse, perked up a bit at the mention of animals.
“A salamander is a magical creature with great wisdom that is only able to survive in the middle of a blindingly intense flame,” Nana answered unexpectedly. She looked around the huge court room with a smile. “My, but this place brings back memories! Your great, great grandmother was one of the most respected fae judges, my dears, and I used to play here as a little girl.” She patted Phil on the cheek. “So I dare say you get your legal aspirations naturally, Philomena.”
“Nana, you never told us that!” Cass said, wondering what other secrets their grandmother had.
“Well, I don’t like to think about the past so much,” Nana hedged. “I tried to put all that behind me when I decided to turn my back on the fae world and live as a human with your grandfather. There’s no sense pining for something you can’t have, you know. And—”
“Why wasn’t I informed of this change?” O’Shea’s deep voice interrupted her and Cass looked up to see their court-appointed elf staring angrily at a clerk who was sitting at a large reception desk to one side of the lobby.
The clerk was consulting a clipboard and had a bored expression on her plump mauve face. She looked like she might be part insect because her large pink eyes were fragmented into hundreds of tiny compound lenses and she had an extra pair of arms folded under her breasts.
“Says here we tried to get in touch with you several times, Counselor O’Shea, but you didn’t answer your calls. Was your tell-me asleep?” she asked, unfolding her second set of arms to scratch her head and tap at a piece of paperwork that appeared to be a call log.
O’Shea cursed under his breath and rounded suddenly to face Cass.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said and thrust one large hand inside the opening of his jacket which she was still wearing.
“Hey! What the hell? Get your hands off me!” Cass shouted hoarsely as his seeking fingers brushed her bare left breast making her jump.
She lifted the discarded Ernie slipper she was still holding to beat at him but O’Shea had already found what he was looking for and pulled it out of the inside pocket. He held up his hand and a round furry creature the size of a golf ball with a long needle-sharp nose was suddenly sitting in his palm.
“Hey, boss,” the tiny creature, which looked a little bit like a porcupine crossed with a sparrow, piped up in a tiny, nasal voice. “The court called. The honorable Judge Greenvine won’t be presiding on the case of the Swann sisters vs their godmother, Lucinda LaFleur. You’re going to have Judge Rosinbloom instead. Oh, and the time has been moved up thirty minutes from nine AM to eight thirty. They called three times— I tried to tell you but you didn’t answer my pokes. Sorry.” It curled into a ball and O’Shea put it into the breast pocket of his white shirt and turned to Cass.
“Why didn’t you tell me I was getting a call?” he demanded, his pale green eyes flashing angrily. “This changes everything.”
“Well how was I supposed to know? It’s not like I heard that…that whatever it is ringing or anything. If you had even set it to vibrate…”
Cass broke off suddenly, remembering the sharp poking sensation that had bothered her three times since O’Shea had put the jacket on her. It must have been the creature’s sharp little snout poking her to try and get her attention. But how was she supposed to know that it was his version of a cell phone trying to get hold of him? She hadn’t even known that the fae used such things.
“Anyway, I didn’t know what it was,” she finished, defensively. “You should have told me. And you should have asked before you went groping around for it, too. I can’t believe you gave me a jacket to wear with a live animal inside it—that thing could have bitten my nipple off!”
“It’s a simple tell-me, not a ravening manticore,” O’Shea ground out between clenched teeth. “Your appendages were never in any danger. Are you humans really so uncivilized that you have no such communication devices?”
“As a matter of fact we do but they’re called cell phones and they’re not alive,” Cass spat back. “They don’t poke us in the nipple with their noses when we have a call—they ring or vibrate.”
O’Shea shook his head in disbelief. “They ring like a bell? What kind of primitive technology—?” He broke off, shaking his head. “Never mind, it’s too late now.” He turned back to the bored looking insectile c
lerk sitting at the reception desk. “Fine, so Judge Rosinbloom it is.”
“You’re late anyway,” the clerk said in a high, buzzing voice. “You’ll be lucky if Judge Rosinbloom doesn’t dismiss the case out of hand.”
“We were unavoidably detained,” O’Shea said shortly. “We had an encounter with a phooka and one of our party was attacked by trows.”
The clerk shrugged both sets of shoulders.
“I’ll send word ahead of you but you know her moods. She may or may not have mercy on you and your clients.”
“Have mercy on us?” Cass didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you should follow me and keep quiet.” O’Shea was obviously still upset that she hadn’t told him his cell phone creature was ringing…er poking her. Cass gave him a murderous glare and opened her mouth but Phil touched her shoulder warningly.
“Please, Cass, we’re already late,” she said desperately, her voice low enough that only Cass could hear it. “And since I’m the one that brought the case in the first place if the judge decides to hold us in contempt, I’ll probably be the one who gets punished. Okay?”
“Fine.” Cass put an arm around her sister as they followed O’Shea deeper into the court house. “But I don’t care what happens, Phil, I’m not going to stand by and watch you get burned or drowned or whatever other weird torture thing they do when you’re twenty minutes late in this fucked-up place.”
She didn’t have to try very hard to keep her voice low since she was still so hoarse but she whispered anyway. There was no point in upsetting Nana and Rory who were talking quietly as they walked along.
“Nor will I.” O’Shea looked over his shoulder, frowning at the both of them. Cass wondered how he could have heard them. Did elves have super hearing or something? “I take full responsibility for my clients, Miss Swann,” he said to Phil formally. “I was charged with bringing you to court on time and I failed in that charge. If there is punishment to be meted out, I will accept it in full.”
Be Careful What You Wish For (The Swann Sisters Chronicles Book 2) Page 6