The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2)

by A. K. Caggiano

  “Are you unwell?”

  Lorelei blinked, Ren suddenly before her, the elf silently appearing at the desk as he so often did. She jerked back, then sighed. “No, I was just…” She huffed as he stared stoically back. “Ren, why are boys so complicated?”

  The elf’s brows raised higher than she’d ever seen them go. “Lorelei, I implore you, please do not request this conversation of me.”

  She laughed as Aly jumped off the counter for the ground where the fox pup was waiting at Ren’s feet. The two ran off through the foyer and into the sitting room.

  “Thank the gods,” Ren mumbled, and floated after the two.

  CHAPTER 27

  SHOW OFF

  Lorelei spent the rest of the day working as usual, taking breaks only to quiz Ziah about the imports and exports of Moonlit Shores, none of which were current and only half of which she could pronounce. The front desk got a call just at the end of her shift from Conrad’s room. It was Jax, in a very rushed voice, asking for a towel. Not multiple, and he didn’t care what size or would say what it was for, he just needed one. “And if you could be the one to please bring it down,” Jax was saying on the other end before bidding her a quick farewell, Conrad’s voice piping up from the background, asking what he thought he was doing.

  She knocked, towel in hand, and she heard Jax’s voice coming from the other side of the room, “…he thinks he’s going to ask me and that I have no idea, which is ridiculously cute, but I’ve got something flashier in mind.” The door opened, and Jax put on that charming grin. “Lore, fantastic seeing you again.” His coat and jacket were both off, and his tie had been abandoned, but he still looked sharp.

  Conrad glanced up from his seat at the desk, a pencil hanging from his mouth. He’d been leaning close to the statue, flannel sleeves rolled up, and had clearly run a hand through his hair a few too many times. Lorelei thought she liked him even better mussed up like that. He spun in his chair and opened his mouth, but Jax interrupted him just as the pencil fell to the floor. “This might be exactly what we need—a fae’s perspective.” He pulled her into the room.

  Conrad bent down to get the pencil. “She doesn’t want—ow!” He banged his head off the bottom of the desk.

  “She can tell us what she wants.” Jax sniffed, looking at her expectantly.

  She held up the towel. “You said you needed—”

  “Right, thanks.” Jax took it from her and immediately tossed it onto Conrad’s bed. “Now, our thing.” With an arm over her shoulders like they’d been friends forever, Jax guided her to the desk and right next to Conrad so that she bumped into his knee. Conrad was rubbing the spot he’d banged, blinking up at her.

  The statue looked out cross-eyed on the room. “What happened to it?” Completely out of the bag now, it had all the fine detail of a real dog, and a very fancy show one at that with luxurious fur that completely eclipsed its paws. If not for the eyes and silly tongue, the thing looked like it belonged on the bag of some fancy dog food, sitting on a satin pillow and eating out of a crystal bowl. Papers covered with symbols in Conrad’s messy handwriting were strewn all around it, and a couple piles of dried herbs were lined up in shallow tins.

  “Transmutation mistake.” Jax waved his hand in the air like it had been nothing. “Honest mix up.”

  “Jax was doing a job for a human,” Conrad said with a bite, twirling the rescued pencil around his fingers. “He turned their apparently very expensive pet into this, and she’s stuck. Pretty hard to explain to charmed folk let alone someone who doesn’t know magic exists that their dog isn’t strictly a dog anymore.”

  “You, of all people, chastising me for dealing with humans. That’s rich.”

  Conrad’s eyes went wide for a moment then he shook his head. “It’s just restricted.”

  “Oh, okay, Mr. Who-Needs-A-License Rognvaldson, we’re just full of hypocrisy today, aren’t we?” He reached out and pinched the top of Conrad’s ear where it was pierced, and Conrad swatted his hand away.

  “You work with humans?” While Lorelei was typically amused by picking on Conrad herself, she didn’t necessarily want to see him suffer too badly and felt a sudden need to shift the conversation.

  “He thinks he’s an artist too,” said Conrad, leaning back in his chair and throwing his hands behind his head.

  “Thinks?” Jax pouted.

  “You conjure duplicates of things then transmute them into marble or gold. You’re more like a printer making cheap copies. You don’t have any real talent like she does.”

  Lorelei’s face felt like it was on fire.

  “Well, they’re certainly not cheap, that’s for sure.” Jax grinned like the whole thing was true, and he wasn’t bothered by it in the least. “And since humans don’t know it takes me all of a day to knock one out, I can charge a lot more than what charmed folk are willing to pay.”

  “Only problem is when you accidentally transmute the real thing and not the conjured copy.” Conrad dropped a hand onto the statue then quickly pulled it back at the tinny growl that emanated from inside.

  “What can I say, it was a really good copy.” Jax took Lorelei by the shoulders and pushed her half a step even closer so that she was standing right up against Conrad’s thigh, boxed in by the two. “So, Ms. Fae, any thoughts on how we might return Duchess Bianca to her physical, fluffy form?”

  Lorelei clammed right up. She really hoped she wasn’t supposed to know how to do that sort of thing. “I’m, um…”

  “She’s not a sylvan, she’s a lorelei, and this isn’t even a fish, Jax,” said Conrad, saving her. “And she doesn’t owe you anything.”

  “Too bad. But I do need a break from all this work, so hang out with us for a while.” He guided her back over to the bed and pushed her down, dropping in beside her.

  Conrad glared at him from across the room. “You said you had to get this thing back by tomorrow night.”

  “Yeah, I do, so no break for you.” He waved, and the warlock reluctantly went back to work as Jax turned to Lorelei. “So, what’s it like being a changeling? Must be weird, right? I mean, I’ve met tons of humans, but I can hardly imagine any of them lasting if they were just thrown into all this with no prior experience.”

  “How do you know—”

  “I have an amazingly detailed memory, and Conrad tells me everything,” said Jax. “I do have to pry it out of him though, sometimes with cajolery.”

  Lorelei’s eyes widened, the sheen of the love potion sloshing in its petri dish in her mind.

  “Oh, no, I know that look. I’m not like that vile sorceress, don’t worry. Pretty dumb to be duped by the same potion over and over though, if you ask me, but I guess a nice rack can get a man to do a lot of dumb stuff—not that I would know. By the way, I tried to get him to end things with her about a hundred times, but he never listened to me, so thank you.” Jax offered her a high five. Lorelei glanced over to see if Conrad was looking. He hadn’t turned around, but he was flipping off Jax over his shoulder.

  Lorelei returned the high five with a quick and silent move, whispering, “I feel bad about how that happened actually.”

  “Oh, I know you do.” Jax rubbed her arm in a surprisingly comforting way. “That’s what makes you so nice.”

  She didn’t exactly feel that nice and wanted to take the conversation elsewhere. “So, you two went to school together?”

  “Yes!” Jax’s eyes glistened. “Let me tell you how we met, it’s adorable. We were both fourteen, me, already as dashing and handsome as I am now, and Conrad looking like an emaciated ghost. I saw his name on the roster, didn’t recognize it from the year before and thought great, we’re getting a Viking, and then this skinny guy walks in, an utter disappointment. Can’t even grow a beard.”

  “Hey, I can—”

  “Anyway, we were up against one another for the only open spot on the conjuring team. We battled it out to the final round, but I won, of course. He did put up a valiant, if failed, attempt though.
”

  Conrad spun around and pointed his pencil at him. “You’re leaving half of it out.”

  “You mean your consolation prize?”

  “We both tried out for the conjuring team and transmutation team at the same time,” he stressed. “And I won the other spot.” The pencil he was holding was enveloped in blue, and he threw it with a skillful flick of his wrist. It sailed end over end straight for Jax, and the warlock had only a second to react. He swept his hand through the air, leaving a violet trail in its wake and a cutting board popped into existence over his forearm, held up just before his face. There was a thunk, and a letter opener was jabbed into the board, wobbled in midair, and then the cutting board faded away, and the weapon fell to the floor, a chewed-up pencil once again.

  Lorelei’s mouth hung open, horrified, but the two of them were grinning ear to ear.

  “Also, I just like being clean shaven.”

  Jax leaned back on the bed as if he hadn’t almost been impaled. “Sure, buddy. So, anyway, all that really set us up to hate each other, which we were pretty good at.”

  Conrad flicked his hand and the pencil rolled back up to him. “Were?” He turned back to the desk.

  Jax rolled dark eyes. “A year or so later some of our classmates decided to make me the target of their ire—can’t imagine why.” He admired a well-manicured hand and snickered. “I didn’t feel much like fighting back, but someone else certainly did.”

  Lorelei glanced across the room at Conrad, but he was busy scribbling, his other hand digging with frustration into the back of his scalp.

  “He really terrorized those little jerks, transmuted their backpacks into things with teeth, got their books to fly around and wallop them. He even made them apologize which I thought was a pretty nice touch if completely unexpected from someone with a burned name who I figured would have just joined in with the teasing by the looks of him. I mean, have you ever seen a blonder, paler—”

  “I got it.” Conrad turned around again, holding up a page. “This has to do it.”

  Jax jumped up and went to him, plucking away the paper. “This is my bit, here?”

  “Your screw up, yeah. This should undo it, though.”

  “And what’s this?”

  Conrad shrugged, grabbing the page back. “The part that keeps it alive.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Jax watched him pick up the statue and place it on the floor near the foot of the bed. “It wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with that envelope you left in my mailbox, would it? I still haven’t opened it, you know, per your directions.”

  “Good. You’re only supposed to hold onto it for me anyway.”

  “This guy,” said Jax. “Always so cryptic.”

  “I know, right?” Lorelei threw up her hands.

  What neither Jax nor Lorelei realized was that a person could forget they were keeping so many secrets when they did it for too long. That and too much exposition at once really bogs down a story.

  “Do not kill this dog, Rognvaldson.” Jax paced. “She might be inbred and incapable of taking a full breath, but I’m pretty sure her owner’s in one of those human crime syndicates and will definitely send someone after me if I don’t bring her back. Plus they owe me fifty grand.”

  Lorelei got up on her knees and crawled to the foot of the bed to watch Conrad draw a chalk circle around the statue on the stone floor.

  “I know what I’m doing,” he told Jax then glanced up at Lorelei with a grin. “And I also know how you like to touch things you’re not supposed to, so I’m telling you now, don’t cross this line.”

  She leaned back, still watching. Conrad hadn’t been willing to turn Seamus back from his temporary toad form, the risk was too big, so she realized this was no small deed.

  Conrad sat cross legged on the ground, rubbing his hands together. Jax bent over his shoulder, lips drawn into a straight line. Conrad moved his hands over the statue, focused, and a trail of blue was left wherever his fingertips had been.

  Unlike other spells she’d seen him do, this was not quick work. Geometric shapes layered over one another in the soft, blue light, suspended until the pattern was complete. Then he laid a palm on top of what he’d made, a net of glowing threads hanging taut in midair over the statue, and pushed it downward. As the lights slid over the figure, the gold began to bubble and shimmer and then break away, melting to the floor. Hair sprouted up, grey and white, from the tuft gathered in the bow at the top of its head, and then more was revealed, that ridiculous face, its collar, its tail, until there was only a fluffy shih tzu standing there surrounded in a pool of evaporating gold in a circle of chalk.

  The dog let out an ear-piercing bark, and all three of them jumped back.

  “Your Highness!” Jax grabbed her from under her front legs and held her at arm’s length. “You survived!”

  The dog yapped back again, less deafening this time, its tail wagging so that its whole hind end wiggled, and then it emptied its bladder all over the front of the warlock’s shirt.

  “Remember your fifty grand,” Conrad cautioned as Jax grit his teeth.

  “My fault,” he said. “She was stuck like that for a whole day after all. Can I, uh…”

  Conrad gestured to the bathroom, and Jax set down the dog and grabbed the towel off of the bed. “See? Knew we’d need this. Maybe I am a diviner after all.” Then he shut himself inside.

  Lorelei was amazed at the little thing, frozen moments before and now running in a circle, its long, glossy fur fanning back like a supermodel before a wind machine. “I can’t believe it.” She blinked over at Conrad from the end of his bed, gripping the foot board and leaning forward. “You really just brought that thing back to life. That was amazing.”

  He looked particularly pleased with himself. “Well, she wasn’t ever really dead—it was nothing.” The dog bolted across the room and ran straight into a leg of the desk, bouncing off. “Hope that’s normal though.” Conrad stood then wobbled, eyes narrowing. When he raised his hands to put them on his hips, they shook.

  “Are you okay?” She slid off the bed and went up to him.

  He blinked back at her slowly. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Taking a step toward his desk, he lost his balance again and stopped. “I think.”

  Hesitantly, she reached up to brush the hair off of his forehead and out of his eyes, and it was wet with sweat. Lorelei gasped, pressing her hand against his temple to feel how hot it was. “Conrad, you’re burning up.”

  “No, your hands are just cold.” As she ran her palm down to his cheek, his skin red underneath it, he smiled in a dopey way, eyelids heavy. “Feels good though.”

  “Sit.” She pushed him into his chair easily despite his weak protests. Over at his desk, Lorelei picked up the page with the test pattern he’d made. There were symbols there she didn’t recognize, but as she suspected there were at least a few in an arrangement that she knew she’d seen before. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “Maybe.” He rubbed his neck and squinted up at her.

  “Does using a piece of that thing on your back always do this to you?” When he didn’t answer, she put a hand on each of the arms of the chair and leaned close to his face so he couldn’t look away. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I don’t usually transmute things that started out alive. This was just…” His voice trailed off, looking down into his lap to avoid her gaze. “There might have been this one other time besides the binding spell trials where I tried something out using the same pattern. I lost a couple hours of consciousness, but that was—”

  “On one spell?” She pushed her face even closer to his so he had to look up at her. She’d seen him overtoil before, she knew it took a lot of magic to get a warlock that close to passing out. “Tell me it was the end of a work day or something.”

  “It was first thing in the morning,” he admitted.

  “Conrad,” she said, giving the chair a shake. “That’s so dangerous.”

&n
bsp; He twisted his face, annoyed, but the color was coming back into it, and then he smirked. “You’re awfully concerned.”

  “Of course I am.” She backed up, crossing her arms over her chest. “Jax is good, right? Like, he’s a pretty powerful warlock?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’m the one who just fixed his mistake, but—”

  “So, you’ve talked to him about your back before. What does he have to say about it?”

  Conrad made a strangled sound and looked away again.

  “What, he doesn’t know? He hasn’t seen it?”

  He shook his head.

  Lorelei kept her voice low so Jax couldn’t hear from the bathroom, but spoke with rushed urgency. “Someone else who knows almost all the same stuff you do should be able to help figure it out. You need to show him.”

  “I don’t really want to do that.” He pouted at the ground.

  “Why not? You showed me, and you’ve known Jax for way longer—don’t you trust him?”

  “I do, but he’s going to be weird about it.”

  She clicked her tongue, rolling her eyes. “Why, because he’s—”

  “No,” Conrad said quickly. “It’s because he’s weird about everything, and I can count the people who’ve actually seen the whole thing on one hand: you, Arista, Byron, and my parents, and they’re dead.”

  “That can’t be it. Haven’t you ever been to a doctor? And, I mean, I did walk in on you and Bridgette that one time, and what about that valkyrie from high school?” She tried to inject some humor into her voice, but he only looked away from her and scowled. He didn’t seem like he was going to relent, so she huffed and bent down to him again, lowering her voice even more. “Conrad, if you keep experimenting on your own, you might really hurt yourself, and I…you’re not allowed to do that.”

  “Not allowed?” He peered back up at her from the corner of his eye, a smug look creeping onto his face. “You’re going to tell me what to—”