Lorelei grabbed his chin and turned him fully toward her. “I like you better in one piece, okay? So you need to stay that way.” She’d apparently scared the arrogance off of his face with the force in her voice, and, surprised with herself, released his chin. “I’m just saying that Jax might be able to help, so at least think about showing him.”
“Show me what?” Jax stood in the doorway to the bathroom in his undershirt.
Lorelei straightened, only noticing then Conrad’s hands were hovering close to her waist. His face flushed, and he crossed his arms over his chest, brow knitting.
Voice higher than usual, she lilted back, “Oh, Conrad helped me fix this fancy dwarven invention I dropped one time, and I thought the spell was really impressive, but he says you wouldn’t be interested.”
Conrad shot her a sly look, keeping his mouth shut.
Jax hung his dress shirt on the corner of the door to dry. “Ah, yeah, he’s quite the show off, isn’t he? I bet he’s tried to pass off all sorts of mundane stuff as fancy to impress you.” He eyed the dog, hands on his hips. “Well, Duchess, as long as Rognvaldson didn’t accidentally give you the ability to blab to your mommy, I oughta get you back to your hand-ground lamb shanks and allergy medication, huh?”
While he was distracted, Lorelei nudged Conrad with her foot. The warlock scowled at her. “Fine,” he said quietly, then with a sigh, he rolled his head on his shoulders and stood. “Jax, I do actually have something to show you.”
“I’m really not interested in a mending spell there, bud.”
“Not a—” He ran his hands over his face. “Just look.” As if he wouldn’t go through with it if he did it any slower, he pulled his shirt and flannel off all at once over his head and turned his left shoulder toward Jax.
“Whoa, what are you doing?” Jax’s visible confusion contorted into a very pleased grin, and he looked over at Lorelei with his tongue hanging out just like the shih tzu. “Conrad! I can’t believe we’ve been friends all these years, and I never knew you were hiding that!” He strode up to him and started poking at his stomach. “I can actually see some definition there. You might be able to do more sit-ups than Rob!”
“See? This is what I mean by weird. Doesn’t even address the enchanted scars.” He glared at Lorelei who was laughing behind her hand, and he tried to scramble back into his shirt, but it was too tied up in his arms and the flannel.
“Quit fidgeting so I can see.” Jax was laughing, but managed to get him to keep still. The amused look fell away as he surveyed the marks. “What in the deepest abyss is all this? Besides the reason you never changed with the rest of us in the locker room, I mean.”
Conrad sighed, referring to what had happened with Byron when they were kids. Jax wasn’t surprised by most of the information, it was really only the existence of the markings that seemed new to him. “I don’t know what most of them do, so sometimes I run experiments.”
“And they make him pass out,” Lorelei added, ignoring the annoyed look Conrad gave her.
Jax looked at the symbols up close, pointing out the small cluster of ones under his shoulder blade with the interlocking circles and eye as the ones they’d just used on the dog. “These have something to do with life, don’t they?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
Jax touched the spot, and Conrad flinched.
“You said they don’t hurt,” said Lorelei, accusatory.
“They don’t normally, but that felt like being burnt.” She could tell by the surprise on his face he was being truthful.
Jax whistled. “Maybe don’t mess with that one again, it’s on your back, but it’s right up against your heart.”
Conrad’s eyes met with Lorelei’s, but only for a second as Jax grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to his bed. “On your stomach. I gotta copy these things down.”
Conrad landed with a huff, glaring over his shoulder. “I don’t want you using any of them—I don’t know what they do.”
“First of all, I wouldn’t dream of it, too risky, but also,”—he tipped his head to the side—“I have a feeling at least some of them are you specific. Lore, come over here and keep him entertained, will ya? This is going to take some time.”
Lorelei forgot she was there for a moment, her mind starting out marginally distracted by Conrad’s abs, but now reeling with what Jax had said about the spell Conrad used having to do with life and being so close to his heart. She walked across the room and sat on the edge of the bed, wanting to ask what the worst-case scenario was, but not wanting the answer.
The way Jax laughed and chatted as he drew out all the symbols put the worst thoughts out of Lorelei’s mind. He tried telling her stories about the academy, and Conrad tried derailing the conversation where he could and burying his face into a pillow when he couldn’t. Duchess Bianca curled herself up in Conrad’s abandoned shirt and slept at their feet. By the time Jax was done, he’d filled up a number of pages and thumbed through them all with another whistle.
“Can I put my shirt back on now?”
“If you must,” Jax joked but didn’t look up at him. “I can tell you one thing: you’re not quite as disappointing a Viking as I thought.”
“Rob will be thrilled to hear that.” His shirt turned into a makeshift dog bed, Conrad grabbed a sweatshirt off of his dresser and pulled it over his head. “I was serious, you know. Do not use these things, even if you think you know what they do.”
“I was serious too,” said Jax, rustling the pages. “I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. I’ll figure something out though. Anything for my best bud.”
Lorelei watched them genuinely hug one another then, but her own chest went cold. In only a short time Conrad had shown two new people a secret he’d held onto for almost his entire life, and what had she told him? Not that she was a human, that was certain, and it wasn’t just an omission of the truth—it was a flat out lie.
Jax turned to her then. “Ms. Fae,” he said, pulling her into a surprisingly warm hug. “Try to keep him from transmuting himself into oblivion before I can decode this, will ya?”
She gave them both a wary smile. “I’ll do my best.”
CHAPTER 28
TINY
Grier hadn’t been able to figure out what was in the package Mr. Carr received. Lorelei tried to find out what the faeries did with the trash, hoping the envelope might give them some kind of clue, but when she asked the sullen-faced Habian, he only told her it was none of her business, but if she was so interested, she could start taking care of it herself. It had been almost two weeks since, and Philomena’s niggling at Mr. Carr was finally starting to wane, the cupid insisting she had gathered enough information and holing herself up in her room with her ingredients and weapons to analyze it.
Mr. Carr received a few more envelopes during that time. Lorelei wasn’t always there to get the mail, but when Helena came a bit earlier than normal one morning, before Mr. Carr could get down to the foyer, Lorelei called Conrad up to the desk and asked if there was a spell to see what was inside it without the recipient knowing.
“You want to commit mail fraud?” he asked with half a smile. “That comes with a pretty stiff penalty.”
“Oh, like you’re going to rat me out,” she said, handing the envelope across the front desk.
Conrad looked intrigued, excited even, until he read the addressed name. He squinted up at her. “Isn’t this the guy in 210 and a half?”
“Well…?” She really didn’t want to tell him, knowing his next question would be why, and she’d have to come up with something that didn’t involve the stranger being a possible human hunter.
“That’s the same guy you were talking to the cupid about, right?” When she nodded sheepishly, he made a face at it. “What do you want with that yuppie’s mail?”
“What’s a yuppie?”
“I don’t know, my dad used to say it,” he mumbled, dropping the envelope. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I’m not asking if it is, I just want to see what’s inside. You were all for it a minute ago.”
“I changed my mind.”
She snatched it up. “Fine, if you don’t want to help me, I’ll just rip it open myself.”
“I didn’t say I don’t want to help you.” He grabbed it back. “I just don’t want to help you do whatever this is.”
Mr. Carr started down the stairs at the same moment. Lorelei’s eyes flashed, and she reached over the counter to get it back, but Conrad held it out of her reach, grabbing another small pile of mail at the same time.
“Conrad,” she hissed, but he ignored her completely, and when Mr. Carr finally made it to the foyer, she put on her brightest, cheeriest face. “Good morning, Mr. Carr!”
He greeted her as uninterested as he always seemed to be, but before he could ask for the mail, Conrad stuck the envelope under his nose without a word. The man raised a brow at it, glanced at Conrad only a second, then took it and headed back up the stairs.
She glared at the warlock and told him he could deliver all of the mail then if he was going to be that way.
“Fine, I will,” he quipped as if he’d won some competition she had no idea they were even in, and he left with an armload of envelopes.
Lorelei was salty for the rest of the day until that evening when Mr. Carr came into the sitting room with his tablet, settling in to take notes in a chair with its back to the wall. She’d tried her key on his door once when she’d seen him start a meal and knew it would be vacated long enough, but the manor didn’t seem to believe that allowing her in was a necessity. With her shift ending and Grier wandering in at the same time, she realized this was another chance.
She pulled the lycan into the back hall instead of the foyer. After ensuring it was empty, she grilled him on what he’d seen that day, but he confirmed it was nothing yet again.
“Damn.” Lorelei tugged on the end of her braid. “This investigation is going nowhere, Grier. I should have just ripped that package open when I had the chance.”
“He looked comfortable in there, he should be out of his room for at least a little bit.”
“Unless there’s a way to sneak in that doesn’t involve the keys…wait, what about the faeries?”
“Jerks,” said Grier, rubbing a cheek. “One of them pulled my whiskers when I was turned last. My face still hurts.”
“No, I mean, they’re tiny and have access to this whole place. They could go in there and do some snooping for us. They must do that all the time, right? It’s like a trick, and they love tricks!”
Grier made a pained face. “Are you kidding? They might love playing tricks on us, but Bur makes sure the guests are totally off limits.”
“Bur’s not here.” She grinned, happy about that fact for the very first time. She was already headed over to the golden intercom beside the door to the conservatory. Grier was looking conflicted, but Lorelei pressed the button beside the grate and called for Tuatha, the kindest faery she knew. A breathy, dreamlike voice answered her, and moments later a dusty glow of light shot toward them from the other end of the hall.
Tuatha floated over to the side table below the intercom and settled herself down on top of a rabbit statuette’s head, crossing her legs and placing her tiny hands on her tiny knee. She had her hair in many braids this time all bundled up on the top of her head, giving her an extra centimeter in height.
And then a second ball of light came down behind her. Habian. He eyed Lorelei with his dark eyes through strands of stringy, black hair and leaned against one of the rabbit statue’s ears. She grimaced back—of course he showed up too. What, just to give her a new pimple in the middle of her forehead or maybe a tail for the next twenty-six and a half hours?
Lorelei put her smile back on and greeted Tuatha. “Bur’s still away, right?”
“Oh, yeah, she hasn’t really sent word in…” The faery put a tiny finger to her tiny lips and tipped her tiny head to look at her tiny feet. “Well, it’s been a while.”
“It’s fine,” said Habian in his usual, sullen drone. “We’re the ones in charge now.”
“Well, I was hoping you guys could do me a favor.”
Grier took a step back, shaking his head behind where the faeries were so only Lorelei could see him.
She inhaled sharply, recognizing she’d made a mistake. “I mean, I would really appreciate your assistance.”
Grier shook his head harder, like she were digging the hole deeper.
“I need help?”
Grier threw his arms up in silent frustration.
“Oh, sure, anything.” Tuatha had a voice that went up and down with every word like a seesaw.
Lorelei leaned down so her face was level with her and whispered. “There’s a room I need some help getting into.”
“Uh huh?” Tuatha nodded.
“There’s something inside I want to see. Not take or break or anything, just see.”
“Uh huh?” She nodded again.
“But it’s one of the guest’s rooms.”
Tuatha’s mouth formed a perfect, tiny O. “Oh, dear, that might be a problem.”
“Yeah, you can’t do that,” Habian cut in, crossing his arms.
“No, not at all, not that size.”
“No, Tuatha,” Habian grumbled. “They can’t at any size.”
“Well, sure they can.” Tuatha raised both of her hands and held them about an inch apart, which for her was mighty wide. “I can do it. I’ve done it before, and it went perfectly then. Well, except for the almost getting squished part.”
“No.” Habian grabbed her wrists, the first time Lorelei had seen him move that fast. “I mean, it’s not allowed. Bur wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, right.” Tuatha looked up at Lorelei again, tiny brows furrowed. “Bur wouldn’t like that.”
“But, guys, Bur’s not here,” she said in feigned confusion, “and I thought you two were in charge?”
“Oh, she’s right!” Tuatha bobbed her head.
“She’s being sneaky,” said Habian, though there was a tinge of amusement to his normally sulky voice, “and she’s not even good at it. Unless you’re willing to make a trade?”
Tuatha’s dreamy voice went a bit sharper. “Ooo, a trade.”
“A trade, yeah.” Lorelei tried not to notice Grier’s frantic head shaking and arm waving. Instead, she pulled him next to her to seem more enticing to the fae. Unfortunately, Lorelei didn’t understand that that wasn’t a good thing. “We can owe you one, how’s that?”
“So, you want to make a deal?” Habian crossed his arms again, eyeing the two. “We do this favor for you, then you do a favor for us. Fair?”
Lorelei was about to agree when Grier nudged her. “It has to be equal value,” he said. “Nothing we’re not capable of.”
Habian rolled his eyes. “When have we ever—”
“Deal?”
Habian and Tuatha looked at one another, both grinning but in very different ways. “Deal,” they said in unison, and Tuatha raised her dainty hands again to clap.
Lorelei was falling. Her stomach shot up into her throat as the ground went out from underneath her. Her surroundings rushed past in a haze, and she instinctively stuck her arms out, but even floundering around didn’t resolve the fact she was suddenly and without reason plummeting endlessly downward.
Then there was a pinch under her arms, and the world slowed, her shoulders jerked painfully, and she felt a presence on her back as a breathy but strained voice said in her ears, “Oh, gee, I sort of forgot that that’s what happens.”
Lorelei’s feet landed on the ground, but her knees were wobbly. She splayed out her arms, taking quick, short breaths, and blinked. There was a crash beside her, and Grier skidded into the ground with another figure on top of him. A figure with massive wings.
Habian pushed up off of Grier as Tuatha scolded him. “You didn’t do a very good job of catching that one.”
“That one’s a
lot bigger,” Habian grumbled shaking out his arms.
Lorelei found her balance and helped Grier to his feet, the boy blinking and rubbing his face. “What the hell just happened?”
“Your favor,” said Tuatha, obviously pleased with herself. “Now you can go to places where you couldn’t before!”
The fae standing beside them were no longer their normal four inches, but were, in fact, taller than both Grier and Lorelei. In detail unlike she had ever been able to see them before, Tuatha and Habian appeared just like ordinary humans except for pretty much everything about them.
They were fine-limbed, very similar to Ren’s elven form, but perhaps even slimmer. Their ears were pointed but in a different way as well, not long or particularly sharp but with a playful curl to their tips. While their noses and mouths were slightly smaller than that of an average human, their eyes were much larger and set wider apart, rimmed with heavy lashes and what could have been a smudgy eyeliner, though it was nearly identical on the two and complimented their pale and dark complexions in kind. They both wore other makeup, a speckling of white dots across Habian’s nose and cheeks and golden ones on Tuatha, but as Lorelei leaned a little closer to Tuatha’s face she was unsure if the freckle-like dots were really artificial.
And then there were the wings. They didn’t fold back like Helena’s but remained on full display, glimmering with their own light, so thin they were like taut cellophane, showing the world behind them through an iridescent kaleidoscope.
Only the world behind them, and everywhere, Lorelei realized as she spun around, wasn’t the one she was used to. “We’re tiny,” she said, sucking in a breath. Beside her, along the baseboard, a dust bunny as tall as she was rolled by. “Ew, we need to do some better cleaning in here.”
“Excuse me.” Habian glared at her, almost two heads taller even when he hunched. Height was relative, she realized, looking down at herself and noting how proportionate she still was and then at Grier who had definitely shot up recently but was still shorter than the faeries.
“You’re not tiny.” Tuatha smiled down in her euphoric way, the look unsettling up close. “You’re just not gigantic anymore.” She reached out a slender hand and pat her on the head. “In fact, you’re very cute like this. Maybe we should keep them small.”
The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2) Page 28