Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) (10 page)

Fairies had a terrible sense of humor. They truly enjoyed messing with people on whatever level they could. I mean, who didn’t, but perhaps that was my own fey lineage cropping up. Regardless, the fey did everything from stealing one sock from the dryer to stealing your grandmother. They are evil buggers. How they have managed to put such a pretty spin on their image has got to have something to do with either glamour or the fact that they are pretty. I mean, most fairies are sparkly and have wings. Who cares if they lead you into a bog to your demise like freakish, mini sparkling sirens?

I wasn’t sure how long we had been down in the land of glowing green grass and warm fragrant air. I didn’t know how long we had been washed in a breeze off the golden seas and lit by the glow of an underground sun. However long it had been, a bitterly cold Alberta Clipper with snowfalls above my knees—which put it nearly at waist height for the fairy—had settled in with vengeance. Even the darkness above was an unwelcome and biting shock to the system.

Chance waved his arm in the air and produced a coat. I didn’t ask how, but allowed him to shove my arms into it, and I burrowed into the hood. He did some of the neatest things. Other than the fact I still hadn’t cataloged all of his abilities, I noticed that his nicest acts seemed to be ones designed to either take care of me or protect me. I really had to figure out what he was.

The fairy’s lips turned blue. Chance sighed and produced another coat from thin air and gave it to the short man. In his too-deep-for-his-body voice, my fiancé thanked him.

Santino came running out of the mound behind me. “Come on.” He dashed to a car parked in the long drive, which I noticed was running to keep it warm.

Chance, without asking permission, picked up my fiancé, slogged through the snow, and stuck him in the car. I trudged through the snow after them and got in the front with Santino. Chance paused outside my door.

He leaned in toward me. “We’ll need to make further arrangements for your safety with these new…changes.”

Turning away from him seemed easier in the mortal world. Our bond had grown stronger, harder to ignore in fairie, impossible once he lured me into the light ball. I couldn’t throw up shields there, and I feared now that he had proven his control over my body, I wouldn’t be able to break away, anywhere. I couldn’t say as I wanted to talk to Chance at all, about any of it. Deny all and pretend it did not happen…true friends of the dysfunctional.

“Yes, well, tonight I have some things I still have to get to. I’ll call you.”
I’ll call you, don’t call me
.

He nodded, but not in a way that made me think he believed me and disappeared.

Santino got us back to the Harbor and dropped us off by the lift bridge. We still had a bit of a walk back to Odd Stuff, but the route took us past four more bars, and as I still had quite a bit of work to do regarding the Hammer situation, that worked for me. I hugged Santino before he drove off. My fiancé, apparently deciding not to argue, followed me as I trudged down the sidewalk. He still tried to glamour me. I could feel it coming off him in waves.

We walked in silence toward the bar, the howl of the wind off the lake the only sound that broke the dark night. I listened. I could hear ‘Hungry Eyes’ in my head again. Finally, I spun on my heel. “Would you stop playing that song in my head?”

“Song, mistress?” His jewel bright eyes glittered at me, and he tilted that foreign head in an animal like way. The fey always reminded me of cats in their mannerisms, and Avery was no different. Like a cat, he stalked me under the glow of streetlights in the falling snow.

“In my head I keep hearing ‘Hungry Eyes.’ It is annoying.”

He furrowed what brows he had. The fairies had little to no body hair. No eyelashes to speak of, and nearly no eyebrows, more dents in their heads. But the expression on that nearly hairless face clearly stated his confusion. “I truly do not know what you are talking about.”

“You are trying to glamour me.” I stabbed a finger at him as I accused the shrunken freak.

He smiled now, and his expression grew feral. “Yes. That I am doing. Is it wrong of me to make you feel the needs of your body?”

I rolled my eyes. Fairies didn’t usually outright lie, though, so he wasn’t playing the music. Which I guess made sense, since he had never been topside that I knew of—how would he know the music to an eighties movie?

Suddenly, I shivered with a chill that had nothing to do with the subzero weather.

Something else was out there.

And that something else had just turned up the volume on the song in my head.
I look at you and I fantasize. You're mine tonight. Now I've got you in my sights,
played in my head. I looked into the night. I searched. I saw no one or nothing.

Something saw us though.

I glanced again at Avery. “You any good against bad guys?”

As I met the strange darkling eyes, he raised one almost hairless brow. “I am a dark fairy. I have been at the elf queen’s side for more years than even I care to recall. Are you asking how I am in a battle?”

I shrugged. “Kind of.”

“I am not sure whether to dignify that with an answer.”

He was maybe not an entire wimp, even if he stood shorter than my kid. I tried to decide on how to put him at my back. Tougher still was how to put him to my back when I didn’t know which side we would be attacked from or by what.

With these hungry eyes, one look at you and I can't disguise. I've got hungry eyes. I feel the magic between you and I.
It annoyed me to have music forced in my head. Way worse, by the way, than having a song stuck in your brain. Similar, but in stereo, or surround sound.

Suddenly, Avery held his ears. “I can hear it too.” He fell to his knees.

He held his head. His response reminded me of everyone else’s response to me singing. Everyone but Chance. I grudgingly took interest. Or, I would have, had the song not blasted in my own skull at such decibel levels that it triggered a headache. I should have searched for the hidden enemy, but in an automatic move that made no sense, I pinched my eyes closed to block the sound. Even as I did it, I knew it would not work. Because my ears could not close, my body pinched the only thing it could. Then the wind blew.

Something swept in. I managed to open my eyes to a squint. Darkness shrouded the street like a fog of some kind descending to cover the entire area. I blinked to force my eyes open all the way, but they watered too much to stay open.

The fog condensed over Avery and a high keening wail squealed from it. Avery cried out as red mist flowed from the fog like rain. When the warm crimson haze hit my arm, I realized dully it had to be blood. A deep scream came from the fog. Mufasa deep. Avery was screaming.

‘Hungry Eyes’ continued to play. Whatever had Avery would come for me next. I fought to think over the music blasting in my brain. I could not concentrate, or could not
hear
myself think over the damned music. I could not let them take Avery. I could not let them have me. I knew those things without thinking. That was the upside of being impulsive. I never thought first about my options. I acted on them, and thought later. And I could not stop that damn song in my head so I could not think. But then again, I was a siren.

I tilted my head back and let them know what they attempted to eat. I sang for them. They had bled my—not by my choosing, but mine nonetheless—fiancé. They threatened to consume me, so I sang their own song back to them, to whatever the hell they were.

I sang and released my fist of power into the fog. Whether mist or fog, when I opened my fist, I found enough energy within it that it had to be alive. My siren vision cleared the cloud in my brain somewhat. The creature knelt over Avery. Lit by a live power, its dim light shimmer. A glittering gold color hung like a shroud that masked the creature from my view, but a living being controlled it. Therefore, I could drain it. I sang and called my power down onto it. As I released the fist fully and sang, I caught the creature as it had tried to capture us.

Now I've got you in my sights with those hungry eyes
. As I sang, thankfully, the song in my head receded. Like any other song in my head, once I sang it out loud, it broke free.

The fog thinned further and the thing tried to rip away from my power. I could possibly have held it. Maybe, I could have drained it. However as the fog diminished, I saw Avery lying on the pavement. The thing had literally been eating his stomach. He lay there with bits of himself missing. I dropped the cords I held the creature with in favor of helping my bleeding fiancé. It wanted away, and I needed to see to Avery.

I had backed up automatically when the mist of blood hit. I ran to him and bent to survey the damage the thing had done. The handsome fairy seemed fine until I got to his waist. There he was a mess of gashes and tears, as if an animal had gnawed at him. “For an ancient fairy warrior, you kind of suck at being ambushed, don’t you?”

He blinked up at me, shoving at my hands. “What was that thing?”

“Like I am supposed to know?” Blood oozed from him. Thankfully, I didn’t get overly nauseous. I figured I had saved the day. I had done my part. Stopping the blood after…yeah, that was beyond me.

“I have never seen power like that in the courts.” His pale hands fingered his newly exposed innards and I tried to control the bile that threatened.

“Um, is there a fairy 911?” I shook my head, abruptly, thinking better of it. “Nevermind,” I unlocked my cell and dialed my mother.

“You are not getting out of this already.” My mother’s voice rang out over the phone, sharp and broaching no argument.

“Hi, mom.”

“I repeat, you are not—”

“Not trying to.” I tried to make my tone as comforting as possible. “But I do have a bit of a situation.”

Momentary silence on the other end of the line greeted that statement. “Santino dropped you off less than a half an hour ago. What could have possibly gone wrong in thirty minutes?”

 “I broke my fiancé?”

Although I hadn’t meant it to come out as a question or quite like that, my mother sighed. “I will send back Santino. He’s the closest.”

“Thanks, Mom. A monster attacked and tried to eat us. I made it go away, but Avery got chewed on, and I figured you didn’t want me to call an ambulance, so…” I left the sentence dangling.

Her fingernails clicked on something. “Are you trying to get rid of him that way then?”

“No!” I nearly shouted down the line. I knelt in the falling snow, freezing my butt off with some tiny man I didn’t even want, hoping he was magic enough and immortal enough not to bleed out before help came, and she thought I had tried to what? Rip his guts out to keep from being dragged back into fairy? I was not the nicest of people sometimes, but even I was not that royal of a bitch.
She
was not even that royal of a bitch. That I knew of.

“Actually.” Some of my uncertainty crept into my voice. “Neither of us is sure what attacked us. If you want to be helpful for once, you could look into that. Not that, mind you, I am complaining about getting out of keeping him tonight.”

I placed a hand over the receiver. “No offense.” I squinted at the fairy at hand.

He glowered at me.

“I help all the time.” My mother spoke in a huff.

I could hardly hold in my disdain. I rolled my eyes only a little grateful that she couldn’t see me. I noticed a car slowing and hoped it was Santino because, as I have mentioned in the past, I have next to no fairy talent and Avery didn’t seem up to any major glam at that moment.

“Hey, mom, I think the troops arrived. I’m sending your guy home for mending.”

“We will have the healers tend him. He will return to you by dawn.”

I sighed. “You don’t even know how badly he’s injured. He is pretty torn up. I don’t know that your healers can mend all this by dawn.” I mentally hoped they could fix him, yes, but if it took them, say, a week and I got out of my week entirely on a loophole, who was I to complain?

“By dawn.” Mom repeated icily and hung up on me.

I slid my phone back into my pocket and stood to watch the car as it braked on the icy road. Help had arrived.

CHAPTER Seven

Having gotten rid of both my wanna-be-fiancé, Chance, and some weird boogie man all in one night, I headed onward and upward and decided, yet again, to earn my paycheck. A glance at my cell phone informed me it was almost one AM, so technically Monday had passed. I hadn’t slept, though, so it still felt like a Monday to me. Possibly the worst Monday in history, but then again, last Monday had been a doosy as well so I quit counting.

I brushed what remained of the snow off my butt from kneeling next to Avery and wished that being a siren made me waterproof. Snow melted fast on warm skin leaving my ass cold and wet. My cell phone began to merrily play the theme song to
Gilligan’s Island
, and I almost cringed. What more fun could tonight really have in store for me? I almost cursed myself for thinking that. That thought alone almost begged for things to get worse.

Sven’s number on the digital readout cheered me somewhat. I flipped it open. “What’s up?”

“Hey, how’s your night goin’?” Sven’s voice was loud over the line.

I stumbled and caught myself before I did a face plant on the snow. I tried to think of an answer that would sum up my evening. “Eventful.”

“Things have been quiet here.” He stifled a yawn but it still echoed in my ear. “Vic fell asleep around nine thirty and I got a call. Do you know where Brennan’s Pub is?”

“Yeah.” I huddled lower in the borrowed coat as a particularly nasty shift of wind blew snow that cut like ice into my face. “Best wings in the Harbor.”

“I got a call from the Terrible Trio…you remember them right?”

“Yep, went ghost hunting with them while Mia was out of town last week, remember?”