The Fairyland Murders (16 page)

“B
lue, what the hell are you doing here?” Peyton asked, his tiny face scrunched up with a frown so fierce I backed up a step. Someone had his wings in a bunch. And, for once, it wasn't me. At least I didn't think it was. “You must go. Now!” He flapped his wings for emphasis.

I waved away a cloud of fairy dust, inhaling a little too much for my comfort. My head started to spin and the walls seemed to shrink even further. I blinked a few times and the walls returned to normal, which was about three feet high. “Where's your brother? He took off with Izzy about an hour ago. I need to find them,” I said when my senses returned. “Izzy! Clayton!” I yelled down the corridor.

Peyton glanced around, grabbed my arm, shocking himself in the process, and pulled me into a small—even by fairy standards—closet. A mop and dirty water bucket sat in one corner. The stench of bleach and mildew replaced the fairy dust in my nostrils. I stifled a sneeze, which sent a bolt of electricity rocketing through my body.

“It's too dangerous for you to be here,” Peyton said, his eyes darting back and forth. “If they catch you . . .”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I'm not going anywhere until you answer a couple of questions.”

He glared down at the small wristwatch on his arm and then back at me. “I don't have time for this. I'm late as it is, and if I'm gone too long, they will get suspicious.”

“Late for what?”

“None of your concern.” His eyes scurried from the doorway to me. “I'll make you a deal.”

“No.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don't have time to play this game. You stay in here and keep quiet until I return and I will tell you whatever you want to know. Okay?”

I smiled. “Kick in a hundred bucks.”

“That's robbery.”

I shrugged. “Consider it a small price to pay after you and your dumbass brother stiffed me for my finder's fee.”

His lips thinned, turning his unappealing face two times less attractive. “We'll make good on the check. I swear it.”

“Nuh-uh.” I moved to block the doorway.

He blew out a harsh breath. “Fine.” Reaching into his tiny wallet, he pulled out five twenties and handed them to me. “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic.” I pocketed the dough.

He motioned to the door. I took a small step to the side, leaving him enough room to squeeze by. He quickly pressed past, pausing with his hand on the doorknob. “Promise you'll stay here.”

“You got it, my friend.”

He nodded and then disappeared down the corridor.

I uncrossed my fingers, following behind at a safe distance.

 

Fairy Central was a maze with hundreds of corridors and what I assumed was office space; again not a fairy in sight with the exception of Peyton in front of me.

He ran through the hallways as fast as his tiny legs could carry him, which I had to admit was a pretty good clip. I huffed and puffed after him, damning the pack of cigarettes I'd smoked last night.

Finally, he pulled to a stop at an ornate wooden door carved sometime in the previous century. All sorts of bizarre symbols filled the wood, including an image of a Tooth Fairy with pink wings. Behind the fairy was a deep, dark shadow.

Her Shadow.

Together they looked invincible, but something in the fairy's eyes spoke of longing mixed with fear.

Peyton drew my attention as he tugged on the iron doorknob, pulling the door free. The sounds of cheering greeted him. At least I now knew where all the fairies were. The question now was why were they gathered and, more importantly, was Izzy somewhere inside?

The answer came soon enough.

“Long live the Tooth Fairy,” the crowd shouted.

Good luck with that.

“Long live Isabella Davis.”

Son of a bitch!

W
as Izzy insane? No way in hell was she about to be the next Tooth Fairy. Not if I could help it. It was too dangerous. Jack the Tooth Ripper already had it in for her. Waving her new status as Tooth Fairy was like wagging a rosebush at Ferdinand.

And how did the fairies even know Henrick was dead and therefore no longer fulfilling his duties as the Tooth Fairy? I thought about the bug planted in my phone and winced.

“As my first act as Tooth Fairy . . .” Izzy was saying as I charged inside the room, bursting through the crowd of well-wishers surrounding her. I realized my mistake immediately, mostly due to the army of tiny ninja fairies armed with teeth.

“It's him. The blue-haired one,” a fairy on my right screamed, flapping his red-tipped wings like a mad fairy. “Get him!”

Hundreds of tiny fingers dug into my arms and legs, dragging me down to the floor. I fought the winged assault, zapping a few of my attackers like mosquitoes, but to no avail. I now knew how that poor Gulliver had felt.

Small feet kicked me in various places. While their tiny kicks and punches didn't hurt exactly, this wasn't an experience I planned on repeating anytime soon.

“Stop,” Izzy screamed from somewhere to my left. “Please, stop it. You're going to hurt him.” I winced; her direct blow to my manhood hurt much more than a hundred tiny punches. When the little winged devils ignored her, her voice rose to a near squeak. “I command you to leave him alone. Now!”

Just as quickly as the attack started it stopped, leaving me lying on the ground full of small red welts. Izzy ran to me and knelt down, her hands hovering above me. “Are you all right?”

One of the fairy army commanders, his camouflage-patterned wings flapping, grabbed her arm, pulling her away from me. “Stay back, Your Highness. The blue-haired one is dangerous. You've heard the prophecy.”

“You're wrong. Blue wouldn't harm us,” she said. Unfortunately, her words came at the very same moment I fried the two fairies holding my arms. The buzz and pop of electricity filled the air, and with it came the stench of burned feathers.

Izzy sucked in a breath. “Damn it, Blue. You're not helping.”

Four more fairies piled on top of me as sparks shot from my body like a volcano. Izzy pushed the commander away, tossing her weight into the fray as she ripped away wing after wing until I was free. “Are you okay?” she asked again, careful to avoid contact with any of my electrical parts.

I sat up, brushing off my arms and jeans. “I'm fine. Great, in fact. Why, I feel like dancing.”

She snorted. “No need to be sarcastic.”

“Oh, you haven't heard anything yet, Isabella.” My tone conveyed just what I thought about her new role in fairy politics. “What the hell were you thinking?” I grabbed her arm, harder than necessary, but fear strengthened my grip.

Red fingerprints welled on her pale skin as blue sparks sheared her flesh. I dropped her arm when she let out a small cry. I started to apologize, but it was too late.

The damage was done.

A long golden wand smacked my knuckles. I yelped, turning to strangle the fairy who'd struck me. The wand-carrying fairy jumped back. “You must never touch the Tooth Fairy. It isn't done.”

I ignored the bossy fairy to focus on the boss fairy, the one in pink wings. Didn't she realize the danger she was in? Someone was ganking Tooth Fairies, and now she'd officially made herself target number one. “Jesus, Izzy, do you have any idea . . . ?”

She pressed her finger to my lips, receiving a small jolt. “This is not the place. Please. Just trust me a little longer.”

I laughed, pushing her hand away. Trust her? Not bloody likely. I trusted no one. It made life so much easier. Blue Reynolds, PI of One.

Nevertheless, I would stay quiet for now, mostly to avoid another round of fairy wrestling. The little guys had called in reinforcements. Now at least forty fairies surrounded me, each armed with toothed weaponry.

I straightened to my full height. The winged crowd took a collective step back, as if I was diseased. I raised an eyebrow. Izzy gave me a tight smile. “They don't like strangers.”

“Liar.” I sent an arc of electricity from one hand to the other. The crowd backed up again, a murmur of fear rising among them. If I weren't careful there would be a full-on tiny winged riot. I grinned at the thought.

“Fine, they don't like
you
.” She lowered her voice. “So I suggest, if you want to leave here anytime soon without electrocuting thousands of fairies, you follow my lead.”

“Your wish is my command, Your Toothiness.” I bowed low to emphasize my point. Rather than appreciate the salutation she kicked me in the shin. Lucky for her, she was wearing rubber-soled boots. Not so lucky for me, though. “Ow!” I jumped on one foot until the sting of her kick eased. “What was that for?”

A genuine smile crossed her face. “I felt like it.”

Seemed like as good a reason as any, I supposed. Izzy motioned me forward, and together we pushed through the crowd of annoyed and possibly deranged fairies, only electrocuting a handful in the process.

One fairy, his wings the color of emeralds in the sunlight, stopped us before we slipped through the door. His eyes blazed and his mouth formed a thin line.

I remembered him from my first foray into Fairy Central. He was the green-winged fairy who'd convinced Deafy the Dwarf to let me go. I kind of owed the guy, so I refrained from zapping him. Just yet.

“Out of the way, Jonas,” Izzy ordered when he stayed planted in our path.

He stood there for a moment, his gaze boring into hers. Then he took a small step to the side. “You know who and what he is, Isabella,” he said in a surprisingly high-pitched falsetto. “Do not make the mistakes of your father.”

Izzy's face twisted with anger, but when she spoke her voice was barely above a whisper. “Do not speak of my father. You know nothing about him.”

Jonas laughed, but it was devoid of humor. “The same can be said of your friend.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is there a problem?”

“Please excuse Jonas, Blue. He's got a bit of a Napoleonic complex, that's all.” With that shot, she shoved past him, leaving me to follow in her wake. I did so, but at a sedate pace, sizing up every fairy I passed.

I turned around in time to see Jonas make a hanging motion with his hands. I gave him a wide bring-it-on smile. Probably not the smartest of moves, but I wasn't in the mood to be bullied by these winged vermin anymore.

L
ater in the night, as Izzy scaled the side of a gingerbread house just outside the New Never City limits, I wondered just what the hell I was doing here.

Bits of cookie crumbled off the siding, nearly smacking me in the head. I ducked a large chunk and frowned. “What the hell are you thinking?” I asked from the frosted grass below. Oddly enough, my comment had little to do with her breaking-and-entering technique but was more of a general question of her sanity.

Rather than answer she dived through the candy-cane window, disappearing inside the house. I strained to hear any signs of life from inside, but no sound emerged. After a few seconds her head appeared in the window frame. “Coming?”

“You're crazy, you know that?” I said but didn't think twice about scaling the sweet-smelling siding to the second floor.

My gloved hands reached the window ledge and I pulled my body up and over it. I landed hard on the floor, almost cracking my head on a plastic dollhouse.

“Shh,” Izzy warned, her finger pointing to a blond kid asleep on the bed. A pink blanket covered the sleeping child and next to her sat a pink pony with sparkles all over it.

In this pretty pink room, with a pretty pink bedspread and a pretty little girly girl, I felt totally out of place. I had to get the hell out of there. But it was too late. Izzy had just stuffed her hand under the little girl's pillow.

I froze, imaging how I would explain to the cops my presence in a child's room at midnight. Surely they would lock me up and toss the key. Izzy apparently didn't hold the same fear. She pulled her hand from beneath the pillow and smiled. In her palm sat a small, bloody baby tooth.

The sight turned my stomach. Give me a sucking chest wound or a large pus-filled knife cut, no problem. Show me a little dried blood on a kid's tooth and I got the willies.

Izzy didn't notice my disgust. She wiped the blood off the tooth with her sleeve and shoved the tooth inside a small brown bag on her belt. “Why can't they ever wash these things?” she complained.

“Are we done yet?” I asked, my last meal on the rise in the back of my throat.

“Of course not,” she said. Taking a dollar from her pocket, she once again reached under the pillow.

I glanced from the Tooth Fairy to the sleeping kid. “A dollar? Really?”

Izzy drew back, a frown marring her beautiful face. “What's wrong with a dollar?”

“It's a little much for a quarter of an inch of dentin.”

She frowned. “How much do you think a fairy's life is worth, Blue? Without enough dentin we will die, and the only way for us to get it—at least get enough of it—is to pay the fair market price.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. You're the Tooth Fairy.”

She sighed and then gestured to the sleeping kid. “Is this something you really want to get into right now?”

“Seems like as good a time as any.” I crossed my arms over my chest, trying my best to intimidate her into telling me what was going on. Why her sudden change of mind? One minute she swore she never wanted to be the Tooth Fairy and then the next she was stealing kids' teeth for the Council? It didn't make sense. Unless the Fairy Council had somehow blackmailed her into becoming the Tooth Fairy. If so, what did they have on her? And why were they using it now?

From her smile I knew I'd fallen very short in my intimidation tactics. “All right.” She took a seat on the end of the bed, crossing her legs as if she didn't have a care in the world. The sleeping child let out a loud snore and rolled over.

I was out of the window and down the drainpipe before the child woke up. Izzy followed at a much slower pace, flapping her wings until her feet touched the ground.

My landing wasn't nearly as graceful. I landed on my head. Thankfully, a bush had softened the blow. A rosebush. “Ow,” I complained as what felt like a thousand thorns shredded my skin.

“Don't be a baby,” she said with a laugh.

“You'll pay for that, Isabella.” I brushed myself off, plucking a thorn or two from my body. When I finished I grabbed Izzy's arm in my gloved hands, spinning her to face me. “Why did you take this job? There's a killer running around whacking Tooth Fairies and here you are, finally volunteering to be the next victim after fighting it for so long. Are you crazy?”

“I'm doing what has to be done,” she said quietly.

“But why?” I asked. “Why do you suddenly care what happens to any of them?”

She shook her head. “You wouldn't understand.”

“Try me.”

“It's my destiny,” she said, her shoulders slumping lower with every word.

I frowned, letting her words sink in. Izzy wasn't the destiny type. In fact, she hated the idea of fate. She'd said as much when we first met. I let out a chuckle. “You almost had me. Now what's really going on?”

Izzy stood in front of me like a statue, her face growing colder as my mirth continued. Finally, she slapped me in the face, hard, jolting both of us in the process. “Don't laugh at things you don't understand.” She rubbed her stinging palm. “Over a hundred years ago a psychic predicted the end-times. A time when the fairies will be lost. Betrayed by one man, which will end the separation and bring on the next Fairy War with the Shadows.”

“And you're the one fairy who can stop it? You honestly believe that?”

“The Fairy Council swears it's true.” She shrugged. “And it could be. After all, this particular psychic saw many other things. Things that eventually all came true.”

“Like what?”

“He saw the separation of fairy and Shadow.”

My eyebrow arched. “Even I could've seen that one coming. No one likes to be enslaved, especially by dudes a few feet shorter, rounder, and three-dimensional.”

She snorted. “Excuse me; I didn't realize you were so up on your history. Please go on. Tell me all about the history of my people, you blue-haired idiot.”

“Ouch,” I said with a grin. “The Tooth Fairy has a bite.”

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again her anger was gone, replaced by something much more frightening. Something I'd never seen before. Something that scared me down to the blue hairs growing on my toes. She looked at me with complete trust and faith.

I swallowed hard. “So how do you stop this guy from betraying the fairies?”

“The how is not the important part.”

I had a feeling it was much more important to her than she let on. But for the moment I let her have her way. “Then what is?”

“Who.”

“Who, what?”

She spun around, giving me a pointed look. “Who betrays the fairies, Blue.”

“Me? Are you crazy?” I gave a bark of laughter. “You think I'm going to betray you to the Shadows?”

“Yes.”

Anger blazed through me like a lightning bolt, sending sparks flying in various directions. “Everything I've done over the last week has been to protect you, Izzy. You! So why, in the end, would I betray you?”

Rather than wait for her answer I grabbed her arm and spun her toward me. “Hell with this.” Her body crashed into mine and all anger left my body, replaced with white-hot desire. Izzy's mouth, lush and ripe, was maybe an inch from mine, close enough for me to smell the sweet scent of her mouthwash.

Close enough to touch what I could never have.

Fate was a fickle bitch.

Red and blue gumball lights flashed over us like a cold shower. “Freeze,” a cop dressed in dark blue yelled from his position behind his open car door.

I released Izzy, raising my arms over my head while willing other body parts to stand down. Izzy apparently hadn't heard the cop's order. Her arms and wings stayed tucked around me like a cocoon, oddly comforting, even with the barrel of a gun pointed at my head.

“Show me your hands,” the cop yelled.

“Better do what he says.”

She blinked a few times, as if coming out of a trance. Quickly, her wings disappeared into her shoulder blades and she raised her hands high in the air. “Officer,” she said in a calm, clear voice, “I think there's been a mistake. I'm the—”

“You could be the Wicked Witch from Greenwitch, missy, it don't make no difference to me.” The cop stepped from behind his car and spoke into his radio. “Two in custody.”

Not yet, I thought, arching a current along my arm.

Izzy shook her head.

I nodded. She shook it again but with greater force. I ignored her, preparing to shock the cop long enough to make a run for it. Last thing I needed was breaking and entering charges, especially when the only thing stolen was a baby tooth.

She apparently didn't see things my way, for Izzy grabbed my arm, crushing it in her hand, forcing the electricity through me and into her. Blue light danced from my skin to hers as the stench of burned feathers filled the air.

And yet she never made a sound. No scream of pain. No indrawn breath. Nothing, much to my relief. When the charge was gone she smiled, her teeth bathed in a familiar blue light.

I frowned, shoving her away. “What the hell was that?”

“What?” she asked, blinking innocently.

I took a menacing step toward her, my hands ready to shake some sense into her.

“Keep your hands up where I can see them,” the cop said. He grabbed my sleeve and walked me backward to his car. Once there, he quickly patted me down and then put me in handcuffs. “You look familiar, son,” he said. “Got any wants or warrants?”

“Not a one,” I lied.

The cop didn't look like he believed me. Not that I blamed him. I was a blue-haired PI caught red-handed copping a feel from a chick with pink wings.

He opened the back door of his cruiser and pushed me inside.