The Lady in Pink - Deadly Ever After 2 (6 page)

M
y luck had changed, I thought as I pushed open the door to James’s room—a clean and tidy albeit small room with a thin layer of dust on the dresser and bookcase. No beer cans here. Or if there had been, they weren’t here anymore. In fact the room seemed a little too clean. A little too sparse. It felt unlived-in, as if James had never existed at all. My eyes narrowed. Had someone cleaned up after learning of James’s murder?

Maybe James was just a tidy housekeeper? Not that I’d ever seen any signs of latent cleanliness. Hell, the kid’s desk was littered with files, paperwork, and discarded fast-food bags. I shook my head to dispel the hint of paranoia.

Taking a deep, clean-smelling breath, I began my search. For what, I didn’t know, but everyone, even a college student, had secrets. A black-and-white photograph of a young woman with light-colored hair, her face obscured slightly by the glare of afternoon sun, sat on the nightstand by the bed. I picked it up, examining it closely. Was this James’s first love? Had they planned a future together? A future he would now never have? Guilt filled me once again, reminding me just how responsible I was for his death.

It should’ve been me.

James should be in my room staring at a picture of my sweetheart.

Except I was still very much alive, and I never had nor would have a future with any woman. Not until I found a way to cure my electrical curse. After all, what woman in her right mind would marry a lightning rod? For a brief second Izzy’s face flashed through my mind. I set the picture down a little harder than necessary. The frame shattered under the pressure, sending shards of glass raining down. I winced as a fragment sliced into my palm.

Just desserts, I supposed.

Blood from the wound dripped onto the photograph. I pulled it free from the broken frame and stuffed it into my pocket for safekeeping. One day I would find this young woman, for James’s sake. I would act as if I knew him, tell her what a good guy he’d been. Maybe even make up a story or two about how he’d solved an impossible case. And maybe he would’ve.

If some bastard hadn’t staged an “accident” for me.

Pressing the sleeve of my shirt against the bleeding cut on my hand, I finished my search of the room. Nothing else caught my eye. James was a normal college kid with big dreams. He wore jeans and T-shirts. Spent his days working for college credit. And died doing the same. With a heavy sadness in my chest, I left the room, quietly closing the door behind me. Almost but not quite the closure I needed.

Closure I wouldn’t have until justice was served.

An eye for an eye.

Or in this case, a fry for a fry.

 

Since I was already on the outskirts of Fairyland, I decided to do a quick search for the missing fairies. When in Rome, after all. Except Fairyland smelled much more like stale Chinese food and day-old fairy dust. Right and Left’s attitude seemed to instantly change as soon as we hit the streets of Fairyland. They went from watchful and sullen to cracking the occasional smile. On top of that, they even pointed out a few historical landmarks, like oddly weaponized tour guides.

But the deeper we moved into Fairyland and the happier they became, the unhappier I was. I stood out like a blue-haired thumb. Not only was I about three feet taller than everyone on the street, but every fairy in the district knew of my role in Izzy’s leaving her toothier duties. And blamed me for the same.

I tensed when a group of heavily tattooed fairies stepped from a fairy bar on the corner. They were loud, and quite drunk, even at eleven in the morning. Considering my sober state, I felt compelled to judge them for their debauchery. I damn well wanted to be half in the bag, but no, I was stuck in Fairyland searching for missing fairies, who’d probably bite my kneecaps if I ever found them. Some days it paid to stay in bed.

“It’s him.” Two of the bigger, drunker fairies pointed at me, their wings in full flutter. Dust flew in all directions. A bad sign. I wasn’t looking for a fight. Hell, the last thing I needed right now was to electrocute a bunch of winged devils.

But I would if it came down to it.

I smiled at the thought as electrical current arced through me.

Right must’ve noticed my sudden glee, for he grabbed my arm, shocking us both, him literally as well as in a more figurative sense. “Ow,” he complained, releasing my arm.

I winced. “Sorry about that.”

“You’ll be sorrier if we don’t leave right now,” he said, motioning to a growing and equally angry mob of fairies. There must’ve been fifty of them, wings aflutter. A toxic cloud of fairy dust rose from the group, indicating my peril. As much as I wanted to stay and electrocute the boisterous lot of them, Right was right. I hadn’t come to Fairyland to cause a riot. I was here to actually help the winged degenerates now throwing rocks my way.

When a rock nicked the side of my face, I allowed Right and Left to hustle me away from danger. Which was easier said than done, as the crowd now reached into the hundreds. Didn’t fairies work? Then it hit me. Today was Fairy Independence Day, the same day, more than a hundred years ago, that the first Isabella Davis, Izzy’s great-grandmother, had freed the fairies from their Shadows.

I shook my head. No wonder these guys were so fired up, not to mention three wings to the wind. I should’ve guessed. Clayton was one smart fairy. He couldn’t have picked a better day to hold his fund-raiser; add in Izzy, the great-granddaughter of Isabella the first, and the former Tooth Fairy to boot, and he’d rake in the campaign contributions tonight.

No way in hell would I let him use Izzy again.

Not while there was electricity still left in my body.

Not too surprisingly, the rest of my day in Fairyland didn’t go much better than the first part. Every nondrunken fairy I approached claimed no knowledge of anything amiss in Fairyland, let alone a rash of missing compatriots. And every drunken fairy tried to knock my teeth in, and usually wound up rocked by fifty thousand volts for their trouble.

Right and Left proved useless to boot.

They didn’t even try to protect me from those drunken attacks.

When I said as much, holding a hand to the bite wound on my thigh, Right just looked at me and smiled. “Isabella asked us to protect you from death.”

I frowned. “So why aren’t you helping me?”

“She didn’t say anything about stopping you from getting a well-deserved ass kicking.”

“Fair enough,” I said, shocking a fairy with orange wings and equally bright carrot-colored eyebrows who was leaping up and down, trying to punch me in the teeth. His small body went rigid, and then he dropped to the concrete. I stepped over him, continuing on my quest to find any fairy willing to talk to me.

T
hree hours later, after a few attempts to learn anything from the fairies, I blew out a sigh along with a stream of cigarette smoke. I’d approached at least fifty fairies, but not one would talk to me, let alone discuss what they considered fairy business. I was an outsider. I always had been, and I always would be. Most of the time this fact didn’t bother me. I liked being a lone wolf. But I needed help to find the missing fairies before someone dusted them to death. Since the fairies weren’t talking, I had to think outside the fairy box.

That left me with one alternative. And not a good one at that. There was only one person in all of New Never City with her sheep in every dirty deal—Little Bo Peep. Considering our history, calling her for information wasn’t the brightest move.

But Bo was a businesswoman at heart. She would sell her entire flock to a slaughterhouse for the right price. While her greedy nature made for a less-than-pleasant friendship, it worked in my favor when it came to buying intel.

With one small exception.

Bo Peep refused to answer any questions about my past. About who I was or where my electrical curse had come from. That, in itself, pissed me off; then add in her selling me out to the leader of the Shadows and his minions last year, which very nearly resulted in my death, and we weren’t on the best of terms. But I had a pocket full of cash and a desire for what only Bo could provide—as long as I didn’t turn my back, for I was fairly sure she’d plunge the closest sharpened object between my shoulder blades without a second thought.

Crushing my cigarette under the heel of my boot, I pulled out my cell phone, preparing to call Bo Peep. Before I could start to dial, my phone gave a shrill ring. I jerked up, nearly dropping the phone before I checked the caller ID.

Bo Peep’s name and number flashed across the screen.

“What the hell?” I said to myself, and then answered the call. “Bo?” I asked in lieu of greeting, my voice only slightly unsteady. Was Peep some kind of mind reader? I shuddered at the thought.

“Well, well, Blue Reynolds, it’s been a while,” her voice slithered through the line.

Ignoring her comment, I said, “What do you want?”

She laughed. “What? No, ‘Hi, Bo, how are you? How’s the flock?’ I thought we were friends.”

It was my turn to laugh. “How about, what the hell do you want?”

“I’m hurt,” she said sounding anything but. “Remember the fun we used to have together?” I remembered some electrically charged encounters, two of which left me with rug burns in various places and no ready explanation for how they’d gotten there. But that was a long time ago. I was no longer the same guy. I’d matured. “I remember a lot of things . . .”

“Do I have to apologize?” she purred. “You know how much I hate to say I’m sorry.”

I laughed. “Not nearly as much as I hate getting the shit beat out of me because you sold me down the Hansel River.”

“Aww, did Blue get a boo-boo?”

“Cut the shit, Bo. What do you want?”

“It’s not what I want . . .” She gave a small, husky laugh. “Come to my place and I’ll give you just what you need,” she said in a silken whisper, and my blood detoured south to my nether, blue-haired regions. It was the last place I wanted to be warmed by Bo Peep.

I cleared my throat. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Probably not,” she said. “But it is the only way I’ll tell you what happened to your little friend. You know ... the extra-crispy one.”

 

Even as I boarded the elevator that would whisk me to Bo Peep’s penthouse apartment in the sky, I shook my head, knowing full well whatever was about to happen wouldn’t bode well for my physical and likely mental health. Thankfully I’d managed to ditch Right and Left in Fairyland an hour earlier, so there would be no witnesses to my downward spiral. For fairyguards, the two were pretty damn easy to ditch. I simply pointed up the street, said, “Is that a molar?” and took off in the opposite direction.

The elevator dinged, and I straightened to my full height. I rubbed my fingers together, generating enough of a spark to fry whatever Peep had lying in wait. With a whoosh the doors opened in a luxurious and expensively decorated penthouse apartment. Floor-to-ceiling windows reflected the orange glow of the sunset over the city below, showering the room in streaks of gold. The intense beauty had nothing on the woman standing in front of me. Little Bo Peep was everything a man could want in a woman—platinum blond straight from the bottle, stacked, and with questionable morals. She wore her hair long, curling around her shoulders. Bare shoulders.

To go along with the bare rest of her.

I blew out a shallow breath, trying my damnedest to tear my gaze from the lush swells of her tanned body.

“What took you so long? I was beginning to worry,” she said, motioning me past her nakedness and into the penthouse. I stepped out of the elevator, careful to avoid brushing any part of my body against hers. My bluish arm hair rose with electricity and more than a little lust. Thankfully, for the moment, the hairs were the only things to rise to attention. Giving in to lust wasn’t a great idea, not with Bo. I needed to keep my head if I wanted to get out of here alive. “Can I get you a drink?” she asked, motioning to an array of dark-colored liquor bottles. “A forty-year-old scotch, perhaps?”

“I’m not here for a drink.”

Her mouth lifted into a sultry smirk. “Just what are you here for, Blue?”

“Answers would be nice.” I walked to the window, more to take my mind off what Bo was so kindly offering than because of a desire to study the cityscape below, even if both views were spectacular. I stared down at the people scurrying home after a long day a hundred stories below. In that moment I felt like a part of something rather than apart from it. I turned back to the very naked Bo Peep. “What do you know about James’s death?”

She shook her finger at me. “Foreplay first, Blue. You know my rules.”

I grinned, reaching into my pants to give her what she wanted.

Her eyes grew hot, and she wetted her lips, which glistened like rubies in the fading light.

“Two grand enough?” I pulled my wallet out, counting the bills I’d pulled out of the ATM under her watchful, greedy gaze. When I had the right amount I waved it toward her. She made no move to take it. My suspicion immediately mounted as my eyes narrowed. “What’s your game, Bo?”

She sighed, long and loud, making sounds almost like a moans of pleasure. “We used to be friends. I miss that.” Her eyes burned into mine as if her intensity would be enough to convince me that she was telling the truth. Hell, I had my doubts that Bo knew what honesty was, let alone how to wield it. “I miss you,” she said with a pretty, single tear glimmering in her eye.

“And yet you betrayed me.” I shrugged, ignoring her tears and the way her breasts rose and fell with her every breath. The latter was a little more difficult to dismiss, but I managed to do so before I lost my head and took her to bed. I cleared my throat. “Can’t say I’m real interested in reliving our past.”

A frown marred her otherwise perfect features, the first genuine emotion to cross her face since I walked into the room. “This is about her, isn’t it?”

“Her?”

She laughed with a surprising amount of bitterness. “You damn well know I’m talking about Isabella, your little fairy girlfriend. She’s ruined you, Blue.”

“Excuse me?”

She took two steps forward, her hips swaying in a hypnotic beat. “You used to be fun.”

“Not that I don’t trust your motives,” I said sarcastically, “but your sudden concern for my merriment makes me wonder.”

Her eyelashes fluttered prettily. “About?”

“Why am I here?”

“Fine,” she said, grabbing a crimson silk robe from the back of a shiny leather sofa. She wrapped it around her, tying the sash tightly before answering. “I wanted to apologize for that thing that happened ... you know ... with the Shadows . . .”

“You mean the trying-to-murder-me thing?” For a very brief second I wondered if Bo was the blond woman the Ferns claimed to have seen discussing my murder. As quickly as the thought crossed my mind, I dismissed it. Bo wasn’t the type to be seen in a dive fairy bar. She was much more likely to hire a killer out of the back of a fashion magazine.

She gave an exaggerated eye roll, one that did nothing to diminish her looks. “Don’t be a drama queen. You’re still alive . . .”

“. . . and you got paid,” I finished for her. “If you really want to make things right, you’ll have to answer a question for me. With complete honesty.” I paused, enjoying her game for the first time since I’d arrived. “And for free.”

“Blue,” she said. Her tongue darted out, licking her lips. “Some things you are better off never knowing. It’s for your own good. Trust me.”

Trust her? Yeah, right. I held up my hand. “I was talking about James’s murder, Bo. Not my past.” As moments ticked by in silence, I had a sneaking suspicion I wasn’t here by accident. Bo Peep wanted something from me, something other than the cash in my pocket.

What exactly, I wasn’t sure.

I gazed deeply into her lying eyes. “You have no idea who killed James, do you?”

She shrugged. “I know more than you think. Don’t make the mistake of assuming otherwise.”

The mistake I’d made had nothing to do with thinking, but rather the woman standing so close to me, which was easy enough to fix. “You’re setting me up. Again.” I reached for her arm, my fingers digging into the muscle of her upper arm. “Why?”

She shrieked as electricity shot through her. Not enough to do actual harm; just enough to warn her that I wasn’t messing around. Whatever she was cooking up wasn’t going to work. Instead of pushing me away, she stepped into my arms, her breasts pressing against my chest. The thin fabric of her silk robe was little protection for either of us. Sparks shot between us, heating the air and my body parts.

She wrapped her arms around my neck, dragging my mouth to hers. I tried to resist, to pull back—at least that’s what I later told myself—but I was unable to stop the flare of heat crackling through me. It had been much too long. And she felt so wrong in my arms. The kind of wrong a man was unable to escape without serious damage.

Our lips melded into a power-hungry kiss. Her tongue brushed mine as her hand slid down my backside. I reacted as expected, deepening what already felt like a consuming kiss. She tasted like sin with a hint of sheep. An oddly tempting sensation. I pressed my knee between her bare legs, feeling the heat of her through the fabric of my pants. She moaned low and deep in her throat, urging me on.

Behind us the elevator dinged.

The doors opened as I tore my mouth from hers.

My gaze flew to the three shadowy figures across the room.

Bo let out a calculated laugh. “I believe you know our guests.”

I closed my eyes and swore. Would I ever fucking learn?