Читать книгу A Risky Proposition, Book 1 of The Third Wish Duology - Dawn Addonizio - Страница 9

“So, do you want to talk about it?” asked my friend Sunny as she stepped off the elevator into the outer foyer of the penthouse, each hand laden with a mismatched overnight bag.

“Not really,” I answered dryly, knowing the ‘it’ was my husband’s infidelity, since I hadn’t told her about the death djinn situation yet.

She was going to be the first person I told about my recent foray into the supernatural. I was nervous about how she’d react. I only hoped she wouldn’t decide that my mind had cracked along with my marriage.

She followed me through the door, tossed her bags onto a nearby chair, and then assaulted me with a bear hug. She knocked me backward, despite her smaller frame, as I laughingly returned the embrace.

“Ooh, I missed you so much, Syd. And this place is amazing!” she exclaimed with an excited twirl that sent her colorful patchwork skirt billowing.

“How did you end up staying in a penthouse at the most exclusive hotel in Palm Beach? You promised to tell me when I got here. You were so mysterious on the phone!” She brushed a dark curl from her mouth and placed her hands on her hips, narrowing her smoky green eyes at me.

I chuckled. “Why don’t we sit down and have a drink while I tell you? That way, if you decide to call the nice people in white coats to come take me away, I can just blame it on the alcohol.”

“I would never!” She gave me an indignant look and looped an arm through mine, hauling me over to the freestanding bar in the corner. “So, what’s good for inducing insanity? Oh, hello Jasper!” Sunny bent down to briefly scratch behind Jasper’s ears as he twined himself between her legs in greeting.

I had few close friends that I’d kept in touch with throughout the years, and Sunny was one of them. We’d known each other since middle school, but had become best friends in high-school. There was a measles scare and all of the students whose vaccination records weren’t up to date had been quarantined in the school gym for two days while they arranged for mass inoculations.

Sunny and I spent the entire two days huddled side-by-side on the bleachers, comparing boys, books and music we liked, and talking about everything else under the sun. I’d never made another friend like her since.

Sunny began rattling glass bottles around as she explored the fully stocked bar. She whistled in appreciation. “This is the stuff they keep in the locked cabinet above the top shelf. You’ve finally won the lottery, haven’t you! That’s it, isn’t it? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”

“How I got into this place is way more unbelievable than hitting the lottery. Champagne?” I suggested, pointing to the mini-fridge built into the bar cabinet.

I had been ecstatic to discover an entire case of the stuff in the small utility room near the kitchen. Sunny pulled a bottle from the fridge as I grabbed the Waterford flutes and motioned her over to the sofa.

“Sinfully rich, darkly handsome, wickedly sexy and enormously endowed sugar daddy?” she asked hopefully, plopping down beside me and removing the foil from the cork.

I snorted. “Sort of. If you want to put an extremely euphemistic spin on it.”

Balthus had been all of those things. Granted, I hadn’t had a chance to find out about his endowments—but as he was a creature with the ability to make wishes come true, it was probably a safe bet he wasn’t lacking in that area. Unfortunately, trying to steal my soul trumped any of his desirable qualities.

Sunny stared at me expectantly, her expression shifting to a frown at my hesitation to elaborate. I watched in amusement as she popped the cork, filled the expensive crystal glasses and then placed them next to the bottle on the scratched glass of my old coffee table.

Then she turned to me and her hands snaked out to grab my shoulders and shake me. “Enough!” she yelled. “Spill, Spill, SPILL, you insufferable wench!” She unerringly found the ticklish spot on my side and set upon it without mercy. “NOW!”

In response to my screech of protest, Jasper, who had curled up on a nearby chair, raised his head to glare at us. I could almost see his black brow twitch in disdain at our childish antics.

When I could breathe again, I haltingly began to tell Sunny about coming to the hotel Friday night and how I met Balthus at the bar and then followed him up to his room. She grinned appreciatively at my description of him and kept interrupting me with suggestive questions and innuendos.

When I finally got to the part about Sparrow showing up on the balcony with the lamp and Balthus going all smoky and disappearing, she just laughed in an ‘Oh, that’s a good one Syd—you got me!’ sort of way.

When it slowly dawned on her that I wasn’t kidding, she downed the rest of her champagne in one gulp and silently got up to retrieve another bottle. After that she didn’t say a word until I’d completed the story, including Lorien’s appearance on my pillow later that night, and how I completely forgot about Jeremy until the next morning.

By the time I finished we were on bottle number three.

“That’s some tall tale, Syd,” she said at last, her speech slurred.

“I wish that’s all it was,” I said blithely. Not only was I high on the champagne, but it felt damn good to tell a fellow human what had happened to me after keeping it to myself for a week.

Sunny stared at me wide-eyed and I giggled at her expression for a moment before I realized I’d spoken the forbidden word. I slapped a hand over my mouth just in time to cover a sneeze.

“I told you not to say that word!” grumbled a tinkling voice. “And if you’re going to get sloshed and talk about me, the least you could do is invite me. Ooh, champagne, my favorite!”

I swung my head toward the sound, waited for my blurred vision to clear, and then smiled at Lorien through a sparkling red haze of faerie dust. “Lorien, Sunny” I gestured, “Lunny, Sorien. Um, sorry, you guys know what I mean.”

I gazed expectantly at Sunny, who was looking somewhere off to Lorien’s left with narrowed eyes and an expression of utter confusion adorning her heart-shaped face. My head tilted back toward Lorien to find her dipping a thimble-sized earthenware jug into my champagne flute.

She took an experimental sip and sighed in approval before carefully settling on the edge of the glass tabletop with her bare feet swinging over the side.

“She can’t see me,” Lorien said smugly.

“What? But you said believing is seeing!” I settled my eyes back on Sunny, who was watching me with an air of concern.

“She thinks you’ve taken a spin on the loopy locomotive,” giggled Lorien, already helping herself to a second jug of my drink.

I snatched my glass away indignantly and turned to Sunny. “I have not taken a ride on the loopy locomotive,” I insisted. She licked her lips and looked at me as if she thought it might be time to call the nice folks in white coats after all.

Jasper leapt nimbly from his chair to the carpet and stalked around the coffee table. He deposited himself directly in front of Lorien, his bright jade eyes fixed on her and the stark white tip of his black tail twitching. An indulgent expression crossed Lorien’s face as she reached out and sprinkled a light peppering of green faerie dust over his dark muzzle. He promptly began to purr and rub his head against the driftwood base of the coffee table.

I huffed in annoyance. “Apparently Jasper can see you. Why can’t Sunny?”

“She doesn’t truly believe?” Lorien suggested, gazing longingly at my glass.

I jerked back to face Sunny. “You don’t believe me!” I accused in a wounded tone.

“Of course I do!” she claimed defensively. “It’s just a lot to take in—death djinns, and hot half-faerie detectives, and faerie guardians…I’m trying,” she mumbled.

“Can’t you sprinkle her with faerie dust or something to make her see?” I begged Lorien.

“That’ll just make her sneeze,” she smirked. “She has to really believe.”

I thought for a minute. “Okay, Sunny. Lorien’s going to make you sneeze.”

Her eyebrows shot up skeptically and I ignored the added insult to my sanity.

“What I mean is, she’s going to sprinkle you with faerie dust and it’s going to make you sneeze. Will you believe me then?”

“You want me to believe faeries exist because I sneezed?”

“No,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster, “I want you believe that faeries exist because faerie dust is going to make you sneeze exactly when I predict. And because I’m your best friend and I say faeries exist.”

“How do you know faerie dust will make me sneeze?”

I blinked at her. “It makes me sneeze.”

“Maybe you’re allergic to it,” she suggested, unconvinced.

I looked imploringly at Lorien, who was in the process of sneaking jug number three from my glass.

“What?” she said innocently.

“How do you know faerie dust will make her sneeze too?” I asked, ignoring the fact that my faerie guardian was apparently a lush. In my present state, I was in no position to judge.

“Oh, faerie dust makes all humans sneeze,” she assured me with glee.

“Lorien says it makes all humans sneeze,” I relayed. Then I narrowed my eyes, “Unless, of course, you’ve been hiding your non-human origins from me all these years?”

Sunny snorted.

“Right,” I breathed. “Okay then—Lorien, do your stuff!”

Lorien plunked her faerie-sized champagne jug on the coffee table and zoomed crookedly over toward Sunny’s nose.

“Sneeze!” I directed in smug amusement a split second before Sunny broke out in a sneezing fit, right on cue. A thick cloud of green faerie dust hung in the air just in front of her face.

I waited a moment, but it didn’t seem to be dissipating and Sunny’s sneezing was becoming more violent. I waved my hand briskly to clear the air, succeeding only in brushing the cloud toward myself and instigating my own sneezing fit.

I attempted to glare at Lorien through watering eyes. “Lorien! You used too much!” My complaint was cut short by three exploding sneezes in quick succession.

The sparkling cloud finally dispersed to reveal Lorien laying back on my coffee table, her overturned jug dripping miniscule drops of champagne onto the glass top as she rolled around in hysterical laughter. A cluster of small, iridescent bubbles drifted around her, swirling away in all directions as she flailed from side to side.

Jasper echoed her movements, rolling playfully on the carpet beneath her and batting lazily at stray bubbles with one fluffy black paw. His eyes were bright and intense, as if he was zonked out on some particularly high-grade catnip.

“It’s not funny,” I wheezed. “And where are all those bubbles coming from?”

Lorien hiccupped delicately between guffaws, emitting a stream of the tiny shimmering spheres.

“You hiccup bubbles?” I asked in disbelief.

She only laughed harder.

I gave up trying to obtain a response from the obviously intoxicated faerie and turned back to Sunny with an apologetic sniffle. She was perched on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward with her mouth gaping open in amazement as she stared at the coffee table.

“You can see her!” I exclaimed in delight.

“Wow,” she whispered, “that’s a faerie.”

I harrumphed. “Gold star for you.”

“What’s the matter with her?” she asked me out of the side of her mouth. She reached forward as if she intended to poke Lorien, who was still lying prone on the coffee table, clutching her sides in fading mirth as the last of the hiccup-bubbles popped out of existence.

Lorien guessed Sunny’s intention and darted upright and away from her to hover next to my glass with a fierce glower. “Hey! Watch the poking there, Sunshine!”

“Sorry!” Sunny said contritely, jerking her hand back, but continuing to stare at Lorien in fascination.

Lorien brushed herself off and righted her jug on the table with a disgruntled expression.

“So sparkly…so pretty,” whispered Sunny in a fawning voice.

I looked at her askance as she made another grab for Lorien, who again darted out of the way.

“Oh, for the love of the Seelie Court! She’s a grabby one, isn’t she?” Lorien, apparently having recovered from her inebriation, zipped over to hover in front of Sunny’s face. She made a snapping motion and a colorful burst of sparks exploded from her fingertips, making Sunny blink in rapid succession.

“What the…” Sunny muttered, her eyes sharpening into focus. She shook her head as if to clear it. “What happened?”

“Faerie magic.” I grinned. “Makes us humans go a bit addle-brained. You just needed a little fire dust to jolt you back into reality. You’re lucky you didn’t get any up your nose.”

Sunny’s eyes followed Lorien with avid curiosity as she scooped up another jug of champagne and settled herself back on the edge of the coffee table.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough? Just a minute ago you were rolling around on the table spewing bubbles and cackling like a lunatic,” I pointed out.

“I have a quick metabolism.” Lorien shrugged.

I followed her lead and topped off both the Waterford flutes with the remaining champagne, gently placing Sunny’s in her hand. She looked a bit stunned and I knew exactly how she felt.

“What was that you said before…‘for the love of some kind of court’?” I asked, wondering about the unfamiliar phrase.

Lorien looked at me without comprehension for a moment, then said, “Oh, you mean ‘for the love of the Seelie Court’? Right. That’s an expression you might hear me use when, say, some lumbering human comes along and tries to crush me in her sticky, oversized hand.”

She shot a dirty look at Sunny, who had the grace to appear chagrinned.

“What’s the Seelie Court?” I asked.

Lorien blinked at me in astonishment and shook her head. “Sometimes I forget how woefully ignorant you humans are.”

“Thanks,” I drawled. “I guess I neglected to read that comprehensive guide to the faerie world you gave me.”

“You have a ‘Comprehensive Guide to The Faerie World’?” Sunny whispered in amazement.

I gave her a half shake of my head to let her know I was kidding. She looked a little crestfallen.

“Here’s a lesson, then,” Lorien drawled. “The Seelie Court is the most powerful body of faerie folk in existence. Simply stated, its members are responsible for keeping the balance of good and evil in check. Without them, the magical entities aligned with evil would take control and chaos would overcome all the realms. You humans wouldn’t stand a chance.” She snorted derisively.

Lorien intercepted the look of shock Sunny and I shared and folded her arms over her chest, her still-dangling bare feet twitching out an annoyed rhythm. “What—did you think faeries just flitted about all day watching to make sure you got a good parking spot? Humans,” she grumbled, “they always think they’re the center of the universe.”

“What kinds of evil entities?” I asked, ignoring her slight.

Lorien took a swig from her jug, throwing her free hand up as if to indicate that there were too many to list, and then surreptitiously using it to cover another bubble-inducing hiccup.

“There are a few races that are predisposed toward evil…trolls and goblins, for instance, are generally rather nasty creatures.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “But anyone or thing can align themselves with evil—mortal and immortal alike.”

“Well, death djinns must be evil, right?” I asked slowly, a thought beginning to form in my muddled brain.

“Yeah,” Sunny agreed, catching on. “Anyone who tries to steal your soul must be evil. I bet this Seelie Court would overturn Balthus’ contract in a flash!”

Lorien pursed her lips and gave us an apologetic look. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. Balthus’ contract for Sydney’s soul was legal. And the Seelie Court isn’t like one of your human courts of law—they don’t deal with such mundane matters.”

“Mundane?” I sputtered.

“As much as I don’t want to see you lose your soul, Sydney, I guarantee you the Seelie Court isn’t going get involved in the details of a standard death djinn contract,” she replied ruefully.

“But Balthus was arrested—he’s a criminal!” I insisted.

“And for that, he’ll go before the king of his tribe and a tribunal assigned by the Court to answer for any laws he’s broken. I have it on good authority that he was arrested for being in possession of an unaligned soul. It was just lucky for you that Agent Sparrow stopped him when he did.” She shot me a meaningful glance.

“Unaligned soul?” I asked, shuddering at the reminder of how close I’d come to becoming Balthus’ eternal sex slave.

“A living soul that’s lost its ties to a mortal body—kind of like a lost soul, I guess you’d say. There are strict guidelines for the soul trade. A soul can only be legally taken if a mortal has willingly given it up. It’s possible to take an unwilling soul, of course, but only a dark mage would attempt such a thing. Possession of an unaligned soul is a serious crime.”

“Sydney wouldn’t willingly give up her soul!” Sunny cried. “And you just said that if it’s not willingly given, no death djinn can legally take it. They can’t hold her hostage forever to a wish she doesn’t even want, can they? Can’t we talk to the king of the tribe, or whoever, and get the contract cancelled?”

Lorien grunted, earning frowns from both of us. “You want to appeal to the king of the death djinns in order to overturn a contract for which he himself created the terms? His people have been profiting from the soul trade for millennia. You can bet your sweet wand that he’s not going to do anything to jeopardize the legal status of their standard contract.”

My shoulders drooped at her words. I had begun to believe that we were on to something.

“Can’t you at least put a spell on her to keep her from saying the word ‘wish’?” asked Sunny.

I brightened. “That’s a great idea! Why didn’t I think of that?” I beamed at her.

“It would violate the terms of the contract,” Lorien said with a sigh, dashing my hopes yet again. “And before you start racking your brains for more clever little loopholes, she can’t wish for anything that will interfere with the contract, either.”

I was suddenly ashamed that I hadn’t spent the last week thinking up witty third wishes that would outsmart the death djinns and leave my soul, and preferably also my new penthouse, intact and in my possession.

“Well, how are we going to get Sydney’s contract cancelled, then?” Sunny demanded in frustration.

“I’m still working on it. I’ve been researching death djinns and their involvement in the soul trade. I haven’t found anything that I think will help us to void the contract yet, but I’ll figure something out. Just because it’s never been done, doesn’t mean it’s impossible!” Lorien enthused.

But her wings seemed to lack some of their zip as she headed toward my glass for another refill, hiccup-bubbles trailing behind her.

Sunny and I exchanged glances. She took a deep breath and gave me a smile that I knew was intended to bolster my confidence.

Jasper leant his support by choosing that moment to leap into my lap. I grunted at the sudden impact of his weight and helped him to curl into a position that was comfortable for both of us.

“So, what’s with the hiccupping bubbles, anyway?” Sunny asked Lorien. I was grateful for the change of subject, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the danger I was in.

“It only happens when I drink champagne,” Lorien explained, looking embarrassed.

“What about absinthe? They call it the ‘Green Fairy’—any connection to real faeries?” Sunny asked.

“Actually, humans gave it that nickname because it allowed them to suspend their disbelief long enough to get a peek into the faerie realm,” Lorien answered. “But even when they do glimpse one of us, most humans just chalk it up to hallucinating when they come down from the stuff.”

“Really?” Sunny queried, her gaze sharpening on Lorien with genuine interest. “That’s fascinating! I smoked some laced pot once in college and I could have sworn I saw a leprechaun eating a sandwich under the oak tree in our back yard…”

I sat quietly sipping the golden liquid remaining in my glass and absently stroking Jasper’s silky fur, as Sunny quizzed Lorien on the effectiveness of various mind-altering substances at heightening human sensitivity to the faerie realm. It was a discussion that would have normally intrigued me, but I was beginning to feel distinctly discouraged about the likelihood of figuring out how to hold onto my soul.

I couldn’t rely on Lorien alone to get me out of this mess, I realized. I needed to have my own plan. The problem was, I knew nothing about death djinns and somehow I didn’t think a few hours at the library or surfing the web was going to help.

The one thing I did know was that if I ever saw Balthus again I was going to keep my mouth shut and let my feet do the talking—right from my shoe to his crotch. Maybe if I kicked him hard enough he’d wish he never met me and it would solve both our problems.