Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

I squinted down at the mirror, at the tangled web of threads that made up the curse.

It all seemed anchored at that one spot towards the bottom of the frame, where the glass had chipped. Maybe something about the trigger would help to unwind the spell holding Mr. Hughes in place? I figured it was a good enough guess to go with.

One of the edges of the ugly, clinging spell started to peel free, just as the slow sound of hooves drew closer. I swore under my breath and started awkwardly shuffling further down the aisle.

"Little witch." Beddow's voice echoed strangely through the store. It sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "Leave him," Beddow continued. "The man is nothing to you. He offers you nothing. Leave him to me and be on your way."

See, the thing was, the Nucklevee was right. I didn't want to be here. I didn't have a horse in this race, so to speak. And frankly, I wouldn't have been able to pick Mr. Hughes out of a line up in a fast-food joint. But I knew Taliyah would want me to keep him from getting murdered, and Poppy would give me a disappointed look if I left the guy to what was, most likely, a horrible punishment, no matter how much he might deserve it. And the jury was out on that particular point.

Ugh, friends were so high maintenance sometimes.

Not to mention, the more someone tried to tell me to do something, the more it made me want to dig my heels in and absolutely refuse. For example, Mother tried to send me into a nice, controlled exile in Portland and failed. Vampires tried to strong arm me into becoming one of them and failed. Everyone who tried to force me to do anything, well, long story short? They failed.

Plus, if that jumped up, wanna be pony ride called me ‘little witch' one more time, I was going to hex bolt him through the window.

With a little twist of magic, I threw my voice a few aisles over. "What do you even want him for? What could one human have done to make you so angry that you'd do this?"

The hoofbeats paused, and then started slowly moving in the direction where my voice had emerged from. Meanwhile, me and my burden were shuffling past what looked like a collection of speakers.

The Nucklevee must have figured out what I was doing, because he stomped and snorted hard enough that I heard it from half a store over. "He is a thief, and a liar."

"That's quite the accusation." I tried not to grunt, flicking my hand to try and fling off the threads of the curse clinging to my fingers. "What did he steal?"

The liar thing, well. Fae tended to tell the truth, but only by the narrowest definition. They tended to talk around a thing, and lead a person to the exact wrong conclusion, without ever actually allowing a falsehood to pass their lips. You'd still end up believing that the sky was green and that rain comes from macaroni, but they'd never actually say as much.

Another snort and stomp, a little too close for comfort. "He does not deal fairly."

"Well, that's another thing entirely," my voice called from behind the counter. "He gave you a bad bargain?"

Now, that I could see a Faerie getting ticked off about. I was hardly an expert, but balance and deals and trade seemed to be pretty big deals in the Fae realm. Someone who went back on their deal, or lied to weasel something out of someone? Yeah, that would be huge. As my cousin Astrid would say, it would be a real party foul. The kind that ended with people dead or with permanent donkey heads.

The curse on the mirror was so, so stubborn. It was like trying to pry an octopus off something. Just when you get one leg free, three more latch on. And I could feel the sullen anger of it, clinging for all it was worth.

The hooves were coming closer again, so I hauled up the mirror with a wheeze that I'd deny until my dying day and started duck walking through the maze of shelves again. I brushed the side of a unit, and a waterfall of dust came raining down on me. Immediately burying my head in the collar of my jacket, I just prayed I wouldn't sneeze.

The tickle built, burning at the back of my throat. My nose twitched, and I fought it. I fought hard. That idiot Hughes was going to get us both killed with his crappy housekeeping. I would have almost called it ‘fitting', if he wasn't about to drag me along into it.

A splintering crash tore through the room then, and I jumped. My heart pounded against the inside of my ribs, listening to an avalanche of stuff cascading to the floor. It sounded like the Nucklevee had broken one of the shelves. Temper, temper.

At least I didn't have to sneeze anymore.

"He comes into my place," the Fae raged. "Buys mytreasures, and then increases the price to sell to others. He constantly asks for discounts, never wanting to pay fairly. He even finds other buyers on the internet and tries to get things cheaply from me so he can turn more of a profit." A pause. An angry one. "He does not deal fairly!"

None of that sounded so terrible to me, but maybe I was a little more familiar with capitalism than horse men who lived in the river. I could see why something like that would offend a Faerie, though. Hughes might have been a little shady, but it wasn't worth getting shattered over.

There was another crash, more items plummeting to the unforgiving ground, and I took the chance to scramble further from the Nucklevee, and closer to the back of the store. I just needed to ditch my big, awkward, astonishingly heavy burden, and I'd be able to teach Beddow some manners.

"Fair trade for a fair bargain," the Nucklevee snarled, stomping one hoof against the ground. "That one spits on such notions, only wanting more. If he cares for these objects so much, then let them be his lesson."

Alright, the ‘why' was starting to take shape in my head. I could see how it made sense, maybe, for someone who didn't really think like a human. The stuff was the problem, so turn the stuff into the punishment. Classic Faerie deal. It seemed kind of sloppy, though. What did shoe lady, or painting guy, or even that woman with the umbrella do to be worthy of purchasing cursed items?

Not that the Fae were really into sweating the collateral damage.

A flick of my fingers, and my voice echoed up from closer to the front door. "So, why curse things that would go to Hughes' customers? Why wait so long just to curse Hughes, himself? Seems like kind of a round-about way to do things."

A furious snort tore through the air, and the clomp of hooves moved towards the front of the store. Metal screamed against tile as the Nucklevee shoved part of a shelf out of his way rather than walk around it.

The old guy had some muscle, apparently.

"All the curses were for those who patroned his shop! If enough of his customers fell to misfortune, then word would spread, and he would lose them all. If none would come to buy, his business would fail." The Nucklevee rounded the edge of a shelf near the door and made a guttural sound of fury.

"That all makes sense to me, so why trap him in the mirror?"

"The fool triggered a curse not meant for him," the Nucklevee answered with a snort of derision. "But no matter. He can watch from his prison as his life's work falls apart. At least for as long as it amuses me."

Wow. Okay. Dealing with the Fae was always a bit of a coin toss—they weren't human, and they didn't think like humans. That meant their laws could be a bit nonintuitive, even to witches, never mind Joe Mundane.

Still, it seemed a little over the top. I was sure Taliyah would agree, Fae princess or not.

I hauled the mirror a little further towards the backroom. The problem was the no man's land between where the shelves ended, and the counter began. It wasn't a big space, but I was moving like a snail on sleeping pills, hauling a mirror that just seemed to get heavier the longer I carried it.

A hoof scraped the ground in a sound that set my teeth on edge.

"I grow tired of games, little witch."

I almost snorted before I remembered myself and cast my voice an aisle over from where the Nucklevee was standing. "That's kind of rich, coming from a Faerie. You all love your games, as long as you're the only ones making the rules."

The Nucklevee spat something in another language, and I didn't need to understand it to know it was rude. I almost opened my mouth to make another comment. Hypocrites were one of the things I found hardest to tolerate, after living under my mother's thumb for so long. But before I had a chance, another sound made my throat go bone dry.

It was a loud popping sound. Like a joint dislocating. A series of crunches followed, then tearing cloth. There was another snort of air that gusted through the store, and the clatter of hooves that were as big around as a dinner plate.

A shadow rose up over the top of the shelves, and a moonstone white eye gleamed in the dark.

Crap.

Lights from a passing car flooded into the store, and for a second, I could see the Nucklevee in all its horrible glory. It looked like a horse, in that it had four legs, hooves, a head, a mane, and a tail. But that was where the similarities ended.

His hide was a green so dark that without the high beams, it would have looked black. His mane and tail were soaked and clumped with pieces of water weeds tangled in the strands. Solid white eyes scanned the room, without a pupil or iris, as the Nucklevee stretched his neck up to peer over the shelves.

His face was wrong, the skin pulled too tight over bone, until I could clearly see the eye sockets, and the pointed end of the nasal cavity of his skull. Each hoofbeat sounded like bone scraping over asphalt, a sound that sent my skin crawling.

His ears pinned flat to his skull, the Nucklevee reared back, and enormous hooves like bounders flashed out as he reared back to his full, terrifying height. His nose almost scraped the roof, skull knocking a light fixture loose to crash to the floor in a shiver of sparks and glass shards.

I hunched forward with a gasp, burying my head in my arms to avoid being pelted. The shadows swirled around my body, spurred on by my rising anxiety. This was bad, this was very bad.

"I've had enough of games, little witch." The Nucklevee's voice came out higher pitched than I expected, closer to a whinny. "You put yourself in my business. So be it. Now, you pay the price."

Normally, I would have been rolling my eyes. A Nucklevee wasn't one of the High Sidhe. They didn't have any business challenging a witch, much less a Blood Witch. But with a big, heavy, extremely fragile hostage in my arms, it meant I was fighting with both hands tied almost literally behind my back.

The Nucklevee was on familiar ground, wasn't hampered by trying to keep an idiot alive, and was also in the form of a huge powerful animal that was known to curb-stomp things that upset it. I wasn't loving my odds of making it to the safety of the backroom...

But I wasn't about to lie down and surrender for a carousel reject, either. I was Wanda Depraysie, and worse things had taken a shot at me and paid for it. I just needed to ditch the mirror holding me back and do it in a way that wouldn't get disapproving looks aimed my way by my more… morally hindered friends.

When the Nucklevee craned his head around, peering over the shelves, I made a break for it. I just needed to get past the counter. The tight quarters would make it hard for a huge horse body to follow. If I could get into the backroom, I could brace the door, and find a secure spot to stash Mr. Hughes' glass prison long enough to teach this annoying horse why it was a bad idea to mess with a witch. And I definitely wasn't little.

I made it halfway across the open space between the shelves and the counter, and the mirror slipped in my hands. My heart surged up into my mouth, my pulse so thick that I could feel it in my tongue. I scrambled for the heavy frame, trying to catch it before it could hit the floor, but one of my bootheels skidded on the crappy carpet.

The curse surged up my arm, coating my skin to the elbow like a glove made out of tar. I had absolutely no desire to share Hughes' accommodations, so I sent a surge of magic rolling down my arm, red light burning away the ragged, clinging strands. The curse fought me. It was a nasty thing, always hungry, and the terror of the victim it already had was continuously fueling it, so it took me a few seconds to wrench myself free.

A few seconds was long enough for the Nucklevee to spot me, those pale, marble eyes swinging in my direction as he pawed at the floor with one massive hoof.

"Son of a witch," I muttered to myself, tensing to dive out of the way when he charged.

Just then, the front door slammed open, and a nightmare of gleaming fangs and furious eyes boiled inside.