20

Violet Miller and the Doctor of Lies

There was no obvious reason why Violet should have returned to the cathedral. No one would have blamed her for quitting her job after she’d nearly been sliced to death with a mythical-style weapon. It wasn’t like the benefits were good here, or her coworker was easy to get along with, or the office environment was safe.

Yet here she was. Waiting at the Master of Doom’s bedside as he slept.

He hadn’t been bandaged up when the knitting store women dumped him on the cathedral’s front steps. For a split second after Violet had found Mor like that, basking in the shadow of three yarn-adorned ladies all sneaking away faster than a speeding bullet, she worried he was dead. She was lucky the cathedral doors were unlocked for once, but the second she dragged Mor inside, they’d slammed shut—seemingly on their own—and when she tried the handle, they were locked again.

It had been no easy feat to carry the muscular fairy-creature up the flight of stairs and haul him into his room, dragging him the whole way by the sleeves of his coat. She was shaking with fatigue when she finally got him onto his bed where she wrestled off his coat and rolled him onto his stomach. Her heavy breathing filled his dark, creepy room now, and she was relieved he wasn’t awake to notice how out of shape she was. She told herself that the first chance she got, she was going to take up jogging.

Violet assessed Mor’s blood-soaked shirt. She wasn’t exactly known for her first aid skills. She thought about calling Zorah to come do her doctor thing, but Violet trespassing in this cathedral in the first place was what had made her “smell” like Mor, and that one little fact had been the cause of her almost dying more than once since. She didn’t feel the need to bestow that honour upon Zorah as well. And besides, she’d just sent a very convincing text to her aunt, saying she was on a work trip. Which, in all technicalities, wasn’t actually a lie.

Violet got down to business trying to get Doom’s shirt off by herself. Her fingers swiped over his bare back beneath the fabric, and she halted. A pink burn mark appeared on his skin almost instantly. She blinked at it, then she tore her hands back and lifted her fingers, staring at them.

“Why do I hurt you again?” she asked Mor, as if he might suddenly pop awake and answer.

She glanced at her overnight bag. She’d spent the night at the café. She’d run away from the fight in the street. She’d gone home and taken her iron supplements. She’d met the redhead villain in the alley. She’d come here.

It didn’t matter. It seemed her superpower had returned, and she couldn’t touch Mor now.

She jogged down to the kitchen and rummaged through the drawers until she found a pair of oven mitts. With her ridiculous lobster claws on, she tried to pull off Mor’s shirt, struggling to pin the fabric between her thumb and single giant finger. When that failed, she tossed the mitts aside and carefully pulled his shirt away from his skin, no longer caring about saving his clothes. She chopped the whole shirt off with a pair of kitchen scissors like a maniac, and she tossed the fabric over the side of the bed.

A surge of nausea crossed her stomach when she looked at his wound; dried red blood delicately splattered out his side like a blooming red flower. She flung herself toward the bedside, sure she’d barf. But after a few inhales and loud exhales, she drew back, her hand pressed tightly over her mouth.

A collection of tattoos adorned Mor’s skin. Five dragon-like creatures filled the canvas of his upper back with detailed, scaled bodies and long, serpentine tails. She leaned over the artwork to see better. The dragons almost looked blue, shimmering in the dull light creeping around the drapes of the bedroom window. She’d never seen tattoos before that could shimmer. Her gaze travelled to his arms covered in the boxy text of a language Violet didn’t know. It wasn’t written in straight lines; the columns were in random places—on the inside of his wrist, on his forearm, over his bicep.

Violet sat straight again. For the first time since she’d met the Master of Doom, she was curious about his story. Well, maybe it wasn’t the first time she’d been curious about him. But it was the first time she’d looked at someone’s skin and had desperately wanted to know more about dragons and foreign languages.

After hours of Mor not moving a muscle, Violet left his bedroom, collecting all the “medical supplies” and bringing them out with her. She hadn’t been able to do much about the wound with the ancient first aid kit she’d found in the basement that looked to have expired decades ago.

Violet was exhausted by nightfall. She searched the halls for a spare bedroom, finding a bathroom instead. There was no light switch, so she flicked on a lamp by the door. The light revealed a spectacular ironclad tub resting in the corner. She gasped into the quietness, dropping her overnight bag to the floor and rushing to the beautiful bath. The air lingered with the scents of soap and soon-to-be-fulfilled, muscle-relaxing dreams. When she spotted a bottle of bubble bath on the vanity, she could have cried.

It took her all of ten minutes to fill the tub with steaming water and bubbles, shed her clothes, and sink into the glorious hot liquid. She tried to massage her tight shoulders as she sat there. She’d never worked so hard to move anything in her life, though it was probably a good thing she didn’t have experience moving bodies.

After scrubbing her hair and face clean in the bath, Violet dried with a towel and poked around in her overnight bag. She didn’t have much—just some undergarments, a pair of comfy weekend shorts, and a loose t-shirt. A toothbrush, toothpaste, and some emergency makeup. She didn’t bother with the makeup since she imagined she was going to bed soon.

Bed. Where was she going to bed?

She cracked the bathroom door open and peeked into the hall. Nothing stirred, and there were no lights on apart from the bathroom lamp. Cool air rushed against her skin from the hallway, and she stifled a shiver. She ducked back into the bathroom, grabbed her overnight bag, and crept on her toes back to Mor’s room.

There was no light switch in the bedroom, either. Violet bit down on her sigh and felt her way in until her hand came against a small lamp on the dresser. She flicked it on.

Mor hadn’t budged.

So, she headed for his antique dresser and quietly pulled the drawer open. Inside, his clothes were neatly piled and organized by colour—if you could call black, white, and gray colours. She took the first sweater she saw—a relaxed gray one—and pulled it on with a sigh of relief, hugging her arms to herself to try and restore some warmth to her skin. She looked back toward the dark hallway, thinking of navigating this unlit cathedral at night.

She realized candles were stationed around the room—one in a holder—and a book of matches rested on the nightstand by the bed. She huffed a laugh and headed for it. “Sleep tight, you creepy vampire,” she said to the Master of Doom as she reached for the candle and matches.

A hand appeared and took a fistful of her sweater. Violet shrieked as she was yanked into the bed, her head hitting the pillow, her body pinned beneath a forearm. She dragged her wide eyes over to see Mor, holding himself up by his elbow, his eyes going in and out of focus. He held her to the mattress by his grip on her sweater—well, his sweater—and he gazed at her with half-open, still mostly sleeping eyes.

He gazed at her for a long time.

Violet swallowed, unsure if he was awake. Maybe he was one of those people who did things at night without knowing it. It seemed he wasn’t seeing anything, even though he was looking right at her.

But then he said, “You look pretty this way, Human.”

A bead of warmth dropped through her stomach where his arm rested. His stare was so brazen, so fearless. So totally asleep. Violet held her hands up slowly so she wouldn’t touch him.

“Doom,” she said. “I can’t touch your arm—”

Mor fell onto the bed, face into the pillow, and didn’t move again.

Violet released the breath she’d been holding and shook her head. She tried to use her sweater-covered-forearms to pick up his arm and move it off her. “Is he joking?” she muttered when she realized his fist was still tightly wrapped around the fabric of her sweater.

So much for being delicate.

Violet grabbed his bare arm and flung it off. She slid out of the bed and scooped up the matches, glancing back at her crazy boss one last time, only to see four pink fingerprint burns forming on his forearm in the exact place she’d grasped him. He hadn’t even reacted.

Once her candle was lit, Violet slipped back into the hallway and headed to the big open space where the stairs led down to the lobby. She felt very small in the enormous, dark room, lightly stepping over the creaky wooden stairs with her candle’s tiny light.

She reached the living room where Mor had left everything spotless. A blanket was tossed over the back of the nearest couch. She took it and laid down, then she blew out the candle.

The morning came with a rainstorm.

Violet tiptoed up the stairs to check on her boss. The Master of Doom was still fast asleep in the same position she’d left him in. She exhaled loudly. Then, instead of tiptoeing back down the stairs, she stomped and smacked the walls on her way, banging off everything in her path.

Still, the fairy didn’t wake up.

She made herself tea as the rain pounded on the foggy windows, and she carried the steaming mug to the living space. She’d found one of her old journals in her overnight bag, one she’d used when she first started at The Sprinkled Scoop. It took her a few tries to get the fireplace going. But when she did, she snuggled under the blanket in the fireside chair and sipped her tea as she flipped open her journal. She scribbled the first things that came to mind:

My name is Violet Miller.

I live with Zorah Miller, my aunt. I work for a crazy legendary creature boss who talks in his sleep and may erase my memories at any moment. If he does, this is a reminder of my name and whose family I’m a part of.

Mor probably can’t be trusted.

His weird fairy friends probably can’t be trusted either.

Violet tapped her pen as she thought about what else to write. She puzzled over everything she’d been through in the past week, from losing a job, to getting a job, to learning fairies existed, to having met the serial-attacker in person. She jotted a few notes down—everything she’d learned so far about fairies and the memory-thief.

After several minutes of writing, she set the journal aside and blew lightly on her tea. The rain raged against the cathedral, echoing in the ceiling heights, the sound mixing with the low crackling fire. Yet, as the fire’s warmth breathed over her, Violet realized she was relaxed. She should have been scared out of her mind with all that had happened.

Her gaze drifted out of the living space toward the stairs in the lobby. All was still, apart from the rain on the windows and the moving flames before her.

She headed back to the kitchen to make more tea and went up to the office.

Articles covered the room like wallpaper, uncategorized. A puddle of ink still stained the floor, along with half a dozen scattered pens from when she’d thrown them at Mor. She sighed and began tidying up. She carefully pulled articles off the walls and organized them into piles based on topics. There weren’t any file folders, so she set each pile evenly spaced apart atop the desk and started reading through them one by one.

The redhead guy’s face filled her whole mind, all at once. He seemed like a lunatic. Violet was sure she shouldn’t even be alive after she’d crossed him in person. A chill rushed up her spine as she thought about it. As she went over his words from their conversation in the alley; words she’d dwelled upon for nearly twenty-four hours.

Just like that, she was sucked back into it. Lost in the story. In the evidence that didn’t add up. In the absurdity. The young women who had been carefully left in different parts of local park woods. Never in the same spot. Never on the same day. Everything seemed spaced out, evenly. She lowered her handful of articles to her lap and stared at the wall.

It wasn’t like the redhead was physically harming the young women, apart from leaving them asleep for too long. It wasn’t like they woke up with broken jaws, or broken legs, or other more horrific violations.

It was like…

Violet looked at the piles of articles on the desk, neatly spread apart. Organized.

“He’s organizing them,” Violet said to herself.

He was a fairy, like Mor. What if being a folklore creature gave all of this a different meaning? What if he had some fairy purpose to fulfil? She slapped her hand on the desk as the thought slid into place. “He’s collecting something.” Her chair screeched back as she stood, and she raced out of the office, down the hall, and into Mor’s bedroom.

“Doom!” she shouted as she came in. “I don’t think the attacks are random! There’s a purpose…” Her voice trailed off when Mor didn’t move. Violet scratched behind her ear, looking at the bedside clock. It was nearly noon. She sighed. “Do fairies just sleep forever?” she muttered as she walked back out.

Two. Whole. Nights.

Violet was ready to yell at the Master of Doom by the morning of the second day. She’d done her hair into a lazy bun and had put on makeup, just because she’d been bored. She’d already consumed three cups of tea and had typed out a whole article all before ten a.m. based on her theory of the redhead having “an end goal” in mind. After, she found herself in a rickety chair by Doom’s bedside, waiting, because she had nothing else to do.

Mor stirred.

Violet grabbed the side of the bed, thinking she was imagining it.

His eyes peeled open. Mor stared at the canopy above his spoked bedframe for a moment. His gaze dragged over to Violet. She dropped her grip on the bed and sat back in the chair, suddenly aware of her hair being messier than normal, and the fact that she wore comfortable shorts and his oversized sweater. She oddly brushed a hand over the hair that had fallen out of her bun.

“You’re alive,” he said, realization crossing his groggy face. “Thank the sky deities. I was afraid my soul was ruined.”

Violet slow-blinked. Did he really not remember seeing her the other night? Grabbing her and yanking her to him by her sweater? Going on about how pretty she was and all that—not that she needed to be told to know it.

The dummy actually tried to prop himself up on his elbows like he wasn’t recovering from being stabbed. His curly hair stood on end in places, but it didn’t make him look bad. It probably wasn’t possible for Mor to look bad.

“Thank the sky—what? Are you joking?” Violet almost glared. If he wasn’t so helpless and hurt and sleepy, she might have. “You nearly got me killed.”

“No, you nearly got yourself killed, Human,” he said right back. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head a little like he was warding off the tiredness from sleeping for three million years. “I told you to stay at the café. You do reckless things, and it gets you into trouble. That’s not my fault.”

“This is all your fault,” she corrected, folding her arms. “You have a past with the attacker I’ve been investigating, and he came after me because I smelled like you. How does that translate into me almost getting myself killed?”

Mor released a grunt. “Humans,” he muttered to himself as he pulled back the sheets and began inspecting his bandaged side. He didn’t even ask who’d bandaged him up. Violet’s jaw slid to the side so she wouldn’t blurt out the obvious—that she’d done it. Like a hero.

She released a huff and sat back in her chair. She would literally bite her tongue to keep her thoughts to herself if she had to. She would bandage up this ungrateful fairy a dozen times over if she must. Because she couldn’t go back to being jobless again. She told herself that was the reason.

Mor tried to sit up all the way—he winced, and Violet jumped forward, grabbing his shoulders. “You were stabbed, you idiot,” she said. “You should rest.”

Mor went still. He blinked at where her fingers wrapped tightly around his bare shoulders. “My bones have melded, and my flesh is healing fast. I’ll be fine,” he said like he hadn’t noticed that she could touch him again. He nudged her hands off and sat up. “Why are you frail? You’re speaking in a tone that makes me think you’ll collapse at any faeborn moment,” he asked, looking her over.

Violet cleared her throat as she sank back into her seat. “I didn’t take my supplements,” she admitted.

“Why?”

“Because I think I figured out what’s hurting you every time our skin touches.” She dragged the bottle of iron supplements out of her purse at her feet and held it up.

Mor took the bottle and read the label. Then he opened the lid and sniffed inside. He carefully tipped the bottle over, and a pill rolled out onto his hand. He snarled as a sizzling sound filled the room, and he hurled the pill toward the wall, shaking out his hand now blemished with a dark red circle where the pill had landed.

“Oh my gosh,” Violet whispered. “I wasn’t even sure if I was right until this minute.”

“So that’s why your flesh feels so faeborn-cursed hot,” he said, more to himself. He shoved the bottle back toward Violet. She took it and was about to put it back in her purse when he said, “Keep taking them. They might be the only thing stopping that Shadow Fairy from snatching you; not that a pair of gloves wouldn’t solve the problem.” He muttered the last part more to himself.

Violet raised a brow and shook the pills. “You want me to take these?”

“Won’t you have fainting spells if you don’t?”

“Maybe. I’m anemic,” she explained. “Like, really, really anemic. I never get enough iron—”

“That’s not what those pills are for,” Mor stated. “And for the faeborn record, that’s not how iron works. Edible iron comes from generous plants. Cold iron isn’t meant to be eaten.”

Violet grunted a laugh. “Well, I’m different than other anemic people. I had a special doctor prescribe these for me, and you might lack understanding of basic human medicine, but trust me, these pills work,” she said, and Mor rolled his eyes.

“That doctor is a liar. These are killing you.” He nodded to her bottle as he threw his legs over the bedside and stood. “And you’ve also become wildly addicted to them. But they’re your best protection against my enemies. So, take them, for now,” he said, opening his dresser drawer and pulling out a white shirt. He paused, still staring in the drawer. He glanced back at Violet. At her sweater.

Violet shifted in her seat and looked off, hugging her arms to herself.

Mor released a sigh and pulled his shirt over his head as he walked across the room, appearing at full strength out of nowhere. “When all my problems are sorted out,” he went on, “I’ll pay a visit to that doctor myself.” His voice was low, and Violet got the strangest feeling she should high tail it to the doctors’ office and warn her doctor to run for his life or something.

Mor stopped by the bedroom door. He turned back with a strange expression. “You didn’t take one of those pills last night?” he asked again.

Violet shook her head and stood, too. She chose not to mention that ‘not taking one of those pills last night’ had left her dizzy this morning, and she was doing everything she could not to show it.

It looked like Mor had a question on the tip of his tongue.

“What?” she asked, nudging her purse away with her foot. It was only then that she remembered she was wearing Mor’s slippers. He seemed to notice the fluffy pink things with the cute cat ears cradling her warm feet. Violet quickly moved on, “Spit it out if you have something to say. I already told you I don’t like it when people beat around the bush.”

Mor seemed to let the slipper thievery go as he drew back into the room. “How did you escape the Shadow Fairy in the alley?” he asked. “How are you alive, Violet?”

Violet huffed an odd laugh that was a total misrepresentation of how she felt about what had transpired. “I hardly remember,” she said. “It all happened so fast.” She cast him an odd look when he came to stand in front of her. It reminded her how tall he was.

“May I see?” he asked.

“See what?” Violet almost backed up a step when he lifted his hands toward her face.

“Hold still, Human. It won’t hurt.” His voice was gentle as his fingers came over her temples. She held perfectly still when he touched her as light as a feather. But she gasped, warning bells going off in her head.

A rush of warmth flooded her mind as he slid into her memories faster than she could form a response—she could feel him there, inside her mind. It was terrifying. She reached to smack him away as it awakened a feeling she knew she’d felt before.

“It’s all right,” he said before she could hit him off. “I’m not stealing anything. Every memory will still be here when…” His face changed, his calm mouth sinking to a frown.

Violet’s mind filled with the memory of the alley, the redhead’s echoing voice getting sharper and sharper as the memory became clear. She suddenly worried that if Mor saw the memory, he might also somehow be able to tell her feelings about it, and all the things she’d thought about it since.