21

Violet Miller and the Thing that Happened in the Alley Two Days Ago

It took one quick swipe of the redhead’s fairy sword to slice the front of Violet’s sweater in half. Strands of pink yarn flew to the ground, one landing in a small pool of Gretchen’s blood behind him. Violet raised both hands in surrender before he might start hacking at her sleeves, too. “I’ll do the rest!” she volunteered, quickly yanking the sweater’s remains off her arms. She carefully set the heap of ripped yarn on the ground at her feet, then stood tall again—still with her hands raised.

Her throat constricted when the fairy leaned in, tilting his mouth toward her neck. He inhaled deeply.

A second too many passed of him standing that close. When he pulled away, his evil leer was gone. His mouth twisted to the side like something was bothering him. Like maybe he totally forgot Violet was even there and had gotten lost to his manic, murderous thoughts. But then he said, “You’re not what I expected, Violet.”

Violet blinked. She didn’t dare lower her hands. “You’re not exactly what I expected either,” she rasped.

The crazy thing was that close up, the redhead didn’t look like a psychopath. He definitely gave off “dark villain” vibes, but when he spoke, it made Violet feel like he’d known her forever. Like they were old friends, trusted allies who had things in common. She wasn’t sure how she connected the dots, but it occurred to her that maybe his easy familiarity was because he was reading her articles on him… And also, that he was totally flattered.

What gave it away was when he said, “You must like me a lot to obsess over every one of my victims the way you do.”

“You must like me a lot to have read all my articles on those victims,” Violet said back, her voice coming out with less force than she would have liked. She cleared her throat. She was already pressed back against the cold brick wall. There was no more moving back for her.

She stole a glance toward the end of the alley, hoping to find a healthy Master of Doom figure standing there, or even Dranian with his spear. But all she saw was a gentle breeze rustling some debris and filling the alley with a shallow whistling sound.

“So, we like each other, then,” the redhead said. His smile returned, broad and provocative. “I’d invite you to seal our discovery with a kiss, but I have a feeling that would go just as poorly as last time.” He drew a sparkling red gem out of his pocket and placed it in his teeth, biting down to hold it in place and smiling around it. “I don’t want you to forget this anyway,” he added.

Violet’s arms grew numb; she slowly lowered them as it dawned on her that this redhead fairy still thought her skin was untouchable. He mustn’t have seen when Violet had touched Dranian’s fingers in the street. She swallowed, trying to think of how to use that to her advantage.

“You’re right about that,” she said. “I’m special. I hurt fairies who get too close. You might want to take a step back,” she said to him.

He raised a scarlet eyebrow and didn’t budge.

“You don’t believe me? Fine. I’ll prove it.” Violet lifted a hand toward him, and sure enough, the Shadow Fairy took a step back, bringing the ruby into his mouth and closing his lips. Her hand hung in midair, her chest filling with relief. She lacked a lot of basic life skills due to her situation, but she was good at bluffing.

The redhead eyed her, his mouth tipping down at the corners. He spat the ruby back out into his hand and shoved it in his pocket. “What,” he began, braving another step back toward Violet, “in the name of the sky deities—” he stopped before her again, nearly pinning her against the brick wall, proving he was less afraid than she thought “—is that scent doing on you?”

“Mor’s scent? I thought you already knew about that when you mistook me for his girlfriend or whatever—”

“Not Trisencor’s scent, Violet. The other one.”

He looked back and forth between her eyes.

Violet debated how to even reply to such a question.

“Listen, you might not believe me, but I actually have no idea what you’re talking about. Why does everyone keep telling me I smell?” Violet asked.

He tilted his head, his broad smile finding its way back like he knew something she didn’t.

“And if you’re going to kill me, just get on with it. Seriously, the wait is murdering me all on its own. This is worse than actually dying!” she said to him, and he burst out laughing.

His laugh was buttery and smooth—Violet couldn’t help but notice. He didn’t sound like a psychopath either. That was a double threat.

“Oh dear, Violet. Trust me, the dying part would be infinitely worse than this,” he assured. “But I won’t kill you unless I decide I want to bring Trisencor anguish. You understand,” he drawled, flicking a bug off the shoulder of his black coat.

“Well, you got it all wrong. I’m not Mor’s girlfriend or lover or anything. I’m just his secretary, and he doesn’t think about me like that. I don’t even think he’s capable of those sorts of feelings,” Violet said with slight sarcasm.

The redhead chuckled again. “Oh Violet, you foolish, little, na?ve human. Let me tell you something about Mor Trisencor.” He took yet another stride in, and this time the buttons of his coat brushed her shirt. He slapped a hand against the brick wall beside her head, blocking any escape path, forcing her to stay put and listen.

“Mor feels things, deeply,” he said.

Violet wasn’t sure she was still breathing. She tried to avoid looking right into his dark eyes.

“Because of those feelings, Trisencor will forever be marked as a traitor to the Dark Corner, forever hunted, forever despised. He’s a slave of the North, bound for death by even his own Queene. Death will forever follow him.” The redhead’s expression turned cruel. “He will always feel strongly, yet his heart will never be able to truly love anyone, lest what he loves be stolen away and ruined as his past continues to catch up with him the way I did.” The fairy’s metallic-scarlet hair glistened in the sunlight as he whispered, his breath scented of sweet roses and sugar. “What you need to understand, Violet, is that Mor is not allowed to love. Everything touched by his heart will be destroyed. Fairy forces have sworn to make it so.”

The silence filled with thick, dismal notes and a warm wind swept into Violet’s hair. Even if she could have formed a response, she didn’t want to. What kind of person would say such a terrible thing about someone else?

Shuffling sounds filled the alley, and Violet looked to the entrance with hope. But it wasn’t Mor or Dranian.

Fairies Violet recognized from the knitting store filed in, two of them appearing via teleportation with a popping sound around the redhead. One of them dropped to assess Gretchen who still laid motionless on the pavement.

The old woman who’d heckled Mor in the yarn store, the one Violet now knew was named Freida, called from the end of the alley where she stood with the other women, “If you take her, Shadow Fairy, we’ll follow you through the wind. But if you leave her behind, we’ll stay put. It’s your choice, but you had best decide quickly,” she said.

The redhead’s hand slowly slid off the brick wall beside Violet’s face. “I don’t want any trouble, females. I’m not here for you.”He didn’t look or sound afraid; frankly, he looked ready to fight them all. He even drew out his sword handle. But he seemed to take inventory of all the women, and he slid his handle away again. He turned back to Violet and looked deeply into her eyes in a way that made her sure he never intended to really let her go. He smiled.

“You can call me Luc, dear Violet. We might as well be on a first name basis since we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

Without another word, he stepped back and vanished into the air.