“What did you just say?” she asked softly. Apparently her hearing problem came and went, depending on the situation.
“I said,
Lie.
You know Maggie, I know you do.”
Her voice was softer this time. “You are bold, girl. Too bold, methinks.”
My head was spinning with the ridiculousness of the situation. We drove all the way here from France to be shut out of this crappy ass wannabe hotel in the middle of the night?
I don’t think so.
My sleep deprivation monster took over. “Well
me
thinks that it’s colder than a witch’s boob out here and I’ve been riding in that foot-smelly van for over seventeen hours, most of them with wet toes and socks, and I have a date with a dragon in a few days and I don’t have time to stand out on your rickety porch all night while you play your witchy games. That’s what methinks. So open up and let me in or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow this mother down.” I didn’t control wind, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t put a hurtin’ on this place. And I’d do it too. I was outer limits pissed over that caning I’d just gotten. I could feel the lump throbbing under my skin.
What the hell, man? I thought we had a reservation. Since when did a caning come with check-in?
Jared grabbed me and shoved me behind him, standing up as straight as he could to make himself look bigger. Now my view of everything was blocked by his back. “Forgive her. She’s an innocent.”
I stood on my tiptoes to see over him, fixing the old hag with a stare. “Innocent, my butt. I meant every word.”
The ogre took a step forward, but the witch’s staff coming out and knocking him in the knee stopped him. I felt a tug on my power and my instincts kicked in. The Green flowed into me from the ground, and when I sensed how open the channel was, I realized we were standing over a ley line. My suspicion that this old bag of bones was somehow related to Maggie hit me double time. I used the ley line to enhance my connection and threw up a stronger bubble of protection around not just Jared and me but all my friends behind me too.
“How dare you use your power in my presence,” she growled. A spark of bluish white light shot out of the end of her staff and hit my bubble. She muttered something at the same time, making me think I was probably being spelled with a little extra whammy for good measure. A funny sound —
Doooiiink—
echoed through my Green light bubble as both the light and the words hit us and then shimmered over the entire structure. I felt nothing but the resonance of power that couldn’t touch us.
I stepped around Jared and smiled, proud as all get-out that my shit was hanging tough. All those months of training with Sam had paid off. “Missed me.” I might also have been a little delirious at that point.
The old woman stepped closer to us, a porch light flicking on and illuminating her face. The cloak still covered much of it, but not enough. A giant, crooked nose, a pointy chin, and skin that looked like a rock wall were revealed. “You are unwise,” she said after a few moments of standing there like a statue.
I shrugged. “So they say, but I’m still standing.”
“All may enter save the pixie,” she said, totally switching gears and acting like it wasn’t insane to do that. She was still cranky, though, which made her sound even more like Maggie. They had to be related, which meant I was related to her … a scary thought.
Is that what my future holds? Scoliosis and skin conditions?
I shook my head. “No deal. The pixie’s with me.”
“Yeah!” Tim yelled from behind me. “I’m with her! BFFs! Friends for life!”
I smiled at his enthusiasm, which I knew came from both his heart and his frosty wings. He wasn’t enjoying the cold any more than I was.
The old woman turned, looking up at her ogre friend as she passed. “All may enter save the pixie.” He nodded once and then turned to face me, his expression revealing nothing other than blind obedience. The old woman disappeared into the yellow light behind her.
“Operation sneak into the witch’s lair behind an elemental’s pony tail shall now commence,” Tim said. “Just let me out of this bubble, and I’ll join you up there.”
I didn’t want to talk to Tim directly and let the ogre know our plan, so I spoke up loud enough for everyone to hear. “The protection I have in place won’t stop any of you from joining us up here.”
Tony was the first to move, pulling Felicia along with him. They passed Tim by and stopped behind me. Spike followed and came up to take my hand, while the others came just after him.
“I can’t get past the stairs, Jayne!” Tim sounded freaked, and a freaked out pixie was not on my agenda for the night. All I had planned was a lot of snoring and drooling ahead of me for at least the next seven hours.
I walked back down the stairs and grabbed him out of the air, putting him on my shoulder.
He grabbed a lock of hair that had escaped my elastic and yanked on it once. “Giddyup, Mule. Take me to my chamber.”
Chapter Six
I GOT ONE STEP UP from where Tim was hovering and I heard his tiny hoot-n-holler and a tug on my hair. Taking a step back, I reached up and grabbed him off my shoulder. “Come on, stop playing around. We’re going in and you’re not hiding.” Another step forward and he yelled again, but this time it sounded more like an outraged scream than a giddyup kind of thing. I looked down and the first thing I noticed was his face. His nose and mouth were smushed to the side.
“Ba uh!
Ba uh!” he yelled, his arms pinwheeling out behind him and his wings fluttering like crazy. It took me a few seconds to figure out what was going on; his ridiculous face and his panic finally clued me in to the fact that he was being pressed up against an invisible barrier. It was too funny to be scary.
“What?” I moved him away and pulled him up closer to my face. “What did you say? I couldn’t hear you with your face all pressed in like that.”
The light on the porch wasn’t that bright, but it was illuminating Tim’s face well enough. He was pissed, his tiny little nostrils flaring and spittle flying from his lips. “I said ‘Back up’, Jayne. Back
up
! There’s a spell there keeping me out. You were about to turn me into a crepe!”
“Not a pancake?” I tried really hard not to laugh. The idea that someone would think pixies are rank enough to force them to sleep outside was hilarious to me, but only because I knew how offended Tim would be.
“No! Not a pancake, Jayne! Because pancakes are
fluffy
, and being stuck in your man-mitt and smashed into a spell would make me flatter than that! Like a crepe!”
I looked down at my hand, opening it up. His wings were a little crumpled. “Man mitt? I have man mitts?” That was the first time I’d heard that about myself. I wondered if I should start getting paranoid about having manly hands.
Tim stood and shook his wings out, working really hard at smoothing down the left one that still had a tiny kink at the bottom. His hair was a wreck, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him. I could see he was as tired as I was and at the end of his rope, and I didn’t want any of his butt dust flying up into my face. I hadn’t remembered to bring any of the antidote, and I doubted anyone else had, either.
Time to get serious.
“I’m sorry I squished you.”
“Apology not accepted,” he said scowling up at me as he unzipped his fanny pack.
An angry pixie forcefully opening one of those was more than I could take when I was as tired as I was. I had to turn around to keep from snorting in his face. When I could finally control myself and not risk accidentally laughing out loud, I raised my voice, hoping the witch wasn’t too far into her lair to hear me. “Um, hotel keeper person? Maggie’s relative? Ogre bodyguard guy? I need you to let my pixie friend in. He can’t stay out here alone. He’s liable to freeze to death.”
The ogre said nothing, but a quick little tap of my pixie-holding hand against the barrier and Tim getting his hair messed up as a result told me no one was cooperating.
Tim spoke in a very contained and calm voice. “If you do that again, I’m going to dust your sorry butt. I’m not kidding. I’ll double dust it.”
I lowered my voice so only he would hear. “Dust even a single hair on my butt and you’ll lose those wings. I’ll give ‘em to the innkeeper. I’m not kidding, either.”
“You
wouldn’t!
” he hissed.
“Try me.” I gave him my super scary stare down.
“You know you look deranged when you do that, right?”
“Shut up, no I don’t. I look awesome.”
“Jayne, are we going in?” Spike asked, sounding incredibly tired. He was the only one still out on the porch.
“Go ahead. I’ll meet you in there.”
He stepped over the threshold and the door slammed shut behind him.
Chapter Seven
“SO WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED to do?” I asked, looking around me. “They’re in there, and we’re out here.” I shivered as a cold breeze blew up into the sleeves of my sweater.
“Does it seem particularly quiet around here to you, or is it just me?” Tim reached down and grabbed a couple of my fingers, forcing them to wrap around him. I saved him the trouble of reaching for the rest of them and put him in a nice loose fist, bringing him up closer as I folded my arms across my chest.
“Yes, it does. Where are the crickets?” I shivered. “Maybe it’s too cold for crickets.”
“It’s not too cold for owls or other things that go bump in the night.”
I stared at the front porch of the B&B and then at its door, sure one of my friends would be coming out at any second to tell us to come in, that all was well, that there was just a little misunderstanding about an anti-pixie spell. The old lady probably hadn’t heard that all the pixies were playing nice now, since she was living out here in the boonies where even the crickets didn’t want to be.
“Where is everybody?” I asked, pissed that the door remained closed and our surroundings silent as a friggin graveyard.
“They’re inside with their feet propped up in front of a fire,” Tim said grouchily. “Typical fae. Treating the pixie like he’s a second class citizen. If they only knew what pixiekind have done for their sorry butts throughout history… ”
“I don’t think that’s it. Spike wouldn’t stay in there without me. Right?”
Tim tilted his head, thinking. “Hmm, you’re right. It’s not like him to let you out of his sight for longer than fifteen seconds. Why don’t you call to him?”
I nodded, the plan instantly coming to me in crystal clear HD vision. I would let him know I was still out here and not happy about it, and he’d come running super speedy, incubus style to make it up to me and apologize for leaving me to freeze my butthairs off in the ice cold landscape of the Isle of Skye. I really loved that he did that stuff for me.
I smiled as I pictured Spike with his shirt off, smiling at me with bad intentions in his eyes. The cold trying to seep into my bones ceased to matter as I imagined his hands on me and the way he always held me close, making me feel like I was the most important thing in the entire world to him.
Come to me, Spike. I need you. I’m out here all alone and I miss you…
I opened my eyes, but the only thing keeping me company was a goofy ass pixie.
“Did you do it? You had a really strange look on your face. Do you need to use the bathroom?”
“Shut up.” I glared at the front door. “I called to him, but it’s not working for some reason. Maybe he’s in the shower.”
“Has that ever stopped him before?”
“Uhh, no.” He did show up soaking wet one time, and I had no doubt that he’d do it again if I asked him to.
“Then I think we have to assume that there’s something going on in there to keep them from coming out.”
I snorted. “I’ve heard that one before. Check out any time you like, but you can never leave?” Tim’s explanation made sense, though. Nothing had ever kept Spike from my side, other than a full-on demon possession; and even then, his demon possessor had latched onto me like velcro. “Whoever made our reservations at the Hotel California needs to be fired from the travel department, that’s all I’ve got to say.” At least I had the Green bubble around my friends. Testing it to be sure, I found the energy seamless and strong. I prayed that meant they were somewhat safe inside, even though temporarily unreachable.
Tim was shaking his head, hands on hips. “It was a trap. I knew it.”
“You knew it was a trap and didn’t say anything?”
“No, I knew it had to be a trap after I hit that spell with my face. Anyone who doesn’t want a pixie in her house is obviously evil.”
I wasn’t about to debate pixie politics with him, so instead, I walked over to the car and slid the side door open, taking the first bench seat and shutting the door behind us.
“What’s the plan?” Tim asked, flying out of my hand up to the headrest of the seat in front of me. He was standing with his legs spread, his hands on his hips, and his wings fluttering in neutral, ready to kick some serious butt.
Super Tim to the rescuuue!
“I’m going to sleep.” After locking all the doors, I grabbed Spike’s sweatshirt that he’d left on the seat and bunched it up under my head. Stretching out as best I could, I tucked my legs up and closed my eyes, resting my hands under my head.
“You’re going to
sleep
? In the middle of our crisis? That’s not the Jayne I know! You need to call up your elements and send that witch into the Otherworlds! Knock down her house! Show her who’s boss!” I could feel the tiny air currents kicked up by his wings just by my face. “At least mess up her hair a little bit.”
I was instantly drowsy, my words slurring together. “Did you see her hair? It’s already messed up.”
Tim landed on my cheek. “Did you get spelled? Is that what this is all about?” I felt my eyelid being pried up. “Hmmm, pupils reacting to dim light, that’s a good sign.”
I shook my head to get rid of him and felt his body leave my face, but decided to offer up an explanation to head off the pixie tantrum I knew I was about to suffer. “I’m going to compel one of them into my dream, see what’s going on.”
There was a moment of silence followed by a tiny pixie toot. “Okay. That could work. I’ll stand guard, then. Go ahead, sleeping booty, do your thing. I’ll sing a beautiful pixie lullaby to you that always works for Willy.” He cleared his throat and then in a crazy falsetto, Bee Gees voice began singing.