Chapter Eighteen

“Go carefully,” Gage whispered. They were walking along a more brightly lit and more frequently used corridor. “There might be surveillance.” He tried to harness the Guardian training and experience he usually had at his fingertips. It wasn’t even second nature—it was so ingrained, so much a part of him that he would have classed it as his actual nature.

“We should be doing something,” he said. He tried to recall how to blend in, when he was on an assignment. Daire’s proximity made it difficult to think. Reluctantly he stepped away a little.

“We are doing something.” Daire looked as puzzled by that as Gage usually did by Daire’s utterances. As he was by the earlier one about Daire liking him. Maybe pixies didn’t have a word for, well, anything stronger? Because Gage was pretty sure he something stronger-ed Daire.

“I mean, we’re hardly on that beach, lying on the soft, caramel-colored sand, stretched out under the sun, feeling the breeze and the salt spray on our…naked bodies, are we?” Daire continued.

His voice had gone low and husky as he painted that picture. That alluring picture of the two of them under that blue sky, serenaded by gently cawing birds, next to the softly lapping ocean. Daire almost sounded like he was working some charm or incantation. Strange. The way he stared hard at Gage was stranger.

“You okay?” Gage asked. “And, no, we’re not.” Gage took a picture from the wall and passed it to Daire. He scooped up a vase from a plinth. “There. So we look like workers.”

“Workers who carry paintings and vases,” Daire muttered. He shook his head, as if to clear it and banish the puzzled-seeming crease from his forehead. “Oh, wait, look!”

“What—? Oh.” Gage peered at Fang the snoremouse poking its tiny head from Daire’s pocket. “What does it mean? Danger, right?”

“I think…that there’s another of its kind around? That—” Daire shut up and pressed Gage flat against the wall just as another mouse scurried down the corridor, passing by their feet. “You were right about the surveillance.”

“That? Those?” There were at least five, sniffing and squeaking their zigzagging way along.

“Yeah. Floormice. Just freeze. if you don’t move, they can’t see you,” Daire informed him.

“Wish I’d known that beforehand,” Gage said through gritted teeth. Then he wouldn’t have been standing mostly on one foot, with one hand raised.

“’S’okay. They’ve gone,” Daire said an eternity later, when his hench subsided back into his pocket. Sure enough, tiny mouse-sized snores emerged. “So, up here, right?”

They went up the staircase, Daire juggling the vase from arm to arm. “What would I be doing with this, if I did work here?” he grumbled.

It was Gage’s turn to grab at Daire when they reached the landing at the top of the flight of stairs. “There’s something…” He felt the presence of something and tilted his head upward. “On the ceiling…spiders?” But he’d seen no cobwebs. “Don’t they clean the place better?”

“Not spiders. Spyders.” Daire gulped.

“Really?” The small skittering black bodies with their many legs made Gage itch. “Well, let’s not give them a chance to spy on us.” Inhaling to the fullest extent of his lungs, he blew out a long, hard breath, blasting any clinging arachnid body from its perch above them.

“Nice. I thought it was wyverns who had the magic breath thing?” Daire commented. “What’s that, just general griffin power?”

“I guess.” Gage tried to look modest. He liked that Daire admired his abilities. “Come on. Should be this main corridor here. And look, more vases all along it.” The hallway bore several tables bearing flower-laden pots and jugs. “You can put yours down with them.”

“See those flowers? I don’t think…I like them,” Daire said.

“I know what you mean.” Gage squinted at them. They stood tall in their containers, long stems with clusters of round white flowers like fat beads. “Are they berries?”

“How should I know? My bolt hole’s never going to grace the cover of Pixie Home Beautiful,” Daire scoffed.

They might have been berries, but they weren’t just white. Gage caught a glimpse of a dark purple dot on one when it moved a little in its vase. And since when did flowers move in their pots?

“Here.” Daire grabbed Gage’s hand and sucked a finger into his mouth.

“Not now!” Gage protested, although he didn’t doubt Daire could persuade him. Even Daire sucking on his finger had him thickening in his pants. Especially Daire sucking on his finger.

“Stars and moon, you’re obsessed with sex!” Daire hissed. “Are all griffins this horny all the time or just you?”

“Me?” Gage started to protest.

“Right. Well, good to know.” Daire smirked, before Gage could protest that Daire was the one who’d taken them to a sex club. Who’d gotten Gage a gig as a stripper. Who’d—

“I was wetting your finger for you to see if there was a breeze along here that was shaking those flower stalks,” Daire explained, his eyes wide and his tone injured. He held Gage’s hand up in illustration.

Gage registered no coolness on the wetted patch, even when he turned his upraised finger in various directions. Nodding, he took Daire’s vase from him and tossed it gently down the corridor. It flew a few yards then landed, rolling along the carpet until it stopped. That was of no concern. What Gage studied was how the bunches of fat round flowers turned to follow it, their deep purple pupils tracking its movement.

“They got eyes?” Daire breathed. “I thought they were creepy.”

“It’s spyberry,” Gage explained, some long-distant lesson or studying coming back to him. “I’ve never seen the flower, but I know how to manage it.” Remaining where he was, he reached out a hand until his fingers touched the nearest display and, wriggling, he was able to pluck the flowers from the jug. “Here.” He gave Daire half. “Carry this as we walk past. One bouquet neutralizes another.”

“Really? So we just prance down this hallway carrying a bouquet, like brides down an aisle?” Daire didn’t look convinced.

“Yes.” Gage’s mind wanted to dwell on that image, but he didn’t let it. “On three. One, two…” On three they walked slowly past the vases and pots, and none of the bunches turned to spy on them. Gage let go of Daire’s hand—when had he taken it?—to scoop up the vase from where it had rolled against the wall. When they’d walked the gauntlet, he dropped both their bunches of flowers into the container and placed it on the last of the tables.

“Ah, okay. So that’s why people carry vases.” Daire grinned. “Good thing Griffin Guardians get training about flower arranging. Your workplace must be sooo pretty.”

Gage narrowed his eyes at him. “Well, time for your pixie powers,” he said, indicating the various ornate doors set into the walls of the Holding Suite corridor.

“Yeah. We don’t want to get the wrong room and have to pay the ransom for other nappees,” Daire replied, moving off.

“We’re not paying the ransom for the Storm Queen. We’re rescuing her, taking her out of here!” Gage protested.

“How? She must be heavily guarded—they all must be,” Daire argued. He stopped. “In fact, what are we going to do? And how? You do have a plan, right?”

“Right. Right.” Gage nodded. A lot.

“You’re lying!” Daire accused. “Don’t tell me you’re just going to wing it.”

“Wing it… I was! I am,” Gage assured him, thinking on the claw.

“Fly away. That’s your plan.” Daire scoffed, then considered. “Well, it’s as good a plan as any, I guess. We’d be in the clear, well away.”

There’d still be the matter of the criminals to bring to justice. Gage would have to work out those details. Work them out with Her Majesty. The lack of armed guards struck him. Well, the absence of any guards. Maybe they were all stationed inside the suites?

“Look at this.” Daire halted before a door with a parchment bearing a picture of a crown pinned to it. A jade crown. “You thinking what I’m thinking? That with these brains, I should be a Guardian, investigating crimes? Pity you’re so speciesist about restricting it to griffins.”

“It’s called the Griffin Guardians,” Gage reminded him. “You have your own security force in this realm, the Pixie Patrol, right?” He knew better than to ask if Daire had ever considered joining them. He was probably the sworn enemy of every patrol pixie in the force. They probably all carried his picture for reference. “Look, concentrate.”

“I am! And I think it’s this one.” Daire pressed his ear to the door with the jade crown on it. He hooked his long hair behind his ear to listen better. It revealed the pointed tip, and Gage’s mouth dried. “I can’t hear anything.”

“Then there’s unlikely to be a kidnap subject locked in there, trying to tunnel out through the floor or smash the windows,” Gage reasoned.

“Yeah. Not locked in there, ’cause it’s not locked.” Daire eased it open a crack and peered in. “It seems occupied though.”

“Daire!” Gage’s exclamation came too late, as did his grab for the pixie, to stop him sneaking in. “Hells-be-damned, Daire!”

“I think there’s someone in bed, through there.” Daire pointed.

Somehow, Gage found his hand in Daire’s again and they crept slowly and quietly into the bedroom. A woman lay asleep on the bed.

“That her?” Daire asked, whispering into Gage’s ear and increasing Gage’s arousal.

Gage shrugged. Spotting the firefly lamp, he shook it, to make it light up, ignoring the creatures’ annoyed buzzing, then held the lamp high and moved it slowly, so the light fell on the figure.

The woman was tall and slim, with long black hair. Was this her? And was this it, the end to the assignment? The lady, perhaps disturbed by the light or the buzzing, shifted and her hair fell away from her face…revealing elven ears and the royal marking on her forehead centered slightly above the space between her well-arched eyebrows and sharp-pointed ears.

“Your Majesty!” Replacing the lamp, Gage went down on one knee.

She remained asleep.

Daire rolled his eyes at Gage. “Er, Storm Queen?” he said, his voice a little louder.

Nothing happened.

“Your Highness?” Gage’s booming voice had her stirring. He only hoped she wouldn’t wake up blasting all about her with magic.

She sat up and saw him and shrieked, dragging the bedclothes around her. “Who are you? And you?” She noticed Daire. “You’re not my usual attendants. Get out!”

“We’re not hotel attendants.” Gage hated the uniform. “We’re here to rescue you from your kidnappers, Your Majesty.” He stood to attention, his left hand on his heart and his right on top of that, as Griffin Guardians did, denoting their pledge to serve

“Majesty? Kidnappers?” The woman’s bewildered and alarmed gaze swung between Gage and Daire. “What are you talking about?”

“Look at her!” Daire whispered to Gage. “She really doesn’t know why we came here. And worse…”

“She doesn’t know who she is,” Gage finished for him.