CHAPTER 42
Later in the night, as Izzy scaled the side of a gingerbread house just outside the New Never City limits, I wondered just what the hell I was doing here.
Bits of cookie crumbled off the siding, nearly smacking me in the head. I ducked a large chunk and frowned. “What the hell are you thinking?” I asked from the frosted grass below. Oddly enough, my comment had little to do with her breaking-and-entering technique but was more of a general question of her sanity.
Rather than answer she dived through the candy-cane window, disappearing inside the house. I strained to hear any signs of life from inside, but no sound emerged. After a few seconds her head appeared in the window frame. “Coming?”
“You’re crazy, you know that?” I said but didn’t think twice about scaling the sweet-smelling siding to the second floor.
My gloved hands reached the window ledge and I pulled my body up and over it. I landed hard on the floor, almost cracking my head on a plastic dollhouse.
“Shh,” Izzy warned, her finger pointing to a blond kid asleep on the bed. A pink blanket covered the sleeping child and next to her sat a pink pony with sparkles all over it.
In this pretty pink room, with a pretty pink bedspread and a pretty little girly girl, I felt totally out of place. I had to get the hell out of there. But it was too late. Izzy had just stuffed her hand under the little girl’s pillow.
I froze, imaging how I would explain to the cops my presence in a child’s room at midnight. Surely they would lock me up and toss the key. Izzy apparently didn’t hold the same fear. She pulled her hand from beneath the pillow and smiled. In her palm sat a small, bloody baby tooth.
The sight turned my stomach. Give me a sucking chest wound or a large pus-filled knife cut, no problem. Show me a little dried blood on a kid’s tooth and I got the willies.
Izzy didn’t notice my disgust. She wiped the blood off the tooth with her sleeve and shoved the tooth inside a small brown bag on her belt. “Why can’t they ever wash these things?” she complained.
“Are we done yet?” I asked, my last meal on the rise in the back of my throat.
“Of course not,” she said. Taking a dollar from her pocket, she once again reached under the pillow.
I glanced from the Tooth Fairy to the sleeping kid. “A dollar? Really?”
Izzy drew back, a frown marring her beautiful face. “What’s wrong with a dollar?”
“It’s a little much for a quarter of an inch of dentin.”
She frowned. “How much do you think a fairy’s life is worth, Blue? Without enough dentin we will die, and the only way for us to get it—at least get enough of it—is to pay the fair market price.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. You’re the Tooth Fairy.”
She sighed and then gestured to the sleeping kid. “Is this something you really want to get into right now?”
“Seems like as good a time as any.” I crossed my arms over my chest, trying my best to intimidate her into telling me what was going on. Why her sudden change of mind? One minute she swore she never wanted to be the Tooth Fairy and then the next she was stealing kids’ teeth for the Council? It didn’t make sense. Unless the Fairy Council had somehow blackmailed her into becoming the Tooth Fairy. If so, what did they have on her? And why were they using it now?
From her smile I knew I’d fallen very short in my intimidation tactics. “All right.” She took a seat on the end of the bed, crossing her legs as if she didn’t have a care in the world. The sleeping child let out a loud snore and rolled over.
I was out of the window and down the drainpipe before the child woke up. Izzy followed at a much slower pace, flapping her wings until her feet touched the ground.
My landing wasn’t nearly as graceful. I landed on my head. Thankfully, a bush had softened the blow. A rosebush. “Ow,” I complained as what felt like a thousand thorns shredded my skin.
“Don’t be a baby,” she said with a laugh.
“You’ll pay for that, Isabella.” I brushed myself off, plucking a thorn or two from my body. When I finished I grabbed Izzy’s arm in my gloved hands, spinning her to face me. “Why did you take this job? There’s a killer running around whacking Tooth Fairies and here you are, finally volunteering to be the next victim after fighting it for so long. Are you crazy?”
“I’m doing what has to be done,” she said quietly.
“But why?” I asked. “Why do you suddenly care what happens to any of them?”
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“It’s my destiny,” she said, her shoulders slumping lower with every word.
I frowned, letting her words sink in. Izzy wasn’t the destiny type. In fact, she hated the idea of fate. She’d said as much when we first met. I let out a chuckle. “You almost had me. Now what’s really going on?”
Izzy stood in front of me like a statue, her face growing colder as my mirth continued. Finally, she slapped me in the face, hard, jolting both of us in the process. “Don’t laugh at things you don’t understand.” She rubbed her stinging palm. “Over a hundred years ago a psychic predicted the end-times. A time when the fairies will be lost. Betrayed by one man, which will end the separation and bring on the next Fairy War with the Shadows.”
“And you’re the one fairy who can stop it? You honestly believe that?”
“The Fairy Council swears it’s true.” She shrugged. “And it could be. After all, this particular psychic saw many other things. Things that eventually all came true.”
“Like what?”
“He saw the separation of fairy and Shadow.”
My eyebrow arched. “Even I could’ve seen that one coming. No one likes to be enslaved, especially by dudes a few feet shorter, rounder, and three-dimensional.”
She snorted. “Excuse me; I didn’t realize you were so up on your history. Please go on. Tell me all about the history of my people, you blue-haired idiot.”
“Ouch,” I said with a grin. “The Tooth Fairy has a bite.”
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again her anger was gone, replaced by something much more frightening. Something I’d never seen before. Something that scared me down to the blue hairs growing on my toes. She looked at me with complete trust and faith.
I swallowed hard. “So how do you stop this guy from betraying the fairies?”
“The how is not the important part.”
I had a feeling it was much more important to her than she let on. But for the moment I let her have her way. “Then what is?”
“Who.”
“Who, what?”
She spun around, giving me a pointed look. “Who betrays the fairies, Blue.”
“Me? Are you crazy?” I gave a bark of laughter. “You think I’m going to betray you to the Shadows?”
“Yes.”
Anger blazed through me like a lightning bolt, sending sparks flying in various directions. “Everything I’ve done over the last week has been to protect you, Izzy. You! So why, in the end, would I betray you?”
Rather than wait for her answer I grabbed her arm and spun her toward me. “Hell with this.” Her body crashed into mine and all anger left my body, replaced with white-hot desire. Izzy’s mouth, lush and ripe, was maybe an inch from mine, close enough for me to smell the sweet scent of her mouthwash.
Close enough to touch what I could never have.
Fate was a fickle bitch.
Red and blue gumball lights flashed over us like a cold shower. “Freeze,” a cop dressed in dark blue yelled from his position behind his open car door.
I released Izzy, raising my arms over my head while willing other body parts to stand down. Izzy apparently hadn’t heard the cop’s order. Her arms and wings stayed tucked around me like a cocoon, oddly comforting, even with the barrel of a gun pointed at my head.
“Show me your hands,” the cop yelled.
“Better do what he says.”
She blinked a few times, as if coming out of a trance. Quickly, her wings disappeared into her shoulder blades and she raised her hands high in the air. “Officer,” she said in a calm, clear voice, “I think there’s been a mistake. I’m the—”
“You could be the Wicked Witch from Greenwitch, missy, it don’t make no difference to me.” The cop stepped from behind his car and spoke into his radio. “Two in custody.”
Not yet, I thought, arching a current along my arm.
Izzy shook her head.
I nodded. She shook it again but with greater force. I ignored her, preparing to shock the cop long enough to make a run for it. Last thing I needed was breaking and entering charges, especially when the only thing stolen was a baby tooth.
She apparently didn’t see things my way, for Izzy grabbed my arm, crushing it in her hand, forcing the electricity through me and into her. Blue light danced from my skin to hers as the stench of burned feathers filled the air.
And yet she never made a sound. No scream of pain. No indrawn breath. Nothing, much to my relief. When the charge was gone she smiled, her teeth bathed in a familiar blue light.
I frowned, shoving her away. “What the hell was that?”
“What?” she asked, blinking innocently.
I took a menacing step toward her, my hands ready to shake some sense into her.
“Keep your hands up where I can see them,” the cop said. He grabbed my sleeve and walked me backward to his car. Once there, he quickly patted me down and then put me in handcuffs. “You look familiar, son,” he said. “Got any wants or warrants?”
“Not a one,” I lied.
The cop didn’t look like he believed me. Not that I blamed him. I was a blue-haired PI caught red-handed copping a feel from a chick with pink wings.
He opened the back door of his cruiser and pushed me inside.