Dragon Bound(91)

Damn, the faerie’s sadness was making her own eyes prickle with tears. “I think I know some of what you’re going through right now,” Pia said. “Not the impending Queen stuff. That’s way out of my stratosphere. But the other stuff.”

“You mean the end of life as you know it?”

“Yeah, that.”

Tricks gave a sudden giggle. “How’d we get so downtrodden? We haven’t even finished our first glasses of wine.” She picked up her glass and clicked it against Pia’s. “Salut, new friend.”

Pia picked up her glass. “Salut.”

Tricks knocked back her wine. “Now for the good stuff. Gossip! You need to know who is lying, cheating, backstabbing, revenge-seeking, who-done-who-wrong and who is just plain hard to get along with in this place. I’m here to give you the road map every girl should have before she starts working in this loony bin.”

Hungry, Pia forked some stir-fry into her mouth. She remarked, “It sounds like I need a flowchart.”

The faerie gasped. “Beauteous. I need a pen.”

Pia watched her pat the pockets of her silk suit, then trot to the door to flag down a passing waitress. Tricks returned triumphant. She started to scribble on the white tablecloth, drawing circles and arrows between names as she chattered. They finished their lunch. The waiter came and left with their plates. More wine flowed.

Sometime later Pia rubbed her nose. She looked at her empty wineglass, then at the empty bottles on the neighboring table. She squinted at her new best friend, who listed to one side in her chair. “What is your name again?”

The faerie snickered. “It’s gotta be on this chart. I’m sure I wrote it down somewhere.”

Pia looked over the dense black scribbles that covered the tablecloth. “We were going to talk about something. Weren’t we?”

“Sure we were. You’re going to take over my PR job.”

“Okay.” She nodded. It was the perfect solution. Of course it was.

But wait. There was something she needed to remember about that. Doubts, other considerations, deadly good reasons why she shouldn’t accept. There was something. . . .

Something that twinkled in the air, a feminine Power so light and delicate and effervescent she only just noticed it, after hours of sitting saturated in its presence.

Her best friend was writing something down. T-r-i-c-k-s. The faerie drew hearts and flowers around the word as she hummed to herself.

“Tricks,” said Pia.

Tricks looked up from the doodling, tongue between her teeth.

Pia put one elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, and smiled at the other woman. “Is your Power by any chance related to charm or charisma?”

Tricks scratched the tip of one ear. “So what if it is?”

“I don’t think I should say yes to anything you ask me while we’re in the same room together and I’m drunk, that’s all,” Pia said.

One of Tricks’s eyelids lowered to half-mast, a crafty, unrepentant look. Then the faerie grinned, and sunshine and happiness burst into the room. “Oh, pfft!” she said.





The afternoon descended into early evening. Dragos, Kristoff and Tiago watched the evening news in Dragos’s office. Kristoff stood with an arm wrapped around his middle, one hand covering the back of his neck. Tiago stood with his feet planted apart, arms crossed. Barbed-wire tattoos flexed as his biceps clenched.

Dragos sat at his desk. He tapped his steepled fingers against his mouth as he watched Cuelebre Enterprises get bitch-slapped on national television.

Two beautiful people were on the screen. One was a human female reporter. The other was the Dark Fae King.

For the first time in many decades, Dragos looked on the face of his enemy. Urien had typical Dark Fae coloring and features, with overlarge gray eyes, high cheekbones, white skin and black hair that fell to his shoulders. His hair was pulled back, revealing elegant, long pointed ears.

“. . . of course, scrapping the project is quite a financial blow to the people of this community and to the state of Illinois,” said Urien, with a charming, regretful smile. “And not only for potential jobs that have been lost. We lost a valuable source of clean and economical power that would have been produced by a new electric-generating nuclear power plant, and we have Cuelebre Enterprises to thank for that. As you know, the nation faces the challenge of reducing our carbon emissions. The only way we can achieve lower emissions is by developing energy efficiencies and clean technologies, such as wind and solar power. Nuclear energy has got to be part of that mix. . . .”

Dragos punched the mute. He looked at Tiago and his miserable assistant.