Americana Fairy Tale (7 page)

He listened for the flush and the footsteps toward the sinks. The guy rounded the corner, and Corentin put on a mask of casualness as he ran the water in his sink. He pretended to pay no attention and splashed water on his face, pressed his fingers to his tired, itchy eyes, and smoothed his hair back with damp hands. He snatched a paper towel from the dispenser and wiped his face, then held the towel there until he heard the telltale swing of the door.

Alone at last.

Corentin hurried to the door, light on his feet, and his heavy work boots made barely a sound on the tiles. He upended the metal trash can and wedged it tight under the door handle. He took a breath, counted to five, and listened for approaching steps. Nothing. His ears perked when he heard the whisper of toilet paper. Corentin looked toward the stalls and found a tail wafting from the ventilation.

Returning to the sink, he retrieved his pocketknife and antiquated candy-bar phone from his pocket. He had noted in his tome of composition notebooks that he tried to make calls on it once. But with no charger and no knowledge if it had even been activated among the mundane human companies, it wasn’t for that. A hag down on the bayou had showed him what to do and whom it would call.

He flipped the corkscrew out of his knife with one hand and balanced the phone on the lip of the sink. He mentally counted backward from seven, and when he came to one, he drove the point of the corkscrew into his left palm. He gasped from the familiar but always disconcerting pain. The sacrifice was always needed on behalf of his kind. As the blood flowed down his fingers, he tossed the pocketknife into the bowl of the sink. Corentin scooped up the phone in his left hand, and the blood slicked over the back casing.

The magic was instant. Black and green tendrils of energy seeped from his wrist and leeched over the phone. The tiny screen blinked to life in a green spark, and he lifted it to his ear. No need to dial—the phone only called whom he served at any given time. It rang once and then clicked with the connection.

“What is it?” Charles’s voice growled over the static.

“You didn’t tell me he was
Curseless
,” Corentin said with irritation. He dabbed the beads of sweat collecting on his forehead.

“I didn’t?” Charles said, sounding surprised. “It must have slipped my mind.”

In the mirror, Corentin watched his face contort with slowly brewing anger. “What the hell am I supposed to do with a
Curseless
princess? We had a deal. I bring him to you and you release me.”

“Did I say that?” Charles said. “Wow, your memory might be getting a bit dodgy.”

Corentin’s knees quaked with the magic draining through him into the phone. He leaned on the sink for support. “Don’t you dare patronize me. You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

“Oh, huntsman….” Charles trailed off with a chuckle. “Do you think threatening someone like me is going to work? That’s cute.”

Corentin sighed, feeling the sweat pour down his back. He couldn’t win this argument, and Charles knew it very well. “What would you have me do?” he sighed in defeat.

“It’s very simple. You don’t even have to take notes in your ghastly book,” Charles said with a smile in his voice. “
Curseless
or not, Taylor remains a princess in the Hatfield clan. Taylor is, regrettably, the
eldest
child in the family line. I can’t enact my plan to the fullest until he’s properly disposed of, due to all that magical bond business that the younger princesses can’t be acted upon until the older princesses are married off. I’m certain you recall every last detail….”

Corentin didn’t, but he wasn’t going to press it. And he needed Charles to get to his point in the next three minutes before he passed out from the strain. “What the hell are you going on about?” he grunted and tightened his grip on the sink.

“Since you won’t remember any of this anyway by dawn, let me spell out my fiendish plan as a true villainous cliché,” Charles said. “Let’s begin with a very simple statement. Taylor’s younger brother, the bastion of virtue he is, is this generation’s Snow White. You know what that means, right? Deep in your Cronespawn soul, you don’t even have to search your thin memories.”

“The Witch Butcher…,” Corentin whispered, then wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“Precisely,” Charles said. “As long as Taylor remains walking this green earth, his younger brother is immune to the majority of my magic. I thought by marrying him off to Phillipa Montclair, she’d discreetly take care of all my problems.”

Corentin’s blood boiled at the name. “Phillipa? That
thing
?”

“Oh, are we still scared of a pretty girl?” Charles said. “I will admit she does have some pretty big teeth….” He hesitated and then chuckled. “About to faint yet?”

Corentin’s thighs tingled with muscle spasms. “I’m
fine
,” he lied. “Get to the point. What do you want me to do? Cut out Taylor’s heart and bring it to you? You’ll release me then?”

“Did I promise any of that?” Charles said, chuckling.

“If you don’t, I’ll see to it no harm comes to Taylor,” Corentin growled.

“Huntsman…,” Charles said. “Don’t be so stupid. If Taylor stays alive, his brother comes into power over all Enchants. And if that happens, Snow White will bring genocide against all witches and their kin. You understand this means
you too
. My plan is very reasonable, you see? Just take Taylor out to the middle of nowhere, put your trusty knife into his chest, and dump him. Simple as that.”

“Simple as that,” Corentin repeated.

“And since I am such a
giving
person,” Charles said. “I’ll put it in your head to remember your orders and be tempted every step of the way. How’s that?”

“And you’ll release me,” Corentin stated. “I have your word.”

Instead, Corentin was greeted with the sound of static and the phone going dead.

“
Dammit
!” Corentin spat and threw the phone into the sink alongside the knife.

He gripped the sink and stared at himself in the mirror. Even under the usual dust and dirt, he had gone pale with the drain of his tiny sliver of magic.

Behind him, the privacy stall flushed. He froze and stared in bewilderment as the lock popped apart and Taylor’s pixie fluttered out while zipping his pants. Ringo nodded to Corentin and drifted over to the sink next to the one with the bloody knife and phone. He washed his hands and studied himself in the mirror, checking his teeth and smacking his lips.

Corentin watched the tiny pixie in silence, his chest heaving with the need for air.

The scruffy little man fluttered around Corentin, bounced on the paper towel lever, and pulled off a sheet to dry his hands. All the while, Ringo glared at him. “Cut out his heart, huh?” Ringo openly accused him.

Corentin snapped into action with the surge of adrenaline that overtook his need to pass out. Lunging forward, he tried to snatch Ringo out of the air. Ringo evaded him and zipped upward out of reach. Corentin crashed into the sinks and scrambled on top of them to reach the pixie. Ringo fluttered in a figure-eight pattern and showered nervous glittering dust onto Corentin, who coughed and flailed, only managing to rip off Ringo’s tiny shoe.

Ringo yelped and fluttered for the door, then fumbled to pull the handle with his doll-sized frame. Corentin seized the moment and slapped his hands around Ringo’s middle.

The pixie wiggled in his grasp. “Lemme go! Lemme go!” Ringo yelped and then chomped on Corentin’s finger.

Corentin barked in surprise with the stab of pixie teeth. “You little shit,” he grunted. “
Listen
to me.”

Ringo squirmed and kicked his feet. “Oh, I heard plenty. Just you wait till I get my hands on you!”

“You really want to listen to me,” Corentin said tersely. “I’m on
your
side.” At the worst moment, Corentin’s knees buckled, and he fought to keep his hold on Ringo. “Please listen,” he said and slumped against the nearby wall. “I want to help.” Corentin slid down the wall and sat upon the tiles. Thankfully, he might have gotten through to Ringo, because the little man watched him with concern.

“You don’t look so hot, boyo,” Ringo said.

The lights were glaring in Corentin’s line of vision, and he rested his head against the wall. “Dark magic…,” he said with a sigh. “I have a bit of it in me, but it doesn’t agree with my system. Comes with the huntsman turf.”

“And if you use too much dark magic, it’ll eventually kill you,” Ringo said. “Unless you break your curse.”

“Exactly,” Corentin said. “Which is why I need Taylor.”

Ringo’s eyebrows furrowed. “I think we’ve been through this. I’m not letting you cut out his heart.”

“I’ve reconsidered that part,” Corentin said, trying to catch his breath. “You… need to understand…. Charles isn’t the
Curseless
simpleton he appears to be. He has Taylor’s brother captive, and I think you can put two and two together from here.”

Ringo looked down at Corentin’s bloody knuckles and the blood seeping into his pressed shirt and tie. “Glad I could serve as a rag for your hand.” The pixie didn’t sound enthused about it. “So you’re telling me Charles is in cahoots with a witch to bump off Snow White via bumping off his older brother.”

“Not in cahoots.
Is
,” Corentin said.

“Is…?” Ringo asked, then gasped. “Charles is a
witch
?”

“Ayup,” Corentin said, and his eyelids fluttered. His head drooped and then jerked with the return of consciousness. “That’s why we’re killing him. I break my curse, and we save Taylor’s brother.”

“And I should trust you, why?” Ringo asked.

“Because
lucky you
, with Taylor being
Curseless
, there’s no way it would help my cause,” Corentin murmured as sleep danced along the edges of his mind.

“And if Taylor had one?” Ringo asked.

“I wouldn’t be appealing to your reasonable senses.” Corentin’s grip on Ringo loosened enough to release the pixie.

Ringo took flight again and hovered out of reach. He glanced to the barricaded door and back to Corentin. “I’m going to hate myself in the morning, but I realize we need someone with your particular set of skills,” Ringo said with a sigh. “I’m going to see if this works.” He lowered to Corentin’s face and hovered there while he collected a golden ball of light in his palm. “Hold still.” He pushed the light between Corentin’s eyes.

The pixie magic thrummed in Corentin’s synapses, and the restroom bloomed into bright candy colors and birds tweeting. Daisies sprouted through the cracks and opened with smiling baby faces. A unicorn trotted by on his way to the urinals. Corentin felt instantly alert, aware, and
blissed out
happy.

And then he belched smoke.

Ringo drifted back as Corentin got to his feet. “Uh-oh,” Ringo said as Corentin staggered to the nearest stall. Corentin heaved once and expelled the contents of his greasy meal into the toilet. The clarity that rushed into his thoughts was a relief.

“You all right?” Ringo asked.

Corentin nodded and hurried to the sinks to gather the knife and the phone, then scrubbed out his mouth. He blinked, and the land of enchantment that had filled the bathroom vanished. “Congrats, little man,” Corentin said and kicked the trash can away from the door. “You have a particular set of skills as well that will be very useful to me too.”

“Don’t make me regret it.” Ringo crossed his arms, scrutinizing Corentin.

“We’ll see now, won’t we?” Corentin said, and his lip curled into a smirk. “We’ve got a princess to save.”

B
OYMOM

The Oasis Travel Center and Derailed Diner, Robertsdale, Alabama

June 6

T
AYLOR
SHUFFLED
back into the café in his newly acquired camouflage flip-flops. He’d decided to keep it as cheap as possible since it didn’t seem Corentin was made of cold hard cash. The stupid things had the painful plastic thong between the toes and zilch tread. He fought to keep from slipping and sliding all over the linoleum. After returning to the same stool, he waited for Corentin to wander in from wherever he had toddled off to.

Taylor wiggled slightly to adjust the horrid forest camo cargo shorts he’d managed to shimmy on, especially since the fabric bunched up in places that the sun didn’t shine. Outside the metropolis of Atlanta, Taylor figured camouflage must be a religion in the Deep South, considering it had been on everything in the souvenir mart. Taylor smoothed his magenta T-shirt just as Corentin spun around the corner from the restrooms. Ringo poked his scruffy head out of their new ally’s jacket pocket.

The expression on Corentin’s face clearly held some measure of aggression, and nerves prickled at the back of Taylor’s neck. Corentin’s dark brows furrowed low, his mouth was a terse line, and his gaze appeared somewhere between panic and wildly feral. Taylor wondered just how much he should trust this guy.

Corentin halted in his steps, and his gaze dropped to the writing on Taylor’s shirt. “
Boymom
?” he read aloud, then watched Taylor, clearly confused.

“It was on clearance,” Taylor said, fidgeting with his shorts again. “I wanted to be a cheap date.” He flushed the moment it left his mouth and rushed to cover his suggestive comment. “Damn, it’s hot in Alabama. Do they not do air conditioning down here?” He gave Corentin the once-over. “Aren’t you roasting in all that?”

Corentin didn’t respond, and his brows once again furrowed. “We need to go…,” he said in a tone that put Taylor on edge.

Ringo spoke up from Corentin’s pocket. “We need to talk.”

Corentin reached out, took Taylor by the elbow, and guided him off the stool. He nudged Taylor toward the door. “Please,” Corentin said with gentle encouragement and gestured to the parking lot.

With an air of uncertainty, Taylor obeyed. Corentin released him once they got outside, and together they walked side by side toward the antiquated Ford F-150. Taylor glanced to Corentin for guidance, and the man pointed to the dinged-up truck that was less cherry red and more faded autumn rust. They stopped beside the eyesore truck, and then Corentin spoke quietly over the clicking whisper of passing traffic. “Your brother is in danger.”