Cold Burn of Magic
Page 41

It had been worth it to see the pain in Blake’s eyes.
For once, even Felix was quiet, and we rode back to the mansion in silence. Felix mumbled an excuse about needing to check on something in the greenlab, then hurried away. Devon disappeared as well, and Grant said that he needed to talk to Claudia about what had happened.
I went back to my room and plopped down on the bed. I pulled out my phone and texted Mo, asking him to call me so I could tell him about my run-in with Blake, but he didn’t respond. He was probably busy in the shop, trying to sell tourists tacky yard art they didn’t need and couldn’t afford. A pang of longing shot through me. A week ago, I would have been in the Razzle Dazzle with him, discussing the latest job he had lined up for me. But things were different now, for better or worse.
I was surprised how sad that made me.
Since I didn’t have anything better to do, I took a long, hot shower, using up some more of the fancy soaps and lotions in the bathroom. I put on a fresh pair of cargo pants and a T-shirt and came back into the bedroom. I headed over to the vanity table so I could pull my hair back into a ponytail—
“So you’re the new girl,” a soft, twangy voice called out. “Woo.”
Startled, I grabbed my sword from where I’d propped it against the vanity table and whipped around, wondering who had gotten in here and what they wanted.
But no one was there.
My eyes scanned the entire room, from front to back and wall to wall, but it was empty. So was the balcony outside.
“Over here, cupcake,” that twangy voice drawled again.
A movement off to the left caught my eye, and that’s when I remembered the pixie. Looked like he’d finally decided to come out and be sociable.
I put the sword down on the bed, walked over to the table to his house, and bent down so we were eye level. Tiny the tortoise was snoozing in a sunspot, so I focused on the pixie.
He was wearing black cowboy boots with pointed, silver tips, a threadbare white tank top, and blue-striped boxers, both of which seemed to be spattered with mustard, ketchup, and other stains. For a guy who was only six inches tall, he was handsome, with sandy blond hair and eyes that were a vivid violet. A bit of stubble clung like golden fuzz to his cheeks, as though he hadn’t shaved in several days.
He slouched down in a tiny, rickety lawn chair on the front porch of his wooden trailer, his legs stretched out in front of him, a can of honeybeer in his hand. At least, I thought it was honeybeer, since it looked the same as all the other cans littering the yard. My nose twitched at the sour stench wafting up from him. It certainly smelled like honeybeer, and he looked like he was in the middle of a bender.
“You must be Oscar.”
The pixie drained the rest of his honeybeer, crushed the can in his hand, and tossed it away. The can clattered against the others in the yard, sending them all flying apart like bowling pins and making them tink-tink-tink across the grass. “Yep. Lucky me.”
“My name is Lila—”
He held up his hand, cutting me off. “Let me stop you right there, cupcake. We need to get a few things straight.”
“Like what?”
He glared at me, his violet eyes practically glowing in his face. “First of all, you will wipe that indulgent smirk off your face. I am not your pet, and I am certainly not a toy to be trifled with.”
“I never said you were—”
“I wasn’t finished yet,” he snapped. “I am a pixie and proud of it. But just because I happen to have been assigned as your pixie doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Okay . . .”
His hot glare intensified. “Ashley Vargas was a friend of mine. A nice, sweet, polite girl who didn’t deserve to die in some crummy pawnshop.”
“No, she didn’t,” I said in a quiet voice.
His gaze sharpened, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not I was mocking him. But I wasn’t. I wouldn’t. Not about something like this. Even I had limits.
“I heard you and your buddy Mo talking last night,” Oscar said. “About what a great opportunity this was for you. You didn’t actually believe any of his pretty speech, did you?”
I didn’t answer. Part of me had believed Mo—or at least wanted to—when he said this was my chance to make something of myself. To finally do what my mom would have wanted me to all along.
Oscar heard the confirmation in my silence. “Oh, you did. You really did. Well, don’t that beat all.”
The pixie slapped his hand against his knee and started chuckling, although his laugh was a bit slurred. I eyed the honeybeer cans and wondered how much he’d had to drink. Given their small size, pixies weren’t known for being able to hold their liquor, which is why they drank honeybeer, which was mostly sugar and barely had any alcohol in it at all. I wondered how long and how often Oscar drowned his sorrows—and why he was taking his anger out on me. I had never even laid eyes on him until two minutes ago, but he already hated me.
His mirthless chuckles finally died down.
“Don’t worry. I will do my duty.” He ground out the last word. “I will wash and clean and make sure you have everything you need. But that’s it. That’s as far as it goes.”
“What else is there?”
His mouth gaped open in surprise, and he gave me another suspicious look. More anger burned in his violet eyes.
“Let’s get something straight, cupcake,” he snapped. “We are not friends. We will never be friends, so let’s not go through the whole getting-to-know-you rigmarole, all right? It’ll save us both a lot of trouble.”