Touch the Dark
Page 21

It took him a few seconds to place me. When he'd known me, my hair had reached the small of my back and I dressed in Eugenie's version of appropriate attire for young ladies, which meant long skirts and high-necked blouses. The hair had been sacrificed to a more practical, and far less memorable, bob as soon as I went with the Witness Protection people. It had grown out some since then, but not enough to make much difference. And Jimmy had never seen me in anything like the leather number. After a confused few seconds, though, it clicked. So much for my great disguise.
"Cassandra! Goddamn, it's good to see you! I always knew you'd be back someday. Let me outta here, would you? There's been a big misunderstanding!"
"Misunderstanding?" I found it hard to believe that he really thought I'd just walked back into the organization. Tony might forgive a fourteen-year-old who had run off in what he assumed was a fit of adolescent angst, but an adult who had conspired to destroy him was another matter. I debated leaving Jimmy where he was, but although I liked having him securely behind bars, I preferred to talk somewhere less likely to be interrupted by Tony's thugs.
"Yeah. One of my assistants is trying to get ahead the easy way, and lied about me to the boss. I can straighten things out, but I gotta talk to Tony—"
"You certainly took your time." I looked around at the sound of a tiny voice but didn't see anything. "I found the witches, but one of the vamps caught me. Get me out!"
I glanced at Billy. "Who said that?"
"I'm over here! Are you blind?" I followed the squeak to a small birdcage that was almost hidden behind a peacock-feather fan. Inside was a woman about eight inches high and mad as a hornet. Flaming red hair framed a perfect Barbie-doll face and a pair of pissed-off lavender eyes. I blinked. What the hell was the bar putting in the drinks?
"It's a pixie, Cass," Billy said, looking unhappy. He drifted in front of her cage, and she scowled at him.
Tiny fists grabbed the bars of her cage and rattled them angrily. "Are you deaf, woman?! I said, get me out! And keep that thing away from me!"
"You know her?" I asked Billy, surprised. Apparently, he'd had a more interesting social life than I'd thought.
He shook his head. "Not that one, but I've met others. Don't listen to her, Cass. None of the Fey are anything but trouble."
"She's probably headed for the ring," I protested, trying to deal with the fact that Tony had found a way into Faerie, which wasn't a myth after all.
"These bars are iron, human! I feel sick already. Release me right now!" I blinked, surprised that a tiny voice could echo like that.
"Don't do it, Cass," Billy warned. "Doing the Fey favors is never a good idea. It comes back on you, and not in a good way." Her teeny face flushed an ugly red and she let out a string of imprecations in a language that I didn't know, but he obviously did. "Nasty, vile creature!" he spluttered. "Let her go to the ring, and good riddance!"
I sighed. Whatever or whoever she was, I wasn't leaving anybody to be entertainment for the bastard or his boys. "If I let you out, you have to promise not to interfere with anything I'm doing," I told her severely. "No blowing the whistle on us, okay?"
"You've lost your mind," she said flatly. "And when did you change clothes? What is going on around here?"
That's what I wanted to know. "Do I know you?"
Tiny green and lavender wings ruffled agitatedly on her back. "I can't believe this," she said in disgust. "I'm on a mission with an idiot." Her eyes narrowed as she scanned me. "Oh, no. You aren't my Cassandra, are you?" She threw up minuscule hands. "I knew it! I should have listened to Granddam: never, ever work with humans!"
"Hey, a little help here," Jimmy called from behind me.
"Just go," the pixie told me. "And take the ghost and the rat with you. I'll deal with this myself."
I had the feeling I needed to know what was going on, but staying around for a prolonged conversation probably wasn't smart. I pulled the latch on her cage, ignoring Billy's comments, and ran back to Jimmy. Unfortunately, his pen had a lock on it that required a key to open. "How do I gel you out of there?"
"Here," Jimmy slid up next to the bars. "They forgot to frisk me. The key's in my coat. Hurry up; they'll be back anytime!"
I reached for his jacket, but my hand stopped a foot away from the bars and simply refused to go any closer. It felt like an invisible wall of thick, sticky molasses had closed around it, one that didn't want to turn loose. The pixie buzzed over while I was struggling to pull my hand back. "I'll free the witches," she said, "but I need you to open a door for me."
"I can't even open this one," I told her, using my left hand to try to pull the right free. That backfired, leaving me with two hands that wouldn't go forwards or pull back. I was well and truly stuck.
"It's a tar-baby spell," Billy said, hovering about anxiously. "We need the release."
"It's a what?"
"That's slang for a really strong variation of a prehendo. I'm guessing that anything that gets within a certain perimeter of the cage is gonna get caught like a bug on flypaper, and the more you struggle, the tighter you're gonna be trapped. Try not to move."
"Now you tell me." His warning came about a second after I'd panicked and kicked out with my foot, only to have it get caught, too. Sometimes I really hated magic. "Billy! What do I do?"
"Stay still! I'll look around. It's gotta be here somewhere."
"Come back!" I yelled after him as he streamed off towards the suit of armor. "Get me out!"
Jimmy swore. "It has to be that thing." he said, pointing upwards. I now noticed what looked like a week-old baked apple hanging from a chain above the door. A second later I recognized it as one of those ugly, shrunken-head key chains they had in the lobby gift shop, along with skeleton tie tacks and "I did it at Dante's" T-shirts. Tony has no shame when it comes to making a buck. "It's the only thing that shouldn't be here."
The pixie flew up to examine it and almost bumped heads with Billy Joe, who'd come back to have a look. "Stay out of my way, remnant," she ordered. Billy was about to say something—probably fairly profane—but someone beat him to it. A shriveled, raisinlike eye popped open on the head and regarded the pixie with annoyance. "Call me that again, Tinkerbell, and you'll never get this door open."
I just stood there, not able to believe I was watching a pixie have a conversation with a shrunken head. I think that was about the time I gave up on logic and just decided to go with the flow. If I was lucky, someone had spiked my drink and I was hallucinating. No one said anything, so I figured it was up to me. "Can you please open the door?" I asked calmly.
The eye—there seemed to be only one working—swiveled to me. "That depends. What can you do for me?"
I stared at it. It was a shrunken head. The options were pretty limited. "What?"
"Hey, you look familiar. You ever come by the voodoo bar? It's in the Seventh Circle, upstairs. I was the star attraction, you know, a lot more popular than those lousy floor shows this loser booked. People would tell me their orders and I'd shout them out to the bartenders. It went over great. Everyone thought I was this sophisticated audio-animatronics thingy. Sometimes I told jokes, too. Like, what would they call Bugsy Seigel if he became a vamp? A fangster!" The little thing cackled maniacally. "I crack myself up, you know that?"
"It is evil," the pixie stated flatly. I nodded in agreement. Extensive warding was impossible in a place that ran off electricity, but was this really the best solution Tony had been able to find?
"Oh, we got a heckler, huh? Okay, how about this one? A guy walks into a bar in Hell and asks for a beer. The bartender says, sorry, but we only serve spirits here!"
"She's right; it is evil," Billy Joe said.
The pixie conked the head with the flat of a tiny sword she pulled off her belt. "Release her, or I will chop you into bits!"
The eye managed to look surprised. "Hey! You're not supposed to be able to do that! Why aren't you stuck like her?"
"Because I'm not human," the pixie said through gritted teeth. "Now, do as I say and stop stalling!"
"I would, honest, but I can't without authorization. I messed up once and look where that got me. All I wanted was a fast car and some faster women to put in it. Now I'd settle for my body back. Only, it's scattered around all over the place since that voodoo bitch carved me up. Give me a break. I got a little behind in my payments, sure, but come on."
"You owed Tony money," I guessed.
"I had what you might call a run of bad luck with the cards," it said with dignity.
"So Tony sold you to a voodoo priestess?" It didn't surprise me. Tony gave a new meaning to the phrase "pound of flesh."
"And then made me work in his stupid casino," the head ranted. "Then a few months ago, they got worried cause one of the regulars began to suspect that I wasn't just a pretty face, and I got stuck down here. No more parties, no more pretty girls, nada. It's been damn depressing. But hey, maybe they'll shrink you and we can hang out together. Literally. What do you—"
The pixie stopped the tirade by making good on her promise and hacking the head clean in two. I stared as the two halves swung free for a few seconds, each on one end of the thin chain; then they knitted themselves back together in front of my eyes. "Hello, already dead, remember?" the head said testily. "You may be able to hurt me, Tink, but it won't be in time to help your friends, here. For that, we hafta cut a deal."
"What do you want?" I asked quickly.
"My body, of course. Get those witches in there to reverse the bokor's mojo and put me back."