Page 32 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

I didn’t even want to think about what happened to the people who had nothing of value to offer the fairy. Were they killed, or were they forced to remain in Fairyland forever to be perpetually tormented? I couldn’t decide what fate was worse.

Apollo tossed her the ruby, and she caught it in mid-air, her delicate features crinkling with disdain. “I’m so tired of jewelry. Give me the girl, and I’ll let you pass.”

Apollo sauntered indolently toward her with his hands crossed behind his back. “Come on, Trix,” he coaxed, and once he reached her, he took her chin between his fingers and pressed his thumb down on her pouting lower lip. “You know you can’t forbid us passage. I brought you a good offering, so you have to let us leave.”

“Youbrought me an offering,” Trix crooned with a sardonic little laugh and glanced at me over Apollo’s shoulder. Her yellow irises sparkled with something like hunger. “Shehasn’t.”

A butterfly caught in a spider’s web—that was how I felt under the weight of her scrutiny. She dashed through the air and emerged right before me, her scent a dizzying fusion of wildflowers and spice.

“I don’t have any money,” I bit out.

She traced with a sparkly fingertip the side of my face. “It doesn’t have to be money,” she cooed, and I noticed, with no small amount of horror, that her teeth were pointy and sharp, like a fox’s. “It can be the color of your eyes. A year of your life. Your favorite childhood memory.” She slipped her cool, soft hand over my clavicle. “Or your true love’s kiss.”

“Getting a little handsy there, Trix?” Apollo said. His inflection was playful, but there was tension in his jaw and alarm in his eyes.

Trix twirled around me. “Are we feeling a bit possessive, Apollo sweetheart?” she mocked, giggling to herself. “Now that would be a first.”

Apollo unsheathed his curvy dagger with the opal handle, the one he’d used to fight the creatures in my Shop.

A gasp of shock escaped me. He wasn’t going to kill her, was he?

But Apollo only proffered it to her with a little bow of his head. “My favorite dagger,” he said. “Consider it her offering.”

Trix tutted as she took a strand of my hair between her fingertips. “It doesn’t work like that, and you know it. She has to lose something of value to me,” she chirped. “But, I suppose, I would be content with the little Stareater’shair.”

Exasperation swarmed in my veins like drunken wasps. “Why does everybody in this wretched kingdom want my hair? I’m so fed up with you people,” I snapped and marched over to Apollo to snatch my parasol from his belt. “You can have my parasol, and that’s it,” I growled as I threw it down at her sandaled feet. “And I did not eat a star, for the love of the sky. It was only some dust.”

“Come on, Trix honey,” Apollo egged on, taking an infuriatingly seductive tone with her. This horrible man would probably flirt with the very air he breathed if it had the shape of a woman. “I’ll bring you a crown next time.”

Trix pouted. “Promise?”

Apollo clutched at his empty chest as he drawled, “Honey,of course.”

Kaleidoscopic fairydust rose from Trix’s skin and flecked the atmosphere with her dizzying magic. “Oh, how can I say no to such a handsome face,” she purred.

Apollo winked at her, looking like an enamored idiot.

I cleared my throat. “Are we done here?”

Trix took my parasol and the ruby and crushed them between her dainty hands, leaving only a wisp of rainbow dust to scatter through the air. Then, with a flutter of her wings, an imperceptible layer of magic—a diaphanous wall, almost—lifted off the bridge, allowing us passage at last.

“You should hurry,” she chirped. “Dusk awaits. You poor little souls don’t want to get caught in the dark.”

Dusk? But the sun had been high and hot in the sky when we had first reached the arch.

Apollo gripped my arm and nudged me towards the bridge, exchanging his flirty demeanor for a scowl. One step on the cobbled passage, and everything changed. Trix was gone. The sweet, magic-speckled air turned damp and chilly. The sky transformed into a deep shade of periwinkle, the clouds rolling out blue and melancholic.

“I don’t understand,” I wheezed, and I couldn’t resist checking over my shoulder now that we were safe.

We were back to our original shagbark path, with no sign of the grand arch in the distance.

“Even time gets lost in Fairyland,” Apollo said grimly. “Don’t worry. We’ll make it to Walder’s before it gets too dark. The cottage isn’t that far from here.”

I didn’t even bother to ask if Walder was the friend he’d mentioned earlier. I only yanked my arm out of his hold and strode ahead, tamping down the anger that kept rising in my chest like the giant waves of the West.

The fairies’ words kept turning in my head, hissing in dark corners of my mind where my most unutterable insecurities had taken refuge.

But the fairies couldn’t have been more wrong about me. I had not beenabandonedby my parents, and certainly not by Ryker. They had wanted something better and bigger for themselves, and who was I to hold them back from their dreams?

---