Page 11 of Sincerely, Secretary of Doom

“Are you coming to our department hockey game this summer? I’m sure we could use you on the team—”

“If you don’tmind, we’ll be leaving now. I have a bath to take,” Cress stated.

“I’ll be there, Officer Alwing. Tell Lily I say hi when you see her!” Shayne called as Cress slid the window back up. Cress pulled the chariot back onto the road, leaving the dumbstruck officer behind.

“Queensbane,” Dranian muttered to Shayne. “She’s going to kill you.”

Shayne nodded. “Yes, she will try. I suppose I better not fall asleep tonight, lest she poison the coffee before we all drink it in the morning.”

Kate’s-brother-Greyson stared ahead with wide eyes, not moving a muscle. “Yeah,” was all he managed to squeak out after a few minutes. “Lily’s going to kill you for sure.”

Cress debated about waiting until Kate’s-brother-Greyson was gone before he got down to fairy business, but the rolled-up Fairy Post beside his seat must have been enchanted to make him obsess over it at all moments.

“Take a look at this,” he said, abandoning his worry about the human and tossing the newspaper back to his brothers in the rear seat. Shuffling and sounds of paper-wrinkling followed.

“I’m making a decree,” Cress stated when he imagined Shayne had seen the depiction of the Shadow Fairy. “I know full well Mor told us to stay away in his last message. I thought he needed a break from work, but this is something else entirely. This is something my royal gut is telling me will get him killed. The three of us…” He glanced over at Kate’s-brother-Greyson who listened with a quizzical brow. “…thefourof us, I suppose,” he corrected, “are now entering into a fairy match. We need to convince Mor to return at all costs. Whichever one of us manages to get him back before it’s too late will earn a great reward. But I know Mor. He’s sensitive about Shadow Fairies,” he added. “If he realizes we’re going after him, he’ll grow afraid we’ll get involved, and he’ll disappear. So, I beg you; be discreet.”

Kate’s-brother-Greyson raised his hand and left it in the air. It seemed as though he had questions of his own to ask, but Cress wasn’t really sure if that’s what the gesture meant.

“Why would Mor try to handle this himself?” Shayne asked first from the back seat. “Does he think just because he’s a Shadow he needs to go head-to-head with this fellow?”

“What reward?” Dranian mumbled too quietly for anyone to really hear.

“He can only have one reason to go it alone,” Cress answered Shayne. His grip tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “He must know who this Shadow is.”

5

Mor Trisencor and the TV that Told Secrets

Mor hadn’t bothered to take off his hooded jacket, even though it was rain-speckled. The cathedral was empty and cold, and all the candles remained unlit. Rather than warm up the space with light and a log-popping fire, draw a cozy blanket, pick up a book, and wedge his feet into his too-tight slippers, he’d gone to the old “TV” in the basement that the human internet had told him how to get working.

A piping hot tea was nestled into his fingers. He didn’t care for tea, but he knew if he drank coffee this late at night, he’d be up pacing and cleaning for hours instead of sleeping. And he might—hemight—become weary and reckless enough to make a phone call. And that couldn’t happen.

So, tea it was. The herbal remedy was the only thing keeping him warm as he watched the pictures on the TV screen flicker. The TV reminded him of Cress. The fae Prince had always hogged the remote for the TV in the café, and then he’d gone as far as to hide it somewhere so no one else could take it. Truly, Mor had found it pleasant to have the TV all to himself these last months. Even if the cathedral did feel a little empty in the evenings.

Mor watched the humans babble their news for half an hour. There was no mention of the tormentor in the shadows haunting the city streets. For a single night, it seemed the human journalists had forgotten that a deadly beast was on the loose, regardless of how Mor had tried to warn them.

Mor sipped his tea and winced. Simply put: tea tasted like dirt. There was no sweetness in it whatsoever.

He set his mug on a low table and lifted the remote, his thumb on the “off” button. But he hesitated when a new face filled the screen.

A young human woman stood there with painted lips, deep coloured hair, soft green eyes, and a modest scatter of freckles mostly covered by thickly smeared cream paint.

“Isn’t that Violet Miller?” the on-screen reporters asked amongst themselves, and Mor’s pointed ears tilted toward the TV. He crept closer to the screen, eyeing the face he’d just looked into only hours ago in his bell tower.

Violet Miller. He wondered if that was her real name or just the pen name she used to write her articles. He’d never seen her face before to match with her name. His rival in journalism, yet… also his informant, even if she didn’t know it. Among a few others.

“Queensbane,” he cursed as he realized. If only she’d told him her name in the bell tower. He could have laughed if he wasn’t so curious about why she had come to his cathedral in the first place. When he’d first read her articles on The Sprinkled Scoop’s human internet pages, he’d imagined her to be old and wrinkled like a mature human who’d been writing for a long time. Not young. Not…

Pretty.

Mor nearly turned off the TV again as Violet Miller started addressing the reporters. Her eyelash paints ran down her cheeks as the rain soaked her face, her hair, her clothes. The journalists all brought out umbrellas to protect their cameras, but not a single one offered an umbrella to the shivering, sopping wet female before them.

Regardless, Violet Miller spoke with clear words, holding a confidence entirely the opposite of how she’d been in the bell tower when she crossed Mor. “Yes,” Violet Miller said in response to the chatter, looking right at the screen now. Seeming to look right at Mor. “I am the girl in the purple dress who woke up with no memories. I’ve also spent the last year of my life working at The Sprinkled Scoop as a journalist, reporting on whatever creep has been taking victims and haunting the streets of our city. Though I’m no longer with The Sprinkled Scoop, I plan to find the memory thief. I’m still going to stop him, and I’m still going to write about him from whichever news base I end up at.”

Ah. So that was why Violet Miller had come to his cathedral.

Mor found himself smiling. He tossed the remote back onto the table and folded his arms. He watched the human say several other things aimed at warding the reporters off. After a moment, she excused herself, but not before one last riveting statement:

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