Page 44 of Sincerely, Secretary of Doom

Dranian’s ever-scowl twisted as he seemed to think how best to describe it. He finally settled with, “Something as powerful as you, Cress. Possibly even more powerful.”

Kate began looking back and forth between Dranian and Cress. She was going to make herself dizzy if she didn’t cut it out.

Dranian stood, and Kate scrambled to stand beside him.

Cress realized his jaw was dropped, leaving his mouth hanging open. He closed it when a human realm fly buzzed by and threatened to sail right in.

So, there was a Shadow Fairy in the human realm terrible enough to have driven Mor mad and make Dranian believe such things. Cress’s hand idly went to Kate, and he tugged her to him by her sleeve. He stared out the café window as he hugged his human to himself. She blinked up at him in question.

“Where is Mor now?” he asked Dranian over his prized human’s head.

Dranian’s gaze fell to the floor again. “He vanished as soon as the Shadow Fairy did. I was left in the street with no rival, no ally, and no human to guard.”

So, that pretty much summed up Cress’s last few days.

20

Violet Miller and the Doctor of Lies

There was no obvious reason why Violet should have returned to the cathedral. No one would have blamed her for quitting her job after she’d nearly been sliced to death with a mythical-style weapon. It wasn’t like the benefits were good here, or her coworker was easy to get along with, or the office environment was safe.

Yet here she was. Waiting at the Master of Doom’s bedside as he slept.

He hadn’t been bandaged up when the knitting store women dumped him on the cathedral’s front steps. For a split second after Violet had found Mor like that, basking in the shadow of three yarn-adorned ladies all sneaking away faster than a speeding bullet, she worried he was dead. She was lucky the cathedral doors were unlocked for once, but the second she dragged Mor inside, they’d slammed shut—seemingly on their own—and when she tried the handle, they were locked again.

It had been no easy feat to carry the muscular fairy-creature up the flight of stairs and haul him into his room, dragging him the whole way by the sleeves of his coat. She was shaking with fatigue when she finally got him onto his bed where she wrestled off his coat and rolled him onto his stomach. Her heavy breathing filled his dark, creepy room now, and she was relieved he wasn’t awake to notice how out of shape she was. She told herself that the first chance she got, she was going to take up jogging.

Violet assessed Mor’s blood-soaked shirt. She wasn’t exactly known for her first aid skills. She thought about calling Zorah to come do her doctor thing, but Violet trespassing in this cathedral in the first place was what had made her “smell” like Mor, and that one little fact had been the cause of her almost dying more than once since. She didn’t feel the need to bestow that honour upon Zorah as well. And besides, she’d just sent a very convincing text to her aunt, saying she was on a work trip. Which, in all technicalities, wasn’t actually a lie.

Violet got down to business trying to get Doom’s shirt off by herself. Her fingers swiped over his bare back beneath the fabric, and she halted. A pink burn mark appeared on his skin almost instantly. She blinked at it, then she tore her hands back and lifted her fingers, staring at them.

“Why do I hurt you again?” she asked Mor, as if he might suddenly pop awake and answer.

She glanced at her overnight bag. She’d spent the night at the café. She’d run away from the fight in the street. She’d gone home and taken her iron supplements. She’d met the redhead villain in the alley. She’d come here.

It didn’t matter. It seemed her superpower had returned, and she couldn’t touch Mor now.

She jogged down to the kitchen and rummaged through the drawers until she found a pair of oven mitts. With her ridiculous lobster claws on, she tried to pull off Mor’s shirt, struggling to pin the fabric between her thumb and single giant finger. When that failed, she tossed the mitts aside and carefully pulled his shirt away from his skin, no longer caring about saving his clothes. She chopped the whole shirt off with a pair of kitchen scissors like a maniac, and she tossed the fabric over the side of the bed.

A surge of nausea crossed her stomach when she looked at his wound; dried red blood delicately splattered out his side like a blooming red flower. She flung herself toward the bedside, sure she’d barf. But after a few inhales and loud exhales, she drew back, her hand pressed tightly over her mouth.

A collection of tattoos adorned Mor’s skin. Five dragon-like creatures filled the canvas of his upper back with detailed, scaled bodies and long, serpentine tails. She leaned over the artwork to see better. The dragons almost looked blue, shimmering in the dull light creeping around the drapes of the bedroom window. She’d never seen tattoos before that could shimmer. Her gaze travelled to his arms covered in the boxy text of a language Violet didn’t know. It wasn’t written in straight lines; the columns were in random places—on the inside of his wrist, on his forearm, over his bicep.

Violet sat straight again. For the first time since she’d met the Master of Doom, she was curious about his story. Well, maybe it wasn’t the first time she’d been curious about him. But it was the first time she’d looked at someone’s skin and had desperately wanted to know more about dragons and foreign languages.

After hours of Mor not moving a muscle, Violet left his bedroom, collecting all the “medical supplies” and bringing them out with her. She hadn’t been able to do much about the wound with the ancient first aid kit she’d found in the basement that looked to have expired decades ago.

Violet was exhausted by nightfall. She searched the halls for a spare bedroom, finding a bathroom instead. There was no light switch, so she flicked on a lamp by the door. The light revealed a spectacular ironclad tub resting in the corner. She gasped into the quietness, dropping her overnight bag to the floor and rushing to the beautiful bath. The air lingered with the scents of soap and soon-to-be-fulfilled, muscle-relaxing dreams. When she spotted a bottle of bubble bath on the vanity, she could have cried.

It took her all of ten minutes to fill the tub with steaming water and bubbles, shed her clothes, and sink into the glorious hot liquid. She tried to massage her tight shoulders as she sat there. She’d never worked so hard to move anything in her life, though it was probably a good thing she didn’t have experience moving bodies.

After scrubbing her hair and face clean in the bath, Violet dried with a towel and poked around in her overnight bag. She didn’t have much—just some undergarments, a pair of comfy weekend shorts, and a loose t-shirt. A toothbrush, toothpaste, and some emergency makeup. She didn’t bother with the makeup since she imagined she was going to bed soon.

Bed. Where was she going to bed?

She cracked the bathroom door open and peeked into the hall. Nothing stirred, and there were no lights on apart from the bathroom lamp. Cool air rushed against her skin from the hallway, and she stifled a shiver. She ducked back into the bathroom, grabbed her overnight bag, and crept on her toes back to Mor’s room.

There was no light switch in the bedroom, either. Violet bit down on her sigh and felt her way in until her hand came against a small lamp on the dresser. She flicked it on.

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