Page 26 of The Fae Menagerie
"Sure." Luckily, it was easy to find on the top shelf next to the hatbox. When I flipped the switch, it glowed for a moment, blinked, and then went out.
I did what any self-respecting horror-movie-watching human would do. I shook it while I walked back to the kitchen.
"I think the batteries are going."
"Batteries?" Doyle banged his head on the top of the cupboard opening and growled. "I don't have any batteries. Yet another annoyance." He wiggled backward, and I caught myself staring at the way his ass strained against the fabric of his robe. I wanted to reach out and test its firmness the way I used to check for ripe produce at the grocery store.
What the … no, I didn't. That would be completely inappropriate!
Once he was free of the offending cupboard door, he turned toward me with the sweetest smile. "Like what you see?"
"Here's the flashlight." I dropped it into his open palm and ran back to the library and my book.
"Parker," Doyle whined a few minutes later. "It doesn't work!"
"I told you. It needs batteries."
"I don't have batteries. I have magic. It always worked before."
"Do you have a mirror?" I asked. All those years studying ancient Egyptian civilization finally helped in a pinch.
"The one on the back of my bathroom door."
It was taller than me, and probably heavy. "Come with me?"
Parker followed me to the bathroom, where the two of us unhooked the giant mirror from the door. Back in the kitchen, I focused the mirror to capture the light from the afternoon sky and the lit chandelier to shine inside the dark cupboard. It would be a bitch to put it back, but the delight on Doyle's face was priceless.
"What's holding up that chandelier?" I asked. It hung from the open sky above us, its metal chain extending until it ended ten feet in the air. Similar fixtures hung in each room, equidistant from the interior wall and the outer corner.
He ignored me, instead blocking the light with his body. "What the fuck is that?" He motioned for me to move the mirror, since he blocked the light when he crammed his upper body beneath the sink again. Even with his wings tucked as closely as he could get them, he looked uncomfortable.
"There's a hole in the glass," he said.
Horace the neighboring cuddlebug waved at me and pointed down at what I assumed was his sink. I nodded and pantomimed Doyle on his hands and knees. I think I gave the cuddlebug thewrong idea, because when he opened his own cupboard door to sign with Doyle, my fae roommate couldn't stop laughing.
"Horace thought we were having sex like this."
I dropped to my knees to shake my head and flash the one sign I had learned from his daughter."No!"
Horace seemed delighted by my ability but quickly learned that was the only sign I knew. He then taught me a few others while Doyle interpreted, still with his ass in my face as he explored beneath the sink.
"That's yes. Hungry. Happy. Sad. Trouble."
Horace pointed at the hole between our enclosures and flashed that last sign again. The hole in the wall was trouble.
I tried to sign "yes," that I understood, but both Horace and Doyle laughed at me again.
"He says you sign like a harpy," Doyle said when he finally regained his breath. "All staccato movements and no patience. I'll have to teach you some finesse."
How a cuddlebug with no fingers thought I looked even more stiff and impatient than he did was beyond me. I crossed my arms over my chest, and Horace did the same with two sets of arms. I didn't need to know what that sign meant to know he was still laughing at me.
"The glass is six inches thick," Doyle said. "This wasn't an accident."
He asked Horace if he'd seen whatever had created it, but he slept during the day.
"He says he smelled Aidan in his enclosure when he woke this afternoon, and the scent was strongest under the sink."
"Do you think he drilled it while we were in the viewing room?" I asked. "I didn't hear anything."
