Page 42 of The Mermaid's Bubble Lounge
Vlad nudged me and I rolled my eyes, pulling out my axe, pointing it at Dave. “Who’s your dad?”
Dave looked back and forth between Vlad and me. “You know who my fucking dad is. How do you know this little asshole isn’t the killer?”
I blew out a breath and returned the axe to its sheath.
The kitchen door swung in, Owen and bright sunlight entering the kitchen. I shouted as Dave moved to block Vlad, but then we both realized he wasn’t there. I ducked my head back through the ward into my apartment. Vlad was sitting on the couch, a book in his hand.
Shaking my head, I turned to tell a very confused Owen that everything was fine. “It turns out that when faced with fiery death, vampires are quite fast. Anyway, how are you?”
Owen looked between the two of us and then shook his head, no doubt deciding it wasn’t worth asking. “I’m fine, but last night sounded insane. Did Benvair really let loose a plume of fire out in the open?”
I tipped my head from side to side. “Sort of, but not really. Did she breathe fire? Yes, she did. Out in the open? Not so much. We were on a deserted pier, behind a churros stand. I mean, someone could have been looking out their window at the exact right time to see it, but it’s doubtful.”
“Crazy,” Owen said. He turned, scanning the counters. “Are the bars gone?”
“Oh!” I grabbed Dave’s arm. “Tell me you saved the last of them?”
He went to the fridge. “You two are nuts.” He pulled out the plate and slid it onto the island. Owen and I fell on them like hyenas.
After I finished one and claimed a second one, I paused. “Owen, do you know anything about pookas?”
He finished chewing and then swallowed, shaking his head. “What’s a pooka?”
I told him about our conversation with Bracken last night and then told Dave about the pooka stealing his likeness.
“Great,” Dave grumbled.
Owen looked longingly at the last bar and then checked the time on his phone. “We need to open.” He pushed out into the bar while I finished the second one. I eyed the last bar, wondering if I had it in me.
Dave picked up the plate and put it back in the fridge. “No. You’re going to make yourself sick. Go to work.” He shooed me away. “I’m busy.”
Fergus stayed with Dave, hoping for handouts, while I went to the bookstore to finish processing the new books.
It wasn’t long before Meri showed up, all smiles. She stowed her bag and then went to work shelving the new books. We’d been working together for a while before it occurred to me. Meri was half fae.
“Meri?”
She looked up from shelving the new psychology books.
“Do you know anything about pookas?”
Flinching, she dropped the books in her hands. “Pookas?” she whispered.
I nodded. “What do you know about them?”
She glanced over her shoulder and then out the window into the ocean as she came behind the counter to stand right beside me. “You should never talk about them,” she whispered. “They’re evil.”
I remembered what my great-uncle had said. “I thought they were mischief makers, chaos agents, not evil.”
She looked like she was afraid we were about to be attacked. “That was long ago and in Faerie. The ones that made it into this realm…” She shivered. “My father used to tell me about them when I was little. You know, like, You better do what your mother says or the pooka will steal you.”
“So they’re something the fae use to scare their children?” I asked.
She shook her head. “They’re real. I asked my father about them—I used to have nightmares—and he said when the pookas arrived in this realm a few hundred years ago, they didn’t start out killing. Humans are easy to kill, though, and their emotions are so much stronger than the fae’s. Pookas got a little drunk off it. It wasn’t just chaos. There was grief and anger, fear and suspicion. It was exciting and they began to crave it, like a drug.
“The queen’s guard came to this realm to hunt them down. Pookas could not be trusted to live amongst the humans. It’s not just that they have no concept of right and wrong, it’s that they don’t care about secrecy. Humans learning about—or even guessing at the existence of—the fae just adds to the confusion and fear. They terrorize a community, glut themselves, and then move on to do it all again.”
A chill went down my spine. “If we have one now, I assume that means the queen’s guard couldn’t hunt them all down.” If Algar and his warriors couldn’t do it, how were we supposed to?
