Page 51 of Quiver of Cobras
I was starting to feel like I had my own personal cheerleader. Everything was ‘wonderful’ and ‘great’ and ‘fantastic’. Maybe that was why she wasn’t wearing the red-leather outfit today – it didn’t match her pompoms. Deciding that the least I could was to take advantage of her beaming friendliness and do some digging, I slowed my steps to allow her to draw level and have a proper chat.
‘So, Looney Tunes,’ I said, ‘how are things going with you? I’ve not seen you since our shopping expedition yesterday and that feels like a lifetime ago. Have you been busy? Weren’t you doing some kind of hush-hush investigation for Rubus?’
It was like I’d taken a cloth to her face and wiped off her expression. Her smile vanished and even the sparkle in her eyes appeared to dim – although her cheeks reddened considerably. ‘Oh yeah,’ she said. She fidgeted with the bag. ‘I’ve been taken off that. It’s why I can come with you today instead.’
‘Mm-hmm. Has everyone been taken off it?’ After all, I’d told Rubus exactly where to go. There was no point searching every golf course for miles around when he already had the answer.
She chewed her bottom lip. ‘I really don’t know.’
For someone with the effervescence of a shaken Pepsi can, Lunaria could be remarkably tight-lipped. I wasn’t going to get anywhere by pursuing this line of questioning; I had to be smarter. That was okay. I was the Madhatter. I was intelligence personified. Most of the time.
‘There’s still a lot about this world that I don’t know,’ I confided. ‘I mean, I understand we’re all trapped here but how exactly did that happen? What made the borders close like that?’
Obviously relieved to be on safer ground, Lunaria’s full-wattage smile returned. At least, that was, until she remembered I’d asked her about the worst thing to happen to us faeries since Tinkerbell. She quickly replaced her grin with a serious expression. ‘No one really knows what happened. It took a while for us to realise that the borders were closed in the first place. It was never easy to get here so once you did you had to make the most of every minute. To get approval to travel, you had to get a visa from the authorities in Mag Mell and there was always loads of red tape. They were concerned that too many faeries in this demesne would upset the balance so they tried to limit the numbers.’
I absorbed this, comparing it to what Rubus had told me the night before. ‘So the faeries in charge were concerned about this demesne?’
‘Sure! Although,’ her eyes clouded slightly, ‘there was a rumour going around that they were going to relax the bureaucracy and let more people travel because there hadn’t been any problems with us coming across. Not everyone was happy about that. In fact,youcomplained a lot. You had a strong personality when you were a teenager.’
Strong personality? There was a euphemism for bitch if ever I heard one. ‘You mean I’m not like that now?’
Lunaria just laughed. ‘In any case, there was no single event that any of us knew of that caused the borders to close. We thought at first that it was a problem with Mag Mell itself, but all signs point to something on this side that created the issue.’
There wasn’t the faintest trace of guile on her face. Lunaria didn’t suspect for a moment that all this was down to me. I wondered what she’d say if she knew. I doubted she’d be so happy to trip the street beside me. ‘Why did I come over?’
‘You gave a reason at the time, something about observing human behaviour in cities to see if we could apply any new techniques to our own behaviour back home which would have a positive effect. Everyone knew you were really just tagging along behind Morgan.’
‘Uh-huh. And Rubus? Why did he come over?’
She gave me a lopsided smile. ‘Anything Morgan did, Rubus wanted to do too.’ It was a surprisingly honest statement from someone who thought the sun shone out of Rubus’s arse. It also sounded like Rubus and I had even more in common. We’d both crossed the border to this demesne for the same reason – but only one of us had trapped everyone here.
I fell into my own thoughts for the rest of the journey, turning everything over and over again in my head. I reckoned I must have been about nineteen when I came over. Young enough to make a stupid mistake but still old enough to know better. I wondered how long I’d feel guilty about something I couldn’t even remember. It wasn’t an emotion that suited me at all well.
We swung into the library and I saw the top of Paeonia’s head in front of the queue of customers. I could have waited patiently in line for my turn but my mission was more important than theirs.
I strolled up to the front, ignoring the angry tuts as I barged my way in. Lunaria, looking vaguely ashamed, loped up behind me.
Paeonia glanced in our direction with her faery green eyes and stiffened. We’d only met once before and Morgan had marched me away from her before I could do much of anything. She had recognised me and petitioned me for some dust, halting only when Morgan had told her off. She was listed as a potential pixie-dust user on Carduus’s list but I didn’t think she was actually in thrall to Rubus. I didn’t know many people I could turn to right now so I had to use every possible contact. It was the only way.
‘Excuse me!’ Someone tapped on my shoulder.
I half turned. It was a little old lady holding a pile of books in one hand and a walking stick in the other. ‘What?’ I snapped.
‘There’s a queue!’
‘I know,’ I informed her. ‘I’m not an idiot. I just don’t have the manners to wait.’
Her blue eyes widened in shock. ‘This is a library!’
I stared at her. Was that supposed to make a difference? Were the surrounding books supposed to imbue me with a sense of inferiority? I opened my mouth to answer her but Paeonia was already stepping in. ‘Ernest, take over from here.’ She glared at me. ‘I’ll deal with this customer.’
She beckoned Lunaria and me well away from the snooping ears of the other book borrowers who were sending me narrow-eyed evil looks. I curtsied dramatically.
Paeonia hissed, ‘What are you doing? I don’t want to lose my job because you’re being a bitch! Why are you here?’
‘Last time we met,’ I said, ‘you were looking for some pixie dust.’
Her face whitened. ‘I changed my mind. I don’t want any. You can’t come here selling that stuff.’
