Page 53 of Quiver of Cobras
I glanced at Lunaria. ‘Actually, if my fabulous colleague here agrees, we can give you a free sample.’
Lunaria smiled. After all, the objective here was to supposedly create loyal addicts, not to bankrupt faeries across the city in a bid to make ourselves rich. ‘I think I can agree to that,’ she said dreamily.
It belatedly occurred to me that I didn’t have a way of passing over the dust to Paeonia. I should have brought some empty ziplocked bags. Some drug dealer I was. ‘Hold out your hands,’ I instructed.
With a wary expression, Paeonia did as I asked. I took the dust bottle and tipped it up, pouring a large amount onto her palms.
Paeonia stared down at it, her eyes almost as wide as Lunaria’s.
‘Time to go!’ I said. I waved and smiled then nudged Lunaria in front of me and we headed for the library’s exit. We were less than a metre from the door when I looked round, just in time to see a man with a book-laden trolley appear from round the corner and bump into Paeonia’s frozen body. She jerked – and the pixie dust went flying everywhere, scattering into the air and onto the floor as well as over a lot of the books shelved nearby.
For a brief moment, her expression was stricken. Then her mouth tightened and she nodded. Her eyes met mine and I could see the resolve reflected in their depths. All’s well that ends well, I decided. For now, anyway.
Chapter Fourteen
We’d barely gone a hundred yards from the library when I started to think that encouraging Lunaria to snort pixie dust had been a hellish mistake. She stopped halfway across the road and bent down to start a conversation with a puddle, or maybe it was her reflection that she was talking to. Either way, I had to yank her viciously to get her out of the way before she was mown down by the oncoming traffic.
‘Hey! You hurt me!’ she complained. ‘Again!’ She squinted. ‘Does the truce not work for you? You’re not supposed to be able to hurt me.’
I sighed. ‘I wasn’t trying to hurt you,’ I muttered. ‘I was trying to save you. You were almost squished by that Range Rover.’
Instead of telling me she was grateful that she wasn’t road kill, she glanced over my shoulder. Her eyes caught something that flooded her expression with delight. She clapped her hands. ‘Whirly!’ she shrieked.
She skipped away from me towards the revolving door leading into one of Manchester’s grander department stores. Clearly, Lunaria had no desire to go into the shop; all she wanted to do was to spin round in the door. Again and again and again.
I gritted my teeth. I had no one to blame for this but myself. It was tempting to use her drug-addled state as an excuse to abandon her but I feared for Manchester and the fate of its revolving doors if I were to do so.
When Lunaria spun past me for the sixth time, I reached in and dragged her out just before the door whirled away again. All Lunaria did was pout. ‘You used to be fun, Mads,’ she said. ‘Since you lost your memory, you’ve gone all serious.’
That was not a word I would ever choose to describe myself and I wasn’t sure anyone else would either. All the same, standing over Lunaria as she tugged at me to be allowed to go back in and whirl round the revolving door again, I felt a bit like I was sucking all the joy out of her life.
I half turned my head, as if glancing down the street. ‘Is that Rubus over there?’
She immediately stopped and whipped round. ‘Where?’ she demanded. ‘Where is my love bunny?’
I waved my hand vaguely in the direction I wanted to go. ‘Over there. I might have been mistaken…’ I barely managed to finish my sentence before she took off.
I caught up to her when she paused in front of a guitar-strumming busker. She was still scanning the street as if Rubus would appear at any moment but she also looked deflated. ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’ Her bottom lip jutted out and started to tremble. ‘He ran away from me.’
Gasbudlikins. She was going to have a complete meltdown. ‘It wasn’t him,’ I said hastily. ‘I made a mistake.’
Her head drooped. ‘He doesn’t want me.’
‘Then he’s a fool.’
‘He didn’t even notice my new outfit. Skin-tight red leather and he didn’t even say I looked good.’
Wow. She had it bad. ‘Pull yourself together,’ I snapped. ‘You’re obviously too good for him. It’s his loss, not yours.’
Lunaria sniffed. ‘I’m too good?’
‘Of course!’
The busker, who’d given up strumming to watch our byplay, apparently agreed. ‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘Whoever this guy is, he’s not worth it.’
‘I want to be a good faery,’ she told him. ‘Iama good faery.’
I gave the busker a tight smile and steered Lunaria away before she could say or do anything else. ‘Watch what you say,’ I warned. ‘He’s a human. He’s not supposed to know about us.’
