It looked like the universe had decided for Mal. Either it wanted to help him take his control to the next level, or itwanted to reward him for being a good little nightmare and offer him the best cookie ever.
“Oh dear,” Clayton said.
“Hmm?” Mal hadn’t said that last part out loud, had he? He’d gotten lost there for a moment and had stopped paying attention to Clayton. Had Mal just subjected him to an entire monologue of how delicious Clayton probably was?
“Well, I just went to contact Samantha and… Holy fucking shit!”
Mal wrenched the phone away from his ear to avoid the horrible, soul-violating static that assaulted him. He gaped at his hand in astonishment as he watched his favorite possession bubble and melt away into smoke.
“My new phone…”
Well, now Mal was definitely going to Boston, and he was going to eat anyone he fucking felt like eating.
He’d spent an eternity experimenting and a ridiculous amount of personal essence to create his phone, and it hadn’t survived first contact with Clayton for more than a handful of minutes.
Clayton had better be alive when Mal got to Boston, because he either owed Mal a new phone or a meal. Preferably both.
The flight was over far quicker than it had any right to be, owing to a favorable tailwind, an empty queue for the landing strip, and the fact that somehow a plane that only had a three-hour trip planned managed to have enough fuel to last the fifteen hours it took to get to Boston. And don’t even get him started on how the entire plane was treating the massive detour like an extended holiday instead of a horrible inconvenience.
Fucking chaos mages.
If Clayton had any idea how to control himself, he’d be unstoppable. But chaos magic didn’t come from the Real, so finding a tutor would be all but impossible.
The goddess of the fae realm didn’t share her precious creations easily, after all.
Which begged the question of how Mal had stumbled across four chaos mages in a single day after going without seeing one in over a century.
Most members of the Other could spend their entire lives without meeting a member of the fae realm, but Mal had the dubious honor of meeting more than his fair share due to his job.
He worked exclusively for the Benighted, taking care of issues the Guard allowed to fall through the cracks.
It was mutually beneficial for both sides. The Benighted got cheap labor, and Mal got an easy supply of food. From his perspective, it was like paying a lion to sit by a watering hole to eat gazelles. Only the gazelles he tended to nab were usually loaded, so Mal almost always pocketed far more than the fee he charged to take the job.
That meant Mal got all the food he could eat, got paid for the honor, and got to meet all the creepy crawlies most folk thought only belonged to myth and legend, including the fae.
In the fae realm, only starry-eyed adventurers and the lawless were willing to break the goddess’s ban on inter-dimensional travel. Mal avoided the adventurers like the plague, but the lawless were fair game. And delicious.
So what did that make Clayton?
Likely oblivious, definitely stupid, and hopefully not already dead, otherwise Mal was out one phone and one meal. Clayton was probably still alive, though, and Mal’s swift arrival in Boston supported that theory.
Clayton must be in serious trouble for his magic to draw in something like Mal, though.
He’d be touched if he wasn’t so godsdamned hungry. However, he didn’t give a shit what Clayton’s problem was. Once Mal found him, if Clayton was alive, Mal was going to eat him.
Now that that was decided, Mal nodded in satisfaction.
After deplaning, he ducked into an empty corner of the airport to do some magic. Since he was about to have an excellent meal, he could afford to replace his phone.
Two birds. One stone. All thanks to Clayton.
Halfway through crafting a new phone, Mal realized he didn’t have enough essence to power a full version of the spell he’d created. He’d likely decorporealize himself if he tried. It had been ages since it had happened, and he wasn’t eager to experience it again, so he only crafted a stripped-down version of his phone. It would suck, but it would still be better than not having it.
Once he was done and had the phone in his hand, Mal’s body shimmered faintly, causing him to swear. He’d taken more than he should have from his reserves, and it had been a dumbass thing to do. He could have found Clayton without the damn thing, but it would have taken longer, and Mal wanted to eat immediately instead of in a few days.
As he was now, Mal could sustain his form on the low-level fear his presence generated from the norms around him until he found and ate Clayton, but it would be a near thing.
Mal didn’t like near things.
