Riker was giving Magda a pleading look over the girl’s slight shoulder. The girl’s hair cascaded all the way down to the dimples of her lower back. Magda brushed the black sweep of her side-bangs off her brow. The back was shaved close. She was taller and heavier and broader than this little sprite of a human, who was giving her threatening looks when she wasn’t begging Riker to stay.
Back in the old world, Magda would’ve killed any woman, no matter her race, for deigning to touch her Prince. Not that her Prince would’ve allowed such a thing, had he been claimed.
For a brief instant, Magda could feel the ghost weight of gild-silver on her fingers, metal sheaths that had been especially designed for her by the dwarves. How easily a human body would peel under the wicked blades of the finger-knives, into pretty gold-and-red ribbons.
Magda swallowed back this uprising of her old self. She hadn’t realized how dangerous it was for her to have a true Pixie back in her life. Damion was awakening thoughts and feelings in her that she’d believed long dead.
She wanted to resist them. She tried. She succeeded, in a way, because she didn’t call her finger-knives to her and peel the California girl out of her flawless skin.
Instead, she said, “Riker, let’s go.”
She turned and strode off the beach, up the boardwalk, and back towards home. And she knew that Riker followed, even if he didn’t understand why, she did. Exiled or not, she was a Rae. And a Prince always follows his Rae.
Frank was a grizzled old knocker, who spent most of his days lording over his little manufactured home kingdom from his artificial turf-covered patio, smoking a mix of pot and tobacco—and sometimes other things—out of a hand-carved bone pipe. He claimed it was dragon bone, but everyone in their small community of exiles greeted this with a healthy amount of skepticism.
As Magda strode back up their road, Frank pushed his fat tomcat, Mr. Fuller, off of his lap, and proceeded to grunt and snort his way out of the deep hollow of his lounger.
“Hey, hey!” he called in his phlegmy bellow.
She sighed and slowed. She hoped he wasn’t going to ask about the lot rent. It was only a week—or two—late. Pay day was still three days away, and Riker had been too busy working on his nonexistent tan—their skin simply wouldn’t—to bother returning any of his agent’s calls.
While Frank passed himself off as a little person of the human ilk, he looked much more like a full-grown barrel-chested man who had been hit with a shrink ray. The top of his head barely came to her mid-thigh, but his hands, his head, his legs, all remained proportionate. He was often mistaken for a husky child, especially from behind. This wasn’t helped by the fact that he found it more practical to buy his clothes in the kids’ department. But anyone who saw his deeply-lined mug quickly realized their error.
Once he got up and moving, he was exceptionally sprightly. In a blink, he had clambered down from the large deck built off of his double-wide and onto the palm-shaded blacktop. His sneakers, also intended for children, lit up as he hurried towards her, flashing red and white with every step, his mop of dusty brown curls flopping around his head. He stuck out his chest and gave her a look that would’ve wilted a flower nymph.
Jabbing the brown-stained stem of his pipe up at her, his silvery eyes flashed over the top of his reflective aviators. “You can’t have new tenants in your place.”
Damion and Riker weren’t far behind, hiking up the slope through the gates that cordoned off their tiny beachside enclave.
“Tenants? I own that box, Frank. You’re not my landlord.”
“I sure am.” Frank tapped his pipe against his thick palm with each syllable. “I own the land that box sits on. My land. Land-lord.”
“He’s not a tenant,” she said as Damion came up beside her. “He’s just visiting.”
Frank harrumphed and took to stabbing his pipe in Damion’s direction. Damion glowered down at him.
“I know his type,” Frank said. “You’re bringing trouble.”
“He’s an exile,” she said. “Like us.”
Frank crossed his arms over his Magic Kingdom T-shirt. “First, the pretty Prince boy and now a warrior? You know what that looks like—”
Damion took the slightest step forward. “What does it look like, pit-dweller?”
Frank’s mouth dropped open. “I am no pit-dweller! I am descended from Laurin, the son of—”
She placed a hand before Damion. “He apologizes, Frank. He just got here today. His Radiant was defeated, his sister.”
Riker strolled up, still in his swim trunks, sunglasses pushed back into his hair, a blue beach towel tossed over his shoulder, bringing out the blue of his eyes—not that it was difficult. Blue toothpaste brought out the color of his eyes.
“Heya, Frank,” he said, forever unperturbed. “Like the new one.” He notched his thumb towards the newest gnome to have found its home among the palms and flowers that grew in a jungle-like abundance around Frank’s deck. Garden gnomes had always struck her as a strange thing to collect, considering, and she didn’t know how Riker could tell one from the other. Frank had an entire gnome army.
“Oh, thanks,” Frank said, his anger fizzling. “Arrived yesterday.”
“The Griebel?” Riker asked as if fine gnome collectibles were also his passion.
Frank smiled a bit, and all the lines of his face smiled too. “Well, yes. The bidding was quite intense. And doing it over the phone was nerve-wracking. Not being able to read the room and depending on someone else to place my bids—”
