“Not all of them,” I said. “It’s not like we’re besties and paint each other’s nails. She gave me one memory, I think, as a thank you for breaking the spell surrounding the prince’s palace and helping them rescue Cordelia.”
“Is she ever going to kill the king?” Clive asked.
Shrugging, I said, “I don’t know if she can. I mean, I’m sure she could. The question is what else in Faerie gets destroyed if she gets rid of him?”
My jeans were feeling super creepy. I looked down at myself and noticed I was on a towel. Oh! That’s what smelled so horrible. Me.
“Okay, I’m off to shower.” I glanced at Clive and Vlad. “Why aren’t you guys sitting on towels?”
“We’ve already cleaned up,” Clive said. “I wasn’t sure if it was safe to wake you, so I decided not to attempt bathing you.”
“Fair enough. I’ll be back, cleaner and better smelling.” I stood, picked up the towel, and went to the back of the plane while they discussed their next vampy steps.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I was more than a little horrified. Things I didn’t want to identify clung to my hair and clothes. I’d taken an unplanned dip in a thermal bath that a poor mermaid had been dying in for hundreds of years. I wasn’t ready to consider what I’d been swimming in. The night had already been too much without that. On the plus side, though, the queen had healed all my cracks, bumps, and bruises.
Afterward, while they sat in the front of the plane, talking endlessly, I lay down on a couch in the rear of the cabin and promptly fell asleep.
When I woke, Clive was beside me, his arm wrapped around me. I slipped out, hit the restroom, and then went to the front to sit across from Vlad, who was reading.
“You know I own a bookstore, right?” I said.
He looked at me over the top of his book. “Your point?”
I shrugged. “I’m just saying if you’re going to buy books anyway, you might as well buy them from me.”
“Is that so?” He quirked an eyebrow. “Is Clive experiencing some sort of financial crisis that requires you hawking goods?”
“Clive’s money is Clive’s. The Slaughtered Lamb is mine. You don’t want to visit, don’t.” I muttered a few insults as I pulled my e-reader out of my bag, reclined my chair, and opened the mystery I was reading. Stupid vampire.
We read silently for a good while and then he finally said, “It was good, what you did.”
I looked up and found him staring at Cadmael, who was sleeping a few seats away from me. Not knowing if Cadmael was really out, I kept quiet and continued reading.
And then I remembered. “Hey, where’s my axe?”
“You keep forgetting about it. I’m not sure you deserve such a beautiful weapon,” Vlad said.
“It’s not up to you. Give me my axe.”
“I’ve noticed,” he said, getting up and going to a storage closet near the cockpit, “that you haven’t been showing me the proper respect.” He pulled out an axe and swung it menacingly. “I don’t like that.”
I put my book aside and stood. “Are you threatening me?”
He held up the axe, admiring the blade’s edge and then threw it at my head.
It was so fast, but my hand was up to catch it, to yank it out of the air and use it. My hand, though, was empty.
Cadmael’s arm was up, and he was holding the axe handle between his thumb and the one finger that had grown back.
Vlad laughed. “I knew it! You’ve been faking this whole time, pretending to sleep so you wouldn’t have to talk to me.” He shook his head and returned to his chair.
“What the hell, dude?” I took the axe from Cadmael. “So if Cadmael had really been asleep, I’d have an axe in my head?”
Vlad rolled his eyes. “If Cadmael didn’t catch it, Clive would have.”
“Clive is asleep in the back of the plane,” I said, twisting the axe head, looking for Algar’s fingerprint.
“Clive is standing right behind you. Not that you needed him. You’d have caught it if Cadmael hadn’t,” Vlad said.
