“I wish,” Mandy mumbles to a wall. Her longing for Rochester is entangled with some kind of desire to escape him—an interesting development I’m not too tired to notice. Hmm. She and Rochester were together kind of a while, weren’t they, when he escorted her to visit Princess May? And they must’ve communicated often over the past month while I was in New York.
I wonder if Mandy tried something. Did it end badly? Poor thing.
“I will return to accompany you personally tomorrow,” Rochester says, characteristically staring at me a little too hard.
I wait, ready to be subjected to more insinuations that I’m an untrustworthy deviant—but no. Rochester steps robotically over the sprawled-out, snoring door-fairy and leaves. Only after Hanry’s fairy godmother rounds the corner do I crack the door open.
“Don’t freak out,” I tell Mandy.
She pales. “Why?”
“Because I went to Hanry’s rooms. He wasn’t there. Also, because of this.”
Inside our guest suite awaits an entire flock of crows. Plus one vampire bat, emerging from a gloomy corner of the room. And—this part actually makes me smile—on top of an old-timey bag of leather luggage bounces a buoyant, red-haired, bearded head.
Bulan. Dark Dave. And the crows, even. I can’t believe they all came, like I’d asked.
“Bulan!” Mandy exclaims. She sprints past me and hugs him, grip fierce and frightening. While they’re busy, I usher Jurgis and Gustavo in behind me and pass the two of them a fairy tarot card deck I pocketed from the warehouse cavern. I don’t know if the unenchanted versions of the men are woo-woo enough for tarot, but card games reliably keep empty minds occupied.
“Hello, Mandy!” Bulan grins into the pixie’s chest. “I have missed your bodily assault! And Sabby. Nice to see you too.”
I fold my arms. Sure, I’m ecstatic to see him, but Bulan left on terms that donotmerit hugs.
“Oh, I’m just ‘nice,’ am I?”
“It’s a euphemism!” he says warmly.
Mandy releases him. Still exuberant, she cries, “I found your body!”
What?
“What?” asks Bulan. The color drains from his face. “Oh no. Oh dear. That’s terrible news.”
“Whoa,” I say. Fighting overwhelm, I pick my way across Bulan’s murder of ruffled birds. “Bulan, what’s this? You have a body?”
“Naturally! However, I fear that someone else has been carrying it with them for a substantial length of time,” says Bulan. “Mandy, is she in the castle?”
“She is!” says Mandy, startling two crows near her feet.
I cannot think with all this flapping. Frustrated, I cry out, “Where iswho?”
“Princess May,” says Mandy, not understanding as usual.
With effort, Bulan lifts his eyes to the ceiling above my regal four-poster bed and answers.
“My ex.”
25I AM NOT A MEMBER OF THE BROKEN HEARTS CLUB. WHO’S GOT TIME FOR THAT?
EXPLAIN,” I DEMAND OF BULAN,who has taken on a self-pitying expression. Several crows caw with unnecessary sympathy, but I don’t have sympathy. I have an ex, and he didn’t tell me he was engaged, and do you see me pitying myself? Feeling upset and poorly used by someone I’d thought was a safe space for one of the first and only times in my life? No way.
“How is this possible?” I ask Bulan.
Preening, Bulan draws himself up an extra half inch.
“I once had a body,” he says. “When I was a young kingling, a willow sapling of a child. One day, I was out in a field near Llandovery picking daffodils—”
“How lovely,” says Mandy.
