The Fairest Kind of Love Page 18

  “When did you say Peter would be back?” I ask once I’ve settled my silliness. “We’ve been waiting for hours.”

  “He’s not exactly forthcoming with his schedule,” Charlie says. “He definitely comes and goes as he pleases.”

  “Have you guys, like, bonded since he’s been staying here?” I ask.

  “Do you mean, have we talked about sports and girls?”

  I roll my eyes. “Yes, obviously that’s what I’m asking.”

  “Well, then, in that case, no. I know he’s been here a while, but Peter’s not really a talker. At least not to me.” My boyfriend shrugs.

  “But do you agree he’s different from when he first arrived?” I snuggle into a pillow.

  “I can’t judge the behavior of a person I don’t know that well. But if you say he’s losing it, I stand beside you and will echo that sentiment with confidence.” He straightens his tie for emphasis.

  It takes three more rounds of Mortal Kombat, two Mario Kart tournaments, and a weird segue into Call of Duty before Peter shows up. We hear a thud against the door—did he fall into it first?—before he stumbles in, looking like a wild animal. In a complete transformation from his appearance at the Black Phoenix, he’s lost all his swagger: peachy hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot, clothes covered in dirt. He staggers around the living room, searching for something but not landing on anything, not even realizing we’re there.

  “Peter?” Charlie jumps into his line of sight, forcing him to focus. “Are you okay?”

  Peter studies Charlie like he’s a ghost, lashes blinking furiously at the strange apparition before him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” Charlie says gently. He glances over at me like “Okay, I get it now.” “Amber is worried about you.”

  “Worried?” Peter laughs too forcefully. Irritated eyes shoot a glance my way. “Why? I’ve absolutely never been better!”

  Well, that’s a crazy statement coming from someone who smells like he just crawled out of a gutter.

  “Peter, you don’t look like yourself,” I insist. Charlie keeps trying to grab any accessible part of him—his wrists, his jacket—but he’s like a cyclone, spinning without direction. Every time he evades Charlie, he lets out a high-pitched laugh that filters all the way into my nervous system.

  Peter runs his fingers through his hair, making it stick up in all directions. “Don’t you think I look dashing? Debonair?” He strikes an awkward pose, completely oblivious as to how uncomfortable he’s making us. “I think I’ve finally come into my own. No more naïve farm boy!”

  “I liked that Peter,” I say quietly. But this comment rubs him the wrong way.

  “No, you didn’t!” he snarls. “I was stupid and passive, a total jerk. But now things can be better.” Peter grabs me by the back of my arms, hard. I let out a small cry, and Charlie rushes to my side.

  “Hey, bud, let’s take a step back,” he insists.

  Peter flinches, insulted. “I’m not going to hurt her.”

  “I didn’t say you were. I just want you to relax.” Charlie is all softness, trying to defuse a bomb, but the fuse is burning brighter.

  “You know what would help me relax?” Peter snarls, still clutching me. “If you could give me some money.”

  His totally random request catches both of us off guard, but most of all Charlie. “What?”

  “C’mon, I know you have plenty,” Peter continues, digging himself a very strange grave. “I mean, look at this place!” He releases me—finally—to gesture wildly to the panoramic city view. “You’re loaded.”

  The two face each other from across the room, the start to an Old Western duel, complete with a damsel in distress. I half expect a tumbleweed to roll by.

  Sheriff Blitzman pushes his glasses up on his nose, defenses rising. “What do you need money for?”

  “What does it matter? Clearly you can spare it. You probably wouldn’t even know it was gone,” Cowboy Peter spits.

  Oh boy. Things are getting weird. Charlie is not one to Hulk out—in fact, he keeps his cool way more frequently than me—but if there’s one thing he hates, it’s being used for his wealth. He always hated the way people treated him in school, like he was a prize to be won just because of his dad’s celebrity. This led to Charlie shutting almost everyone out, doing his best not to bring attention to himself. Which is a shame, because obviously Charlie is awesome because of who he is, not what he’s worth, and all those high school losers seriously missed out. The Blitzmans are more well-off than most, but they also never hesitate to help those in need, which is exactly why Peter has a room to stay in, thank you very much. But no one likes being taken advantage of, and it’s definitely Charlie’s biggest trigger.

  “Okay, um, let’s take an intermission here, shall we?” I assert myself in the center of the rumble. But Charlie’s still in this showdown, ignoring my comment completely.

  “It matters because you are having some sort of issue, and I’m not funding anything that would inadvertently hurt Amber,” he says firmly, fists clenched. I know now’s not the appropriate time, but damn, my heart is pounding for this boy.

  “I know you have money stashed around here.” Peter starts casing the joint. “You probably have gold bars in your underwear drawer.” With only that misguided visual to lead him, he takes off, running toward the bedrooms.

  “Hey!” Charlie shouts, sprinting after him. I take a beat to massage my tricep, before heading to the back of the penthouse, where Peter has already ransacked John’s bedroom, clothes strewn from closets and drawers. He’s about to pocket a pair of very sparkly cuff links when Charlie tackles him, and both guys crash to the floor. I can’t look away; I’ve never seen Charlie fight someone before. They roll around for a couple seconds, both grunting and gritting their teeth as they tumble, and while Peter may be much taller than Charlie, he’s barely in control of his limbs, hopefully giving my boyfriend an advantage.

  “Give those back!” Charlie yells, right before Peter swings and manages to hit him on the bridge of his nose, breaking his glasses. Without a second thought, I fling myself next to Charlie, just as Peter makes a dash for the door. My brain knows I should try to stop the thieving fairy, but my feet must be controlled by my heart, because they take me to my love, who is curled into a ball.

  “Charlie?” I gasp, rubbing his back. He’s so tightly huddled, I can’t see his face. The stillness of his shape is making my nerves explode. “Charlie, say something, please.” As gently as possible, I roll him over, revealing a small trail of blood running down his face, his nose crooked and red. “Oh my Gods! Um, um, don’t move, okay? Oh, you’re already not moving, so um, keep doing that!”

  I carefully slide a pillow under his head, then go to the bathroom and grab a wet washcloth. Sweaty and swollen, he reaches for me as I wipe blood from his mouth.

  “I’m here, it’s okay.” I push damp hair off his forehead. “I love you; you were very brave.”

  “Did we win?” he asks before closing his eyes and pass-ing out.

  I’m sitting in Charlie’s kitchen while my mom makes chamomile tea spiked with a healing elixir. Seeing Charlie’s blood outside of his body completely freaked me out, signaling that we are now in parental territory. After I called my mommy, she called John, who is tending to his son on the couch.

  “My boy, taking a punch like a man,” John boasts to no one in particular.

  Charlie winces, both from pain and the random comment. “Dad, maybe cool it with the alpha male stuff?”

  “What? Do you know how many hits I took in my day?”

  “This isn’t football.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Anyway!” I interrupt, since we’re veering into unnecessary territory. With a hot mug of magic tea, I take a spot next to the Blitzmans. “So, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say Peter is having an adverse reaction to magic. What do we think?”

  “It sounds like it, yes,” Mom agrees, joining the group. “We didn�
��t give him anything potent, but everyone reacts differently.”

  I stare at her blankly. “Like an allergy?”

  “Kind of.” Mom’s face pinches in thought. “But I guess I’d compare it more to a sugar rush or coffee buzz. If you’re not used to consuming those substances, you get all riled up, and once they’re in your system, you want them even more.”

  Well, I can definitely relate to that. I get pretty stabby without a regular stream of cookies. “But where is he getting all this magic? Even if he downed all that stuff he bought, it wouldn’t be enough to make him act all wild like this for this long,” I reason. “He hasn’t been back to Windy City Magic, so who’s he been going to?”

  Yet even as the words cross my lips, I know the answer. We Sands know when to turn away someone who’s abusing limits, but on the black market, the limit does not exist. Maybe he’s visited my pal Roscoe, or maybe someplace else, but either way, those waters are too deep for a newbie like Peter to navigate.

  John rubs the back of his neck with his giant hand. “Maybe we should call his parents.”

  “What? No!” I cry. “This is exactly what they feared would happen! They will never trust anyone magical ever if they find out!”

  “Not to be lame, but I don’t really want him here,” Charlie says from under his ice pack. “I’m probably biased, though, since he punched me in the face.”

  “It’s not the worst idea to get the parents involved,” Mom says hesitantly. I give her a look, but she doesn’t flinch. “We’d have to find him first, though.”

  I can’t believe this. I CANNOT. Peter has been acting like a total ass, but calling the Wisterias seems like a horrible idea. Not only will they have major “I told you so” face, but I doubt their methods or rehabilitation would be beneficial. If they had just taught their kids how to include magic in their lives safely, none of this would be happening. Instead, they filled their heads with stories about how evil magic is, and now their son is on the receiving end of the nightmare. It’s beyond frustrating; there has to be a better way to help him.

  “Will you use a locator spell?” John asks.

  Mom nods. “It shouldn’t be too hard. But before we do that, I want an idea of what kind of magic he’s been playing around with. If we know what he’s been exposed to, it will make it easier once we find him. I don’t want us walking into a situation we aren’t prepared for.”

  She and John get up and talk quietly in a corner, in that hushed tone that parents use when life gets serious. I want to say something more about how calling the parents is the absolute worst idea, but it seems I’m in the minority here. So I stroke the side of Charlie’s arm, letting him relax as the healing powers of Mom’s elixir swirl inside him. I can’t believe these gentle spells are having such an adverse effect on Peter. I almost want him to be involved in more insidious magic, because I can’t imagine anything my mom brewed would turn someone into the worst version of himself. Delving into the darker sides of witchcraft is not an interest of mine, but I guess it’s time for another installment. GREAT.

  YEARS AGO, I REMEMBER a vampire coming into Windy City Magic in need of help. He’d been in some kind of major brawl, almost staked through the heart, but his attacker missed. There were wood splinters scattered inside his chest, and he couldn’t dig them out on his own because his vamp healing powers had already closed up the external wound. We had to find a way to remove the wooden shards without puncturing his heart. Mom scoured her grimoires, and finally came across a gemstone that, when combined with the right spell, could open any barrier—flesh included—creating a pseudo portal to wherever you needed to go. Well, since portals aren’t something you see popping up all over the city, you can imagine how rare this gemstone was. Time was running out, and Mom went through some dark channels to save this guy (luckily, I was not present for the whole chest-cavity game of Operation). Mom is well connected, and Dawning Day does what it can too, but occasionally we’ve all had to work outside comfort zones to get the magic we need. In extreme emergencies, we have to go underground. Literally.

  There’s a stretch of road in downtown Chicago called Lower Wacker, an underground tunnel that follows the course of its sunlit sister, Upper Wacker. This subterranean avenue was designed as an expressway to help people travel through the Loop faster, bypassing the bumper-to-bumper traffic stopping at every single light, and has evolved into a dark, lawless roadway where cars race through at extreme speeds, with no regard for safety or courtesy. Lit only by sporadic yellow bulbs, the underpass takes on a sickly hue, and the farther you go, the more it feels like you won’t come out the other side alive. Strangely enough, this sunken hellscape exits right near the entrance to Navy Pier, which is like one nightmare opening up to the next.

  Even though we make our way to Lower Wacker in the middle of the day, the tunnel blocks out all sunlight—and happiness—in a matter of seconds. It melts my brain how one minute we can be surrounded by carnival lights and the next plunged into oblivion.

  “So, um, which shop are we visiting again?” I yell against the roar of cars speeding by. Lower Wacker was not created with pedestrians in mind, and the one walkway that runs along its treacherous course is so narrow, it makes you want to clutch the cement walls, except not really, since the walls are cold, dirty, and covered in much more than cobwebs.

  “Nico’s place,” Mom calls over her shoulder.

  “Is that the name, or is it just a place owned by a dude named Nico?”

  “The latter, I think.” Hard to be sure, I guess, since it’s not like underground lairs print up business cards. When Mom suggested we visit a former “associate” for more information on Peter’s extracurricular activities, my heart skipped a beat thinking it could be Roscoe. He did seem to know her after all, and while visiting his Instagrammable shop would have been more comfortable than trekking through this underground tunnel, it would have been hella awkward for me, since I didn’t exactly share the details of our dark pact with Mom. So I’m weirdly relieved to be making this journey instead, even though my insides are crawling with fear.

  Bob is grunting behind me, struggling to squeeze his frame into this terribly narrow space. We brought Bob along for the intimidation factor, although he wouldn’t hurt a fly (figuratively speaking—one time I did see him tear the wings off a fly, an act that was both impressive and shocking).

  “Amber, are we there yet?” he whines.

  “How should I know? This isn’t my regular hangout.” I don’t mean to be so harsh with him, but my anxiety is through the roof. I feel like any minute now the Batmobile is going to race by in a shootout with the Joker, and while that would be insanely cool to witness, I’m also not looking to be caught in cross fire today (or any day, for that matter).

  Mom finally stops in front of a gray metal door that is almost the same color as the surrounding concrete, effectively camouflaging its existence. Its only distinguishing characteristic is a small, rectangular peephole looking out. Mom knocks three times, and a panel opens, revealing two orange eyes staring us down. I can only assume this to be Nico, and fully expect him to ask for a secret password, but instead he slams the panel shut, opening the rust-covered door a crack, its metal bottom screeching against the pavement. It’s somehow even darker inside his place, yet we all foolishly proceed. I can practically hear Bob rubbing his lucky rabbit’s foot behind me.

  It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, but when they do, I realize I’m standing in what I bet Peter thought a magic shop would look like. Illuminated only by candlelight, the room has no ventilation, leaving a thick layer of smoke. And the smell, well . . . I wonder if they make bleach to clean nasal passages. Exposed pipes crisscross the ceiling, along with countless animal carcasses, each in different stages of decay. Besides a very real human skeleton with several missing bones standing in the corner, there isn’t much inventory on the floor, though our proprietor has strategically positioned himself in front of a large closet where his supplies must be stored.
>
  “What brings you here today, Lucille?” Nico asks with a sneer. He’s giving off very strong troll vibes, and those dudes really like to rub it in when higher magical creatures ask for help. Since almost any mystically inclined person ranks higher than trolls (well, except me, of course), he must get that sense of superiority from every single customer. But he’s wearing a cape, so how cool can he really be? (Answer: not at all.) “Care for a goat brain? They’re fresh.”

  He holds one out to her, throbbing coils oozing on his meaty hand. A creepy smile reveals teeth in all shades of yellow.

  “I’m not looking for merchandise today,” Mom says, keeping her cool despite the pulsating organ inches from her face. “I’m wondering if you’ve seen someone here.”

  Nico sticks a pinkie finger in his ear, pulling out a giant blob of wax, which he flings to the floor. “I don’t trade in information.”

  Mom rolls her eyes. “That’s not true and you know it. Remember the nymph turf wars several years ago?” She raises an accusatory eyebrow.

  The troll swirls his cape up around his shoulders. “Oh, who even cares about nymphs anyway?”

  “Nymphs probably do,” I mutter under my breath, putting me on the receiving end of orange stink eye. I quickly stare at the nearest candle to avoid his gaze.

  “Bob, do you have the drawing?” Mom asks. Bob fumbles through his satchel, nervously pulling out a piece of parchment. I worked with him to do a sketch of Peter, detailing him somewhere between his normal self and magically insane state. “We’re looking for this person.” She holds out the drawing to Nico. “Have you seen him?”

  Nico steps closer (visibility is truly awful in here), squinting for a second before a flash of recognition crosses his face. “Ah yes, a fairy, right?”

  “Yes. Have you seen him?”