“Kill me, and you won’t find out what happened to your friend.”
“What do you want?” Gabe asked with a sigh.
“Some of those boom things would be nice.”
“Gabe . . .,” I said. We needed to get Tess back, but dumping guns on a pre-industrial society?
“Two pistols,” Gabe said, holding one up.
“Done. Tess is not here. She’s taken a position with the former Crown Prince of our beloved country. I was paid quite the handsome finder’s fee.”
“Former Crown Prince?” I said. “Who and what is he, and where can we find him?”
“Before the revolution, he was heir to the throne. Now he holes up in an old manor home with a large entourage to meet his needs. After his parents were executed, he surrendered to the provisional government and hammered out a deal. A former court magician cursed him and sent him on his way, to make sure he doesn’t try and make a play for the crown again.”
“Cursed? You sent my sister to some guy with a curse?”
“His form was changed from a pleasing one . . .” Gump ran fingers through his chest fur,
“to the unpleasant one you monkeys sport. His curse is that he must find someone to love him in his monstrous shape or be forced to live in an inferior body that would never be accepted, even by the most ardent royalist. His men have come to me regularly to try and find someone who may fit the bill; this girl was one of the few monkeys I’d seen that might.”
“You sold my sister to this man!”
“Not at all, it was merely a finder’s fee. When I spoke of His Highness’s plight, your sister, was it?” I nodded. “She was quite moved and volunteered her services.”
I slumped in my chair. I’d hoped that this was a matter of a dodgy character forcing Tess into a situation that we could ride in to save her from. That she’d chosen this?
“This manor, is it like a huge house?”
“Yes, I believe that is implied in the word manor.”
“And how long does he have to try and get her to fall in love with him?”
“As long as it takes.”
A growing feeling of desperation grew within my chest. “And does this place have access to an extensive library or something?”
Gump’s furry face grew quizzical, “Like all houses of significance, it has a conduit to the Celestial Record.”
“And what’s that when it’s at home?” Flea said.
“Access to the written records of all cultures in every realm. You pay a subscription fee and then can borrow what you like through your designated librarian.”
“Fuck!” I snapped, snapping to my feet. I kicked the stool away from me, Cage’s hand whipping to his sword’s hilt, Gabe and Flea jerking their guns up to aim at him in response. “This is Beauty and the fucking Beast. She’ll think that there will be singing clocks and shit and true love’s kiss. God fucking damn this fairy-tale bullshit! So, Gump, what happens if she doesn’t fall in love with him?”
Gump’s eyes glittered as his mouth opened into a wide smile, the candlelight dancing along his carnivore’s teeth. He pulled a short knife from his belt, the guys stiffening, but he held out his leathery palms in truce. Slowly, so as to allay our fears, he bent over to the fire, to the carcass being roasted there and sliced off a chunk. It was then that I noticed it wasn’t beef or lamb or pork. The arms and legs on the red, well-basted surface were long and muscular, like a human's. He gobbled the meat up with an awful slobbering sound. “I imagine he’ll do as he always has and eat her right up.”
His laughter rung in my ears as I stormed out of the pub, shoving past creatures taller, furrier and more muscular than me, with teeth that could easily rip my throat out, but I didn’t care. As I burst out the front door, the cool night air felt good on my heated skin, but nothing, nothing was going to make this better. “Fuck!” I shouted, my voice echoing in the quiet, “Fuck–” A steady hand closed over my shoulder as the sobs came. It was too much; I couldn’t carry it anymore. The exhaustion of a million sleepless nights crashed down upon me, ready to grind me in the dirt and turn me into dust.
“Ash–”
“No,” I cried, my voice a mournful wail, “no, no, no!”
“We’ll get her back, love, I promise. We’re not leaving this mutt-filled zoo until we do.”
“We . . .” I couldn’t even get my vocal cords to work. We were travelling to a stately home, no doubt full of soldiers, with a bagful of dodgy guns and two out of four people who could shoot them. For the umpteenth time, I wondered what the fuck my grandmother was thinking, casting that spell, giving us the shop. She had to have known what Tess was going to do. Tess had been picking up rocks with holes in them and looking for four-leaf clover since she was old enough to understand what they were. My mind kept going back to the body rotating slowly on the spit, over and over, Gump’s knife slicing through the pink flesh, him taking it to his lips. “Oh, God,” I said and stumbled over to the road to throw up what was left in my stomach.
“Here, this will help,” Gabe said, passing me a bottle of water.