Chapter 4
Okay, before you go, we need to make sure you’re all wearing only Faerie-friendly stuff,” James said as I walked back into the tattoo shop. “That means no cold iron anywhere.”
“Like no buttons or zippers?” Jarvis asked, looking nervously at his pants.
“No,” I replied, jumping in because I could see the glint in James’s eye that said he was about to seriously screw with the new guy.
As partial as I am to a good hazing, I was in a hurry.
It wasn’t going to take long for Father Matthew and Skeeter to run out of ways to keep the local po-po from noticing that a whole building and everyone in it was missing, so we needed to stop screwing around and get over to Fairyland soon.
Once there, we could take a little more time figuring things out, because time moves slower there, at least according to what Mama told me.
“Cold iron is kinda specific. Steel isn’t a fairy’s favorite thing, but your zipper doesn’t have a high enough iron content to be dangerous.
Usually the only stuff you have to worry about is weapons.
So if you’ve got a good pocketknife, leave it behind.
But you don’t have to cut the buttons off your pants or take out your body jewelry.
” That last part was directed at Geri and Ash, who both had enough rings in their faces to set off an airport metal detector.
“You take all the fun out of this, Bubba,” James grumbled.
“On a clock, cuz,” I replied. “And I’ll be taking my gun, and my cold iron ammunition. That’s non-negotiable.”
“You’re technically part of the royal family of both Courts, so it ain’t like anybody short of one of the Queens can say shit to you, so go ahead,” the big man said.
I stared at him for a second, then realized he was right.
If I’d known all that the last time I went through the mushroom ring, it might have saved on some fights.
Probably not, though. Most of the crap I got into was either on the orders of Mab or Titania, or caused by Puck, who didn’t give a shit about protocol.
“How long is it gonna take you to get stuff set up?” I asked.
“About ten minutes.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Everybody outside with me while James sets up. We need to figure out what weapons we’re taking and who’s carrying what.
We won’t need any survival gear, because I don’t plan on making this a camping trip, but we’re not going in unarmed.
” I turned and walked to the parking lot, my three amigos in tow.
I opened the back door of my F-250 and lifted the back bench seat, exposing a pair of weapons drawers. Geri went around to the back of the truck and dropped the tailgate, opening up a hidden compartment in the bed full of long guns.
I looked at Ash. “You know how to shoot?”
“I’m a stagehand in Georgia. Of course I know how to shoot,” they replied.
“Okay, what do you want to carry? I’ve got a couple Glock 19s with plenty of spare magazines, a G26 backup if you want something in an ankle holster, or—”
“Gimme a 19 with four magazines and the 26,” they said. “You gonna carry a backpack or something for extra rounds?”
“Yeah, I’ll have a couple boxes of ammo for each gun we take,” I said.
“Sounds good,” they said, accepting the pistols and checking their action. They clipped the 19 to their hip and knelt to strap the backup to their right ankle.
“What do I get?” Jarvis asked, looking at the drawers like a kid on Christmas morning.
“What can you shoot?” I replied.
He looked up at me, confused. “What do you mean, what can I shoot? It’s a gun. You point the end with the hole in it toward the bad guy and pull the trigger. What else do I need to be able to do?”
Geri and I exchanged a look and at the same time, said, “Shotgun.”
Jarvis looked confused, but after a minute, I handed him a little Smith & Wesson .
38 revolver and pointed him around to where Geri stood holding a Mossberg 500 twelve-gauge.
I felt a little twinge seeing her hand that gun to Jarvis, because I kept it around mostly for Skeeter, who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a rocket launcher.
But Jarvis was the one with the least experience among us, so he got the most forgiving guns.
He was unlikely to be able to screw up a revolver, and I could take along my Colt Python instead of my Taurus Judge as a backup, and if I ran out of .
357 ammo, I could use Jarvis’s .38 ammunition in my backup.
“What are you taking, Ger?” I asked.
“Give me the other Glock 19 in a shoulder rig, and I’ll take this MP-5 with a short scope. That keeps all my shit in nine mil, and if we run into a problem that’s too far away for me to hit with a submachine gun, we can just run like hell.”
That made sense. We were probably going in way too heavily armed, and the first fae royal we ran into would probably take all our guns away, but better to start off with it and lose it, than to leave it at home and need it the second we stepped through the portal.
“Should we take bulletproof vests or body armor or anything like that?” Jarvis asked. “What about grenades? Should we carry grenades?”
“We’re going to rescue people, not invade Panama, bro,” Ash said. “Besides, I’m pretty sure we’ll be the only people with guns. Anybody who wants to kill us will use either magic or swords, and Kevlar doesn’t do shit against blades.”
I raised an eyebrow at them, and they shrugged. “I watched every season of SWAT. I learned a lot.”
“Yeah, you learned that Shemar Moore does a shitload of crunches,” I said with a laugh. “Ash is right. There ain’t a lot of guns in Fairyland, and we don’t have any armor that stops lightning bolts, so we’re better off rolling in light.”
Jarvis looked at the eight guns between four people and then back to me. “This is rolling in light?”
Geri laughed. “You oughta see the amount of shit he carries when he thinks there might be trouble.”
That reminded me of something, and I closed the gun drawer and slid out a smaller drawer underneath it.
I pulled out a thick leather belt with a pair of silver-edged kukris hanging from it and clipped a pair of bulky spiked gloves to sides.
I hadn’t carried my caestae for a while, but I figured if there was any mission I was going to need iron-banded boxing gloves with spikes on the knuckles, this was it.
Sufficiently geared up, we all headed back inside to see if James was ready to create an interdimensional incident with us yet.
* * *
The big man waved us back through the little half-door separating the lobby from the space where the actual work was done, then guided us into a back room and arranged everyone in a half-circle facing a battered wooden door that would have looked more suited to the kind of abandoned house that had a family of cannibal chainsaw murderers living in it than a passageway to a magical kingdom.
I opened my mouth to ask some smartassed question, but a quick jab in the gut from Geri’s needle-sharp elbow put a pause on my stupider instincts.
James stood in front of the door with his shop assistant and the pair clasped hands.
They reached out and put their other hands on the surface of the door and bowed their heads.
After a few seconds, light started to leak around the edges of the door, which I could have sworn was just leaning up against the wall and wasn’t actually a functioning portal.
And maybe most of the time it wasn’t. But something was sure happening, because the light got brighter and brighter until I had to shield my eyes from the glare.
After several seconds of being blinded by the magical light, not the Manfredd Mann kind, James’s voice came from the shadowy outline where his massive frame used to be.
“Okay, step into the light. Be careful, because Her Majesty Queen Titania is not expecting you, or any visitors, so your reception might be…somewhat fraught. Be careful, and please try not to break all of Faerie.”
I was a little offended by this. “What gives you the idea we’re gonna break anything?” I asked.
“You’re friends with Quincy Harker,” James replied. “The man is chaos incarnate. Do I need any other reason to be worried?”
“Well, there’s the fact that he’s Bubba,” Geri said brightly.
I would have smacked her, but I knew exactly how well-armed she was.
We’d pretty much gotten past the part of her life where killing me was her main motivation for everything, but I didn’t want to give her any reason to go back to that place.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll try not to wreck the magical kingdom. But no promises about not kicking Mab’s ass.”
James laughed, and by the tinkle of laughter from beside him, I guessed his assistant was equally amused. “I don’t think I have to worry about you hurting the Queen of Winter,” he said. “Now step through. I’ve got more appointments tonight, so I can’t stand around holding the door open for you.”
I looked at my team—the psychopath, the douchebro, and Ash, the nonbinary telepathic X-factor—and nodded at them. “Let’s go, gang. We’ve got a wedding to save.”
I walked toward the glowing portal and just as my foot crossed the threshold and the mundane world started to fade around me, I heard Jarvis ask, “Um…how are we supposed to get back?”
And with that very valid question that I had no answer at all for, we crossed over into Fairyland. And stepped out right into a circle of pissed-off faeries in full plate armor holding drawn swords.
I looked at Geri, then at the faerie knights, then at the rest of Team Bubba. There was only one thing to say, so I said it. “Well, shit.”