Chapter 11 Picking up Prince Charming
Picking up Prince Charming
It was almost too easy shaking the law-hound, and Cha said as much to Dy, back on the marcasite channel.
“Don’t get cocky, Bandit,” Dy warned, and Warg added bark-growl of agreement. “That was a local hound, a human with shitty skills looking to blow off the tedium. It’ll get uglier from here.”
“I can handle ugly,” Cha replied. “Look at Warg.”
“Ha ha.”
“How much time did I buy you?”
“Three hours and forty-four minutes ahead of the clock,” Dy admitted, her tone grudging. “Soon as you flew past, the whole ley kicked up speed to max on the black.”
“And Fastcart here thanks you both!” another voice chimed in. “We’re putting out the word that the juice is on the Thirteen. Anything you need, Goldilocks, we got you.”
“Aw, thanks, Fastcart.”
“Keep an eye on my girl, Fastcart,” Cha said.
“I’m looping back via the rural leys. Map shows I ought to come up behind you in an hour, maybe less, Goldi.
Well before BX-time.” They’d agreed not to discuss their crossing the border into Obsidian, much less the next realm, not even among apparent friends on the path-channels.
Too much exposure. Just because they weren’t yet in fae lands didn’t mean they wouldn’t attract the interest of fae ears.
“Copy that, Bandit,” Fastcart replied. “Watch your tail.”
“It’s a fine tail, so I can promise that…Well, well, well—what have we here?”
The rural ley, a dull black that moved so slowly under the feathering trees that it was practically molasses, had given Katu a breather.
In a nice bonus, the pretty scenery had just gotten a whole lot prettier.
A man stood on the side of the ley, waving her down.
He was well back from the thick flow of the seething dust of the line, wearing an absurdly formal outfit for these parts.
He frankly looked like he’d escaped from a royal ball.
Cha didn’t think it was a costume, either, but the real thing.
In fact, a small but glittering crown was affixed to his rather elaborately styled indigo hair.
A violet silk cloak lined with eye-popping chartreuse streamed down his back, while the layers of the expensive suit beneath clung to a lithe, attractively masculine figure.
Cha usually liked her men beefier, but something about this one appealed to her immensely.
That was, besides the fact that he was available and in apparent need of rescue—both qualities she preferred in her men.
The telltale sparkle in her pussy confirmed it. She liked this one.
“Bandit,” Dy said, possibly not for the first time. “Come back. Did we lose you? What do you see, dammitall?”
“Candy,” Cha replied, easing Katu to the edge of the sedate flow and petting him into patience as he unwillingly came to a stop.
“No!” Dy shouted through the path-box. “No candy while we’re on this job, Bandit! You said you’d be responsible.”
“I’m not being irresponsible. We’re ahead of schedule,” Cha pointed out, very reasonably, she thought.
The handsome, harried looking man was jogging up the dirt shoulder, waving to her as if she wasn’t already taking in the enticing, lean flow of him.
Nothing like a little juiced-up chase and smoking a law-hound to give her a sweet-tooth.
“I’m just being helpful. You’re always telling me I need to try to be a better person. ”
“Don’t you do this to me, Bandit!” Dy shouted. “Not again. You promised that—”
“That I’d be behind you in an hour,” Cha interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Probably less. You know I can catch up. Bandit out.”
She tapped off transmission on the path-box just as the man reached them. “Hello sailor,” she purred, quite certain Katu echoed it.
The man frowned, looking down at himself. “I’m a prince, not a sailor.”
Oh yeah, and she was the queen of the fae. She sighed to herself. Did the pretty ones all have to be cursed with a lack of wit? “Even better. Where you headed?”
“Anywhere but here.” He looked back up the ley line nervously. “As fast as possible.”
“Happens to be where I’m going and I’m always fast.” She added a salacious grin, but he seemed oblivious to flirtation as well as wit because he frowned.
“You can only go as fast the ley line flows,” he pointed out.
Shows what he knew. “Hop in, Prince Charming.”
“Bandit.” Dy’s voice lit up the path-box. “Come on, curse you.”
“Who’s Bandit?” the prince asked, eyeing the box dubiously as he leapt over the carriage rim with seductive grace and slid into the seat of the two-seater carriage, his cloak overflowing the side, causing him to fuss with it in frustration.
“No idea,” Cha answered blithely, switching the channel to an obscure limestone.
She wasn’t going to be so cavalier as to turn it off entirely—she could always fast-tap to gold, or marcasite, in a pinch—but she didn’t want any more interruptions to this introduction to the delicious princeling. “You settled?”
He determinedly punched down the voluminous cloak, which poofed up in his lap like a violet and chartreuse mushroom. “Can we please just go?”
He turned a beseeching look on her and Cha nearly choked on her breath at the surge of pussy-sparkle.
His eyes were a shade of blue barely lighter than his hair, dominating a face so exquisite he could be fae.
He must dye the hair to coordinate and what a stellar idea that had been.
The human royals tended to get a bit absurd with their fashion excesses and endless mimicking of the colorful fae, but in this case she heartily approved.
“Now?” he added, his tone slightly sharper than his befuddled behavior had indicated.
A hint of a predator showing fang beneath the fluffy camouflage.
In truth, the imperious tone matched his tale of being a prince, but something was off here.
Not only because princes had entourages, not relying on hitchhiking to get them about.
Cha frowned, wondering if Dy had been right to warn her about picking up strange candy. “Who are you, really?”
A chorus of high-pitched yowls echoed up from the intersecting ley about a league back and Prince Charming visibly blanched. “In case you don’t recognize that sound, those are fell wolves chasing me. If they catch us, it won’t be pretty.”
Cha snorted. Fell wolves in human lands, especially this far out in the country? Not likely. “Tell me another tale,” she invited.
“Go and I will. Or are you not capable of riding this ley?” he inquired with enough silky disdain that her hackles went up. Oh yeah, he was royalty of some kind all right.
She deliberately lifted her hands in the air. Not that she needed to touch Katu with her hands to direct him on the ley line, but Mr. High and Mighty didn’t need to know that. Royals seldom knew how to do the day-to-day stuff of living. “We go nowhere until you tell me who you are.”
“I’m roadkill, is who I am, if you don’t move this thing along,” he replied, all keen edge and zero befuddlement now.
She shrugged, kicking back in the sloped seat, putting her hands behind her neck and turning her face up to the gentle sunshine. “Not my problem,” she noted mildly.
The overdressed fop practically seethed beside her. Were those magic prickles emanating from him? Cha had spent enough years around Dy to recognize the buzz of it. Interesting.
“I can make it your problem, Bandit,” the man said quietly, raising a blue-tinted brow when she fastened him with a glare.
“I tell you I’m not him.”
He shrugged, mimicking her earlier insouciance. “I beg to differ.” With a flick of his finger, he popped the path-channel box back to the marcasite channel—not something a royal should know how to do, since they had staff for that kind of thing—and Dy’s voice came ringing through immediately.
“Bandit! Come back. I swear, if you picked up some roadside piece of hitchhiking fluff while we’re on a critical gig, I’ll—” Cha cut off her partner, by changing off marcasite again.
“Roadside piece of fluff?” the man queried with that lifted brow, clearly striving for cool, but he was sweating.
“You have to admit you’re quite floofy.” Cha poked the billowing cloak. “And your implied threats don’t work on me.”
“How about aggressively stated threats? I can make life quite difficult for you, Bandit.” The creatures howled louder, closing on them, and he barely restrained a wince.
“Not if you’re reduced to flesh strips drying in the sun,” Cha retorted cheerfully, although the howls did lift the hairs on the back of her neck. Surely they weren’t really fell wolves, though.
“If you’re a bandit, then you can be bought.” He rummaged under his floral-embroidered vest, producing a platinum coin and proffering it.
Cha felt her own eyes bulge—not a pleasant sensation, but whoa, she’d never seen a real platinum coin, worth ten golds—and she reached for it. Quick as a wink, Prince Charming folded it out of sight, revealing only an empty palm. She huffed. “I resent the implication that I’m cheap goods for sale.”
“Expensive goods,” he corrected with a wicked smile that went right through her. The coin winked into sight between his nimble fingers and disappeared again. “A platinum coin should be enough to take you away from selling your…wares.”
Cha nearly choked on the insulting implication, until she caught the calculating glint in his eyes. Maybe he wasn’t so dumb. “Fine. I’ll ride the line, do it fast enough to shake those slavering pups, and drop you where you like—as long as it’s on my way—and I get the coin.”
“For a platinum coin, I should think you’d take me wherever I want to go.”
“Things to do. Places to be.” The howls drew near enough to make even Cha a bit jumpy.
If they really were fell wolves, they shouldn’t attack anyone but their target, but you never knew…
Still, unlike Dy, Cha was a champion negotiator and Prince Charming was sweating like an ice fae in the Summerlands.
She tipped her head in the direction of the pursuing howls.
“Whoever you are, someone wants you back pretty badly.”
“Fine,” he bit out. “Now does this thing go fast or not?”
Cha grinned. “Hold my ale.”