Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
The spa was full of fairies who took one look at Chira and then carried her away to be polished.
“And you should start with a haircut,” the frosty blonde woman in charge said, studying my hair.
I almost touched it, but resisted the urge. “I’m going shopping while she’s here.”
The woman frowned. She was a fairy, because she had wings, but her bones were too dense to be only a fairy and a human mix. “How are the two of you related?”
“We aren’t. We’re having girl time.”
“While you’re shopping without her?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head, studying me with that look you should give vampire murderers. I hadn’t gotten that look for some time. “I’m going to have to call the authorities.”
“I’m sure that will be fun for you.”
“You can’t just have a fairy girl. I don’t care if her parents are pix dust addicts, you can’t just—”
“Hey, sorry I took so long,” Frankie said, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
Ah. He’d been following me to make sure that I wasn’t actually taking Chira to a slave market or something.
“I’ll stay with Chira while you do the shopping for the presents she’s not supposed to know about. ” He winked at me.
“Oh! You’re shopping for her! That’s different.
Vampires do usually have such good taste,” the woman gushed, now feeling better because a fairy boy had shown up.
Also, she was sparkling at him, which meant he was probably attractive to her.
Maybe he wasn’t as young as he seemed. It was hard to tell with fairies.
“Good,” I said to Frankie and then turned and stalked off, ignoring the fairy woman.
Where were the people calling authorities when Romi had her collared?
Not that it wasn’t logical to keep innocent youngsters away from me, but would a dangerous person actually drop someone off at a spa?
No, I should have had Frankie come with us all along for her protection.
Not that I didn’t have her scent. And how much protection could Frankie provide?
I shrugged and left to go across the street from the fancy spa to the fancy department store.
Sing was a world away from Song, and the flashes of sunlight between buildings burned.
Once I got inside the plush, blue carpeted shop, with a tower of leather bags on display, I started to get that feeling, when you know that everyone is staring at you and judging you to be a murderous vampire even though they didn’t personally know that for a fact.
I walked around the home goods section. Home. What would that be like? Home is where you stash your blood bags. And then there was the hunting section. It was full of flimsy tents and bright clothing so that your prey would see you coming.
I wandered like that for a good hour until I was trekking through a woman’s shoe section and a fairy girl stepped in front of me.
“Hi. Can I help you find something?” She had a name tag, but I couldn’t make out the words. I couldn’t read the map to find out where things were either. Glasses would be so useful.
“Cake. I need to make a cake and a birthday card.”
“You need to make a cake and a card? You’re not here to buy them?” Her blue wings shimmered while she cocked her head and studied me, trying to understand so she could help. She was a helper.
I shrugged. “He said he wanted homemade.”
“He?” Her eyes sparkled along with a flash over her blue wings. Fairy emotions were almost embarrassingly easy to read. Unless you were faking it. Fairies were supposed to be cunning fakers.
“Yes. I’m in a weird…” I wasn’t sure what to call it. We weren’t dating, but we were in hiding together, at least officially.
“Relationship? Well, that’s exciting. What does he like?”
I stared at her. “Cake?”
She gave a lilting laugh that made her sparkle all over again.
“There are thousands of kinds of cake. Hundreds of thousands. Baking is actually my passion, so I feel entitled to give you advice.” She linked my arm with hers and then started leading me towards the baking section.
“You’ll be able to get everything you need in the kitchen shop.
It’s all expensive, but the ingredients are high quality.
I take it he’s not a vampire, or you wouldn’t be looking for cake. ”
“He’s an angel.”
I expected surprise and judgement, hearing that I was seducing an innocent angel, but instead, she nodded thoughtfully until a mischievous smile spread. “What about angel food cake? I know it’s so on the nose, but it’s actually a really great neutral cake.”
“Angel food cake? That exists?”
“Everything exists. That’s what I mean. And there’s devil’s food cake too if you want to give him some temptation in the form of decadent chocolate.”
“Angel’s food cake. Not devils.”
“What kind of oven do you have?”
“There are different kinds of ovens? I don’t know. I don’t have one yet.”
She pulled me to a stop and stared at me. “You don’t have an oven?”
“I was going to find one. There is one in the bar’s back room, but I wanted to make it as a surprise.”
She furrowed her brow in thought. Finally, her face brightened, and she beamed at me. “In that case, you can use mine. I’m technically off work, but I saw you wandering around without anyone helping you. I’m afraid you might be slightly intimidating.”
“You can’t let a vampire into your house. It’s very unsafe.”
She patted my arm. “You telling me that makes me feel much better.”
“It shouldn’t. You should trust me to know that it’s unsafe and be on your guard.”
“Vampires don’t usually like fairy blood. Particularly if you’re used to angelic. And I’m not entirely defenseless.”
Her points were quite good, at least the first one.
Compared to me, she was extremely defenseless.
There were so many ways to kill her, I didn’t bother counting them.
I let her drag me around the kitchen department, getting all the things: the fancy pan with a removable bottom, the special flour, the sugar crystals just the right sharpness, and other things that she explained but completely overwhelmed me.
By the time we were checking out, the clerk looked at me mostly civilly. If I was baking a cake, I wasn’t as threatening as a vampire would otherwise be.
I stopped before we reached the front doors. “I actually have a fairy girl living in my building. She doesn’t have clothes. I was going to pick up some things for her as a surprise. Could you help me with that too?”
She positively sparkled, and her smile was bewilderingly sweet. “I’d love to. That’ll be so much fun.”
It wasn’t fun. I told her what colors Chira was, and then the fairy shopping assistant had a wonderful time combining different things for the most outfits for the amount of clothing, plus a few dresses just because.
“Now,” she said, frowning at the clothing. “What’s your budget?”
I took the clothes out of her hands. “It’s good enough to get everything.”
“Are you sure? What about you?”
“I don’t like shopping for myself.”
“But there’s a section curated just for vampires.”
“You are a really good salesperson. I suppose it would be nice to wear something an angel might think was…pretty.” Did I use that word? For me? I must be mad. Of course, I was fixated on an angel. There wasn’t anything more insanely stupid than that.
She clapped her hands and then dragged me to another section. I had to try on the clothing. Fortunately, the fairy girl made things go quickly.
“I don’t know your name,” she said as I came out to model the dress that wasn’t too awkward. It was black. That helped.
“Oh. I guess you can call me Ruby Blood.”
“And you can call me Kesti Charles. Do you like this one, Miss Blood?”
“Ruby. Call me Ruby. I think it’s good.” I studied myself in the mirror. I looked normal enough. The only interesting thing about the dress was that the neckline was wide enough to show off my collarbones.
“Then let’s check out and make some cake.”
Her apartment wasn’t very far. It was probably the smallest apartment in the building, and the doorman gave me a very disapproving look before he gave that to my companion in equal measures.
In the elevator, she turned to look at me, both of us carrying bags that she’d insisted on helping carry. “I’m sorry about the doorman. He’s not used to anyone from Song.”
“This building doesn’t allow infernal creatures? That makes sense.”
“It’s prejudiced!” She exclaimed, clearly outraged at the injustice.
I smiled at her, showing my fangs. “There are good reasons for it.”
“No, there isn’t a reason, just prejudice. The last serial killer I read about was human. Nothing infernal or heavenly about him. And the one before that was a mix of infernal and heavenly. But that doesn’t mean that the infernal blood infected the heavenly. It’s not like that!”
I nodded at her. “Someone you love must have infernal blood.”
She winced and then glanced around the elevator like there might be spies. Maybe there were. Once the doors opened, she hurried down the hall to the tiny apartment that still had a very nice stove in the very small kitchen.
She showed me the process, helping me to make it when it was clear that she was dying to take over. Still, I did it all myself, measuring the flour, cracking a thousand eggs, beating those eggs into frothy peaks, flouring the pan, and cutting the parchment paper to fit.
“Use a light hand,” she said encouragingly over my shoulder.
I focused on being delicate, like I was skinning someone. You had to use your knives just so. This was like that.
And then the pan was in the oven, and I was ready to do something less stressful.
“And now we can make cards!” Her enthusiasm was starting to scare me. We moved into the living room, where she had a shelf full of scissors and paper and other sparkly, sticky things.
“What is the point of decorating paper and folding it in half to give to someone?” I asked, picking up a purple sheet.