Chapter Four
Itracked down Cecil first.
“He’s in the back room with Kiv,” Gela Melliza said when I called. “They’re working on a recipe for iced faery cakes together. We can’t serve the cakes to customers, but they’re having fun.”
Faeries Kiv and Gela Melliza ran The Desert Rose Café in Smokethorn. It was less of a café than a coffeehouse—the menu consisted of various teas and coffees and a select variety of sandwiches and pastries.
“Fairy cakes. Aren’t they just cupcakes?” I perched on the stool in front of my workstation in the garden room and picked up a wilted rose petal left over from a menstruation pain relief tincture I’d been working on for a client. “Why can’t you serve them to your customers?”
“Not fairy with an ‘i.’ Faery with an ‘e.’ They’re nothing like the fairy cakes you people are accustomed to.
The side effects for non-Faery folk include hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, anxiety, panic, bizarre behavior, and violent seizures.
” Her voice brightened. “Oh, but they’re a delicacy in our world. ”
“Glad I asked. Please don’t let him bring any of that home. All I need is for him to feed one to Senora Cervantes.”
“Aw, Cecil’s a good guy. He’d never do that.”
“Are we talking about the same ornery little dude?” I lifted the rose petal to my nose and sniffed. The scent reminded me of Abuela Lulu, and I smiled. “I mean it, Gela. Check his pockets.”
“Don’t worry. Kiv will do it. They’re a lot more cynical than I am.”
“Good. Can you also please tell him to hang out until I get there, please? I need his assistance with something.”
“Will do.” The faery lowered her voice. “Thanks for encouraging him to visit us. Kiv gets homesick for the old country sometimes. Cecil’s presence calms them.”
“Cecil’s presence calms them,” I repeated. “Gela, that’s a sentence no one has ever uttered before. I should write it on the calendar. Light a candle. Commemorate the date somehow.”
Gela laughed and ended the call.
Now that I knew Cecil was safe with the Melliza cousins, I could focus on tracking down Fennel.
My partners were free to come and go as they pleased, but it was unusual for them to be gone this long and not give me a head’s up where they were going. We were running a business, after all.
I stared down at the empty cat bed I’d bought for him after he decided to stay with me. Originally, I’d placed it further back in the garden room where it was quieter. He’d dragged it to where it was now. Near the door, beneath the planter where I grew his namesake.
“Where are you, gato?”
I’d talked to most of the residents, and no one had seen him, so I decided to walk the perimeter of the Siete Saguaros.
Fennel had taken to napping by the new saguaro sprouts, going as far as to curl his body around the smaller ones.
He was as invested in their wellbeing as I was, and I appreciated it.
The largest of the saguaro sprouts, Red, was alone.
I’d visited him on my way to Ida’s this morning, so I didn’t stick around long after ascertaining that Fennel wasn’t there.
I did, however, take a quick second to send some magic into his roots.
It was habit now, something I’d started doing the day I saw the first signs of life from the once-dead plants.
Every saguaro in the park had died the day my mom had, as if she’d been their sole reason for existing. Red’s death, especially, had cut me to the core, and I’d nearly killed myself trying to save him. Had it not been for Ida—and later Fennel—I don’t believe I’d have made it.
Now that they were back, things felt more settled in the park. It meant I’d connected with the soil here, that it had accepted me, and that it trusted me with its most precious of gifts—the elder saguaros who protected the park.
I jogged past Red and headed to the saguaro sprout outside Senora Cervantes’s trailer—Orange. Mom had loved rainbows, and had named the giant cactuses using the Roy G. Biv mnemonic device.
Fennel wasn’t with Orange, Yellow, or Blue, but when I passed Indigo, I spotted him lying on his back in a ray of sunshine beside Violet. At only a few inches tall, she was the tiniest sprout, and we were all protective of her.
“Hey, I need to run a couple of errands. I could use your help,” I said.
He rolled onto his side and blinked up at me. “Meow.”
“Cool. Thanks. I’m going to need a few things from the garden room, then we’ll pick up Cecil at the café, and head out to the cemetery.”
“Meow?” Fennel rolled to his feet, tail up, ears alert.
“Yeah, the cemetery. It’s time to let my long-lost grandfather tell me about my even longer-lost birth father.”
Fennel head-butted my leg. He saw through my sarcasm and understood what this was going to cost me.
Goddess, I wasn’t looking forward to this.
Before today, I’d fought my grandfather whenever he tried to tell me about his son—or grandson, or great-grandson, for all I knew.
Time was a stretchy thing in the otherworlds.
As a result of that elasticity, relationships on Sexton’s side of reality were often hard to define on this one.
He called me granddaughter, but I could just as easily have been his hundred-times-great-granddaughter.
Trying to parse it all out threatened to break my brain, so I mostly accepted the situation on faith. I was Bertrand Sexton’s granddaughter, and his son was my father, and that was that.
Sheez. That almost made our relationship sound normal.
Then again, I supposed normal was in the eye of the beholder.
After picking up Cecil at the café, I buckled him and Fennel into Fennel’s kitty car seat.
The “buckles” were snap clips attached to the ends of six-inch nylon leashes sewn into the back of the seat.
I hooked one to Fennel’s collar and cinched the other around Cecil’s waist like a belt.
It wouldn’t be much help in a serious accident, but it would keep them from picking their teeth up off the dashboard if I had to slam on the brakes at a traffic light.
Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Let it Ride” blared out of the speakers when I started the car. A promising beginning to our journey.
“It’s morning, so I’m not sure Sexton will be available, and before you chitter or meow at me, no, I didn’t call first. I’m just going to charge in and demand answers.”
The BTO song finished and “Ain't No Sunshine” by Bill Withers followed it.
That felt less promising.
“I’ll just charge right in there.” I slowed for a stoplight.
A left turn would put me on the road to the cemetery. Right would take me into downtown La Paloma.
“Soon. I’ll charge in soon.” I veered across two lanes and hung a sharp right, royally ticking off the driver behind me if the way he laid on the horn was any indication. “Right after I drop off this tincture at Wicked. It’s for one of Bronwyn’s customers.”
Cecil chittered.
Fennel meowed.
“She asked for it two days ago, you know. We owe it to her to get it there as fast as we can.”
Chitter.
Meow.
“Fine, I’m procrastinating. Whatever. I don’t need this kind of judgement from you guys,” I said. “Let’s just drop this off with Bronwyn, grab a burrito, maybe stop by Beau’s place and—”
CHITTER.
MEOW.
“Fine.” I gritted my teeth. “We’ll go to the cemetery right after we stop by Wicked. You have my word.” I thumbed at the backseat. “While I’m inside with Bronwyn, could you arrange the belladonna I brought to bribe Sexton, Cecil? You do it better than I do. Also, it’s not poisonous to you.”
“Meow?”
“Not a bribe. Did I say bribe? A gift. Can you arrange the gift, Cecil?”
Cecil nodded. His purple hat flung back, and I caught a glimpse of glazed-over, beady little eyes.
“You know, Gela said those cakes you and Kiv made were basically like PCP for non-Faery folk. What exactly do they do to your kind?”
The little deviant’s response was to tug his hat back down and shrug.
“Nice to know you’re going to be at the top of your game,” I muttered.
I pulled into the parking lot behind Wicked. Cracked the window before shutting off the engine even though Cecil was a gnome, not a beagle. He had magical ways of keeping cool.
Fennel trailed me as I strolled down the walkway toward the front door.
The day was warm, around eighty-five degrees, nothing like it would get in a few weeks’ time.
When it started to hit triple digits, I wouldn’t leave Cecil or Fennel in the car no matter how much magic they possessed.
I wouldn’t leave an iced tea in the car then. It was too risky.
The chimes announcing our entrance brought Bronwyn out from behind her counter. “Hey, Betty. Hello, Fennel.”
Fennel had a thing for Bronwyn. It was plain to see why—the woman was the polar opposite of me.
Kind-hearted, sympathetic, and girl-next-door sweet.
She resembled a real-world Princess Tiana, if you replaced the fairytale gown with a peasant blouse and skirt and the glittery crown with a black witch hat.
Yes, the woman was wearing an actual pointed hat, and no, it wasn’t Halloween.
“We doing the hat again?”
She tossed her long black braids down her back. Dabbed at the perspiration on her golden-brown cheeks with the back of one hand. “Sales go up when I wear it, so yes.”
“Because you’re adorable,” a female voice called out.
Maya Reeves emerged from the storeroom in the back with a cardboard box clutched to her chest. Bronwyn’s best friend, Maya was a white woman in her mid-forties with shoulder-length blond hair and nut-brown eyes. She was also a rat shifter, though she hadn’t yet joined the local pack.
“Oh please. Adorable?” Bronwyn said. Adorably.
Yeesh.
Maya held up the box. “The lady from the crystal shop in East Pluto just dropped this off. Hi, Betty and Fennel.”
“Hey,” I replied.
Fennel meowed.
Bronwyn’s skirt swished as she whirled around and jogged behind the counter. She grabbed a small, rectangular bundle off a shelf. “Is she still there?”
“No. Just handed me the box and drove off. Looked like she was in a hurry.”