“Wouldn’t you?”
She shrugged one smooth shoulder. “I do not think I would call any of my sex partners friends. But I did like you more than most. After all, you still live.”
Another one of Ea Seko’s names was Black Widow. There were reasons for it, which I’m certain one could guess if one applied themselves to solving that particularly-gruesome riddle.
“That I do. I come now to call a debt due.”
Brows lifting high, she nodded. “Of course you have. A deal is a deal after all, so ask your question, Rumpel, and I will let the price of it go. This time.”
The Spider’s currency was nearly identical to my own, and her powers were nearly as great as mine. But I needed two questions answered. Friend or no, I knew exactly how this worked as I’d bargain the exact same way as she in any deal.
Slipping out of my jacket, I gently laid it over the top of a chair and began to roll up my sleeve.
A lascivious grin stole across her tight features, turning her from an unassuming beauty to something ancient and profoundly disturbing. Ea Seko had the ability to unnerve me at times. I had few hang-ups about magic, but I steered well clear of necromancy and demonology, arts she was proficient in.
She rubbed her hands together. “I never thought I’d see the day that Rumpel would willingly give up his power. Whatever this is, you want it bad.”
Silver eyes began to glow.
I bit my lip. Friend or no, it was never wise to give a seer too much power over you. So I kept my mouth shut and presented her my unspoiled arm. Her touch was electric as she purred and ran her fingertips down my peach-toned flesh.
I was a bright spot of color in this otherwise monochromatic world—part of my allure for her, no doubt. Licking her lips slowly as her eyes rolled to the back of her head, she grunted. “Such power I taste in you.”
Releasing my arm, she grabbed a glass canister full of a white substance off her shelf and tossed its contents at me. The granules hit my lips. Salt.
She was binding me, creating a circle around me so that I would not renege. I would not be released from this world unless she got what I’d promised her. But I would not leave. Not without my questions answered.
Soon she began to chant in a tongue I did not know, one that sounded ancient and primordial, and that lifted all the fine hairs on my arms. The undulating waves of darkest magic, like a veil of shimmering heat over scorched ground, pressed in on me from all sides. I began to tingle with beads of sweat.
The breeze lifted outside the hut, whistling wildly and loudly as it hummed and echoed with voices dragged up from the very depths of hell itself. I swallowed hard. The sooner I asked my questions, the sooner I could leave.
But I could ask nothing until she’d finished her ritual. She was calling the ancient one to her. I didn’t know the name of this ancient, and I didn’t really care. All I knew was the ancient’s powers were very real. The only catch was that in order to get the ancient to comply, there had to be an offering of sufficient sacrifice to the questioner. If the ancient did not feel satisfied by my offer, I would learn nothing and lose far too much.
It was a risk I was willing to take.
The Spider began to gyrate and shake as she danced around me. Her movements were jerky and wild, but at the same time controlled and deliberate. Those startling silver eyes gleamed like icy flame, and even through the veil of suppressive heat surrounding me, I shivered. My clothes were drenched with my sweat. My hair was plastered to my face.
Ea Seko’s voice lifted high and higher still, until it turned from sultry feminine to throatily masculine and resonated with something that was not naturally part of her.
And then in an instant, the chaos stopped, and so did she. Her head hung to her chest, her hands were up, and one of them was open. In her palm rested her third eye, a lovely shade of electric blue, and it gazed back at me, blinking.
It was time. “Ask your questions, male.”
My first question was free; no power would be leached from me in payment.
“Can this endeavor to return my bride to the land of the living succeed?”
The eye blinked. The Spider spoke. “Yes.”
I growled. She’d given me the very barest of answer. Not that I wouldn’t have done the same, had the situation been reversed. But I’d hoped our history might make her more sympathetic to my plight. She chuckled, the sound deep and throaty and not of this world.
Clenching my jaw, I counted the cost, what I would lose, what asking this next question would do to me. But there was no other choice. There never had been.
“Ask your question, demone prince,” she hissed impatiently.
“What can I do to ensure absolute success?”
The winds outside the doors blasted against the hut, shaking the floor beneath my feet, as her laughter boomed and rang out from the very depths of her lungs.
“There are two paths I see. One, you do nothing. You let fate run its course with the mother and father. Odds of success are low, but it’s possible they will choose each other again. Two, you do as you’ve planned. Odds of success are absolute. Your bride will be returned to you.”
A trembling breath reverberated through my lungs. Shayera would be back. She would be mine again. I could fix this.
She held up a long finger. “But do not crow yet, dark prince. For if you do what you are thinking, the odds of her ever learning to love you again are slim.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “No. No, you are wrong. Shayera and I have bonded. We are—”
“No more,” she said, chuckling grimly. “Not in your world. She does not even exist, Rumpel. Those bonds are broken. There is nothing to tie her to you. Do to the mother and father as you are thinking, and they might never forgive you. That burden would be passed down to the child. She will be with you, but you may never have her again.”
She laughed. The sound was shrill and chilled me to the very marrow of my soul.
Do nothing, and there was a slight chance of getting her back. Interfere, and I would get her back, but she might loathe me forever.
Before I even had time to decide on a course of action, Ea Seko slapped her palm onto my wrist, and I roared as magic, power, and unyielding pain dropped me to my knees.
I felt the tearing of my magic, the sundering of the cord like a snap to my soul. Lightning tore through my body, rushing through my blood in a heated wave. Her laughter rang out all around me like a choir of demon bells. When she finally stopped, I was panting, heaving, stomach churning and rolling, feeling lost and displaced.
She closed her hand over the eye and lifted her head. Her own eyes were back to their normal silver, and she wore a happy smile. “I’ve taken a quarter of your power. I hope she is worth it, Rumpelstiltskin.”
“She’s worth everything and more,” I groaned as remnants of pain continued to zip down my head like electrifying needle shots.
“Then go, my friend.” She laughed, turned on her heel, and faded back into the shadow that’d birthed her.
I just barely managed to make it out of her hut before I leaned over the edge of the plank bridge and lost the contents of my stomach. I was sick for hours after, knowing what I had to do, but for the first time in my life, questioning just how far I’d be willing to go to bring my family back.
Chapter 5
Betty
Well, hell.
Honestly, there were worse words currently rolling through my mind, but those were the most PC of the bunch. I’d give anything to, yanno, stop floating in space right about now. But seeing as how that didn’t seem likely after hours of this crap, I’d happily just settle for a Twinkie. I hadn’t eaten a thing all day.
Terror had finally given way to boredom.
This wasn’t exactly how I’d planned my day to go. But then, showing up at the pond and playing Pokémon Go had been a last minute idea that, in hindsight, I desperately wished I could get a mulligan for. I hadn’t exactly been thinking I’d get snatched up by two wei
rdos at the time—and the fact that I could call anyone a weirdo, considering the freak I was, said something—one who looked like a Captain Hook reject, and another who looked like a blond demigod, like Thor’s lesser known, yet equally hot, third cousin, Cooter.
At first, I’d freaked out. Who wouldn’t, right? One second, I’m on terra firma. The next, I’m free floating in space, expecting the next breath to be my last because I’ve seen the movies, and that was what happened in space. Except after a while, all the screaming got to be a bit... well, obnoxious. Even to me.
I glanced to my left at the pirate reject, who had finally, after hours, managed to disentangle my octopus tentacles from around his neck. He was staring off into the nothingness surrounding us with a hard, annoyed look etched onto his strong features.
Pepé Le Pew hadn’t said anything else to me after our little tête-à-tête on the pier. Granted, I’d maybe acted a tad... crazy. Yeah, crazy was a good word for it. But I’d had a hell of a day, and he’d had the misfortune of catching the brunt of it.
Cooter had up and vanished a while ago, leaving us to float on the clouds, probably forever. So if Le Pew was all I was ever going to have for company, it was probably best I apologized or something.
I scratched the back of my neck, wrinkling my nose. My brother, Kelly, had always told me I was as stubborn as a mule when I had a mind to be, which was mostly when Momma made me apologize to his dumbass for being so dumb. ‘Cause boys were dumb. ’Nuff said.
The misandry was strong with me today. I held back a chuckle at the thinly-veiled Star Wars reference, pretty sure Le Pew wouldn’t get it, which would make him lose any sort of cool points he’d managed to eke out with me.
I scowled, thinking about guys and how much I was currently having a hate on for them. But that tended to happen when the guy you’d been dating for years, and was sure was going to finally man up and make an honest woman out of you, instead got caught by the town gossip behind the Piggly Wiggly making out with the town floozy. No, I wasn’t bitter or anything.
I sighed. When that failed to get Le Pew to look at me, I cleared my throat, softly at first. The obstinate male still didn’t look. So I made a show of hacking and sputtering and acting like a complete moron.
That finally made him turn. He looked at me with both brows raised, but that tight scowl somehow totally still in place. I was impressed, though I’d never tell him so.
I tapped a long, painted nail against my slim bicep. Kelly’s taunting voice echoed through time and space. It’s not hard, Bets. Just open your mouth and say “I’m sorry.”
I was really hoping this was a dream. Yes, I might be the world’s biggest uber-geek, who loved sci-fi and had my own fan site dedicated to all things cosplay and the elaborate costumes I lovingly made by hand every year, but that didn’t mean I actually wanted to live in a parallel universe.
Believe it or not, looks aside, I was a fairly responsible adult. Fairly.
Back in the day, I’d gone to college to earn a psychology degree. Not to brag or anything, but I’d been decent at reading body language. His wasn’t exactly hard to read at the moment, though. Le Pew’s lips pursed in annoyance, and he started to look away.
I was pretty sure talking to the product of my own psychosis wasn’t a sign of the most mentally-stable mind, but then, there was literally nothing and no one else here to distract me from my crazy thoughts.
I took a deep breath and blurted, “I’m sorry.” As I said it, I rubbed my fingers over my mouth, making my I’m sorry sound more like Imshurry.
“What?” Heavy-set brows lowered even farther, which I didn’t think was even physically possible.
I tossed up my hands. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. Sorry for acting like such a giant ass back there. I’m having a crap day. I lost my phone, which I spent way too much money on and can hardly afford as it is. I feel like I’ve gotten my hands on some bad ‘shrooms, but since I haven’t eaten today, I’m pretty sure that’s impossible. I’m probably going to lose my job since I was supposed to be there hours ago. And I’m almost completely positive I’ve lost my mind because you cannot be real. Cooter vanished, which further cements for me that I’m more than likely a pancake on the road somewhere while my life literally bleeds out of me. And somewhere at the bottom of that dirty pond is my other contact, I’m half-blind and grumpy right now. So I’m sorry.”
I laughed, and even to me, it sounded trippy and spooked.
Le Pew looked at me like I was a nut, which was hilarious considering I’d made him up. And that only made me laugh harder. If I was dying somewhere and this was the afterlife, it really, really sucked donkey balls.
On the heels of that thought came another one that stopped my laughter cold and caused me to break out in a wash of cold sweat. I couldn’t be dying. This couldn’t be it. Who would help Kelly raise Briley?
My breath scissored violently through my chest, making me ache and shake my head. Any bit of hilarity I’d just felt vanished like a moth’s wings in flame.
Suddenly, his hands were on me, feeling hella real and dragging me back from a deep, dark pit of despair threatening to swallow me whole.
“Look at me, pigêon.”
I didn’t even care right now that he was calling me a disease-riddled poop plopper because his hands were more real than anything else in this godforsaken place.
Our eyes connected, and I literally felt hot all of sudden. Not just turned on, which I weirdly was, but like someone had just shoved a torch down my throat and was burning me up from the inside out.
My vision shifted, and spots danced before my eyes as I stared deep into his dark blue ones.
I’d never seen this man before in my life, but suddenly, it felt like I’d known him forever, like he and I had done this a million times before—connected on a soul-deep and visceral level. I swallowed hard. His jaw dropped, and judging by the scroll of emotions playing across a face I’d grudgingly call the sexiest thing I’d ever seen—though I wasn’t now and never had been into pretty boys like Le Pew—he was feeling something weird right now, too.
We stayed locked that way, me feeling like there was something I wasn’t remembering, for what felt like an eternity. My subconscious was roaring to life, a fire-breathing dragon demanding I remember something that mattered deeply, profoundly. I didn’t even realize I was crying until his thumbs scrubbed tears off my cheeks.
What the hell was happening to me? What was this? I’d made this man up completely. He wasn’t real. He wasn’t. So why did he feel so real to me right now? Why did his cologne of sandalwood and something deeper and darker tug at an emotion that I’d not known existed until now? A fierce longing and crazy-insane loyalty.
Which was nuts. Absolutely insanely crazy. I couldn’t be loyal to a figment of my imagination, a pirate-looking knockoff with a pretty-boy face and deep-sea-blue eyes that tugged at my soul.
“I swear I’m going crazy. But it feels... it feels like—”
“I know you,” he whispered, words breaking and full of heat.
I shivered.
And then... the spell was broken. With a hard growl, he all but shoved me away from him, staring at me with something that looked a hell of a lot like scorn. I almost fell on my ass, flailing my arms in a windmill just to keep my balance.
Completely and totally discombobulated, I rubbed my hands down my arms and didn’t even have it in me to snap at him for being so damn rude. I guess I hadn’t been much of a peach myself lately, either.
“This is real, isn’t it?” I asked softly, several minutes later, both of us still staring at each other, wearing identical frowns.
This... him... it went against everything I knew, everything I’d ever believed in. Time traveling tunnels through space did not exist. Sexy pirate Pepé Le Pews did not exist. Demigod Cooters did not exist.
And yet... the aching sadness in my heart was starting to spread, telling me that, beyond belief, beyond all rational explanation, beyond the reality of scien
ce I’d been taught in school, not only was this real, but so was he.
Worse yet, I wasn’t on Earth anymore. Kelly wouldn’t just be wondering where I’d gone to, but he’d be in a full-out panic, thinking the absolute worst. And the very worst thing yet...
Briley, my beautiful, wonderful, special little nephew, was never going to understand that his kooky but awesome aunt hadn’t abandoned him the same way his mama had the second she’d looked into the eyes of that lovely child and realized she couldn’t handle raising a kid with Down’s Syndrome.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, shaking my head as fat tears dripped down my cheeks. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.” My knees got weak, and then they could no longer hold me up. I dropped, shaking my head and begging to the heavens to please let me wake up.
Please take me home.
Please.
Please.
Chapter 6
Rumpel
It’d taken me far too long to return to them. I felt the new limits of my power on an intense level. Grabbing hold of my still-aching stomach, I stared at the two of them in the tunnel of stars—Betty with her head hanging and shoulders shaking, and Gerard staring off into the cosmos with a broken and shattered look in his eyes.
Once, in a different life, I’d counted these two amongst my very few, but very dear friends. Doing to them as I was doing now, a part of me hated myself for it, hated that any of this had happened, that I was making the decisions I was currently making.
Betty was radically altered from the woman I’d once known. It was why I’d not been able to find her on my own, why I’d needed the mystical bond she and Gerard shared to bring her to me, why I’d been forced to shatter Gerard’s dreams of ever having a happily ever after with Belle, the woman he’d loved so fiercely that the loss of her in the other life had sent him spiraling into a deep, dark depression that’d very nearly earned him a death sentence by the fairy council.
In that world, it’d been Betty that had healed him, Betty that had saved him. But in this world, they weren’t even close to being the same people. Betty was far different than she’d been then. She was sassy and temperamental, not to mention physically altered.