Rise of Allies (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 4) (36 page)

“Jake?”

Her voice grew distant; her face went fuzzy for a minute. He felt a pleasant buzzing sensation in his head, a tingle down his arms and legs, and a weird warmth glowing in his chest.

Nixie grasped him by the shoulder and shook him. “Answer me! Are you all right? Jake, can you hear me?”

He blinked until her face came back into focus, then he gazed at her, awestruck by her unimaginable beauty. How on earth had he not seen it before?

“What?” she asked in alarm.

A dazed laugh escaped him. He gazed breathlessly at her, marveling, as though he had never seen a girl before.

Nixie furrowed her brow, looking all the more adorable. She had the loveliest dark eyes, like a starry night sky…

She punched him in the arm. “Jake! Can you walk? We have to go.”

“Ahh,” was all he said, mesmerized by her.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded.

“Nothing. I’ve never been better. I feel…wonderful, Nixie. Nixie…Valentine. Valentine! Hearts and flowers…”

She began backing away, staring at him like he had sprouted two heads. “Come on, then. Let’s get going. We have to find the paintbrush.”

He leaned against the tree, unable to tear his eyes off her. “Maybe we should just stay here and talk. I hardly know anything about you. Do you realize that? We’ve never really
talked
.”

Nixie stared at him with a sudden grimace of revulsion. “Oh,
God
.” She rolled her eyes and then started limping away rather indignantly.

“Come back, my love!” Jake called, prancing after her. He could not stop smiling and felt like he was floating.

“Would you be serious, please? This is just repulsive.”

“Please! Tell me more about yourself! I must know everything!”

“Focus, idiot. We have to find the paintbrush door, remember?”

But he just laughed, charmed at how adorable she was when she was annoyed. “I don’t care if you call me an idiot. I call you an angel.”

“Oh, if only my wand worked,” she muttered, keeping to the path.

“Why do you always wear black, little Valentine? You’d look even more beautiful if you wore some colors. But if you must wear black for your own mysterious reasons, then I shall wear it, too! Always.”

“Would you snap out of it, please? You’re not yourself!”

“I’m not, am I?” he agreed, considering his soaring emotions. “I’ve never felt so happy in all my life, actually. I’m not even hungry anymore! Maybe music really
is
the food of love. Hmm. Nixie!”

“What?” she retorted when he grasped her wrist.

“Look!” He pointed into the woods. “Let’s go pet those bunny rabbits together! Maybe they’ll let us hold them. They look so soft. Hullo, birdie.” He held out his finger and a bluebird hopped onto it and started tweeting.

Somehow he understood every word.

“Goodbye, little friend!” he called as the bluebird flitted off into the pretty-pretty woods.

Nixie stopped hobbling down the path and turned to him.

In truth, she looked like she wanted to punch him, but instead, she pressed her lips together for a moment, perhaps holding back an exasperated curse word. “Jake.”

He gazed rapturously at her. “Yes, my love?”

#  #  #

Nixie didn’t know whether to laugh or to scream. But she saw the glazed look in Jake’s blue eyes and the vacant smile on his lips, and knew perfectly well what had happened. It wasn’t his fault, of course, that he was suddenly in love—with
love
, not with her, though at the moment he couldn’t tell the difference.

Her first-ever suitor waited with bated breath for her to speak.

She almost started to reason with him but then gave up on that idea. There was no point in it, since she was dealing with a boy under a spell.

“If you love me,” she said calmly and slowly, as though she were speaking to either a very young child or a very thick dunce, “you will help me find the paintbrush door. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

A crestfallen look came over his admittedly handsome face. He was cute, she’d give him that. But she still liked Archie better. “Well, yes,” he said, “but…why do you want to go so soon? I never want to leave this wonderful place.” She jolted when he took both of her hands and held them with an earnest look. “I want to stay here forever, my darling! With you.”

“Oh, puke.” She scowled, thought about how that feisty little red-haired girl would want to punch her lights out for this, and yanked her hands free. Nixie strove for patience. “But, Jake, if you really loved me, you’d want to make me happy. Wouldn’t you?”

“Oh…” He considered this and still looked a little disappointed, but to Nixie’s relief, he must have seen she had a point and resigned himself to it. “Right! A mission for my lady. You stay here, my love, where you’re safe. Rest your poor hurt ankle. I will find it for you. Leave this to me! For I am your servant!”

With that, he raced off, the golden boy of the Order, careening through the woods to do her bidding.

Nixie rolled her eyes and shook her head, but couldn’t help laughing silently in relief. She leaned against a tree while he did the work.

“Found it!” he yelled several minutes later.

He ran back and helped to steady her, showing her the way up the path, solicitous over her every step. She kept her amusement to herself, but vowed she was never going to let him live this down.

“Here it is!” He presented the paintbrush doorway to her with a proud flourish. This one appeared as a rustic country gate leading into a sheep pasture on the far side of the woods.

“Ah! Good boy.” She reached to give him an ironic pat on the head, but to her surprise, he captured her hand and kissed her knuckles like some sort of revolting charmer.

“I deserve a reward, don’t I? Give us a kiss!” He started to pull her toward him, but she planted her feet with the stubbornness of a mule.

“Get away from me!” She arched back with a grimace as he leaned toward her, lips puckered.

Nixie shoved the idiot aside and bolted through the door.

“Come back, my princess!” he called after her, distraught, but thanks to his dart-induced infatuation, he followed.

And much to her amusement, the spell wore off as soon as he had walked a few steps into the next painting: a dim room.

Nixie glanced back over her shoulder at the sound of his mortified groan.

“Uh…what just happened?” Jake mumbled. “I don’t feel so good.”

She stopped and turned around. He was standing a few feet behind her, holding his head in confusion. She folded her arms across her chest, amused. “You don’t remember?”

“A little.” It seemed he could not bring himself to look at her. “Enough.” Another pained moan of embarrassment escaped him. “I am…so sorry about that. Please don’t tell anybody.”

“What, that you love me until death?” she asked pleasantly.

“But I don’t!” He glanced up, wide-eyed, and looked a little panicked. “I would never! Not when Archie—” He stopped himself abruptly.

Nixie arched an eyebrow. “Archie what?”

Jake lowered his head again, his forelock falling over his eyes. “Never mind. Not my place to say.”

Nixie felt a bit as if she had been grazed by a love arrow herself to think that Archie might have said something nice about her to his cousin. He really was the most interesting boy, and he looked so cute in a bowtie.

For now, she chuckled at Jake’s discomfiture. “Don’t worry, I know full well it was just the Cupid arrow talking.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled, then cleared his throat and struggled to regain his dignity, glancing around in a businesslike manner. The poor lad was obviously desperate to change the subject. “Right. So where are we now?”

“No idea,” Nixie said, but when she turned around and saw the scene on the other side of the large room, she quickly signaled for silence, a finger over her lips. She pointed across the dark background to where a richly dressed court dwarf and a royal lapdog in a jeweled collar were having their portrait painted.

They were both holding very still—and both looking very annoyed at the tediousness of this assignment.

Jake saw them, too, and nodded. Then they proceeded to tiptoe past, heading for the paintbrush lever on the far side of the room.

#  #  #

Isabelle did not know what made her glance up just then at one of the many masterworks hung around the stately parlor where the Queen received them. But the last thing she expected to see was her cousin and Nixella Valentine tiptoeing through the background of the painting.

In the presence of the Queen, the royal daughters, and the other nervous debutantes, she let out a small shriek of astonishment and sloshed her tea on herself.

Every pair of eyes in the room turned to her in startled annoyance.

“What is the matter with you, gel?” Her Majesty demanded in her no-nonsense way.

The royal princesses barely held back scornful titters, and the other debs gloated, seeing they had just moved ahead of her in Society’s great pecking order.

Isabelle gulped and looked down at her tea-stained gown. “Um,” she said haltingly, “I’m so sorry. I seem to have made, er, a little spill.”

Royal Victoria rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Miss Bradford, I fear that any gel who cannot manage a teacup may not be ready to join Society for some time yet.”

“No, Ma’am,” Isabelle agreed, lowering her head. “Sorry, Your Majesty.”

“Humph. Go.” The queen waved her off with a flick of her chubby, jeweled hand. “Run along, then, and do try to steady your nerves. You are excused.”

“Thank you, Ma’am. Sorry again,” she mumbled.

An attendant glided over and took Isabelle’s half-empty teacup and dripping saucer from her, handing her a napkin in exchange.

“Er, thank you.”

The other girls smirked as Isabel dabbed at her ruined pastel skirts in dismay, then popped up to her feet, sketched a curtsy, and started backing out. One did not turn one’s back on the monarch. At least she managed to remember that much.

As she walked backward slowly toward the door, trying not to trip and ruin whatever dignity she had left, she ran a furtive gaze over the art on the walls and held her breath when she spotted her cousin again.

How on earth had he got inside the paintings?

Oh, Jake, what have you done now?

He and Nixie had somehow found their way out of the background of the dwarf’s portrait and were now slogging with obvious difficulty across the gooey ground of a blurry, swirly, riverbank scene, in that radical new style known as Impressionism.

But dread filled Isabelle when she saw where they were heading next.
No, don’t go that way!

She had no idea how they were traveling from one picture to the next, but the painting dead ahead of the river scene—the one they’d reach as soon as they turned the corner—was the giant, twenty-foot mural labeled
The Last Day of Pompeii
.

It showed the legendary catastrophe of Mt. Vesuvius erupting, spewing lava all over the Mediterranean like an ancient doomsday.

As she bumped up against the door, Isabelle had no way of signaling her cousin not to go there. Somehow at that very moment, Jake glanced into the parlor and spotted her there.

At once, he ran up to the frame of the picture and began waving his arms to make sure he’d got her attention. Oh, she saw him, all right, and the look of distress on his face told her he was desperate to get out.

She tried not to stare, worried that somebody else might notice her shocked gaze and also see him. There was no telling what sort of trouble he might get into with the Elders if they found out he was traipsing around inside the palace art collection. She did not know how to help him.