Slumber (11 page)

“There's a bouquet in the hall,” Skye said. “I'll get it.”

Ruby didn't want to start playing the stupid flower game again, but since Tam showed no inclination to leave she had to retake her seat next to him. “What's the Slumber?” she muttered while they waited.

“It's sort of a spell but different,” he murmured in her ear like he was whispering sexy nothings. He draped his arm around her shoulders again and ran a finger sensuously down the side of her neck, making her stiffen.

Ruby caught Ash's appraising eyes on her, so she forced herself to snuggle into Tam and smile like a brainless bimbo. It wasn't as hard as it should have been. “What do you mean, the Slumber's not really a spell?”

“It's more like a side effect of being at Cottingley. We've been living here since the first colonial settlements. We think humans absorb the
fae
magic that's been soaking into the property for hundreds of years and get, uh, spacey. Kind of the way sniffing marijuana smoke on your clothes can still pack a wallop.”

“In other words, humans get high on magic just by being here.”

“Yeah. The effect can be pretty strong depending on the person's resistance and, um, other things. When people leave, they think anything that happened here was just a dream. And even if they don't, who's going to believe them?”

Ruby remembered the girl in the emergency room who thought she broke her arm falling out of bed. “So you can talk to us like we're your pets and do magic right in front of us, and we won't remember. How convenient.”

He thumbed her ear, which sent an unwilling shiver through her. “Blame the fact that humans are always trying to rationalize the unexplained. It's not our fault that it works in our favor.”

“Is it going to happen to me, this Slumber effect?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Maybe. Or not. Magic is unpredictable. Now that you're aware of it, you might be immune to the effects.”

Ruby opened her mouth to ask him why awareness would make a difference, but at that moment Skye returned holding another bouquet of flowers, this time beautiful blood-red roses. The game continued. After the first round, where everyone's flowers went poof in a puff of flame, Ruby's carefully aimed petal somehow just missed the edge of the bowl. Her heart skipped a beat.

“Forfeit! Forfeit!” the fairies hollered.

“Make her fat with warts all over her face!” Skye screamed.

The boy fairy's face lit up with a predatory smile. “I wouldn't mind if she gave us all lap dances.”

“How about seeing if Madison can fly off the battlements?” Cosette murmured, sensuously circling Ash's thigh with a fingertip.

“Wouldn't that, like, break her neck or something?”

Ash spoke up. “Let Tam decide, since she's his human.”

Everyone expectantly turned to Tam.

Ruby's heart was jacking against her ribs. She was completely at Tam's mercy, but that had to be better than letting the other fairies determine whatever psycho forfeit their twisted minds could devise. Right?

Tam's lips curled into a smile. “I think Madison's punishment should be…to kiss me.”

The others rolled their eyes. “That doesn't sound like a punishment at all,” Skye pouted.

“Trust me, it is.”

“
Est-ce vrai?
” Cosette murmured. “But why?”

Ruby's eyes locked onto Tam's. There was a challenge in them, plus amusement. He'd leaned back into the leather. Waiting.

“Just get it over with so we can keep playing,” Skye said impatiently.

Fine. Ruby leaned into Tam and pressed her lips into his.

His lips parted, and the kiss deepened. Oh holy cow, Tam kissed like Hendrix played guitar, with complete and utter awesomeness, and the kiss he was giving her now was every bit as good as the one at the art gallery. She felt her body melt into his while his palms ran down her back.

Applause pierced the fog of bliss misting her senses, and she broke away, gasping, to see Skye and the other boy groping each other.

“Mmm, Tam,
chère
, your human knows how to give quite the performance,” Cosette said while Ash's hands quested up the hem of her dress. “You should take care not let her get away from you.”

Tam's black eyes never left Ruby's. They sparked with a knowing gleam. “Believe me, I'm working on it,” he said.

Ruby's cheeks burned with humiliation and anger. The door to the lounge thumped open, and Aryenis ran into the room.

“Oh shit, busted,” the boy fairy stage-whispered, while the others giggled.

Aryenis snatched up the remaining roses, fury and shock on her face. She cradled the mangled bouquet to her chest like it was a wounded kitten and wiped a tear away from her cheek. Then, with an accusatory glare at all of them, she ran back out of the room, snickers following her.

“What was that all about?” Ruby asked Tam. The others had got up and started drifting away now that the game was over.

“Aryenis doesn't like anyone messing with her flowers.”

“Then why do it if it's going to upset her so much?”

“Because it's fun. It's not as if she's going to yell at us or anything.”

“But—”

“Best not to ask, Ruby.” Tam's earlier playfulness was gone. “Seriously. The less you know about us, the better it will be for you in the end.”

Ruby was suddenly aware that Tam could turn his moods on and off like a light switch when he needed to. Deception came so naturally to him.

She needed to remember that—and not how right it felt to be in his arms.

A gong sounded throughout the house.

“Time for dinner,” Tam announced. He rose and held out his hand to her.

“I've never seen food here before, just drugs and booze.”

“Not all of us eat. But some of us have human guests. It wouldn't be polite to let them starve.”

I'm surprised starving the humans hasn't been turned into some sort of fairy game
, she thought, following Tam down a hallway and into an opulent dining room. Glittering chandeliers hung over a long table exquisitely laid out with gold plates and crystal goblets. Most of the seats were already occupied. Here and there Ruby picked out a few humans—they were less radiantly beautiful than the fairies and wore the dazed expression of people on the verge of waking up from a dream. Or a really bad acid trip.

Tam politely seated Ruby before settling in the chair next to her. “Don't touch,” he said mildly to the human boy on Ruby's right. The guy shrank back from her.

Ruby opened her mouth to tell Tam she didn't need protection, she knew how to take care of herself, when the door to the dining room opened. Violet strode in arrogantly, flanked by two hunky guys wearing low slung leather pants, dog collars, and nothing else. She surveyed the room, green eyes sharp and feral…

And her gaze stopped right at Ruby.

“A new fuck buddy, Tam?” Violet sneered

“She calls herself Madison. Right, baby?” Tam slung an arm over Ruby's shoulders and pulled her in for a quick squeeze.

Fighting the panic bolting through her, Ruby copied the dazed expression of the other humans and gave what she hoped was a flirtatious giggle up into Tam's face. He raised a brow at her.

Violet snorted. “This one's a step up from your trailer trash playmate, I'll give you that. Move,” she said to the fairies sitting across from them. She and her entourage took the suddenly vacated seats.

Ruby tensed. Tam didn't seem all that thrilled either, but he shrugged and filled their champagne flutes out of one of the bottles of Cristal littering the table.

“There's something familiar about you,” Violet said to Ruby, eyes narrowing as they razed her face. “Either that, or the lack of variety in Tam's bedmates is appalling.”

“If it ain't broke,” Tam replied cheerily. “Madison has been highly entertaining.”

“I'll bet. You always did like simple creatures, Tam. This one seems even simpler than your usual fare though.”

I really want to punch you
, Ruby thought as she gazed at Violet's delicate face, marred by her disgusted expression.

Tam must have felt Ruby make an involuntary movement because under cover of the table he put a restraining hand over her clenched fist. “Simplicity is much more satisfying than trying too hard,” he said. “You should give it a whirl sometime.”

“No thanks. I like my diversions to be sophisticated.”

“Like those two, I suppose.” Tam tilted his half-empty flute at the two boys sitting on either side of Violet. “Nothing screams sophistication like half-naked boys in leather.”

Violet arched a perfect eyebrow. “Exactly.”

A chime sounded, which thankfully put an end to their banter. To Ruby's shock, food magically appeared on their plates.

The dude next to her giggled and started to play with the roasted quail on his plate. “Little birdie, fly fly fly,” he said in a sing-song voice. He picked up the greasy quail and zoomed it around like a toy airplane. Down a few seats, a guy fairy stuffed his mouth with raw meat then grinned, mouth full, to the human girl next to him. She laughed, popped a handful of pills, and washed them down with a chug from a bottle of Grey Goose. Bits of food flew in the air as the fairies and humans tossed their dinner at each other.

Ruby stared down at her plate. An intricate arrangement of rare tuna and micro-greens dribbled artfully with some sort of sauce lay before her. In a Manhattan restaurant, a dish like this would cost at least a hundred bucks.

Nothing on earth would get her to take a bite. The less magic she came in contact with, the better, and that included magical food.

Violet toyed with a lettuce leaf. “So. Madison, is it? How long have you known Tam?”

Ruby plastered on the spacey expression. “I'm not sure. Couple days, maybe?”

“We met in the city,” Tam said. He ignored the steak on his plate, sipping champagne instead.

“The city. Really.” She fed the leaf to one of her pretty boys. “One of the boroughs, you mean. Queens? Brooklyn?”

Ruby forced herself to reply calmly to the person killing her mother. “Upper East Side.”

“Huh. I didn't know you had a taste for uptown girls, Tam.”

“I didn't until I met Madison,” Tam said with a sideways grin at Ruby.

Ruby giggled brainlessly in response. Violet rolled her eyes with an expression of distaste but not with the teeth-gritting hatred she'd displayed toward Ruby. She wondered what it was about her true self that bugged Violet so much.

The guy next to her launched his quail into the air over the heads of the other guests. It hit the wall with a greasy thud and fell on the floor. He started to cry.

“I think I'm finished,” Ruby told Tam.

“You've hardly touched your food.”

“I'm good.”

Tam shrugged and rose, holding the chair out for her. Some of the other guests had already begun drifting away, especially from the other end of the long table, where the food fight had started to intensify.

“Let's go, boys.” Violet rose as well. Studded leather leashes appeared in her hand, which she clipped onto their dog collars. She gave the leashes a tug, and the two boys obediently slithered behind her as she headed out of the room. “Nighty night,” she said over her shoulder.

Cosette and Ash sauntered up to Ruby and Tam. Ruby hadn't seen them at dinner—maybe they hadn't been there at all. Ash was wearing a well-worn leather motorcycle jacket over a muscle-tee while Cosette had changed into skin-tight cigarette pants, a crop-top, and stilettos. They looked like extras from
Grease
.

“Your human is so very pretty,” Cosette said to Tam, clinging to Ash's arm. “Can we borrow her for the night? We're going to do some role-playing.”

“Borrow…Madison?” Tam shot Ruby an indecipherable look.

“We'll make sure she has a good time,” Ash added.

“
She'll
have a good time, but what about me?” Tam answered lightly.

Cosette tittered. “Join us,
mon chère
. My bed's big enough for all four of us.”

“Hmm.”

Was Tam actually considering it? Ruby almost blew her cover to yell HELL NO, but she forced herself to remain docile.

Tam gave it a beat—to torture her? To see if she'd agree?—and then he said, “This is Madison's first night at Cottingley. I think I'll keep her with me. I'm sure you'll both have fun without her. Come on, baby.” Tam took her hand and started leading her out of the room.

“If you change your mind,” Cosette said regretfully after them.

Out in Cottingley's main lounge, the party was just getting started. Electronica pumped from unseen speakers, and pot smoke thickened the air. Tam kept hold of Ruby's hand as he weaved between couples making out, doing lines, or tossing back shots of Jagermeister or Patron. In the corner, a group of fairy boys poured sake into the open mouth of a human girl lying prone on the floor. She choked and barfed all over herself. They laughed wildly at her.

Wooziness dogged Ruby as she followed Tam up the stairs and back to his room. Maybe she was getting high from the secondhand smoke or maybe she should have risked eating some of the food at dinner. Or maybe the disgust was getting to her. When Tam shut the door, she couldn't hold back any longer and rounded on him.

“You fairies are gross! How dare you pass us around like we're toys, using us for your sick games?”

Tam leaned back against the door and regarded her with amusement. “I've never had any complaints. The humans I've brought to Cottingley always have a good time.”

“Oh, like getting half-drowned in sake or being bedmates in threesomes?”

“Yeah, like that. Why not? I've never forced my guests to do anything they didn't want to do.”

“But what about the other fairies, like Violet? Do you think she gives a crap about her human guests?”

He looked away. “I don't know. How the others treat their guests is none of my business. The ones who aren't having fun usually don't stick around.” He seemed uncertain though.

The throb of hard partying vibrated up through the floor to the soles of her feet. “You mean the Slumber gets them, and they're dumped back into the real world with amnesia and a massive hangover—if they're lucky.”

“You know what I've noticed about you? You worry about others too much. You should think about your own pleasures for once. Why don't you let me make you feel fantastic?” He pushed off against the door with one shoulder and approached until they were almost toe to toe. She watched in almost hypnotic fascination as his head dipped low toward hers. “Come to bed with me, and I'll show you how good you can feel.”

She stared up at him. “Are you serious?”

“Never more serious in my life.”

And become another notch in his bedpost?
Ruby gave a disbelieving laugh right in his face. “No fucking way, Tam. The last thing I'm interested in is being one of your random hookups. I've got a little more self-respect than that.”

Did she imagine the admiration flickering across his face? Or was it just disappointment? Whatever the emotion, it disappeared in an instant, leaving his expression smooth and in control. He took a step back. “Okay, whatever. Sleep alone, it doesn't matter to me. I don't need to force anyone to come to my bed. You can take the spare bedroom at the top of the stairs. No one will bug you there.”

“Thanks.” She hugged her arms, feeling a chill as he moved away from her. “I appreciate it.”

“But if you change your mind…” He gave her a flirty grin.

She couldn't help laughing at his hopeful expression as she grabbed her backpack and discarded clothes. “Not likely, but you can keep dreaming about it. Good night.”

“Night, Ruby.”

The stairway to the third floor was badly lit and cobwebby; the spare room distinctly garret-like, sparse and cold, with a narrow hard bed, ugly furniture, and one lone lamp. Like a poor servant's room in a story like ‘The Little Princess,' or ‘Cinderella.' She had a sneaking suspicion Tam sent her here on purpose to make his own room seem more appealing by comparison. It was kind of working.

Even three floors up, she could still hear the sounds of partying with the occasional shriek or yell over the music's muffled beats. She dragged the dresser in front of the door for extra security. She didn't trust anyone in this place.

Then she lay on the hard mattress and tried not to think of Tam's soft bed—or his warm arms.

Maybe she couldn't even trust herself.

She got up, rummaged around her backpack, and pulled out the page with the story of the Ruby Red necklace. She lay back down with her knees drawn up protectively, clutching it.

“What am I getting myself into?” she said into the silent, cold room.

But there was no answer, except for the wind rattling against her window like a warning.