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He hurled the bugs at the demon through the magical, slightly glowing barrier between us. They struck the barrier and then they started expanding, and wriggling, and in general, being a way worse nightmare than kissing Rynne’s little brother.
The bugs he’d dropped also started expanding and coming to life, but less dramatically than the other ones. But still, when one started climbing up my leg, I shrieked and flailed around, kicking Percy in the calf.
He shot me a glare and then he was kicking his own not-so-little bugs off himself.
Five bugs attached themselves to my legs and bit me. I screamed and stomped them off, then climbed the nearest thing, which happened to be Percy. “Your magic could use some finesse,” I said, holding onto him and flicking a big bug with wings off his shoulder.
He grabbed my legs with one arm, fingers grasping my hip while I struggled to stay balanced. “Your bugs were already enchanted. Where did you get them?”
“I collected them myself from…” I brushed half a dozen bugs off his legs and kind of groped his butt before I realized what I was doing. “Sorry! That wasn’t me.”
He sighed heavily and stomped on a bug the size of a mouse while the demon dealt with his own monstrously vicious bugs. “If you apologize, that makes a denial contradictory, but perhaps confusion is your intention, thus the pre-enchanted bugs.”
“I’m telling you that they weren’t enchanted. You just messed up your magic. It happens to the best of us.” Like I’d know anything about magic, but there was always time for validation.
The demon snarled and turned to leave, but when he tried, another magic brightly lit geometric box flared up, showing him trapped where he was with the bugs growing still larger and clearly hungry for demon flesh.
I lost track of the demon for the next few seconds while I tried to kick bugs off Percy’s legs as he spun around, stomping the creatures I got off him. We weren’t the worst bug-fighting team in the world, but it was awkward, and I was super glad that no one I knew saw the debacle.
The demon snarled and roared, then vanished in a puff of vile-smelling smoke, leaving us with enormous magic bugs to deal with before they ate all the happily sleeping passengers.
Percy let go of my legs and I fell abruptly down, landing on a bug the size of a saucer. Happily, it crunched satisfyingly, but unhappily, left a very splashy squish behind. Ew. The smell wasn’t that great, either. Maybe I shouldn’t run around with bugs in a bottle.
“Hatikarulah Nullo Vida!” Percy declared with long, sweeping arm movements.
The bugs all went still, the fancy glowing designs went out, and I was left standing on one foot with goo dripping off the other boot.
Percy took the bugs one at a time and threw them out the door and onto the passing train tracks below us. I helped after the second one, because I wasn’t just going to stand there on one foot like a prissy princess. If he could deal with bug guts on his shoes, so could I. Still, it was really genuinely revolting to pick up the hard-shelled beasts in my bare hands and carry them to the door. On the very last one, I thought it moved, and I shrieked and dropped it, earning a mocking smile from Percy of No Mercy.
“Don’t say anything.” I hissed, scooping it up and carrying it gingerly away from my body to throw out the door he held open for me. Ugh. I was never going to touch another bug again.
“I didn’t say a word, Red of Bug Dread. Not one word.”
Chapter
Eight
Iwas going to kill him.
The waxing, the exfoliating, and the skin polishing were enough torture, but the dress and the hair were completely unnecessary cruelties. They cut off two feet of hair before I realized what they were doing, and of course it would grow back, but I’d had that hair since I was five. It was my good old friend that had been with me through thick and thin, and now I had hair down to my shoulder blades that the tress-torturers had straightened and then curled in loose waves that looked pretentious over my pale, luminous skin. My skin was that color, cream and roses, or something else poetic, when they were finished with me, and that was before they did the makeup.
They put my hair up in elaborate coils woven with white roses and baby’s breath to match the dress. In other words, I looked like a ceramic doll waiting for some power-hungry male to pick up and carry away. Back to the dress. I didn’t pick it out when the dressmakers came, they just measured me, which was enough awkwardness to last me a lifetime, and then sent me off to get more spa treatments. Torture. When I was at the hotel, trying not to cry after they’d murdered my hair, they sent the dress, approved by Marigold. Marigold the Monster.
It was like my sensible white slip if you added a pound of push-up, a breath-stealing waist-cincher, plus twenty yards of cheesecloth. It had dozens of gauzy layers around and over and under the ribs-crushing stomach-hater. I couldn’t breathe, and when I tried to breathe, my formerly uninteresting chest swelled alarmingly. I looked stunning, sure, but nothing like myself. Of course, that was the point, but for some reason I hadn’t thought, ‘I’ll flaunt my dubious charms at my father to get his attention,’ because it hadn’t crossed my mind. Of course, Percy of No Mercy would use it as a fresh opportunity to humiliate me, like the bugs weren’t bad enough.
It wasn’t just that I spent most of my time trying not to get objectified, but the terrifying truth was that this level of artistic presentation took confidence to pull off, confidence that I didn’t have. I would go to the party with the wrong posture, the wrong words, the wrong expression, and everyone would know that I was a poseur. I’d be thrown out before I made it two steps past the door.
I stood in that arched ceiling hotel room painted the color of the sky at nightfall, with a hint of purple to the blue that made everything dreamy, and stared at my reflection in the enormous cheval mirrors, one in front of me, one behind, stretching out forever, framing me, the pretend princess who had no idea how to so much as breathe right.
My eyes shone with unshed tears, but I wouldn’t spill a single one, not when the makeup artists had worked so hard to turn my pretty into perfection. Would Percy of No Mercy finally look at me as an object worth having, instead of an object worth mocking? My heart beat faster at the thought. Men seemed to be pretty basic when it came to beauty and desire. Was there a secret corner of my heart that harbored the wish to be seen and desired by someone as vain and cruel as Percival?
A brief rap on the door came before it opened and he walked in, confidence oozing out of every piece of him from the lines of his impeccable suit to the sleek fall of his dark hair.
“The makeup artists told me that you’re ready. You look like you’re going to throw up. If you can face demons and giant bugs, you can face the wealthy elite that you don’t care about.” He came over, adjusting his cuffs. He treated me exactly the same in this thing as he did in my white slip or shapeless black dress.
“Do you like my dress?” I asked, because maybe he hadn’t noticed somehow.
He frowned as he studied it, dropping on his heels before he tested some of the skirt layers, like they were curtains he was going to replace. “The spellwork is neat and subtle. You shouldn’t have to worry about your posture or your movement if you don’t try to do anything too difficult.” He stood up and then poked a curl draped over my shoulder and down over the bodice. “The hair may be slightly too romantic, but it suits the dress, and it’s hard to find spelled dresses of this quality on short notice. I can see why it was still available, though. It doesn’t look very comfortable. Can you breathe? If you faint, do it on the stairs, because that will get the most attention, and you’ll be less likely to be silently dragged out of the party and down into the dungeon.” He smiled cheerfully.
