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“I thought you’d have clapped me upside the head by now for putting my hand on you,” he says, bemused.
I smirk and laugh. “I think you’d enjoy that far too much. Besides, letting you feel me up is worth seeing the look of confusion on your face.”
Finn fake scowls at me. “Two can play at that game,” he replies and then moves his hand from my knee to my inner thigh and works his way up under my dress. It takes all of my will power not to stop him. I feel like a teenager playing some dumb flirtatious game with the boy I fancy. The hard pressure of his hand sends tingles shooting through me. When he gets dangerously close to the top I breathe out shakily and grab his hand, effectively shoving it away from me.
“Aw, too much for you, was it Petal?” he asks happily.
“Yeah,” I reply deadpan, “you’re so completely irresistible, Finn.”
Even though my words are sarcastic, I can’t help admitting to myself that he kind of is irresistible in a way, with his roguish charm and sharp tongue.
“And don’t you forget it,” he says with a wink and a grin, just as we pull the car to a stop around the corner from Steward’s Street where Indigo is located.
When we near the entrance to the shop, I immediately notice the steady flow of customers going in and out. I know I didn’t work in the place for very long, but not i
n all the time I’d been there had I experienced such a large number of patrons. Finn places his hand on my lower back, ushering me inside. I’d have spent more time wondering about the affectionate gesture if I wasn’t so stunned to see how much Indigo has changed since I’d last been here.
The interior has undergone a major renovation. There are now three state of the art cash register stations instead of the old rickety one from before. It also seems like they’ve knocked down one of the back walls in order to make the space larger. The shelves are new shiny plastic ones, displaying a whole range of stock the shop never used to carry, such as herbal cosmetics and hair dyes.
The cash registers are being manned by two guys and one girl, none of whom I have ever seen before. Something hums inside of me. My magic informing me that these are members of the magical families, Girards and Ridleys most likely.
“Is your boss around?” Finn asks one of the guy workers.
He gives Finn a shrug and turns to serve his next customer. A second later a recognisable voice greets us.
“Well, well, to what do I owe this pleasure?”
Marcel steps out of a doorway at the back of the shop. There’s a smile on his face and a calculating gleam in his eye. I can feel Finn’s body stiffen beside me at the warlock’s approach.
“I think you’re finding this about as pleasurable as an injection up the posterior,” says Finn, casually crossing his arms over his chest. “Oh and by the way, I love what you’ve done with the place. It’s like McDonalds for hippies.”
Marcel gives him a broad smile. “I’ll take that as a compliment. And on the contrary, finding old friends such as yourselves grace my door is quite the gift.” His eyes slowly drift to me, and in their seemingly harmless depths I see my dad falling into a black, unfathomable hole.
“Hello Tegan,” Marcel greets me, with something of a cruel sparkle on his happy face. I enjoy watching that happiness swiftly dissolve when those sparkling eyes land on Ira, who’s standing just behind me.
“Ah,” Marcel goes on. “I see you’ve brought another – friend.”
Ira straightens up as I quickly glance back at him. His face is clean of any emotion as he peers down at Marcel. Recalling Finn’s instructions back in the car, I quickly confront the warlock about my father.
“This isn’t a social visit,” I say. “I want you to tell me how I can bring my dad back from wherever you and your buddies sent him.”
My tone is hard, as I think of the injustices Marcel has done to me. Stealing my blood, kidnapping my father. I clench my fists tight to keep from letting my anger and grief turn into violence. Violence never solves anything, I repeat in my head over and over.
Marcel reaches out as if to touch me on the cheek in sympathy, (I know, WTF?), however he rapidly withdraws his hand when Ira starts making this low, rumbling growl. Funny, he never growled when Finn had been touching me in the car earlier. He must really have a grudge against magical folk, just like Rita had said.
“Easy,” says Marcel, moving further away. “I mean the girl no harm.”
Ira’s growling ceases once Marcel has distanced himself enough.
“Tegan,” Marcel clears his throat, “your father is irretrievable. I suggest you grieve and move on.”
His heartless statement hits me right in the gut. I narrow my gaze at him, while at the same time the hole of despair that was created when I lost my dad to hell widens by another fraction.
“But he’s been sent to the same place Theodore had been. If Theodore could be retrieved then my dad can be too.” I sound like a desperate girl clutching at straws. Again, Marcel appears to look sympathetic. I want to punch the emotion right off his smug face.
“Your father is human, Theodore is not. If you try and pull a human out of a hell dimension they will always come back changed. There are no fifty-fifty chances with this. He would be corrupted, poisoned, certainly not the father you once knew.”
His awful words sink into my gut. I just can’t allow myself to believe that he’s right. I can’t accept that my dad is as good as dead.
