AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I put down my book and gave him a forceful look. “What did you do this time?”
“I want to make sure we aren’t exactly exclusive, right?” he asked.
I narrowed my eyes.
“I’m so sorry!” he said, throwing himself, now in his phantom form, onto my bed.
I half rose from the chair. Should I go hug him and tell him everything would be all right?
No! Sy said mercilessly. We should not believe in his tears or any sob story.
She was tough.
Then I registered that Pucker wasn’t crying. He had tossed himself to my bed to smoke weed, real weed this time. And his form had turned solid again, more solid than ever.
“What the fuck?” I said.
Pucker puffed out a ring, savoring the smell of the weed. “Prince Killian also let me drink his energy in exchange for me being your bodyguard twenty-four seven! His power is amazing, Barbie, and it complements yours.”
“Motherfucker!” I shouted. I dogeared the page of my book, tossed it to the corner of the chair, and shot to my feet. “You’re getting double pay for the same job?”
“Technically, you use me as an errand boy and a scout, but he uses me as a certified bodyguard. I can multitask.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard!” I yelled at him. I thought of throwing a book or a cake at him, but it would waste resources. “I don’t even need you around me every day. I just want to make sure none of the Shriekers get in so they won’t report to?—”
Pucker’s eyes brightened eerily. He wanted that piece of crucial information, but I’d stopped myself just in time.
“You know what, Pucker?” I threw up my hands. “You can have a gentlemen’s agreement with Sir Killian, but I’ll dissolve our contract!”
His eyes widened in panic.
I was bluffing, of course. The ghost guardian had two centuries of experience at deception. I had to outwit him.
“I’m so sorry, Barbie!” he cried out. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. But I got lonely. In my moment of weakness, I couldn’t resist the temptation when Prince Killian offered me a drink of his starlight power.”
No one could resist that temptation.
“You should’ve stayed stronger!” I growled. “And have you learned anything about the investigation on my kidnapping? I hope you didn’t neglect your spy duty after you got a full drink of Killian’s whatever starlight.”
“Not much.” Pucker sighed. “None of the princes can agree with one another. Putting all of them in one room is like dynamite about to go off anytime.”
I’d given the princes my account of the incident. All we’d learned was that the mastermind behind the kidnapping had hired the mercenaries from CrimsonTide to prevent the trail from going back to them. The mercenaries had been hexed to bind their tongues, so even if we’d captured them, we couldn’t get any intel out of them. Only two of them escaped; the rest were either cut down or self-destructed.
It seemed like a dead end, but we still hoped that the princes’ spy networks in CrimsonTide could eventually find out something.
I’d also given Killian a long list of suspects—Ethel, the druid, Medea, America…for starters.
“Basically, you included everyone you don’t like.” Rock had frowned at me when he also reviewed the list.
He didn’t get it.
America had predicted that bad things would happen to me from the tarot cards I’d drawn right before I was kidnapped. She must’ve known the machinations behind my kidnapping.
But before I sprang to call her out, Pucker had stopped me.
“When you suspect your enemies plan to put you in an unmarked grave, you don’t go straight to challenge them. You wait for them to slip up. You lurk in the dark, set a trap, and lure them into it. You don’t show those psychopaths how brave and clever you are and give them a chance to get away. We can’t win in a straight fight. Let’s give the bad guys a false sense of security, and they’ll eventually slip up, and then we’ll pounce. They won’t see it coming. That’s the way to get them hard. Believe me, I have centuries of experience when it comes to crime and murder.”
I didn’t point out that in the end, he’d gotten murdered and didn’t even see his foes’ faces. He was too clever for his own good, but then he also made sense.
