Page 11 of Crown of the Fae King

We painted the dark paneling an azure blue, made the ceiling look like puffy white clouds, and threw a few lighthouse pictures up on the wall to remind us our ultimate destination was the Pacific Coast.

When the weather warmed up enough to leave a window open, I planned to repaint, to remove the glaring reminders that Neal had reached the ocean and I had not. Taking down the lighthouses had been the only remodeling I could afford, so I’d put my head down and concentrated on paying down balances so I, too, could leave Hazelton in the rearview mirror.

Nine months left…

Only it wasn’t nine months anymore, thanks to a perfect stranger. I should be more excited than I was. After all, I’d been dreaming of this moment.

Someone had sprinkled salt on the steps since I’d left in the early morning, when I’d had to count on the fresh snow for traction. The main entrance was unlocked, as usual. No amount of urging could get my fellow dwellers to lock the thing. My guess was they wouldn’t consider it until there were break-ins on the street. In general, crime in our little town was pretty low. And if you took Andy and Lynette’s pot-stirring out of the statistics, it was lower still.

I needed to ask Wickham how he knew of Andy’s arson plans and promised myself I wouldn’t leave the city limits again without knowing.

I tried not to make excuses as we wended our way through the hallways to my door. I sorted through my keys and Wickham reached around me to push on the wood. The door swung open, and I gasped.

“I never leave it unlocked,” I hissed.

He pushed me back against the far wall and slipped inside, his boots making no sound. I couldn’t imagine who would want to break into the apartment of someone as poor as I was. Had the landlord come snooping? If so, he wouldn’t have left the door unlocked.

Suddenly, standing in the hallway, waiting for a criminal to run out of my apartment seemed like a stupid move, so I started back outside. Then I imagined some thief poking around and finding my hiding spot, and I forgot all about saving myself.

Even if a burglar hadn’t found my “precious,” I couldn’t just let this strange Scotsman go snooping around. If I hadn’t been hallucinating, the man had frozen a café full of people. Who knew what other capabilities he might have? Could someone like him sniff out my secret?

Of course he could!

I shoved the door open and lifted my forearms, fighter style, ready to defend myself. But all that greeted me was a mess.

My little apartment had been tipped on its head and shaken. Every little scrap of paper lay on the floor, my chair turned over, my couch cushions everywhere but the couch. There was only a half wall between the living room and the bedroom, and a drawer’s worth of underwear decorated my fat little television and dangled from the antennae.

“This was personal,” Wickham said, coming out of the bedroom with Neal’s old green suitcase hanging from one hand.

“I had better luggage,” I explained, “but my boyfriend took it.”

“Good enough for today.” He opened it on the cushion-less couch and leaned the lid back, then glanced at the lacy flags on the TV.

“I’ll pack my stuff. Maybe you should wait in the car.”

“Not bloody likely.”

“All right, then. Sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

He uprighted the chair and sat facing the door, like a watchdog sitting on the doormat. I was glad he didn’t see me smile. And I was glad he’d turned his back so I could check my hiding place. I figured if he’d found my secret, he would have been on his way already and not waiting around for me to pack my earthly goods.

I went to the dresser drawers set in the bedroom wall, but there was nothing left inside them. The contents were strewn all over the bed, floor. My grandmother’s jewelry box—the one thing I loved with all my heart--had been smashed. Its green fabric covering lay in shreds, the shattered wood spread across the room, and its beaded decorations lay in a heap against the baseboards, near my hidey hole.

I knelt and stuffed a handful of those silly, ugly beads into the pocket of my apron, temporarily swallowed my heartache, and pushed on the end of the loose board in the floor. The space had been perfect. One of the better hiding places I’d had over the years…

The hole was empty! No matter how many times I fished around it, there was nothing left.

Some guttural shriek deafened me, until I realized all I had to do was shut my mouth to turn it off. I was gasping for air by the time Wickham reached me. He took one look at the board and my grasping, empty hand and cursed.

“Who is Hank?”

“What?”

“You screamedHank.”

“It’s…what I call it.”

“And it’s gone?” He couldn’t know what he was talking about, but he did.

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