Page 18 of Iron Unicorn

“Exactly. My vet bill. I’m warming soup for you, and I’m going to put it in a mug so you don’t have to leave bed to have some. Once they accepted I will not be leaving this room, nor will I tolerate a relocation of your person, I was given instructions to feed you a mug of soup every two hours, check your temperature, and make use of the earpiece if you show any concerning symptoms. They also requested that I ask you how to switch channels as you’re on one of the main lines. They’d like to put the sick agent on a dedicated line.”

I groaned as the process of changing the frequency to one of the dedicated lines involved my phone. “Bring me the blasted thing and my phone. I’ll change it.”

With a happy squeal, she lunged off the bed and scrambled to the sitting room, returning with my phone and the earpiece. Still refusing to emerge from my nest of blankets and pillows, I opened the app for the earpiece. “What channel?”

“6742,” she replied.

I located the channel and snorted at the descriptor, which listed it as ‘Sickly New Yorker Monitoring’. After activating the channel for the earpiece, I flipped the switch on the device to make certain it used the app’s setting. Determined to avoid croaking at any of my co-workers, I handed the mess back to Olivia. “You can test it.”

She put the earpiece on, lifted her hand, and pressed her finger to the activation button. “Good morning, Texan RPS agents! Please confirm I have successfully coerced Sickly New Yorker into setting this thing to the correct channel. Marvelous, marvelous. I’m going to need a few extra blankets and pillows. Please apologize to the hotel staff for me. Once Terry gets sick, he hibernates, and he needs a nest to properly hibernate. For some reason, he cannot bear any exposure to fresh air, so he buries himself in as many blankets and pillows as he can get his hands on. If I want to ever sleep again, I’m going to need a dedicated blanket. The pillows have long since been assimilated into his nest. If you could ask King Patrick if he might come make more soup, that might be good. Something spicy, please. Once the snot takes over, Terry gets surly without spice. He can’t stand when his taste buds register nothing, and his taste buds are usually the first to go.”

I thought about asking for coffee, decided against it, and retreated back under the pillows, making sure to keep as much of my germs to myself as possible.

“Sure. I don’t mind somebody coming in. You’re not getting Terry up, though. He has retreated into his nest. I figure he started feeling poorly around four or five in the morning. That’s when every blanket and sheet on the bed underwent a mysterious relocation. That woke me, leaving me to witness him morph into a human burrito. Then I heard the cough thing he does in his sleep when he gets sick. Don’t panic about that. It sounds awful, but he’s not dying. He just found a way to make us all think he might die in his sleep.”

Having heard recordings of the dreaded sleep cough, I would not protest. I truly sounded worse than some zombie, one foot deep within the grave.

“If I catch the plague, I catch the plague. My nose is fine. I feel great. I also referred to the paper list of prescriptions and selected the appropriate pills for this morning. Despite my status as a princess, I’m quite capable of fending for myself. I can even handle Terry when he’s ill. This isn’t my first rodeo! It’s not my second, either. I have done many rodeos over the years, successful in my nursing duties every time. Terry doesn’t get sick often, but when he does, he brings out that wretched cough. You’ll know when he’s asleep because he’ll start doing the death cough. If he’s doing the death cough, he’s definitely alive, though. I’d focus on that.”

I gave the princess credit; she offered my Texan counterparts excellent advice.

Someone knocked at the door, and Olivia took off the earpiece, put it on the nightstand, and bounded into the sitting room. A moment later, she chirped, “Come in, come in. I’m going to check on the soup, and if it’s warm, I’ll feed Terry. The best practice is to leave him to being sickly and grumpy. Once he has his soup, he’ll go right back to sleep. Then we’ll deal with the death cough, but at least you don’t have to go into the room to check on him. If you hear the death cough, he’s fine.”

While I understood Olivia meant well, the words ‘death’ and ‘cough’ put together in the same sentence would trip the trigger of every RPS agent listening in. Worse, if word spread back to my queen, she would become involved. I could see her teaming up with Olivia and taking over Texas until certain I would not perish from the death cough.

“Death cough?” Quincy asked. “Are you seriously calling it a death cough?”

“The first time we heard it, we thought he was literally dying. The entire Montana royal family had a meltdown. We wereconvincedhe was dying. We brought in our royal physicians. They laughed at us when they heard it. Apparently, Terry is just one of those freaks who makes weird sounds when he isn’t feeling well and sleeps, and he can cough without waking up. As the coughing keeps his airways clear, we decided to embrace the death cough. What’s bad is if he’s coughing and stuff starts coming out. That’s the death cough with a twist. In good news for us, he does wake up when the death cough with a twist starts up.”

If I left her talking to Quincy alone, the entire Texan RPS would be living in a state of terror until I recovered from the bug ailing me. I emerged from the blankets and pillows and said, “I’ll sleep it off and be fine in a day or two.”

As I had no desire to actually interact with anyone, I burrowed, covered my head, and hoped the audience would go away so I could get back to sleep.

“Poor Terry.” Olivia came into the bedroom, and she set something on the nightstand. “I’ll go keep the skittish RPS agents company in the sitting room while you eat your soup. We’ll try to quiet down so you can sleep. I’ll turn off the light and shut the door. I expect you’ll get a visit from a royal physician soon enough. Rachel will flip once she finds out you’re the one who got sick. I’m the one who is supposed to be sick.” The princess laughed and retreated.

As a pair of RPS agents could handle Olivia even at her most boisterous, I decided to play the game her way, sighing when my nose informed me it no longer wished to smell anything at all, a certain sign my taste buds had already left the building. Sure enough, I could barely identify the soup was made of chicken. Well aware the princess would flip if I failed to eat, I drank down every drop, set the mug on the nightstand, and decided to take her advice to sleep it off.

* * *

Where my queen went,her tigers followed. Normally, the animals kept her close company, but somehow, my queen had tricked them into coming into bed with me. Waking up sandwiched between a pair of tigers went to the top of my list of things to never repeat if at all possible.

Amisha, upon discovering I’d woken up, did her best to lick my face off, forcing me to engage in cuddling, else lose my skin to her tongue. In good news, the tiger radiated warmth, and after some thought, I determined warm with a tiger beat being cold without a tiger. Embracing the animal might cost me some pride later, but I refused to care.

She was warm.

A few moments later, I clued in the reason for being cold involved the complete loss of every blanket on the bed. Only one woman would be so ruthless as to steal my blankets in an attempt to get me up.

Her Highness of Montana. Somehow, Olivia would pay for her cruelty.

I altered my stance on the tigers, determined they were my allies, and accepted their affection in exchange for staying cozy.

“Damn it, Rachel! You said he’d launch right out of bed upon figuring out he’s the plaything of tigers. He’s cuddling with them.”

“As he should,” my queen replied. “Terry, you’re worrying Olivia. It’s time to get up. I know you aren’t feeling well, but it’s time to rejoin the real world.”

Amisha huffed, but she escaped my hold and got off the bed, and her sister followed. “I’m awake.” I would protest once I figured out which day of the week it was, got dressed, and restored myself to functionality. In the meantime, I’d settle with taking a shower and hoping everything else came together with minimal effort on my part. “Did I miss something?”

Olivia came into the bedroom, laughed at me, and held out her hands. As the princess would complain until she got what she wanted, I rolled over, placed my hands in hers, and allowed her to haul me out of bed. “You’ve missed a week’s worth of things. My brother has discovered I have disappeared. The Texans are playing dumb. Rachel is having a great time. Apparently, I am not to see my brother until I stop crying every time someone looks at my face.”

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