Fair Peril Read online

  “All right, I’m coming,” she mumbled as she heaved herself upright, nudged her feet into their cow-nosed slippers, and shuffled toward the bedroom door.

  The intruder, in brief, was a lot faster than she was. A quite fetching intruder dressed with cat-burglar élan in black, butt-hugging jeans, black turtleneck, and an utterly charming black velvet French hat.

  Emily.

  Trust Emily to do this thing in style. Emily, who had smashed a window even though she should have known the spare key was right there by the bushes in a hyperrealistic plastic dog-poop key hider Buffy had brought home from work. Emily, swooping like Ms. Musketeer through the night, buckle that swash. Emily, frog-rescuer and savior of an ensorcelled prince.

  All of this Buffy comprehended afterward, when she had time to feel ruefully proud of the kid. In the actual event, her attention, from the moment she waddled around the corner into the kitchen, was entirely taken up by the tableau.

  Emily, embracing Adamus tenderly, kissing him.

  Prince Adamus d’Aurca. Standing there in human form.

  Over six feet tall and buck naked, with the sheen of supernatural glory on every consummate inch of him. Sleek ballet-dancer legs and bunched buttocks exquisite with muscle, tapered torso, broad shining shoulders—he lighted up the kitchen with the glow of his transformation. Though his bare, beautiful feet touched the floor, he did not seem to stand; rather, he manifested, too perfect and otherworldly to be quite human, too lusty to pass as a naked angel lacking wings, much too sweetly flesh. Emily—even though the spell was unmistakably broken, Emily was still kissing him.

  Buffy stood struggling for breath at the sight of him. Then she found it and screamed.

  Shrieked, rather. An embarrassingly Victorian ululation, useless except that it startled them apart. She caught a freeze-frame glimpse of their two faces, Emily’s rose-colored gasp as she noticed her prince’s unclad midsection, Addie staring back at Buffy with no more expression than a wild thing and with beauty that threatened to stop her heart. That old Queen of Fair Peril sure knew what she was doing when she shaped him. Wide pagan mouth. Greek brow. Golden eyes—she saw them from across the room, those glittering gold-dust eyes pooled with midnight black. Addie: she would have known him anywhere.

  Standing there with the brand of faerie lips hot on his brow.

  The next instant the two of them, Emily and Adamus, fled like a pair of deer.

  Hand in hand, they darted out the door into the night. Buffy screamed again and stumbled after them, getting to the door just in time to hear the car roar away, speeding God knew where. No, probably God did not know. God had no place in that amoral kingdom. And Buffy could tell herself and tell herself that she would call the police, the National Guard, the President, and Oprah, that she would do whatever it took to get Emily back, but in her heart she knew: she was talking all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. No use. Emily belonged to the Realm of Fair Peril now.

  Six

  Free! By all the gods and little red devils, how joy to fill a million hearts ensouled that one simple word. Free! She set me FREE. How the power had filled him, the power of a paradise of angels in her kiss. With awe, adoration, joy, Adamus gazed upon her as she sent the mechanical chariot scudding at dizzying speed through the night. Such power. This, then, at last, was his fated princess. Princess Emily. How beautiful she was in the half-light that kept flashing past from the tall lamps. Up until the moment she had lifted him in her hands, when the touch of her soft lips had flashed through him like lightning and turned him inside out, up until that moment he had not known, he had not understood—she had been just the daughter to him, the pale shadow, the second choice. His focus had been all on the mother, the thunder woman who fascinated and appalled him. But now—

  She felt his gaze and glanced at him, the soft contours of her face shaky in the changing light.

  “Princess Emily,” he said, his voice shaky also.

  “Shhhh.” She turned back to the large dark glass, the speeding lights. “I’ve got to concentrate or we’ll wreck.” But she kept talking. “I can’t believe it.” He could hear the delight and terror in her voice. “I mean, I believe it, but I can’t believe it. You’re real.”

  Did she mean he had a soul now? Could this be? Possibly—because the potency of her kiss was like lightning and larksong, like nothing he could have expected, like nothing he had ever experienced before. The transformation from hostage child to faerie prince did not rival it. The branding fire of the kiss that had made him a servant of the Queen of Fair Peril, that was only a bad dream by comparison. Even the rigors of becoming a frog did not compare with the shock of this metamorphosis. Even the helplessness of falling to death was as nothing compared with this helplessness, this—this naked falling, this becoming a—a hostage to her. This falling in love.

  Her kiss had made him her captive.

  Not free.

  The realization put a keen and painful edge on his joy, but joy remained. He adored her. His terror and unhappiness ran through him like wine. He whispered again, “Princess Emily.”

  “Shhhh. I can’t look at you. We have to find you some clothes before the cops stop us.”

  He said, “I love you.”

  “Hush. Please.” Her voice trembled. He saw a shivering smile. He saw her rosebud chest heave.

  She must not have meant, Adamus decided, that he had a soul, because a soul was a constant, was it not? It did not seem possible that he could have a soul when everything about him could be transformed so quickly and completely. When he had been a frog, his thoughts had been green and watery, his dreams informed with algae and the flitting of winged insects, his lusts founded upon the laying of eggs. But now that he was a prince, his thoughts had transformed as much as his body. Just the thought of her small, round breasts under the thin cloth made his—made him cover a salient part of himself with his hands. And his thoughts had a new texture. Blue velvet in them, and smooth bedsheets, and the whisper of silk on skin. And that wine-red heat in his heart, his blood. And the color of gold, her hair. The weight of gold in his thoughts. Crown. Circlet. Wedding ring.

  He loved her. He loved her. Heady joy. Yet—how could he say he loved her? He knew he did not yet have a soul.

  Only one thing seemed constant: he was still in thrall.

  “Nine-one-one.”

  “Yes, my daughter just ran away with a naked fetch.”

  “A naked what, ma’am?”

  “Fetch. Frog, fairy-tale prince, stud muffin, crotchthrob frog fairy—”

  “Name-calling won’t help us, ma’am. You say his name is Tayell Prinz?”

  “No, his name is Prince Adamus d’Aurca, and he just took off in the altogether with my daughter!”

  “And your daughter is how old, ma’am?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “And how long has she been gone?”

  “About a minute and a half now.”

  The dispatcher’s tone of professional boredom never varied. “Call us if she hasn’t come back in twenty-four hours, ma’am.”

  “But she’s likely to do anything! She broke my window, stole my frog—”

  “She broke a window? I’ll send an officer to take a report, ma’am. Your name and address?”

  Buffy hung up without answering, her thoughts reserving a hot spot in hell for people who considered that a broken window was more important than a missing child, Emily, who had already been gone for two minutes. God damn it that time had been wasted. Buffy grabbed her car keys and headed for the door. Her slippers slowed her down; broken glass be damned, she kicked them off and ran out barefoot into the night. The Escort, with the nearly supernatural perversity routinely demonstrated by inanimate objects in times of stress, stalled the first three times she tried to start it, then bucked as she backed down the driveway and shimmied like a belly dancer when she pushed it to sixty before the first traffic light. Goddamn car. But at least no cop saw her run the light. Buffy accomplished a one-car stampede
to the edge of town, back Main Street to the commercial strip at the other end, and around the bypass before a cop stopped her. Speeding. Driving without a license. A ticket for $297. He did not ticket her for hysteria, driving barefoot and in a nightgown (cerulean-blue flannel with glow-in-the-dark stars, planets, and crescent moons), or asking goofy questions. No, he had not seen a metallic-mauve Probe with a teenage girl and a naked fetch in it.

  Forty-five minutes later, Buffy, still barefoot, flannel-gowned, and hysterical, stood at the door of the Prentis Sewell stately residence, pounding and leaning on the loathsome door chimes.

  After an inordinate interval, Prentis opened the door a crack and peered out with his cute little dresser-drawer weapon in hand. Prentis, in sweats, jaw set, trying to look tough on crime, as if there might be a TV crew on his doorstep at three in the morning. Turning his hair-implanted head slightly so that the light caught his best angle. Seeing his ex, he opened the door fully yet seemed not at all sure he might not need the gun. “Buffy, for God’s sake—”

  “Emily’s missing.”

  Prentis puffed his chest and scowled. “I hear you ruined her party.”

  “Better than ruining her life.” Could he think of nothing but taking potshots in the post-marital war? At least she had been there for the party. “Suction the wax out of your ears, Prentis. Emily is missing. Gone. She’s run away.” Prentis belonged to the old boys’ network; he might be able to get the cops to do something.

  “She’s got a right to run away after the trick you pulled.”

  Dear God, what was it going to take to make him get the picture? Buffy had thought he might be able to see past their personal differences long enough to focus on helping their youngest child. Silly thought.

  “Prentis,” she said between her teeth, “may I draw your attention to the fact that your garage door is hanging open and the Probe is gone.”

  His stare shifted and his scowl turned to a frown. “Hey.” He swiveled and bawled into the house, “Tempestt!” After waiting for a short while, he raised the volume. “Pestt!”

  It was a measure of Buffy’s agitation that learning in this way of Tempestt’s uncomplimentary nickname failed to cheer her.

  “Pestt! What’s Emily gone and done with the Probe?”

  A sleepy soprano response wafted from upstairs.

  “She’s not there? Did she wreck the car and not tell me?”

  “For God’s sake,” Buffy exploded, “forget the damn car! We’ve got to find Emily!”

  He turned back to her and gave her his what’s-the-big-problem look. “Emily? Hell, she’s a kid, she’s probably out cruising with her friends. Snuck out without telling us. I’ll give her what for when she gets back.”

  Buffy said, “She’s out cruising with a—” How to explain this in terms even a politician like Prentis could understand? “She’s with a young man who is entirely too old for her.”

  “Is she!” Prentis crinkled into his most charming running-for-office grin. “Well, she’s sixteen. She’s legal. That’s about the age I liked them when I started screwing them.”

  It knocked Buffy’s breath away. He might as well have punched her in the gut. She staggered back. It would not have hit her as hard if she had thought he was being boorish on purpose to hurt her—but she knew better. He was being Prentis.

  “Just joking,” he said.

  “You are a toad,” Buffy managed to whisper. “A total, odious toad.” She turned her back on him and ran, her bare feet colder than the pavement, colder than the April night air.

  Driving around feverishly till dawn, talking to the kind of people who hang out on street corners all night, Buffy did not manage to track down Emily or Adamus. Instead, outside a bar that echoed the neon glow in the east, she found LeeVon. She would probably not have noticed him, as she was not in the habit of scanning what came out of bars, except that he was serenely standing there watching for sunrise in his underwear.

  “LeeVon?” She pulled over and took another look. It was him, all right. Black-rimmed eyeglasses. Mr. McGregor on the left arm, Peter Rabbit on the right. T-shirt with holes in it. Bullwinkle-print boxer shorts. Well, of course, she should have known; what else would a guy like LeeVon wear under his black leathers? Bullwinkle shorts. Bony knees and wrinkled orange socks.

  “Buffles!” He smiled like the dawn, delighted to see her, not at all concerned about being seen in his underwear, and alcoholically unimpaired as he bent beside her window to talk with her. “Mercy heavens, Best Beloved, what are you doing here in your nightgown?”

  “You should talk. Strip poker?”

  “Nah. Nude dude needed my clothes.”

  She jumped so hard she rammed her head against the Escort’s ceiling. “Ow! Adamus?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Compared to what! LeeVon, help me out, come on, my daughter has run away with my frog. The naked guy, was it Adamus, dammit?”

  His mouth came open and hung that way, showing the stud in his tongue. It had never made sense to Buffy how that thing didn’t click against his teeth when he talked.

  “LeeVon!”

  He stammered, “The—the Cinderella in the car, was that your little darling? It was! But—but I didn’t recognize her. She was changed somehow. Different.”

  “When!” Buffy barked.

  “Pardon?”

  “When were they here? Just now?”

  “Oh, no. Hours ago. I went back inside and played Candyland.”

  “Great. Just lovely. Wonderful.” Buffy jammed the car into gear. “So now the handsome prince is running around in your black leathers.”

  “Black jeans, actually, and a leather jacket.”

  “Only you would give him your clothes.”

  LeeVon seemed surprised at her comment. “Well, he needed them.”

  “Right. LeeVon, get in.”

  “Pardon? My bike—”

  “As if you can ride home on your motorcycle in your BVDs? Get in the car.”

  He did so, complaining, “Nobody better take my bike.”

  Stamping on the gas, Buffy veered off at a reckless vector, trying hard not to hate all men. She didn’t want to be that way. She actually did know some nice men. Knew some people with good marriages, too. Women her own age, even. She managed to keep her volume down when she said, “My daughter is missing and all you can worry about is your bike?”

  “No, my bike is one of the things I’m worried about. Tell me what is going on with Emily.”

  He knew her name? Points for LeeVon. Not everybody remembered the names of other people’s kids.

  Buffy told him about it in full, amphibious detail, slowing down almost to the speed limit as she became absorbed in the story.

  “Emily’s an idealist,” LeeVon said once she had briefed him. “I mean, a lot of kids are, teenagers, more than most adults like to give credit—but Emily has always been completely committed to the fairy tale. Whom did you name her after? Emily Dickinson?”

  “No. I loathe Emily Dickinson.” Weird old witch; every poem Emily Dickinson ever wrote could be sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” and most of them sounded better that way. “I just named her.” She had always liked the name Emily. It sounded pretty.

  “There’s poetry in her just the same. Elinor Wylie. Not so much Sylvia Plath.”

  She forgave him completely. Good God, Emily was an individual to him, a person, not just somebody’s kid. A lot more a person than she was to the cops or her own father.

  “The idealism is what worries me. When it comes to a cause, Emily’s unselfish.” Buffy found herself pulling into her driveway.

  “What are we doing at your place?”

  “I have no idea.” Buffy only then realized that she had given up for the time being. The initial search was over, and unsuccessful, and it was time to regroup. She led the way inside—the door swung unlocked and open, the way she had left it. “Watch the broken glass.”

  LeeVon hunkered down and started cleaning u
p the shards of her window.

  “I can do that.” Buffy stepped into her slippers.

  “Well, I know you can, Best Beloved, but let me help. Do you have a piece of cardboard that will fit the orifice?”

  She found some and got it taped in there, then brought LeeVon the dustpan and whisk broom, then made coffee. LeeVon finished with the floor and sat at her kitchen table in his Bullwinkle shorts. She served coffee, sat across from him, and sipped. Outside, birds were piping like flutes. The refrigerator hummed, matronly. The pseudo-satin-stitch daisies on the plastic tablecloth lay soothingly white under the fluorescent light. Everything seemed very calm.

  “All you can do, I guess,” said LeeVon, “is wait.”

  Buffy did not answer. Too tired. Idly she flipped through Batracheios. Wait? LeeVon was right, there was nothing else to do, but she was afraid for Emily; Addie was the enemy now, yet she missed him, she wanted him back; in the too-damn-early dawn, after a night of driving at top speed to nowhere, she felt adrift, borderless, disoriented. LeeVon the librarian was her buddy and he had given her this book and she was looking for something to point out to him, but she couldn’t quite remember what. The book had grown and changed since the last time she had read it, and she could feel the green cover alive and warm and flexing in her hand. The glossy pictures of frogs in green suits and creamy waistcoats winked at her. “Here it is,” she muttered, happening upon the headline that had interested her. “Transfrogrification. One part wrath added to two parts perverted sense of humor. Coddle the mixture over medium heat.” She had that part under control. Wrath, heat? Just think of Prentis. The sense of humor was her own. No problem. “In appropriate garb, repeat the following gibberish: gimme an F, F! Gimme an R, R! Gimme an O, O! Gimme a G, G! What’s it spell? FROG! What’s it smell like? A FROG! What—”