Page 28 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Ida

Dear Malia,

Hari is with me. I’m sorry, I’ve been on the road and haven’t been able to write.

I hope this letter doesn’t take too long to reach you.

I had to grab a stray bat last night to deliver it.

I hope it didn’t bite too hard—I checked it with a spell and it’s not a vampire.

Rest assured, Hari’s quite well and safe.

Don’t worry.

Ida

Hari wasn’t doing well at all.

The gnome ate breakfast, but he did it to please Tinbit, not because he was hungry.

If Tinbit had served up frog spawn and swamp water instead of huckleberry clafouti and hot tea, Hari would’ve gobbled it and called it the best meal he’d ever eaten.

But Cear crawled over Hari’s forehead and pronounced him still on fire before they retired to feed on the sweetgrass in their firepot.

The whole coach smelled like burnt vanilla pudding.

Hari lay in the seat, head in Tinbit’s lap, wrapped in Ida’s wool robe, shivering uncontrollably.

“Are you doing all right?” Tinbit combed his fingers through Hari’s thick hair.

Hari’s smile was a wan moon. “A little uncomfortable.”

“Next stop, you can rest,” Tinbit said. He’d been saying that every fifteen minutes since breakfast.

Ida glanced at Hector. “How much farther?”

“Another three hours.” He regarded Hari, and after a moment, he reached out and adjusted the wool robe to cover Hari’s feet. He was surely worried about his own gnome and if the swamp fever would get him next. She would keep telling herself that because she’d started to believe he actually cared.

It seemed like he cared. And it had sounded like he cared this morning, walking side by side with her in the mist, his tall frame slightly stooped, salt-and-pepper hair catching every drop of light like a prism and turning it into rainbows.

Stop it. Stop it, woman. You are immune. She ought to be anyway. True, she’d never destroyed her heart, but having a heart had never been a real drawback before. She rather thought it gave her an edge. Well, she knew about the love magic’s effects at least, and she could combat them.

She leaned across the coach to take Hari’s hand. “Sweetheart, do you need us to stop for a minute?”

“I think…I think so,” Hari said faintly. “I don’t mean to complain.”

“You aren’t complaining,” she said. “We’ll see if we can make you more comfortable.”

She consulted with Hector standing outside the coach while Tinbit went through their luggage, searching for anything soft they could use to make a bed for Hari on the coach seat.

“I don’t mean to fault your horse, but I would beg you to have your coachman push him more,” Ida said. “The sooner we can get Hari to the inn, the sooner I may be able to effect a cure for him both for this damned fever and the damned love magic.”

“I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding what you need for the Heartsease in town, but we may be hard pressed to find everything we need for a tonic. There are no herbalists or apothecaries, only poisoners and would-be poisoners. They don’t carry anything that isn’t lethal.”

“I can work with lethal.” Ida folded her arms over her middle. “My stepmother was a hedge witch. She taught me herbs.”

His eyebrows lifted. “A wicked witch?”

“It was a long time ago. No one cared back then whether a witch was good or wicked as long as they could help. My stepmother was a wise woman, a healer.”

“We’ll see what we can find on the way. I think I know which ones you need.”

“You do?”

“I know my herbs, too. It’s quite difficult for a giant to get to an herbalist when they are ill. I go to them.”

Another unpleasant jolt of surprised admiration. Nope. It’s not caring, no. He just wants his giants healthy so he can send them to step on people.

She cleared her throat. “Marshmallow would be appropriate, and perhaps horehound.”

He nodded. “Marshmallow may be blooming now. We should be able to spot it from the coach. Horehound will be more difficult, but I’ll watch from this side, and you from the other, and if you see a pale white flower growing in a clump, yell and I’ll alert the driver.”

Hari muttered something unintelligible as Ida climbed back into the coach. Tinbit gave her a nervous look. He didn’t need to say anything. The sooner they got to the inn, the better.

***

Ida was completely worn out with worry when they reached the town, and also muddy up to her armpits.

A light rain was falling, turning everything cold and wet, inside the coach and out.

While pursuing a clump of marshmallow down to its roots, she’d inadvertently stepped in a pit with a mire imp.

Only a fast jab with her wand and screaming her head off kept her from going under.

Hector had come to the rescue, thumping the creature between the ears with his staff before he pulled her out, apologizing profusely.

“They’re not truly evil,” he said, “just…somewhat unfriendly.”

“It said it would eat me, saving my internal organs for last so I would live longer.” She spat mud.

“Oh, they all say that.” Hector waved her concern off. “It would’ve stopped with one foot and decided you weren’t worth the chewing—humans aren’t their favorite prey. Prefer Will-o-the-Wisps.”

Ida scraped as much of the mineral-laden mud off her shoes as she could.

Clothes and all, she glowed like a bioluminescent animal.

“Perhaps you should put up warning signs for travelers. The heroes will go on undaunted, but perhaps there won’t be quite so many peg-legged people stumping around this town. ”

A surly pirate type gave her a stern glare as he passed, heading into the inn.

“I thought you said this was the best hotel in town. It looks like a dive.”

“It is,” Hector said in a weary tone, leaving her to decide which description was accurate. He scooped Hari up in his arms and carried the gnome into the inn, a worried Tinbit at his side.

The inside of the building did nothing to make Ida feel better.

A gritty barmaid with a knife in her hand threatened a nonpaying customer while a pickpocket worked the room with his sad ragamuffin face and sticky fingers, right up until he tried the barmaid and she boxed his ears.

But when the innkeeper saw Hector, she froze right in the middle of a gut thrust into the abdomen of a cutthroat who’d had his purse belt slit and was giving her grief about it.

“Your Wickedness! What can we do for you?” She wiped down her knife and bustled toward Hector.

The cutthroat tried to sneak off.

A quick throw by the barmaid pinned him between the shoulder blades.

“Gods!” Ida cried out as the man crawled a few inches toward her feet and then collapsed.

“Pay him no mind, Your Goodness,” the innkeeper said. “He’s a zombie. We do this every week. What’s wrong with the gnome?”

“Swamp fever,” Hector said. “Deadly. Contagious too. It will kill anyone who catches it in three days or less.”

The inn emptied like a burning building, all but the innkeeper. She grinned. “Well, then, you’ll be renting the whole inn, won’t you, for bringing such a devastating sickness into my house?”

“Naturally,” Hector said.

“Lovely, lovely. I’ll go put the plague signs on the door right after I show you to your rooms.”

“Oh, Belinda, that won’t be necessary. I know I’m putting you out two week’s earnings and—”

“No apologies, Your Wickedness,” she said, wiping her blood-stained hands on her apron. “You know I’m always glad to help my old boss.”

Hector glanced at Ida. “Belinda’s mother worked as a hired assassin for me for years—one of the best. So did Belinda—”

“Then I got married and had a kid,” Belinda said. “After that, I had a family to provide for. No more murder for me.”

“Where is your son today?” Hector asked.

Belinda smiled with pride. “Out robbing the stage with the boys. He’ll be back this evening.

” She wiped a tear from her eye. “They grow up so fast. One day they’re picking pockets and the next day they’re a hired hit man.

” She handed Hector a skeleton key. “Here you are, Hector. The best room in the house for you and your lady. I’ll bring up hot water for the bath in a jiffy. ”

Ida glared at Hector as they climbed the stairs. “ Your lady?”

Tinbit unlocked the door, and Hector laid Hari down on a rough but serviceable couch. “They are evil-minded, my dear Ida—the bed is yours. I’m quite used to sleeping on the floor.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Ida said, eyeing it with great dislike. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find rats nesting in it. I’m taking the floor. You get eaten.”

“Can you both quit arguing?” Tinbit grumbled. “I’ll bathe Hari for the fever while you two get started on a potion.”

“I’ll go purchase the herbs,” Hector said. “Far safer for me to do that. You stay here and help him, Ida.”

Ida sat on the end of the couch and unlaced Hari’s long, stylish boots, irreparably damaged, probably from dragging the ground as he clung to the back of the coach.

“He’s going to be okay,” Tinbit said stubbornly.

“Yes,” she said. She wouldn’t forgive herself otherwise.