Page 30 of Welcome to Fae Cafe
“Where are you?” Cress asked, turning the mirror this way and that to try and see the rest of the white-haired assassin through it. “I can see only your mouth.”
“I can only see your forehead,” Shayne’s voice came from the mirror. “You’re showing me the ceiling, Cress.”
“You’re showing me your stubble, you fool.”
Shayne’s close-up mouth spread into a grin.
“Where are you?” Mor’s voice came through the device next, but Cress couldn’t see him past Shayne’s chin.
“I’m watching the human,” Cress said, his gaze flickering back to the hallway where Kate Kole took the childling’s hand. “See?” He turned the phone.
“You’re showing us the ceiling again.”
Cress aimed the phone lower.
“Now we can only see the floor.”
A growl lifted from Cress’s throat, and he turned the mirror back toward himself. “I’m ending this preposterous meeting,” he decided.
“Wait! When can we leave this tavern and come help you?”
Cress could see just Shayne’s neck now.
“Not yet. We’ll speak again once I’ve enchanted the human,” Cress said. He slid the phone into his pocket and turned back to spy as Kate Kole led the childling through the crowd.
Cress shoved off the doorframe, slipping into the bustle of humans to follow. He thought about red velvet cream cake, and hot pepper-roasted forestboar meat, tapping his fingers along his stomach. “Queensbane, hush, hush,hush!” he muttered at it when it growled again. He was thankful humans had shamefully terrible hearing.
His target and the childling stopped in between halls where every ounce of human flesh seemed to collide. The humans pushed past each other, talking so loudly that Cress couldn’t choose a conversation to eavesdrop upon. His gaze snapped over the throng when he lost sight of the yellow knit sweater.
Shoving his way past a weakling, Cress entered the middle of the junction, squeaking to a halt on his damp boots and nearly toppling over the pair; the human girl—his target—kneeling on one knee right in the cursed middle of the crowd, and the childling who had begun wailing like a dying hogbeast. He didn’t have time to redirect and disappear among the bodies before his human target began to…
Sing.
She was singing.
His target sounded raspy for a female, but her song voice was sweet in the centre. On a calm day in the North Corner, Cress might have followed such a sound to discover the female responsible. He had never heard a song voice quite like this—clean and pure.
“Can you keep singing for me, Miss Kate? I’m still scared!” the childling whined.
Kate Kole’s soft lips curled into a smile, and Cress tilted his head as he studied it. For a human insect, her smile was pleasantly striking. Possibly even slightly attractive to an untrained eye.
Cress pulled back and slammed his palms over his ears.
“Queensbane,” he muttered. What if his human had the gift of siren-song?
Cress turned to leave before he might be lured in and trapped by a songspell, stifling a growl as humans pushed in and trapped him there. But when his target’s raspy singing lifted to his ears again, he turned back, skin tightening as rolls of music rippled along his flesh.
“Daffodils sway and the golden sun sings, la, la, la, la. Rivers rush and the silver stars sing, la, la, la, la…”
His target hugged the childling and rubbed its shoulders.
Cress blinked a few times. He waited for the song’s magic to rapid his heartbeat, or a trick to follow and fuzzy his mind. But the air remained sweet and clean. The childling stood an inch taller, and his human target smiled again like a sprouting blushflower in the morning. It all appeared annoyingly innocent.
He turned to face them fully, no longer caring if he was seen. How in the faeborn-cursed Corners did she hide her cruelty so well?
Cress didn’t realize how close he came to the pair until his human target nudged him back with her elbow to make way for the childling to walk again. His hand flexed and he fought the impulse to grab her—How dare she shove aprince?—but the stone in his blood melted as he watched the two head down the hallway. His target ditched her paper goblet in a barrel on her way. The pair disappeared around the bend, and Cress inched toward the barrel. He glanced inside to find atrocious food scraps and crumpled parchment all mushed together. Kate Kole’s paper cup rested on top of it all. A word was scribed across:Coffee.
“Coffee,” he said to test the word.
