~Prologue~
Get In, Loser, We’re GoingShopping
“The trick togetting the best deal,” Cha confided to Dy in an undertone, “is to pretend like you’re not interested.”
“We kind of blew that approach right off the bat by coming here,” Dy pointed out, tossing back her long blonde hair and gesturing to the combination carriage-lot and kennel.“Nobody comes to Satan’s Village to window shop.”
Cha scowled at her friend, though Dy had a point.Satan’s Village wasn’t like Santa’s Village, the common nickname for the tourist destination in the fae realm of Obsidian where humans went to cosplay being fairies and squander their hard-earned coin on overpriced, glamoured goods like a “magic wand” that fell apart when they got it back home.Or that turned out to be something like a stick at best or poisonous at worst.Some wag had dubbed the fae market depot where magic-workers went to get therealgoods as “Satan’s Village.”It was a play on the cutesier name—and an implicit warning.
There weren’t many venues for legally purchasing quality magic supplies—a supply chain tightly controlled by the fae—but Satan’s Village was the place to go for everything from the path-boxes that let humans communicate over distances to the pixie dust that powered all things actually magical.If you had the coin, you could buy it there.
That is, if the fae didn’t cheat you blind, enslave, or kill you instead.
The reality that the fae were as likely to cheat you blind, enslave, or kill customers instead of selling to them—and the fact that the fae charged shockingly high prices, changing them on a whim—was why Dy and Cha had developed a thriving business for obtaining and supplying black-market magical goods.Their clients included their former teachers at Miss Mulry’s Academy for the Magically Gifted, and other mages who needed pixie dust and other supplies to do their jobs.If it existed, Bandit and Goldilocks—their code names—would find a way to get it.And they offered the goods usually at a much better price than the fae would extort from their customers, even if the deal went off without bloodshed (human) and unfathomable tantrums (fae).
But, if you wanted a new carriage, Satan’s Village was where you had to go.And Cha had her eye on a fancy one.No more trying to pull off evading the fae authorities on the ley lines with a donkey carriage.Not that she wouldn’t always be fond of Punkin the donkey, but he had never been fast and was slowing more lately with age.He couldn’t keep up speed on even the slowest family carriage ley lines.And he turned out stubborn at the most inopportune times, demanding extra portions of ambrosia before he’d do anything.Cha had taken to carrying a flask of the stuff to feed him, which got pricey.
Even soft-hearted Dy had agreed Punkin was ready for a juicy, quiet pasture after this last fiasco, when the fae law actually overtook Cha and forced her off the ley line.At which point Punkin decided to transform back to animal form and plop his ass—no pun intended—on the shoulder, nearly getting Cha arrested.As it was, it had taken a lot of fast-talking, and a bribe so expensive it might as well as been a pound of flesh for them to let her go.
Then Punkin had refused to change back into carriage form and the pair of them had ended up ignominiously walking home.The other ley riders hadn’t missed the opportunity to hurl taunts and supposedly clever jokes at Cha.She was one of the youngest ley riders, barely out of academy, and the pros didn’t take kindly to upstart amateurs anyway.Even viciously talented ones like herself.
They were just jealous.
Soon they’d be even more jealous when they saw her tooling down the high-test leys in a sleek, ultra-fast jaguar carriage.Fortunately, despite Punkin’s complete cock-up of the run, Dy had gotten clear with their contraband—barely—and Cha’s half of the payout had been enough to top off her savings, and she planned to spend it all on a sexy new number.Like that one over there she had her eye on.
Deliberately, she took her eyes off of it again and pretended to be interested in a leggy chestnut mare.
“We don’t play it like we’re window shopping,” she explained to Dy.“We act like we’re in the market for something cheaper.How do you like this one, Goldilocks?”she asked more loudly, using Dy’s handle.You didn’t give your real name to the fae if you could help it.
“Very nice,” Dy answered with forced enthusiasm, rolling her eyes, and muttering, “and one step from the big corral where all good horses go.”
At least Dy had kept her face averted from the fae salesperson who’d been watching them like they might steal something.Granted, they were con artists and smuggler, but they were not thieves.Okay, they were thieves, but notpettythieves.And not stupid ones.It simply wasn’t possible to steal one of the animals the fae enchanted to become the carriages that traveled the ley lines.Maybe someone could make off with one—but without the individualized enchantment key only the fae could provide, you’d just have a new pet with an expensive ambrosia habit.Still, Dy needed to get into the game here.
Cha elbowed her shorter partner sharply.
“Ow,” Dy complained, rubbing her shoulder.
“You didn’t have to come along,” Cha hissed at her.
“Like I’d let you come to Satan’s Village alone,” Dy hissed back.“You’d just piss off some fae and end up in jail, or worse, and I’d have to bail you out or rescue you.”
“Then put in some effort here, since I won’t be inconveniencing you with my mortal peril.”
“Oh yes,” Dy cooed in a falsely bright tone.“What a pretty pretty pony!”
Cha gave her friend an incredulous stare.“Seriously?Thatis your best acting effort.”
“There’s a reason I chose a life of crime,” Dy returned loftily.
“Yeah, because your mother is a narcissistic bitch who left you no other option unless you wanted to be her puppet for life.”Unlike Cha, Dy had grown up with money.But, as wealth always did, the family fortune came with serious strings attached.The kind that strangled you in the cradle.
“True,” Dy conceded, her pretty face clouding.She’d finally gone no contact with her family only a few months before and Cha regretted bringing it up.But they had each other, which was more than Cha had had since her mother dropped her off at academy as a charity ward and washed her hands of her troublesome and rebellious daughter.
“You laydeess in the market for a new carriage?”the fae salesperson asked, having slithered up to them soundlessly.
Like most Obsidian fae Cha had seen, this one had long and glass smooth black hair, shiny as, well, as obsidian.Of indeterminate gender—not all fae had ones that correlated to the human varieties—slim as a pole and half again even Cha’s generous height, the creature loomed over them, spidery white fingers tapping in a steeple of greed.Its fully black eyes, with no discernible iris, cornea, or pupil slid to the spavined chestnut mare they’d been pretending to like.
“A pretty horsie for the pretty human,” the fae suggested with a fawning smile.“Dottie here is top of the line.You won’t find a better horse-carriage in all the realms.”