Page 29 of No Rest for the Wicked

“My cake!” Zee thrust his hand into the cake, and yanked out the chocolate covered pixie.

Jimmy’s tiny hands shoveled as much cake into his mouth as was possible.

“Fucking, time out! Bad pixie! Tom, you got a container back there?”

“Sure do.”

Zee stomped to the bar and shoved Jimmy into a large mixing cannister. Tom slapped the lid on. The mixer buzzed, sounding like an angry bee in a jar.

“Just make sure to crack the lid a few times, so he doesn’t suffocate, I guess,” Zee grumbled, then his wings sagged as he laid his gaze on the crumbled remains of the cake.

“We’ll get another cake.”

“It’s fine.” He brightened, but the smile was one of his old Razorsedge smiles, that barely warmed his eyes. “Everything is fucking fine. It’s my birthday. I’m immune to bad shit. Let’s go find Junk Jim.” Zee stomped from the bar, leaving me with Victor, who sighed at the cake, looking more dejected than ever.

I was definitely going to have to do something to cheer them both up. “You okay?” I asked him.

“I’d like to be, Adam.”

We stood in the quiet for a while, surrounded by bits of cake. He’d gone to a great deal of effort to organize all that, and now it was in pieces on the floor. “It’s going to be okay, you know.”

“Optimism is a wonderful thing.”

“Also known as hope, and I’ve gotten by on hope for a long time. Trust me. What else can go wrong today?”

Finally, his lips ticked into that tiniest of smiles. “Indeed. Let us hope that is the last of our bad luck for one day.”

Unfortunately, it was not.

CHAPTER 7

Junk Jim traveled from market to market selling human trash to Lost Ones. We’d first met when he’d sold me a broken Tom Collins unit, and we’d then reconnected when Zee and I had questioned him about where those Tom Collins units had come from. Turned out the fae syndicate were involved, which led us to a fae named Kris, who had ultimately been working for Agatha, a fae boss lady, and eventually, all roads led back to Gideon Cain—but Jim hadn’t known that.

He’d been helpful, and might be again, but tracking him down was the tricky part, especially without Victor’s software.

Zee made a few calls from outside the hotel wards—which had now stretched way down the street, if the distance he’d had to walk from the porch was any indication. Victor remained in the bar, offering to clean up the cake and keep an eye on Little Jimmy.

With a few minutes to myself, I sat on the hotel steps, watching the sun go down while Zee paced and chatted on his phone. He looked good—like he always did—wearing torn, baggy denim pants, paired with a figure-hugging red top that simply said Babe, in fun cursive swirls.

I was definitely not using all of this—the gremlins, summoning Jimmy etc.—as a delaying tactic for not telling Zee about myself and the Lost Ones prophecy. Once the hotel was free of critters, then we’d have The Talk. We should probably also deal with the portal, and the body up a chimney. After all that, we’d definitely have The Talk.

Zee came striding back, boots striking the sidewalk, a sassy sway on his hips that travelled through his body and made his wings bounce. “What do ya know, Karaoke Kris has been asking after me, saying he’d do anything if I remove the viral video of him getting his Rick Astley funk on. He was more than happy to give me the address for Junk Jim. Don’t you fucking love me?”

I really did. Squinting into the sun behind him, I shielded my eyes. I couldn’t let him down by being a loser who was too scared to save the world. “You’re amazing.”

“I am.” He posed, planting a booted foot on the bottom step. His gold horn-ring glinted in the sunlight, shining like his grin.

“And humble.”

“Right. So fucking humble—wait, what’s humble?”

I chuckled, and we laughed together.

“I didn’t agree to never upload the video again.” Zee’s smile held a sly tease. “Just that I’d take it down for now.” He tucked his phone away and glanced behind me at the hotel’s main entrance. “Where’s Fancy Fangs?”

“He said he’d join us later. Honestly, I think he’s having a hard time of it, and the cake . . . That was the final blow.”

“The cake finished him off? It was my cake Jimmy destroyed. Pixies are dicks.”