“That’s Piri,” Alex said, gesturing to the man behind the bar.
“That’s the pixie you were telling us about?” Nina asked, incredulous.
On our drive to Heaven, Alex had filled us in on Piri, a local pixie who spent most of his time in the “upper world” (that’s ours), and was the go-to guy for finding out the seedy goings-ons of human-angel-demon dealings.
Alex looked at Piri, nodded his head. “Yeah, that’s him. Why?”
While it’s true that very few demons reflect their Dis-neyized /Wes Craven/Hollywoodized images, pixies were generally fairly well depicted.
Except for this one.
Though he had the same fine-boned features and porcelain skin I was used to with other fairy folk, the stern set of his jaw and his narrowed, beer-bottle brown eyes—eyes that raked over us as we stood in the doorway— generally didn’t give off that cutesy Tinkerbelle vibe.
Piri stood behind the bar, his huge mitt-like hands set on the hardwood top, his fingers tapping in a slow, bored rhythm that made the tattooed coiled snake on his forearm jump. His bare, bulging biceps were littered with images of thorny roses and screaming eagles, their talons arched and sharp.
“You know, in the sixteenth century, rose tattoos were given to prisoners sentenced to death,” Nina said matter-of-factly.
I studied the burgeoning bush spewing rose blossoms out from under Piri’s leather vest and gulped. “Good to know.”
Piri’s thick eyebrows rose and he eyed our trio with an unwelcome glare. Nina paused when her cell phone trilled a jaunty out-of-place tune.
“I need to get this,” she said, pointing to the spastically vibrating jeweled device. “It’s Dixon.”
“This is Nina,” she trilled into the phone.
Nina disappeared out the front door and Alex and I shared a look. I shrugged, pasted on my most welcoming smile, and sauntered over to the bar. I seated myself directly in front of Piri and hopped up onto the cracked Naugahyde stool. “Hi there,” I said, all smiles and normalcy. “Can I get a cosmo?”
Piri said nothing; he just blinked, revealing a spiderweb tattoo that started at his inner eye and blossomed out toward his temple. I felt myself involuntarily wince.
Alex sat down next to me and faced ol’ baldy. “Scotch. Neat. You Piri?”
The bartender lined up two smudged highball glasses and upturned a scotch bottle over each one. He slid the half-full glasses across the bar to us. “Who wants to know?” was his response.
I looked at the amber liquid in my glass and dropped my voice. “Actually, sir, I ordered a—” I gazed up into unforgiving eyes. “Never mind.”
I caught a hint of movement from the corner of my eye and I noticed the guy with the ash-blond hair had moved one stool closer to me. I gave him a closed-lipped smile as he grinned at me and raised his half-full glass in one of those “Hey, how ya doin’?” bar salutes. He inched a small bit closer and opened his mouth to speak, but my whole body was on high alert, focused on Piri and finding my father.
“I’m with someone,” I said to the blond-haired stranger.
“Brilliant. I’d like to be with the peanuts if you’d hand them down.”
My cheeks burned with embarrassment as I slipped the bowl of peanuts to the guy. He didn’t take his eyes off me as he shook a handful of peanuts in his palms, tossed them into his mouth.
“Very smooth,” Alex whispered in my ear.
I clutched my glass and narrowed my eyes at him. “Are we just here visiting, or did we actually come for a reason?”
Alex cleared his throat, threw back his entire glass of scotch. He seemed to savor it a minute before swallowing.
Piri raised his eyebrows when Alex slapped the empty glass on the bar. “’Nother?”
Alex nodded and Piri’s eyes grazed me and my still-full glass. “I’m good,” I said, bringing it to my lips. The wafting scent of the amber liquid burned my nostrils and I worked hard not to cough. “Smells good,” I said in a scotch-induced hoarse whisper.
I sipped my drink and tried not to wince as the scotch burned my throat and Alex got Piri to talk.
“I don’t recognize you—either of you,” Piri said as he worked a bar rag. “Where you from?”
“Not important,” Alex said. “You know a Lucas Szabo?”
Piri stopped wiping the bar. “Maybe.”
“Well, would you know, maybe, where someone could find him?”
Piri jutted his chin toward me. “Who’s the girl?”
“Lucas Szabo,” Alex repeated.
I looked around nonchalantly but could feel Piri’s dark eyes boring into me, studying me.
“I asked you a question.”
I thrust out a hand. “I’m Sophie.”
Piri ignored my offer to shake. I watched his lip twitch and I saw that he was fighting a smile.
I heard the tinkle of ice against glass down the bar. “Can I get another?” the blond-haired guy was asking.
Piri regarded his customer disdainfully but still filled his drink.
“You know him?” Alex asked again once Piri returned to us.
“Please?” I asked Piri. “It’s important that we find Lucas Szabo.”
“Because?” asked Piri—but I had the feeling he already knew.
“Because he’s my father,” I supplied.
Piri crossed his arms in front of his chest, and I worked not to stare at the troop of scorpions that were tattooed down the front of his arm. “I can help you find him,” Piri said finally. He leaned forward, his elbow gently tapping Alex’s glass of scotch. Alex watched the glass as it wobbled to the lip of the bar and then dropped gracefully, shattering on the floor. Alex leaned down and Piri bounded over him, clearing the bar in a single smooth motion. A pair of gossamer wings tore through Piri’s leather vest and caught the stolid, beer-soaked stench of the bar and then his hands were around my neck, his thumbs pressing against my windpipe. I hurtled to the floor, Piri on top of me, choking me, and I felt the breath leave my body, but I opened my mouth anyway, gasping, working. The first scrapings of a severe headache blossomed from the back of my head where I hit the ground.
Piri groaned when Alex’s body made contact with his; I felt Piri’s nails rake across my neck, scrape at the skin on my cheek as Alex dragged him off me. Piri landed with a thud and howled as his head mashed against the shards of broken glass on the floor. Alex had his knee pressed against Piri’s chest, his hand on Piri’s throat. Piri’s short legs and arms flailed under Alex’s weight. I gaped at Alex, who wore an expression so fierce, so angry that it startled me.
“Don’t you touch her, demon,” Alex spat between gritted teeth.
Piri’s chest rose and Alex’s knee drifted up an inch. Piri cut his eyes to me and they were hard, cold. “She’s not even human. She’s a thing, a prize—and you want her as badly as I do.”
I shuddered at the sound of Alex’s knuckles connecting with Piri’s jaw.
“Alex!” I shouted.
“He doesn’t have anything worthwhile to say.”
I stood up, mildly surprised that my shaky legs held me up. “Let’s just go.”
Alex looked at me and then down at Piri. “If I let him up, he’s just going to come after you again.”
Piri tried to nod his head, his lips arching into a horrible, grimacing smile. I scrambled behind the bar and pried the pour spout off two bottles of coconut rum. I upended the bottles over Piri, who howled and writhed.
“You can get up now,” I told Alex.
Alex looked down, incredulous. “Coconut rum kills pixies? Who knew?”
“It’s not the rum,” I said, shrugging at Piri, his wings soaked and stuck to the floor. “It’s the liquid. Sticks ’em down. And the coconut is just ... festive.”
Alex nodded, carefully stepping off Piri and brushing his palms on his jeans. “I will ... keep that in mind.”
We crossed the bar and left Piri on the floor behind us, wings pinned to the ground, legs and arms floundering wildly. His bald head was red with effort and when I looked back at him he growled, “Your days are numbered, girl. A prize like you isn’t safe anywhere.”
