Chapter Two: London is made for walking, for seeing and being seen. Which is why that afternoon I paid sixpence for a ride home on the omnibus.
I chose to forego climbing to the more spacious seats on the roof and sat in the cloistered section below, near an attractive woman who wore a red dress and coat. The omnibus’ blue velvet seats were deceptively luxurious and failed to hide how the air held you by the throat when you tried to breathe. You also ran the risk of getting your pocket picked or your personal space compromised in some other unappealing way.
But I didn’t only want to go unseen. I wanted to crawl under a rock.
The bus was still loading when a lighted blue orb stopped outside the window beside me. Another fairy. Wonderful. It was Pea Blossom, and she looked pissed about something.
The other passengers couldn’t see her. Their eyes weren’t attuned to that sort of thing, so they didn’t notice when she buzzed around back, through the door, and hovered three inches in front of my face.
I couldn’t help flinching.
“You stay away from him,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly stout for such a small fairy. “And you keep that juice to yourself.”
That again. This too was about Dragon Venom.
I performed my best ventriloquist act, trying to look like I wasn’t talking to myself. “You got it wrong. I don’t deal in that.”
The attractive woman in the red dress gave me a look. I tipped my hat.
Pea Blossom persisted. “That’s not what I heard. And it’s not what I seen, either. I seen him at your shop.” She shook her tiny fist at me. “You stay away from that one.”
Hm. Fairy love. The plot thickens.
“Well,” I said. “If you saw him in my shop, then you know I didn’t give him anything.”
“Don’t matter. Stay away just the same.”
There was no debating that kind of logic.
By now, the other passengers were eyeing me with suspicion. I tried to pass it all off with a friendly smile, but the little fairy kicked me in the face a few times, so all I could manage was something like a grimace as the metallic taste of blood seeped into my mouth.
The attractive woman’s eyes grew round.
“I am warning you,” the tenacious fairy said. “You don’t know whom you’re messing with.”
I couldn’t resist. “That would sound a lot more intimidating coming from someone a bit taller,” I said.
Her eyes flared. Me and my big mouth.
Pea Blossom reared back. The orb of blue light around her grew.
I braced myself. This wasn’t going to be good.
The tiny blue orb crashed through the side of the omnibus like a steam locomotive. The other passengers didn’t have to be attuned to anything to see that. They panicked. Apparently, they thought we were under fire.
The fairy burst through in another place on her way back, creating another explosion of shattered wood. The bus rocked up on two wheels. Someone screamed.
I couldn’t just sit there. Someone was going to get hurt. I weighed the options and swallowed the blood that had pooled between my cheek and gums. I concentrated, shaping the fear and confusion of the passengers to form a wall of protective energy around the bus.
When my new little friend tried to blast us a third time, she hit that wall and bounced off it like a shuttlecock.
That’s when she turned her attack on the horses.
The horses had no idea what was attacking them, which according to horse logic, meant we should all go crashing through the streets of London at full speed.
The driver struggled to stop the horses. Pedestrians dove out of the way, and a coffee stall barely avoided getting reduced to rubble. The passengers fought to get at the door to escape. I wasn’t feeling too calm myself. Then we experienced the sickening feeling of sliding out of control as the omnibus whipped sideways, grazing a lamp post.