Shadowglass: The Shadowfae Chronicles - By Erica Hayes Page 0,2
you are is a naughty boy with a hard-on. Get a girlfriend.” And I turned and pushed my way through the fragrant crowd, laughter floating from me like starlight on the swelling currents of my high.
Colors tumbled and prismed. My diamonds dazzled me, and I stumbled over my own ankles a few times as I approached the blue neon bar. Azure pointed at me and laughed, pearlescent wings jittering as she swayed on her stool. She wore a jagged-hemmed white dress that left her back bare, and she’d piled her green hair above her head in a wild nest of knots and stolen pearls, a pair of broken chopsticks and a cocktail fork sticking out.
My purple-drugged heart swelled with love and awe. Azure’s the pretty one. Her glamour shows some weirdly beautiful supermodel, tall and willowy with wide-spaced almond eyes. Her real appearance is the same, only with shimmering oval wings, and her skin is a dozen perfect shades of pale air-sprite blue.
Whereas my hair looks kinda like mango peel, half green and half moldy orange, and my wings are burnt yellow, ragged and droopy like a sick butterfly’s.
Some girls have all the luck.
Azure poked my chin with a sharp claw, her soft breeze playing with my hair. Az is airfae, attuned to air and the atmosphere. “You’re drunk, diamond girl.”
“Not true. I’m high. You’re the one who’s drunk.” I jumped up and down, unsteady on my heels, until the bar boy noticed me, and he served me two pink vodka lemonades without me asking. Maybe I was drunker than I thought. Still plenty of stolen cash left, though. I tossed him a crumpled twenty, waving my diamonded wrist grandly. “Keep it, peaches. Stop looking at him like that.”
Azure said nothing, and I lurched onto a stool and tickled her slender ribs. “I said, stop staring at him.”
“Who?” She tossed her pretty blue head, her wings aflutter, and concentrated too hard on stirring her drink.
“Oh, I dunno, the woolly mammoth in the corner? Who d’ya think?”
She thumped her chin into her hand and her elbow onto the bar, sea-green moisture staining her eyes. “But he’s so pretty.”
Guilt twinged my happy guts, and I patted her shoulder clumsily. “Yeah, I know. But it’s an orchid farm in here, okay? Look around. There’s other pretty ones.”
“Not like him.” She hiccuped and burst into proper tears, her wings flooding verdant.
I sighed. Last month she’d had the hots for some cute blond vampire babe. This week it was Blaze. She’d get over it. But my heart still ached for her. Just because she falls quick doesn’t mean she doesn’t fall hard. And Blaze is the Court’s biggest boy whore. He’ll only break her heart.
I slipped my arm around her bony shoulder and pointed to the dance floor, where Blaze was trickling orange flame down some laughing banshee’s spine, singeing the ends of her long silver hair. “Look at him. See that girl he’s dancing with? In the silver dress? Oh, now he’s tongue-kissing her, he’s putting his hand up her . . . Yeah. You really want that to be you?”
Az just looked at me, indignant breeze dragging her hair back.
I flushed, vodka-tainted water heating my muscles. Maybe I wasn’t quite making my point. “Okay, let’s not look at that anymore.” Firmly I spun her back around to the bar.
She glared, wet-eyed. “You’re a real big help, Ice.”
I gulped my vodka, pink fizz shooting fireworks up my nose. “So he’s boy candy. Everyone knows that. You also know what a bitch he can be. Whaddaya want me to say?”
“Promise you’ll never go with him.”
I flushed again, and this time the water burned my cheeks. “What?”
“Butterflies in the sun. I’ve seen him flirt with you. Promise me you’ll never.”
“Never flirt with him?” Discomfort twisted, ruining my high. Why dissemble? We were best friends. That’s all. Even if I’d wanted to, I didn’t have the courage to pursue it further. Believe it or not, I’m not too smooth with the boys, and courage is not my middle name.
Azure swatted my shoulder. “You know what I mean.”
“Hide and seek, catch-me-if-you-can. It’s just games—”
“Promise, Ice. I couldn’t bear it.”
She stared, so earnest and brimful with tears that I couldn’t take it. “Okay, I promise. Call me a pincushion and shove safety pins up my nose if I’m wrong. It’s the rules anyway, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Azure gave a sad half smile.
I hugged her, my hand slipping beneath her delicate wings. “You’ll get over him, Az.”