Merrick gave him a steady look from under his thin brows, and returned to his work.
“I don’t know,” Crane repeated. “I can’t—I don’t think I can do this any more. I can’t…” I can’t bear it. He’d never said the words in thirty-seven years, not even in the times of hunger and degradation. He wanted to say them now.
Merrick frowned. “Got to fight it, my lord.”
“Fight what? Give me something to fight, and I’ll fight it—but how the hell do I fight my own mind?”
“It ain’t your mind,” said Merrick levelly. “You ain’t mad.”
“Right. I can see how you reached that conclusion.” Crane made a sound that was a little, though not very much, like a laugh. “After all these years, after he’s bloody dead, it looks like the old bastard is finally getting rid of me.”
Merrick began rolling up the lint and bandages with care. “You’re thinking about that word again.”
“Hereditary,” enunciated Crane, staring at his narrow-fingered hands. “Hereditary insanity. We might as well put the name to it, no?”
“No,” said Merrick. “Cos, I’ll tell you what word I’m thinking of.”
Crane’s brows drew together. “What?”
Merrick’s hazel eyes met Crane’s and held them. He put the bottle of spirits back down on the table with a deliberate clink. “Shaman.”
There was a silence.
“We’re not in Shanghai now,” said Crane eventually.
“No, we ain’t. But if we was there, and you started going mad all on a sudden and off again, you wouldn’t be sat there whining, would you? You’d be right out—”
“To see Yu Len.”
Merrick cocked his head in agreement.
“But we’re not in Shanghai,” Crane repeated. “This is London. Yu Len is half the world away, and at this rate I’m not going to make it to next quarter day.”
“So we find a shaman here,” said Merrick simply.
“But—”
“No buts!” The words rang off the stone floor and tiled walls. “You can go to some mad-doctor and get thrown in the bedlam, or you can sit there and go mad for thinking you’re going mad, or we find a fucking shaman and get this looked at like we would back home, because hereditary my arse.” Merrick leaned forward, hands on the table, glaring in his master’s face. “I know you, Lucien Vaudrey. I seen you look death in the face plenty of times, and every time you either ran like hell or you kicked him in the balls, so don’t you tell me you want to die. I never met anyone who didn’t want to die as much as you don’t. So we are going to find a shaman and get this sorted, unless you got any better ideas, which you don’t! Right?”
Merrick held his gaze for a few seconds, then straightened and began to tidy up. Crane cleared his throat. “Are there English shamans?”
“Got to be, right? Witches. Whatever.”
“I suppose so,” said Crane, trying hard, knowing it was pointless, knowing he owed it to Merrick. “I suppose so. Who’d know…” His fingers twitched, calling up memories. “Rackham. He’s back, isn’t he? I could ask him.”
“Mr. Rackham,” agreed Merrick. “We’ll go see him. Ask for a shaman. You got any idea where he is?”
“No.” Crane flexed his bandaged wrist and rose. “But if I can’t find him through any of the clubs, we can just hang around all the filthiest opium dens in Limehouse till we meet him.”
“See?” said Merrick. “Things are looking up already.”
Happily ever after doesn’t always come quietly. Sometimes it puts up a fight.
Too Many Fairy Princes
? 2013 Alex Beecroft
Kjartan’s family is royally dysfunctional. He’d prefer to ignore the lot of them, but can’t since his father has set him and his brothers on a quest to win a throne Kjartan doesn’t even want. Worse, his younger brother resorts to murder and forces Kjartan to teleport—without looking where he’s going.
Art gallery worker Joel Wilson’s day has gone from hopeless, to hopeful, then straight to hell. One minute he’s sure his boss has found a way to save the floundering business, the next he’s scrambling to sell everything to pay off a loan shark. If anyone needs a fairy godmother right now, it’s Joel. What he gets is a fugitive elven prince in a trash bin.
They’ll both have to make the best of it, because fairy tales run roughshod over reluctant heroes. Particularly when there aren’t enough happy endings to go around.
Warning: This sweet romance contains a starving artist trying to scrape together a living, extreme sibling rivalry, royalty behaving outrageously, and elves being unreasonably beautiful, grotesque or deadly.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Too Many Fairy Princes: