The Unfortunate Story of Roddy Mayhem, Julie Steimle [i can read book club TXT] 📗

I get comfortable with my wings like this?” Piranha snapped. She strained against the red ribbon bond. “And how come he doesn’t have one?” She gestured to me.

Gazing dryly at her, Rick replied like the solid CEO material that he was, “I’m afraid that those bonds are necessary as we can’t trust you aren’t going to bail on us during the flight—which would be unwise as we will be flying a high velocities several thousand feet above the ground.”

They stared at him. He really did understand the impulsive imp mind. It was something Tom probably would have done. And we peeked at him as he was digging through the magazine and packets in the seat pocket before him.

“But how come he doesn’t have one?” Piranha repeated, pointing at me.

Rick glanced at me and said, “He seems sensible. And we don’t know the rest of you very well.”

The other halfs stared at me now. I felt like a bug.

“You knew him?” Piranha’s voice rose as she glared at me.

“We were watching him,” Dan spoke up.

Rick nodded.

I paled. How had I not noticed? It had been my fault after all that they had come to the gang’s club house. If Dervish ever found me, I was dead.

“A friend of ours told us about him,” Dan explained. And I realized immediately that they had meant Eve. Of course she had been watching me. I had been watching her. It clear she had noticed the Unseelie Gang, yet was not intending to take things into her own dangerous hands. Gads. She really was a goody-goody.

“A friend of yours?” Piranha protested, still angry.

“The demon,” I hissed at her. “The one I told you guys about at the club.”

She heard me and paled. She stared at them more. “You are friends with that demon?”

They all nodded, Tom barely as he was reading the braille on the emergency instructions—with closed eyes. I stared at him. It was weird.  Why was he learning braille? The guy could see invisible things for pity’s sake!

“That’s right,” Rick said, nodding to her. “And you are all about to discover that the world is larger than the one you were just in.”

He then went over to the flight attendants to talk with them. The flight attendants immediately stepped forward and started into a spiel over ‘emergency procedures’, instructing us to look at the things Tom was already reading. And they demonstrated while the airplane started to move.

Wispy and Piranha were once again urged into seats. Spastic claimed one, but he too found it hard to sit comfortably with his wings bound. None of us just sat, either. I felt restless. I just couldn’t sit still—until Tom said, “Guys, seriously. Pay attention. You don’t have to stay in those seats the entire flight. Just for the lift off, ok?”

We all stared a back at him.

Tom leaned back in his seat, his fingers still skimming blindly over the braille dots, feeling them out. Rick shot him a concerned look when he settled in the seat next to him. He then whispered, “How are you coming with that? Mastered it yet?”

“Nearly,” Tom said, not a chuckle in his voice. For some reason it gave me a sick sensation.

“Are you worried you are going to go blind soon?” Rick asked, though it did not sound as facetious as I imagined it ought. He wasn’t joking. And I didn’t know which part.

“My eyes are fine,” Tom said. “But I’ve made so many enemies these days that one can’t be too careful.”

Rick nodded. As he rested in his seat, listening to the emergency instructions, he said, “Just stay away from witches, and I think you’ll be fine.”

Tom chuckled, nodding.

Witches.

I absorbed that.

Were there witches in the world?

I knew there were vampires. I had seen those death angels and a few demons sent from that Unseelie Court. But witches? Then again, as I stared at that werewolf—the first I had ever met—the possibility of witches being real seemed more true. And if that were the case, the world was definitely a lot bigger than I knew.

My stomach bottomed out when the airplane finally lifted off the runway. All of us shook as we were soon suspended in air, no longer on the ground. And though I had technically flown with my little wings, I had never been that high up before. None of us halfs besides Tom had. Tom looked comfortable in his seat. And once the captain announced we were free to move about the cabin, he popped up from his seat and sat on the back of it with hardly any of his weight at all. I was impressed. It was so second nature to him, and I hardly thought of doing that.

Spastic copied him, grinning. Though Spastic had his full weight and nearly fell over. Whatever bound his wings made him solid entirely.

“Here we go…” Dan muttered, eyeing us.

James nodded.

“Ok,” Tom said to us. “First some rules.”

All of us halfs moaned.

Rick smirked, then closed his eyes with the intention to sleep during the entire flight. He had already taken off crisp his suit coat and hung it on the seat in front of him.

“To start, stay in the plane,” Tom said.

We all rolled our eyes.

“Like we can leave,” Piranha said, staring right back at him.

Tom’s grin spread. He apparently enjoyed someone challenging him. His eyes raked over Piranha’s spiked jewelry, punked dark silver-and-blue waxed hair and mostly gothic clothes. He especially took in her black stilettos as if he liked what he saw. “I know. But if you promise not to do anything stupid, I can take those ties off your wings.”

“No, you can’t,” Dan piped up.

Looking back to him, actually distressed, Tom said, “Why not?”

“Because you wouldn’t be able to touch it,” Dan said, rising. “You’re half imp too, and they repel imp hands.”

I blinked and Tom moaned, nodding. Of course, halfers like us could have ordered imps to remove such bonds for us.

Dan got out of his seat aisle and walked over to Wispy. He gestured for her to rise, smiling wryly at her. “My half-sister is ingenious, you know. She provided these for me, just in case.”

Tom shuddered. “No kidding?”

“He’d never use them against you, Tom,” James called out.

But Tom was pale. He peeked to Rick who was not exactly sleeping yet. “I know. Just… that’s a witch thing. I always wondered how they could catch one of us, considering…”

“You’re so fast?” Dan said, helping Wispy turn around so he could unwind the red ribbon off her wings. Wispy shuddered as he gently fingered and untied the knot to it. I could see the black writing in it was not painted on, but sewn in—and in writing I did not recognize.

Tom nodded, watching also.

When Wispy was loose, her imps shouted for her to jump out of the plane right then. Tom grabbed her wrist and shook his head. “High altitude, remember?”

She nodded, staring at him.

Dan then gestured to Piranha.

She rose sharply, glaring at Tom. She turned around so her back faced Dan. She said, “So—what is your sister? A witch?”

“Yes,” Dan said, not masking the truth a bit.

Tom cringed, nodding.

“Are they really that scary?” Piranha said to Tom, almost sneering at him.

Lifting his eyes to her and taking off his sunglasses, Tom said, “Are you kidding? One witch is easy enough to handle. But they gather in covens. Covens. And a coven of witches is deadly.”

“Like the Unseelie Court?” Piranha nearly snarled at him now.

Tom lifted his chin, his gaze now turning dry. “The Unseelie Court is not a coven. That is a side of the faerie realm that enjoys wreaking havoc on the world. And messing around with them is an entirely different game altogether.

But Piranha jeered out, “But I hear their queen is in love with you.”

With such a disgusted and annoyed moan, hanging his shoulders as if the weight of that information dragged him down, Tom replied, “She is not in love with me! Queen Maeve—”

“So, you’ve met her?” Wispy piped up. Her voice was willowy and light. She hardly talked much, but when she did, you listened. There was something in the pitch of her voice that pierced into your brain.

Tom looked sharply to her, cringing. “Yeah. Of course. The crazy lady won’t leave me alone.”

Dan drew of the rest of the ribbon from around Piranha’s wings and he stepped to Spastic to take his off next. Spastic happily hopped over the seats.

Piranha stretched her wings and then her back muscles, glaring once at me for never having to wear one. But then her eyes shot back on Tom. “And why is that?”

“I dunno?” Tom tossed up his hands. “She thinks it’s funny messing with my life? You tell me.”

I had to admit, Piranha was amazing. She stood up to Tom like she would duke it out with him—like he wasn’t the infamous Trouble whom all the imps loved. And Tom, the nut, gazed back at her as if she were an equal. I realized then that that was how he saw us. The idiot didn’t even know he was superior to us in a thousand ways.

Piranha huffed and went back to her seat.

Once Spastic’s wings were free, he fluttered upside down and rested on the roof of the airplane. “This is cool.”

Rick opened one eye and chuckled at him, watching the guy.

The flight attendants stared.

Tom strolled up to him and said, “Just stay in the airplane. Ok?”

Spastic nodded, his mucky clothes hanging upside down with his crooked bow tie bobbing above his chin.

Rick got up and tugged on Spastic’s hair, urging him to get off the ceiling. “Come on. Not on the plane. You can do that at the school.”

Spastic popped off the ceiling and flipped back around, grinning at Rick. “Nothin’ freaks you out, does it?”

Chuckling, Rick shook his head. “Plenty freaks me out. Just not that.”

“Who are you people?” Wispy asked. Her large orange gaze on them stared from her pale face. She looked a bit like that Les Miserables poster girl staring up with her fluffy fair hair framing her face—her stubby horns barely poking out. She had lost her hat in prison, I figured.

Rick turned while gently pushing Spastic to a seat, gazing toward her, then the rest of us. “That’s a fair question. Um, I’m sort of the financial backer for this operation. My friends are really whom you should be asking. But my name is Rick Deacon—otherwise known as Howard Richard Deacon the Third.”

Piranha drew in a breath. She apparently knew about the guy. I wondered how. I only knew what the others had told me about him.

He then led out a hand to Dan who had gone back to his seat. “Those two gentlemen back there are knights of the Holy Seven—close friends of mine. And their job is to deal with supernatural phenomena that goes amok.”

I looked back to the two men—the pyromaniac and that guy in the boy scout tee shirt. I remembered their scars. These were dangerous men. Knights, huh? That explained their swords.

“And I do believe you all know about Tom Brown,” Rick said.

“Trouble,” Piranha corrected.

Rick immediately choked on a laugh.

“Knock it off!” Tom shouted up to him, then reached up to swat Rick. “It was a stupid school nickname.”

Raising his hands to fend him off, Rick tried not to laugh, though their imps were enjoying these two going at each other. “I know. I know. I never called you that for pity’s sake!”

“You did once!” Tom snapped.

Shrugging, Rick stepped to the side of Tom to get out from his reach and continued what he was saying. “Anyway, this aircraft is only so big—and know you half-imps are going to be stir crazy. I’m sorry. But to make this trip easier, I’ve got a list of inflight movies we can watch, books and magazines you can read—and I’d recommend you get a nap as jet lag is killer.”

“Do you have Hellboy?” I raised my hand.

Wispy and Piranha moaned together. “Not Hellboy, you fanatic.”

But Spastic was bouncing in his