[Puck/Meghan Chase] - [Iron Fey] - [The Rogue's Bargain]
Title: The Rogue's Bargain
Character/Pairing: Iron Fey
Prompt List: Sin and Salvation
Prompt: Dorian
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 2966
Author's Notes: A little dark.
Summary: On the surface, everything seems fine. But underneath, Puck knows that he can't stand out long against the tension...
The air was like syrup in his throat, thick like molasses and too sickly sweet for him to swallow. Dust flaked it like frosting glimmering on a cake, like even looking at it would stab pangs of stale sweetness into his tastebuds.
Careful to check for night security, he lightly vaulted over the turnstiles that led into the Historic Voodoo Museum and sat in front of the display hanging over the entrance, his legs swinging back and forth, curious. The security cameras didn't cover this stretch of floor as well as other places, and he'd taken care to leave the guard watching them with a sufficient enchantment so that he wouldn't notice anything suspicious. Like, for example, a teen-aged boy spindling his legs in front of a statue of three seers, his eyes as predatory as a cat when it spots its mouse.
The dust motes here seemed almost in permanent suspension, as though the museum had been deserted for years rather than the six hours it had been since closing for the night. The particles in the air were still, as ready for casual inspection as the artifacts they floated above.
Puck smiled. Yeah, this was definitely the place.
"You know," he said conversationally, still vigorously kicking the air into motion, "you're going to run this place into the ground if you keep glamouring school teachers not to take their classes here. Museums don't run on kindness and intellectual interest alone. Money speaks volumes these days."
At once, the woman making up the left part of the oracle triad exploded into a maelstrom of dust and a low, guttural moan. It was as though every particle that had been resting in the air had been transformed into an angry insect, swirling in unison to swarm him, but Puck laughed, cover his mouthing, and swatted them away playfully.
"Nice to see you've kept well." He commented.
The woman, after she had finished reassembling herself, sat on the far side of the turnstile and looked quite a bit more worse for wear. Though her eyes were dark holes that Puck couldn't see the ends of and her skin was wrinkled from countless years like much-abused parchment paper, he could definitely tell that she was scowling.
"Puck," the oracle wheezed, still sending up bursts of dust as she arranged herself more comfortably, "how unfortunate. Why am I not surprised that it is always you who disturbs my rest?"
"Maybe it's because you can see me in the future?" Puck asked innocently. "But hey, I make it a point to know where old friends are in the neighborhood. And who would have thought that you would choose to settle in New Orleans?"
She grumbled, waving her hand impatiently and dislodging a spider with the motion. She wanted him to get on with it.
But Puck would not be rushed. No, he'd come all this way, found her after all, and he would savor this sweet bit of victory. Leaning forward, he shrugged.
"So what is it you go by these days? Unless you want me referring to you the same way as when I found you that time in Delphi."
The oracle glowered, or as much as it was possible for a near-skeletal, eyeless face to. "Anna will do nicely."
"Anna, then." He swallowed. He'd come this far, found her out, now all that remained was to carry out the task. "Much as it's fun to renew old acquaintances, I didn't come here t-"
Anna exhaled in a laughing cough of dust and a sick, over ripe smile, like something decaying would grin, its mouth stretching too far for the boundaries of its face. "You came, like everyone else who comes here, to make a bargain. So what is it you want this time, Robin Goodfellow?"
Another oracle, he knew, would not be powerful enough to grant him this request. Or if there were, then they would have wanted something more than what he was willing to offer for it. So it all came down to this.
Why, then, was he feeling like something had caught him by the heel and was trying to drag him back, keep him from going through with it?
-o-
They read through the play at Meghan's house. She sat on the window seat as he acted out his parts with great aplomb. They were reading through A Midsummer Night's Dream, which had nearly given Puck a heart attack when their English teacher asked him to read the part of, well, himself.
The assignment was to read through the first act by Friday, so he and Meghan were having a study party to do it early. There was one read-through where Puck was somehow playing all the roles at once, which left Meghan in tears by the end of the first scene. When he voiced Titania in a high, cold falsetto with curt endings, she made him stop, giggling so much that she gasped for breath.
"No way, no...way." Meghan shook her head, wiping tears away from her eyes. "The Queen of all the Faeries doesn't sound like that."
Puck put his hands on his sides in mock outrage and asked in the same high-pitched voice, "And how would you know?"
Meghan doubled over again and he had to wait for her to calm down for her to reply. "I mean, I obviously don't, but aren't Faery Queens supposed to sound more elegant than that, like they drink fresh-squeezed honeysuckle, or braid their hair with vanilla leaves or something? Besides, it's not like you know either."
Actually, Puck wanted to say, you'd be surprised. And, believe it or not, that had been his best Titania imitation yet.
-o-
"I want to be able to lie." He said, then quickly added: "Just once. A one-time special power I can choose where and when to use, but when I do use it, will get me to either tell an untruth or get myself out of a promise made in past or future. That's all."
He shrugged, holding his palms out as though to say: there, was that such an unreasonable thing?
The oracle's eye sockets widened. "That is quite a request. It goes against the very nature of fey to lie. Promises are binding, vows once made-"
"-cannot be unmade, yes, I know." Puck finished darkly. "But," here he sighed dramatically, "if you can't do it, then I guess that's alright. I was thinking that since you'd lasted this long, making all those deals to get yourself more power and skirt death that maybe you could be the one to do this for me, but I can be wrong sometimes. Guess you aren't as powerful as-"
Anna held up a withered hand for silence.
"I did not say that it was beyond my power." She began slowly, slightly miffed. "It is more that so many wish for it and yet they cannot afford to pay my price. For example, for a wish such as that, it would not be unreasonable to ask even your True Name..."
She trailed off, allowing it to sound like a question, but Robin Goodfellow was clever enough to know not to take the bait.
"Sorry, Anna, but try as you might, all the names you're going to get from me are the ones you already know. How about considering something a little different from your usual fare of names and memories?"
And with a flourish worthy of a sidhe of the Seelie Court, he drew out a very ragged and much put-upon book. It had a comfortable air around it, like a house that had been lived in, or a broken-in pair of shoes, perfectly shaped to its owner. Leather bound up its spine, preserving it neatly, though the gilt letters that made up its title had started to fade.
"A Token." Anna said, trying to keep her voice dull and dismissively, but failing to disguise the sharp intake of breath she'd taken on seeing it. She'd want to haggle higher, he knew, but he could see the excitement creeping into her features as she leaned yet closer still. "Well, it would be a good start. But you would require something more than that to tempt me."
"I thought you were beyond temptation," Puck said piously, "but surely you're joking. Don't tell me that you can't sense what this is?"
Anna's brow furrowed, perturbed at the slight, even though it had been in jest. "Of course I can tell that it is a scholar's Token, that much is obvious. It is powerful, I will grant you that, but you will need something more than that to convince me that what you are offering is a fair trade."
"More?" Puck's eyebrows raised theatrically. "This is a scholar's Token, true. Each page is filled with a fervent devotion to the author's subject, almost like a man falling in love and finding more and more that he is powerless to resist the call of his beloved object. But to call it no more than that is a grievous oversight, unworthy of the book."
The oracle, he could tell, did not like being called unworthy of anything. She sniffed haughtily. "I do perhaps sense some muted undertones of some other emotions..." Her voice petered off, an invitation to further convince her.
Puck took it. "The man whose book this used to be was just that: a scholar of great renown, whose love throughout his academic years was just that, his subject and his work. But then, as fate would have it, he met someone just as passionate about his field as he was. They were to be married and would have been, but he wanted to complete his manuscript before then, as a testament to their shared love of learning.
"However, his sweetheart wished that they were not so idle. She could see a rift beginning to open up between them when she attempted to distract him doing his working hours. One day while late at work, she was spirited away to Faery for a time. She was bewitched by beautiful sights, as they say, and even fell in love with a faery herself. Oberon found out, and quicker than thinking, she was sent back to the mortal realm. You probably know how it goes from there. She either ate nor drank, and when it came to her betrothed..."
Puck shrugged, putting on a melancholy air.
"Ah. I did detect an undertone of grief."
"The man strove on after the loss, finishing his masterpiece. At last, he realized what a wonderful person he had been on the verge of being with forever, though he had lost his chance. The dedication is to her and the cycle of emotions contained within the pages mirrors their relationship: from joy to reckless determination to sorrow at the end, it is all indexed by page number for your convenience."
He bowed, as a storyteller would completing a tale.
Anna appeared to be considering something most heavily. "It is certainly a potent Token."
On hearing this, Puck laughed. "It's so potent that it's more or less a collection of smaller Tokens all bound together. Truly, one of a kind."
He saw the last bit of resistance fade in her eyes and took his chance.
"So do we have a deal?"
And once again, like seeing a jack-o-lantern's carved face rot in fast-forwarded time, she smiled.
-o-
The amusement park's rides glinted in the sun, like they were pieces of molten rock candy, lapsing into a slow melt.
They were here not because either of them had invited the other, but more because the school was doing a freshman outing at the end of the year to celebrate and encourage them to be more friendly with each other. Puck has always been a little curious about theme parks and what better chance was there to see what the fuss was about?
Threads of sugar drifted along the breeze from the cotton candy machine, like strays from a spinner's loom. He could even feel the iron throbbing at him from the rides; luckily Meghan wasn't all that fond of them, either. He'd gone on a rollercoaster to prove that he could, but the long lines seemed to keep them away, which was good.
The two of them walked through a house of mirrors, went on a haunted mine cart ride (also very metallic, but the bus had been good training), and even spun around in teacup-shaped cars. Wandering through the midway, both slightly soaked from standing outside the water rides and watching people go down them, they stopped at a fishing game whose prizes caught Meghan's eye.
"What do you say, princess?" Puck teased. "Think you can take me on in a wholesome game of fishing?"
Meghan cocked an eyebrow, spading her hands in her khaki cargo pants. "Oh, I'd say I could. Be prepared to lose, Robbie. I have years of farm experience on my side."
He wooed the plastic fish with the magnetic sinker deftly, but Puck had to admit that Meghan wasn't bluffing. When at last they'd managed to secure their fish, the man behind the counter whistled as he examined the stickers on the undersides of their catches.
"Well now, looks like we have some winners!" He squinted at both fish. "Hate to break it to ya, sir, but your friend's a natural."
Puck's eyes widened as Meghan was instructed to choose which of the massive stuffed animals she wanted. Puck, in the meantime, was content with his glowstick crown, though it seemed somewhat meager compared to the mammoth sea creature that Meghan walked out with.
"How on earth did you get so good at fishing?" He frowned. "Your family keeps pigs, not trout or something."
"Well, sometimes important stuff falls into the pig pen and you don't want to have to glove up to get it out." Meghan replied. "You just get really good at winding a wire around objects that are stuck in mud. Like this one time my mom dropped her watch in there- it was pretty gross."
"At least I beat you at skeeball." Puck said.
"That's only because I'm out of practice."
"Yeah, sure, whatever you say, prin-"
"Hey!"
Puck stopped. A man who had been woozily weaving through the midway kiosks had walked into Meghan and was now looking at her angrily. He was bald and his face and upper arms, like many other park-goers, were burnt red from the sun.
"Why don't you watch where you're going, missy?" Puck noticed that he slurred the "s"'s and smelt slightly of alcohol. Great, he thought, just after we were having such a good time. But then man was not done. He grabbed hold of Meghan's arm and she flinched. "I demand an apology for you," he paused, "being so-o-o-o rude." He drew out the "so" for what seemed an inestimable amount of time.
"Let her go." Puck said, stepping closer. "It's your own fault you bumped into her."
"Oh, look, got yourself a knight ion shining armor to protect you, huh?" The man taunted, pulling Meghan so suddenly that she stumbled. Puck knew what this was all about. Male-to-male power brokering, this jerk's way of showing him who was top dog around here. But even though he could understand what was happening, he still heard his voice come out in a growl.
"I sat, let her go."
"What," the man leered back, "gonna fight me?"
Puck was faster than he'd even though he'd be. A breath after the man had uttered those words, he'd wrestled Meghan's arm away as the man suddenly started to fight the air. Meghan looked back hastily over her shoulder as a theme park security guard sauntered over and a twig and a leaf floated to the ground.
"Wow, Robbie." Meghan gulped, rubbing her arm. "What did you do to him?"
"He's just drunk." Puck threw a seething glare over his shoulder as the man was now arguing vehemently with the officer. Abruptly, he turned back to Meghan. "Are you okay?"
His heart was beating strangely, as though there were some strange thread between them, as soft and thin, volatile as cotton candy contorting on the breeze, yet drawing him closer and closer to her until-
"Such an idiot." Puck murmured into her hair.
He wished he was more certain whether he'd meant the man or himself.
-o-
"Why lying?" Anna mused. "Answer me this in addition to that book of yours, and I'll grant you one lie. I'd say be careful not to waste it, but I hardly need to warn someone like you. So why a lie?"
Puck smirked. "Isn't it obvious? I have something I need to get out of."
Character/Pairing: Iron Fey
Prompt List: Sin and Salvation
Prompt: Dorian
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 2966
Author's Notes: A little dark.
Summary: On the surface, everything seems fine. But underneath, Puck knows that he can't stand out long against the tension...
The air was like syrup in his throat, thick like molasses and too sickly sweet for him to swallow. Dust flaked it like frosting glimmering on a cake, like even looking at it would stab pangs of stale sweetness into his tastebuds.
Careful to check for night security, he lightly vaulted over the turnstiles that led into the Historic Voodoo Museum and sat in front of the display hanging over the entrance, his legs swinging back and forth, curious. The security cameras didn't cover this stretch of floor as well as other places, and he'd taken care to leave the guard watching them with a sufficient enchantment so that he wouldn't notice anything suspicious. Like, for example, a teen-aged boy spindling his legs in front of a statue of three seers, his eyes as predatory as a cat when it spots its mouse.
The dust motes here seemed almost in permanent suspension, as though the museum had been deserted for years rather than the six hours it had been since closing for the night. The particles in the air were still, as ready for casual inspection as the artifacts they floated above.
Puck smiled. Yeah, this was definitely the place.
"You know," he said conversationally, still vigorously kicking the air into motion, "you're going to run this place into the ground if you keep glamouring school teachers not to take their classes here. Museums don't run on kindness and intellectual interest alone. Money speaks volumes these days."
At once, the woman making up the left part of the oracle triad exploded into a maelstrom of dust and a low, guttural moan. It was as though every particle that had been resting in the air had been transformed into an angry insect, swirling in unison to swarm him, but Puck laughed, cover his mouthing, and swatted them away playfully.
"Nice to see you've kept well." He commented.
The woman, after she had finished reassembling herself, sat on the far side of the turnstile and looked quite a bit more worse for wear. Though her eyes were dark holes that Puck couldn't see the ends of and her skin was wrinkled from countless years like much-abused parchment paper, he could definitely tell that she was scowling.
"Puck," the oracle wheezed, still sending up bursts of dust as she arranged herself more comfortably, "how unfortunate. Why am I not surprised that it is always you who disturbs my rest?"
"Maybe it's because you can see me in the future?" Puck asked innocently. "But hey, I make it a point to know where old friends are in the neighborhood. And who would have thought that you would choose to settle in New Orleans?"
She grumbled, waving her hand impatiently and dislodging a spider with the motion. She wanted him to get on with it.
But Puck would not be rushed. No, he'd come all this way, found her after all, and he would savor this sweet bit of victory. Leaning forward, he shrugged.
"So what is it you go by these days? Unless you want me referring to you the same way as when I found you that time in Delphi."
The oracle glowered, or as much as it was possible for a near-skeletal, eyeless face to. "Anna will do nicely."
"Anna, then." He swallowed. He'd come this far, found her out, now all that remained was to carry out the task. "Much as it's fun to renew old acquaintances, I didn't come here t-"
Anna exhaled in a laughing cough of dust and a sick, over ripe smile, like something decaying would grin, its mouth stretching too far for the boundaries of its face. "You came, like everyone else who comes here, to make a bargain. So what is it you want this time, Robin Goodfellow?"
Another oracle, he knew, would not be powerful enough to grant him this request. Or if there were, then they would have wanted something more than what he was willing to offer for it. So it all came down to this.
Why, then, was he feeling like something had caught him by the heel and was trying to drag him back, keep him from going through with it?
-o-
They read through the play at Meghan's house. She sat on the window seat as he acted out his parts with great aplomb. They were reading through A Midsummer Night's Dream, which had nearly given Puck a heart attack when their English teacher asked him to read the part of, well, himself.
The assignment was to read through the first act by Friday, so he and Meghan were having a study party to do it early. There was one read-through where Puck was somehow playing all the roles at once, which left Meghan in tears by the end of the first scene. When he voiced Titania in a high, cold falsetto with curt endings, she made him stop, giggling so much that she gasped for breath.
"No way, no...way." Meghan shook her head, wiping tears away from her eyes. "The Queen of all the Faeries doesn't sound like that."
Puck put his hands on his sides in mock outrage and asked in the same high-pitched voice, "And how would you know?"
Meghan doubled over again and he had to wait for her to calm down for her to reply. "I mean, I obviously don't, but aren't Faery Queens supposed to sound more elegant than that, like they drink fresh-squeezed honeysuckle, or braid their hair with vanilla leaves or something? Besides, it's not like you know either."
Actually, Puck wanted to say, you'd be surprised. And, believe it or not, that had been his best Titania imitation yet.
-o-
"I want to be able to lie." He said, then quickly added: "Just once. A one-time special power I can choose where and when to use, but when I do use it, will get me to either tell an untruth or get myself out of a promise made in past or future. That's all."
He shrugged, holding his palms out as though to say: there, was that such an unreasonable thing?
The oracle's eye sockets widened. "That is quite a request. It goes against the very nature of fey to lie. Promises are binding, vows once made-"
"-cannot be unmade, yes, I know." Puck finished darkly. "But," here he sighed dramatically, "if you can't do it, then I guess that's alright. I was thinking that since you'd lasted this long, making all those deals to get yourself more power and skirt death that maybe you could be the one to do this for me, but I can be wrong sometimes. Guess you aren't as powerful as-"
Anna held up a withered hand for silence.
"I did not say that it was beyond my power." She began slowly, slightly miffed. "It is more that so many wish for it and yet they cannot afford to pay my price. For example, for a wish such as that, it would not be unreasonable to ask even your True Name..."
She trailed off, allowing it to sound like a question, but Robin Goodfellow was clever enough to know not to take the bait.
"Sorry, Anna, but try as you might, all the names you're going to get from me are the ones you already know. How about considering something a little different from your usual fare of names and memories?"
And with a flourish worthy of a sidhe of the Seelie Court, he drew out a very ragged and much put-upon book. It had a comfortable air around it, like a house that had been lived in, or a broken-in pair of shoes, perfectly shaped to its owner. Leather bound up its spine, preserving it neatly, though the gilt letters that made up its title had started to fade.
"A Token." Anna said, trying to keep her voice dull and dismissively, but failing to disguise the sharp intake of breath she'd taken on seeing it. She'd want to haggle higher, he knew, but he could see the excitement creeping into her features as she leaned yet closer still. "Well, it would be a good start. But you would require something more than that to tempt me."
"I thought you were beyond temptation," Puck said piously, "but surely you're joking. Don't tell me that you can't sense what this is?"
Anna's brow furrowed, perturbed at the slight, even though it had been in jest. "Of course I can tell that it is a scholar's Token, that much is obvious. It is powerful, I will grant you that, but you will need something more than that to convince me that what you are offering is a fair trade."
"More?" Puck's eyebrows raised theatrically. "This is a scholar's Token, true. Each page is filled with a fervent devotion to the author's subject, almost like a man falling in love and finding more and more that he is powerless to resist the call of his beloved object. But to call it no more than that is a grievous oversight, unworthy of the book."
The oracle, he could tell, did not like being called unworthy of anything. She sniffed haughtily. "I do perhaps sense some muted undertones of some other emotions..." Her voice petered off, an invitation to further convince her.
Puck took it. "The man whose book this used to be was just that: a scholar of great renown, whose love throughout his academic years was just that, his subject and his work. But then, as fate would have it, he met someone just as passionate about his field as he was. They were to be married and would have been, but he wanted to complete his manuscript before then, as a testament to their shared love of learning.
"However, his sweetheart wished that they were not so idle. She could see a rift beginning to open up between them when she attempted to distract him doing his working hours. One day while late at work, she was spirited away to Faery for a time. She was bewitched by beautiful sights, as they say, and even fell in love with a faery herself. Oberon found out, and quicker than thinking, she was sent back to the mortal realm. You probably know how it goes from there. She either ate nor drank, and when it came to her betrothed..."
Puck shrugged, putting on a melancholy air.
"Ah. I did detect an undertone of grief."
"The man strove on after the loss, finishing his masterpiece. At last, he realized what a wonderful person he had been on the verge of being with forever, though he had lost his chance. The dedication is to her and the cycle of emotions contained within the pages mirrors their relationship: from joy to reckless determination to sorrow at the end, it is all indexed by page number for your convenience."
He bowed, as a storyteller would completing a tale.
Anna appeared to be considering something most heavily. "It is certainly a potent Token."
On hearing this, Puck laughed. "It's so potent that it's more or less a collection of smaller Tokens all bound together. Truly, one of a kind."
He saw the last bit of resistance fade in her eyes and took his chance.
"So do we have a deal?"
And once again, like seeing a jack-o-lantern's carved face rot in fast-forwarded time, she smiled.
-o-
The amusement park's rides glinted in the sun, like they were pieces of molten rock candy, lapsing into a slow melt.
They were here not because either of them had invited the other, but more because the school was doing a freshman outing at the end of the year to celebrate and encourage them to be more friendly with each other. Puck has always been a little curious about theme parks and what better chance was there to see what the fuss was about?
Threads of sugar drifted along the breeze from the cotton candy machine, like strays from a spinner's loom. He could even feel the iron throbbing at him from the rides; luckily Meghan wasn't all that fond of them, either. He'd gone on a rollercoaster to prove that he could, but the long lines seemed to keep them away, which was good.
The two of them walked through a house of mirrors, went on a haunted mine cart ride (also very metallic, but the bus had been good training), and even spun around in teacup-shaped cars. Wandering through the midway, both slightly soaked from standing outside the water rides and watching people go down them, they stopped at a fishing game whose prizes caught Meghan's eye.
"What do you say, princess?" Puck teased. "Think you can take me on in a wholesome game of fishing?"
Meghan cocked an eyebrow, spading her hands in her khaki cargo pants. "Oh, I'd say I could. Be prepared to lose, Robbie. I have years of farm experience on my side."
He wooed the plastic fish with the magnetic sinker deftly, but Puck had to admit that Meghan wasn't bluffing. When at last they'd managed to secure their fish, the man behind the counter whistled as he examined the stickers on the undersides of their catches.
"Well now, looks like we have some winners!" He squinted at both fish. "Hate to break it to ya, sir, but your friend's a natural."
Puck's eyes widened as Meghan was instructed to choose which of the massive stuffed animals she wanted. Puck, in the meantime, was content with his glowstick crown, though it seemed somewhat meager compared to the mammoth sea creature that Meghan walked out with.
"How on earth did you get so good at fishing?" He frowned. "Your family keeps pigs, not trout or something."
"Well, sometimes important stuff falls into the pig pen and you don't want to have to glove up to get it out." Meghan replied. "You just get really good at winding a wire around objects that are stuck in mud. Like this one time my mom dropped her watch in there- it was pretty gross."
"At least I beat you at skeeball." Puck said.
"That's only because I'm out of practice."
"Yeah, sure, whatever you say, prin-"
"Hey!"
Puck stopped. A man who had been woozily weaving through the midway kiosks had walked into Meghan and was now looking at her angrily. He was bald and his face and upper arms, like many other park-goers, were burnt red from the sun.
"Why don't you watch where you're going, missy?" Puck noticed that he slurred the "s"'s and smelt slightly of alcohol. Great, he thought, just after we were having such a good time. But then man was not done. He grabbed hold of Meghan's arm and she flinched. "I demand an apology for you," he paused, "being so-o-o-o rude." He drew out the "so" for what seemed an inestimable amount of time.
"Let her go." Puck said, stepping closer. "It's your own fault you bumped into her."
"Oh, look, got yourself a knight ion shining armor to protect you, huh?" The man taunted, pulling Meghan so suddenly that she stumbled. Puck knew what this was all about. Male-to-male power brokering, this jerk's way of showing him who was top dog around here. But even though he could understand what was happening, he still heard his voice come out in a growl.
"I sat, let her go."
"What," the man leered back, "gonna fight me?"
Puck was faster than he'd even though he'd be. A breath after the man had uttered those words, he'd wrestled Meghan's arm away as the man suddenly started to fight the air. Meghan looked back hastily over her shoulder as a theme park security guard sauntered over and a twig and a leaf floated to the ground.
"Wow, Robbie." Meghan gulped, rubbing her arm. "What did you do to him?"
"He's just drunk." Puck threw a seething glare over his shoulder as the man was now arguing vehemently with the officer. Abruptly, he turned back to Meghan. "Are you okay?"
His heart was beating strangely, as though there were some strange thread between them, as soft and thin, volatile as cotton candy contorting on the breeze, yet drawing him closer and closer to her until-
"Such an idiot." Puck murmured into her hair.
He wished he was more certain whether he'd meant the man or himself.
-o-
"Why lying?" Anna mused. "Answer me this in addition to that book of yours, and I'll grant you one lie. I'd say be careful not to waste it, but I hardly need to warn someone like you. So why a lie?"
Puck smirked. "Isn't it obvious? I have something I need to get out of."