Broken Heart 05 Over My Dead Body by Michele Bardsley

can’t change the rules. What would the world be like if there weren’t rules?”
    “Free of pixies?” I ventured.
    “A comedian, are you? Gah! I should’ve never rescued the giant. If’n I hadn’t rescued him, then I’d still have my nest and my shinies and my honey.”
    “And the possibility of another ride on the Colon Express.”
    I heard the tiny indrawn breath of indignation. “Goin’ to be a sassy one, I see. Tell you what. You go on and get into life-threatening danger and I’ll rescue you. Then we’ll be free of each other.”
    “Is that really the only way to get rid of you?”
    “O’ course not. I just keep secret all the easy ways to end my bleedin’ curse.” He (er, she?) sighed. “I’m a pixie. Part of bein’ a pixie is repayin’ a kindness. It’s not a choice, mind you. It’s just the way it works. I’ve accepted it, and so should you. Now, where are you going to build my nest?”
    “On a rocket ship to the moon,” I said. I waved it away. “Just go flit around somewhere else so I can think.”
    “You can think?” it said. Then it spun away, giggling. I bet the giant had eaten the damned thing on purpose.
    I probably should’ve called Damian or Doc Michaels to let them know sabotage wasn’t the cause of the pole’s malfunction. Instead, I dialed Zerina.
    Zerina was a foul-mouthed, badass fairy, or sidhe, who had tried to open her own sort of beauty shop. She didn’t get much business because she followed her own creative muse when it came to hairstyles. If you saw someone walking around wearing a scarf over their head, then they’d probably gotten a Zee do.
    She was not the vampire kind of sidhe. Maybe she would know more about my little problem—like how to make it disappear.
    She picked up on the first ring. “Bloody hell! What do you want?”
    “Hello to you, too.” Was the natural disposition of fairies to be cranky and insulting? “I need your help.”
    “I agree. You need a makeover, and fast. You still wearin’ those overalls and trucker’s caps?” Her British accent was thick with censure.
    I refused to be judged by a woman who looked like a magician’s drunken assistant on her normal days. “I don’t want a makeover. I want you to get rid of a pixie.”
    “I’m not a pest removal service.” She paused. “Did you say pixie? Here, in Broken Heart?”
    “No, in France, because I thought, What the hell? I like the Eiffel Tower and croissants and French accents. Of course it’s in Broken Heart!”
    “No need to get your knickers in a knot,” she muttered, although she sounded more bemused than irritated. “It said it was a pixie, then?”
    “Yeah. Well, it also said it was a sidhe.”
    “Blimey. I’ll be right there.”
    “Look, I just wanted advice—”
    The phone went dead. Argh! I snapped the cell phone shut. My skin prickled, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a spurt of pink sparkles. I spun around and watched Zerina pop into view. She looked like she was in her early twenties, with a neon pink haircut, pageboy style. Her eyes were pink, too. Today, she wore a neon pink bustier, black miniskirt, and zippered black calf boots with pink skulls on the sides.
    “What’s its name?” Her gaze was glued to the twirling and zipping and flickering gold dot.
    “Spriggan.”
    She looked at me and grinned. “They’re all called spriggan. It’s what the Celts named the little buggers. Gold means it’s a male. Females are silver.” She glanced at me. “I haven’t seen a pixie for almost a hundred years. Used to be you couldn’t walk through a field without kicking up a cloud of ’em. They like nature. Really good at makin’ things grow. Sorta like bees on steroids. Only they use their magic.”
    Aw, man. I didn’t want a Pixie 101 class. Still, I found my curiosity peaked. “He said pixies were immortal. If they can’t die, then what happened to all of them?”
    “All sidhe are immortal,” said Zerina. “Nobody knows why the pixies