Free Serpent's Kiss: A Witches of East End Novel by Melissa de la Cruz Page B

protect her face as if Ingrid might smack her.
    “I see you’ve picked up the local slang. Isn’t that just fantastic!” returned Ingrid as all five of the pixies sheepishly rose and stepped out of the trunk. The clever ones , Tyler had called them. Clever boy.
    Their clothes were an array of grimy hues, from dark army olive to black: skinny jeans, ripped T-shirts, frayed sweaters, safety pins, wool caps, and heavy black boots. Ingrid could not have determined what kind of look they were aiming for—punk, grunge, grebo, or crusty. All those rebellious styles looked the same to her no matter the decade; only the year and the label changed. The pixies looked as if they had just returned from war, and they had grown quite odiferous since the last time she’d seen them.
    There was Kelda and Nyph, the two female pixies, petite and small boned like teenage ballerina rebels with their tough clothes and heavy dark eyeliner. While Kelda was fair, with white-blond hair and pale-blue eyes, her skin as nacreous and white as pearl, offset by arresting crimson lips, a tiny bloom, and her ruddy cheeks, Nyph was her opposite with a darker complexion—sleek black hair, olive skin, huge liquid-brown eyes tilting up at the corners, puffy lips. The boys huddled behind the girls of course. There was scruffy, dark-haired Sven with green eyes, whom Ingrid thought of as a grumpy old man, always with the five o’clock shadow and apathetic manner; Val, who had a spiky fire-engine-red Mohawk, who was a perpetual nervous wreck; and finally Irdick, with his tousled head of flaxen hair and round boyish, rosy-cheeked face. He was wearing a T-shirt that read HUGS NOT DRUGS.
    The thing about pixies, both male and female, was they were rather comely creatures, their features refined, delicate, as if carefully carved out of ivory. But at this particular moment, it was difficult for Ingrid to tell exactly what any of them truly looked like because they were so damned filthy.
    “Will you tell me what is going on here before I cast a spell on you and turn you all into frogs?” she said. Although it was more a reproof than an actual threat.
    “Please don’t do that!” Irdick yelped. There was something so vulnerable and sweet about Irdick that he made Ingrid feel guilty for scolding them. Also, the T-shirt was hilarious.
    Val moved forward from the huddle, speaking so fast that Ingrid could barely make out the jumbled words of his endless run-on sentence, which turned staccato whenever he ran into a word that began with an s . She did, however, catch a phrase here and there, getting the overall gist.
    From what she could tell, they had tried to fulfill the promise they’d made to her to return home following her instructions to follow the yellow brick road—a real path that led between the worlds. At the motel where they had been staying, Ingrid had showed them where the path was in the seam, but when they had set out on it, the path faded, and besides, they could no longer remember where home was, or even what it was. So after they’d failed, they’d caught Ingrid’s scent and followed her home, where they had taken shelter in Joanna’s attic.
    “It’s nice here!”
    “There are pies!”
    “Yummy!”
    “Don’t make us leave! Erda, please!” Kelda donned the black leather mask and began doing fast cartwheels across the room, which made Ingrid dizzy.
    “Did we mention there are pies?” said Val.
    “We promise to stay out of the way!” said Kelda, landing on her feet.
    “Hush!” yelled Ingrid. “I can’t think with all of you shouting and moving around like that!”
    The pixies instantly quieted and stood still.
    “Okay,” said Ingrid, crossing her arms. “I’m going to let you stay, for now, but you have to promise to be quiet and stay hidden and not make such horrible messes. Also, you guys stink and you need to bathe. Do it when Joanna is out of the house, of course, and leave the bathroom as you found it. We’ll do this