Free The Glass Gargoyle (The Lost Ancients Book 1) by Marie Andreas

few things that could slow down a faery.
    They were also not common in the kingdom of Lindor. When my trio of trouble had first joined me, I’d asked them where the rest of their people were. I got vague stories indicating they were out. Somewhere, just out. After a week or so of trying to get a straight answer I decided to leave off.
    “Leaf,” I kept my voice low. Those damn faery ears could have probably heard me from my hiding place. I should have stayed put. “Damn it, Leaf, get up. This isn’t safe.”
    I crept closer and picked up the roll. It looked clean and I was still hungry. Dusting it off I slipped it in my pocket.
    And almost jumped ten feet in the air when a pair of tiny freezing faery hands grabbed my ear. “Looking what for?” Leaf chittered in my ear.
    I kept from jumping, but grabbed Leaf hard. “Don’t do that! Damn it, I’ve told you not to scare me.”
    “But—”
    I covered the entire lower half of her face with my thumb. “No. I’m trying to get into the ruins and I can’t take a chance someone will see you. You need to stay in my pocket and be quiet.”
    Her huge gold eyes looked wounded, but she nodded. I released my thumb.
    “Don’t say a word. I’ve got to get through that fence. I can set off a nummer spell and fitz out that fence, but it’ll only last only a few seconds. I’ll have to wait for them to spread out and be distracted. So you’ll need to stay quiet, stay still, and do what I say.” I held her up to my face. “Got it?”
    Her bright little green head bobbed up and down enthusiastically. Then she slipped through my fingers and took off like a shot over the guards’ heads. An instant later a series of small explosions indicated she’d found their spell locker.
    Leaf was usually my favorite, but right now I wanted to kill that faery.
    Then every single guard tore back toward the weapons locker. Not a single one waited behind thinking perhaps it was a trick.
    Idiots.
    Maybe I wouldn’t kill Leaf after all. I ran for the fence perimeter as I whipped out the spell packet. The nummer spell should cancel out this part of the fence long enough for me to fling myself over it.
    A vague lavender scent drifted out as I ripped open the packet. One problem of being magic numb with no powers, having to rely on idiots who sold pre-packaged spells and thought scenting them was a nice touch.
    Ignoring the flowery scent, I threw the packet at the fence, then scrambled up it myself. The guards were still yelling in the distance, so hopefully that meant they were all trying to contain the spells that Leaf had set off.
    I was just climbing down the other side of the fence, when a suspicious tingle, and lack of lavender scent, told me the spell was finished. I flung myself off the fence and rolled as far away as I could. My hands were smoking a little, but all in all it went much better than I had expected.
    And I wasn’t in custody or shot yet.
    Taking advantage of my homicidal and disobedient faery’s continued hijinks, I ran into the jungle surrounding the ruins. I didn’t want to run straight into the area they’d first blocked off. There was too much of a chance of secondary guards, and my heart was pounding too loud for me to have heard them if they approached.
    For the second time in less than an hour, I crouched behind a clump of green and sticky plants and waited to sort things out.
    The area I’d worked for Perallan lay no more than ten minutes from the most heavily guarded portion of the fence. Talking to Harlan on the way back last night, I’d found out that that area was the first closed off. I’d ransacked my brain for anything I could have found leading up to Perallan’s death. But the weeks before had been lean, and he had stayed on site with me, taking anything I found practically before it was out of the ground. My memory clearly wasn’t going to give me any answers.
    A shrill whistle of a faery with a war prize came into hearing followed by the faery