Free Prospero Lost: Prospero's Daughter, Book I by L. Jagi Lamplighter

lute I played for Queen Elizabeth.”
    I stepped away, back to where Mab stood. He was squinting at the fragments of lute.
    “Was that really a fifteenth-century lute?” Mab asked.
    “Most likely he lost that one long ago and forgot he’d replaced it.” I shrugged. “But it is possible.”
    Mephisto began walking. He wound his way through the pedestrians until he came to a trash can. There, he unstrung the strings from the neck and body and ceremoniously lowered the broken remains into the wire bin. Wandering back to the tomato crate, he sat with his hands over his face.
    In a tired and ragged voice, he said, “Breaks. Stolen. Falls apart. Everything I love gets destroyed. My staff is gone. I can’t find my Bully Boy. My friends don’t recognize me. A woman killed my cat with a car. She said she was sorry afterwards. Does that make it okay? All the things I love get destroyed, and there is nothing I can do. There’s nothing I can do to protect them.”
    Mab spoke softly in my ear. “I think he’s forgotten us.”
    I nodded.
    Mab lowered the brim of his hat. “He’s not going to hear any warning you give him, Ma’am, and he’s in no position to respond if he did.” When I did not answer, Mab continued, “Mr. Prospero told me nothing could be done for him. He said Mephisto resisted every attempt your family made to help him.”
    “It’s true. Every time Mephisto seemed to improve, he would suddenly grow obstinate and refuse to continue his treatment. We tried locking him up, but sooner or later he’d escape or one of his supernatural beast friends would show up to break him out. Eventually, Father washed his hands of the matter and said we had to let him go his own way.”
    “Let’s go then,” said Mab, “There’s nothing else we can do.”
    I started to turn away, then hesitated.
    “There’s one big difference between the past and now.”
    “What’s that, Ma’am?”
    “Normally, Mephisto has all sorts of supernatural friends to help him. When he has his staff, no number of ordinary thugs could overwhelm him. Without it? He may be faster and stronger than a normal mortal, but in his current condition, he could be taken out by a bum with a knife.” Frowning, I contrasted in my mind once more the picture of my brother, broken and dirty on the sidewalk, with the intelligent young man portrayed by his statue. “We can’t leave him like this, Mab!”
    “We can’t do anything for him here,” Mab gestured at the sidewalk. He waved his hand in front of his face to dissipate the awful stink.
    Walking over to Mephisto I grabbed his arm and dragged him to his feet.
    “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
     
    I HAD just finished my soup and was beginning on my salad when the door into the men’s bedroom finally opened. A wet and bedraggled Mab came slouching into the parlor of our suite. Mab had been saddled with the unpleasant job of stripping Mephisto down and piling him into the shower, while I went out to purchase a new wardrobe for my brother. On the way back, I had stopped at a theater costume shop, where I had found a royal blue surcoat emblazoned with the fleur-de-lis, left over from a performance of
The Lion in Winter
. It was my hope Mephisto would accept it as a replacement for the ghastly poncho. As best I understood, he had started wearing ponchos to begin with as a replacement for his royal tabard.
    “Where is he?” I asked.
    “Admiring his new duds in the mirror,” Mab growled. “He’ll be out here soon enough, once he smells the food.”
    As Mab pulled the silver dome off his lunch, the door opened again to admit my brother.
    Mephisto looked like a different man. He was clean. His newly-cut hair formed a halo of wavy dark curls around his head. He wore a loose, black, Russian shirt and black trousers with high black-leather boots. Over the black clothes, he had thrown the royal blue surcoat emblazoned with the fleur-de-lis in silver. When he came forward and