Seamus the Leprechaun stood frozen like a statue, floating two feet off the ground. This allowed Celeste to look him in the face as they approached. He had green eyes, freckles and a shock of red hair that stuck out everywhere, as if he’d tried to give himself a haircut with a bowl and a pair of blunt scissors.
Celeste watched him from up the sidewalk. The occasional pedestrian gave him a wide berth as they passed, but otherwise ignored the floating leprechaun as they walked by.
“Is that normal?” She asked Lucky.
The werewolf shrugged. “New Orangers have better things to do than to get involved.”
She eyed the unmoving, floating leprechaun again. “How do you see this going?” She asked Lucky. “We don’t have a lot of time before that mojo wears off.”
Lucky turned his head, cracking his neck. “We’ll just have to be persuasive with the little time we have.”
“Persuasive?” Celeste said doubtfully. “You mean, you’re going to beat on him until he talks.”
“Something like that.” He motioned her to follow him toward the floating fairy.
Seamus glared at them as they approached. “I haven’t done anything.” He muttered.
“Sure you didn’t,” Lucky said.
“I didn’t! And even if I did,” Seamus’s voice rose. “What are you going to do about it? Sooner or later, this spell will wear off and then we’ll see what’s what.”
“My point exactly,” Celeste whispered to Lucky.
“Then I guess I’ll have to take the mess out of your hide before then.” Lucky said to Seamus, cracking his knuckles. He grabbed Seamus by the lapels and drew back a fist.
“Wait! Wait!” Seamus put an arm over his face to ward off Lucky’s blow.
Lucky put his fist down and raised his eyebrows.
“Before you start beating on me, at least tell me this: Was it very bad?” The Leprechaun looked pleased with himself.
“You know it was,” Lucky said, raising his fist again. “It looks like an elephant was there.”
“Now I wouldn’t go that far.” Seamus put his hands up again.
“I would,” Lucky snarled, shaking the leprechaun by the lapels. “In fact, I’d go farther. Do you know how much your little prank cost me?”
Seamus rolled his eyes up as if mentally calculating the cost. “I’ve some idea.”
“Good! Then maybe you’d like to make a binding agreement to fix what broke in the basement. Otherwise I might start breaking valuable parts of your body, like your spleen!”
“Do fairies have spleens?” Celeste asked. “I thought a lot of them were animated wood?”
“That’s just fae-ke news!” Seamus said. “You think we would be letting humans know anything real about us?” Turning his head back to Lucky, he continued their conversation. “Do you expect me to work off what you think I owe you?”
Lucky scoffed. “As if you would have to work at all with your fairy magic,”
Celeste followed the argument as if it were a tennis match. “Wait!” She waved to them. Both creatures broke off their sniping to look at her. “I don’t think you are having the same conversation.” She pointed at Lucky. “Tell the leprechaun exactly what you think he did.”
“He broke in through the sewers and trashed my basement storeroom.”
“Ha!” Seamus said. “I did no such thing!”
“Then what did you do?” Lucky asked.
Seamus crossed his arms. “I slipped a bit o’ fairy coin into the pockets of your customers. Check your cash box, werewolf. You’ll find a lot of nothing in there. Sorry about the storeroom, but that wasn’t me.”
With that, he dropped out of Lucky’s grip like a rock.
“The mojo wore off!” Lucky cursed.
Seamus gave them a cheery wave, skipped up the street, wiggled his ears and vanished.
“Well, that was useless,” Celeste grumbled.
“At least we know it wasn’t Seamus,” Lucky said. “Which means that it was something else.”
“Like what?” Celeste asked. “Sewer gators?”
Lucky chuckled and shook his head. “What is it with you and sewer gators?”
Celeste held up her hands helplessly.
“If we want to know what it was that trashed out the basement, we’re going to have to go down into the sewers ourselves and find out.”
“Have you ever been down there?” Celeste asked
“Yeah, but not for a long time.” Lucky said. “We’ll head down there first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Yay us,” Celeste said without much enthusiasm.”