Several golden baskets sat on the floor at his feet. Jeb kicked one over. His tiny captors swooped around the room in mass hysterics.
Gossamer, Morpheus’s prized sprite, appointed five of them to pick up the spilled strawberries. They counted the fruits one by one and placed them back in the container.
Jeb knocked over another basket, this one filled with beads of scented oil. Five more sprites dropped to the floor for cleanup, stopping to count each bead before putting it away.
Soon he’d overturned every basket. Some were full of flower petals, some with lotion, others with grapes. By tumbling them over, he’d managed to preoccupy most of his captors. Only Gossamer and two others still fluttered around his head.
“Give me something to wear,” he repeated, “or I’ll start ripping the feathers from the pillows. There aren’t enough of you in here to clean up that mess.”
“He’s not responding to our allure,” one of the sprites muttered to Gossamer, her coppery bug-eyes turned in Jeb’s direction.
“Or our magic,” the other one added with a pout. “I conjured some girl from his memories, but his subconscious broke through.”
“Yes, this one is indeed a challenge,” Gossamer agreed in a voice that tinkled like chimes. After sending the other two sprites to pick up the contents of the latest basket, she offered Jeb a silk robe.
He turned his back and shrugged the covering on, taking in his surroundings.
Morpheus had put him in an opulent prison. The room was round with black marble floors that reflected orange candlelight. He was already intimately acquainted with the focal point: a swinging, circular mattress attached to the center of the domed ceiling with gold chains. Furs and pillows cushioned the bed, perfumed with rose petals.
For all its comforts, this room was missing one very important aspect. An exit. There was no door, window, or any other opening in sight.
Convex walls—painted dark lavender—had grapevines stretching around their circumference, winding in and out of the plaster and entwining lit candelabras. Fruit blossomed on the vines. At random intervals the grapes would spontaneously burst and drizzle their juice into stone basins set all along the walls to catch it. From there, rich purple liquid drained into fountains—a constant supply of sweet-smelling fairy wine.
He vaguely remembered tasting the wine when he’d first arrived. Suspicious of it, he’d tried to resist, but he had been so thirsty. No telling what kind of magic was inside the liquid.
He groaned and rubbed his face. How long had he been drunk and bewitched? He’d made himself useless to Alyssa, just like his old man would’ve done.
“Where is she?” he asked, ignoring the self-playing harp behind him, which picked up volume, trying to muffle his voice. “Tell me what Morpheus is doing to her.”
Minuscule, glittering, and confident, Gossamer settled on a satin pillow. She patted the mattress next to her and crossed her green ankles. “Perhaps you don’t realize what we sprites are capable of. We’ve had centuries of practice. We can show you rapture the likes of which you’ve only dreamed about.”
Jeb regarded her, head to toe, then tightened the satin belt at his waist. “Sorry. I don’t dream in green.”
He found Alyssa’s backpack under the bed and dragged it out. He’d noticed something in there earlier when he’d been digging through it: a wrought iron bangle bracelet she’d probably tucked inside at school and forgotten about. He’d done his share of research on fairies when he first started painting them, and he knew they didn’t like iron—if the lore was true.
He slammed the backpack onto the mattress. The fur blankets billowed like a huge wave and knocked Gossamer from her pillow. Kick-starting her wings, she landed lightly on Jeb’s shoulder.
“If it is Alyssa who inspires your passions, we can fulfill that fantasy.” Gossamer clapped her hands. The others left their cleaning posts and hovered in a circle around Jeb. A sick spasm knotted his gut as every sprite took on the likeness of Alyssa—miniature replicas complete with platinum hair and sexy skate-glam outfits. They released their pheromone seeds again, blinding him with Alyssa’s nectar-sweet scent.
Swinging a pillow, he shattered the illusion and scattered the seeds. The sprites screeched and hid in the vines on the walls, their glowing bodies like strands of white twinkle lights.
Gossamer fluttered overhead, scowling. “Enough! Report to our master that the mortal is loyal to the girl. We cannot seduce him to return to his world without her.”