I prayed to the Goddess that Barinthus wouldn't force me to kill him. It would hurt my heart to do it, but as we walked out into the California sunshine and I slid my sunglasses on, there was something hard and cold inside me. It was a surety that if he pushed hard enough I would do exactly what I'd threatened. Maybe I was more my aunt's niece than I cared to think about.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Doyle and Frost, with Usna driving, took the Suv, and Usna used glamour to make him appear as me. It had surprised me that he had his driver's license, but apparently years before I was born he had left faerie to explore the country. When I'd asked why, he'd replied, "Cats are curious." And I knew just by the look on his face that that was all the answer I would get.
Usna wasn't good enough at glamour to walk through a crowd. One bump and the illusion would have shattered, which was why he wasn't going with me. There'd be a crowd where I was going. But we were hoping the more elementary illusion would lure the press from the outer gates, so we could drive off unmolested.
But his partner, Cathbodua, was good enough to go with us. There was a moment when she stood in the middle of the living room in her raven-feather cloak with that shoulder-length hair mingling with the feathers so that she, like Doyle, was dark enough that where one blackness ended and the other began the eye couldn't sort out. It made her skin seem to almost float against all the darkness.
Then the feathers smoothed out, and she was wearing the long black trench coat that it so often appeared to be. Cathbodua only had to soften her skin from the otherworldly paleness to a more human shade of pale. Most of the women had been so little photographed with me that they wouldn't even have to change anything but their eyes, hair, and some clothing. Saraid turned her golden hair to a brown-gold and her skin to a sun-kissed tan. Her blue-and-star eyes were simply blue. She was still beautiful, but she could pass for human. Even the fact that she was six feet even and naturally thin didn't make her stand out here in L.A. the way it would have back in the midwest. There were a thousand tall, gorgeous women here who had started out trying for acting and had had to settle for a day job.
Galen made his short curls a nondescript brown, and changed his eyes to match. He darkened his skin so he looked truly tanned, and he did subtle things to his face and body so that he looked ordinary. You'd seen a laughing, cute guy like him on every beach you'd ever been on. Rhys gave himself back the illusion of his missing eye, and painted both eyes to a good blue, but not too eye-catching. He simply piled his waist-length curls up under his fedora, left his signature trench coat at the beach house, and went in just the suit coat that he'd worn last to work, putting it over jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans were his, but the T-shirt he'd had to borrow. It fit through the shoulders, but lots of it was tucked into the stylishly faded jeans. He slipped back into his boots and he was dressed.
I came out of the bedroom with my hair an auburn that was almost brown. I'd also put it up into a French twist. The deep, chocolate-brown skirt suit was a little short for business, but I was short enough that long just wasn't good on me. I'd borrowed a holster and gun from Rhys and put them at the small of my back so I would be armed. It still left him a gun, a sword, and a dagger. I had my own folding knife in a thigh holster under the skirt. The knife actually wasn't just for defense; it was also so there would be some cold steel touching my na**d flesh. Steel and iron help against faerie magic, but it's best if they touch your skin. There were a lot of fey, even sidhe, who couldn't have done glamour this detailed with cold metal touching their skin. My human and brownie ancestry helped me work magic no matter how much metal and technology surrounded me. The knife was nothing compared to the city itself. Out here by the ocean it was easier for the rest of them, but there were lesser fey who couldn't do much magic in the heart of any modern city.
The thought made me wonder about Bittersweet and whether Lucy had found her. I pushed the thought aside and checked the mirror one last time to make sure neither gun nor knife showed in the suit. The skirt was lightweight but flouncy, moving with me. I had a lot of skirts that were formfitting enough that even a small weapon showed against the material.
I walked back out into the great room. Galen met me, smiling. "I forgot you make your eyes brown, too."
"Green eyes are too unusual. Humans remember them."
He grinned at me, and moved to take me in his arms. I let him, pretty sure what he was going to say. "We should test the glamour and see if touching makes either of us lose our concentration."
We kissed, and it was a nice, thorough kiss. He drew away and I was staring up into a pair of dark brown eyes set in a face more tan than his would ever be by nature.
I smiled.
It was Rhys who said, "Come on you two, we all know our glamour holds up. Amatheon and Adair checked in. The press took the bait with Doyle and Frost, so we can go do some work." We followed him out the door, dropping each other's hands as we walked outside. I trusted the other guards that the main force of the press had gone away, but if we hung all over each other like lovers, no amount of glamour would keep them from snapping pictures, and not all glamour holds up to cameras. We don't know why, but even with the best of us sometimes a picture will reveal the truth when the na**d eye will not.
Sholto had gone ahead of us all.
"All doors are in place."
"So you'll just appear," Galen said.
"Yes."
"How do you make certain someone isn't in the doorway when you appear."
"I can feel if it's empty," he said.
"Nifty."
"I didn't know you could do doorways," I said.