by Eli Grant
She made it look deceptively easy, running her fingers through my hair to create shine and flawless curls, pinning sections up with a gesture, adjusting coil and color with a thought. A quick glance around the room made it obvious how much faster and more fluidly she worked than any of the other beauticians in the room.
“You can do so much better than this place,” I said, but Judith just rolled her eyes. We’d had this conversation too many times.
“Not with my grade I can’t,” she said.
“The magic grading system is bullshit.”
“You know it, I know it, they all know it.” Judith sighed, gesturing with the heavy wide toothed comb she was using as a wand. “Seems like the only ones who don’t know it are the ones in charge of hiring people. As soon as they see that number on my application I’ve got no chance. I’m lucky they even hired me here. I’m the lowest graded witch on staff.”
But not the lowest in the building. I was, technically, a nonary grade witch. Witch was what my parents had put on all the papers when I was a kid, but since I hadn’t gone to Occult school, I’d never registered or been graded. Nonary was the lowest grade that could be given under normal circumstances, denary being reserved for those who couldn’t do magic at all. To be graded nonary, a witch either had to be so hopelessly inept at magic that they could barely outcast a human, or they had refused to be graded. And to most witches the only reason to refuse being graded and registered was because you were so bad at magic you’d have been graded nonary anyway, so they just slapped that number on anyone who didn’t show up for the test. I didn’t particularly care, except for when it got in the way of my ability to get jobs at any business run by a witch. But the system screwed over Judith too, and that made me want to flip tables and set fires. She’d talked endlessly about going to the High Circle University when we were kids. But she’d been graded only a rank above me, octonary, and been barred from entry.
“You’re better than anyone here,” I griped.
“Yeah, well, the final practical test for magical registration is biased as hell towards evocation and I can’t make a fireball to save my life,” Judith replied with a dismissive gesture and a little laugh. “Maybe if they’d had a few questions about repairing heat damage to 4A type natural hair or matching magical concealment spells to combination skin tones, I would have been graded higher. As it is, I’m just grateful this place was willing to give me a chance. Eventually I’ll save up enough to open my own salon, and then my grade won’t matter.”
“It’s still bullshit,” I muttered. “It just pisses me off.” Occult schools tended to focus on memorization, rote and lecture style. Judith was naturally gifted, so she didn’t need to memorize all the extra information most witches relied on. Unfortunately, she had a panic attack during the standardized testing, and she never got the chance to show what she was capable of.
“Yeah, me too.” Judith said with a chipper smile and a shrug, pulling out a plastic tackle box full of hair accessories. “But what can you do? It’s not up to us.”
“Just one more thing.”
“Now hold still,” Judith demanded, digging through the box and pulling out a bag. “I’m almost finished.”
She’d decided on this fancy half up, half down thing that she said complemented the neckline of the dress or whatever. The top layer was all carefully arranged curls magically frozen in place, pinned back into a deceptively casual looking knot. Under that, the rest of my hair fell loose around my shoulders in heavy, sweeping curls. It was probably less formal than Dante would have preferred, but I appreciated the slightly wild look to it. As a final touch, Judith arranged a coronet of delicate silk flowers, their petals almost translucent, nested among the curls like they’d grown there. With a gesture, she changed their color, from pearly white to a deep burgundy, finally to a dramatic red that was just a shade closer to orange than scarlet. In that color they seemed less like petals than tongues of flame.
“There. I hope I matched the color of the dress right. It’s so hard to tell from cell phone pictures.”
“It’s perfect,” I assured her. “You did amazing.”
“Why yes I did,” Judith said proudly. “Now, on to makeup!”
The torture was never-ending.
chapter
7
I WAS JUDITH’S LAST APPOINTMENT for the day, so once she was done with my hair we went back to her apartment for the final stage of my big stupid makeover. Halfway through my dress arrived, dropped at the door by a Fae delivery service about thirty seconds after my phone chimed with a text from Dante telling me to expect it. I didn’t want to know how he got Judith’s address.
Judith feigned swooning when she saw me in it.
“Evie, that’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen!” she said, circling me in stunned admiration. “Your date just gave you this? How loaded is this guy?”
“Wait till you see the jewelry,” I replied, indicating the boxes that had been packed underneath the gown.
“Oh, this is enchanted!” Judith cooed, dropping to her knees to examine the hem of the skirt. “That’s crazy! Do you have any idea how hard it is to enchant silk?”
“No idea at all actually,” I confessed. “I don’t really follow fashion. Or witch stuff.”
Judith gave me an exasperated look.
“They taught us about this in school. I know you were there, I sat right next to you.”
“Then you know I spent most of those classes asleep.”
“Enchantment was completely theoretical fifty years ago,” she explained. “They’ve known how to access the demonic plane, even pull demons over, for thousands of years. But they just crumble on contact with this reality and we still don’t know why. Then in the 1960’s a group of university wizards figured out they could bind the demons to certain rare metals in order to keep them on this plane, and someone else figured out you could etch spells into the metal and use the demon as a permanent power source, essentially making it possible to operate magic without a caster. It revolutionized the magical community, kicked off the Fae magitech boom, the permanent glamour scandal—Evie how could you not know this stuff?”
“I knew about all the stuff at the end,” I said, crossing my arms.
“Anyway,” Judith rolled her eyes. “Enchanting silk is crazy hard and this dress probably costs more than my apartment. Can I turn it on?”
“Depends,” I said, eyeing the gown warily. “Can you tell what it’s supposed to do?”
Judith squinted at the fabric for a moment, twisting it in her hands. “Looks kind of like the same spells I use for hair color. I think that’s an ombre mod. That line looks like the refraction set up I use for glitter, but the conditions are so precise I can’t tell what half of them are for.”
“But it’s just a beauty spell, right? Nothing that’ll make me... blow up or turn blue or something?”
“Why would your date send you a dress enchanted to make you turn blue?”
I could only shrug in the face of Judith’s baffled expression. I wouldn’t have put it past Dante to build in something like that just to torture me. But I couldn’t explain that to Judith.
“Let’s just turn it on and see what happens,” she said finally, and I watched, tense in anticipation of disaster, as she closed her eyes and reached out with her powers to touch the enchantment. She barely had to brush against it before the enchantment lit up. Once it was active, even I could feel it buzzing against my skin like an electric charge in the air. A ripple of light ran through the dress where Judith touched it, and everywhere it passed it left glowing. The entire gown seemed to smolder like a banked ember, casting a subtle candle-light glow across my skin. The shadow of every pleat and artfully draped fold seemed to hide a glimpse of the deep red heart of a blazing furnace. It was at once subtle and spectacular. It could have easily been too much and come across as cheap and cheesy. But it had been applied with clear skill, barely noticeable except when I moved an
d the swing of the full skirt revealed the flicker-heat of molten gold.
“Evie,” Judith said, breathless. “I know you haven’t met this guy yet, but I think you need to marry him.”
“Let’s not go that far,” I said, a bit stunned myself, swishing the skirt to watch the color grow more intense, like molten metal growing hotter as I fanned the flames.
“Think of the money, Evie,” Judith replied, then gasped. “Think of the wedding.”
My phone chimed again and I patted myself down for it in a daze before remembering I’d left my phone on the table. Judith handed it to me and I cursed as I saw the text waiting for me.
“My date’s on his way here,” I told Judith, picking up my skirt and hurrying back to the seat where she’d been working on my makeup. “We gotta wrap this up, pronto.”
“Say no more,” Judith assured me, swooping in with a makeup brush.
When I was painted to her satisfaction, I put on the jewelry Dante had sent along, which almost made Judith cry. The final touch was a slim black clutch purse, made to exactly match the enchanted case I would swap it for later.
“I’m not sure your phone is going to fit in that,” Judith said as she handed to me.
“Doesn’t need to,” I said with a grin. “The dress has pockets.”
“Seriously?!”
We were interrupted by the chime of the doorbell, which had Judith leaping to her feet.
“Oh shit, show time!”
“Do I look alright?” I asked, feeling a sudden spike of self-conscious panic. The pulsing glow of the enchanted dress suddenly seemed garish and stupid. “What am I doing, I probably look like a burning oil tanker. I never should have let them talk me into this, I’m so stupid—”
“Evie, the door!”
“Fuck, right!”
Judith unlocked the front door while I smoothed my skirts, already mentally going through the checklist of wardrobe malfunctions and makeup disasters I was probably displaying. How can you be getting ready for something all day and still feel like it snuck up on you?
Then Judith opened the door and all at once my feelings rocketed from self-conscious anxiety to shock, and then barreled on past that towards embarrassed anxiety.
“You!”
Standing in the doorway, golden hair gleaming in the setting sun, in full evening dress complete with a fucking tailcoat and yet somehow still looking like he could herd cattle at a moment’s notice, was Detective Ryan Carpenter. Because of course it was him. I should have guessed Dante would set me up with the one hot guy who saw me immediately post werewolf assault. That was just the kind of week I was having.
“Miss Barr,” he said, looking equally caught off guard. His accent was more pronounced when he was surprised.
“You know each other?” Judith asked, standing between us holding the door.
It took me a second to gather enough focus to answer coherently, since most of my brain power was bouncing between intense embarrassment and the desire to break Dante’s nose.
“This is Detective Carpenter. The one who took my statement after the thing at Harvey’s the other night,” I explained, my jaw tight.
“The one you said looked like if the state of Kentucky designed a romance novel cover?” Judith replied in a poor excuse for a stage whisper, her eyes wide. Ryan gave me a look, part pity part amusement, that made me want to punch one or both of them and run.
“Yes,” I said through my teeth. “That one.”
“Police detectives must get paid a lot better than I thought.” Judith eyed Ryan critically.
“Only when they’re in the pocket of a vampire,” I replied. Ryan frowned, then cleared his throat.
“Sorry for the surprise, ladies,” he said, inclining his head first to Judith and then me. “If it makes you feel any better, Dante didn’t tell me either. I was half expecting he’d set me up with a troll if I’m honest.”
“Sorry to let you down,” I said with a dry shrug. “You’ll just have to make do with me.”
His smile crinkled the corners of his eyes charmingly. I felt my anger dissolving rapidly. It wasn’t possible to stay pissed at a person who looked so much like the human equivalent of a golden retriever.
“I think I’ll survive the disappointment,” he said. “Are you all set to get going? We’re running a bit late.”
I checked myself quickly, making sure I had the clutch and my phone. I’d already texted Aaron to let him know I was going to be working tonight. There was nothing else I could think of that needed to be done, much as I wanted some reason to put off having to do this.
“I’m good,” I told him, turning to Judith. “I’ll text you from the party and when I get home.”
“Just text me a string of emojis if you need me to come pick you up, babe,” Judith replied, and snapped Ryan’s picture with her own phone. “Got his picture for the police in case you disappear.”
“He is police so you’re probably better off going to the media first.”
“Good point.”
“Guess I’d better scratch serial murder off the agenda for tonight,” Ryan put in, amused. “Oh, almost forgot. This is for you.” He handed Judith an envelope and her eyes widened at the wad of cash inside.
“This is double my monthly salary,” she murmured, her eyes watering.
“The one nice thing about vampires,” Ryan shrugged. “They tend to overpay.”
I hugged Judith, then took Ryan’s arm as I stepped through the door, if only because between the heels and the huge skirt navigating steps and small ledges was kind of a problem.
“Bye, Evie,” Judith said, waving. “Have a good time!”
When the detective’s back was turned, she gestured aggressively at her ring finger, raising her eyebrows for emphasis. I studiously ignored her.
Dante’s town car was waiting for us, but Ryan had apparently sent the driver home. He opened the car door for me and, to my embarrassment, helped stuff the excess fabric of my skirt in after me so that it wouldn’t get caught in the door when he closed it.
We drove in silence then, a policy I was happy to adopt and maintain throughout this whole ordeal if possible. Unfortunately, Detective Carpenter had other ideas.
“I’m not in any vampire’s pocket, you know,” he said. When I only gave him an unimpressed look, he continued, defensive. “Not all cops are on the take.”
I couldn’t stop myself from scoffing.
“Right, and not all vampires burn in the sun.”
“I happen to be proud of what I do,” he said, jaw set in stubborn defiance. “Good, honest police work. I’m not pretending there aren’t any cops out there playing private army for the count, but I’m not one of them.”
“The fact that you think that means anything is actually kind of sad.”
He looked taken aback for a moment, flustered.
“If anything, you’re the one working for a vampire,” he said, almost stumbling over the words.
“Me?” I’d been slouching in the seat but I sat up now, mouth open in angry shock. I probably didn’t have any right to be so offended, considering I kind of was working for Dante at this point.
“I don’t even know the guy, alright?” Ryan insisted. “I only tracked him down last night because of his involvement in the incident at the bodega.”
“How’d that work out for you?” I asked, arms crossed over my chest.
He shrugged, mouth twisted in an annoyed frown that he directed at the road instead of me.
“He was a typical vampire about the whole thing, of course. Wouldn’t give a statement or anything. But then he starts talking about how this friend of his needs an escort to a party and favors greasing the wheels of society or some such bull. And I agree to it because I need the damn paperwork signed, and now here you are, his friend who needed a favor, in a glitzy ass get up I’m assuming he bought you, claiming that I’m the one working for him. If I’m in his pocket you must be ridi
ng in the waistband of his fancy silk underpants, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“I will pardon nothing,” I said with a snort. I wanted to stay angry, but I was too busy trying not to laugh at this uptight cowboy saying fancy silk underpants. “Alright, fine, whatever. I’m the vampire shill and you’re pure as the driven snow. Happy?”
“No,” he declared after a moment’s frustrated deliberation. But then he settled back into his seat, unable to think of what else to say.
Silence lingered for another long moment. I caught him glancing at me several times before he spoke.
“So. Why does Dante want you at this party with me anyway?”
At least Dante had the good sense not to try and bring the one semi-uncorrupt cop in the city in on this. I scrambled for a reason for a minute before remembering I already had one.
“He’s just doing a favor for a Lord in his court. The Lord wants me there to, you know, serve him,” I said, uncomfortable even thinking about it. “But bringing me as his plus one would be embarrassing or some shit. So you’re my cover.”
“Oh.” A complex series of emotions crossed Ryan’s face before settling on a kind of hesitant pity. “Then, you’re his...?”
“His Host, yeah,” I confirmed, choosing to look out at the passing buildings rather than at him. The word was bitter and hard to say. I felt like I needed a shower for even pretending.
“You don’t seem like you’re from an enclave,” Ryan said after a beat, his voice soft and tense at the same time, like he wanted to be gentle but it wasn’t enough to cover his discomfort.
“I’m not,” I said, choosing the easier lie. I leaned against the window, keeping my eyes averted. “Lord Heuron prefers his meat wild.”
It was unusual but not unheard of for a vampire to take a mundane human as a Host, though they had to have powerful connections in the courts to get it approved. They usually targeted artists and other successful types with talents the vampire community wanted preserved when the Host was eventually turned. When they decided to amuse themselves with some no-name Mundie with nothing to offer the courts, rather than being rewarded with eternal life the Host probably had a mindwipe in their future, or a one way trip to an enclave.