Curse of Iron

by D. D. Miers

  “But?”

  “No, but I just get the impression you’re waiting for me to say something else.”

  “I’m tempted to go, Grayson, but I don’t want to be some weird burden on you at a party.”

  He laughed aloud, and the corners of my mouth tugged up into a grin at the sound. “Believe me, the party is the burden, not your company.”

  “Even if your pack sees me again, after the magic I did in your den?”

  “You know how it is. Most of the pack respect you for having power. The few dissenting opinions are the same in every pack, they don’t like feeling someone might be more powerful than they are.”

  What he said made sense, even if it wasn’t true for me. The covens, my aunt in particular had made me afraid of the other supernaturals knowing what I was. I’d never had the benefit of a pack, despite breaking free of my family. The dissenting opinion in my home had been the few who didn’t despise me.

  “I’ve never been in a pack, Grayson. I have no tribe, except maybe my coworkers.” I thought for a moment. Being with him would make it harder for my least favorite detective to get close to me. “I’ll go to the party with you, though. I mean, I know I haven’t done anything, so what can it hurt?”

  “Great, I’ll pick you up around seven tonight. Did you have any problem with your apartment?”

  Shit. “Um, I’m actually out trying to prove my innocence all day today, between work, of course, so I won’t be home.” I paused and added, “But, I kind of need a favor from you. I need to find a shifter named Danny Burke. It’s important, for his safety, among other things.”

  “Is he a skip?”

  “No,” I chuckled nervously, “but he’s gonna be a daddy, and I promised I’d talk to him.”

  “Uh,” he started to speak and his voice got muffled like he was covering his phone. “Hey, look. I’ll call you later to work it out, I’ve got to break up a couple of assholes.”

  He hung up without saying goodbye, but I understood. Whoever had killed his alpha had put him right in the center of all the trouble it caused. I sat in my car and googled his name, realizing I’d probably find out more about him from online sources than waiting for him to tell me about himself.

  A shot of guilt jolted through me when a text from Grayson popped up on my screen mid-search. “Party’s at the Julia Moss ballroom. Evening wear.”

  And…double shit. I’d just finished telling the man I had no pack, no tribe, but somehow, he thought I was the owner of evening wear? Floor length ball gowns aren’t exactly the uniform of bail bond clerks.

  “Oh well,” I muttered to myself as I surveyed the area around my car, looking for sign of Detective Mills. “Maybe Sylvie will magically answer all my problems, hand over the real murderer, and tell me where to go for the perfect gown to seduce a were-jaguar.” I scoffed at myself, but the tight, hot need in the pit of my stomach didn’t fade.

  But wasn’t that just perfectly me, too—finally—really want to get a guy into my bed but the only one I wanted was the one who thought I might be a super-villain… and I had no bed to get him into.

  My body was quick to remind me beds weren’t necessary, and even the irritating voice in my head was silent. Because when you’re going to make a really bad decision, it was always best all your parts agreed, I supposed.

  Eleven

  I took the steps up to Sylvie’s million-dollar townhouse two at a time and banged on the door with my fist. “Goddamn, I need to rethink my career choices. Am I seriously the poorest person I know?”

  Of course, none of the supernaturals I knew had been forced to run from home without their inheritance, or most of their belongings for that matter, and none of them had spent years and thousands of dollars on private Fae investigators to learn about their own father, either.

  I knocked again, but there was still no answer. Instantly, I felt bone-tired. It wasn’t a magical attack or a hex, just events catching up with me. Still, I sank to the top step and let my head rest in my hands. “Am I a monster for not being more traumatized by Gideon’s death?” I mumbled into my palms. I was about to go on what amounted to my first real, or at least classy, date. A date with arguably one of the hottest men I’d ever encountered.

  And it would be great revenge when I found the witches behind this, to have them put in jail for the rest of their unnatural lives, while I get to have a life, finally.

  I took out my phone and Googled local dress shops, finding everything from wedding gowns to shops catering to drag queens in the tenderloin. None of them seemed like a good option, but I didn’t know where else to go. Penelope was too tall to borrow from and Pippi, my favorite brownie and the source of all my Fae knowledge, was too short, round, and poor to have anything that would work.

  “Looks like my choices are to tell him ‘no’ or show up in leather pants and a mesh shirt.” I sighed and rubbed at my temples. “At least he’d know what I was interested in doing after the party.”

  “Why are you mumbling to yourself on my porch? Are you looking for a handout?” I glanced up to see Sylvie standing over me, her arms laden with retail bags.

  “Oh, Sylvie, it’s me, Morgan.” She stared at me from behind oversized sunglasses so big the only expression I could see was one eyebrow raised over the rim. “I came to talk to you about your bail bond?”

  She groaned and glanced around and jerked her head toward the door. I stood and let her pass, so she could set her bags down on the stoop. “You seriously came to my house to bother me about money? What the hell is Orson thinking?”

  “Woah. I just came to ask you a few questions and let you know you’re listed as a skip, Sylvie,” I explained. “If you’re not supposed to be in my files, you need to talk to Orson, because he only puts up with so many incidents of non-payment, no matter who you are.” Or what you can do for him, I added silently.

  “Fine. I’ll give Orson a call. Now please get off my front porch before someone sees you.”

  I flinched, but took a step toward her instead of backing off. “I hold your fucking freedom in my hands right now. Do you think you can work up a little civility?”

  “Shit. Come in, just come inside.” I followed her into the foyer, picking up two of the bags on my way and setting them by the stairs.

  “Why would you think I want to be seen with you?” I felt no magic from her, but the feel of the house set my teeth on edge, and I called my magic, just to be safe.

  “Why would it be a problem to be seen with me, Sylvie? Do your neighbors know where I work?”

  She shut the curtains by the front door and pulled me away from the windows. “They know your face, and that’s enough.”

  “You’re no witch.”

  “No, I’m a Nerida.” Suddenly, her attachment to appearance and the way she drew the opposite sex made sense. A Nerida, or flower nymph, was all about beauty and grace, with no depth, their hearts literally changed with the seasons, and grew cold in the winter.

  “Well, I guess you’ve chosen a good place to live, where you can bloom year-round.”

  “Why are you here? The Fae are forbidden to associate with you.” She picked at her fingernails and chewed her bottom lip. Everything about her was disarming and sweet, even the near-panic in her eyes.

  I backed toward the door automatically but stopped at the flash of victory in her eyes. “Did you just bloody glamor me, Sylvie?” I gasped. “I am Fae enough you could be punished for trying to mess with my head.”

  She huffed and stomped one Christian Louboutin heel on the wood floor. “I could be killed for speaking to you, Morgana Silk.”

  “Look, I’ll get out of your house and your life, I just need some answers.”

  Her lip went back between her teeth, but she nodded. “Okay, come upstairs, I can hide you better there.” I suppressed the desire to make a snarky comment and followed her, carrying most of her bags, a fact that didn’t escape me.

  I sat on a pouf on her floor, next to her closet, while she laid her new c
lothes out on the bed. Every movement was fascinating, but once I realized it was in part a natural glamour I saw past the childlike draw she had. She was still delicately beautiful, and every move had the kind of perfect grace of the Fae I’d always wished I had inherited.

  “Move to the bed and hand me things so I can hang them up?” She picked up a jumpsuit and walked past me to the closet, making room for me on the bed.

  “You have the prettiest things, Sylvie,” I laughed. “I don’t know I’ve ever even imagined buying things this frilly and girlie.”

  She snorted rudely and held out her hand for another item. I handed her a kimono and ran my hand over a silk skirt. If I had tried to wear something so fine and high-maintenance, it would end up covered in salad dressing or coffee stains.

  “How do you stay so thin and frail looking, when you’re such a good fighter?”

  Sylvie laughed, a tinkling sound like tiny bells. “It’s a pixie thing. We can’t bulk up, no matter how hard we try. Even when we make ourselves taller, we just stretch out thinner.”

  “Gods how I wish my aunt had given me to my father.” The words were out before I could stop them, and I shut my mouth and stared hard at the bed, hoping she hadn’t heard me.

  A manicured hand rested on my shoulder and I glanced up into Sylvie’s sympathetic face. “I couldn’t wait to get out of Fairy and live among humans,” she confessed. “I can’t imagine what it must’ve felt like being cut off from all the Fae.”

  “The Fae, the humans, anyone not a witch. The covens are so protective of their magic and their supposed superiority, I had no connection with the world at all.” I forced my face blank and met her gaze again. “At this point, I would’ve been happy with a normal high school and the ability to buy a dress for a party."

  She squealed and clapped her hands. “I love a party. Who’s having the party?”

  “I don’t know.” I tried not to grin in response to her sudden shift into a valley girl. “It’s at the Julia Moss hall.”

  Her mouth made a round "O" and her eyebrows arched over her ice blue eyes. “You’re spending time with the coalition leaders. It’s smart, you know getting friendly with the big boys.”

  “That’s what you do, isn’t it?” Sylvie wiggled her hand to say, "sort of", and hung up another item of clothing. “Are you friends with some of the shifters?”

  “The shifters aren’t like humans,” she tittered. “I’m friends with their mates, not the men. I have a powerful sense of self-preservation.”

  I felt the sudden need for a strong drink. “What do you mean?”

  “I make things pretty, halfling. I’m stronger than a human, but not a shifter. To them, I’m weak, and they don’t have patience with weakness.”

  “Oh, I’m so screwed.”

  “Why? Who are you seeing?” She sat on the end of the bed in the space she’d made.

  I didn’t answer right away. Her sudden switch from cold and angry to friendly made me suspicious of her motives. “I just need to go to the party and find out what happened to Gideon Masters.”

  Her excitement faded as quickly as it had bloomed. “Oh. I was hoping it was something juicy. Who invited you?”

  “If I tell you what you want to know, will you help me find a place to buy a dress? I don’t own anything long enough, let alone fancy enough for a party like this.” She nodded vigorously but didn’t speak. Shit. As a lesser Fae, every interaction she made, she skewed to her benefit. I could expect no less from her with me. She’d already shown she saw me as less than her.

  “Well, if it was Gideon, I would’ve warned you off, but I assumed you were the one who took care of it.”

  “For someone who moves in those circles, you don’t seem very down about his death.” She stood and paced the room until I grabbed her arm. “What is it, Sylvie?”

  “Look. Rumor is, Freya went to the witches after a particularly bad fight put her in the hospital. Gideon said she could never leave him, she was tired of fighting challenges to keep a man she didn’t love, because if she lost her standing in the pack, she had nothing.”

  “I didn’t kill Gideon.”

  “That’s a shame. It might’ve won you a friend or two, if the mistress was as unhappy as Freya.”

  I groaned. “I’m gonna kill him.” I paced the room in her place, taking long strides across to the upstairs window and back again. “Grayson Xenos asked me to join him tonight. Is he taking me into a death trap? Because I can’t go in there if people think I killed him.”

  “Oh, you’re going. It will be spectacular.”

  “I don’t even have a dress.”

  “You’ve really never been to a party?” She clucked her tongue.

  I laughed humorlessly. “I’ve never been to a party where I had to worry about what to wear, just how easily I could get out of it if circumstances necessitated.”

  She beamed at me like a proud mother. “Now you sound Fae. If you ever make it out to Fairy, you should know, at all parties, clothing is optional.”

  I couldn’t even imagine what a party full of naked Fae would look like. I opened my mouth to ask for more information and closed it again. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

  Her laugh was real, no more tinkling bells as she collapsed over the bed, catching tears on a tissue so they didn’t ruin her face. It made me like her more that she continued to let me see more of the real her. It was a gift, whether she intended it or not.

  “Oh, daughter of the Storm King. You are going to this party, and you are going to shine.” She took my face in her hands and stared into my eyes, her blue ones so pale, from mere inches away they looked almost white. “I haven’t made my way in the world by following the rules, you know. Fae is Fae, and if a Fae is in need, you render aid.”

  I’d read it in books as I researched my people, but I’d never heard it spoken to me. I swallowed hard and nodded. Fae is Fae, and as rare as the moments were I truly felt it, I was every bit as Fae as I’d always wished to be. It might have been glamor, and I knew my trust would be betrayed eventually, but for once, it was nice to just be a fairy princess, hanging out with a fairy hooker, talking about a party.

  Long ago I’d learned to take it as I got it, but never did what I get, turn out to be what I wanted. For once, I was getting something better, and it felt unusual and sweet.

  Twelve

  She opened the double doors wider, revealing a closet as big as my bedroom, perusing the garments as I looked on. “I have a couple of old dresses I’ll never wear again, but I haven’t gotten around to donating them yet.”

  “You donate your clothes to charity?” I was impressed. Most Fae I knew, especially the beautiful ones, were selfish to the point of ridiculousness.

  She giggled and shook out her curls. “No, I donate my clothes to my girls.”

  Your girls? I glanced at the file sticking out of my bag. Right. Sylvie was an entrepreneur with her manicured nails in multiple pies. One of them just so happened to be prostitution. “So, you want me to wear a hooker dress?”

  She shot me a dirty look. “No, I want you to wear one of these.” She laid out several dresses on the bed, each of them more daring and more beautiful than the last. Together we whittled the number down to three, and I stood over the finalists, amazed no matter what, I was walking out the door with a gown more stunning than anything I’d ever even imagined coveting.

  The first was white, fitted from bust to knee, with a flamenco flair dropping to the floor in a slight train in the back. The neckline was low enough Sylvie had to reassure me my breasts would be safe from accidental reveal. “There are Fae who wish they could have a rack like yours, Honey,” she’d crowed when I tried it on. I smoothed my hand over the soft fabric and finally looked at myself in one of the full-length mirrors. I’d never looked so glamorous in my life.

  “I don’t recognize myself.”

  She laughed and made me try on another, a violet ball gown with an actual hoop skirt under it. Again, it was low in the
front, and Sylvie complained it was much easier to fit a dress to a body narrow "all the way up", as she puffed out the Victorian sleeves. It cut in deep at the waist and laced up the front, and I tightened it as much as I could before she prodded me into a turn. It was classic, very Fae, and when she pulled up my hair to show off my pointed ears, I looked exactly like the Fae princess I’d imagined myself as a child.

  The last was almost gold, a cream shimmering and shifting all the way to my ankles. Thick straps crossed at my throat, and a high slit made it possible to walk, flashing my leg almost to the hip with each step. I looked tall, willowy if you didn’t look at my chest too hard.

  “You look like a member of the light court,” she gasped, her palms pressed together in front of her mouth.

  “Oh, if my father could see me now,” I scoffed. “I wonder if he would regret abandoning me so easily?"

  Sylvie turned away from the mirror as a funny look crossed her face, part anger, part guilt. Perhaps from being part of a community that turned their back on their young. Maybe she regretted letting me wear her clothes, cast off or not.

  As I turned to change my clothes, she emerged from the dressing room, I refused to call anything so massive a closet, carrying a bin full of shoes and bindings. “In for a penny, in for a pound, Princess,” she chuckled as I felt the blood drain from my face. “Because there is no chance wearing one of my creations, you will be going home alone.”

  She dumped the basket on the bed and gestured to the small mountain of corsets and thigh high stockings with one hand. “I don’t think I can do this,” I confessed, my voice embarrassingly small and overwhelmed.

  Sylvie laughed and danced past me with one of the dresses pressed to her chest. “Pick a dress, some shoes, and accessories, and go to your ball, Princess.” Her words cut through my panic. No one would know who or what I really was. It was like I was Cinderella, and Sylvie my fairy godmother.