Skin Deep lb-1

by Mark Del Franco

  “There was a computer lab that looked heavily defended,” said Laura.

  Terryn sifted a folder out of his pile. “I thought that was interesting, too. It was destroyed. Crime Scene hasn’t released anything yet, and I’m hearing rumblings that the FBI might take over.” Terryn pushed a piece of paper across his desk. “More bad news.”

  She picked up the sheet, a memo on FBI letterhead, stamped SECRET and hand-delivered. She skimmed it and slipped surprise on her face. “Sanchez was working for the Bureau?”

  Terryn nodded. “I confirmed the report through our back channel at the FBI. He was CTD.”

  A spot of annoyance in her chest quickly blossomed into anger. “Counterterrorism? What the hell did I step in, Terryn, and why didn’t we know about it?”

  He held up his hands. “I was as much in the dark as you were, Laura.”

  She threw the memo on his desk. “Dark? I got shot at, Terryn, by our own side. You can’t get more dark than that.”

  He frowned. “Laura… I know. I don’t blame you for being upset, but you’re getting angry at the wrong person. You volunteered for that mission, remember?”

  She closed her eyes and massaged her temples. “I’m sorry. You’re right, Terryn. I have a headache, and I’m ticked off. It’s been a long two days.”

  She wasn’t going to wait for an invitation or assignment to figure out what was going on with Sanchez and the FBI, not when her own life was in the balance. “Who was Sanchez’s field director?”

  “Lawrence Scales.”

  She knew the name. Good reputation from all she had heard. “Set up an appointment. I’m going.”

  Terryn didn’t try to hide his amusement. “There’s the Laura I know. Would you like me to drive you to the meeting, or do I have your permission to run this unit while you go?”

  She bit her lips in false embarrassment. “I’m sorry. What I meant was, may I have this assignment, sir?”

  He inclined his head. “You may. It makes sense for you to go as Mariel Tate anyway. I already set up the appointment and sent a dossier to the Tate office.”

  “Thanks. She’ll get right on it,” said Laura. Mariel was the most formidable persona Laura used. She was smart, powerful, and had the might of InterSec to back her up publicly. Mariel’s phone calls were always taken if someone was in, and the first returned if someone was out.

  Terryn moved papers on his desk. “I’ve done some preliminary research on the SWAT team. Gianni, Sinclair, and Sanchez have done paid detail and other side work at a dinner club called the Vault.”

  Laura nodded. “I know. I was there last night. Tylo Blume, of all people, owns the place. He offered me a job.”

  “He’s an arms merchant,” said Terryn.

  Laura’s eyebrow flicked up. “That I didn’t know. His firm is running some of the security for the Archives ceremony I’m working on for Guild public relations.”

  Terryn dropped a corner of his mouth slightly. “Laura Blackstone and Janice Crawford have both met him?”

  Laura shrugged. “It’s a coincidence. I’ve been avoiding meeting with him about the Archives ceremony as Laura Blackstone because that ups the pressure to say yes to what he wants. Senator Hornbeck’s the actual connection. Foyle mentioned to him that he wanted a backup for Corman Deegan, his SWAT-team druid who’s out of commission. If you remember, Terryn, you were the one that wanted more contacts with local enforcement. I created Janice the first time Deegan called in sick.”

  Terryn leaned back in his chair. “I remember. I also remember saying I thought the situation might produce a persona conflict.”

  She had no choice but to agree. “Fine, you were right. I didn’t think the two personas would ever have a reason to cross. Once the Archives ceremony is over, the problem should go away. Did Corman Deegan work there, too?”

  Terryn shook his head. “The SWAT-team druid? I don’t see any indications that he did.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Still in the hospital with head-blindness,” Terryn said.

  “Sanchez knew something, Terryn. Now somebody thinks I do and is willing to kill me because of it.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  She thought of her memory flashes, Sanchez pressing his finger into her bloody hand. She pushed at the moment, tried to make the scene step beyond what she remembered, but it drifted into nothing. “I think Sanchez did tell me something. He couldn’t talk. I remember him doing something to my hand. He might have been trying to communicate something.”

  “Sign language?”

  Laura looked at her palm. Something about the way the lines of her skin crisscrossed made her uneasy. She had never subscribed to palmistry, at least not the way the modern world did. She knew some fey could read health issues in the skin, but that had more to do with how essence points radiated than simple lines. Something about the way her life, heart, and head lines were arranged. “It was a shape, I think. He wrote something.”

  “A name?”

  She didn’t respond, but continued staring. The memory flickered on the edges of her awareness. Frustration grew within her, frustration that a druid, of all people, was having a hard time remembering. She shook her head. “It’s gone again.”

  Terryn had the good grace not to look disappointed, but she felt it. “It’ll come. In the meantime, let’s do the footwork to figure out why the FBI was spying on the SWAT team.”

  Laura gathered her things. “Will do. I want to talk to Corman Deegan first, see if he knows anything. I’ll catch up with you after that.”

  On the way to the elevator, she passed Cress in the hall. “I made him smile. You owe me lunch.”

  “A small price to pay, I am sure,” she replied.

  CHAPTER 9

  “WHERE THE HECK have you been?” Saffin said.

  Laura was tempted to tell her she had been impersonating a police officer and drinking with an arms merchant, but thought better of it. Instead, she rolled her eyes in shared exasperation as she walked through the public-relations reception area. “Sorry. I got pulled into a meeting yesterday, then had to do some damage control on something last night.”

  Saffin handed her a stack of mail. “Hornbeck called again,” she said.

  Laura shook her head as she sorted the mail. “He won’t let up, will he?”

  Saffin made a sour face. “It gets worse. His office noticed that the two of you will be at separate Senate hearings on the same floor tomorrow. He wants you to meet him as soon as he finishes.”

  Laura bit back a curse. She was participating in a fact-finding session at one of the Senate buildings about fey homeless shelters. “I forgot about the hearing.”

  Saffin sighed and frowned in mock-frustration. “Did you not read the three email alerts I sent you? I can’t run your life if you don’t pay attention.”

  Laura chuckled, but a sliver of guilt swept over her. She had neglected to check her email. Sloppy. Despite her joking, Saffin’s face had a shadow of gauntness about it that suggested stress. That was a minor hint that a boggart situation could evolve. Over the years, Saffin had never become more than highly agitated with Laura. Laura took that as a point of pride for both of them. It meant they knew how to work together.

  Brownies didn’t like going boggie. The mental strain was bad enough, but the change was physical, too. Their bodies literally transformed, becoming elongated and taut, while their physical strength increased dramatically. Their minds slipped, too, normal rationality becoming suppressed as they became obsessed with completing the task that sparked the change. It happened like an adrenaline rush-fast, intense, and utterly exhausting when it was over. “I’m really sorry, Saf. I’ve been distracted. I think it’s time we pull Rhys into this to get Hornbeck to go away.”

  Saffin nodded her acceptance of the apology, but the sad look on her face pained Laura. “Sorry to disappoint you, but Hornbeck already called the Guildmaster, and they referred him to you.”

  Laura slumped against the door in frus
tration. “Okay, dammit, I’ll talk to him. But if Rhys doesn’t want to deal with it, then I can’t be responsible for what I say.”

  Saffin followed her into her office. “Speaking of which, Rhys’s office has been calling all morning. They want your edits to his speech.”

  As Laura walked around her desk, she found a small Talbots bag on the chair, Saffin’s favorite spot to leave things she absolutely wanted Laura to see. Slipping her hand into the bag, she pulled out a large piece of silk folded in a neat square. She let it slide against itself to reveal a large paisley scarf in shades of red. “Oh, Saf! This is gorgeous.”

  Some of the stress lines in Saffin’s face relaxed. “It’s the wrong red for me, but I thought it would look great with your hair. It was an insane deal.”

  Laura gathered the fabric and slipped it loosely around her neck. “I love it. How much do I owe you?”

  Saffin waved her hand. “Nothing. It’s a gift.”

  Laura learned long ago not to argue when Saffin called something a gift. Part of her nature was in the giving of things, whether help or tangible items, and Saffin sometimes perceived even a courteous demurral as a failure on her part. “Thank you, Saffin. I’ll get on the speech right now.”

  Saffin brightened considerably, the tautness nearly gone. “Okay. I’ll be right outside.”

  Laura took her seat and adjusted the scarf. She really did like it.

  She opened her email and retrieved the Guildmaster’s document. Orrin ap Rhys wrote most of his own speeches. He was good at it. In recent years, he had taken a liking to Laura’s editing suggestions, probably because they shared similar approaches to problems. She hardly ever needed to contradict him or attempt to change his position. Usually, all she did was update his language for a modern audience and let him know about current affairs that would enhance his arguments.

  His Archives speech demonstrated their mutual concerns. Laura didn’t add much for most of the speech. Rhys had hit all the key points in the relationship between modern humans and the Celtic fey. In fact, he had lived through all of the last century’s interactions and been a significant player himself, even participating in the negotiation of the Treaty of London.

  Near the end of the speech, though, Laura massaged the language with an eye to current politics. She brought in the achievements of a recent summit between Maeve and the Elvenking. It wasn’t a resounding success, but enough progress had been made to ensure that the process would probably continue. Except, not everyone was pleased with the idea that the Celts and the Teuts might settle their differences. Some human factions feared that an allied fey was a dangerous fey. Therein lay the difficulty for her-events had different meanings to different groups. Laura tried to keep tabs on all of them and make sure that Rhys soothed the right egos and slapped back at the politically inconsequential and the dangerous. Nuance was key.

  As a commander of fairy-warrior forces, Rhys liked to talk too much about conflicts. Laura thought it undermined the message of success and unity of the recent negotiations and the benefits that they would provide the human population. She cut the troublesome material in half, wrote “too negative” in the margin, and slanted the language into a stronger message of triumph, despite the inevitable obstacles naysayers would throw in the way of progress. She made one more pass through the speech and emailed it off to Rhys.

  She glanced at her watch and called out the door to Saffin. “I sent the speech, if anyone should ask, Saf. I need you to make a delivery for me.”

  From within a locked drawer in her desk, she retrieved a sealed envelope. As Saffin entered, Laura wrote “Candace Burke” on the envelope and an address. Burke didn’t exist. She was a means to manipulate Saffin away from her desk by sending her on an errand outside the building. She handed the envelope to Saffin. “I probably won’t be here when you get back, but call my cell if you need me.”

  Saffin read the address to herself. “Okay. Don’t forget the hearing tomorrow. Wear the yellow suit with the short skirt. Your new scarf will go perfectly, and Hornbeck will be distracted by your legs.”

  Laura shook her head. “I think you know my entire wardrobe better than I do.”

  Saffin shrugged. “You surprise me sometimes.”

  Laura waited a few minutes, then checked the outer hall. Saffin was gone. She gathered her handbag, her briefcase and PDA, and stepped through the closet to her private room.

  Dropping her things on the bed, she slipped into the chair at one of the worktables. Two tiers of plastic bins sat on the table, a collection of stones, gems, and wood-the accumulation of years of practice. She removed the chained emerald with the Janice glamour in it and hung it on a wooden stand. The monetary value of the three-carat emerald never crossed her mind. It was worth more than dollars and cents to her.

  Any stone could be made to hold a glamour, but a perfect stone-a perfect stone was rare and priceless to someone who manipulated essence. Perfect stones held essence imprints that didn’t degrade quickly, and the amount of essence required to power them went down as the perfection of the crystalline structure went up. Laura had never come across a more perfect one.

  She sorted through a bin of smaller emeralds. The Janice glamour was rather simple, playing off Laura’s existing features and changing her hair color. It didn’t require a perfect stone. Laura had used the stone because it was convenient-she wore it all the time-and she hadn’t expected Janice to be around for more than the one day of the raid. However, the perfect stone was more suited to the Mariel Tate glamour, so she needed to switch Janice onto a lesser stone.

  She selected a serviceable one-carat emerald, threaded it onto a gold chain, and hung it from another wooden stand. Cupping the smaller stone in her hand with a thin wand of oak, she took care not to touch the stone with the wood. Brushing the tip of the wand against the perfect stone, she pulled at the glamour with a muttered cantrip. The essence-template that formed the Janice glamour tingled under her hand as it swirled through the wood. It sought the crystalline structure of the smaller stone and imprinted itself there.

  Laura draped the one-carat stone around her neck, cool static chasing over her skin as the glamour settled. She examined herself in the mirror above the table. Janice Crawford stared back at her. Satisfied that the transfer hadn’t degraded the glamour, she removed the chain and put the stone aside.

  Lifting the perfect stone from the stand, she dropped it in a box carved from granite and covered it with a glass lid. Sparks of essence escaped her fingertips and into the box, dancing with a blue light around the emerald. When the essence faded, she removed the stone and tested it with her sensing ability. No essence registered, the equivalent of sterile. The only glamour on the stone was its own inherent beauty.

  She slipped it back around her neck and visualized Mariel Tate. Mariel was a more complicated glamour than Janice. Laura had modeled her on several classic beauties who looked nothing like her. She rarely enhanced her own looks with a glamour, but she had gone all out with Mariel. Physical attractiveness could be a useful distraction.

  A mental image was the first step in creating a glamour, providing the basic blueprint. She bound the mental image of Mariel Tate with a touch of essence and pushed it into the stone. The mirror above the table reflected the shift, her true face blurring into a rudimentary version of Mariel’s features.

  From experience, Laura focused first on the eyes. If the eyes weren’t right, nothing else would matter. She shifted the color of her irises from their normal green until they shone golden. The trick with Mariel’s eyes was light and depth. For ease of transition, she kept Mariel a druid, but for added effect, she had styled her as an Old One, an ancient fey who had a deep, fathomless aspect to her eyes that spoke of years of experience and survival. To look into the eyes of an Old One was to see history and power, a cool, sometimes cold, detachment of someone who had lived through decades of experience and would continue to do so. An Old One projected the power of triumphant survival. Humans felt insignifica
nt under such a gaze. The physical difference that produced the effect was subtle but intense.

  Satisfied with the basic template, she worked the rest of the glamour with little effort. Re-creating a glamour took less time than producing a new one, the uncanny recall that all druids had enabling Laura to call forth the memory of the template. Mariel’s ebony hair flowed to her waist-another trick, long hair on women having a history of conveying mystery beneath femininity. For convenience, she added an outfit, a dark gray, form-fitting power suit with a long skirt. Wearing physical clothing was easier since she only needed to maintain a body image, but she wouldn’t have time just then to change into Mariel’s clothes.

  As a final touch, she softly sang an old Irish song as she worked, a cadence of grief and remembrance that touched the soul. Mariel’s voice had a mild lilt, which women found endearing and men found alluring, and the song spelled the accent into her voice.

  Rising from the worktable, she examined the results in a full-length mirror, a critical eye roaming over the line of the skirt, the shape of her shoes, and the drape of her hair. As Laura, as her physical self, she knew she was attractive. But Mariel went beyond that. She represented a woman who most people aspired to be or be with, and possessed a confidence in herself that everyone wished they had. If a glamour was a mask-a visual lie-Mariel was Laura’s lie to her inner self. She was Mariel, but wasn’t. Mariel’s allure and power were aspects she only pretended to have.

  She slipped the Janice glamour stone into a small pouch that was keyed to her body signature. For security reasons, only she could open it. She tucked the pouch into one of the vest pockets of her business suit, closed the plastic bins, and returned them to their orderly cubbyholes.

  Instead of passing back through the closet-and risking an encounter with a returning Saffin-Laura paused at the workroom door, which led into the next department. Sensing no one in the hallway on the other side, she opened the door. From the hallway, the view into the room was masked to look like an electrical closet. If a maintenance staff member opened the door, he would see junction boxes and the raw piping of the building but would be unable to enter because of a security spell. If anyone asked why there was a security spell, they were told that the room serviced sensitive experiments in the building and entrance needed clearance from Terryn macCullen. Few people asked. It was a Guildhouse, a building that everyone understood was filled with secrets that often were not healthy to investigate.