by Cate Corvin
“I’m just joking, boss. Lighten up. You’re stuck with me.” I reached out to take the box and the ring within.
It looked like delicate vines woven from silver, set with a gleaming moonstone. Tiny facets within the stone shone in blue and green, with a flash of vivid purple when turned the right way.
I pulled it from its velvet cushion and slid it over my left middle finger. The silver vines warmed and compressed, adjusting to fit my finger perfectly.
“This is a ring from the Unseelie Court,” Robin said, reaching over the desk to take my hand. My breath caught in my throat when his calloused fingers ran over mine, checking the fit of the ring, but his expression was purely business. “It’s a loaner, so try not to lose it.”
“Why do I need an Unseelie ring?” I asked, a little unsteadily.
Bright blue eyes pierced me. “This will allow you to spin the shadows.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m a dryad. Magic isn’t really my forte, unless you’d like me to grow some rather ugly trees.”
“The magic is woven into the ring itself.” He tapped the moonstone. “Spin it around on your finger, and whisper to it: spin me a tale. Then you will be able to step through the shadows, weave them like ropes, pull them over you for cover... this is not a toy, Miss Appletree. It’s to save your life, if need be.”
I stared down at the ring and my hand, still clasped in his. He seemed to realize he was still holding mine and released me quickly, withdrawing his arms like he’d done something wrong.
“Got it, boss. Super-powered ring for emergencies only.” I took a deep breath.
Was my life likely to be in danger? The only answer to that seemed to be yes. All I had to do was picture the human girl in the incriminating photo.
That wasn’t the kind of information Brightkin would want to get out into the world. It was the kind of information someone would commit murder over. “So I’m going to need a disguise, right?”
Robin pointed upstairs.
6
Most of the upper level of Robin’s house was restricted to me. I was informed that the first room on the right was his bedroom, and that I had zero business stepping in there.
“Like I’d want to,” I muttered under my breath. Robin ignored me.
There was an armory, but the last room on the left was apparently now mine.
“Everything you need will be provided for you in here,” he told me. “Get ready. I’m bringing you out tonight to make initial contact.”
He strode away with silent footsteps, disappearing into the bedroom that was off-limits.
I locked the door and turned around to survey ‘my’ room. There was a neatly made bed and a tall wardrobe of pale wood, carved with mermaids around the sides.
Best of all, there was a small bathroom. I showered quickly, scrubbing with lilac-scented body wash and thinking about the photo.
If I was Brightkin’s flavor, so to speak, I’d want to match the glittery, lush-looking nymphs he’d partied with.
After the shower, I ran my fingers through my hair, shaking it out so it was a big mass of curls. When I opened the medicine cabinet, I found a bag of brand-new makeup and shimmering lotion.
I slapped it on liberally, making sure every inch of exposed skin would shine under the club lights, and applied thick, glassy lip gloss.
Then it was time to see what horrors the wardrobe had in store for me. I opened the doors to a riot of sequins and lace.
At least the wardrobe had picked up on what I’d need. Not a single dress looked like it would come within miles of mid-thigh, and most of them had plunging necklines.
I chose a minidress of black leather, studded with deep blue spangles, and grabbed a handful of jewelry shining in a velvet box.
With the chains draped over my shoulders and throat and hanging down my exposed back, the ring didn’t stand out as odd at all. I touched it nervously while examining myself in the mirror.
Did I look like the kind of nymph that would party hard with princes?
The wardrobe’s doors flew open. It belched a pair of black stilettos onto the carpet, then slowly closed itself again.
“You’re very helpful,” I told it. “Feel free to move into my apartment.”
The wardrobe didn’t move.
I felt a little like a newborn deer, wobbling around on the six-inch heels. When I could walk a straight line without keeling over, I finally grabbed a wristlet large enough to fit my phone and extra lip gloss and descended the stairs to meet Robin.
He was sitting at his desk again, typing something on a sleek Acorn laptop. The sound of my sharp heels hitting the wooden floor made him look up, and his hand froze over the keyboard.
A tense moment passed, the air between us strung as tight as a wire. His eyes were hard, but not cold, as though he were a tiger on a chain, lusting to take a bite and unable to get close enough.
Sisse wolf-whistled at me, raising a tiny mug of cream. “Oh, Robin. If I were five feet taller, I’d be all over that.”
He didn’t move, his gaze dropping to my very exposed legs. He looked… hungry.
“Thanks for your vote of confidence, Sisse. I’m ready, boss.” I kept my tone brisk and professional. “Where are we going?”
Robin closed the laptop and stood up, his hand absently drifting to his collar. “Myrage. It’s been Brightkin’s most frequent haunt lately.” Thankfully, he sounded as cool and business-like as I did, collecting himself swiftly. “I’m going in with you.”
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of sending me in?” I asked, stuffing my new phone in the wristlet. “If he sees his mother’s fixer sitting there, he’s not going to be collecting random nymphs to party with him.”
“That’s what a glamour is for. If I stay far enough away, I’ll be able to watch everything without my cover being blown.” He took cufflinks out of the drawer and began fiddling at his wrists, deliberately not looking at me.
“I did consider using one to go after him myself, but being a high level Gentry…” Robin shrugged. “I’d need an extraordinarily powerful glamour to disguise myself as a female nymph and hide my own magic signature within several feet of him. He’d sense me within moments. But this will be a much more minor illusion.”
He twisted the other cufflink, and the air seemed to ripple around him in a heatwave. A second later, Robin was no longer standing there in a suit.
He’d become a Gentry male with messy scarlet hair and dark eyes, his tie loosened and collar unbuttoned carelessly. It was a perfect approximation of the young corporate climbers in the Seelie Court, especially the ones who worked in PR and tried hard to appeal to humans.
He looked down at himself. “It takes much less magic to work with what I already am. A male Gentry, that’s close enough to my natural essence. A female nymph… much less so.”
I appreciated that he said nymph, not Lesser.
“What a pair we make.” I strode towards the door. “Let’s get this show started. I still have work tomorrow.”
Robin cut me off. “Not that way. This way.” He tried out a grin, sinking into the character, and even his voice sounded different now: younger, more relaxed. “I haven’t forgotten your nonsense job, don’t worry.”
“It’s an honest living,” I snapped.
Robin held up a hand in compliance. “Fair enough. My apologies.”
Instead of going through the back, he led me through a door I hadn’t seen before and down a set of concrete stairs. “Is this where you hide the bodies, boss?”
Lights flickered on, and I drew up short. It wasn’t a basement but a garage, and several cars gleamed under the bright lights.
He held up the keys to a dark sports car. “Only the ones I want you to find.”
I snorted. “This isn’t practice flirtation time. Your job is to sit in the corner and make sure I’m not abducted, not pick up Gentry party-girls.”
“I’m not picking anyone up.” He tossed his head, flicking scarlet hair out of his eyes.
“I will make sure you’re safe, Miss Appletree.”
He opened the passenger door for me, and I carefully climbed in. The leather seat cradled me, silky smooth and black as night.
When he got in behind the wheel and pushed a button on the console, I was trying to touch as little of the seat as possible. “Boss. I’m getting glitter all over your car.”
Everywhere my skin touched left a streak of shimmer behind. It was my worst nightmare. Getting lotion all over a car I wouldn’t be able to afford if I slaved away my entire life.
He looked at the shimmer on the seat, then my bare legs, and shrugged. “Occupational hazard of hiring a honeypot, I suppose.”
But under the roar of the car starting, I could’ve sworn he muttered, “Worth it.”
Then Robin sent the car careening down a dark passage, towards a shining, mirror-like wall.
I closed my eyes and gripped the seat to brace for impact, questioning the sanity of working for a man like this.
But we didn’t hit a wall, there was no breaking glass, and I heard a car horn blare outside my window.
I opened my eyes. We were speeding down the Mainway, the largest highway in Avilion, and Robin merged us into the traffic like it was second nature.
He noticed me looking at him. “It’s a portal,” he said defensively.
“You could’ve warned me.”
“It deposits the car in any empty space on the main highway.”
“I would’ve liked to know we weren’t about to die. That’s all I’m saying.”
Robin wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel, cheerfully speeding up and passing a blue oceanic sports car painted with electric yellow stripes. “There was absolutely zero chance of death.”
My heart was still pounding in my throat. I realized I was clinging to my seatbelt for dear life and slowly pried my fingers away. I had to admit, it was a hell of a great method for getting on the Mainway, which was usually backed up.
“Okay. So… what should my name be?” I looked out the window as we rounded the Seelie Palace. At night, the spires were lit like white fire, gleaming in shades of azure, scarlet, and gold. “I can’t go introducing myself by my real name.”
“Look in your bag,” he said. “I took the liberty of making you a fake ID.”
I’d left my real ID in the pocket of my Fairy Ferry shorts, which were currently in a heap on the bedroom floor of his house, but the wristlet had something hard and thin inside, pressed up against my phone.
I pulled out the fake ID and held it up to the passing lights. My picture was on it, but the name read Cress Willowtree.
I briefly considered asking him to change it to Cress Bananatree, smiling to myself.
“Is something amusing?” Robin asked, glancing at me.
I shook my head. “No.” I tucked the ID away carefully.
“All right… Cress,” he added, clearly testing out the name. “Your goal is to make initial contact with Brightkin, that’s all. Hang out, dance with him, make him trust you. Getting into his VIP room would be a bonus, but not a necessity tonight. If you can get his number, even better.”
“You’re the fixer. Don’t you already have it?” I fiddled with the strap on the wristlet, a growing ball of nervousness in my stomach.
It had all seemed so easy back in Robin’s house, but now that the moment was coming, I wanted to throw up a little bit. I’d have to talk to the actual Seelie Prince, something I’d never imagined in my wildest dreams.
Or nightmares, I corrected myself, thinking of the photo.
“It’s not about me getting the number,” Robin said. “It’s about him trusting you enough to hand it out. If you can’t get into VIP tonight, we’ll have another chance later.”
I nodded, still picking at the strap. I needed to start thinking clearly if I was going to be working for the guy who basically ran the Seelie kingdom on Titania’s orders.
“Hey.”
I glanced over at Robin, trying not to look as sick as I felt. What if I screwed everything up and ruined his chances?
“Can you handle this?” He drew the car to a stop, and I realized we’d left the Mainway. We were on the border of Mothwing Falls and Sobek Street, on the last neon-lit stretch of Mothwing before it gave way to Unseelie territory.
I watched a Fae with crocodile skin disappear into the shadows, his slit pupils focused on Robin’s car.
If Brightkin was really taking human girls, girls with their whole lives ahead of them, and rotting their minds with evanesce, I’d never forgive myself for fucking up this job. Robin needed that evidence.
“Yes. I can do this.” I exhaled a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
He locked the car doors as I carefully picked my way down the sidewalk, shivering a little with the sea salt air coming in from Acionna Harbor.
“One last thing.” He pitched his voice low. “I’ve put funds in your wallet on the Acorn. Use it if you need to, but you likely won’t be buying your own drinks tonight. And if you see a huldra anywhere near Brightkin, do not engage her under any circumstances if you can help it.”
“Why? Who is she to him?” I asked, forcing myself to keep my arms at my sides despite my goosebumps.
“Silke, his majordomo. If you play your part right, she won’t be suspicious, but you don’t want to get on her bad side. If she suspects you’re a danger to him… well, things will get ugly very quickly.”
Great. Nothing like an overzealous Personal Relations bodyguard to get through.
“Don’t worry, I’m an amazing actress.” I smiled at him.
He raised his eyebrows, looking more like Robin than possible even with a glamour on. “Are you?”
“Nope. But I’ll figure it out.”
Brilliant green and blue lights strobed across the street ahead of us, and a machine blew thousands of perfect glimmering bubbles into the air. It gave the oddest sensation of walking underwater as we approached the wavy lights of Myrage.
“Briallen.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. Robin had never called me by my first name before. When I turned, he was several feet back, lingering in the shadows.
I felt like a strange moment of friendship had been snatched away. We’d felt like a team for a minute, almost like actual friends. “Yeah?”
Robin’s expression was impossible to read. “Be careful in there.”
7
The bouncer was a massive golem, the mark on his forehead gleaming red as he looked down at us.
I clung to Robin’s arm like I’d already pre-gamed my way to the clubs. The golem would never know I was digging my nails into his arm for dear life.
The moment was here.
“Oh. My. Trees.” I giggled. It was a little easier than I’d anticipated, but before we’d walked up, Robin had pulled out a silver flask of cherry dwarf-distilled vodka and made me take a healthy gulp to steady my nerves and get the scent of alcohol on me. It had the added benefit of making me feel a little flushed, the role a little easier to play. “He’s bigger than you.”
Robin, wearing the dark-eyed face we’d decided to name Rory, looked up at him and rolled his eyes, the perfect image of a high-strung corporate climber with an exasperating date. “She’s never been to Myrage. Small town nymph.”
He rudely pressed a fifty into the golem’s pocket.
The golem glared at us both, and for a moment, I thought we would get turned away.
Then he shrugged his boulder-like shoulders and stood aside. “Nice ass,” he rumbled.
My cheeks went red, then I forced myself to flutter my eyelashes with another giggle. “Are you, like, that big all over?”
The golem was about to answer when Robin pulled me inside a dark vestibule. “He’d already let us in,” he grumbled.
I glanced at him sidelong as a nereid wearing nothing but strings of pearls opened a door, smiling widely at us. “Maybe I was genuinely curious.”
“I didn’t say you had to go into method acting for this.”
I grinned back at the naiad and followed Robin into the strobing lights. “I’m just getting comfortably settled into the mind of Cress Willowtree— wow.”
The nightclub was two floors high. Two walls were enormous aquariums, displaying several nereids dancing in the water and rubbing themselves against the glass, blowing kisses to the dancers below.
Above us, sylphs spun on brass poles, wearing bits of cloud and not much else. One of them smiled at me with lips that glittered like frost before flipping upside down.
I turned away quickly. For all I knew, Ioin had come here to meet his sylph.
Robin pulled me to a table in a dark corner behind a crush of dancers glittering with sweat. “Look up there,” he said in my ear, fighting to be heard over the music.
The second level was a balcony, lined with doors. Outside one door on the very end, a huldra stood guard, scowling at the dance floor below.
It was impossible to see her hollow back from this angle, but she had the face of an ice queen, cruel and cold, her platinum hair hanging in long sheets to her waist.
“That’s Silke.” The feel of his lips moving against my ear made me shiver, even though it was hot inside Myrage. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
I nodded, and steeled myself before plunging in.
Several satyrs offered me drinks as I passed, but I shook my head and smiled to make my meaning clear: so sorry, not with you.
The bar was less crowded, and I managed to scoop a seat at the end, hidden behind a Gentry woman with deep red skin.
There was absolutely no sign of Brightkin. If he was in here, he would’ve been a prime target, but I didn’t spot any groups of giggling nymphs.
I ordered a vodka tonic and turned to the side, and realized I had a perfect view of Silke above the fray. If she was there, then Brightkin was probably holed up in the VIP room with his retinue.
The bartender slid a glass to me, and I raised it to my lips. The gloss was sticky, leaving a film on the rim of the glass, but I didn’t dare wipe it off. I sipped it, pretending to look around the club, watching Silke like a hawk from the corner of my eye.