Skin Deep lb-1

by Mark Del Franco

  Tomorrow she would pretend she was plain Laura Blackstone, public-relations director for the Guild. She would get up in front of a meeting or a reporter or a strategy group and spin the Guild and the fey in the best light possible. People would compliment her on her marketing talents, despite the fact that the skill was predicated on not telling the whole truth in order to get what she wanted. She was good at it. Too good, she thought lately, to the extent that she wondered if deep down she had started lying to herself.

  She drained the remains of her drink and slid the glass onto the nightstand.

  CHAPTER 5

  TO AN OUTSIDE observer, which in a Guildhouse invariably meant a human one, a meeting at the D.C. Fey Guild attracted an assortment of people not encountered on a regular basis. Most everyone knew what a Celtic fairy or a Teutonic elf looked like. Dwarves were obvious and easy. Druids didn’t raise an eyebrow, but the average person had a hard time telling the difference between a brownie and a kobold. The solitary fey were another matter altogether.

  The solitaries claimed neither Maeve nor Donor Elfenkonig as their leader, though the various individuals and groups had natural affinities for one or the other. In truth, “solitary” was a bit of misnomer, because not all solitaries were single, lonely individuals. The name was more a recognition of their status apart from the more mainstream fey, who often despised and belittled them when they weren’t dismissing them. After Convergence, the solitaries had found a new voice for themselves in a world where monarchies did not hold sway.

  Laura shifted in her seat and glanced around the conference table as the public-relations staff meeting drew to a close. The department had more solitaries than any other at the Guild. Politics dictated that the group tasked with convincing humans that the fey should be treated inclusively employ the solitary fey even the Guild didn’t love. Their high profile rarely translated into much authority. To the other fey, they still lived under a cloud of fear and suspicion.

  A large contingent of brownies were part of the department. They weren’t solitaries, and they had a tendency toward efficiency that the solitaries lacked. The other staffers ran a gamut of species that kept taxonomists awake at night. Blue-skinned nixies milled about the floor, too fidgety to remain in seats, while the odd wood fairy with its bark-skinned flesh sat as still as an oak. Several sleek selkies, almost human-looking when out of the water, gathered in a clique at one end of the table, as far as possible from the pale merrows at the other end. The two fey water species had an intense dislike for each other.

  Laura used her body language to appear attentive to Resha Dunne. He was a merrow, a member of one of the most hostile types of sea fey. Where his brothers tended toward aggression and seduction, particularly with human women, Resha seemed insecure and tentative about everything. Of course, Laura had never seen him in his water aspect, which was when his species tended to be at its worst in temperament. Even so, Resha was someone she chose to spend little time with. He felt clammy and smelled damp to her.

  Although he was the solitary representative on the Guild board of directors, Resha voted the Celtic party line as a matter of course. He never attended a meeting that he couldn’t drag into overtime. What could be discussed in an hour took two when he was involved, with a monotonous litany of agenda items and committee forming at the end for the next meeting. Usually Laura delegated one of her staff to deal with him, but the fey exhibit being planned at the National Archives was too high-profile for her to avoid him without insulting him. She flipped through the memos in front of her to hide the fact that she was scanning her PDA to monitor email.

  Keeping the lives of her competing personalities under control was difficult to do alone. Terryn helped enormously, either by direct intervention or propagating disinformation campaigns on her whereabouts. That need to juggle and balance was one of the reasons she avoided an independent personal life. It would add yet another layer of subterfuge and lies that she didn’t think was worth it. At least, that was what she had convinced herself of.

  Terryn was running interference for her with Foyle while she attended the Guild meeting. Every few minutes, Foyle would send an annoyed text message, demanding Janice Crawford report for duty. Duty, in this case, meant desk work while the fiasco of the raid was investigated. Terryn would respond with his usual calm and noncommittal reply.

  No less than three congressional committees were demanding answers about the raid. She swore to herself when she saw Senator Hornbeck’s Fey Relations Committee on the list of interested parties. Laura Blackstone was having enough trouble with him about the National Archives ceremony she was working on with the Guild. She didn’t need to open another front of aggravation with him.

  “Are there any other questions?” Resha asked.

  His usual meeting-end question was met with an apprehensive silence. No one ever had another question once Resha had wrung dry every possible topic. Laura moved her attention back to the pale merrow. Everyone in the conference room shuffled their notes into folders and briefcases, unconcerned that Resha droned on, announcing the date and time of the next meeting. He would send an email about it and at least two reminders.

  Laura picked up her folders and PDA. She had enough time to get a few hours’ work in before Terryn couldn’t put off Foyle any longer.

  “Laura, do you have a minute?”

  She paused at the door, too long to pretend she hadn’t heard Resha. Fixing a smile on her face, she faced the conference room. “Sure, Resha, what’s up?”

  He gestured at the empty seat to his left. Against her better judgment, she sat, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t keep her long. His eyes shifted beneath heavy lids as he waited for the room to empty, a pleasant smile plastered on his face. At least, through Laura’s years of familiarity with his kind, she knew it indicated pleasure. To the uninitiated, it had the cold tooth slash of a predator.

  “I was hoping you could help me with something,” he said.

  She popped the cap of her Waterman pen and held it poised over a blank sheet of paper in her notepad. “Sure.”

  Resha reached out a long thin hand, the pale fingers too long for comfort, the dull gray claws more so. As much as she would have liked to, Laura did not recoil from the cool, slick touch on her arm. Just because Resha was not as lecherous as his brother merrows did not mean she wanted him to touch her. “No, no, it’s not something official. Well, technically. I was wondering if you knew much about glamours.”

  With exaggerated care, she replaced the cap, keeping her eyes on the blank sheet of paper as she considered how to answer him. Resha wasn’t a political game player, at least not a powerful one. The Guild board of directors let him run programs that had little political impact, or at least impact that Resha couldn’t screw up or interfere with. Why he was asking such a loaded question made her start looking for exits and doing a mental inventory of passports and bank accounts. As a druid, she couldn’t lie and say she didn’t know anything about glamours. All druids did. She forced the smile back on her face. “Oh, I haven’t used them in years. I was much more fascinated by them when I was young.”

  Resha nodded, dropping his hands on the table. “I was wondering what you thought if I got one. Would it be difficult?”

  She relaxed, but not completely. Not until she understood where this was going. “It would depend on what you needed. They’re easy to purchase. I can think of a few jewelry stores that might take custom orders.”

  He nodded, his lidded eyes narrowing. “Yes, but I’m uncertain about discretion.”

  She smiled, more genuinely. “Everything has a price, Resha.”

  “What would you think if I pinked my skin?” he asked.

  The idea was so mundane, she almost let her jaw drop. Here she was fearing one of her undercover personas had been compromised, and Resha was being used to wheedle information from her, when he was only talking about cosmetics. “What do I think personally or professionally?”

  “Both.”

 
She shook her head. “I don’t see a reason in either case.”

  He smiled again. “Yes, well, you have an aspect that humans find pleasing. You can pass as one of them. I can’t.”

  He had a point. With his exaggerated features-the sharp peak in his forehead, those teeth and claws, the blade of a nose-humans knew he was fey, even if they might not know exactly what kind. Those physical traits didn’t include what happened when a merrow hit the water. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that making his pale white skin any other color would not change a thing about his appearance.

  Steeling herself, she reached out and squeezed those cold, pale hands. “Don’t take this as anything more than a compliment, Resha, but you’re a perfectly handsome man of your species. Why are you worried about what humans think?”

  He pressed his wide lips together. “Television, Laura. The National Archives ceremony is going to be televised. People in Washington are used to dealing with solitaries who don’t fit the human mold. But outside the cities, particularly out West, it’s a different story. Most of this country does not see the fey on a daily basis.”

  She tapped his hand for emphasis. “Which is precisely why you shouldn’t change a thing. This ceremony is about alliances and cooperation. We’re celebrating our diversity.”

  He shook his head and shrugged. “Yes, well, that’s fine when you’re not the one with the camera in your face because you’re diverse.”

  Laura stood and retrieved her folders. “Resha, I’m hearing none of this. Be who you are. If we can’t do that, then everything the fey have been fighting for here is pointless.”

  He smiled again, that strange merrow smile that demonstrated exactly what he meant by other people not understanding. “You always put the best spin on things.”

  She grinned at him as she made for the door. “That’s my job, Resha. Wear your blue Hermиs tie. It complements your skin tone.”

  She cut through the service kitchen to the back stairs to avoid the slow elevator. As she climbed the two flights to her floor, she decided to be amused by the conversation instead of annoyed. She was the last person to criticize someone who wanted to change his looks. Keeping her head down, she strode down the long hallway through the accounting department, one of the few areas of the Guildhouse where she wasn’t peppered with questions when she appeared.

  As she entered her office, her assistant, Saffin Corril, followed her in. “Your zipper’s in the front,” she said.

  Laura dropped her paperwork and spun her skirt around. “Dammit, I wish I’d never bought this thing.”

  Saffin placed a stack of pink messages on the desk. “Stop wearing it on days you have a meeting in the fifth-floor conference room or start taking the elevator.”

  Laura looked up from the first message on the stack. “What the heck does that have to do with my skirt?”

  The brownie smiled. “You always take the stairs from the fifth floor too fast, then you charge down the hallway to avoid people. Poof. Your skirt spins.”

  They stared at each other. The corner of Saffin’s mouth twitched, and Laura laughed. She dropped into her desk chair. “You’re too observant for your own good.”

  “Can I have a raise?” she asked.

  “No. You can have next Tuesday off. I’m out of the office, and you’ve put in a ton of time on the Archives ceremony,” said Laura.

  “Groovy. Thanks,” she replied.

  Laura nodded with a slight smile as she flipped through the messages. Saffin was tall for a brownie. With her long, wispy, blond hair and slender body, Laura could picture Saffin with flowers in her hair on an ashram in the sixties, which was where Saffin was then. Brownies gravitated to hospitable situations that reflected their preferred demeanor and liked to take task-oriented positions that played to their industrious natures. People loved brownie assistants and financial managers. But if someone prevented one of them from performing his duties, a brownie might turn into a boggart. Their boggart nature ranged from annoying to downright dangerous. A brownie transformed from a passive, friendly person into a gangly aggressor with teeth and claws to back it up. No one wanted a maniacal boggart harassing them for a response to a memo. Saffin confessed to Laura she was asked to leave the ashram because she kept going boggie when others forgot to weed the soybeans. Saffin liked a tidy garden.

  “Senator Hornbeck’s office called three times,” Saffin said.

  Laura dropped her head back. “Good gods, why won’t that man leave us alone? I am not going to put Tylo Blume at the podium. I don’t care what favors he’s done Hornbeck.”

  The senator was pressing her to include Tylo Blume as a speaker at the Archives’ exhibit opening. Blume supported Hornbeck’s ideas about mutual cooperation between humans and the fey, a sentiment Laura didn’t disagree with. But Blume wasn’t in the same league as the other speakers and had done little to support the cause until recently.

  Laura suspected Blume would use the opportunity to promote his security firm. The U.S. government had become so stretched with its Homeland Security initiatives, they hired private security contractors like Blackwater and Titan-and Blume’s own Triad Global-to support regular law enforcement. Triad was hired to maintain the building perimeter for the Archives’ fey exhibit opening while regular government operatives handled the higher-profile guests, to say nothing of the documents, inside the Archives. Laura didn’t think anyone needed to provide Blume with free advertising because Hornbeck wanted to score political points with the Teutonic elves.

  Saffin placed another folder on her desk. “Speaking of which, Triad sent over a revised traffic ban around the Archives. The Capitol police didn’t like some of the sight lines on the VIPs.”

  Laura tilted the charts toward the natural light from the window. Triad loved their color printer. They did good work. That didn’t mean she owed them anything more than their fees. “This is fine. Any more changes on the Treaty display?”

  The centerpiece of the Archives exhibit was the 1914 Treaty of London that recognized Maeve as High Queen of the Celtic fey and Tara as a sovereign territory within Ireland. Over a century later, the document, signed by Prime Minister H. H. Asquith of the United Kingdom, President Woodrow Wilson, and Maeve, continued to generate controversy. The National Archives was going to display it for the first time as part of its major fey exhibition, along with never-before-seen letters, documents, and film footage from the early days of the Guild. Threats against the exhibit had been made by militia groups that believed the Treaty was the first step in world domination by the fey over humans. It was an old story in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. government responded with security improvements on the documents and the ceremony.

  “No more changes today. It’s still early,” said Saffin.

  Laura nodded understanding. “Can you check with the Guildmaster’s Office and see if Rhys wants me to review his speech again?”

  “I did. He does. They’ll have something for you to look at tonight,” she said.

  Laura reached the bottom of the messages. The last two were from reporters. She recognized the names and knew they weren’t calling about the ceremony. She sighed as she realized the raid was going to complicate more than one of her lives. “What are you hearing about this police raid in Anacostia, Saf? Anything I need to handle?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t think so. The District’s SWAT team is being blamed for now. They took out a brownie, and the only other fey involved was a druid team member named Janice Crawford. She got hit by a bullet, but she’s okay apparently. InterSec is stalling. Maybe you could call Terryn to see what’s going on.”

  Laura did not raise her head but stayed focused on the messages. “Terryn macCullen? Why would I call him?”

  Saffin shrugged. “You guys are friends, aren’t you? He might return your call.”

  Her mind raced as she tried to recall mentioning Terryn at the office. They had routine Guild/InterSec interactions, but that was expected. Laura wondered what she had done to imply
she knew Terryn as more than a colleague at another agency. Saffin was observant, and she had been with Laura a long, long time. She must have picked up on a pattern Laura hadn’t noticed she was creating.

  “I was thinking,” said Saffin into Laura’s silence. “This might be a good angle for the ceremony, a fey person getting wounded during a joint human-fey exercise. I can do a preliminary interview with this Janice Crawford if you like.”

  It’s a great idea, Laura thought. It was why she valued Saffin so much. No one else could cover for her like Saf did, run things in a pinch, and have the intuition for the big picture all at the same time. “Let’s wait and see what develops. We don’t want egg on our faces if something screwy was going on there. Good thinking, though. Anything else?”

  “There’s a sale at Talbots,” she said.

  “I don’t have time, Saf.”

  Saffin smirked over her shoulder as she left the office. “Oh, I know. I’ll be back in forty-five minutes. Don’t forget to eat lunch.”

  “I won’t be here when you get back. Text me if you need anything,” Laura called after her.

  Laura did a mental inventory as she stared out the window. The ceremony was under control. Hornbeck was a problem. She debated bringing in Guildmaster Rhys to get the senator to back off, but the idea didn’t sit well. It felt like conceding she couldn’t handle him. On the other hand, she couldn’t avoid Aaron Foyle much longer, and she had no idea how much time she would need to deal with the SWAT-team investigation. She considered tossing Hornbeck on Resha Dunne’s lap. But the way the two of them liked to hear their own voices, the ceremony would be over before a decision had been made. She shook her head. She liked the Archives project and didn’t want to see it ruined. She sighed and picked up the phone to call Hornbeck.

  CHAPTER 6