by Cate Corvin
Robin stared at me, his blue eyes inscrutable.
Hell, I’d messed it up.
“Let me start over,” I said, holding up my hands. “I am going to work for you full time. I want to be your agent.”
The corner of Robin’s lips twitched. “Do you now?”
“Yes.” I crossed the kitchen, poured myself a cup of coffee, and rummaged in the fridge for the cream. A frost sprite was lounging on an old take-out box in the back, reading a tiny magazine. “You’re going to hire me, and I’m going to be an agent. This is non-negotiable. Also, I get a pay raise and I keep my dental plan.”
I sat at the table, mixed enough cream and sugar into my coffee to turn it more of an off-white than brown, and looked expectantly at Robin. “So, what’s the first order of business, boss?”
The grim look was gone. He was looking at me like I was the sun, his sapphire eyes crinkled a little at the corners, but his gaze also dropped to my mouth, still swollen from Gwyn’s kisses.
I fidgeted with my mug, trying not to imagine kissing both Gwyn and Robin and failing. How fickle was I?
“Well,” he said, pulling his eyes from my mouth with what seemed like an effort. “I’m happy to have you onboard, since I clearly can’t say no.”
“Nope.” I took a cheerful swig of coffee and almost choked. I’d dumped in enough sugar to kill a pixie. “You can’t.”
“Then the first order of business is to find Calder. We need to confirm he’s still living in the Undercity.” Robin glanced at my clothes. “And to get you out of that ridiculous outfit.”
My ears interpreted that statement in a very different way than how he meant it.
Robin seemed to realize the exact same thing when he saw the light blush on my cheeks. He cleared his throat. “The wardrobe will provide,” he added hastily. “Feel free to use it whenever you wish.”
“Thanks, boss.” Sisse smirked at my mumble.
“I could cut the tension in here with a knife,” she murmured, and flew away on a sprinkle of glittering dust.
I was going to curl up and die like a salted snail. “So, how are we going to lure Calder out? If he has a nereid fetish, disguising ourselves as one of them is our best bet, right?”
Robin still wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Yes, especially as I’d prefer not to have your real face on display all the time, especially in the Undercity. I’ll construct you a better glamour, and you’ll once again be the bait— but this time, Briallen, please do not take unnecessary risks. It’s better to run than become impaired in enemy territory.”
I thought of the guilt that had saturated his voice when he thought he was speaking privately to Sisse, and my ears burned with shame.
Robin had been more worried about me than the mission… which had made me a weak link. “I won’t. Once was enough to learn that lesson.”
“We need to lure him out.” Robin took a long drink of coffee. I wondered if he’d slept at all last night, but judging from the faint shadows under his eyes, I was willing to bet the answer was not much. “Once we make contact and find his new hiding place, I’ll have you plant a bug in there. If you can install a tracking chip on his phone, all the better. Once we have access to his messages, we’ll know with whom he meets and where he’s funneling these humans.”
I tapped my fingers on the table, thinking it over and playing my last encounter with Calder through my mind. “It’ll be hard to do it while he’s conscious. Especially if he’s pawing at me.”
Robin nodded slowly. “I’d rather not have you pawed at, if possible.”
I lifted one shoulder. “Some things I can deal with, if it comes down to that. Finding those girls is more important to me. But I was thinking… what if I rendered him unconscious without hurting him? We’ll need him again later.”
One of Robin’s arched brows rose. “Go on.”
“Well… I wouldn’t roofie him. That might make it a little too obvious. But maybe…”
“An alcohol-activated contact poison?” Robin suggested.
I grinned at him over my coffee. “Perfect.”
I told him my plan, cringing a little bit at some of it, and by the end I was expecting Robin to tell me off, get the hell out, and go beg Numa for my old job back.
But he was nodding, his brows scrunched in a thoughtful frown. “It’s risky, but it could work. And that behavior isn’t uncommon in the Undercity.”
My hand froze midway to raising my coffee to my mouth. “I’m sorry, the Undercity?”
Robin refilled my cup, still in midair, with the last of the coffee. “Where else would a wanted satyr live, Miss Appletree?”
The glamour Robin constructed for me was amazingly well-done.
I touched my arm, running a finger along the smooth silver scales, each one no bigger than a baby’s fingernail.
My skin not only looked wet, it felt wet; I was perfectly dry, and yet I felt the water beading around my fingers and sliding down my arm.
It had taken all day to make, along with procuring a new fake ID, the contact poison I’d approved of, and finding a universal tracking chip that I’d be able to pop into his phone.
A nereid stared back at me in the bathroom mirror.
My cheekbones were higher, and the hollows of my cheeks thinner; long, pale blue hair hung down my back, and my skin was silver all over. I carefully painted my lips with cerulean lipstick, then unscrewed the tiny vial Robin had procured for me.
It was full of a colorless, odorless clear liquid with a gluey consistency.
I dipped in a small brush and began painting over the lipstick at the edges of my mouth. I was careful not to get too close to the soft skin inside my lips; Robin had stressed how important it was that I not lick or bite my lips while it was on.
Still, he’d given me a small paper soaked in a neutralizing solution, just in case.
The contact poison on my lips dried down, becoming nearly invisible. In the Undercity, where the light was uncertain at best, Calder wouldn’t notice a thing.
My skirt barely covered my ass cheeks and the neckline dipped down to my belly button, but when I came downstairs, Sisse made a sound of approval.
“Perfect, he’ll lose his mind. I’m so glad you’re staying with us. Trying to convince Robin to dress up is a nightmare. He says the sequins itch too much.”
“I mean, he’s not wrong.” I smoothed the silver sequins of the dress, trying not to feel uncomfortable. Dressing for a club was one thing. Dressing as a prostitute was another; hopefully nobody tried to get handsy.
At the very least, I had the ring and the poison, and Robin would be waiting for me by the entrance, disguised as an old fachan— and my pimp.
He’d left the chip and ID on the table. I looked at my nereid-disguised face on the card, memorizing my new name: Vanora Pearlwave.
The tiny chip went into a tiny pocket inside my dress, right over my heart. The bug went in as well, and I adjusted the heavy strands of pearls around my neck, disguising the faint bulge.
“I can’t say I feel classy,” I said sourly, practicing walking on the ultra-high platform shoes the closet had given me. I’d told it I wanted to look like a ‘nereid hooker’ and by the Branches, had it provided. The soles of my shoes were full of water, with glittery plastic fish floating inside them. “But I was the one who suggested it, after all.”
“It was an excellent idea, Briallen.” Sisse shrugged. “You know how satyrs are.”
I did, all too well. All satyrs were horny bastards, but if they had a particular fetish… well, they’d go through hell and high water, literally, to get ahold of it. I was counting on Calder practically going brain dead at the sight of a buyable nereid in the Undercity.
Then the poison would do its work, and I’d do mine.
A faint scratching caught my ears, and Robin came limping into the kitchen, several feet shorter than usual and with a face like a squashed potato. To complete his fachan disguise, he’d pulled several threadbare blankets and cloaked over h
is hunched shoulders, hiding most of the grotesquerie of his false body.
His eyes were beady and dark as he looked up at me. It was impossible to tell it was Robin under the glamour.
“Like it?” I asked, striking an exaggerated pose and dripping nonexistent water everywhere.
The fachan coughed. “I prefer your face,” he said in a voice like rusty gears grating against each other.
I let my arms relax to my sides, looking away so I wouldn’t blush blue. Robin studied the ceiling with his beady eyes.
Sisse sighed. “Get out of here.”
13
Sobek Street was the one part of Avilion any self-respecting dryad avoided.
I’d never thought I’d find myself walking it dressed like a nereid hooker, accompanied by what seemed to be a decrepit bag-lady of a fachan.
Robin clutched both a dented pail and a spiked club in his hairy, clawed hands, the tattered robes dragging on the cracked sidewalk behind him. I was only several steps behind, smiling nervously at some of the Fae we passed.
There were no Gentry here. This was the part of town ruled entirely by the Lessers, the castoffs of the Seelie Court and those Unseelie who were willing to brave the light of day.
I wish I could’ve said they were my kind of Lessers, but they were the kind my mother had told me to stay far away from. Barely clothed nymphs danced in windows, bathed in red light, and more than a few interested eyes watched me from alleyways. The street was covered in a coat of grime that years of washing wouldn’t be able to scrape away.
Luckily, Robin had chosen the best type of Lesser to pose as to ensure we wouldn’t be accosted. Fachans were notoriously ill-tempered, besides being hideously ugly; nobody wanted to meet the spiked club with their face.
He led me past several grimy bars to an arch set in a stone wall. A set of narrow steps descended into a wet sort of darkness.
“Go work,” he grated, settling on a broken box nearby and clutching his pail to his chest. “Make money.”
Fachans weren’t exactly known for their eloquence, either.
I steeled my nerves. Robin had prepped me for what waited in the Undercity, a complete dossier on the upper-level Skin Market, and which doors to stay away from to avoid going lower and dropping into the Unseelie Court, or the Unseelie city of Annwyn, the reverse side of Avilion.
Still, he hadn’t told me that walking it alone would be safe at all.
I tottered down the stairs, avoiding touching the slimy walls. At the bottom of the shallow well was a warped door that pushed open easily under my touch, leading to another dank tunnel lit with oil lamps and cobbled-together electric lights that ran off power stolen from the Avilion grid.
The smell of water and stone was overpowered by the smell of the Skin Market ahead: perfume, food, piss, sweat. I wanted to wrinkle my nose, but this needed to look like second nature to me.
The tunnel opened on a wide underground room. Roots grew down from the ceiling in pale tangles like entwined limbs, but under it, the Skin Market was in full hustle.
I plunged in, one of a thousand others. A sylph reclining on a divan under a tent exhaled smoke that danced in rings around her head. There was another dryad, her skin pale from living underground, and a crown of branches rising from her thick hair. She sat in a tree that had managed to grow out of a hostile environment, its spindly branches reaching for the ceiling.
Their eyes slid right over me; I was one of them in this disguise.
A hob that barely reached my knee touched my leg. “How much?” His paws were slimy, making me shudder.
“You can’t afford me,” I told him haughtily, and strolled off. Robin had made me practice the liquid accent of the Harbor all day until I sounded passably nereid, as long as I didn’t say too much.
I heard the hob swearing at me from behind, but he was soon swallowed up by the milling crowd.
I went from one entrance all the way to another with no sign of a satyr.
My heart fell. I’d known it was a long shot, that we might have to repeat this several times in different disguises before we came across Calder, but I’d been hoping my luck would hold out.
I looked down a dark tunnel: one of the ones Robin had warned me away from. There were a thousand of them, a network of underground passages spreading all across Avilion, but until I’d seen them for myself, I hadn’t understood just how many Solitary Fae lived beneath the streets. It was like a city under a city.
I turned back, ready to search the other side, when the soft clip-clop of hooves caught my ear. My heart began racing before I even saw him.
Calder stepped into the Skin Market, flanked by bodyguards: two Dullahans in dark leather armor, each carrying their heads under one arm, with the other hand resting on a sword at their waists.
He was talking at rapid speed into a phone, his piggish little eyes scanning the market. The leather jacket he’d worn the other day was stretched almost to the breaking point across his belly.
I almost tripped over the legs of an unconscious Fae in my haste to get in full view as quickly as possible.
Striding over several cobblestones, I made a show of flipping my pale blue hair over my shoulder, looking over the Market with a bored expression, and making sure I was standing in a pool of lantern-light that caught my glamoured scales to maximum advantage.
I knew I’d won when Calder abruptly stopped talking. Casting my eyes lazily over the crowd, I finally let them settle on the satyr, taking in his open mouth and glazed eyes, and trying not to look at the fur stirring under his belly.
I smiled, running a finger over my glittering cleavage, and Calder hung up his phone without even saying goodbye.
He shoved it in the front of his jacket and trotted forward, his tail wagging madly.
“Haven’t seen you here before, beautiful.” He was practically panting, his leer making me feel naked.
My expression became superior. “Fresh from Tír fo Thuinn. One hundred for thirty minutes.”
It was a price that most of the johns here wouldn’t spend on a Skin Market hooker, but if Calder was as loaded off the human slave trade as we thought…
He nodded, a bit of drool clinging to his lower lip. I suppressed a wince. It was one of the worst things about satyrs; they literally drooled when they were horny.
“Yeah, yeah, a hundred works. Haven’t had you before. Come on, come with me. I’ve got a nice place for us.”
The Dullahans stared at me with dead eyes but said nothing. The glamour worked on them, at least.
Calder jerked his head back towards the tunnel he’d come from, pointing with his horns. I followed him at a leisurely pace, marking the rusted sign hung over the entrance: the Tunnel of Thorns.
The Dullahans closed in behind me, blocking the way back to the Skin Market as we entered. The tunnel forked several times until we stopped in a cobblestone passage, where a series of doors appeared in the walls.
I counted six doors before we stopped. One of Calder’s bodyguards unlocked it, leading the way into his home.
Calder took my hand and pulled me in after him, stroking my fingers. His hands were greasy. “Come on now.”
I stepped inside, feeling nauseated now that the time had come.
Robin is depending on you. You’re Agent Awesome now.
The floor was covered in rotting Oriental rugs. Crates were stacked along a far wall, along with a table and chairs. The table was covered with empty bottles and a plate of moldy food. Everything was lit with lamps wired from the city above, which meant Calder certainly did have money if he could afford the stolen electricity in a temporary hideout.
There was another door leading to what I assumed passed for a bedroom. The Dullahans, being dead, didn’t need to sleep.
“Right through here,” Calder said with another leer. He pushed the door open, running his hand up the back of my thigh.
“Wine?” I asked, injecting a hopeful note in my fake accent. “I take twenty off for wine.”
Calder was wasting no time. “Dubh! Get the wine!” he snapped. The slimy little bastard even snapped his fingers like he was calling a dog.
One of the Dullahans rummaged in a broken-down cabinet, finally coming up with an unopened bottle of dark wine. The dead face at his side stared at me as he brought it to Calder, and I held my breath, praying the undead spirit wouldn’t see through my glamour.
He turned away, thank the trees.
Calder popped the cork, sniffed the bottle, and made a face. “We’ll have to drink from the bottle, darlin’,” he said, and took a healthy swig before passing it over to me. It was the nastiest kind of rotgut the Undercity had to offer.
“Perfect,” I purred.
I gripped it, making sure to touch his fingers despite their greasiness, and grabbed him by the collar, dragging him inside the room and kicking the door shut behind me.
He had a large bed covered in dirty linens. I pretended not to see a roach crawling in it as I pushed him onto it, making him chuckle.
“You’re pretty feisty, ya know?” he asked me, spreading his furred legs wide. His dick was fully erect and about the size of my ring finger. Poor Calder.
I lifted the bottle to my lips and tipped it, though I kept my mouth tightly closed, pretending to drink.
When I handed it back to Calder, he was already jerking off, staring at my scaled cleavage.
“Drink,” I demanded, taking a step closer and placing my hands on my hips. I felt so awkward and unnatural despite the false face I wore, but Calder didn’t seem to notice at all, thankfully.
He took another healthy draught, but before he could wipe his mouth, and before I could lose my nerve or guts, I ducked in and kissed him.
It was like kissing worms. His breath was disgusting and his lips rubbery, and he had no technique. He started licking my mouth like a dog, humping the air under me and making horrible moaning noises.
A few seconds later, he drew back, looking at me with bleary eyes. “Wha—?”
Then he slumped backwards. Mouth open, hand still on his dick, wine bottle leaking all over his bed.
