The hell?
Every bottle of perfume I owned was scattered over my dressing table, half of them with the tops off and some of them leaking onto the wood. The drawer in front was also open and appeared to have been plundered. Since that was where I kept the makeup I rarely used, the super glittery stuff for evening, I felt my spine relax.
I doubted the fey had braved a brood of vampires, a bunch of witches, and some Pythian acolytes in order to raid my makeup drawer!
And then I knew they hadn’t, when I heard giggles.
The louvered door of my closet told the tale, of four little miscreants ready for Samhain, complete with a feathered boa, a flapper headdress, an old fashioned, cloche style hat, and more makeup than a bunch of drag queens.
I had to bite my lip—hard. Two of them had been in here a few days ago, following Augustine, my court designer, who had been carrying an armload of outfits and had left the door open. The dresses had spanned a number of eras, being part of a project to allow me to shift to other times without constantly bothering him for something to wear.
It hadn’t occurred to me at the time, but the spangles, laces, and unfamiliar fripperies must have looked like the costume box of the gods to a couple of awed little girls. Who had rounded up two more tiny burglars and somehow broken in here, when I had been assured that that was impossible. Wait until I told Pritkin that his so-powerful wards had been hacked—by four six-year-olds!
Or, more likely, the delinquents had simply followed Marco in here without him noticing, because they followed him everywhere. The younger initiates trailed him around like a bunch of goslings after a mother goose, finding the massive vamp—and the candy he kept in a pocket that he thought I didn’t know about—to be fascinating. He’d probably learned to tune them out by now.
A fact, it seemed, that they’d taken full advantage of.
I opened the door and just stood there for a moment, dissipating the Pythian power that I no longer needed, and crossing my arms. And waiting. It took a while.
They were very absorbed in their business, particularly with a pair of false eyelashes that they’d found with the makeup, but couldn’t seem to make work. One had glued her left eye shut with one of them, while another had a top lash affixed considerably below her right, like Alex from A Clockwork Orange. But she was kinder than her doppelganger; she was trying to help the other girl with her issue when she glanced up and saw me.
And froze.
The other two were experimenting with sparkly eyeshadow, and took a while longer to catch on, and the poor one-eyed one was the last to notice me, because she was getting increasingly frustrated with her new, pirate status. But she finally looked up, and suddenly it was all too much. She couldn’t see, her pretty new look had devolved into Captain Jack Sparrow, and now she was busted.
She burst into tears.
I went over, scooped her up, and looked down at the others, who hadn’t moved. I’d seen time spells that didn’t freeze people that thoroughly. But when I said “out”, they scrambled for the door like greyhounds after a rabbit, leaving the poor pirate behind.
No honor among thieves, it seemed.
“Come on,” I told her. “Let’s get you fixed up.”
Some warm water managed to pry the eyelash loose without taking too many of her own along with it. And some chewing gum from my dressing table stopped the crying. It was nasty old spearmint, so I didn’t get a smile, but you can’t have everything.
“There,” I told her. “That’s better, now isn’t . . . it . . .”
My thoughts trailed off at the sight of her chubby palm, which I’d initially assumed had just gotten into the blush. But I didn’t have any blush that shade. And then I noticed a smear across my pretty new outfit, which showed up a lot better under the bathroom fluorescents than it had in the dim splash from the bedroom lamp.
Enough that I could see a fine spray of reddish brown all over me, like a thousand tiny freckles—courtesy of the fey, I assumed.
It looked like Marco’s nose hadn’t needed to work that hard, after all.
I licked my lips, then ran some warm water into the basin, and took a washcloth to the little girl’s hand. I’d just finished cleaning her up, and dragging my now blood-stained couture off her, when one of the acolytes rapped on the door. And then came bustling in, breathing apologies.
“Not a problem,” I heard myself say. “I just, uh, I have to take a bath. I have to take a bath right now.”
The woman said something I didn’t hear, and took the little girl off to join her friends. I shut the door behind her and leaned my back against it, and then sprang away—too late. The blood had smeared the white paint where my back had rested, forcing me to do yet another clean-up.
I stripped off the horror movie clothes and stood there in my bra and panties, looking at the ruined outfits on the sink. And recalling what Pritkin had said. “You could have simply shifted back in time and warned us.”
And I could have. It was what I’d been doing all month, to buy myself more time. It was almost automatic anymore.
So why hadn’t I done it?
I’d never given he and Jonas an explanation, except that I’d been too shocked to think straight. But that wasn’t really true, was it? I’d thought clearly enough to run back into Pritkin’s room and get the weapons. And to chase Lab Coat half a freaking mile to trigger the wards. And to realize that I could locate my attacker by smell, when I couldn’t see him.
There’d been no problem thinking about all of that, so what the hell?