" 'Oddly' is what I usually say," I told him.
"Oddly on Mercedes. Some works fine, some not so well. But she has a keen nose, and that allows her to penetrate glamours. I've seen her break through a glamour set by a Gray Lord. This one we are after is no Gray Lord."
"Phin bled on that floor, Jesse," I said. "I don't have much hope that he survived his encounter. But we didn't find his body. We went down to the basement - which was also trashed - and while we were down there, one of the fae who had destroyed the store turned up on the stairs."
"That's the one who was dead in the basement," Alicia said in an odd tone. "The one someone started to eat."
"Sam's not been himself lately," I told Jesse. "The fae knocked me cold, and when I woke up Sam had killed him and . . ."
"Sam," the fae said softly - and her hands clenched on her lap. "You have friends who are werewolves, Zee tells me. This Sam is a werewolf?"
"Sam is a werewolf and my friend," I told her. Maybe my tone was a little sharp, but I was getting tired of people attacking Samuel. "Who saved my life by killing the not-so-jolly green giant. I'm okay with it if he helped himself to a little snack." If it squicked my thou-shalt-not-be-a-cannibal button, that was a button my mother gave me, not the werewolves. He hadn't violated any werewolf taboos - eating your prey is better than leaving the bodies lying around.
Alicia didn't seem to be too upset about my snapping at her, though.
"Samuel Cornick," she said, her eyes catching mine. "Samuel Marrokson, Samuel Branson, Samuel Whitewolf, Samuel Swift-foot, Samuel Deathbringer, Samuel Avenger." I couldn't remember what color her eyes had been in the bookstore, but I knew it hadn't been green. Not hazel, not a human color at all, but a brilliant grass green that darkened to blue and brightened.
"That would be me," said Samuel, standing in the doorway. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt and had managed to find a pair of jeans that were only a little baggy. "Hello, Ari. It's been a few centuries." His voice was soft. "I didn't know you had a talent for true naming."
She looked at him, and I saw the pupils of her eyes widen past her changeable irises until her eyes were as black as a starless night. And then her glamour went all funky.
I've seen fae drop their glamour before. Sometimes it's cool, with colors sliding and mixing; sometimes it's like when I shapeshift - just blink and the man in front of you suddenly has antennae and six-inch-long hair growing from his hands.
But this was different. It reminded me of an electrical appliance shorting out, complete with quiet fizzling noises. A patch of skin appeared on her arm that had been covered by the sweater she wore, and on the patch of skin was a little scar. Then there was a sound and the sweater reappeared and there was a six-inch-by-four-inch section of skin revealed on her thigh, but most of that space was taken up by a horrendous scar that looked deep and stiff - a wound that healed badly enough that it probably interfered with her ability to use her leg. After an instant it disappeared, and three scarred areas appeared on her face, hand, and neck. Her skin tone around the scars was darker than the one she wore to hide from the world. The color was nothing outlandish, a few shades darker than mine or lighter than Darryl's, but to my eyes the texture was softer than human skin. It appeared as if the old wounds were presenting themselves to us - or rather to Samuel, because she never took her attention off him.
Jesse reached out and grabbed my knee, but her face didn't change as the fae woman slowly stood up. She began to breathe hard as she took several steps back, sliding her chair behind her until it bumped into the shelving in back of her, and she couldn't retreat anymore. Her mouth opened and she began panting, and I realized what I was seeing was a full-blown panic attack done fae-style.
Zee had said her panic attacks were dangerous.
"Ariana," Samuel said, in a voice like Medea's gentlest purr.
He didn't move from the door, giving her space. "Ari. Your father is dead and so are his beasts. I promise you are safe."
"Don't move," Zee told Jesse and me in a low voice, his eyes on the fae woman. "This could go very badly. I told you not to bring any of the wolves."
"I brought myself, old man," said Samuel. "And I told Ariana that if she ever needed me, I would come. It was a promise and a threat, though I didn't mean it that way at the time."
Alicia Brewster - whom Samuel had apparently known as Ariana - hummed three notes and started to talk.
"A long time past in a land far from this one," said Alicia in a storyteller's voice, "there was a fae daughter who could work magic in silver and so she was named. In a time where fae were dying from cold iron, their magics fading as the One God's ignorant followers built their churches in our places of power, the metals loved her touch, her magic flourished, and her father grew envious."
"He was a nasty piece of work," said Samuel, his eyes on the woman's wrinkled face that sometimes wore scars on her cheek or at the corner of her eye. "Mercy would call him a real rat-bastard. He was a forest lord whose greatest magic was to command beasts. When the last of the giants - who were beasts controlled by his magic - died, it left him a forest lord with no great power, and he resented it as Ariana's power grew. When the fae lost their ability to imprint their magic on things - like your walking staff, Mercy - she could still manage it. People found out."
"A great lord of the fae came," continued Ariana. She didn't seem to be listening to Samuel, but she waited for him to quit speaking before she started. "He required that she build an abomination - an artifact that would consume the fae magic of his enemies and give it back to him. She refused, but her father accepted and sealed the bargain in blood."
She stopped talking, and after a moment Samuel picked up the story. "He beat her, and she still refused. His was a magic sort of like the fairy queen's, in that he could influence others. It might have been more useful, but he could only influence beasts."
"So he turned her into a beast." Ariana's voice echoed even though my office was full enough that a gunshot shouldn't echo, and it was eerie enough that Jesse scooted nearer to me.
Ariana wasn't looking at Samuel anymore, but I couldn't tell where she was looking instead. I don't think it was a happy place.
"In those days, the fae's magic was still strong enough that it was harder to kill them unless you had iron or steel," said Samuel.
He didn't seem worried about Ariana, but Zee was. Zee had gradually moved off his chair until he was crouched between Jesse and the scarred fae woman.