Skin Deep (28 page)

Let me in. It won’t hurt if you let me,
Cress sent. Softer, farther away. Was she leaving? Laura wondered. Or am I? A dagger of light pierced something inside her, and she felt Cress, felt her presence like no one she had ever sensed. She screamed.

Don’t fight me. It’s Cress, Laura. Cress.

Another voice joined hers.
You’re safe, Laura. Let Cress in. You’re safe.
Terryn. Cress and Terryn. Friends. They were friends. She knew them. Friends. She let go, stopped fighting the strange essence, fought the panic she was feeling. The daggers lost their edge, became thick feathers, bending and weaving inside her. Something shifted, as if she moved beside herself, a new angle of perspective opening in her mind. Cress’s perspective. She rode along with Cress, looking at her own body essence as if it were someone else’s.

Something moved inside her, something virulent and green, a spiderlike essence that twisted into her own burning amber light. It coiled and cinched around her essence, the amber light fading to green and fading away. Cress tracked it with her own essence, her feathery strands blossoming into fronds of violet and lavender. They embraced the strange green thing, smothering it, constricting its movements as Cress leached its energy. Power surged through Laura, a hot, burning rush as Cress’s essence flared.

Laura shivered violently as the pulsating violet essence drained the green, sucking the light out of it. A yawning ache built in her chest, a hunger and desire to devour. Cress’s essence raced through her, siphoning the spider-shape into itself until the last faint flicker of green dimmed and went out. The purple light hovered around her, slithering around her body signature. Hunting. Stalking. Disappointed, it withdrew, like a reluctant wave retreating from shore.

Laura wrenched forward and slammed into Cress. They fell out of the SUV in a tangle of arms and legs, hit pavement, and sprawled away from each other. Laura dragged herself to her hands and knees as dry heaves wracked her. She sat back on her feet and let her head fall back.

Exhilaration raced through her, an adrenaline surge that made her skin prickle. She pushed sweat-damp hair off her face and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Herself again, her essence shining within on its own, no strange spiderling dancing on her life spark. No Cress either.

Cress squatted nearby on the ground, arms wrapped around knees as she swayed. She stared, not looking at Laura, not focusing on anything but the patch of concrete at her feet. Laura sensed a deep purple corona smoldering darkly around her. Cress lifted her head, her eyes closing as she opened her mouth. With a strange, soft cry, a small cluster of darkness floated out of her mouth. It danced like a cloud of nothing, then dissolved into motes of black and was gone.

Terryn waited near the front of the SUV, his dark wings open high and wide. Around him, around them all, the air wavered like a curtain of water, the distorted images of cars and columns undulating beyond it. They were behind a protection barrier in the Guildhouse parking garage.

Laura felt the flutter of sending. Cress lifted her head toward Terryn. She nodded with a weak smile and stood. She held out her hand to Laura. “How do you feel?”

Laura pulled herself up. “Fine. Considering.”

Anytime Cress looked at her or anything else, Laura thought of it as staring. The weird, whiteless eyes acted like normal eyes, the raised bumps of pupils shifted as Cress focused or cocked her head to examine something. But without that small defining white to either side, she always looked like she was staring. “Do you remember what happened?”

“I started going head-blind and blacking out. Every time I stopped the SUV, I woke up driving the damned thing again.”

Cress nodded. “There was an essence infusion of henbane and moonflower in your system. It was short-circuiting your brain. You threw up the physical poison, but the killing spell released.”

“How the hell did you find me?” Laura asked.

Cress tilted her head. “You called us on the cell and activated your transmitter.”

Laura rubbed the back of her neck. She remembered taking out the cell, then blacking out, then taking the cell out again.

She jumped to her feet. “Sinclair!”

“He’s fine,” said Terryn. “As soon as we received your distress call, we sent someone to pick him up at the Vault. He made an excuse to leave his post and left before anyone knew he was gone.”

Laura slumped down onto the running board of the SUV. “I screwed up.”

“You’re tired and still recovering from the concussion,” Cress said.

“I screwed up, Cress!” Cress took the outburst without reacting. She knew the anger wasn’t directed at her.

“What happened?” asked Terryn.

Laura shook her head. “Alfrey was in the building. I had a drink with Gianni. He slipped something into it.”

Cress leaned against Terryn. “We need rest. We can talk tomorrow. I will remain on call.”

“You don’t need to do that, Cress. I just need sleep now,” Laura said.

“I think it’s better I sleep alone tonight anyway,” said Cress. Laura glanced at her, then away. She didn’t want to think about what Cress had done to her—what Laura had let her do.

Terryn wrapped his arms around Cress and kissed her forehead, a rare show of public affection. “Go upstairs then. I’ll take care of the body.”

Cress held him. Laura felt a surge of essence and watched without comment as Terryn allowed Cress to siphon some of his body essence. She wondered what Terryn would have done if he had fallen in love with Cress and wasn’t an Inverni. With the powerful reserves of essence innate to his species, he had little to fear from a
leanansidhe
absorbing some off him. It didn’t mean she couldn’t hurt or kill him, just that he would last a lot longer against her than most fey. Cress pulled away from him and walked through the shimmering barrier that hid them from prying eyes.

Body. Terryn said he would take care of a body. Laura spun toward the SUV. Through the open door, she saw a dark shape in the back. She sensed the essence of an Inverni fairy. It should have been stronger that close to her.

“Dammit,” she muttered.

She popped the hatch of the SUV. A shirtless Inverni fairy lay on his back, pale skin bearing ancient blue tribal tattoos across the chest and shoulders, faded with time. In life, Inverni wings flicker with light and color, notably whites and deep blues. In death, they were dim and gray, their diaphanous nature hardening to a fragile membrane that crumbled at the slightest touch. The translucent wings twisted around his arms and legs, a nauseating tangle that would never happen in life. A deep burn mark marred the left half of the fairy’s face. It wasn’t Alfrey.

On top of messing up, she’d put Terryn in a position of having to kill someone. He went for a head shot. Laura spoke a prayer of departing to herself. She didn’t want the Inverni to leave an echo of anger behind for her as he made his afterlife journey to TirNaNog.

“I’m sorry you had to do that, Terryn.”

He shrugged. “The Wheel of the World turns as it will, Laura. It chose me to be at the end of his path.”

Laura didn’t respond as he lifted out the body. She believed in the Wheel of the World, the grand turning of events large and small that determined the course of one’s life. She accepted that things happened for a reason and for no reason at the same time. That didn’t mean she wasn’t responsible for her role in events. It didn’t mean she had to like it. It didn’t mean she knew what her future held. What it meant, to her, was that actions begot reactions and mistakes had ramifications. A dead body was never a good thing to leave in one’s path.

CHAPTER 29

LAURA LET TERRYN
unlock the door to the Mariel Tate apartment. She rarely used the place. Mariel had to appear to live somewhere, and the nondescript building where the Guildhouse kept corporate residence suites fit the bill. She turned on the lights as she entered behind him, illuminating the large open studio. If her apartment in Alexandria lacked personality, the Mariel apartment had the bland style of a hotel room.

She dropped her bags on the floor. “Really, Terryn, you had someone do a sweep of all my places yesterday.”

He circled the room with a small obelisk of granite that glowed a steady blue. It was keyed to change color if it encountered other essences. “I’ll remind you that someone managed to get a bomb through security at the FBI building.”

He had a point. She went to the kitchenette in the corner and pulled two bottles of fruit juice out of the refrigerator. She opened one and left the other on the counter. “Whose orders do you think Gianni is following, Alfrey’s or Blume’s?”

He hovered off the floor to check along the top of the wall of curtained windows. “Alfrey’s.”

She pursed her lips. “That was a quick answer.”

Terryn settled to the floor and placed the obelisk on the coffee table. “It’s clear.” He pointed at the juice on the counter. “Is that for me?”

She tossed him the bottle. “Are you changing the subject?”

He drank the entire bottle in one smooth motion. “Blume’s not a fool. He wouldn’t poison you on his own property. I think Gianni is playing Alfrey and Blume against each other. Besides, I recognized the clan tattoos of the Inverni who attacked you in the SUV. He’s from a subclan of the Alfreys.”

She showed him a slight smile. “Terryn, my friend, you forget whom you’re talking to. I’m sensing a subtle evasion in your voice modulations.”

He nodded, staring down at the floor. “Simon Alfrey and his father Skene manipulate the lesser Inverni clans to no good end. Simon’s involvement makes me uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, well, uncomfortable doesn’t quite cover how I feel about someone who’s tried to kill me,” Laura sent.

Terryn sighed and looked up. “It would not be an exaggeration to say I blame the Alfreys for the death of my father.”

Laura’s eyebrows shot up. “You know I want to hear why.”

He shrugged. “The Alfreys stirred the Invernis to challenge the Danann leadership. The Dananns tried to make us slaves—at least that is the story the Alfreys told. As High Chief of the Clans, my father confronted Maeve. Then the Alfreys submitted to Maeve, destroying my father’s support. He died in Maeve’s prison.”

Laura crossed her arms as she leaned against the counter. She knew Terryn was heir to the rule of the Inverni clan but that he refused to take the underKing title to which he was entitled. For years, she had thought it was because he wanted to keep peace with Maeve. Without an invested Inverni leader, the Dananns had no one to rally support against. “You won’t take the title because you don’t want Maeve to say she gave it to you.”

Terryn nodded. “I cannot let her undermine my authority by claiming I rule because she removed my father. The Alfreys think they will take over with her blessing someday, so they do her bidding. Simon Alfrey would not have been involved in a drug raid unless it was really something much bigger.”

She pushed away from the counter and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Simon Alfrey screwed up, Terryn. I can identify him at the scene. Let me do that, and you’ll have one less Alfrey to deal with.”

He placed his hand on hers. “You were glamoured, Laura. The only confirmation you have of that is the macCullen heir and a
leanansidhe
. That presents a credibility problem.”

She dropped her hand. “And Sinclair.”

Terryn walked to the door. “A second-generation fire giant masquerading as a human also has little weight in a fairy court, even if he were willing. No, we will have to catch Alfrey with stronger evidence.”

“We’ll think of something,” she said.

He bowed as he left. “I appreciate that. Now get the rest that Cress ordered. We have much to do in the days ahead.”

Tired didn’t cover how she felt. Whenever she heard that someone had been admitted to a hospital for exhaustion, the concept baffled her. She tried to imagine feeling more exhausted than she did at that moment and couldn’t. Laura put water on to boil as she pulled down the Murphy bed. She steeped some tea and curled into the corner of the couch.

Staring at her hand, she thought about the raid. She tried to force lines on her palm into a pattern that might trigger a memory. From one angle, the three lines radiating across the palm could be the Celtic ogham rune
gort
or the German
ansuz
. A single rune could mean anything, though, never mind the question of why Sanchez—who wasn’t fey—would use a rune to convey a message. Maybe an “F,” she thought. Foyle?

She let her hand fall to her lap. Aaron Foyle was right about one thing: Last words were important. She remembered the look in Sanchez’s face. He’d known he was dying. He didn’t pray or speak a lover’s name. He used his last breath to tell her something—something important enough to use his final moments of life. And she couldn’t remember.

She left the tea on the counter and turned the shower on in the bathroom. She watched herself undress in the full-length mirror. Humans would kill for the body she had at her age, but not the rest. Her hair hung lank. Darkness shadowed the skin under her eyes. Her lips, wiped clean of lipstick, looked thin and colorless. Her eyes unsettled her. She saw the small signs—the faint traces of crystallization forming, the slight recession into the skull, the uncanny depth that intimidated people. Age was catching up with her. Fey age. It appeared in the eyes first with the fey, eyes that had seen much. Sometimes too much.

The hot water beat down on her face. She stood, motionless, letting the heat seep into her, letting it reach deep beneath the skin where she could feel. Drying off, she felt better, physically anyway. The steam from the shower fogged the mirror, blurring her image. For a moment, she remembered what she’d looked like in her youth.

She slipped into bed, feeling the cool, crisp, white cotton sheets, noting the designer bedcover, and taking in the room meticulously styled in tones of soft creams and beige with splashes of maroon and bright yellow. Perfect.

Something had to change.

She turned out the light. With the drapes closed, the studio apartment plunged into darkness punctuated by the phosphorescent glow of the alarm clock. She wondered what she would have done in Sanchez’s position. What would her last words be? A cry of pain? For love? She murmured a sad laugh in the dark. She didn’t know Sanchez or his life, but she knew hers. She was lying alone in the dark in an empty, sterile apartment with no one. She would have done what he had done, tried to complete a mission. It was all she had, pathetic as it was.