“About ten years older, dark haired? Yeah.”
“Good stuff,” I said.
“It’s supposed to be harder than that,” she said. “Pretty sure.”
“Good thing you didn’t tell me before I tried anything,” I said.
I ran my hands along my arms. The skin color changed to black. I left the tattoos intact.
I did my face and head. When I ran my hands along the top of my head a second time, I found my head shaved as I’d imagined it. I scratched it and found all of the nerve endings responded. I could feel the stubble, the tiniest details.
“Crazy,” I commented. I ran my hands down the length of my throat. Then said, in a different voice, “Crazy.”
“Definitely supposed to be harder than that,” Rose said.
“Stop saying that,” I said. “If I believe it, it might become true. Ignorance is power, in this case.”
I could see her frowning at me in the reflective side of the toaster.
“Maybe it’s an advantage,” I said. “I’ve expended personal power, there’s more spaces for it to get traction? There’s less of me to modify?”
“I don’t buy it,” she said. “Remember, all power has a price. What’s the price for that little tidbit?”
“I’d like to think nearly getting killed by the faerie swordswoman and beating her in a duel was a pretty fair cost,” I said.
Rose seemed to internally debate the idea, before saying, “Maybe. Point taken.”
I started spreading the stuff over the rest of my neck, shoulders, and beneath my shirt. “But if this proves to be more useful than that duel was dangerous, I agree, we should be suspicious.”
■
The glamour was really fucking useful, as it turned out. Damn it.
I waited outside of the school as the students filed out. All grades, kindergarten through twelve, were present. Children who still wet their pants and young adults who were working their first jobs, all in the same general mob.
Behaims and Duchamps of various ages passed me without a first glance, let alone a second.
I joined the parents who were waiting for their kids. An ordinary, unassuming guy.
Maggie came out, headphones on, a bag slung over one shoulder. The checkered scarf was in place.
I walked over to the exit and fell into step beside her.
She stopped right away.
“Sorry,” I said, in a stranger’s voice.
“No need to be sorry, Mr. Stranger Danger. Why don’t you walk away?” Maggie suggested. “Go find a nice middle aged woman to sleaze on.”
She was so casual, so everyday. I wondered if she’d lost any sleep after ordering her goblins to tear Molly to pieces.
“You don’t hold back,” I observed, burying the surge of emotion.
She jammed her hands into her jacket pockets, shoulders hunched forward, defensive, one glance going over her shoulder, as if she were checking her escape routes.
I knew full well that she was getting her hands on a weapon of some sort. The glance would be to see if people were looking, which they were. Kids and teenagers still milled around us and between us.
“I mean you no harm,” I said. “Please don’t stab me. Or throw a goblin at me.”
I could see her studying me. Was she identifying flaws or tells in the disguise, picking it apart with her eyes? Or was she reinforcing it, feeding into it?
“Who the drat are you?” she asked.
Yay, I thought.
There was a freedom to this, a high, almost.
Her eyes moved to something or someone behind me.
I turned before they could touch me. A man, dark haired, heavyset, wearing a flannel button-up shirt.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
I looked and I saw the connection between him and Maggie. For someone who’d just moved to this city, for that connection to be that strong…
“You’re Maggie’s father?” I asked.
“Yes, and you know my daughter how?”
“We have a mutual friend,” I said. “I believe Maggie knows of a girl with a thing regarding mirrors?”
I saw Maggie go still, surprised, confused. Her eyes darted over me.
Trying to find connections?
“This is funny business, isn’t it?” her father asked.
“Yeah,” Maggie said. “Funny.”
I glanced at her dad. He knows.
That made things simultaneously easier and more tricky.
“I have a message for you,” I said. “Forgiveness won’t be particularly easy, nor fast, not for either of us, but help is needed.”
“No need to be impossibly cryptic,” she said. “I tell my dads almost everything.”
“Almost?” her dad asked.
“So dish,” she said. “You want to mess with the Thorburns?”
I hesitated.
“What if I did?”
“I’d tell you I’m done with that. Fool me once, and all that jazz.”
“If you’re trying to embroil Maggie in something else like-”
“No,” I said. “No. Because I have… I won’t say I have no quarrel with the Thorburns, but I’m looking to help the family. If Maggie wanted to make amends for what happened to Molly Walker, I could use a hand. A loan of resources.”
“The dead girl?” her father asked.
So he didn’t know. I could see concern on her face.
I decided to pull her ass out of the fire, here. Karma, if nothing else. Or did it not count if I recognized it? “More about what happened yesterday, when we last talked.”
I saw a glimmer of a connection. She was figuring it out. Only so many people I could be. Maybe she suspected me of being the lawyer in another guise? Easier to figure out, easier to explain?
“This would be a hell of a lot easier if you told us who you were,” her father said.
“Can I walk you to your car?” I asked. “I could explain there.”
“You can explain right here,” her father said. “Or you can walk away.”
I sighed.
Hopefully I’d reinforced the glamour enough it could take a hit. If not, I could derail all of my plans.
Glancing around, I verified nobody was looking, and then unzipped my jacket. I revealed the bike mirror pendant I wore.
Maggie’s eyes went wide. “Blake?”
“A mirror?” her father asked.
“It’s Blake,” she whispered. “Blake Thorburn.”
Each time she said my name, I could see the connection striving to appear, hammering at my glamour, like a battering ram slamming into a heavy door.
Her father’s continued confusion helped.
“Stop,” I said. “Enough. Can I walk you to your car?”
Maggie nodded, pulling on her dad’s sleeve.
As we walked in silence to the car, I tried to gauge the damage to the glamour. I could use blood to fix it, but that was suicidal, at this point.
Better to let it mend on its own.
“Don’t say my name,” I said. “Do let me know if I can borrow some goblins.”
“They’re work to get under control,” she said. “Not easy.”
“I’ll settle for goblins in paper prisons I can’t control,” I said. “I’m making a move against Laird. Soon.”