Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel) (3 page)

“But it’s gone now. Neutralized, right?”

He hesitated before replying. “Yes,” he said. But there was something tentative in his response.

“So why can’t I remember who it was?”

“This
geis
,” he said, leading her to a sofa and sitting down behind her, “was only meant to seal your mouth, to prevent you voicing any fears or suspicions. To prevent you seeking help.” He pushed the straps off her other shoulder, so both were now bare, and began tracing soothing patterns over her skin. “That’s why you weren’t able to confide in Beth. Controlling a living being with spells is rather like programming a computer. One line of code at a time. One spell for each action you want performed or prevented.”

“Are they all so binary?” she asked. “Spells? Are they all yes or no?”

“The ones worked with a
geis
, yes. There are more complicated magics, but they can’t be contained in a simple symbol like that. Several such symbols together, though, can be combined and layered to create more complicated enchantments. You bore one that was meant to keep you silent. You might wear another to take away your memories, still another to compel you to do something else. Now tell me exactly what has been happening.”

While his hands spread warmth through her shoulders, she told him. About waking up the night after the gala, about finding herself suddenly in her office with no recollection of the last few hours.

“After the party,” he said, “all of the incidents took place at the museum?”

“Yes.” It almost came out a moan. His hands felt incredible. Beth had said it was good with a Fae, so good that you forgot everything else in life, became a husk, a shell, pined and starved when they left you. Unless they tied themselves to you
permanently
.

And the Fae almost never did that. There was Beth and Conn, of course, but Conn was . . . unusual, she suspected, almost unique. Beth had fallen in love with her brawny Fae champion. Conn seemed to possess more humanity than the rest of his kind, and the couple were in Ireland together now, on a dig. Helene was happy for her friend, who had endured a terrible first marriage and generally rotten love life before encountering Conn, but Helene herself had wanted nothing more to do with the Fae.

“Are there any security cameras at the museum?” Miach asked. His hands ceased to draw patterns and now began to massage the tight muscles in her neck, and the invitation was clear. She could release all her tensions in his bed, under his magnificent body, if she was willing to lose what little control over her mind she had left.

“I already checked the cameras,” she said, trying to focus on what was important. “We don’t have them in the storage areas or the offices—those are accessed with key cards—but there’s twenty-four-hour surveillance on the entrances and exits and in the large galleries. I looked at all the footage, and I wasn’t recorded leaving the building. I spotted myself walking through the rotunda, twice, but I don’t remember doing it.”

His hands stopped. “Were you by yourself in the footage?”

“Yes. I was walking from the main gallery, where we have cameras, toward the offices, where we don’t. But there was no one with me.”

Miach cursed. The oath wasn’t in English, but the tone of it was unmistakable. His hands began kneading her shoulders. “Helene,” he said. “If this Fae was taking control of your mind from a distance, summoning you to meet him, then he’s using dangerous magic on you.”

And she couldn’t remember any of it. Cold, sick fear washed over her. “What do you think he was doing with me, when he summoned me?” she asked. Her mind skidded away from the possibilities, none of them pleasant. The Fae, as she had discovered, could be inventively cruel. After each episode she’d searched her body for signs of abuse, and found none. She’d showered each time anyway, a ritual to wash away the feeling of violation.

“Whatever he did,” said Miach, “he will die for it. You mustn’t be afraid, Helene. I won’t let it happen again. I’m going to keep you safe.”

Relief washed over her. Helene had never thought that a Fae could make her feel safe, but the determined tone of his voice was persuasive. She looked at the pink skin on her shoulder. “You think there’s another
geis,
somewhere else on my body, don’t you?”

“Possibly,” he said.

“But you can remove, it right? Like the one
on my shoulder.”

“The
geis
on your shoulder was light magic, a simple spell, temporary, requiring little time and less energy to cast. A summoning spell is a different matter entirely. A
geis
is only one of several different ways to work one, but
none
of them are easy to remove. Summoning spells have to be woven into the body and mind. And if this Fae has used the most tenacious—and dangerous—means of calling and controlling you, then nothing will sever that connection except death. His, or yours.”

• • •

M
iach watched the blood leave
Helene’s face. He had enjoyed touching her, had gone on rubbing her shoulders long after the skin there had healed.

And she had let him. A promising sign.

But this was not how he had imagined meeting her again. The first time he’d seen her, the leggy blonde had been wearing the most absurd costume—shorts, fur boots, and a fuzzy sweater—and she’d been trying to wrest her cell phone back from Conn of the Hundred Battles. Which was like watching a puppy attack a statue.

Miach had wanted her instantly.

Her looks, naturally, had appealed to him. At five-foot-ten, she had the stature of an Amazon. Her tanned skin spoke of time outdoors, of the warmth of the sun, of long wooded trails, of rocky, wild beaches: the natural world of the Fae, before they had fallen. He’d pictured how she would look flushed and naked in his bed, her muscled calves wrapped around his waist, her golden skin contrasting with his pale Fae complexion.

She kept her hair long, as all the Fae once had, but as Miach and Finn and those who dwelt in human cities no longer could. It attracted too much attention, and the
Tuatha Dé Danann
were no longer numerous or strong enough to lord it over the race of men. Their only choice, if they wished to live like civilized beings, was to pass unnoticed in the world of men, or hide like Miach’s family in Celtic enclaves where memories were long and the locals were willing to pay their tithe to the Good Neighbors, the Fair Folk, the
Aes Sídhe
, in exchange for protection.

Helene’s flamboyant dress had excited his Fae love of ornament. The scallop of lace thong peeking out from her shorts, the beaded flowers on her soft fur boots. Today she wore a knitted cotton tank top in cornflower blue that clung to her gentle curves over a slim pencil skirt in chocolate brown. It was a subdued costume for Helene, if you missed the all-grown-up Mary-Jane shoes in matching shades of blue and brown that added two inches to her already unusual height.

But his desire for her had been kindled by more than just her appearance.

The fierceness with which she had defended her friend from the stoic Conn had hinted at an equal ferocity in bed. And when Miach had sent Elada after the two women with orders to kill Beth Carter, Helene had cleverly waylaid Elada and thrown him off the Druid’s trail, at great personal risk to herself.

She had been attracted to Miach as well, he sensed—
until
he knocked her unconscious. He had done it to prevent her from taking Beth Carter to the hospital, where conventional medical treatment would have killed the little Druid. But there had been no way to explain that to Helene at the time, and so he’d chosen the most expedient route to saving Beth Carter’s life.

It might have been possible to win Helene back if that had been his only transgression, but Helene also blamed him—quite wrongly, in fact—in her kidnapping. That had been Miach’s renegade son Brian’s doing, and none of his.

And to all this add that he had promised Beth Carter, whose help he would need to keep the wall between worlds intact, that he would not pursue Helene. Such had been the
geis
he’d accepted.

But Beth had never considered that Helene might come to him.

With good reason. After the kidnapping, Helene had wanted nothing to do with Miach.

Now her life depended on her placing her trust in him. And because Helene had come to Miach, it might be possible to circumvent some of the intention of Beth’s
geis
. It would be a tricky thing, because if he violated the Druid’s prohibition against seducing Helene Whitney, he would be weakened by it, made vulnerable to attack by his enemies.

But if Helene came to him—not just to his house but to his bed—
willingly
, it might not violate the
geis
. And a
geis
was only as strong as the Fae or Druid who worked it. Beth was still learning to harness her power and might not have been able to channel her full intention—which no doubt had been sweepingly broad—into the prohibition. If so, Miach might be able to enjoy Helene without untoward consequences.

“You must let me search your body for another
geis
,” he said.

“No.” Her refusal was absolute.

“Then this Fae will be able to summon you again. The wards on my house will protect you, but set foot outside its doors without me or Elada, and we can do nothing to stop him.”

“There has to be another way,” she insisted.

There were other ways. She wasn’t going to like any of them. “You could stay here, with me, and when he summoned you next, I could follow you, and kill him.”

“No. This was a mistake,” she said. “I’m going home.”

“Then Elada is coming with you. Someone has to watch you, Helene. Whatever Fae did this to you, when he summons you next, he will see that the
geis
on your shoulder is gone. He will know that you are aware of him—and that another
Sídhe
is involved. If he wishes to remain undiscovered—and if he realizes that you are under my protection, he will—the easiest way to ensure that will be to kill you.”

She shook her head. “I am not
under your protection
.”

“Beth Carter is my ally. You are her closest friend. I am obligated to keep you safe. My ties to the little Druid demand as much. And my interest in you demands the same.”

“You promised Beth you would leave me alone. She told me it was a vow, a
geis
.”

“And I will obey it until such time as she lifts it from me.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because you will ask her to. You’re an intelligent woman, Helene. The advantages of taking a Fae lover are impossible to ignore.”

“You mean like madness and death.”

“Only the weak and simple-minded go mad,” he said. “And I have no need or desire to prey on such women. There are more than enough beautiful and strong-willed females in the world to choose from. Most of them would not hesitate to become my lover. Once you understand what you have to gain, you’ll come to my bed of your own free will.”

“Well, you certainly make a persuasive case for hooking up,” Helene remarked acidly. She plucked her bag off the floor. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “I’m leaving. And if Elada follows me, I’ll call the police. Beth said you and your family are shy of the police.”

The police were a nuisance. Not the local beat cops, who were Southie natives and knew what was owed the Fae, but the police from across the channel could make trouble for Miach and his family, and their followers. They would notice things that they should not. Even the most diluted half-bloods in Miach’s extended family were preternaturally long lived, looked thirty when they were as old as seventy, were forced to change names and identities every few decades in this modern world of record keeping and bureaucracy.

Miach had survived the intense
interest
of the Druids, their crude experiments on his body. They had searched inside his chest for the source of Fae power with the primitive implements of the first millennia, splitting him open at the sternum, prying apart his ribs. He still remembered the excruciating pain; he still bore the scars. And he did not care to contemplate what the men of this age would do to his family with their new technology, their drugs, machines, and engines, if they discovered the existence of the Fae.

He could not allow Helene to call the police.

He could force her to stay by using his glamour to overpower her resistance, get inside her mind and plant a false trust in him. But that would be risky. It might, for one thing, violate the
geis
Beth had placed on him to stay away from Helene Whitney. And violating his
geis
would diminish him. He couldn’t afford to be weakened if he was to face and kill whoever was doing this to her. And more worrying still: depending on what kind of sorcery his unnamed adversary had used on Helene, his own magical tampering might harm or kill her.

The other option was to knock her out cold and lock her in the house. But that was almost certain to violate his
geis
.

Nor could he order Elada to follow her if she threatened to call the police, so long as there was any other alternative. The bond between sorcerer and right hand went two ways. They protected each other. He could not send Elada into unnecessary danger when other, less direct possibilities existed.

“Don’t go,” Miach said. “I won’t send Elada after you, if you’ll make a bargain with me.”

Helene eyed him suspiciously “Beth told me never to make a bargain with a Fae.”

“Sound advice,” he said. “A fine general rule. But you have very few choices at the moment. If you cannot see your way clear to accepting my help, then as soon as you leave this house, you will be at the mercy of the Fae who put that
geis
on you.”

She paled. “I could call Beth,” she said.

“We will call Beth. The Druid needs to know what is happening here. But she is three thousand miles away. It will take her a day or more to return home. During that time this Fae could summon you again. And this time, afterward, you might not wake up at your desk. You might not wake up at all.”