Wicked Enchantment (41 page)

Brother Gideon was average in every way possible—medium brown hair, average height and build, unremarkable brown eyes, weak chin, receding hairline. A person walking by him on the street would glance at him and immediately dismiss him as nonthreatening. In reality, Brother Gideon was the most menacing of all the Phaendir, a black mamba in a cave filled with rattlers. While you were busy overlooking and underestimating him, he’d be busy killing you. That’s what made him extradangerous.

It was no secret that Gideon was nursing a crush on her. She’d been carefully fostering that crush for quite some time now, using it as an effective tool. It wasn’t a pleasant or easy thing, having a man as vicious as Brother Gideon admiring her. It was, however, a useful thing. Useful to the HFF—Humans for the Freedom of the Fae—an organization to which she’d dedicated her life.

“I’m sorry, Emily,” he replied in his very average light tenor of a voice. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just saw you standing out here and wanted to see you off.”

A little over a year ago, Brother Gideon had attempted a coup. He’d tried to obtain the Book of Bindings before Brother Maddoc, the leader of the Phaendir, could do it. Emmaline speculated it had been a move to take over Maddoc’s place. Brother Gideon strove very hard to implement his much bloodier agenda for dealing with the fae.

Luckily Brother Gideon had been caught and punished by being demoted four places in the Phaendir power structure. But Maddoc should have killed Gideon. During the last year, two of the Phaendir who occupied spots above Gideon had met their ends in freak, horrific accidents. Not one being could prove Gideon had anything to do with the deaths.

But Emmaline had no doubt that Gideon wasn’t done yet. Maddoc needed to watch his back.

The prospect of having Gideon leading the Phaendir made her mission more critical. It even made her fingers itch for her old crossbow, and it took a hell of a lot for that to happen. If anyone needed a quarrel through the throat, it was Brother Gideon.

She forced a smile. “And I’m so glad you did.”

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“I may be human, but in my heart, I’m Phaendir. I live to serve.”

Gideon smiled and she fought the urge to vomit on her hiking boots.

She looked away from him, up at the hazy warding. Gideon thought she was human and a human wouldn’t be able to see the warding, so she motioned to the wall. “It’s immense and so . . . strong.” She made sure she glanced at Gideon with a shy smile as she said the last. “It’s a beautiful thing, this place the Phaendir have created to keep us safe.” She used the reverent tone of the Worshipful Observer that Gideon believed she was.

Gideon came to stand near her and clasped his thin, pale hands in front of him. “Labrai wills it so.” He paused. “As he wills your entry into Piefferburg and your eventual success. You’re a woman with a strong, stable character. It can be no other way.”

She wanted to laugh.
A strong, stable character
. Right. Her characters were so layered even she had trouble parsing them. She was a fae HFF member currently undercover as a human Worshipful Observer who was soon going undercover as a member of the
Faemous
film crew in order to mine information for the Phaendir while actually working a mission for the HFF.

Yeah. Not confusing at all.

It was an event that would ironically blow
all
her covers, bringing her back to what she really was. A free fae.

As if she wasn’t already bewildered enough.

Danu and all the gods, why was she going into Piefferburg of her own free will? She swallowed hard.
The Blacksmith
was in there. She had nightmares about coming face-to-face with him often enough to warrant a prescription for Xanax.

And hell, she was
seeking him out
. He was the only one who could help the HFF at this point. How crazy was that? He wanted to kill her . . . maybe. Probably.

Maybe.

It had been so long—over three hundred and sixty years—since the night she’d killed Aileen Arabella Edmé McIlvernock. She didn’t even know if Aeric had survived Watt syndrome, though she hoped he had. If he hadn’t survived, and if there was no other fae who could forge a charmed iron key, they were all doomed. She knew Aeric’s father also had the talent, but he’d been one of the first fae to come down with Watt syndrome. At the time she’d left Ireland, he’d been very ill and was not expected to live.

But she felt it in her blood that Aeric O’Malley had survived. She could feel him in there, within the boundaries of Piefferburg. Almost as if he was waiting for her. She shivered. That couldn’t be possible of course; it was only her vivid imagination.

And he wasn’t the only one who might be thirsting for her blood. Once upon a time, when she’d been the Summer Queen’s greatest weapon in the Seelie war against the Unseelie, she’d burned some bridges. Many, many bridges. There were those in the Black Tower who would love to cross the charred ruins of those bridges . . . to strangle her.

Danu
, she hoped her glamour was strong enough to fool the Blacksmith. If the illusion slipped, if he found out who she really was, her life was as good as gone. If
any
of the Unseelie found out who she was . . .

Or if the Summer Queen found out . . .

Or Lars, the Summer Queen’s barely leashed pit bull . . .

Emmaline shuddered. Once she was in Piefferburg, she didn’t plan to go to the Rose Tower at all. It was straight to the Black in heavy glamour. There was no way she was going anywhere near the woman who’d screwed up her life so much and, via Lars, planted nightmares in her subconscious that put the ones she had about the Blacksmith to shame.

Gods, why was she doing this again? Oh, right, because she was the only one who could.
Damn it
.

“Emily? Are you nervous?”

She blinked and glanced at Gideon, pulling herself back from the muck of her thoughts. For a moment, she groped for something plausible to respond with. “Well, a little. I’ve heard the stories about the goblins.” Humans were terrified of goblins, though, as a fae she didn’t swallow the boogyman tales. There were other races that were much more terrifying. “I saw the bodies of the Phaendir you sent in after the Book—”

He waved his hand, not wanting to take that conversational road. The men he’d sent into Piefferburg after the Book of Bindings had come out gnawed on. “You’ll be fine. You’re going to the Seelie Court, to the Rose Tower. They’re much more hospitable to humans than the Unseelie. No goblins there, only the tamer breed of hobgoblin. They’re servants, mostly.”

She smiled. “I know I’ll be fine. You would never let me come to harm, would you, Brother Gideon?”

He smiled at her and she suppressed another shudder. There was lust in his eyes—a thing no woman wanted directed at her. “Never.”

“Anyway, like I said, I’m ready to sacrifice my life for the cause of the Phaendir.”

“Emily.” Gideon took her hands in his. His skin was papery-feeling, dry. On his wrists, she could feel the start of the scars that marked his arms, chest, and back. Brother Gideon flagellated himself every day in name of Labrai, though Emmaline had long suspected he enjoyed the floggings with his wicked cat-o’-nine-tails. “But I am not willing to sacrifice your life, Emily. Not for anything.” He blinked watery brown eyes.

“Oh, Gideon,” she said in a practiced, slightly breathy voice. “Your piousness is already so attractive and to know you actually care about me as a person is so . . . moving.” She didn’t melt against him or bat her eyelashes, but she did stare adoringly into his eyes.

“Shhh, I understand. I only hope that one day—”

“Brother Gideon? Emily?”

Gideon gritted his teeth for a moment. His face—just for a heartbeat—made the transformation from medium to monster. Veins stood out in his forehead and neck. His skin went pale and his eyes bulged. He dropped her hands and moved away from her, his natural, unassuming visage back in place in a matter of seconds. Just the glimpse of Gideon’s true self was enough to leave Emmaline shaky, a reaction that luckily worked for this particular situation.

The tension in the air ratcheted upward between the two men. Power struggles within the structure of the group seemed to permeate all their interactions. Then, of course, there was the carefully orchestrated charade she’d been performing for Gideon to make things worse—making Gideon believe she was sleeping with his arch enemy.

As undercover HFF, it was her job to throw wrenches into the best of the Phaendir’s machines and she was good at her job.

“Are you ready?” asked Brother Maddoc with a warm smile. Brother Maddoc was annoyingly likable considering he was Phaendir. With him, you got what you saw on the surface. Trouble was, he hated the fae. Not as much as Gideon hated the fae, but enough to want to keep them imprisoned forever.

Her smile flickered. “No.”

Maddoc laughed and pulled her against him for a hug. “Don’t worry, you’re all set up. They’re expecting you at the Rose Tower as the newest addition to the
Faemous
crew. Just go in like you’re a real anchor and start snooping around for information about the
bosca fadbh
. I don’t think I need to impress upon you how important a job this is, Emily.”

Except it wasn’t her real job. She wasn’t going to step foot in the Rose Tower.

She knew all about the
bosca fadbh
and information about the valuable puzzle key would be found nowhere near the Seelie Court. The HFF had found clues to the second piece in records buried in a room of an ancient castle in Ireland. The piece she was trying to get was halfway around the world, off the coast of Atlit, Israel. It sucked that the only man capable of helping the HFF get that piece was stuck in Piefferburg.

She laid her head on Maddoc’s shoulder, an action that made Gideon shuffle his feet and cough as he tried to conceal his irritation and jealousy. “I won’t let you down, Brother Maddoc.”

“I know.” He smiled and kissed her temple. “Now go. They’re ready to let you in.”

She turned toward the heavy wrought iron gates that separated Piefferburg and most of the world’s fae from the fragile human world. The huge doors opened with a groan and all the heavy protocol that went with the admission of individuals began. On this side of the gate things were monitored by the Phaendir. On the other side of the gate, all deliveries or people passing through were carefully inspected by the fae and all arrivals reported to both towers.

Of course neither side trusted the other. The fae exerted what little control they had by checking to make sure no Phaendir entered—some had tried, all had been brutally killed. The Phaendir, of course, would not allow any fae to leave. Humans could come and go at their own peril. Not many did. Only the very brave and the very stupid dared cross into the land of the fae.

Or the very desperate. That would be her.

Glancing back at Gideon and Maddoc and shooting them a look of uncertainty she didn’t have to feign, she stepped past the gates.

Surely the Blacksmith wouldn’t recognize her under her powerful glamour. Surely she would be safe from his wrath. If she could fool all of the Phaendir, she could fool one fae. Even if somehow he did recognize her, hundreds of years had passed since that unfortunate day and her errand was of monumental importance to the fae.

Surely this would turn out all right.