Bewitched & Betrayed (21 page)

I leaned forward for a closer look, but wasn’t about to touch any kind of pendant on a chain. An amulet was what had gotten me into the whole Saghred mess to begin with. “Which is?”

“It will record everything I see and hear for one hour.”

“What’s it called?”

“The inventor never named it. He’s an old friend of mine, a prolific inventor, not big on naming his gadgets. This little beauty hasn’t failed me yet.”

“Then why do I need to wear one?”

“Because there’s a first time for everything not to work.” He held out the second pendant to me. “I’m not about to take any chances.”

I put it on and held the tiny globe up by the chain and looked into it. It was a flat blue on the surface; it could have been a trick of the light, but I thought I saw swirling strands of pale blue light beneath the surface. “So if Cradock incriminates himself, this little thing will record it?”

“
When
Cradock incriminates himself,” he corrected me. He smiled gently. “I’ve done this before, many times, and I like to think I’m rather good at it.”

“Sorry. I’m just having trouble with the whole ‘Mychael Eiliesor as con man’ thing.”

“Understandable. No offense taken. The gem will play back the entire hour in any common crystal ball.”

“So when this guy gets a case of loose lips, we’ll have a record of it, and Carnades, or anyone else who wants to keep Tam behind bars, will have no choice but to let him go—with an apology.”

“I think an apology from Carnades would be pushing it.”

I frowned. “Mychael, we’re going to have to do something permanent about him. Phaelan’s offered to contact some people, and I’m about to let him.”

“I agree that he needs to go, but let’s do it my way.” There was that secretive smile again. “I’ve got a few irons in the fire; they’ll be getting hot enough to use soon.”

“What’s your way?”

“Destroy his credibility, take away his influence, and get him dismissed from the Seat of Twelve.” Mychael’s voice turned cold and each word was sharp and clipped. “And when he can’t buy a vote or bribe an official, and none of his bought-and-paid-for allies will even admit to knowing him,
then
I will personally kick his ass off of my island.”

Now,
that
was a plan I could get behind.

“When’s this meeting?” I asked.

“Two bells. That gives us a little less than an hour.”

“Where do you have Morrell and Orla locked up?”

“A Guardian safe house.”

“Mychael, I don’t mean to stick pins in your plan, but if I’m going to do a glamour of this woman, I have to see her. I can’t do this without details.”

“I’ve got all the details you need.” He laid his index finger to his temple. “Right here.”

“Use our bond.”

Mychael nodded once. “The cell where we’re holding Morrell and Orla has a ward across the bars so they can’t see out, but I can see in. You’ll have to reproduce her clothes yourself as part of the glamour, but I have all of her weapons here.”

“
All
of her weapons?”

“I think she carries even more steel than you do, if that’s possible. They’re over there on the bed.”

I went, I looked, and I really liked.

There were assorted daggers of various sizes, and a brace of throwing stars, but what made my hands itch with “gimme” was a Nebian scimitar. I picked it up and pulled the blade from the scabbard and kept pulling, and it kept coming. Long, curved, and utterly lethal. It almost made my pair of goblin blades look puny.

“I think I’m in love.” I glanced back at Mychael. “Will I like her taste in clothes?”

Mychael gave me a crooked grin. “I don’t think so; but who knows? You may surprise me.”

“So how do we do this?”

“The easiest and most direct way is through palm-to-temple contact.”

“We’re spending a lot of time lately touching each other.”

Mychael’s grin broadened into a mischievous smile. “Do you have a problem with that?”

I chuckled. “I haven’t yet, even when naked. After we’re touching, then what?”

“I’ll show you what I saw, and you just let me know when you’ve seen enough of Maire Orla to do a glamour.”

Mychael put his palms to my temples, and within moments I had Orla’s image.

Maire Orla was beautiful, brunette, and busty—and she was dressed to show as much skin as you could in public and not be arrested. Now I knew why she carried all that steel; there was no way a woman could walk around looking like that and wearing that little and expect to be left alone.

She wore blood- red leather from head to toe. Her boots extended to mid-thigh. Thighs that were otherwise left bare by her short leather skirt layered with overlapping disks of brass armor. The armor was mostly for decoration, but it would also direct any ogling male eyes to the bare thighs between the tops of the tall boots and the bottom of the short skirt. I wondered if she wore anything underneath, and I was sure every man who saw her wondered the same thing. I imagined her throwing stars had discouraged some wandering eyes from becoming wandering hands. Her own hands were covered by red leather gloves that came up to her elbows. Between the gloves and the scimitar, it was obvious that Maire Orla was a woman who knew how to accessorize.

A wide leather belt studded with brass was laced high and tight around a crimson leather bustier, pushing up and out what I had to admit were a very impressive pair of breasts. If she so much as breathed wrong, any ogling eyes would get two more things to gander.

“Jeez, you could set a beer on those things,” I said.

Mychael grinned. “Have you seen enough?”

“
Amply
more than enough.” I opened my eyes and Mychael lowered his hands from my temples. I didn’t step back; neither did he. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Seeing you turn yourself into another woman? I prefer you just the way you are.”

“But you wouldn’t mind seeing me in red leather.”

His voice turned husky. “There isn’t a man breathing who wouldn’t enjoy seeing that. I’m breathing, and last time I checked, I was a man. But for the record,” he said deliberately, “I enjoy seeing you in whatever you’re wearing.” A slow, wicked smile spread across his face. “But mostly in what you’re not wearing. The vision of you nude in my bed isn’t leaving anytime soon.”

“That’s not a very professional healer attitude,” I chided lightly.

“I’m not a healer right now.”

I took another glance at his leathers. He could say that again.

“Do you think you can hold your own glamour knowing that it’s me under that magic and leather?” I wove a subtle challenge into my voice. “Mixing business with pleasure can be dangerous. We should be careful.”

He laughed. “For a living you find things that shouldn’t be found, and have apparently taken up chasing specter-possessed naked men through bordellos as a hobby. Since when do you play it safe?”

The mechanics of doing a glamour are easy. The thoughts of all
that could go wrong are hard.

A couple years ago, I’d seen someone get stuck halfway through their transformation. It wasn’t pretty. It also tossed a bucket of cold water on any inclination I might have had about trying it myself. I’d done it once to rescue Piaras from the elven embassy, and up until getting punched in the balls made me lose my concentration, my glamour, and nearly my lunch, I thought I’d done a fine job.

Maire Orla didn’t have balls, but she had plenty of everything else, and chose to cover her bounty with barely enough red leather to be considered decent. I closed my eyes and gathered my focus, and began recalling her image.

Mychael was giving me the space I needed, both physical and magical. At the moment he was sitting in an armchair in the far corner of the room, the sense of his magic tamped down to a flicker. That by itself was no mean trick.

But he was watching me, and that was a problem. My own eyes were closed, so I couldn’t see him, but I sure could feel him. It wasn’t his magic; it was Mychael. Intensity controlled until it pulsed in the air. He was watching me from the shadows, and liking what he saw. That, he couldn’t control. I knew it as surely as if he’d said it out loud.

“Close your eyes,” I told him, without opening my own.

“But you can’t see me.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

“I can
feel
you watching. This is hard enough without an audience—especially an audience who’s looking at me like I was naked. Again.”

“Am not.” Those blue eyes had to be glittering.

A tiny smile curled my lips. “Con man
and
a liar,” I murmured, stubbornly refusing to open my eyes. “What other talents are you hiding from me?”

“You’ll just have to wait and find out.”

I bit my lip against a full smile. “Close your—”

“As you wish, Miss Benares. Closing my eyes, controlling my thoughts.”

And hopefully his impulses.

All sense of him vanished. Utterly gone. It was as if he’d disappeared from the room. I’d only heard of a handful of mages who could negate their presence that quickly and completely. It was impressive as hell.

Concentrate, Raine. Time isn’t on your side.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. While we didn’t have much time, there was no way I was rushing a glamour. Too much could go wrong, and all of it was ugly. I recalled the image Mychael had sent to me through our contact. Beautiful, brunette, busty, and belligerent. Mychael’s contact had also included sound, and Maire Orla was definitely belligerent. I couldn’t really blame her. If I was locked behind bars and wards, I’d be pissed, too.

Just like Tam.

“Shit,” I hissed softly, and lost what concentration I had.

“What is it?” came Mychael’s deep voice from the shadows. No sense of him, just a voice. A shiver ran up my back.

I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth. Once. Twice. “Nothing I can’t handle,” I murmured, steering my mind back to the work. Focus on the work, Raine. Tam is fine. He’s safe and protected. If you get this right, you’ll get him out of there.

I focused on the image of Maire Orla, committing it to memory little by little, internalizing the smallest detail. When I had it firmly in my mind’s eye, I released the slightest touch of my power into the image in my mind, projecting it outward.

As I felt the glamour solidify around me, I opened my eyes and looked down. Damn. So this was what looking hot felt like. “Uh, you can open your eyes now.” My voice was Maire Orla’s, too.

“They’re already open.”

Of course they were. As soon as her breasts had popped up, Mychael’s eyes had probably popped open—one of those involuntary male response things.

Mychael stood and came toward me, the candlelight flickering on his face.

Kester Morrell’s face.

I instinctively reached for a dagger that wasn’t there. I put out a hand between us. “Stop right there and let me get used to this.”

Mychael stopped and I started breathing right again.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. At least it was still Mychael’s voice.

“It’s okay. It’s just that closing my eyes to one man and opening them to another is a little unsettling.”

Kester Morrell’s eyes took in the scenery that was Maire Orla. “I can understand that.”

Glamoured as Kester Morrell, Mychael’s eyes were hazel and there was a little more brown to his otherwise auburn hair. He sported a short, neatly trimmed beard and mustache; and since Morrell was a human, the tips of Mychael’s ears were rounded out. But the glitter in those hazel eyes was all Mychael, and all for me.

I couldn’t really blame him. I thought I looked hot, too.

I ignored the heat in his gaze and strode over to the bed and started strapping Orla’s weapons on. I’d used throwing stars before, but I’d never carried more than half a dozen. Maire Orla carried a ridiculous amount. I slung the baldric holding the stars across my now-ample chest, and a couple of the steel tips rested uncomfortably close to some bare skin.

“Well, that’s one way to get men to stop looking,” I muttered. Then something occurred to me, something that could give an awkward angle to our evening’s masquerade. “What kind of relationship do Morrell and Orla have? They work together.” I paused to ask what I thought I already knew the answer to. “What else do they do together?”

“When they travel, they only request one room or cabin,” Mychael replied smoothly.

“And if they’re good at what they do, they’re not lacking for money, unless they’re just being cheap.”

“They’re not being cheap.”

“I kind of thought that’d be the case. So how publicly demonstrative are these two?”

“Do you
want
to be publicly demonstrative?” he teased.

“I want to get this right.”

“When Morrell is working, he’s all business.”

“How about Orla?”

“Constantly looking for an excuse to use her steel.”

And she and Morrell would be meeting with a scumbag who was hiring them to possibly kidnap someone I loved. The scimitar made a gratifyingly steely hiss as I resheathed it. “I might just enjoy being Maire Orla after all.”

 

 

I had to admit that if I saw us coming down the street, I’d give
serious thought to crossing to the other side. Maire Orla wasn’t the shrinking violet type, and with all the steel I was carrying, and magic I was packing, my stride turned into a bit of a strut. I just couldn’t seem to help myself, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to.

Mychael was walking next to me, but we were giving each other enough room to move should the need arise, though Maire Orla would have thought of being ambushed as more of an opportunity for entertainment.

“We’re being watched,”
Mychael said in mindspeak.
“Though with the way your hips are moving, I don’t think they’ve noticed me.”