Wayfinder

who I was anymore, that maybe he never did. I blew it, Lara. I mean I really, really blew it.”

“No.” Unexpectedly, it was Dafydd who interrupted, voice low but confident. “No, Kelly, if anyone is to blame, it’s me. Dickon was my cameraman and close friend for years, and he had no reason to suspect I was anything other than human. Though in most ways I neither would nor could change that, I should have found a way to tell him the truth immediately after I returned from the Barrow-lands without Lara. He deserved better than the friendship I offered him, and you deserved far better than the disaster I imparted upon your relationship.”

“I could have picked him,” Kelly whispered. Tears trembled down her cheeks and she pressed a finger above the cut on her face, giving the saltwater another path to travel than into the wound. “I could’ve done something else instead of turning into a criminal mastermind and spiriting us all away from a crime scene.”

Lara slipped an arm around Kelly’s waist, offering her a tentative smile. “Will it make you feel any better if I say no, you really couldn’t have?”

Kelly sniffled. “Couldn’t I?”

“Not from what I hear in your voice,” Lara said. “The truth is, helping Dafydd get away was the only thing you were ever going to do that day, Kelly. You weren’t going to let him die on a lab table, no matter how high the cost somewhere else might be. If Dickon can’t appreciate the strength of character that shows, then he doesn’t deserve you.”

Kelly laughed, a shaky wet sound. “That’s not fair. I have to believe it when you say it, Lara. I don’t have to believe me when I say it, but I have to believe you.” She wiped her eyes again, then hugged Lara hard. “Thank you. You might have to tell me five thousand times so I remember I have to believe you, but thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Lara hugged her back, then sighed. “How’s Detective Washington doing, anyway?”

Kelly sank down into an armchair. “He’s not out of the woods yet. We got stupid lucky with that mess at the courthouse garage, Lara. I mean, Dickon doesn’t care, because he was there and he knows we left Reg behind, but David’s lightning fried the whole security system. All the digital backups for the whole week got wiped out. There’s no footage anywhere that proves who was in the garage, and the only one who could identify us is Reg. He’s still unconscious, which is probably why I’m not in jail right now. They’ve got him at the same hospital Ioan’s at. If we could get in there, could you help him?” Her gaze went to Dafydd and Aerin, beseeching, and Dafydd once more translated before spreading his hands uncertainly.

“Neither of us has a talent for healing, Kelly. If Reginald Washington is indeed still in danger, if they’re still uncertain as to his recovery, the truth is we might best help him by bringing him to the Barrow-lands where he can be tended to by the other side of the magic that did him harm.”

Kelly flashed a sharp, bright smile. “Fantastic. I’ve always wanted to visit fairyland. Let’s go.”

Twenty-three

“There is too much iron in this world.” Aerin spoke through her teeth, a grimace pulling her striking features out of line. “The glamour is almost impossible to hold.”

Dafydd touched the small of her back, a small soothing gesture that had little visible effect. Lara made an apologetic face, but had to look away again: the glamours dancing in place around all of them jangled her nerves. Managing forward motion was enough of a task without trying to offer sympathy to an ill-tempered elf.

Of the four, only Kelly was clearly enjoying herself as they hurried through hospital corridors. Then again, of the four, she was the only one virtually undisguised. A costume shop had provided high-quality lab coats for all of them, and Kelly had found green hospital scrubs with a V-neck that displayed her considerable assets to good advantage. Half a week’s diet of ice cream and potato chips hadn’t visibly damaged her waistline and the shirt’s tucked-in waist emphasizer her curvaceous figure. The only glamour Dafydd had worked on her was transforming a driver’s license into a hospital ID, and the result was a soap opera–style nurse, all curves and quick smiles.

Lara, much more recognizable as a recent news-story kidnap victim, was hidden behind a glamour she couldn’t even see without making herself sick. A glimpse had suggested she was taller and more physically imposing than usual, with less delicacy in her heart-shaped face and drab lowlights in her blond hair. Dafydd swore the long white lab coat she wore made the illusion more effective and easier to maintain, and she only hoped the quick job would hold.

Aerin was almost as lightly glamoured as Kelly. She looked slightly more human than Ioan, but their fine bone structure and pointed ears were of a kind. A calculated risk, Dafydd called it, and swept into the secured corridor Ioan’s room was in as if he had every right to be there. Unlike any of the women, he’d added breadth to his own glamour, giving himself a far more intimidating air, though none of the suit-clad security looked even slightly intimidated.

“Doctor Aerin Cragen?” he said impatiently to one of the guards. “She’s flown all the way from—Don’t tell me the paperwork didn’t come through. If you could impress upon these gentlemen—?” He gestured to Lara, who stepped forward already hating what she had to do.

“The patient is from Ms. Cragen’s ethnic group, as I’m sure you can see. She’s come a long way to provide the help he needs. We must be allowed to see him.” Each statement was true enough. Aerin, sullenly, as though confessing something private, had allowed that her mother’s name was Cragen, and the closest thing she had to a last name was the matronym. Lara put strain into the words, making them impossible to disbelieve. It hurt her throat, hurt her skin to make truth heard, the task no easier than it had been in a human courtroom when it had been Dafydd’s freedom she was trying to achieve. It was easier by far in the Barrow-lands, so much more receptive to magic.

One of the guards, a tall man whose width of shoulder made him seem twice Lara’s size, removed his sunglasses to look first at her, then for a long time at Aerin, and finally back to Lara. “Sorry, miss. We can’t. Not without the appropriate paperwork.” He did, though, jerk his chin at Aerin to say, “I’ve never seen anybody who looks like you two. Where’re you from?”

Aerin looked without comprehension at Dafydd, who translated. Exasperation slid across Aerin’s face and she answered abruptly, cool expression locked on the guard. “An isolated area in Wales,” Dafydd said blithely.

Chills ran down Lara’s spine, not quite outraged protest at the lie, but not happy with the half-truth, either. The guard didn’t look any happier, an eyebrow cocked at Aerin. “I thought the Welsh spoke English.”

“I doubt your guest in there has spoken any,” Dafydd said. “This group has long since eschewed any but their native tongue. It’s a matter of cultural support and propagation.”

The guards exchanged looks again before the self-appointed spokesman sighed. “I can call it in for permission. It’s going to take a while. There’s a lot of paperwork to go through, and if you,” he pointed at Aerin, “weren’t obviously like him,” a thumb over the shoulder, indicating down the corridor, “I’d never bother trying. What kind of doctor are you, anyway? They’ve had the best brain surgeons in the country in there and they’re all afraid to even give it a shot because his physiology’s so bizarre.” He took out a phone, not waiting for an answer from Aerin, and after a few seconds said, “Yeah, we’ve got a doctor from the patient’s ethnic group down here, I thought you might want to come down and have a talk with her.”

Warning tones shot over Lara’s skin. She stepped forward and put out a hand, trying to imbue the gesture with some of Emyr’s imperious expectation. The guard snorted and she drew a sharp breath, driving it into sharper words: “You will give me the phone.”

Anger slid over the guard’s face as he handed her the phone, his own free will clearly countermanded by her order. Lara, trying not to tremble, kept her eyes on the guard. A truthseeker at the height of her power could say a thing and make it true. Determined, sick to her stomach, desperate, she said into the phone, “You will give permission to let us through to see the patient, and you will do it now.”

Hesitation came down the line, an inhalation that went nowhere. “Who is this?” a woman finally asked.

Lara clenched her fingers around the phone, headache spiking. Magic use could wear even the Seelie out, and humans were far less built for it than the elfin race was. For a painful moment she sympathized with Emyr, unable to work his magics smoothly with mortal interference in the area. Her own truthseeking was easier to manage if she wasn’t already hidden behind the veil of power that kept them all from easy recognition. “This is the only person who can keep your patient alive. I assume your interest in his autopsy is secondary to the possibility of speaking with him.”