By morning, George O’Malley was mobile again. His own healing abilities and Talus’s Power had fully dealt with his injuries, and the four of us headed downtown as Talus vanished to deal with his own preparations for the funeral—taking Laurie with him.
The fae noble had handed Celine a credit card before he left, and the Fury had promptly decided to find the most expensive fancy-dress store in the city. This, of course, was buried inside the core and relatively quiet on a Saturday morning.
One of Eric’s “friends I can completely trust” had picked up the van we’d left at Talus’s hidden apartment armory near downtown and delivered it to the motel, so we had transportation.
Celine drove us downtown like she owned the road, and walked into the store with about the same level of ownership vibe. I watched with more than a little fascination as the Fury—probably among the three or four most dangerous females I currently knew, including the Queen—managed to corral four staff members and point one of them at each of us. She kept the manager, I noticed, to herself as she started audibly gleeing over a certain color of coat.
“And what is sir’s style choice for the day?” the somewhat shell-shocked staff member asked me.
I answered with the long-standing conversational placeholder of choice: “Umm.
“I’m headed to a funeral in about two hours,” I continued slowly, thinking carefully. “I want something appropriate, but still...easy to move in—I won’t have to time to change afterward and I have a bunch of errands to do.”
That seemed more acceptable in my ears—and apparently to the young “fashion consultant”—than “I’m going to a funeral, which will be followed by an election and a political negotiation, either or both of which may turn to violence at a moment’s notice.”
“We do have a new line of ‘athletic dress shirts,’” the girl said after a moment. “They’re designed so you can go right from the office to a golf game...”
I paid some attention to the girl’s sales pitch, but mostly just nodded whenever she grabbed an item of clothing. Twenty minutes and a mind-boggling price tag later, I was dressed in a neat black suit with almost-invisible burgundy pinstripes. Both the suit and the shirt underneath it had a surprising degree of flexibility and flow, hopefully enough for me to fight in them if I had to.
O’Malley was finished before me, sitting in a plain charcoal-gray suit by the front entrance while we waited for the girls. Tamara joined us a few minutes after I finished, in a prim suit tied to a long skirt whose multiple layers concealed the fact that it was slit almost all the way up to the hip for ease of movement.
Celine took another hour on top of all of us. By the time she was done, the manager had three of the staff running relays of clothes in and out of the changing room. Finally, however, she emerged to join us—in much the same style of skirt suit as Tamara had picked out in half an hour.
We paid and left the store, heading for the van.
“What took so long?” I finally asked.
The Fury shrugged. “I didn’t see a reason not to make sure I didn’t get the perfect outfit on a noble’s credit,” she answered. “I didn’t go over time—we have plenty of time to get to the funeral. And now I’m ready, and you’re all ready, and you’ve spent the last hour being annoyed at me instead of nervous about what’s coming. Let’s go.”
With that, she strode ahead of the rest of us as I looked after her, knowing I was staring in open-mouthed surprise.
The Fury was good.
WE RETURNED to the van in our new formal wear, and Tamara promptly started pulling shoulder holsters and black metal-and-polymer pistols—Glock 18s, apparently—from a box in the back of the van and passed them around. They slipped easily under the suit jackets we all wore and belted into place.
Armed and dressed for the occasion, Celine took the wheel and drove us farther into the city’s southwest quarter. The funeral was at a small Catholic church that was heavily supported by the Clan Tenerim—Tarvers himself had converted to Catholicism several centuries earlier, apparently.
The building was no cathedral, but it was a fair-sized structure of concrete and wrought iron surrounded by easily two acres of landscaped grounds, a tall and neatly trimmed hedge shielding the grounds from view.
A handful of “stray dogs” wandered around the perimeter, outside the hedge, with a precision and pattern that gave their true nature away almost instantly to those of us looking for the guards.
We pulled into the parking lot, slotting the black van in amidst the chaotic mix of vehicles. I recognized many of the cars from David and Elena’s funeral—either shifters who’d known the two fae, or fae who were there to honor the leader of the shifters. Like us.
Mary texted me, asking me if I’d arrived yet, just as we were exiting the van. I excused myself from the group of fae and went to meet her and Holly. I found them standing just around the corner of the church, out of sight from the entrance.
Shelly stood with them, as did Theino, the young and well-spoken goblin who’d been organizing their care. All four were dressed in plain black formal clothes, though Theino also wore a plain white scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face to conceal his tusks.
Ignoring the fact that, even tucked out of view as we were, we were in public, I wrapped Mary in a tight embrace, feeling for a long moment like I would never let her go. She returned the embrace with full force for a moment and then gently extricated herself.
“Hey, what’s going on with you?” she asked. “I’m not the one who tried to get killed last night—I should be the one freaking out over you.”
“Yes, but you’re not going to,” I told her, trying to keep my voice reasonable and somewhat flippant. “So, I have to do it for both of us.”
My shifter shook her head, pressed a kiss to my forehead, and cast a look around. “Shelly told us about Laurie,” she said very quietly. “What are you going to do?”
“For now?” I shrugged, nodding toward Shelly. “Follow Talus’s lead. I trust his sense of melodrama to provide the right timing to introduce Laurie.”
“He’s noble fae,” Shelly said, nodding. “Melodrama runs in his blood.”
“Shelly, melodrama runs in all fae blood,” I told her, finding it easier to joke and smile now Mary was there. “What about you?” I asked, turning to Holly.
“I’m going to hide between you and Theino until the actual election starts,” she said quietly, responding slightly to my smile and attempted good cheer. “Then I’m hoping you’ll be between me and any of Darius’s men who try to shut me up.”
I nodded, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder and glancing over at the goblin. In answer to my unspoken question, so that Holly wasn’t aware of it, he opened his jacket just enough for to see the black metal of some sort of firearm in a shoulder rig.
Both of us were armed, so with me on one side of the girl and Theino on the other, no one was getting to her without paying a heavier price than they expected. Mary saw the exchange as well and leaned in to kiss me. She grabbed my hand as she did and put it inside her jacket.
It looked like a cuddling, possibly somewhat indecent gesture to everyone else. I realized she’d put my hand on the grip of the same ugly-looking little submachine gun she’d produced in Holly’s apartment.
There was a very real chance no one in this church was unarmed, and unlike most of them, I knew how ugly this could get.
“The Fontaines are in,” Shelly told us quietly, having glanced around the corner. “We should head in. We don’t want to miss the service.”
I nodded at her comment, taking a deep breath as the real reason for today sank in. With everything else going on, I’d almost forgotten we were there to mourn a man who’d proven himself worthy of my respect in the short time I’d known him.