Resha nodded, dropping his hands on the table. “I was wondering what you thought if I got one. Would it be difficult?”
She relaxed, but not completely. Not until she understood where this was going. “It would depend on what you needed. They’re easy to purchase. I can think of a few jewelry stores that might take custom orders.”
He nodded, his lidded eyes narrowing. “Yes, but I’m uncertain about discretion.”
She smiled, more genuinely. “Everything has a price, Resha.”
“What would you think if I pinked my skin?” he asked.
The idea was so mundane, she almost let her jaw drop. Here she was fearing one of her undercover personas had been compromised, and Resha was being used to wheedle information from her, when he was only talking about cosmetics. “What do I think personally or professionally?”
“Both.”
She shook her head. “I don’t see a reason in either case.”
He smiled again. “Yes, well, you have an aspect that humans find pleasing. You can pass as one of them. I can’t.”
He had a point. With his exaggerated features-the sharp peak in his forehead, those teeth and claws, the blade of a nose-humans knew he was fey, even if they might not know exactly what kind. Those physical traits didn’t include what happened when a merrow hit the water. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that making his pale white skin any other color would not change a thing about his appearance.
Steeling herself, she reached out and squeezed those cold, pale hands. “Don’t take this as anything more than a compliment, Resha, but you’re a perfectly handsome man of your species. Why are you worried about what humans think?”
He pressed his wide lips together. “Television, Laura. The National Archives ceremony is going to be televised. People in Washington are used to dealing with solitaries who don’t fit the human mold. But outside the cities, particularly out West, it’s a different story. Most of this country does not see the fey on a daily basis.”
She tapped his hand for emphasis. “Which is precisely why you shouldn’t change a thing. This ceremony is about alliances and cooperation. We’re celebrating our diversity.”
He shook his head and shrugged. “Yes, well, that’s fine when you’re not the one with the camera in your face because you’re diverse.”
Laura stood and retrieved her folders. “Resha, I’m hearing none of this. Be who you are. If we can’t do that, then everything the fey have been fighting for here is pointless.”
He smiled again, that strange merrow smile that demonstrated exactly what he meant by other people not understanding. “You always put the best spin on things.”
She grinned at him as she made for the door. “That’s my job, Resha. Wear your blue Hermиs tie. It complements your skin tone.”
She cut through the service kitchen to the back stairs to avoid the slow elevator. As she climbed the two flights to her floor, she decided to be amused by the conversation instead of annoyed. She was the last person to criticize someone who wanted to change his looks. Keeping her head down, she strode down the long hallway through the accounting department, one of the few areas of the Guildhouse where she wasn’t peppered with questions when she appeared.
As she entered her office, her assistant, Saffin Corril, followed her in. “Your zipper’s in the front,” she said.
Laura dropped her paperwork and spun her skirt around. “Dammit, I wish I’d never bought this thing.”
Saffin placed a stack of pink messages on the desk. “Stop wearing it on days you have a meeting in the fifth-floor conference room or start taking the elevator.”
Laura looked up from the first message on the stack. “What the heck does that have to do with my skirt?”
The brownie smiled. “You always take the stairs from the fifth floor too fast, then you charge down the hallway to avoid people. Poof. Your skirt spins.”
They stared at each other. The corner of Saffin’s mouth twitched, and Laura laughed. She dropped into her desk chair. “You’re too observant for your own good.”
“Can I have a raise?” she asked.
“No. You can have next Tuesday off. I’m out of the office, and you’ve put in a ton of time on the Archives ceremony,” said Laura.
“Groovy. Thanks,” she replied.
Laura nodded with a slight smile as she flipped through the messages. Saffin was tall for a brownie. With her long, wispy, blond hair and slender body, Laura could picture Saffin with flowers in her hair on an ashram in the sixties, which was where Saffin was then. Brownies gravitated to hospitable situations that reflected their preferred demeanor and liked to take task-oriented positions that played to their industrious natures. People loved brownie assistants and financial managers. But if someone prevented one of them from performing his duties, a brownie might turn into a boggart. Their boggart nature ranged from annoying to downright dangerous. A brownie transformed from a passive, friendly person into a gangly aggressor with teeth and claws to back it up. No one wanted a maniacal boggart harassing them for a response to a memo. Saffin confessed to Laura she was asked to leave the ashram because she kept going boggie when others forgot to weed the soybeans. Saffin liked a tidy garden.
“Senator Hornbeck’s office called three times,” Saffin said.
Laura dropped her head back. “Good gods, why won’t that man leave us alone? I am not going to put Tylo Blume at the podium. I don’t care what favors he’s done Hornbeck.”
The senator was pressing her to include Tylo Blume as a speaker at the Archives’ exhibit opening. Blume supported Hornbeck’s ideas about mutual cooperation between humans and the fey, a sentiment Laura didn’t disagree with. But Blume wasn’t in the same league as the other speakers and had done little to support the cause until recently.
Laura suspected Blume would use the opportunity to promote his security firm. The U.S. government had become so stretched with its Homeland Security initiatives, they hired private security contractors like Blackwater and Titan-and Blume’s own Triad Global-to support regular law enforcement. Triad was hired to maintain the building perimeter for the Archives’ fey exhibit opening while regular government operatives handled the higher-profile guests, to say nothing of the documents, inside the Archives. Laura didn’t think anyone needed to provide Blume with free advertising because Hornbeck wanted to score political points with the Teutonic elves.
Saffin placed another folder on her desk. “Speaking of which, Triad sent over a revised traffic ban around the Archives. The Capitol police didn’t like some of the sight lines on the VIPs.”
Laura tilted the charts toward the natural light from the window. Triad loved their color printer. They did good work. That didn’t mean she owed them anything more than their fees. “This is fine. Any more changes on the Treaty display?”
The centerpiece of the Archives exhibit was the 1914 Treaty of London that recognized Maeve as High Queen of the Celtic fey and Tara as a sovereign territory within Ireland. Over a century later, the document, signed by Prime Minister H. H. Asquith of the United Kingdom, President Woodrow Wilson, and Maeve, continued to generate controversy. The National Archives was going to display it for the first time as part of its major fey exhibition, along with never-before-seen letters, documents, and film footage from the early days of the Guild. Threats against the exhibit had been made by militia groups that believed the Treaty was the first step in world domination by the fey over humans. It was an old story in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. government responded with security improvements on the documents and the ceremony.