Divine Misdemeanors

Galen made his short curls a nondescript brown, and changed his eyes to match. He darkened his skin so he looked truly ta

I came out of the bedroom with my hair an auburn that was almost brown. I’d also put it up into a French twist. The deep, chocolate-brown skirt suit was a little short for business, but I was short enough that long just wasn’t good on me. I’d borrowed a holster and gun from Rhys and put them at the small of my back so I would be armed. It still left him a gun, a sword, and a dagger. I had my own folding knife in a thigh holster under the skirt. The knife actually wasn’t just for defense; it was also so there would be some cold steel touching my naked flesh. Steel and iron help against faerie magic, but it’s best if they touch your skin. There were a lot of fey, even sidhe, who couldn’t have done glamour this detailed with cold metal touching their skin. My human and brownie ancestry helped me work magic no matter how much metal and technology surrounded me. The knife was nothing compared to the city itself. Out here by the ocean it was easier for the rest of them, but there were lesser fey who couldn’t do much magic in the heart of any modern city.

The thought made me wonder about Bittersweet and whether Lucy had found her. I pushed the thought aside and checked the mirror one last time to make sure neither gun nor knife showed in the suit. The skirt was lightweight but flouncy, moving with me. I had a lot of skirts that were formfitting enough that even a small weapon showed against the material.

I walked back out into the great room. Galen met me, smiling. “I forgot you make your eyes brown, too.”

“Green eyes are too unusual. Humans remember them.”

He gri

We kissed, and it was a nice, thorough kiss. He drew away and I was staring up into a pair of dark brown eyes set in a face more tan than his would ever be by nature.

I smiled.

It was Rhys who said, “Come on you two, we all know our glamour holds up. Amatheon and Adair checked in. The press took the bait with Doyle and Frost, so we can go do some work.” We followed him out the door, dropping each other’s hands as we walked outside. I trusted the other guards that the main force of the press had gone away, but if we hung all over each other like lovers, no amount of glamour would keep them from snapping pictures, and not all glamour holds up to cameras. We don’t know why, but even with the best of us sometimes a picture will reveal the truth when the naked eye will not.

Sholto had gone ahead of us all.

“All doors are in place.”

“So you’ll just appear,” Galen said.

“Yes.”

“How do you make certain someone isn’t in the doorway when you appear.”

“I can feel if it’s empty,” he said.

“Nifty.”

“I didn’t know you could do doorways,” I said.

“Its a power that has returned since we were crowned.”

“Don’t tell Barinthus,” Galen said.

“I will not.” He’d been solemn when he said it. “But I will scout the area and if reporters seem aware you are on your way; tipped off, I believe they say.”

“They do,” I said with a smile.

“Then I will call if they have been tipped off.” He’d gone with his blond hair looking short, his golden eyes as brown as Galen’s and mine. Sholto even made his face less handsome so he wouldn’t even attract attention as a too handsome human.

Rhys drove since it was his car. We put Saraid in the front with him, and the rest of us scattered in the back. We could actually see the distant flash of police lights when Rhys pulled over into a small parking lot. Julian or Jordan Hart leaned against one of the company cars. It wasn’t until he turned and gave me that smile of his that I knew it was Julian and not his twin brother. They both had short, rich brown hair cut so it was short on the sides, but a little longer on top, where it was gelled into small spikes. But Jordan didn’t have such a careless, devil-may-care smile. He had a good smile. They both did. They’d made enough money from modeling to first start their own detective agency and then to buy into the Grey Detective Agency. They were both six feet of ta

He was wearing small-framed glasses with yellow-tinted glass that complemented his shades of brown and tan clothes. He came to me laughing. “You should have called, dear. I’d have worn another color so we wouldn’t have matched.”

I smiled and gave my cheek for a kiss, which I got and returned. His face still held that edge of laughter, but his eyes behind their almost-silly tinted glasses were very serious.

“You haven’t been to the crime scene yet, have you?” I asked.

“No,” he said, his voice as serious as his eyes, but if anyone was watching, his face still laughed and was pleasant. “But Jordan has.”

Now I understood why his eyes were already a little grim. The twin brothers could let each other see what they were looking at, if they wanted to. When they’d been little they’d had no control over it, but they’d gone to the afterschool psychic programs along with all the other little gifted children and now they only shared if they chose. Whatever Julian’s brother had shown him was bad enough to take the shine from his eyes.

He looked past me to the men with me, and the smile climbed back up into his eyes. There were other human wizards who would have had to ask before being certain who was hiding behind the glamour, but Julian really was that good, and so was his brother. So he went to Galen and exchanged a cheek kiss like he had with me and a handshake with Rhys. The fact that he knew who to kiss and who to just shake hands with said that the disguises weren’t really fooling him. That was not good, since some police were now wizards, but most didn’t specialize in “seeing” the truth.

Julian hesitated at the women, which meant that it wasn’t what they looked like to his physical eyes that let him know who to kiss. It was something more mystical than that. He didn’t know the female guards well at all, so he shook their hands. He was actually more careful of the women than the men.

Of course, even Julian hadn’t quite been his exuberant self since more than half of Kane and Hart’s detective agency had gotten eaten by a very big, bad piece of magical beastie called the Nameless. We—my men and I—had eventually entrapped it, but Kane and Hart had been ground down to only four employees, which was why the Grey Detective Agency was now the Grey and Hart Detective Agency. Both agencies had been going after the same niche market, so it made sense to join forces, and maybe Julian and Jordan Hart just felt that mixing their human magic with our not-so-human magic might be healthier for their remaining employees.