All That Glows

Two

Of course I find myself sitting at a bar. The prince’s nightly play has led me to the Darkroom, a club nestled in the heart of London. My fingers tap against the lacquered wood as I stare absently at the cocktail menu. I should be watching the dance floor, watching Richard. But the movement of so many heads whipping to the music makes mine throb.

“Up to no good, that one.” The bartender nods over at the prince and grunts as he wipes the counter down. “They let him in here because he’s good for business. All the girls buy him drinks, and he gets drunker than a jilted woman on her wedding anniversary. Mark my words, he’s gonna get us shut down for all that underage drinking. Him and all his kid friends. Can I getcha anything, love?”

I jump a little when I realize he’s addressing me. In crowds as large as the one at this club, I don’t bother wasting energy on veiling spells. There are so many pretty faces, Richard will glaze over mine without a thought.

I rub my temple and glance at the rainbow row of liquor bottles against the back wall. The brutal nausea brought on by the club’s pulsing lights and stereos won’t let me keep down anything more substantial than tonic.

“Just a sparkling water,” I tell him, my smile apologetic.

The bartender’s mouth pinches to the side, forehead scrolling tight with wrinkles. “Why’s a pretty girl like you getting dressed up and hitting the clubs for water?”

I pretend I don’t hear him as he slides the drink into my hands, creating fresh streaks on his bartop. It’s easier than coming up with a lie in this storm of color and sound. “Could I get a lemon with that?”

“Sure, sure,” he mutters, and retreats to the end of the bar. He doesn’t even make it to the lemon tub before he’s distracted by another order.

I take my drink to the edge the dance floor. There’s a long booth in a corner made of shadows, where I can get a full view of the crowd.

The prince is still dancing. Amber liquid sloshes from the top of his beer bottle as he moves from side to side. Although several of his classmates from Eton are also on the floor, the dancing girls have eyes only for Richard. They jostle one another, swarm around him as thick as ants on a piece of picnic bread. I can barely see the prince through the piles of hair and wiggling bodies. Thankfully, none of them look dangerous. None of them are dressed in green.

The sparkling water does wonders for my stomach. I’m halfway through the glass when Breena arrives. The sight of her, with her tight silver dress and stilettos, doesn’t startle me. I felt her aura approaching long before this.

“What are you doing here?” I ask as she slides into the booth beside me. She looks perfectly pieced together, as if the sickness isn’t touching her at all—which would be impossible. Any Fae within a mile would feel the intense thrash of the Darkroom’s electrical equipment.

“Just trying to look out for you.” Breena shrugs. “I thought you could use an extra pair of eyes. Richard’s not the easiest first shift ever. Plus I’m sure this is doing wonders for your stomach.”

“I’ll get over it.” I take another bubbling sip and look over at the prince, who’s taken a break from his dancing to get another beer. I’ve lost count of how many he’s had.

“Of course you will.” Breena pulls some bright lipstick out of her clutch and swathes her lips scarlet. I wonder how much pain this technology is shooting through her body. She shows no signs of it. “Seen any Green Women yet?”

“No. I don’t think they’ll try anything tonight.” The last statement is more of a hope than a certainty. Encounters with Green Women are never pleasant. Especially when they’re hunting.

“Oh, they’ll come,” Breena says. “It’s Friday night. They’re hungry.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re here,” I tell her. It’s assuring to have Breena’s magic, about a century more seasoned than mine, as a backup.

“Yep.” Her brilliant red lips curve into a smile as she glances over the dance floor. “How’s Richard doing?”

I follow her stare. The prince is stumbling off to a table, half dragged by an eager, skimpy brunette. “He’s certainly the life of the party.”

The hair on the back of my neck suddenly bristles. Another immortal is here. Breena feels it too.

“See anything?” I ask Breena, unwilling to look away from Richard.

“Two of them,” she says. “Front entrance.”

For just one second I break eye contact to view the new threat. Two women, tall, blonde, and breathtaking, break through the crowd. Men and women, everyone they pass, stare at their lithe, supple bodies. More than a few mouths drop open.

The one in the pale green dress scouts the room for suitable prey. I can tell by the way her dark eyes widen that she’s caught Richard’s aura. She starts walking; each stride brings her closer to the prince.

“Move,” I grunt, and push Breena out of the booth. My head spins, at the mercy of the club’s stacked subwoofers. I push past the pain, the dizziness. There’s no time for it.

The Green Woman has eyes only for her victim. She doesn’t notice as I slip through the crowd and stop directly in her path. It isn’t until we’re inches apart that she suddenly registers my aura. She stops, her beautiful face wrinkles with disappointment.

“Back off,” I warn in my most threatening tone. My fists are clenched. It’s doubtful she’ll try anything in a room full of mortals. Yet sometimes, if a Green Woman is desperate enough . . .

Her pale pink lips protrude. “Just a taste . . . I promise I won’t kill him.”

My eyes narrow. “There are plenty of other men here. Go seduce one of them.”

When the Green Woman realizes her opportunity at the prince is lost, she bares her teeth. They’re flawlessly white and sharp. Fury clouds her eyes and I get a glimpse of her true form: the dead, gray thing that lurks behind such saccharine beauty. A shudder creeps down my spine, but my face doesn’t flinch. I refuse to show fear.

She saunters off to resume her scouting. A rain shower of relief breaks over me—for a moment the world becomes steady again. The feeling is short-lived, however, when I turn to find that the prince is gone.

Curses form under my breath. I reach out and search for him with my mind. His aura is strong—he’s still in the club. Pins and needles of worry bite into every surface of my body when I realize who else is missing: the other Green Woman.

“Bree!” My friend is closer than I expect. Just a few steps behind me. There’s a wildness in her face. She’s ready to fight. “Did you see where Richard went?”

“He ran off to the bathroom.” The sequins of her dress slink and glow like a wet serpent as she turns, those wintery eyes tearing the room apart. “Go! I’ll take care of the other one.”

I run, faster than I should through a crowd of mortals, in the direction of the bathrooms. Two men in black suits—the prince’s human security—stand outside the men’s room. The Green Woman must have spelled them to stay away. I mutter a short spell and ghost past them, unseen.

The restroom is empty, with one obvious exception. A pair of forest-green stilettos peeks out from the bottom of the final stall. My heart flutters at the sight. I practically fly the distance and wrench the door open.

The prince leans against the side of the stall, head wreathed in obscene graffiti and eyes half closed with the weight of his evening drinks. The second Green Woman lurks close; her pale hair spills across his chest as she leans in. Her head jerks around when the door opens, eyes lit dark with rage. When she sees me, all the beauty of her flesh melts away. Her pink skin withers to a sickly greenish gray, like some corpse frozen in the depths of a peat bog. The teeth beneath her mottled lips grow ragged, meant for tearing tendon from bone. She hisses and grips her prey with long, ratty fingernails.

Although I’ve fought Green Women before, this one’s ghoulish grin is unnerving. I have to look at Richard and see the smooth, unblemished skin of his throat to remember why I’m here.

I launch myself between her and the prince. At the same moment she lunges, grungy teeth aimed for Richard’s throat. I catch the bite with my shoulder, gasping with shock as the pain lances my bone. The force of my body throws the prince onto the toilet, far from the Green Woman’s reach. He blinks slowly; his jaw grows slack at what he sees.

The Green Woman shrieks with frustration as she pulls away from me. Dark blood coats her teeth and stains her lips. Her feral eyes wheel to where the prince is slouched over the toilet. There’s intense, desperate hunger behind her gaze. She’d do anything to have him.

“He’s under Queen Mab’s protection,” I tell her, once more positioning myself between the pair.

“And what are you going to do to stop me, little woodling?” the Green Woman rasps. Her eyes focus past my wounded shoulder.

I ignore her name-calling and invoke the old magic: “Blodes geweald.”

The familiar rush of power surges through my veins, seizes my body till I feel only barely in control. Every piece of me buzzes with the pure energy of it. The Green Woman jumps forward again and I hold out my hands. When the edges of my fingers brush her dead skin, a massive shock rattles through me. The world grows white with savage magic. It throws the Green Woman back with such force that the stall door crumples around her body. I watch the wreckage. Nothing moves. Small wisps of smoke rise from the Green Woman’s body, but I know she’s not dead. It takes more than a little flash of light to unmake them.

“Stay away from the prince,” I warn the crisp, blackened body, “or it’ll be worse next time.”

There’s a long, low hiss and the room fills with black smoke. She’s gone.

A sharp cough draws my attention back into the stall. The prince is trying to stand, bracing himself with unsteady hands.

“Who—who are you? W-what the hell just happened?” The alcohol has messed with his balance. He slips and falls back against the toilet.

I sigh and walk through the clearing smoke to where the door lies. The Green Woman’s outline is clear in the wrinkled metal. At my touch it smoothes back to its original casting. I direct the door back through the air to the frame, where it comes to rest on its hinges.

“I’m Emrys, your Frithemaeg. Your Faery guardian,” I say, and turn to face him again.

He stares at me, his mouth gaping. When I kneel down close, he stays perfectly still. Our eyes meet, this time for real. My body hums with the same strange current that caught me on my first sight of him. Half of me expects it. I push past the feeling, forcing myself to focus on erasing Richard’s memory.

“Bloody hell!” the prince exclaims, and breaks our eye connection to stare at his hands. They’re soft, unworked. Only the fingertips are calloused, relics of practiced guitar chords. “Did you feel that?”

I fall still, uncertain of what to do next. Richard felt it too? What was it? I check the air for traces of a spell, but there’s none outside of the banishing magic I used on the Green Woman.

The squeal of the restroom door breaks my concentration. Another mortal is here, in the room. I should get rid of him before he witnesses any magic. He’ll have less of a headache if I use a banishment spell instead of a memory wipe.

This man is even drunker than the prince. That much is obvious as he swaggers across the dark tile floor. His eyes are oddly detached as they fall on me, on my body. A sick grin plasters his face.

“Well, well. What do we have here?” He lurches forward. The movement highlights just how arched and beaky his nose is. Like some bird of prey. “A pretty girl, all by herself in the loo. That’s l-lucky.”

Disgust overwhelms me. If I were mortal, truly powerless, there’s no telling what this man might do to me. He moves forward with awkward, wide steps—like a puppet being strung by a five-year-old. He’s less than an arm’s length away when he reaches out, his fingers twitching and eager.

The magic isn’t even on my lips when the man falls to the ground. I blink. Richard is by my side, standing over the howling drunk as he writhes on the floor clutching his face and his awful, running nose.

“Don’t touch her.” His words are deep, forceful. The slur of his drinks has vanished in the adrenaline of the moment.

Hands fall from the drunk’s face, revealing a nasty, crimson split above his lip. It melds perfectly with the blood from his nostrils. He snarls and tries to get up again. Tries to grab for me.

Richard’s fist descends on its target with sobering precision. This time the man doesn’t move. He’s a loose marionette, all angles, out cold on the tile.

“Are you okay?” Richard asks as he shakes out his fist, wincing.

The prince came to my rescue. He protected me. This is so shocking, so unprecedented, that I can’t think of anything to say.

I can’t let him remember what happened.

“Forgiete.” I face him, murmur my enchantment in the old tongue.

The magic is gentler this time. His face grows blank as the spell takes him, wiping away the past few minutes. I guide him toward the door before his senses clear up enough to see his passed-out victim. Dazed and disoriented, Richard wanders through the crowd back to the bar top.

Breena is there, lounging on a bar stool. I grab the empty seat next to her and try to ignore the sickness that’s once again worming its way through my stomach.

“The other one?” I search the dance floor for a glimpse of the pale green dress.

“She’s gone,” Breena assures me. “Nice work in there. I see you haven’t lost your touch. Need another sparkling water?”

I’m about to answer when there’s a commotion at the other end of the bar, where Richard is sitting. I look down to find him pointing at me. For a moment, I doubt my spell’s effectiveness.

“Get that pretty redhead a drink on me!” he shouts at the bartender, and slings his arm over an ecstatic, big-breasted blonde.

I start to breathe again. He’s forgotten all about the Green Woman. And that moment between us. Whatever it was.