Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

Three words: time traveling assassin.

No, wait, hear me out.

I’d been attacked by an unknown assailant at HQ and also at Gertie’s. The two assaults had been a century apart and seemed completely separate, one done by a fey and one by some incubus-like creature with a completely different MO. And maybe they were. I didn’t even know that I was the target for the first one, and maybe there was something about my borrowed powers that had triggered the second, the same way that the Were attack had been provoked.

But they bugged me. They bugged me a lot. There were two things that I couldn’t explain: Pritkin’s face being used by the incubus, when we wouldn’t be an item for a century, and what he’d told me about the wards at HQ. Namely that nobody could figure out how the fey got in. But there was one obvious way, wasn’t there?

The same way that I did.

There was also a possible third issue, namely the time ward that I’d done back at my own court, the one that had blown out so spectacularly. Sure, maybe I was just a shitty wardsmith, but when it had collapsed on Billy Joe, it hadn’t gone ballistic. It had done what it was supposed to do and trapped him like he’d wallowed around in taffy. But while I was bathing, it had gone completely loco.

&nb

sp; As if it had trapped a time traveler, one who had managed to throw it off, but who threw it a bit too hard in his panic?

Okay, that one was a stretch, but still. It bugged. And with the Pythian library possibly permanently out of bounds, there was only one way to find out if I was right.

Only my one way was in a mood.

“You want to do what?”

Augustine, dress designer to the stars, or at least to the well-heeled members of the supernatural community, cocked an eyebrow at me. I wanted to frown, since everybody seemed to be able to do that but me. But this was the time for some diplomacy, so I smiled instead.

“Just for a little while.”

“It isn’t a toy, Cassie,” the gorgeous creature told me severely. “It’s among the items I’m designing for the war effort.”

The latter was said with a good deal of pride, since Augustine had been recruited by the Circle to help devise some magical items that might work in Faerie. The typical human variety didn’t, at least not very well, but Augustine’s stuff wasn’t typically human. In fact, it was more fey than not, as he was part fey himself and used that advantage to edge out the competition.

We were in his workroom, which was in the Pythian Court at the moment, as his beloved shop had been a casualty of the Battle for Dante’s. While it was being rebuilt, he was occupying one of my spare bedrooms, since I only had about a million of them. And since he’d helped us in the battle in question.

That was why I was currently surrounded by gorgeous creations that probably cost the earth. Including Augustine’s own, a skin tight jumpsuit that changed color and texture to match whatever it was near. It was currently imitating the iridescent feathers on the trailing hem of a mostly see through dress of netting dotted with jewels.

And giving me a glimpse of a long, hairy shank in what looked like a glimmering fishnet, because the copycat effect had made his leggings see-through, too.

I wasn’t sure that he’d thought that part out too well. What if a lady was wearing a gown made of that fabric, and passed a guy with no shirt on? What if a guy was wearing it, and got too close to a woman in a bikini? The questions were endless, unlike my patience.

“I know it’s not a toy,” I said, my smile never wavering. “That’s why I need it.”

“What you need is a better glamourie,” he said, turning me toward a mirror.

And damn it all!

“I’ve had two,” I said, peering at my cheerfully glowing eyes. “Nothing sticks.”

“This will.” I looked away as he turned to grab something from a shelf, not wanting to see how far up the fishnet effect went, and when I looked back, he was holding out a little pot. It looked like it contained clear hair gel, but felt like nothing at all under my fingertips.

I rubbed them together and took a sniff.

It didn’t smell like anything, either, even to vampire senses.

“It’s fey,” he told me. “Adjusted, of course.”

“I thought fey glamouries always smelled like flowers,” I said doubtfully.

“Normally. Or fish entrails, as they contain the same extract. But flowers are typically preferred.”

“I wonder why.”