Teo stopped short, looking as surprised as I felt. “This is my new partner,” he said. “Millie.”
“Lisa is still dead?” the fey said sadly.
“Yes.”
She stabbed a manicured finger at me. “It’s half metal.”
“I’m just a regular person,” I reassured her awkwardly. “I got hurt really badly, and they had to, uh, repair me with metal bits.”
“Like, surgery?” said Foxfeather, her suspicion turning to fascination as quickly as the lamp over the bar shifted from pink to periwinkle.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding like a bobblehead doll. “Lots and lots of surgery. Well, the legs weren’t surgically attached; they can come off. But some of my bones needed to be held together with—”
“What do you need, Teo?” Foxfeather had already lost interest in me. “Is it another inspection?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder; even the mundane facade was enough to make me rotten with jealousy.
“No, nothing like that.” Teo didn’t seem in the least distracted by the lightly freckled cleavage on display. Yup, definitely gay. “We were just wondering if you’d seen Viscount Rivenholt recently.”
“Yeah,” said Foxfeather. She then wandered off to the other end of the bar and pulled a slim knife from her pocket, absently digging its point into the wood.
“Milady,” said Teo in the patient tone people use with small children. He moved around to the end of the bar so he was -facing her again. “How recently, would you say?”
I followed and saw that Foxfeather was adding details to an impressive rendition of a goat-legged man. It was captivating—something I might have expected to see in a museum—and she was just carving it right into the bar. “I don’t know,” she said, intent on her work.
Teo gave me an I hate fairies look.
“I love that,” I said, pointing to her art. “Is that a satyr?”
“I don’t know what it’s called,” she said with a vague smile. “I can’t keep all the commoners straight. They’re not allowed in here. But they have such interesting faces, don’t they?”
“What about Rivenholt?” I ventured. “Does he have an interesting face?”
For a moment Foxfeather looked scandalized, and I was afraid I’d made some unforgivable fey faux pas. But then she giggled. “I’m only a baroness,” she said. “He’s a viscount.”
“I didn’t ask if you were dating him; I just wondered if you thought he was handsome. He seems very handsome to me.”
She giggled again nervously. “I like his facade better than his real face,” she said. “But I think I’m just starting to like the way humans look.”
“You look really pretty both ways,” I said.
“Thanks!” she said. “Hey, why don’t you have a facade? You don’t have to look like that.”
Teo opened his mouth as though to intervene, but I put up a hand. Gloria had said damn near the same that morning, and with less excuse. “I don’t know much about facades,” I said. “You’re actually the first fey I’ve talked to.”
“Ohmigod!” she squealed.
Several of the other patrons turned to see what had her so excited. They all seemed to find me offensive at first sight, as she had.
“We have a dry-eye in the bar!” Foxfeather shouted.
Whatever a dry-eye was, it seemed exciting enough to overcome the patrons’ disgust. Some of them rose from their seats and approached; the rest went back to their drinks. I glanced at Teo; he looked uneasy but not panicked, so I tried to calm my suddenly racing heart as the curious fey closed in.
One of the interested patrons, a tanned hunk of beefcake, flexed a bicep at me and then turned abruptly into a lemon tree. I started, nearly knocking over the bar stool I’d been leaning on and setting off a chorus of giddy laughter.
“Now you’ve done it,” said Teo. “They’ll never leave you alone.”
“Rivenholt,” I stammered at them. “Do any of you know Rivenholt?”
“Rivenholt,” said a slender brown man in a three-piece suit, using my exact voice and inflection. “Do any of you know Rivenholt?”
“You smell horrible,” said a brunette who had sidled up next to me. “You stink of death.” She reached out to do something to me, change my scent perhaps, but the moment her hand touched me, her facade dropped.
It was only for a second—a flash of autumn wings and blowtorch hair. The moment she let go of me she looked like a leggy brunette again.
“What the hell?” she and I said simultaneously.
“She has iron inside of her,” Foxfeather supplied helpfully, leaning forward on the bar behind us.
Teo blinked at me. “What is she talking about? The leg?”
“I have a steel plate in my head,” I said slowly. “Also various nails and pins and things holding my bones together.”