Margaret’s pain was too private to watch, so I looked up at the hotel.
In downtown Seattle, the Marcus Whitman Hotel wouldn’t stand out, but in Walla Walla, it was about a hundred feet taller than anything else around it. From the bones of the original structure, it had been built in the late nineteen twenties. Several colors of brick and the very modern entrance evidenced more than one renovation over the years.
“All right,” Margaret said, her voice a little husky from pain. “There are supposed to be three Gray Lords meeting with me, and I’m allowed to bring my people with me. I had intended it to be just Thomas, but they allowed me six. With your permission, I’m going to give you, Adam and Mercy, a little glamour, nothing fancy—just something that will help them dismiss you as thugs numbers one and two. If you do something to draw attention, the glamour won’t hold.” She looked at Zee. “You, I expect, can do your own and be thug number three.” She turned back to Adam and me. “It won’t hold if they really look at you, but it should give us the element of surprise. And any advantage is to your favor—they’ll respect you for it.”
“Fine,” said Adam. I nodded.
Her magic settled over me like a cool mist. Sometimes magic doesn’t stick to me, but this time it seemed to.
“Thomas?” I asked.
“He doesn’t need it,” she said. “He can do it without magic. When he doesn’t want people to notice him, they just don’t.”
I rubbed my pleasantly tingling skin, and said, “You’re just going in to tell them ‘no,’ right? Which you could do with just Thomas. The glamour is to help us?”
She smiled. “It’s fun. I don’t like them. Don’t like the games they are playing. I’m happy to help. Now hush, someone could be listening.”
“Probably not,” I said. “I would smell anyone close enough to listen.”
Thomas looked at me as though I were interesting. “Better than a werewolf?”
“For fae and magic, yes,” I told him. “To be fair, there is a lot of ambient noise right now. Someone would have to be very close to overhear us.” I didn’t tell them that fae glamour might be awesomely powerful, but it seldom worked on scent. Let them think I was special.
We walked into the hotel, following Margaret. She didn’t travel fast, but no one evinced even the slightest impatience. Adam took the left-rear position. I don’t know if he did it for the reasons he’d told me in the car, or if that was just where he happened to be. Zee took the right rear. Thomas walked in front of Adam, and I took the leftover spot next to Thomas.
Inside, the lobby was overflowing with beige tuxes and unflattering teal gowns. They were most densely clustered near the bride, recognizable as such by her thirties-style off-white lace gown. She was patting the back of a middle-aged woman in a bright green sparkly suit who was sobbing on the bride’s shoulder. The whole lobby was trying not to watch—and so no one noticed us at all.
As if she’d been in the hotel a hundred times, Margaret headed for one of the banks of elevators. We waited in silence for the doors to slide open. When they did, we stepped inside—it was a tight squeeze. The elevators weren’t built for a fairy princess and her guards. Fortunately, it was a fast elevator, and we got off on the second floor. Margaret headed down the hallway, and we spread out behind her like a wedding train.
She passed a couple of doors on her left before opening the door on her right, discreetly marked WALLA WALLA. She waited while we flowed around her to precede her into the room. There was a conference table and someone, maybe the hotel, had put bright bouquets of carnations in shades of red on either end of the long table. Five people were already seated on the side of the table that faced the entry door, two more stood against the far wall in parade rest. All of the fae were wearing their human glamour.