“Did you want to get dressed?” She cut her eyes purposefully to my pajamas.
I glanced down. The camisole was thin, and between the fact that we’d turned the thermostat in the typically empty house way down and that the front door had let in quite a bit of the chilly air, it was obvious I was cold. The problem was, there were no clothes in this apartment anymore.
I hugged my arms across my chest but shrugged. “I could meet you in my office when we open at nine.”
“If I wanted to wait that long, I wouldn’t have shown up at your door at the ass crack of dawn,” she said, scowling at me.
Great.
“Are you arresting me?” Because if that was the case, this was really going to suck as I didn’t even have a jacket in the apartment anymore—an issue I probably needed to fix. But if she planned to arrest me, I didn’t think she’d be nice enough to offer me a chance to dress first. Besides, this awkward intrusion seemed a little too informal for an arrest.
“Not yet,” she said, to my limited relief. “But go get dressed. I can see that you’re not wearing anything under that. I really don’t need to know that much about you, Craft.” She turned to Falin. “And it wouldn’t be amiss if you were not standing around like some Greek marble statue.”
One edge of his mouth twitched into the smallest amused smile, but he strolled across the room, toward my dresser. Crap, what was he thinking? I started to jump to my feet but then faltered. What was I supposed to do, yell that he couldn’t open that drawer? That would draw even more attention. Maybe I could claim all my clothes were in the wash? Except that would be a lie and I wouldn’t be able to utter the words.
Falin pulled open the top drawer, appeared to fumble with something, and then dragged out a small stack of clothing. I tried not to gape. Those drawers were empty. I’d emptied them myself.
Which meant the stack of clothes in his hands, which appeared to be a shirt for him and an outfit that looked a hell of a lot like one of mine, had to be pure glamour.
He turned to me, a mischievous smile touching his lips, and held out his hand to help me off the bed. I took it dumbly, not sure what else to do. Falin was good at personal glamours, but he wasn’t great at making lasting objects without some similar raw material to work with, and there had been literally nothing in that drawer. There was no chance I’d be able to accept that pile of clothes, go to another room, and put them on. Still, I let him pull me to my feet.
He waved a hand toward my small bathroom on the other side of my kitchenette. “After you,” he said with another smile.
I frowned at him but headed in that direction, Falin on my heels.
Briar rolled her eyes. “I’m regretting this already. Hurry up, I don’t have all morning.”
Before the bathroom door fully closed behind us, I channeled raw magic from my ring into a small privacy charm on my bracelet. A soundproof privacy bubble sprang up around me. I’d crafted the charm myself, so the bubble of privacy was small. Really small. As in for both Falin and me to be fully covered by it, we had to be close enough that if I took too large a breath, our chests would touch, but the spell itself inside that small area was solid.
“What are you thinking?” I whispered in a hiss of breath. Whispering wasn’t necessary inside the spell, but it seemed prudent.
Falin shrugged. His hands were empty now, the stack of glamoured clothing having vanished as soon as the door had closed. “I was thinking that cooperating over little things would look better for you. Unless you want to explain to the OMIH and MCIB how your own private space unfolded for you with a Faerie castle inside.”
Yeah, that wasn’t high on my to-do list. I was still attempting to pass for human as much as I could.
“What I forgot to take into account is how close it is to dawn,” he said, looking up as if he could see the rising sun through the ceiling.
I followed his gaze, frowning. “Glamours break at dawn, right? But the exact moment has passed. Faerie magic should be flooding back into the world by now.”
His brow creased and he studied my face as if searching for some kind of recognition I clearly wasn’t giving.
“What?” I hissed.
“You still can’t feel the ebb and flow of Faerie magic, can you?”
I didn’t answer, and that must have been answer enough, because his lips compressed into a tight line. I’d spent most of my life with my fae nature sealed away by a spell my father had put on me before I was even born. The seal had been crumbling since the Blood Moon months ago, and had theoretically been fully ripped away the night of the Fall Equinox, but there were still several parts of my newly discovered nature that weren’t working for me. Glamour for one. And apparently, sensing ambient Faerie magics.
“I wouldn’t exactly say it rushes back into the world,” Falin said, and shook his head. “If I weave a glamour now, it will be relatively weak. I’ll have to reinforce it later.”
“Do it. We’ve been in here too long already.”
He nodded and his hands lifted to my waist. An electric zing shot through me that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with Falin touching me. A tinge of guilt met the response in equal portions. I glanced away, trying not to let it show on my face, but surely the way my skin seemed to tighten gave me away.
If he noticed, he was good enough not to show it. Instead he knelt, trailing his hands over my hips. It was oddly businesslike and intimate at the same time. And it was really, really awkward. As his hands moved, my silk shorts darkened and lengthened. His hands glided down to my knees and then over my calves, and as he moved, buttery soft black leather crawled down my legs until I was wearing a pair of pants nicer than anything I actually owned.
He stood and lifted the bottom hem of my cami, rubbing the material between his fingers as if testing what it was made of. Then he placed his hands on my shoulders and trailed them slowly down my arms. The thin straps of the camisole seemed to swell, becoming thicker, growing to follow his fingers but also rippling down the shirt until I wasn’t wearing a camisole but a purple V-neck sweater. I turned and looked in the mirror. It was similar to a sweater I wore often, but like the pants, it was softer and better-quality than anything I owned. The outfit fit better too, hugging every curve as if it had been painted on, which, in a way, it had.
“Nice,” I said, fingering the sleeve of the sweater. It was so soft, it had to be some sort of cashmere blend.
By the time I turned back around, Falin had on what appeared to be his typical oxford button-up. He had shoes too. Which was a very good idea.