C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

“There is too much iron in this world.” Aerin spoke through her teeth, a grimace pulling her striking features out of line. “The glamour is almost impossible to hold.”

Dafydd touched the small of her back, a small soothing gesture that had little visible effect. Lara made an apologetic face, but had to look away again: the glamours dancing in place around all of them jangled her nerves. Managing forward motion was enough of a task without trying to offer sympathy to an ill-tempered elf.

Of the four, only Kelly was clearly enjoying herself as they hurried through hospital corridors. Then again, of the four, she was the only one virtually undisguised. A costume shop had provided high-quality lab coats for all of them, and Kelly had found green hospital scrubs with a V-neck that displayed her considerable assets to good advantage. Half a week’s diet of ice cream and potato chips hadn’t visibly damaged her waistline and the shirt’s tucked-in waist emphasizer her curvaceous figure. The only glamour Dafydd had worked on her was transforming a driver’s license into a hospital ID, and the result was a soap opera–style nurse, all curves and quick smiles.

Lara, much more recognizable as a recent news-story kidnap victim, was hidden behind a glamour she couldn’t even see without making herself sick. A glimpse had suggested she was taller and more physically imposing than usual, with less delicacy in her heart-shaped face and drab lowlights in her blond hair. Dafydd swore the long white lab coat she wore made the illusion more effective and easier to maintain, and she only hoped the quick job would hold.

Aerin was almost as lightly glamoured as Kelly. She looked slightly more human than Ioan, but their fine bone structure and pointed ears were of a kind. A calculated risk, Dafydd called it, and swept into the secured corridor Ioan’s room was in as if he had every right to be there. Unlike any of the women, he’d added breadth to his own glamour, giving himself a far more intimidating air, though none of the suit-clad security looked even slightly intimidated.

“Doctor Aerin Cragen?” he said impatiently to one of the guards. “She’s flown all the way from—Don’t tell me the paperwork didn’t come through. If you could impress upon these gentlemen—?” He gestured to Lara, who stepped forward already hating what she had to do.

“The patient is from Ms. Cragen’s ethnic group, as I’m sure you can see. She’s come a long way to provide the help he needs. We must be allowed to see him.” Each statement was true enough. Aerin, sullenly, as though confessing something private, had allowed that her mother’s name was Cragen, and the closest thing she had to a last name was the matronym. Lara put strain into the words, making them impossible to disbelieve. It hurt her throat, hurt her skin to make truth heard, the task no easier than it had been in a human courtroom when it had been Dafydd’s freedom she was trying to achieve. It was easier by far in the Barrow-lands, so much more receptive to magic.

One of the guards, a tall man whose width of shoulder made him seem twice Lara’s size, removed his sunglasses to look first at her, then for a long time at Aerin, and finally back to Lara. “Sorry, miss. We can’t. Not without the appropriate paperwork.” He did, though, jerk his chin at Aerin to say, “I’ve never seen anybody who looks like you two. Where’re you from?”

Aerin looked without comprehension at Dafydd, who translated. Exasperation slid across Aerin’s face and she answered abruptly, cool expression locked on the guard. “An isolated area in Wales,” Dafydd said blithely.

Chills ran down Lara’s spine, not quite outraged protest at the lie, but not happy with the half-truth, either. The guard didn’t look any happier, an eyebrow cocked at Aerin. “I thought the Welsh spoke English.”

“I doubt your guest in there has spoken any,” Dafydd said. “This group has long since eschewed any but their native tongue. It’s a matter of cultural support and propagation.”

The guards exchanged looks again before the self-appointed spokesman sighed. “I can call it in for permission. It’s going to take a while. There’s a lot of paperwork to go through, and if you,” he pointed at Aerin, “weren’t obviously like him,” a thumb over the shoulder, indicating down the corridor, “I’d never bother trying. What kind of doctor are you, anyway? They’ve had the best brain surgeons in the country in there and they’re all afraid to even give it a shot because his physiology’s so bizarre.” He took out a phone, not waiting for an answer from Aerin, and after a few seconds said, “Yeah, we’ve got a doctor from the patient’s ethnic group down here, I thought you might want to come down and have a talk with her.”

Warning tones shot over Lara’s skin. She stepped forward and put out a hand, trying to imbue the gesture with some of Emyr’s imperious expectation. The guard snorted and she drew a sharp breath, driving it into sharper words: “You will give me the phone.”

Anger slid over the guard’s face as he handed her the phone, his own free will clearly countermanded by her order. Lara, trying not to tremble, kept her eyes on the guard. A truthseeker at the height of her power could say a thing and make it true. Determined, sick to her stomach, desperate, she said into the phone, “You will give permission to let us through to see the patient, and you will do it now.”

Hesitation came down the line, an inhalation that went nowhere. “Who is this?” a woman finally asked.

Lara clenched her fingers around the phone, headache spiking. Magic use could wear even the Seelie out, and humans were far less built for it than the elfin race was. For a painful moment she sympathized with Emyr, unable to work his magics smoothly with mortal interference in the area. Her own truthseeking was easier to manage if she wasn’t already hidden behind the veil of power that kept them all from easy recognition. “This is the only person who can keep your patient alive. I assume your interest in his autopsy is secondary to the possibility of speaking with him.”

“Perhaps,” the woman on the other end said cautiously. “We can learn a great deal from an autopsy.”

“I have no doubt that your patient’s return to health now would impinge upon a convenient autopsy later,” Lara said bitterly. “You will give us permission to see him.”

“Who is this?” the woman demanded again.

Lara shut her eyes briefly. “Someone who answers to a much higher power than you do. Now let us through.” She handed the phone back. The guard listened for a moment, nodded, nodded a second time, then stepped out of the way as he snapped the phone shut. Lara stalked by with a scant nod of thanks, aware that the others fell in line behind her. Not until they’d reached the safety of Ioan’s room and Dafydd had authoritatively ordered the nurses out did Lara sag against the wall, hands buried in her hair.

Sour music faded as Dafydd released the glamour hiding her true features. Despite Ioan’s prone form on the bed a few feet away, he crouched by Lara, a hand light on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“The only reason they let us through is because Aerin’s so much like Ioan. I could hear it in the guard’s voice, the way he said she was like him.” Lara’s voice felt rough, as if her magic had torn her throat up. “Believe me, Dafydd, they’re not letting us in, they’re trapping us. Or they’re trying to.”

“Well, we can get out of here, right?” Kelly demanded. “Except it’s just your guy here, not Reg. We’ve got to get him, too.”

“We have to sneak out,” Dafydd said cheerfully. Lara gave him a dire look from behind her arms, and he chuckled, though his humor faded away under the weight of her glare. “Even at my weakest I’ve been able to hold a glamour that makes us effectively invisible, Lara, and we rode out of plain sight on the Common not three hours ago. The task of getting Ioan out of this ward is hardly insurmountable.”