Mark Del Franco - Face Off

Laura pulled the folder closer and flipped it open. “I won’t be in tomorrow, but text me if you need anything.”

“No problem.” Laura picked up a slight pause before the reply. Saffin was the only person outside InterSec who knew about Laura’s double life. She had figured it out on her own years ago. That she kept it to herself—not even discussing it with Laura until recent events exposed her knowledge—assured Laura that she could rely on Saffin to keep it a secret. From experience, she had no doubt that Saffin would have no problem running the office without her.

Saffin picked up the papers in the desk out-box. “I’m going for a mani and a pedi. Be back in an hour.”

“Should you be telling me you’re running personal errands on company time?” Laura said.

Saffin grinned as she walked out the door. “It’s for the reception. That makes it work-related and a tax write-off. Is this a groovy country or isn’t it?”

Laura chuckled. If there was one thing she could count on, it was Saffin Corrill not missing a detail. She spent a few minutes reviewing the folders and making notes. She checked her watch. She wanted to be gone before Saffin returned because she wasn’t, in reality, going to be gone. Despite Saffin’s knowing about her InterSec life, she didn’t want to become nonchalant about it.

She retrieved her handbag from under the desk and opened the closet door behind her. Pushing aside the coat and spare outfits, a warding spell keyed to Laura’s body signature made the back of the closet appear to be solid. Laura stepped through the wall and disappeared from her office.

ON THE OPPOSITEside of the closet from her office, Laura dropped her bag on the bed of her private room. A work space occupied one wall. Ranks of storage boxes lined the surfaces of two tables. Jewelry-making tools were scattered over the work spaces, everything she needed to make a glamour. Over the years, the wall above the tables had become covered with photographs—some of herself under glamour, some as reference for creating new ones. Her unmade bed filled most of the room, the remaining space crammed with a bewildering array of outfits, hats, and footwear. Throughout the city, various apartments held the clothes only for individual personas—like the nearby corporate suite for Mariel Tate or her condo in Alexandria.

The hidden room, though, was a refuge. No one else entered. Terryn had arranged for the office behind her own to “disappear” from the building’s floor plan. The only other person who knew about it was Cress, and that was on the off chance Laura had an emergency. Not even Saffin knew, or at least Laura thought she didn’t. But Saffin always surprised her with the things she picked up on.

Laura slipped into the chair at the worktable and opened a drawer in a small storage container. A collection of rubies shifted against each other, some polished enough to catch the light with a deep red wink, some dulled by long disuse. The storage container held dozens of gems, mostly rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. They worked well for persona templates and were common enough gemstones that they didn’t attract curiosity when she wore them. The dollar value of the collection was not something she thought about. InterSec had paid for some, but others, like the emerald for Mariel Tate, were her own. As with most fey, money became less of an issue as time went on.

She trailed her finger through the pile of rubies, pushing most to the back of the drawer before deciding on a quarter-carat stone. She dropped it on the tabletop, then retrieved it with tweezers to examine it through a jeweler’s loupe. Minor blemishing marked the stone, and the soft shapes of trapped air bubbles marred it here and there. She recognized the patterning from having used the stone years ago. She liked it, not too flawed and small enough in size not to raise eyebrows if someone noticed it. The advantage of her skill was that she did not always need large stones to make realistic glamours but stones that enhanced what she intended.

From another drawer, she sorted through empty pendant bezels. Resetting the stone in the same bezel it had been in once before would save time. Pleased at her luck, she found the piece and placed it next to the ruby on the table. Lowering the ruby into the bezel, she used her stone pliers to crimp the prongs into place little by little, turning the setting with each pass. Retrieving the loupe, she examined the gem again, checking for any gaps. She gave a prong another firm press for good measure, then threaded the bezel onto a thin gold chain. Sliding her hands beneath her hair, she clasped the necklace around her neck.

From a small plastic envelope, she retrieved a few strands of wheat blond hair. Cress had collected them from Fallon Moor’s cell while Laura had been interrogating her. Holding them up to the light, she coiled the strands around her fingers. She pictured Fallon Moor as she scanned the hair for the faint traces of her body signature.

Everyone and everything generated essence. Body signatures were unique to individuals, with an underlying resonance of their species type. Brownies—like Saffin or Moor—were Celtic fey, who moved in and out of stories like far-flung cousins stopping by for a visit. No one disliked brownies in particular. They weren’t powerful like the Danann or Inverni fairies. They didn’t have ancient political rivalries with other species. They had little interest in politics and less patience for class distinctions. What they were, thought Laura, were brilliant organizers with a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder who had no patience with sloth. When brownies became interested in something, they absorbed everything they could about the subject.

She found the hint of Moor’s signature, too subtle for most druids to trace. With practiced skill, she infused a mental image of the brownie’s face with her own essence, bound it to Moor’s body signature, and pushed the result into the ruby. The essence bonded to the structure of the stone, forming a template to build an entire persona upon. In the mirror over the worktable, Laura’s reflection shimmered and settled into a rudimentary version of Moor. Her skin tone darkened to a warm fawn color, hair shifted to a warm blond, and her features flattened. With the framework in place, she turned to the real work of building the glamour.

The first order of business was the eyes. Laura’s natural green eyes blazed against the dark skin, but with a few nudges in the essence pattern, the color darkened to a hazelnut with a touch of red. She rounded her cheekbones and chin, turned the nose up a bit, and pushed the eyebrows higher on her forehead. The process worked liked sculpting, refining the essence here and there to bring out a natural form that would fool the sharpest eye. With a slight dampening, she softened her voice. Moor wasn’t a loud talker. With the image complete, she added the final touch—dropping almost a foot off her frame. Watching the effect amused her, as if she were a character in some child’s story caught in a spell. She leaned back and appraised the result. For all intents and purposes, Fallon Moor, a moderately attractive brownie, looked back at her.

The time she spent creating a glamour always surprised her. Hours flew like minutes while she threw herself into the process, focused on producing the perfect image. She took a break with some fruit juice, staring at the reflection with a critical eye. She liked the Moor image—self-assured without being aggressive, competent without being arrogant. Thinner than her usual preferences, but most brownies were. With a few tweaks to disguise the original source, she thought she might be able to use this particular glamour again.