Page 98 of Changeling
Admittedly, Sasha had a little natural GQ going on, butthisguy? He had neat, impossibly blond hair and a trim build. He was average height but held himself tall. The suit was all black—black jacket, pants, and button down—with a blood red tie. He stood in the middle of the main room, leaning casually against the back of the sofa with a satisfied grin.
Nathan disliked him immediately, but he wasn’t afraid.
“My, my,” the man said, flicking pale blue eyes over Nathan’s form in the doorway, “you are rarely frightened, Nathan, and tonight you do not disappoint. You are quite unique, I can assure you.” He looked past Nathan at the others.
Jim and Sasha hadn’t moved.
“What’s with you guys?” Nathan hissed.
“Don’t be too hard on them,” the man called, getting Nathan to turn back to face him with a glare. “They simply sense something you cannot. And only because I am allowing them to. It’s often more prudent to stay under the radar, but sometimes…I find this so much more entertaining.” His smile was wicked and smug, entirely self-satisfied.
“Nathan…” called Jim’s voice from beside him, small and trembling.
“What? Will you snap out of it already,” Nathan nearly growled. “It’s just another—” but before he could say “sidhe,” the pale blue eyes of the man in the suit changed. They were slit, as Nathan expected, but the whites of his eyes were black, and the irises red.
Red on black.
“Nathan…”
Nathan felt his body begin to shake, but banished the inclination. Instead, he thought of Gambit from X-men, who had the same red on black eyes in the comics. He forced a chuckle. “Dude, really? I think Marvel might have some copyright issues with those.”
The bounty holder echoed Nathan’s laugh with a full-throated reply. “In that case…” he said, trailing purposefully.
The air seemed to ripple in front of him like a mirage, and before Nathan could blink, the sidhe had switched bodies. He was no longer a ‘he’. It was a woman now, eerily similar to the man but also very opposite. She was equally average in height and slight in build, wearing a classy black dress and heels. But her hair was red, as red as Sasha’s and curly past her shoulders. Her eyes were also different, because instead of red like the blond man, they were yellow. Yellow on black.
“Do you prefer…this?” she said, grinning in the same manner as the man, all pleased with herself and smug.
Jim still sat on the floor beside Nathan, with Sasha crouched behind them. He shook his head. “They…” he said like an afterthought, “because it’s…both.”
“Now, now,” the sidhe interrupted with a dainty hand raised into the air. “Not both, darling. Either/or. I just don’t see the point in limiting myself. There are benefits and good points to either gender.” She batted those awful yellow on black eyes at Nathan and her tongue darted out at her bottom lip. “You understand that quite well these days, don’t you, Nathan?” Sheglanced pointedly at Sasha. “Now, why don’t you three get up off the floor and come have a chat. I’m afraid the usual tricks James uses will be quite lost on me. Better if we talk this out like civilized men. Well…civilized people anyway,” she grinned.
Nathan only got up because Jim and Sasha did, but he didn’t like the idea of having a sit-down with the fae who owned his soul. They’d been so hopeful that Jim’s powers could control this…them. Clearly they were wrong.
“Err…” Jim coughed and discreetly averted his eyes from Nathan and Sasha. “You two do realize that you’re both a little, uhh…naked. Right?”
Crap.
Nathan promptly turned from the doorway and began searching for the nearest thing to cover himself with. Before he even really had time to look for something, Sasha thrust a pair of sweatpants at him. The incubus was already wearing sleep pants that he had seemingly pulled out of nowhere—or maybe just materialized with a glamour.
As Nathan briefly decided if it was worth it to grab a shirt, he looked down and saw that his bandages were gone, back on the bed somehow, and where there should have been the remains of his wounds were only the faintest scars. He rolled his shoulders; there was no pain. He touched a hand to his eyebrow and felt only the fine grooves of a thin scar through the hair, not the still slightly red and healing cut.
His scars were still scars—his mark, the divided circle on his palm—but his fresher wounds had healed and scared over too. Whatever time he had spent as an almost-incubus had healed him, but Nathan didn’t have time to think on that now.
“Look,princess,” he snarled at their uninvited guest, stepping out of the doorway finally to approach her. He kept his distance, but he wasn’t about to stay cowering with the others. “I don’t know what you did to my brother just now, but if you actuallywant to talk, then you better spit it out before we kick your gender-confused ass back through the Veil.”
“Oh?” she said without moving an inch, leaning back casually against the sofa. “And…how would you go about doing that? You’ll find no spell would be quite the right flavor for me. And James’s powers? Very nice for a beginner but he has a lot to learn before he even comes close to a fraction of what I can do, let alone being a challenge for me. Where do you think all that power comes from?” She looked at Jim who along with Sasha had slowly followed Nathan out of the room. “He was withmein the Veil for several months, after all. Who do you think taught him everything he can do? Why do you think his eyes turnamber?”
Nathan felt his resolve waver. Red and yellow equaled amber—a mark of this sidhe’s control.
She moved finally, smiling, all pleased with herself as she walked casually around the sofa. “I’m actually a very reasonable person you’ll find if you cooperate. For example, I could allow myself to be very angry right now with James for how he’s hunted me on your behalf…and yet, as you can see, I haven’t touched him. Well, not since you corrected that little mistake a few moments ago…Nathan.” She paused halfway around the sofa and glanced back with a wider smile. “I’d say that’s very hospitable of me, wouldn’t you?”
Realization clanged in Nathan’s head like a gong. She was still considering the deal Nathan had made with the Messenger legit—Jim for Nathan. And Nathan had been about to take himself off the table if he became an incubus, so she had taken it out on Jim. Only a human could become a Shadow Immortal. Nathan had never considered being initiated by Sasha to escape his fate. Now, knowing it was an option, it was already out of the question.
Before Nathan could think of anything in reply, Jim sprinted past him for the side table, grabbing up the gun that lay there, and aimed it at the sidhe. “Let Nathan go,” he demanded. His hands were steady, his aim perfect at her head, but he was panicking—he had to be.
They were out of their league and all of them knew it.
“Let him out of the contract!” Jim commanded more firmly. “Or I shoot.”
