A white stretch limo pulled up to get us, and I managed to dodder out to it without falling all over myself.
“Oh my God,” Andi said when we got in. The redhead stuck her feet out and wiggled them. “I love these shoes! If I have to wolf out and eat somebody’s face, I am going to cry to leave these behind.”
Justine smiled at her but then looked out the window, her lovely face distant, worried. “They’re just shoes.”
“Shoes that make my legs and my butt look awesome!” Andi said.
“Shoes that hurt,” I said. My wounded leg might have healed up, but moving around in these spiky torture devices was a new motion, and a steady ache was spreading up through my leg toward my hip. The last thing I needed was for my leg to cramp up and drop me to the ground, the way it had kept doing when I first started walking on it again. Any shoes with heels that high should come with their own safety net. Or a parachute.
We’d gone with similar outfits: stylish little black dresses, black chokers, and black pumps that proclaimed us hopeful that we wouldn’t spend much time on our feet. Each of us had a little Italian leather clutch, too. I’d put most of my magical gear in mine. All of us had our hair up in styles that varied only slightly. There were forged Renaissance paintings which had not had as much artist’s attention as our faces.
“It just takes practice wearing them,” Justine said. “Are you sure this is going to work?”
“Of course it is,” I said calmly. “You’ve been to clubs, Justine. The three of us together would skip the line to any place in town. We’re a matched set of hotness.”
“Like the Robert Palmer girls,” Andi said drily.
“I was going to go with Charlie’s Angels,” I said. “Oh, speaking of”—I opened the clutch and drew out a quartz crystal the size of my thumb—“Bosley, can you hear me?”
A second later, the crystal vibrated in my fingers and we heard Waldo’s faint voice coming from it. “Loud and clear, Angels. You think these will work once you get inside?”
“Depends on how paranoid they are,” I said. “If they’re paranoid, they’ll have defenses in place to cut off any magical communications. If they’re murderously paranoid, they’ll have defenses in place that let us talk so that they can listen in, and then they’ll kill us.”
“Fun,” Butters said. “Okay, I’ve got the Paranet chat room up. For what it’s worth, the hivemind is online.”
“What have you found out?” Andi asked.
“They’ll look human,” Waldo replied. “Their real forms are … well, there’s some discussion, but the basic consensus is that they look like aliens.”
“Ripley or Roswell?” I asked.
“Roswell. More or less. They can wear flesh forms, though, kind of like the Red Court vampires did. So be aware that they’ll be disguised.”
“Got it,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Not much,” he said. “There’s just too much lore floating around to pick out anything for sure. They might be allergic to salt. They might be supernaturally OCD and flip out if you wear your clothes inside out. They might turn to stone in sunlight.”
I growled. “It was worth a shot. Okay. Keep the discussion going, and I’ll get back to you if I can.”
“Got it,” he said. “Marci just got here. I’ll bring the laptop with me and we’ll be waiting for you on the east side of the building when you’re ready to go. How do you look, Andi-licious?”
“Fabulous,” Andi said confidently. “The hemlines on these dresses stop about an inch short of slutty nymphomaniac.”
“Someone take a picture,” he said cheerfully, but I could hear the worry in his voice. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Don’t take any chances,” I said. “See you soon.”
I put the crystal away and tried to ignore the butterflies in my stomach.
“This isn’t going to work,” Justine murmured.
“It is going to work,” I told her, keeping my tone confident. “We’ll breeze right in. The Rack will be with us.”
Justine glanced at me with an arched eyebrow. “The Rack?”
“The Rack is more than just boobs, Justine,” I told her soberly. “It’s an energy field created by all living boobs. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.”
Andi started giggling. “You’re insane.”
“But functionally so,” I said, and adjusted myself to round out a little better. “Just let go your conscious self and act on instinct.”
Justine stared blankly at me for a second. Then her face lightened and she let out a little laugh. “The Rack will be with us?”
I couldn’t stop myself from cracking a smile. “Always.”
The limo joined a line of similar vehicles dropping people off at the entrance to the svartalf stronghold. A valet opened our door, and I swung my legs out and tried to leave the car without flashing everyone in sight. Andi and Justine followed me out, and I started walking confidently toward the entrance with the other two flanking me. Our heels clicked in near unison, and I suddenly felt every eye in sight swivel toward us. A cloud of thought and emotion rolled out in response to our presence—pleasure, mostly, along with a mixed slurry of desire, outright lust, jealousy, anxiety, and surprise. It hurt to feel all of that scraping against the inside of my head, but it was necessary. I didn’t sense any outright hostility or imminent violence, and the instant of warning I might get between sensing an attacker’s intention and the moment of attack might save our lives.
A security guard at the door watched us intently as we approached, and I could feel the uncomplicated sexual attraction churning through him. He kept it off his face and out of his voice and body, though. “Good evening, ladies,” he said. “May I see your invitations?”
I arched an eyebrow at him, gave him what I hoped was a seductive smile, and tried to arch my back a little more. Deploying the Rack had worked before. “You don’t need to see our invitation.”
“Um,” he said. “Miss … I kind of do.”
Andi stepped up beside me and gave him a sex-kitten smile that made me hate her a little, just for a second. “No you don’t.”
“Uh,” he said, “yeah. Still do.”
Justine stepped up on my other side. She looked more sweet than sexy, but only barely. “I’m sure it was just an oversight, sir. Couldn’t you ask your supervisor if we might come to the reception?”
He stared at us for a long moment, clearly hesitant. Then one hand slowly went to the radio at his side and he lifted it to his mouth. A moment later a slight, small man in a silk suit appeared from inside the building. He took a long look at us.
The interest I’d felt from the guard was fairly normal. It had just been a spark, the instinct-level response of any male to a desirable female.
What came off of the new guy was … it was more like a road flare. It burned a thousand times hotter and brighter, and it kept on burning. I’d sensed lust and desire in others before. This went so much deeper and wider than mere lust that I didn’t think there was a word for it. It was … a vast and inhuman yearning, blended with a fierce and jealous love, and seasoned with sexual attraction and desire. It was like standing near a tiny sun, and I suddenly understood exactly what Auntie Lea had been trying to tell me.
Fire is hot. Water is wet. And svartalves are suckers for pretty girls. They could no