Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

The younger one smiled, all the way to his eyes. I couldn’t even hear what Galen was saying, but I didn’t need to. He’d understood what Rhys had wanted him to do. With Galen’s pleasant magic easing the way, we got the policemen their guns, and they left, happy with the nightflyers still hanging like bats from the ceiling, and the tentacles still writhing in the window like some sort of really good 3-D. Though Sholto letting go of Gran had been the thing that had made the older cop succumb to Galen’s charm. I think if the older cop had continued to see anyone in danger, he wouldn’t have been so easily won over.
    Oh, and Sholto had put his tentacles away. Once he would have had to use glamour to hide them, but they would have still been there. He’d been able to hide them, even if you were touching his chest and stomach. They had felt smooth and perfect. Strong glamour, that. But when the wild magic escaped, or was called into being by Sholto and myself, he had gained a new ability. His tentacles could look like a very realistic tattoo, and it
was
a tattoo, but with a thought he could make it tentacles again. It was similar to the tattoos on Galen and myself that looked like a butterfly and a moth, respectively. I’d been grateful when they stopped being alive, but trapped in our skin. It had felt very wrong.
    Several of the men had tattoos, and some of them could become real. Real vines to twine down the body. None were as real as Sholto’s mark, but then it was the only mark that had begun life as part of his own body.
    Galen’s winning personality didn’t work if the person was too afraid, or was looking directly at something too frightening, so Sholto smoothed his extra bits back into the delicate tattoo. Galen’s was a mild magic by our terms, but it was very, very useful in situations where the more spectacular powers were useless.
    At Rhys’s suggestion Galen turned to the doctor next, and it worked even better with her, but then she was a woman and he was charming. She might get to another patient or two before she finally realized that she hadn’t said everything she’d wanted to say, but by then, she might be too embarrassed to admit that a nice smile had made her forget so much. One of the real benefits of subtle magic was that most humans assumed that it wasn’t magic, but just how handsome the man was, and what doctor wants to admit that they can be befuddled so easily by a pretty face?
    When we were alone again, just us, we all turned to Gran. I asked the question. “You said you knew who did the spell? Who?”
    Gran looked at the floor, as if she were embarrassed. “Your cousin, Cair, she comes to visit now and then. She is me granddaughter.” She said the last in a defensive tone.
    “I know that you have more than one grandchild, Gran.”
    “None so dear to me as you, Merry.”
    “I’m not jealous, Gran. Just tell us what happened.”
    “She was very affectionate, touched me several times, stroked me hair, said how lovely it was. She joked that she was glad she got something lovely out of the family genetics.”
    My cousin, Cair, was tall, slender, and very sidhe of body, but her face was like Gran’s, very brownie, noseless, and with all her smooth pale sidhe skin, her face looked unfinished. There were human surgeons who could have given her a nose for real, but she was like most sidhe. She didn’t have much faith in human science.
    “Did she know you were going to visit me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why would she wish me harm?”
    “Perhaps it is not you she wished to harm,” Doyle said.
    “What do you mean?” I asked.
    “I would nae have harmed ye on purpose, but these two,” and she jabbed her thumb back at Sholto, and forward to Doyle, “I would happily have killed these two.”
    “Do you still feel that way?” I asked, voice soft.
    She had to think about it, but finally she said, “No, not kill. You have the King of the sluagh as your man, and the Darkness; they are