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“Oh, no. That might get you a bit of a reputation, as it were.”
“And we wouldn’t want that.”
There was some sort of commotion going on outside, and I decided I’d had enough. I went to the door and stuck my head out. Marco was gasping for breath on the sofa, and two of the other guards were bent over a cell phone.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Trying to record this,” the smart-ass from the shopping trip told me. “Nobody is going to believe us otherwise.”
“Well, cut it out. It isn’t funny!”
“On what planet?”
I glared at him, which did no good, because he simply went back to tinkering with the phone. So I looked at Marco. “Can’t you do anything with them?”
Marco flopped a hand at me, tears streaming down his reddened cheeks, and tried to say something. But all that came out for several moments were asthmatic wheezes. I bent over his prone form, starting to worry about him, and he put a hand on my neck and pulled me down.
“It . . . is . . . funny,” he gasped.
I stood back up and smacked him on his rocklike shoulder. “Bastard.”
Jonas was coming out of the lounge when I turned around, dragging Niall by the arm. “Now, now,” he told the younger mage. “Don’t fuss.”
“We have ten days, Jonas,” he said. “When I frankly doubt that ten months would be enough! She looks about twelve, except for the, uh . . .” he gestured up and down at my offensive curves. “Her clothes are wrong, her makeup is wrong—”
“Those are bruises!” I told him indignantly.
“And her hair is . . .” He bent closer, squinting at it in the lights. “Why is your hair green?”
“It’s a fashion statement.”
“It’s hideous. And even if it weren’t . . . tinted . . . or whatever you did to it, it still wouldn’t do. We haven’t had a blond Pythia before; it’s simply not what people expect to see. And, frankly, it doesn’t suit you.”
“It’s my natural color!”
“Then it’s naturally hideous. And this”—he tugged at my curls—“will have to go.”
“If you touch me one more time—” I said softly.
“I’ll make you an appointment with a hairdresser who understands that we need suave. We need sophisticated. We need—well, someone else, obviously, but—”
“Niall. I really think that will do for today,” Jonas said, watching my face.
“And what is this?” He took the fine, starched handkerchief out of his pocket and used it to fish Pritkin’s amulet from my shirt. “And if all that weren’t enough, she smells!”
“Let it go,” I told him, my voice low and even.
“I’ll let it go,” he told me grimly, ripping it off my neck. “Straight into the nearest trash bin, along with whatever other hippie-dippie nonsense you—”
“Oh, dear,” Jonas said.
I blinked, staring at the spot where the officious mage had just been. Because he wasn’t there any longer. “Damn,” one of the vamps said.
&n
bsp; “What happened?” I asked, feeling myself start to panic. Because the mage wasn’t anywhere in sight.
“Well, on the bright side, we weren’t scheduled to cover that for another month,” Jonas said. “We’re making fine progress, it would seem.”
