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I smiled cheerily at the shocked faces looking down at us from a raised platform that curved along the far end of the huge, circular room. Eleven people, all from different countries, sat along the polished, dark wood table. They were each dressed impeccably in suits, the women with no-nonsense buns. I wasn't sure, but it looked to me like most of them were exhausted under their severe exteriors.
As for me, I was in my best hot-pink shirtdress with a big black belt, matching black boots (worth the pain), and sparkly silver tights. I wasn't going for subtlety.
"What are you doing here?" Anne-Whatever Whatever asked from her spot in the center of the table, her jaw nearly unhinged in shock as the door slid closed behind Reth and me. I kept my hand tucked in Reth's elbow; in this lion's den, Reth was a bit like a security blanket. A crazy, magical security blanket who would probably hurt me again soon but for now would definitely hurt these people if they tried to hurt me.
There was a lot of hurt potential, really.
"I'm here to represent the defendant," I said.
Anne recovered quickly. She pulled out her communicator and typed something into it, smiling smugly at me. But then she looked down at her communicator and her smile turned into a frown. She pushed the buttons again; nothing.
"The communications system is down," she snapped, glaring at a vampire standing in the corner. He had a typically handsome glamour, dark hair and nearly black eyes, but both his faces-the glamoured one and the corpse one underneath-looked confused.
"I don't know-" he started, but she cut him off with another glare.
"Fix it. "
He pulled out his own communicator and started tapping furiously. I so owed Arianna, that undead little genius.
"Shouldn't we get down to business?" I asked. For the first time I let myself look over to the side, where Raquel was sitting on a simple, hard chair. She didn't have a massive desk to hide her, and seemed shockingly small there all by herself. Her suit was rumpled and some hair had escaped her perpetual bun. She met my eyes and looked impossibly sad. I wanted to hug her, but I had to wait.
"Evie, please," she said. "Leave. "
"By all means, stay," Anne said. "Have a seat. We'll take care of you next. "
"Yeah, see, I think someone else is going to be on trial next. " Baring my teeth at her in a grin I pulled out my file folder. "I've got some interesting reading here. And I even brought copies for everyone so you don't have to share. "
A distinguished-looking South African man on the end shook his head. "What is this? Another farce?"
"No, but bonus points for using a funny word. You really want to read what I have here. Anne, you'll be especially interested, since you have a starring role. "
"Enough. Rhia-"
Reth quickly flicked his wrist at her; her mouth kept moving, but no sound came out. It was one of the most satisfying things I'd ever seen. Sure, that trick had sucked when he used it on me, but I wholly approved of it now.
"Whoops. I forgot to mention these are now closed proceedings. There will be no summoning of faeries, or my faerie friend will make sure it's the last thing you ever say. " I walked forward, setting one of the photocopied sheets in front of each Supervisor. Several of them glared at me, but a few actually looked interested. One, a Chinese woman named Hong Li who had a bad habit of patting my head whenever we met at holiday parties even after I grew taller than her, actually looked amused.
Maybe not everyone here hated me, after all.
"Now, as you'll see, the top sheet is a detailed record of everything that Raquel has discovered about Anne's extracurricular activities. " I stepped back and watched, holding my breath. This was the critical part. Either this was going to blow the top off Anne's operations, or the rest of them were already in on it and I was going to have to figure out a new tactic, stat.
Hong Li skimmed the paper, then sat up straighter, putting on reading glasses and scanning it again. She looked up at me. "What proof do you have?"
"The evidence Raquel has gathered, which includes names-dozens of names-of missing people that have been filtered through IPCA, and my personal eyewitness account of Anne talking and making deals with an unnamed faerie of the Unseelie Court. "
Anne slammed her fist down onto the table, still mouthing words furiously.
Hong Li looked back at me. "Evie, you have a history of lying and misleading this organization. How can we trust you now?"
I stared at her, willing her to see my earnestness. "Because I have no interest in any of this. If I wanted to disappear, I could have. If I wanted to burst in here and break Raquel out, I could have done that, too. But I thought it was more important that you all understand exactly what Anne is doing, and just what it means for the rest of the world if she's successful. She's using you-everyone, the entirety of IPCA-for her own ends. And surely things haven't changed so much since I left that you've all forgotten why IPCA is here in the first place: to make the world safer. Not to help evil faeries, not to conspire with governments, and not to imprison and punish a woman who's done nothing but try to fulfill the Charter to the best of her ability. "
Hong Li turned to look at the other S
upervisors. Several looked outraged, still reading the sheets. One, a woman with a shock of curly red hair, looked terrified, all the blood draining from her face. And a couple of them looked entirely impassive.
"Let Anne-Laurie speak," Hong Li said to Reth.
I turned to him, noting the slightly murderous expression on his face that flitted there after she gave him a command, and squeezed his arm. "Go ahead. "
