Without conscious thought, she retrieved the glass from the drainboard and had the vodka bottle in her hand. She stared at it, startled to see her own hand through the glass and clear fluid, as if someone else was holding this thing she had not meant to hold. She placed the bottle next to the empty glass on the counter.

Enough, she thought. The drink, the shower, the maid. She knew enough about her work and her life to know the dangers of the long, slow slide into a bottle. She had seen it happen time and again to others, but she wasn’t going to let it happen to her. Flipping through the bills again, she glanced at the bottle and decided to make one more drink after all. One more, then, one more than usual, and that would be it. Getting shot in the head and almost run off a bridge warranted a little leeway.

She took the glass to bed with her and turned on the television. The news recycled the story about the failed raid. If an officer hadn’t died, the coverage would have been a blip of a mention and on to the weather. Laura preferred when that happened. It meant an operation had gone off without a hitch, so much so that the media didn’t think it was newsworthy.

Despite the exhaustion, the headache, and the bruises, she would step up and do what InterSec required her to do. It was important. Too important to risk failure. Maintaining multiple glamours was taxing, but she would manage it. That didn’t mean she wanted to. It meant she knew what she was in for.

Tomorrow she would pretend she was plain Laura Blackstone, public-relations director for the Guild. She would get up in front of a meeting or a reporter or a strategy group and spin the Guild and the fey in the best light possible. People would compliment her on her marketing talents, despite the fact that the skill was predicated on not telling the whole truth in order to get what she wanted. She was good at it. Too good, she thought lately, to the extent that she wondered if deep down she had started lying to herself.

She drained the remains of her drink and slid the glass onto the nightstand.

TO AN OUTSIDE observer, which in a Guildhouse invariably meant a human one, a meeting at the D.C. Fey Guild attracted an assortment of people not encountered on a regular basis. Most everyone knew what a Celtic fairy or a Teutonic elf looked like. Dwarves were obvious and easy. Druids didn’t raise an eyebrow, but the average person had a hard time telling the difference between a brownie and a kobold. The solitary fey were another matter altogether.

The solitaries claimed neither Maeve nor Donor Elfenkonig as their leader, though the various individuals and groups had natural affinities for one or the other. In truth, “solitary” was a bit of misnomer, because not all solitaries were single, lonely individuals. The name was more a recognition of their status apart from the more mainstream fey, who often despised and belittled them when they weren’t dismissing them. After Convergence, the solitaries had found a new voice for themselves in a world where monarchies did not hold sway.

Laura shifted in her seat and glanced around the conference table as the public-relations staff meeting drew to a close. The department had more solitaries than any other at the Guild. Politics dictated that the group tasked with convincing humans that the fey should be treated inclusively employ the solitary fey even the Guild didn’t love. Their high profile rarely translated into much authority. To the other fey, they still lived under a cloud of fear and suspicion.

A large contingent of brownies were part of the department. They weren’t solitaries, and they had a tendency toward efficiency that the solitaries lacked. The other staffers ran a gamut of species that kept taxonomists awake at night. Blue-skinned nixies milled about the floor, too fidgety to remain in seats, while the odd wood fairy with its bark-skinned flesh sat as still as an oak. Several sleek selkies, almost human-looking when out of the water, gathered in a clique at one end of the table, as far as possible from the pale merrows at the other end. The two fey water species had an intense dislike for each other.

Laura used her body language to appear attentive to Resha Dunne. He was a merrow, a member of one of the most hostile types of sea fey. Where his brothers tended toward aggression and seduction, particularly with human women, Resha seemed insecure and tentative about everything. Of course, Laura had never seen him in his water aspect, which was when his species tended to be at its worst in temperament. Even so, Resha was someone she chose to spend little time with. He felt clammy and smelled damp to her.

Although he was the solitary representative on the Guild board of directors, Resha voted the Celtic party line as a matter of course. He never attended a meeting that he couldn’t drag into overtime. What could be discussed in an hour took two when he was involved, with a monotonous litany of agenda items and committee forming at the end for the next meeting. Usually Laura delegated one of her staff to deal with him, but the fey exhibit being planned at the National Archives was too high-profile for her to avoid him without insulting him. She flipped through the memos in front of her to hide the fact that she was scanning her PDA to monitor email.

Keeping the lives of her competing personalities under control was difficult to do alone. Terryn helped enormously, either by direct intervention or propagating disinformation campaigns on her whereabouts. That need to juggle and balance was one of the reasons she avoided an independent personal life. It would add yet another layer of subterfuge and lies that she didn’t think was worth it. At least, that was what she had convinced herself of.

Terryn was running interference for her with Foyle while she attended the Guild meeting. Every few minutes, Foyle would send an annoyed text message, demanding Janice Crawford report for duty. Duty, in this case, meant desk work while the fiasco of the raid was investigated. Terryn would respond with his usual calm and noncommittal reply.

No less than three congressional committees were demanding answers about the raid. She swore to herself when she saw Senator Hornbeck’s Fey Relations Committee on the list of interested parties. Laura Blackstone was having enough trouble with him about the National Archives ceremony she was working on with the Guild. She didn’t need to open another front of aggravation with him.

“Are there any other questions?” Resha asked.

His usual meeting-end question was met with an apprehensive silence. No one ever had another question once Resha had wrung dry every possible topic. Laura moved her attention back to the pale merrow. Everyone in the conference room shuffled their notes into folders and briefcases, unconcerned that Resha droned on, announcing the date and time of the next meeting. He would send an email about it and at least two reminders.

Laura picked up her folders and PDA. She had enough time to get a few hours’ work in before Terryn couldn’t put off Foyle any longer.

“Laura, do you have a minute?”

She paused at the door, too long to pretend she hadn’t heard Resha. Fixing a smile on her face, she faced the conference room. “Sure, Resha, what’s up?”

He gestured at the empty seat to his left. Against her better judgment, she sat, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t keep her long. His eyes shifted beneath heavy lids as he waited for the room to empty, a pleasant smile plastered on his face. At least, through Laura’s years of familiarity with his kind, she knew it indicated pleasure. To the uninitiated, it had the cold tooth slash of a predator.

“I was hoping you could help me with something,” he said.

She popped the cap of her Waterman pen and held it poised over a blank sheet of paper in her notepad. “Sure.”