She selected a serviceable one-carat emerald, threaded it onto a gold chain, and hung it from another wooden stand. Cupping the smaller stone in her hand with a thin wand of oak, she took care not to touch the stone with the wood. Brushing the tip of the wand against the perfect stone, she pulled at the glamour with a muttered cantrip. The essence-template that formed the Janice glamour tingled under her hand as it swirled through the wood. It sought the crystalline structure of the smaller stone and imprinted itself there.

Laura draped the one-carat stone around her neck, cool static chasing over her skin as the glamour settled. She examined herself in the mirror above the table. Janice Crawford stared back at her. Satisfied that the transfer hadn’t degraded the glamour, she removed the chain and put the stone aside.

Lifting the perfect stone from the stand, she dropped it in a box carved from granite and covered it with a glass lid. Sparks of essence escaped her fingertips and into the box, dancing with a blue light around the emerald. When the essence faded, she removed the stone and tested it with her sensing ability. No essence registered, the equivalent of sterile. The only glamour on the stone was its own inherent beauty.

She slipped it back around her neck and visualized Mariel Tate. Mariel was a more complicated glamour than Janice. Laura had modeled her on several classic beauties who looked nothing like her. She rarely enhanced her own looks with a glamour, but she had gone all out with Mariel. Physical attractiveness could be a useful distraction.

A mental image was the first step in creating a glamour, providing the basic blueprint. She bound the mental image of Mariel Tate with a touch of essence and pushed it into the stone. The mirror above the table reflected the shift, her true face blurring into a rudimentary version of Mariel’s features.

From experience, Laura focused first on the eyes. If the eyes weren’t right, nothing else would matter. She shifted the color of her irises from their normal green until they shone golden. The trick with Mariel’s eyes was light and depth. For ease of transition, she kept Mariel a druid, but for added effect, she had styled her as an Old One, an ancient fey who had a deep, fathomless aspect to her eyes that spoke of years of experience and survival. To look into the eyes of an Old One was to see history and power, a cool, sometimes cold, detachment of someone who had lived through decades of experience and would continue to do so. An Old One projected the power of triumphant survival. Humans felt insignificant under such a gaze. The physical difference that produced the effect was subtle but intense.

Satisfied with the basic template, she worked the rest of the glamour with little effort. Re-creating a glamour took less time than producing a new one, the uncanny recall that all druids had enabling Laura to call forth the memory of the template. Mariel’s ebony hair flowed to her waist-another trick, long hair on women having a history of conveying mystery beneath femininity. For convenience, she added an outfit, a dark gray, form-fitting power suit with a long skirt. Wearing physical clothing was easier since she only needed to maintain a body image, but she wouldn’t have time just then to change into Mariel’s clothes.

As a final touch, she softly sang an old Irish song as she worked, a cadence of grief and remembrance that touched the soul. Mariel’s voice had a mild lilt, which women found endearing and men found alluring, and the song spelled the accent into her voice.

Rising from the worktable, she examined the results in a full-length mirror, a critical eye roaming over the line of the skirt, the shape of her shoes, and the drape of her hair. As Laura, as her physical self, she knew she was attractive. But Mariel went beyond that. She represented a woman who most people aspired to be or be with, and possessed a confidence in herself that everyone wished they had. If a glamour was a mask-a visual lie-Mariel was Laura’s lie to her inner self. She was Mariel, but wasn’t. Mariel’s allure and power were aspects she only pretended to have.

She slipped the Janice glamour stone into a small pouch that was keyed to her body signature. For security reasons, only she could open it. She tucked the pouch into one of the vest pockets of her business suit, closed the plastic bins, and returned them to their orderly cubbyholes.

Instead of passing back through the closet-and risking an encounter with a returning Saffin-Laura paused at the workroom door, which led into the next department. Sensing no one in the hallway on the other side, she opened the door. From the hallway, the view into the room was masked to look like an electrical closet. If a maintenance staff member opened the door, he would see junction boxes and the raw piping of the building but would be unable to enter because of a security spell. If anyone asked why there was a security spell, they were told that the room serviced sensitive experiments in the building and entrance needed clearance from Terryn macCullen. Few people asked. It was a Guildhouse, a building that everyone understood was filled with secrets that often were not healthy to investigate.

An added benefit of the location of her workroom was its proximity to a secondary elevator bank near the back of the building. A crowded elevator arrived, and Laura eased into the front. As the doors closed, she noticed Resha Dunne standing two people away. She caught his glance, a brief flicker laced with the gleam of attraction, before his lidded eyes shifted to stare at the numbers at the top of the car. Even with his docile nature, Resha was still a merrow and didn’t suppress his obvious appreciation for Mariel. He had no idea who she really was. Without a mirror, even Laura sometimes forgot. She watched as the lit numbers counted down to the lobby. At ground level, she blended in with people in the crowded lobby, alone and anonymous, but still drawing attention.

ELYSIUM GENERAL HOSPITAL blended into its surroundings like any other neighborhood business building. A solid mass of concrete with cantilevered sides, it had been built in the 1950s as part of the urban renewal south of the National Mall. The brutalist architecture suffered from unfavorable critical reviews. After struggling to find tenants for years, a coalition of fey groups purchased it and founded the hospital. If the Celtic fairies and Teutonic elves agreed on anything, it was quality health care, and EGH was the one place where no one argued politics, of the fey kind anyway.

Laura strolled the fourth-floor corridor, the Mariel Tate glamour drawing its intended attention from hospital staff and visitors. Her high heels punctured the hushed working atmosphere with a firm, measured rhythm. Mariel didn’t rush and would not be rushed, her movements steady with purpose, the casual sway in her hips conveying a woman comfortable in her own skin more than one attempting to provoke desire in an onlooker. She had other attributes to do that.

She paused at the door to Corman Deegan’s room. For a moment, she thought she might have the wrong room. The file in her hands had Deegan’s picture in it, a trim man dressed in jeans and a blue oxford shirt. He appeared more youthful than his picture, certainly younger than his fifty-some years. Druids weren’t immortal, but they lived decades longer than humans and aged at a much slower rate. Some were rumored to have lived centuries. In the file photo, Deegan looked to be no more than in his early thirties, his blunt-cut hair swept over his ears to the nape of his neck adding to the youthful appearance. The man sitting in the chair by the window looked considerably older.

He tilted his head to follow some movement outside the window. “I’m not sure why InterSec is interested in talking to me,” he said.