panic attacks can be dangerous to anyone around me." She looked at Zee. "Could they find them without me, do you think?"
"No," said Zee. "If I have to stay out here, then they will need you to keep them from being lost. Moreover, I think that the wolves might be a mistake. Samuel is old enough and powerful in his own right - I think he could resist the will of one such as a fairy queen. But all of the wolves . . . The chances are too great that she would turn our own against us. If she turns you or Jesse, Ariana and Sam can still get you out. If you go in with the pack, even one wolf who turns would mean death."
"It's all right, Mercy," said Jesse. "I'm not helpless, and I . . . Would you be able to wait out here if it were Dad in there?"
"No."
"Are you ready?" asked Zee.
"All right," I said, painfully aware that Adam would not be happy with me, but Jesse was right. She was probably the safest among us. "Let's get them out of here."
"Good," said Zee - and he dropped his glamour without fanfare or drama.
One moment he was the tallish skinny old man with a little rounded belly and age spots on his neck and hands, and the next he was a tall, sleek warrior with skin dark as wet bark. Sunlight tinted his hair gold. It hung in a thick braid that flowed over one shoulder and hung lower than his belt. The last time I'd seen him, his pointed ears had been pierced many times, and he had worn bone earrings in the piercings. There were no decorations at all.
His was a body that didn't belong in the jeans and plaid flannel shirt he still wore. The clothing fit him as well in his current shape as they had in the one I was used to. I supposed that made sense because it was the Zee I knew who was the illusion and this man, and his clothes, that were real.
Zee's true face was uncanny - beautiful, proud, and cruel. I remembered the stories I'd found about the Dark Smith of Drontheim. Zee had never been the kind of fairy who cleaned houses or rescued lost children. He'd been one to avoid if you could and to treat very, very courteously if you couldn't. He'd mellowed a little with age and didn't disembowel anyone who displeased him anymore. Not that I'd seen anyway.
"Wow," said Jesse. "You are beautiful. Scary. But beautiful."
He looked at her a moment, then said, "I have heard Gabriel say the same of you, Jesse Adamstochter. It was meant as a compliment, I believe." He turned to Ariana. "You'll have to leave the glamour behind. The only glamour that works in Elphame is the queen's, and if you wait until the Elphame rips it from you, it will alert those inside that they have an intruder."
She clenched her fists and glanced at Samuel and away.
"I've seen your scars," he said. "I am a doctor and a werewolf. I saw those wounds when they were new and raw - scars do not bother me. They are the laurels of the survivor."
Like Zee, she didn't bother with theatrics. Without glamour, her skin was a warmer color than Zee's and several shades lighter. It was beautiful against silver-lavender hair that was no more than a finger-length long anywhere and floated out from her scalp more like plumage than hair - a lot like Jesse's current hairstyle. Ariana's clothes altered when her glamour dropped as well, into a simple knee-length dress of an off-white color with a handkerchief hem.
She wasn't conventionally beautiful - her face was too inhuman for that, with eyes that were too big and a nose too small for humanity. Her scars weren't as bad as they'd appeared when I'd seen them before. They looked older and less angry . . . but there were a lot of them.
"We are ready," Samuel said, looking at Ariana with a hunger that had nothing to do with his stomach.
Zee reached behind his head and drew his dagger, dark-bladed and elegant in its deadly simplicity, from beneath the collar of his shirt. Either it was magic or a sheath, I couldn't tell, and with Zee it could be either one. He used it to make a single clean cut on his forearm. For a moment, nothing happened, and then blood, dark and red, welled