The tension eased when she responded with a crooked little smile. "Introduced us? That's what we're calling it?"
"Works for me."
"Me, too." Song opened the door. "Let's get this party started. The royal family of Scotia awaits."
Baka stepped into the hallway and offered both arms to the lovely ladies on either side of him as the three dazzled their way toward the elevator.
The palace was an easy walk in walking shoes and a marathon in high heels. The doorman had a car and driver waiting, as promised. The women were having such a good time being dressed to kill that Baka was glad about going after all.
Aelsong insisted on an old-fashioned London-style cab so that she could half-stand in the car and try to keep from creasing her dress. "Just a warnin'. Tonight I'm along to listen, no' to talk. If I speak they'll know I'm elf and the ground might open up and swallow us all."
Heaven seemed to mull that over. "You mean the only difference between fae and elves is dialect?"
Song screwed up her face. "Can no' say for sure. But 'tis a tip off. That I can say for sure. You will have to give me cover. Worse comin' to worse, just say I'm mute." When Heaven laughed, Song didn't like the impish look in her eye. "You would no'."
"Would not what?" Heaven batted her eyelashes and feigned innocence.
"You would no' deliberately say thin's, knowin' I can no' respond, that would make me either want to explode or want to squeeze your neck until that pretty amber necklace is permanently embedded!"
Baka was always surprised when reminded just how young his wife really was. "Come now. Nobody is choking anybody else. Heaven will behave."
Heaven looked out the window. "You can behave if you wish, stodgy old man. I will do what seems most fun at the time."
That threat miffed Song enough to make her forget about creasing the peau de soie dress. She sat unceremoniously and tried to reach over Baka to pinch Heaven. Baka blocked her with a stiff forearm while Heaven laughed with the impunity of a lady being protected by a powerful husband.
Baka stood on the fringe of the ballroom talking quietly with Simon Tvelgar. Both men were more interested in using their evening to discuss business than to engage in painfully inane small talk, chatting up people they would probably not see again, if they were lucky. Baka actually saw it as a momentous opportunity, because Simon's hectic schedule left him pressed for time and difficult to see. It was a bit of a challenge to manage verbal code so that nothing said between them would seem extraordinary if overheard.
Now and then Baka's eyes were drawn to his spouse's heavenly body moving through the room in her scarlet dress and her fuck-me shoes. So far as he was concerned all her shoes were fuck-me shoes, but the heels she wore that night screamed naughty by anybody's standards. There could be no doubt that she was having a marvelous time pulling the other beauty along, introducing Song to everyone as her very pretty, but tragically mute friend.
At one point Song leaned into Heaven with a big grin and spoke next to her ear without moving her lips. "I will get you for this if I have to spend years waitin' for the right moment."
Without looking at her companion, Heaven smiled and said, to no one in particular, but within Song's earshot, "Shaking in my knickers, darling. Oh, look, there's someone you haven't met." She grabbed Song to drag her in the direction pointed out by Heaven's beautifully manicured and scandalously red fingernail.
Song gave her a look so evil it would curdle milk. "Years," was all she said.
Baka suspected Heaven was having fun at Song's expense, but it would have been impossible not to appreciate the essence of life and liveliness in that sort of youthful mischief.
Turning back to Simon, with one hand in his pants pocket, the other holding a heavy crystal tumbler of Scotch etched with the monarchy's coat of arms, Baka did look as if he could pass for James Bond.
"One thing is clear. It isn't going to be as easy as we had hoped. So far it's been Myrtle's Law regarding getting the Inversion kick-started. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong."
"And you couldn't be more wrong about that," Simon replied.
"How so?"
"The worst thing that could have happened would be for the head of the task force to be reinfected with the virus, thereby becoming part of the problem instead of part of the solution."
Baka opened his mouth to respond, but his attention was redirected by a small fanfare.
The prince was being introduced and making a grand entrance.
Heaven leaned toward Song. "Do not tell my husband I said this, but oh, my, my."
Duff's eyes found Song like heat-seeking missiles. It was uncanny. Only a lifetime of pressure cooker discipline enabled him to tear his gaze away. But not before Heaven caught it. "Uh oh."
Song looked at Heaven and shook her head with such a tiny movement that it would have been missed by anyone not staring at her. That, coupled with the pleading look in Song's eyes, told Heaven all she needed to know.
"Let me take back that 'uh oh'." She glanced at the prince. "Bloody buggin' bags full of shite is what I should have said."