"It's fairie magic. It's what allows them to cloud our minds, make things seem better or worse than they are."
Magnus nodded, smiling, as if pleased that I knew so much. "Exactly; it's really a minor magic compared to some."
I shook my head. "I've read about glamor, and it doesn't work this well unless you're high court, Daoine Sidhe. The seelie court of fairyland doesn't interbreed with mortals often. At least not commoners. The unseelie court, on the other hand, does."
He stared at me with his beautiful eyes, looking, even without glamor, so gorgeous you wanted to touch him. Wanted to see if his hair was as luxuriant as it looked. He was like a really fine sculpture; you wanted to run your hands over it and feel the lines.
Magnus smiled gently. "The unseelie court is evil, cruel. What I do here is not evil. For one night these people can come here and be their own fantasies. They think it's love charms, and I let them. We all keep the secret of this small illegal act. The local police know. They even come down once in a while and join in."
"But it's not love charms."
"No, it's natural talent on my part. Using my own homegrown magic isn't illegal if everyone knows I'm doing it."
"So you pretend it's love charms, and everyone looks the other way because they're having a good time, but it's really fairie glamor, which isn't illegal with permission of the participants."
"Exactly," he said.
"Which makes it all legal."
He nodded. "Now if I was descended from the dark side of fairie, would I do anything to bring pleasure to so many?"
"If it suited your needs, yeah."
"Isn't there a ban on unseelie court moving to this country?" Larry asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"Not if my family moved here before the ban went into effect. The Bouviers have been here for nearly three hundred years."
"Not possible," I said. "Nobody but the Indians have been here that long."
"Llyn Bouvier was a French fur trapper. He was the first European to set foot on this land. He married into the local tribe, Christianized them."
"Bully for him. So how come you didn't want to sell to Raymond Stirling?"
He blinked at me. "It would disappoint me greatly to find out you are working for him."
"Sorry to disappoint you," I said.
"What are you?"
He hadn't asked who, he'd asked what. It was a very different question. It sort of stopped me for a second.
"I'm Anita Blake; this is Larry Kirkland. We're animators."
"I take it you don't draw cartoons," he said.
It made me smile. "No. We raise the dead; 'animate' from the Latin, to give life."
"Is that all you do?" He was staring at me very intently, like there was something written on the inside of my skull and he was trying to read it.
It was an uncomfortable level of scrutiny, but I've been stared at by the best. I met his eyes and answered. "I'm a licensed vampire executioner."
He shook his head gently. "I didn't ask what you did for a living. I asked what you were."
I frowned. "Maybe I don't understand the question."
"Perhaps you don't, but your friend asked what I was. You said I was a fairie. I ask you what you are, and you describe your job. It would be like me saying I'm a bartender."