Divine Misdemeanors (Merry Gentry #8)(37)

The thought made me wonder about Bittersweet and whether Lucy had found her. I pushed the thought aside and checked the mirror one last time to make sure neither gun nor knife showed in the suit. The skirt was lightweight but flouncy, moving with me. I had a lot of skirts that were formfitting enough that even a small weapon showed against the material.
I walked back out into the great room. Galen met me, smiling. “I forgot you make your eyes brown, too.”
“Green eyes are too unusual. Humans remember them.”
He grinned at me, and moved to take me in his arms. I let him, pretty sure what he was going to say. “We should test the glamour and see if touching makes either of us lose our concentration.”We kissed, and it was a nice, thorough kiss. He drew away and I was staring up into a pair of dark brown eyes set in a face more tan than his would ever be by nature.
I smiled.
It was Rhys who said, “Come on you two, we all know our glamour holds up. Amatheon and Adair checked in. The press took the bait with Doyle and Frost, so we can go do some work.” We followed him out the door, dropping each other’s hands as we walked outside. I trusted the other guards that the main force of the press had gone away, but if we hung all over each other like lovers, no amount of glamour would keep them from snapping pictures, and not all glamour holds up to cameras. We don’t know why, but even with the best of us sometimes a picture will reveal the truth when the naked eye will not.
Sholto had gone ahead of us all.
“All doors are in place.”
“So you’ll just appear,” Galen said.
“Yes.”
“How do you make certain someone isn’t in the doorway when you appear.”
“I can feel if it’s empty,” he said.
“Nifty.”
“I didn’t know you could do doorways,” I said.
“Its a power that has returned since we were crowned.”
“Don’t tell Barinthus,” Galen said.
“I will not.” He’d been solemn when he said it. “But I will scout the area and if reporters seem aware you are on your way; tipped off, I believe they say.”
“They do,” I said with a smile.
“Then I will call if they have been tipped off.” He’d gone with his blond hair looking short, his golden eyes as brown as Galen’s and mine. Sholto even made his face less handsome so he wouldn’t even attract attention as a too handsome human.
Rhys drove since it was his car. We put Saraid in the front with him, and the rest of us scattered in the back. We could actually see the distant flash of police lights when Rhys pulled over into a small parking lot. Julian or Jordan Hart leaned against one of the company cars. It wasn’t until he turned and gave me that smile of his that I knew it was Julian and not his twin brother. They both had short, rich brown hair cut so it was short on the sides, but a little longer on top, where it was gelled into small spikes. But Jordan didn’t have such a careless, devil-may-care smile. He had a good smile. They both did. They’d made enough money from modeling to first start their own detective agency and then to buy into the Grey Detective Agency. They were both six feet of tanned and easy handsome, but Julian was lighter, more of a tease. Though oddly it was the teasing brother who had found a monogamous relationship and done happily so for more than five years. Serious brother Jordan was still quite the ladies’ man, though even in his single days Julian had never been a ladies’ man. A gentleman’s man, if that was a phrase, would have been more accurate. 
He was wearing small-framed glasses with yellow-tinted glass that complemented his shades of brown and tan clothes. He came to me laughing. “You should have called, dear. I’d have worn another color so we wouldn’t have matched.”
I smiled and gave my cheek for a kiss, which I got and returned. His face still held that edge of laughter, but his eyes behind their almost-silly tinted glasses were very serious.
“You haven’t been to the crime scene yet, have you?” I asked.
“No,” he said, his voice as serious as his eyes, but if anyone was watching, his face still laughed and was pleasant. “But Jordan has.”
Now I understood why his eyes were already a little grim. The twin brothers could let each other see what they were looking at, if they wanted to. When they’d been little they’d had no control over it, but they’d gone to the afterschool psychic programs along with all the other little gifted children and now they only shared if they chose. Whatever Julian’s brother had shown him was bad enough to take the shine from his eyes.
He looked past me to the men with me, and the smile climbed back up into his eyes. There were other human wizards who would have had to ask before being certain who was hiding behind the glamour, but Julian really was that good, and so was his brother. So he went to Galen and exchanged a cheek kiss like he had with me and a handshake with Rhys. The fact that he knew who to kiss and who to just shake hands with said that the disguises weren’t really fooling him. That was not good, since some police were now wizards, but most didn’t specialize in “seeing” the truth.
Julian hesitated at the women, which meant that it wasn’t what they looked like to his physical eyes that let him know who to kiss. It was something more mystical than that. He didn’t know the female guards well at all, so he shook their hands. He was actually more careful of the women than the men.
Of course, even Julian hadn’t quite been his exuberant self since more than half of Kane and Hart’s detective agency had gotten eaten by a very big, bad piece of magical beastie called the Nameless. We—my men and I—had eventually entrapped it, but Kane and Hart had been ground down to only four employees, which was why the Grey Detective Agency was now the Grey and Hart Detective Agency. Both agencies had been going after the same niche market, so it made sense to join forces, and maybe Julian and Jordan Hart just felt that mixing their human magic with our not-so-human magic might be healthier for their remaining employees.
Adam Kane, Julian’s longtime boyfriend, had lost his younger brother Ethan in the fight. I think Adam would have agreed to anything in those first few weeks. Even now Adam was doing mostly office work, seeing clients, but not much fieldwork. I wasn’t sure whether that was still grief, or whether Julian couldn’t stand the thought of endangering him. Eventually, if it had to be asked, Jeremy would do it, because at the office he was the boss. It was actually nice that I wasn’t the boss every damn where.
“It’s actually quicker to walk from here,” Julian said. His hands went to his jacket pocket and started to lift a pack of cigarettes out, then he hesitated. “Do you mind if I smoke as we walk?”
“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.
He gave a brilliant smile, flashing the perfect white teeth that he’d gotten as a model and that now made him picture-perfect when he was working with the local celebrities. “I quit years ago, but lately I’ve felt the need again.” Something passed over his face, some thought or emotion, and not a good one.
“Is the crime scene that bad?” Galen asked, proving that he’d noticed the expression, too.Julian looked up almost absentmindedly, as if he weren’t really seeing the here and now. I’d seen that look before when he was seeing through his brother’s eyes. “It’s bad enough, but not so bad it makes me want to smoke.”
I debated on whether to ask him what was bad enough to send him to smoke, as he lit a cigarette and began to stride down the sidewalk. He walked as he usually did, as if the sidewalk was a runway and everyone should be looking at him. Sometimes they did. Rhys moved ahead of us, with Saraid by his side. Galen and Cathbodua took up the rear position behind Julian and me. I realized that we could use all the glamour we wanted, but they were clearly being bodyguards. That would be a clue that Julian and I weren’t what we seemed.
He seemed to notice that when I did, because he offered me his arm, and I took it. He began to touch my arm too much, and smile down at me too much. He was playing the part of wealthy lover and businessman or celebrity who needed the bodyguards. I played with him, bumping my head against his shoulder, and laughing at comments that weren’t funny at all.
He leaned over and spoke quietly, smiling brilliantly. “You always were a quick study on undercover work, Merry.”
“Thank you, you, too.”
“Oh, I’m very good under the covers.” And he laughed. He also tossed his half-smoked cigarette into the first trash can we came to.
“I thought you needed the cigarette,” I said, smiling up at him.
“I’d almost forgotten that flirting is better than smoking.” He leaned over me, putting one arm across my shoulders to draw me in against his body. I’d had a lot of practice walking like that with people about six feet tall, though he moved differently than most of my men. I slid my arm around his waist, underneath the jacket, brushing against his own gun that was at the small of his back so it didn’t ruin the line of his suit coat. We strolled up the street like that, our hips rubbing against each other as we walked.
“I didn’t think you liked flirting with women,” I said.
“I’m an equal-opportunity flirt, Merry, you should know that.”
I laughed, and this one was for real. “I do remember that, but not usually this much for me.”