Chapter 2

  Here, then, was a quandary the likes of which I'd never faced before.

  Intellectually, and without conceit, I know that I'm quite pretty, in an old-fashioned, Audrey Hepburn sort of way. I also know that with my long white hair and mismatched blue and green eyes, I'm also quite exotic-looking.

  But I'd never wanted to be pretty before, because in the past I had primarily associated my appearance with being hit on a lot in secondary school and at university. Even after being labeled 'the brain' by my fellow students. Perhaps especially after I made it clear I wasn't interested, and became 'the ice queen' on top of it.

  Long story short, I was not accomplished at dating.

  It's not that I didn't want a love life…I'm as much of a sucker for a good romantic story as anybody else. But the few times I'd tried it myself had been very uncomfortable, I hadn't enjoyed it at all, and in the end I'd had no time for it.

  If I'm being entirely honest, I had intentionally not made time for it.

  I'd met Police Constable D.T. Burroughs a little over four months earlier; she'd stepped in to help me when Penny — then still under von Einhardt's control — attacked me in Oakwood. She was taller than me, strong, rather dashing, quick-witted, and rolled with the weirdness of my new life more easily than I had.

  I had more than enough to be getting on with, and really wasn't looking for a possible relationship, but there she was. And she was attracted to me too.

  To complicate matters, In the four months and change since we'd met, we'd both been incredibly busy. It had taken me just a few days to repair the wards around Oakwood Hall - with the help of the clan of brownies who lived in and acted as the Hall's maintenance staff - but it then had taken weeks for me to reinforce and improve them. I'd had a lot to learn, and a lot to do. And after that, I'd been helping the Fairies of Oakwood Hall - the clan of fairies who lived in the clearing outside my bedroom windows, long story - get settled and build their defenses.

  Then there'd been increased combat magic lessons, more Jeet Kune Do practice, more fencing practice, multiple conversations with Margrave about my hereditary estate and everything it encompassed…it was a lot.

  At the same time, D.T. had been doing her job around town, talking to a therapist about her vocational doubts (which was why she'd been assigned to the apparently very low-impact town of Oakwood in the first place), and working on some mystery project that she'd been shy about discussing with me.

  To be sure, D.T. had met me for early morning jogging two or three days a week, sometimes stopping at the Hall with me for breakfast afterwards. We'd met at the Oak & Ivy pub at least every Thursday night to join in the open game of darts, and sometimes one or two other nights a week just to rub elbows with the citizens of Oakwood and get to know everybody.

  But somehow, even though I knew she was interested in me romantically and vice versa…we had yet to go on an actual date. In spite of which, she'd already seen me in a fair chunk of my wardrobe. She'd seen me in exercise clothes. In skirts, slacks, and shorts. Blouses, shirts, henleys, and more.

  She knew that my wardrobe was mostly earth tones and - thanks to Sparkle's influence - shades of dark purple.

  Then, suddenly, she'd called and asked me on a date. She had specifically called it a date, even though we'd just be meeting at the Oak & Ivy for a late lunch.

  And now I found myself unaccountably not wanting to show up for our first official date wearing anything I owned.

  For the first time in my life, I found myself actually wanting to be attractive.

  In a moment of sheer panic, I abandoned my closet - seeing it, for the first time, as being rather drab - and bolted for the master bedroom with the idea of raiding my mother's wardrobe. Which was how I came to be standing in the open doorway of the closet she'd shared with my father, wearing just my green silk robe and what was probably a comical expression of bewilderment.

  "This," Ken said dryly from behind me, "is not something I'm well-equipped to help you with. The good news is, most of the clothing your mother owned was Fae-made, and so should fit you as well. Sparkle? Penny?"

  Penny, sitting on her haunches in her natural form, laughed softly. "Clothing is almost entirely alien to me. I'm looking forward to learning something today."

  "Something pretty and frilly and bright!" Sparkle said from where she was standing atop the bureau beside the closet door. "And if you want to attract her for sporting, maybe a little see-through!"

  I felt the muscles under my right eye twitch. "I don't think we're quite ready for that yet, and definitely not in public." I took a deep breath. "Okay, there must be something in here that will do."

  With that pronouncement, I bravely plunged into my mother's wardrobe.

  Where my father's half of the closet was a lot like mine - muted earth tones in a fairly narrow range, conservative styles, and lots of clothing that basically looked the same - my mother's was…exactly the opposite. Bright and bursting with warm colors and styles that ranged from modest to playful to scandalous, in every fabric I was familiar with and a few I'd only heard of.

  Sister Sarah, the nun (and apparently gifted sorceress) who'd overseen my care at the orphanage where I'd grown up, once told me: "When you're not sure what to do, start by eliminating the undesirable and impossible options. Sometimes, just narrowing down the available choices will make the right one obvious."

  Which allowed me to immediately dismiss everything at the far end of Mother's side of the closet. Most of which was not any kind of clothing I could imagine ever going outside in, let alone on a date, and was made of fabrics that were impractical or absurd. I was not, for example, going on a date with D.T. wearing a fire engine red latex catsuit, even if it did magically change size to fit me properly.

  Seriously. Mom was…apparently really something.

  "I remember when your mother got that," Ken said with obvious amusement as I held the garment in question up. "It was not long after she met your father, and she was going through something of a rebellious phase. As I recall -"

  "Stop!" I said quickly, hanging it back on the rack, beside a few similar outfits in various colors. "I really don't want to know!"

  Ken chuckled.

  In the end, I settled on a very cute (almost an alien word for me) calf-length A Line slip dress with spaghetti straps, an empire waistline, and a second gauzy layer over the skirt that had rippled frills down the front. It faded from pale green at the bust to spruce green at the hem, so I added an off-the-shoulder blouse with short, poofy sleeves that gathered just above my waist, in a light cocoa color. I finished it off with a pair of strappy knee-high sandals with flat heels.

  In a plastic storage bin full of purses, I found a small one with a shoulder strap that was the same spruce green as the lower part of the dress, so I grabbed that for the few things I'd want to take with me.

  Finally, I went back to my room for jewelry. I was already wearing the rings that marked Sparkle and Penny's bonds to me, and the platinum choker that the Master Key hung from, none of which I ever took off. Or even really gave any thought anymore.

  To that I added my shield ring, and earrings…a pair of simple silver studs, one with an emerald, and one with a sapphire. The emerald one was an heirloom from my mother, like my shield ring, and was enchanted to protect me from a variety of minor spells that would otherwise harm (or more likely annoy) me. The sapphire one I had picked up at Harrods to match the emerald. I wanted to enchant it, but hadn't learned enough yet to do the job properly.

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  I liked to wear them in opposition to the color of my eyes, for my own amusement.

  After the delicate application of a small amount of makeup - more than a little looks absurd on my fair skin - I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, and hardly recognized myself. I looked…frankly, to my own eyes, I looked like a little girl playing dress-up.

  I just hoped D.T. liked it.

  With that thought fluttering nervously in my stomach, and thus armed and armored - so to speak - I emerged from the bathroom and did a pirouette for my friends, my long white braid trailing behind me and the dress's skirts flaring up almost to my knees. "Well?"

  He smiled. "You look stunning. D.T. won't know what hit her."

  Sparkle just giggled and zoomed over, shrinking even further and attaching to the Master Key. When she did that, she even took on the silvery sheen of the thing, looking like nothing more than a part of it.

  Penny rose and stretched. "I, for one, know nothing of human mating rituals. This should be interesting." She gave a little hop and melted into my shadow.

  Ken nodded. "Go, have fun." He smiled. "Call if you need anything."

  So I drove into town in my little red VW Beetle. The question of how it stayed in good running order when I'd hardly had any use for it in the ten months since Margrave had acquired it for me strayed through my mind and was gone again. Considering the ease with which Wadsworth and his fellow brownies had taken to the Hall's new high-tech security system, it was just as likely one or two of them were taking care of the car when I wasn't looking.

  They seemed to thrive on being aggressively and invisibly efficient, and I was instinctively certain that questioning it would just cause everyone unnecessary stress.

  D.T. was waiting for me as I parked in front of the Oak & Ivy, and rather gallantly offered me a hand out of the car, which I took.

  Then she didn't let go, instead taking a little step back and looking me up and down. I thought she looked a little flushed as she said, "Well, you look lovely! I feel under-dressed, now."

  She was wearing a sleeveless green cotton blouse with a short black pleated skirt, which I guessed - based on her athletic lifestyle - was actually a skort. I couldn't imagine her wearing just a skirt without shorts under it. What if she had to chase someone?

  Like me, she'd paired the outfit with sandals and minimal jewelry, not even earrings. Her short, auburn hair was freshly trimmed in a tidy undercut pixie style, and her light brown eyes seemed to glitter with amusement as I took in her appearance.

  I found myself reluctant to let go of her hand, so I didn't. "You don't look under-dressed at all," I said, feeling my cheeks heating up. "You look very pretty."

  She bobbed a teasing little curtsy, and I caught a glimpse of shorts underneath the short skirt. Definitely a skort.

  I giggled. The second time today I'd done that, yet another thing that had been utterly alien to me until recently. "Shouldn't I be curtsying to you?"

  "You do cut more of a traditional fairy princess figure than I do," D.T. agreed with a quick flash of grin. "Especially in that. I've never seen you wear anything so…so…"

  "Girly?" I offered.

  She shrugged. "I was going to say cute, but that's being unfair. You look beautiful."

  We stared at one another for a long moment, holding hands there in the street. Then D.T. cleared her throat and gave my hand a little tug. "Let's go in and sit down."

  A few minutes later, as we waited for Judy O'Day to serve up her beef stew in a bread bowl (which had become one of my favorite meals), I said, "You already know just about everything there is to know about me…"

  D.T. laughed. "It's funny how that happened, though, right?"

  I shrugged, smiling. It sort of was. How the little bits and pieces of my history had simply become need-to-know for her as she'd helped clean up in the wake of von Einhardt's failed assault on Oakwood Hall. She'd written two utterly mundane reports about the damage she'd seen done to the Hall's front gates ('freak tornado damage') and to the gargoyle over the front portico ('lightning damage'…which was, at least, technically true…), for the sake of making sure everything was above board. During the writing of which, she'd collected all of the relevant information about me…which was astoundingly boring until last October, even to me.

  "Until I came home to Oakwood," I said by way of answer, "I wasn't terribly interesting."

  D.T. smiled. "I doubt that. But as you will. What do you want to know?"

  "Well…I have to ask…about your name." I knew it was a sore subject with her, but I really wanted to know for certain.

  She shook her head a little. "Yes, D.T. is short for Dejah Thoris." She pronounced it 'Day-jah.' "My father, because of his family name, is a huge fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Mom loves Robert Heinlein, so…they thought they were being clever. I dragged it through primary school like a boat anchor."

  "For what it's worth," I said gently, "I think you have a beautiful name, Dejah." I pronounced it 'Dee-jah'.

  D.T. looked startled for a moment, her mouth opened to protest her name's use. She met my eyes, presumably saw I was quite in earnest, and blushed deeply. "Doesn't sound so bad when you say it. I've never heard it pronounced that way, though."

  I shrugged. "One of the Edgar Rice Burroughs collections I read had some of his correspondences in the back, including one where he was asked how some of the names were pronounced."

  "I like it better that way," she said with a surprisingly shy smile. "I suppose you could use my full name, if you like."

  "I do," I said with a smile. "And I recall Emrys saying that he heard a hint of Wales in your accent…"

  D.T. nodded. "I was born in Shrewsbury -"

  "Where the Brother Cadfael books took place?" I asked, leaning forward a little.

  She chuckled. "Exactly. Dad is from Shrewsbury, Mom is from Welshpool just across the border in Wales. I grew up speaking both English and Welsh. Got my A Levels in Law, Sociology, and French -"

  "Oooh, multi-lingual!"

  "- and went straight into the police force because I didn't know what else to do with myself," she continued. "My grades got me into Hendon - that's Hendon Police College in London - then I transferred to Avon & Somerset and took advantage of their degree apprenticeship program to get my degree in Professional Policing Practice…" She trailed off.

  "Which is when you started becoming disillusioned with policing?" I asked gently.

  She shrugged a little. "I don't know when it started, really. It was a gradual thing. I didn't just wake up one morning and feel like nothing I'd done so far on the force had really accomplished anything."

  "Is that how you feel?"

  She considered my question seriously for a moment before answering. "Not as much as I did before they moved me here to Oakwood. It's a lot less policing, to be sure, but…weirdly, I feel more engaged here. Maybe it's a community thing."

  "The community here is amazing," I agreed.

  "Community engagement is something that was really hammered into us at Hendon," D.T. said thoughtfully. "I think my biggest source of disillusionment was that until I got here, I never felt it or saw it. I mean, I don't doubt that we're better off than police in America…or pretty much anywhere else in the world, really…but…" She frowned. "I don't know if I can explain it really well."

  I sighed a little. "And it's not like I have a ton of life experience to give me a framework for understanding it."

  She looked surprised. "What? That's not…" She broke off and laughed. "That's not what I was thinking at all. Heck, it sounds like our life experience is pretty similar, really."

  I felt a twinge of uncertainty. "I don't think so," I said quietly. "I was practically a professional student, on a path that would've made me a professional educator. I've hardly spent any time out in the real world."

  D.T. rested her elbows on the table and propped her chin in her hands. "Okay, let's try this instead: Hobbies. I did gymnastics in primary and secondary, fencing at Hendon, I'm a rabid reader of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, love TV and movies from the 1970's and 80's…"

  I laughed. "Okay, point taken. We have a lot in common. But you've been out on the streets, doing something worthwhile," I added seriously. "I was…sequestered in classrooms and lecture halls, insulated by the partitions of library carrels…"

  D.T. waved my comment off. "You make it sound a lot more important than it really was. I was getting drunks and druggies off the streets when they got too loaded, giving tourists directions, and dealing with the occasional arrogant ass who thought beating up a girl copper sounded like a fun evening."

  That left me silent for a moment. "You know," I said finally, "when you put it that way it doesn't sound that much different from wrangling a lecture hall full of undergrads. If a bit more dangerous."

  She grinned and spread her hands, as if to say 'there you go, then.'

  "But," I said, thinking to put the nail in the coffin of my own argument, "if I hadn't had my family legacy waiting to surprise me and give me purpose, I have no idea what I really would've done with my life…"

  I trailed off. She was smiling again.

  "You mean like it did for me when I met you?" D.T. asked. "Come off it, Caley. You know I was floundering when they assigned me to Oakwood to cool my heels and think about my future. Meeting you, learning about Oakwood Hall and how badly this town and area need stolid protectors…" Her smile grew a bit. "My involvement was accidental and incidental, but your family legacy has given me a sense of purpose as surely as it did for you. This town, though I didn't know it, is what I was really looking for when I joined the force."

  I held up my hands in surrender. "I give up."

  She grinned. "We're a right pair, we are."

  I could have sworn that, just for a moment, I heard Penny laughing hysterically somewhere nearby.

  Malcolm O'Day approached the table, carrying our bread bowls of stew on stoneware plates. "Here you are, my girls!" he said cheerfully, setting them down. "If you have a moment?"

  We both nodded. "Of course," I said. "What's up?"

  He smiled. "Nothing bad. There's a town meeting tomorrow night, and as a member of the town council I was asked to invite you both to attend." He nodded to D.T.. "Constable Burroughs, of course, has an official position in town and should be there to fulfill it."

  His eyes returned to me. "Your position might be less official, Caley, but every bit as important. You should attend too."

  "I'll be there," D.T. said firmly.

  "Me too," I said happily, just feeling glad to be included and involved. "Where is it being held?"

  Malcolm grinned. "Right here, of course."

  "In the pub?" D.T. asked, sounding amused. "Why?"

  Malcolm's grin faded. "It's a long story. The social hall has…problems. That's one of the reasons I'm asking Caley to attend. It's tradition, and a place for people to bring less urgent issues to Caley without bothering her."

  "It's no bother -" I began to say.

  Malcolm cut me off with a smile and a finger to his lips. "Don't say that, lass, or you'll never have a moment's peace. Every tiny maybe-problem will ring your phone at all hours. This is better."

  I huffed out a little laugh. "All right. Tomorrow night it is, then."

  Malcolm nodded happily. "Enjoy your meals, ladies."