Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel) Read Free Page B

renegade son kidnapped her, the Fae sorcerer had not put it there for her sake.
    He’d put it there to mark his territory. To make it clear that Helene Whitney was his . Later, Beth had made Miach swear to leave Helene alone, but now that she was entering his domain of her own free will, all bets, she feared, were off.
    The girl who answered the door was young and pretty and welcoming, and she beckoned Helene inside with a warm smile. Helene crossed the threshold and felt something almost like an electric current pass through her, like receiving a massive static shock. At the same time the whole house shook, as though a truck had passed in the street.
    A look of surprise and curiosity passed over the girl’s face. “You’re the lady the old man sent the curly lamb coat to, aren’t you?” she asked.
    The Persian lamb coat. Helene still had it in her closet. Longed to wear it. Possibly the most glamorous thing she had ever owned. Miach had sent it by way of an apology—after his son and grandsons had kidnapped her, locked her in a tiny attic, and threatened to abuse her.
    She’d hidden the coat away.
    “Yes,” she said carefully.
    The girl looked her up and down, then wrinkled her nose and said, “He’ll be able to smell it on you. Another Fae’s magic.”
    It was the thing Helene had feared the most. That one of these cruel, soulless creatures was climbing inside her mind. Had done it over and over again. Would continue to do so if she could not find help.
    So she asked the question that had kept her from coming here for so long. “How can you tell it isn’t Miach’s magic on me?”
    The girl looked at her like she was stupid. “Because you tripped the wards on the house.”
    Helene wished Beth was here to explain this strange and hidden world to her, but she wasn’t, so Helene was forced to ask: “What does that mean, exactly?”
    “The old man’s got the house warded—protected—I mean, with boundary spells. They’re only triggered by magic that isn’t his. Otherwise we’d lose a set of crockery and have to replace all the mirrors every time he came back from a stroll.”
    The relief on Helene’s face must have been obvious, because the girl looked at her and said, “Are you all right?”
    “I’m better. Fine, I mean,” Helene said.
    That was at least one of her fears alleviated. Miach was not the one doing this to her. The mosquito bite on her shoulder, nearly a month old, itched suddenly, but she ignored it and followed the girl—Nieve, she said her name was—into the house.
    Nieve ushered Helene past a dining room where a boisterous afternoon meal was taking place with piles of cakes and toast and pots of tea. There were half a dozen small children seated at the table as well as a sprinkling of adults who shared Miach’s black hair and brown black eyes and—looking sheepish at the far end of the room—Miach’s grandsons Liam and Nial.
    Helene almost turned tail and ran. Liam and Niall had been two of her kidnappers. But then Nieve was leading her up the stairs, drawing her on with a steady stream of chatter. Nieve was not Fae—or at least not full-blooded Fae. She was pretty but not achingly so. She was charming, but used no chilling glamour to coax Helene to talk about herself. Nieve simply exuded warmth and interest, and Helene found herself describing her job at the museum and her apartment in the Back Bay and then, before she knew it, she was inside a huge chamber that looked out over the harbor.
    It was a library. It could easily have been one of the university’s tiny specialized collection rooms, with its polished paneling and embossed red-leather walls. The furnishings were nicer than what a college would have in a space used by students, an assortment of overstuffed lolling chairs and empire sofas covered in silk damask.
    Helene took all this in before noting the room’s principal feature: Miach MacCecht. He stood behind a large mahogany desk, and he wore a human glamour,