Chapter 13 #2
The lord had dyed the ends of his hair a bright pink that faded to pale lavender about two hands above the ends, the natural golden-blond showing above that.
On anyone else, it might have looked like a bad dye job that had grown out, except that wasn’t what it was.
Laurette had arranged the top part of his hair in a high updo, pink and lavender fringes now framing his fine-boned face while the rest fanned out behind him, clashing with light beige riding pants worn for fashion, not for horses, and a tight-fitting pink T-shirt that perfectly matched the hair.
The Elf should’ve looked garish. He didn’t, and Peter sort of hated that about him.
“Lord Laurette,” he said, sighing with some relief and sketching a quick bow.
“Lord?” the Fae said, confusion filling his voice.
“Oh, damn,” Laurette said, putting his hands on his knees and breathing heavily. “I forgot how bad running is for my composure. Tarts and tits, my side stings.”
“Tarts and—” The Fae swallowed tightly, as if he was scared of that particular piece of anatomy.
Laurette waved a hand at him, then fanned himself with it.
“Why, the bird, not the breast. Although if you’d rather think of breasts, you may be my guest. Personally, I enjoy both—bird and breast—though perhaps not at the same time, as it were.
My, aren’t you tall and all that.” He stepped right up to the Fae and felt along the hunk’s shoulder.
“Very tall. Hmm, not sword muscles, these, nor a bowman’s arms.”
“I-I will have you know—” The Fae seemed at a loss for words, his cheeks pinking.
Laurette focused his cool green eyes on him. “Have me know what? I love a confession. Go on.”
“I know my way around a bow. And a blade.” The Fae’s voice had turned into a small thing, a flame about to reach the end of the wick.
“My lord.” Laurette’s servant jogged up to them. She was a pixie, and wore the pointy hat they preferred. Like all pixies, she was perhaps half as tall as Peter, but unlike her lord, she didn’t seem to mind the running. She handed Laurette a thin silver chain.
“That is wonderful to know indeed.” Laurette could sound like a predator, and he did so now.
With a movement so quick that even Peter had trouble following it, he took the chain from the pixie and snapped it around the Fae’s neck.
It tightened like a very thin collar with the long end in Laurette’s hand. “There. That’s better.”
The Fae’s eyes went wide, and his hands flew to his neck. “M-magic! You dare shackle me with magic! But you are Elven.”
“Exactly.” Laurette tugged on the silver chain before handing it off to the pixie. He turned to Peter. “Didn’t we dance? Some ball or other? Two years ago?”
Peter nodded. “Closer to five years ago, and it was a fundraiser for the museum.”
Laurette nodded, twirling a pink strand of hair around his fingers.
“Oh yes. You were taciturn but sort of charming. Hmm. Celeste says you’re her lawyer, and your human lover is safe at her place.
” He pointed a thumb. “Bow Arms here seems to have accosted him. Your man has good instincts to run at the first sight of Fae.”
Peter straightened. “Theodore is smart like that.”
The Fae pulled against his chain, but the pixie was unimpressed. “I was not—I would never—I did not accost the human! He was besmirched by a thrall.”
Laurette glanced back at the Fae, who was fumbling with the chain, while the pixie had pulled a phone from an inner pocket of the coat she wore. She was texting, apparently oblivious to what was going on around her.
“Celeste asks us if we would come by the Boudoir. For tea, she says, if your lordship is amenable.” The pixie spoke with an air of supreme boredom. Peter could admire that.
Laurette grinned. “Tea! Lovely. Oh, has she cookies? Gertrude, try to find a way to ask, carefully, if the madame has cookies and if she might be persuaded to hand one over. Or two. One for you, one for me.” He glanced at Peter, his green eyes flickering with the magic.
Peter knew Elves had no visible pupils, but the magic they used to hide that was somehow just as unsettling to him. “Want to come with us?”
“My car is parked right back there.” Peter pointed at the linguistics building, meaning the lot behind it.
Laurette rocked back and forth on his feet. “I like being driven around town. Do please take us.” He cocked his head. “I mean, you did donate. To the museum, I mean. Back when we danced.”
Peter nodded, never gladder that he’d written that check. “Of course, Lord Laurette. It’s to keep the humans safe, after all.”
Laurette smiled at him with all the brightness of a Venus flytrap playing at being pretty and innocent to an unsuspecting housefly. “Right answer!”
The pixie visibly rolled her eyes. “She says she’s out of cookies.”
Laurette’s face fell. “Oh no. That is—Gertrude, that will not do. Handsome, we are going to have to make a detour. We cannot possibly have tea with Madame Celeste and not bring baked goods. You understand, yes?”
Peter nodded, impossibly glad that Michael was no longer doing anything this Elven lord might find fault with. He walked ahead of the group toward his car, feeling like a footman and oddly at ease with that.
Theodore, beloved, I’m returning to you.
The urge to hold him and never let him go again settled in Peter like a soft scarf around his neck; a warm comfort without which you were cold and miserable.