I briefly considered asking him to change it to Cress Bananatree, smiling to myself.
“Is something amusing?” Robin asked, glancing at me.
I shook my head. “No.” I tucked the ID away carefully.
“All right… Cress,” he added, clearly testing out the name. “Your goal is to make initial contact with Brightkin, that’s all. Hang out, dance with him, make him trust you. Getting into his VIP room would be a bonus, but not a necessity tonight. If you can get his number, even better.”
“You’re the fixer. Don’t you already have it?” I fiddled with the strap on the wristlet, a growing ball of nervousness in my stomach.
It had all seemed so easy back in Robin’s house, but now that the moment was coming, I wanted to throw up a little bit. I’d have to talk to the actual Seelie Prince, something I’d never imagined in my wildest dreams.
Or nightmares, I corrected myself, thinking of the photo.
“It’s not about me getting the number,” Robin said. “It’s about him trusting you enough to hand it out. If you can’t get into VIP tonight, we’ll have another chance later.”
I nodded, still picking at the strap. I needed to start thinking clearly if I was going to be working for the guy who basically ran the Seelie kingdom on Titania’s orders.
“Hey.”
I glanced over at Robin, trying not to look as sick as I felt. What if I screwed everything up and ruined his chances?
“Can you handle this?” He drew the car to a stop, and I realized we’d left the Mainway. We were on the border of Mothwing Falls and Sobek Street, on the last neon-lit stretch of Mothwing before it gave way to Unseelie territory.
I watched a Fae with crocodile skin disappear into the shadows, his slit pupils focused on Robin’s car.
If Brightkin was really taking human girls, girls with their whole lives ahead of them, and rotting their minds with evanesce, I’d never forgive myself for fucking up this job. Robin needed that evidence.
“Yes. I can do this.” I exhaled a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
He locked the car doors as I carefully picked my way down the sidewalk, shivering a little with the sea salt air coming in from Acionna Harbor.
“One last thing.” He pitched his voice low. “I’ve put funds in your wallet on the Acorn. Use it if you need to, but you likely won’t be buying your own drinks tonight. And if you see a huldra anywhere near Brightkin, do not engage her under any circumstances if you can help it.”
“Why? Who is she to him?” I asked, forcing myself to keep my arms at my sides despite my goosebumps.
“Silke, his majordomo. If you play your part right, she won’t be suspicious, but you don’t want to get on her bad side. If she suspects you’re a danger to him… well, things will get ugly very quickly.”
Great. Nothing like an overzealous Personal Relations bodyguard to get through.
“Don’t worry, I’m an amazing actress.” I smiled at him.
He raised his eyebrows, looking more like Robin than possible even with a glamour on. “Are you?”
“Nope. But I’ll figure it out.”
Brilliant green and blue lights strobed across the street ahead of us, and a machine blew thousands of perfect glimmering bubbles into the air. It gave the oddest sensation of walking underwater as we approached the wavy lights of Myrage.
“Briallen.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. Robin had never called me by my first name before. When I turned, he was several feet back, lingering in the shadows.
I felt like a strange moment of friendship had been snatched away. We’d felt like a team for a minute, almost like actual friends. “Yeah?”
Robin’s expression was impossible to read. “Be careful in there.”
7
The bouncer was a massive golem, the mark on his forehead gleaming red as he looked down at us.
I clung to Robin’s arm like I’d already pre-gamed my way to the clubs. The golem would never know I was digging my nails into his arm for dear life.
The moment was here.
“Oh. My. Trees.” I giggled. It was a little easier than I’d anticipated, but before we’d walked up, Robin had pulled out a silver flask of cherry dwarf-distilled vodka and made me take a healthy gulp to steady my nerves and get the scent of alcohol on me. It had the added benefit of making me feel a little flushed, the role a little easier to play. “He’s bigger than you.”
Robin, wearing the dark-eyed face we’d decided to name Rory, looked up at him and rolled his eyes, the perfect image of a high-strung corporate climber with an exasperating date. “She’s never been to Myrage. Small town nymph.”
He rudely pressed a fifty into the golem’s pocket.
The golem glared at us both, and for a moment, I thought we would get turned away.
Then he shrugged his boulder-like shoulders and stood aside. “Nice ass,” he rumbled.
My cheeks went red, then I forced myself to flutter my eyelashes with another giggle. “Are you, like, that big all over?”
The golem was about to answer when Robin pulled me inside a dark vestibule. “He’d already let us in,” he grumbled.
I glanced at him sidelong as a nereid wearing nothing but strings of pearls opened a door, smiling widely at us. “Maybe I was genuinely curious.”
“I didn’t say you had to go into method acting for this.”
I grinned back at the naiad and followed Robin into the strobing lights. “I’m just getting comfortably settled into the mind of Cress Willowtree— wow.”
The nightclub was two floors high. Two walls were enormous aquariums, displaying several nereids dancing in the water and rubbing themselves against the glass, blowing kisses to the dancers below.
Above us, sylphs spun on brass poles, wearing bits of cloud and not much else. One of them smiled at me with lips that glittered like frost before flipping upside down.
I turned away quickly. For all I knew, Ioin had come here to meet his sylph.
Robin pulled me to a table in a dark corner behind a crush of dancers glittering with sweat. “Look up there,” he said in my ear, fighting to be heard over the music.
The second level was a balcony, lined with doors. Outside one door on the very end, a huldra stood guard, scowling at the dance floor below.
It was impossible to see her hollow back from this angle, but she had the face of an ice queen, cruel and cold, her platinum hair hanging in long sheets to her waist.
“That’s Silke.” The feel of his lips moving against my ear made me shiver, even though it was hot inside Myrage. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
I nodded, and steeled myself before plunging in.
Several satyrs offered me drinks as I passed, but I shook my head and smiled to make my meaning clear: so sorry, not with you.
The bar was less crowded, and I managed to scoop a seat at the end, hidden behind a Gentry woman with deep red skin.
There was absolutely no sign of Brightkin. If he was in here, he would’ve been a prime target, but I didn’t spot any groups of giggling nymphs.
I ordered a vodka tonic and turned to the side, and realized I had a perfect view of Silke above the fray. If she was there, then Brightkin was probably holed up in the VIP room with his retinue.