Page 47 of Alec

“I share a bloodline with the Baobhan Sith,” Jean said, her real voice a cavernous, rasping ruin. “That is all you need know.”

“You mean, I’m right,” he said, amused at her umbrage. “How did you come into being? Did your mistress amuse herself with a male troll who didn’t tell her he was in rut? Or was she somehow desperate for a slave even uglier than she was?”

Jean looked as if she might scream again, but then hunched her bony shoulders. “I was exiled here just after my birth. I’ll never know.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Clagden demanded.

“Let me answer that one, my dear,” Bodach said before she could reply. “Her mother is a vampire Fae, you idiot. How could you not recognize her as such? You feed off mortals.”

“Not their blood,” Clagden muttered, looking resentful.

“I only take their life energy,” Jean said quickly.

“You didn’t desire to mate with my servant,” Bodach said, chuckling. To Clagden he said, “She wished to feed on you.”

“I would have kept you alive,” she said quickly, giving the changeling a sorrowful look. “I’m only half Baobhan Sith. I don’t need to kill to live.”

Bodach studied her expression. “Oh, for the sake of all the gods. You’re actually in love with him. I think I’m going to puke now.”

Jean knelt down and bowed her head. “If you wish to kill me, Clagden, you may. I deserve death for lying to you.”

The changeling shed his mortal guise and stood over his paramour, and then knelt down and took hold of her ugly hands. “I’m no prettier than you. Is that why you wished me to improve my glamour, and mate with me in mortal form? So you wouldn’t have to show your true appearance to me?”

“I know I’m hideous.” Jean shifted back into the form of the lovely gallery director before she threw her arms around his neck. “I only wanted to be beautiful for you, my darling.”

“Of course you did.” Bodach left them embracing on the floor, and wandered through the gallery until he found another, smaller office with the door marked “Bookkeeper.”

Inside a young woman sat working on a computer. By the pallid look of her skin and the dark marks under her eyes, she was Jean’s current victim, so the halfling had told the truth when she’d said she didn’t kill.

“May I help you, sir?” the woman asked as she got to her feet, her voice heavy with tiredness.

He bespelled her at once and had her accompany him back to the director’s office, where Clagden and Jean were grappling in their mortal forms on the floor like the most eager of new lovers. The way in which they mated seemed boring with their guises intact.

“Don’t mind me,” Bodach told them when they halted and glared at him. He sat down before pulling up the bookkeeper’s skirt and maneuvering her onto his lap. “Just change into your true forms before you continue. My little friend here needs entertaining as much as I do.”