“Then come here.”
She hesitated for a moment, then walked to where Nathaniel stood on the sidewalk next to a beautiful, blooming crab apple tree.
“Turn around,” he told her. “I can remove the glamour for you to see what the Underworld truly is. It’s one of the few powers I can use here. You’ll see why I don’t use it very often.”
Val turned around and felt him press his body against her.
“Nathaniel, I—”
“Shh, you wanted to know the truth. Have you changed your mind?”
“No.”
He slid his hands up her arms, and, avoiding Reggie on her shoulder who’d chosen to be temporarily quiet as a mouse, he covered her eyes with his hands. He was so close that when he whispered, his lips grazed her ear. “You can’t always trust your eyes to show you the truth.”
He removed his hands and Val blinked in horror at what she saw before her.
Mile upon mile of gray, jagged rock spread out before her eyes. The sky was dark and swirling with white veins of lightning that appeared every few seconds. There was a cold, bone-chilling wind that whipped the hair off her face. Nathaniel held her waist as she stared at the true Underworld. Barren, cold, dangerous—a feeling of despair filled her as she looked at it. And emptiness.
There were gray creatures crawling along the rocks in the distance, eyeless beasts, and she could hear the flapping and distant squawking of the Nightflyers. A lump of fear formed in her chest.
“Do you see, Valerie?”
She turned around in his arms and looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears that began to streak down her cheeks. This was his true home? This is where Nathaniel had to live? This empty, cold, soulless place with only a veneer of glamour on top of it to make it bearable?
“Make it go away. Please.”
He nodded and wiped her tears gently away with his thumbs. “As you wish.”
He covered her eyes again and when his warm hands moved away, the glamour was back. The Underworld again looked like a bright, shiny, happy place full of warmth and sunshine. But now she knew it was all a lie.
“Is it over?” Reggie said from her shoulder with a tremor in his voice. “Good golly, Miss
Molly, please tell me it’s over.”
“It’s over.” She rubbed her arms to chase away the chill that filled her body. “We’re okay.
Open your eyes.”
Val looked at Nathaniel. He looked unhappy. Was he sorry he showed her the no-holds-barred truth? Showed her that his existence was not as glamorous as she may have believed? That underneath it all was pain and loneliness and eternal suffering, just as Lloyd had said? She reached for him but he pulled away, and instead presented her with a killer smile.
“Anyhow,” he said. “Time’s a-wasting. And the mayor’s mansion is only a few blocks away.
Let’s get going.”
Val swallowed hard. “Okay.”
“First, though, I think I need to do a little glamour on you, little angel.”
She frowned at him. “Glamour?”
He grinned. “Evil witches need to have an evil witch look, don’t you think? Not an innocent, naïve, blond angel look.”
She looked down at her jeans and tank top. She flicked away an errant chocolate chip that had attached itself to her otherwise clean clothes. She ran a hand through her slightly tangled blond hair, feeling self-conscious now.
Nathaniel stepped back from her and moved his gaze slowly down her body, much as he’d done the first time she’d met him in the alley after the mugger had attacked her. His gaze finally met her own and he raised an amused eyebrow.
She flicked her hand. “Fine. Make me look different, then, if you think it will help.”
Val felt a sudden wave of warm air touch her and then it was gone.
Nathaniel grinned. “Done.”
“Wow, Val,” Reggie breathed.
She slowly looked down at herself. She was now wearing a skin-tight leather corset over a low-cut, very low, black lace top. Her newly ample chest was pushed up to nearly her chin.
An equally tight black leather miniskirt that barely covered her butt, and thigh-high leather high-heeled boots finished the outfit. She moved a long, red fingernailed hand up to her face.
“What did you just do to me? Does my face look different?”
Nathaniel smiled. “That’s an understatement.”
She moved over to the window of a nearby store to stare at her reflection. She looked like a complete stranger. A drop-dead gorgeous stranger with a Pamela Anderson body, way too much makeup and long, long bloodred hair. She raised a high, penciled-in eyebrow at the rat on her shoulder. He was wearing a little leather biker cap.
“Well,” Val put a hand on her hip. “That’s definitely different. This is your idea of the perfect woman, I assume?”
“No, my idea of the perfect woman is . . .” He stopped talking for a second and eyed her.
“Yeah, that’s right. This is exactly what I like.”
“Then let’s get going,” she said, thinking about the key. “Julian won’t know what hit him.”
I am evil, Val told herself as she tried to get into her Elvira-Mistress-of-the-Night-like character. An evil, large-breasted witch who’s up to no good. No good at all. And who wears too much makeup. And very uncomfortable thong underwear.
The mayor’s mansion was at the end of the Miami-esque main strip of the Underworld.
Behind it was nothing. Literally nothing, which Val found quite strange, since she never knew what nothing looked like until she saw it. The mayor’s gated estate made her immediately think of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion, which she’d seen on Entertainment Tonight. She’d thought for an old man he sure had a lot of gorgeous babes surrounding him. Maybe he, too, was a fallen angel and those were all of his buxom blond Tempters.
She suddenly felt like they were being watched, then noticed that at the side of the gate was an eye. A large eyeball about the size of a beach ball mounted on a metal pole. When they neared the gate it turned to look at them.
“And you are?” it asked blandly. But, since an eyeball on a pole didn’t have a mouth to speak, Val simply heard the voice projected around them.
“We’re here to see Mayor Vaille,” Nathaniel told it.
It blinked. “Are you here for the party?”