“Wouldn’t work,” both Sigrid and Tanya said.
“So you’ll need to wear something really different if we’re to disguise you properly. We need to cut your hair too. Instead of long and straight, how about short and curly? You’ll still be you, just a different version of you. After we’ve made all the changes, we’ll take you to see your friends and see how many recognize you. If several do, even if they’re going to know you better than Alton or the others who have only seen you once or twice, we’ll get to work on making certain the majority have no clue it’s you.” Sigrid refilled her tea cup.
“I’ll do it,” Kayla said, certain they could succeed. As far as the business of participating in the games, maybe not. She wasn’t certain she could fool Alton since she had seen more of him. But everyone else? No problem.
“So what do we do first?” Tanya asked.
“First, we cut her hair, then color it.” Sigrid quickly finished her tea. Then she rose from the table and collected the empty tea cups.
Tanya helped her with cleaning the tea cups. “Where?”
“Human world, where else? Most of us have long hair. We don’t have hair stylists that can think innovatively.” Sigrid took both their hands. “Do you know how to get us to Houston?” Both nodded. “Then take us there.” She gave them the directions.
“Wait, but what about your wings? Can you hide them?” Kayla asked.
“Once I come of age.” Sigrid grabbed a cloak. “Let’s go.”
The buildings were taller, lots of glass windows, when they appeared behind a dumpster at the back of some buildings.
“Where are we?” Tanya asked, wrinkling her nose at the smell of garbage.
“Houston. And we have Le Chic Boutique Hair Styles.” Sigrid led them around the back of the buildings to the front. All kinds of dress stores with all kinds of fashions were featured. And the hair salon was smack dab in the middle of them.
“We’d probably have to have an appointment in a place like this.” Kayla stared in the windows at the people sitting inside, waiting their turn.
“Nah. Leave it to me.” Sigrid pulled open the door.
A couple of customers looked her way. Sigrid eyed them, then smiled. She turned her attention to the stylists, their hair cut in every way imaginable, B.o.Bs, short curls, bowl cuts, long and pink.
“I’m not going with pink,” Kayla said.
“No. It would make you stand out too much.” Sigrid eyed a stylist who was just finishing up a client. As soon as she did, Sigrid was standing at the checkout counter, smiling at the stylist. “My friend here has an appointment with you. Now. For a short, curly hair style, big full bangs, and she wants to be a blond.”
The stylist was wearing a razor haircut, her black hair emphasizing her pixie face. Kayla thought she would make a suitable fae. The woman looked at the computer and Sigrid snapped her fingers to get her attention. “You’re ready to turn her into a beauty. Now.”
“Now,” the woman said. And took Kayla right back to wash her hair. “You may take a seat—”
“We stay with her,” Sigrid said.
“Of course.”
Kayla wondered why Sigrid couldn’t just go to the dragon fae kingdom herself as many abilities as she had. She could even transport her there. But then again, Sigrid had the problem with her wings and that was something she might not be able to hide.
Kayla was glad they were with her and hopeful she would look okay after all that the stylist did with her hair. When Kayla was having her hair dyed, a patron began to complain that she was supposed to be next. Sigrid drew the woman away from the other clients and spoke to her softly.
The woman laughed and said, “I can’t believe I mixed up my days. Thanks.” Then she walked out of the salon.
Kayla wished she could do what Sigrid could do. Having a magical touch with plants didn’t seem quite so useful. Not in this situation anyway.
After her hair was unwrapped, the stylist rinsed it out and patted it dry. As soon as she removed the blue towel, Kayla stared at her hair color. It was a pale blond, and even now, she didn’t think she looked like herself. But before she could talk herself out of having her hair cut short, the stylist started to section it off and snip away.
She relaxed. She could do this. Her hair would grow back. Eventually.
When she was all done, she couldn’t believe how lightweight her hair was or how bouncy and fun.
“Much, much different,” Tanya said, as they left the shop. “I’m your best friend, but believe me, if I saw you coming out of a shop, I wouldn’t have realized it was you.”
“Ready for clothes and makeup? So what do you think?” Sigrid motioned to a shop carrying 1960’s fashions: mini-skirts, patent leather boots, opaque tights, head bands. “Or how about that. Circle skirts, saddle shoes, sweaters, white shirts.”
Kayla laughed.
Then they saw a corset shop with old vintage clothes for Renaissance fairs and the like. Big plumed hats filled one window, beautiful embroidered corsets in another. “You could go with black. That’s what Ena and I wear. Or you can do something different. Your favorite color,” Sigrid said.
“Purple.”
“Okay, so we go with everything purple. Maybe purple and black so you can wear high black boots and a pants skirt like we wear for traveling.” Sigrid frowned. “Unless you’ve already worn anything like that around them.”
“No. She was wearing brown. She always wears brown,” Tanya said, sounding like that was the most boring color around.
“I do not. I’ve got all kinds of colors in my wardrobe.”
“Let’s get some purple corsets in a variety of shades so everyone will know her as the—“ Sigrid said.
“Lavender dragon,” Tanya said. “She has to have scales that color too when she shifts into a dragon.”
They both looked at Kayla, but she turned her attention again to a black and violet colored corset that blended in with her lavender flowers. She would match Alton’s dragon color, scale for scale if she had this color too.
“Maybe a different shade of purple for the scales,” Kayla said. “So I don’t look like I’m a matched pair with Alton.”
“Come to think of it, without my locket, I’m not sure what color I can make you.”
They entered the store, and Kayla glanced at Sigrid. “You’re not going to charge me anything more because you’ve had to do so much extra stuff to help me get the lockets back, are you?”
“No. I want my locket back. We have to do whatever we can to get it back.”
Kayla frowned at her. “You can’t fae transport, can you?”
“No. I can give you the ability through my powers, but I can’t do it myself until I have my locket back. And there are other spells I can’t do either until I have it back.”
“How did you lose it?”
Sigrid snorted. “I was being foolish.”
“Hey, how are we going to pay for all this stuff?” Tanya modeled a blue corset over her clothes in front of a mirror.
“You don’t need a do-over.” Kayla gathered up four different corsets in her size—purple and white, purple and black, purple and lighter purple, purple and teal.
“I like this. I’ve never worn one. They’re cute.”
“We pay for it like we did the haircut,” Sigrid said. She spoke to the clerk, who wrapped up the purple corsets and the one blue one, and then they went to a store that sold cosmetics.
A woman applied the makeup to Kayla’s face, no gold. Instead, she gave her cat-like eyes and shadowed them with violet.
“Do you have boots and pants-skirts that will go with these?” Sigrid asked.
“Yeah. I’m all set.” She glanced over at Tanya who was still getting her face painted. “I don’t want to bother with colored contact lenses. When we get back, can you turn me into a dragon, Sigrid?”
“Yes, but just be careful where you shoot your flames. They can be deadly.”
“Right.” Kayla glanced in the mirror a
t herself. She looked older, and she definitely didn’t look like herself. She’d never worn anything wild like this. Surely, others wouldn’t recognize her.
As if knowing what she was thinking, Sigrid said, “But first, we need to see if anyone recognizes you.”
“Where to then?”
“Let’s go to the village to ‘shop.’” Tanya hopped off the stool she’d been sitting on to have her makeup applied.
“Okay, question. Do the two of you always hang out together?” Sigrid asked as they walked out of the store with a couple of more sacks.
“Mostly.” Kayla enjoyed Tanya’s company. They were best friends so naturally they did a lot of things together.
“Then you can’t for this experiment. If the two of you are always together, people who know you will still think you’re Kayla. But if you’re on your own, or hanging out with someone like me, they won’t immediately believe you are.”
“Good point.” Kayla saw something behind Sigrid’s comment though. She wondered if no one was her best friend. If she isolated herself from other fae because they treated her like she was a witch. Though Kayla and Tanya hadn’t openly befriended her and they had talked about how scary she could be, they hadn’t shared what their concerns about her were with others. And at least for now, while Sigrid needed Kayla to retrieve her locket, Sigrid seemed like a nice enough fae. “I’d be thrilled if you’d pal around with me.”
Kayla didn’t want Tanya to feel left out or that Sigrid was suddenly going to take her place. Tanya did look glum about the whole idea.
“You can observe us from far away.” Kayla wanted Tanya to be a part of this. She had been all along, and Kayla didn’t want her to feel unneeded.
“It’s okay. I don’t want to mess this up for you. It’s really important that we learn if people we know will recognize you or not. I really don’t mind staying away.” Tanya seemed eager to do what she had to in order to help out, but at the same time, Kayla knew she was disappointed that she wouldn’t be right there with her the whole time, watching reactions close up.
“You’ll be my silent partner in this. I really need you to do it for me. We can’t really watch people’s reactions. We have to act like we belong there and just be ourselves. You’ll be able to observe everyone who encounters me. Hey, you could even ask others who I am. Pretend you don’t know me and see if they do.”
“Oh, yeah, excellent idea!” Tanya’s face was alight with excitement. The fae were known to play tricks on each other. Though in this case, they had important, but dangerous work to do. Still, as fae, they couldn’t help but be drawn to the deviousness of their plan.
“Let’s go then.” Tanya was so eager to leave the human world and get started on this, she took hold of Sigrid’s hand and this time Kayla transported on her own. They met up at Kayla’s cottage so she could dress in her new clothes.
Kayla tried on her various pants-skirts with the corsets and before she chickened out, she decided on the purple and teal with a teal pants-skirt and brown boots. She had never worn anything so risqué before, so she wanted to throw on a shirt or jacket or something, and then just have it open in the front.
“This is the new you, remember?” Tanya grinned. “I love it. You look so different. I swear if I hadn’t watched the transformation, I would have to have looked twice to recognize you. Just be the new you and enjoy! This is so much fun, I think Sigrid and I should try it next.”
Sigrid laughed. “They will always think that I’m a witch.”
She was smiling when she said it, but Kayla didn’t think she was really happy about it. And she decided right then and there, Sigrid was going to be their best friend too. Wasn’t it better to have a ‘witch’ on their side than against them? Besides, she loved all Sigrid’s suggestions and was having lots of fun with this, when she had been trying to handle this on her own—unsuccessfully. Kayla still wondered how Sigrid had lost her locket too. Maybe she’d feel like opening up to them later, after she realized they wanted to be her friends and not just that they needed her for a job.
“Why don’t we go first to the farmer’s market?” Sigrid said. “I want to get some fresh tomatoes. They have the fairy ice cones now too. Everyone goes there when it first opens.”
“Sounds good to me.” Kayla looked to see Tanya’s take on it.
“I want one of the watermelon ones. I can even be there at the same time you all are, only I’ll just pretend I don’t know you.”
“It’s a big market so it should work.” Sigrid held out her hand to Kayla.
Kayla took it, and knew it must be bugging Sigrid that she couldn’t go to places on her own like that, unless she walked, until she got her locket back. Just like it was for Kayla. “See you there. Well, but we’ll pretend not to see you.”
Tanya smiled. “This will be fun.” And she sounded like she really meant it.
Kayla was glad. She took one last look in her bedroom mirror and her reflection showed her a person she didn’t recognize. “Oh, what about my voice? Even if I don’t look the same, won’t people recognize my voice?”
“Try to change it when you talk. If that doesn’t work, I might be able to do something to change it. I doubt anyone would recognize it who doesn’t know you really well though.”
“True. Ready? Let’s go.”
As soon as they transported to the farmer’s market, Kayla saw two guys she knew talking to a girl she didn’t get along with at the ice cone stand, Helena. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, she always had the guys’ attentions. Darrel and Sebastian glanced in Kayla’s direction, their eyes widening. Was it in recognition and because she looked so different? Or because she looked so different and they didn’t know her and they wondered who she was?
Helena turned to see what they were gawking at, and Kayla turned her attention away from them, remembering she wasn’t supposed to act like she knew them. She hoped she hadn’t already blown her cover.
6
Alton knew it was a dumb idea thinking Kayla would return to where she must have been spying on him while he had been practicing dragon games with Olaf before. And that’s where she had left her jewelry behind. After the way he had told on her, even if he’d had no intention of doing so, he assumed she wouldn’t come anywhere near the place. And yet, she’d seemed so desperate to get her locket back that he felt she wouldn’t just give up.
Flying high above the clearing with the brown dragon, Alton kept searching the area for signs of her gold glittering in the sunlight as if she’d come here wearing gold again and risk getting caught, but he saw no sign of her. Everyone was practicing their skills before the games, and he often practiced with Olaf here, so at least the dragon didn’t wonder why Alton wanted to return here. For a second time, Olaf tried to fly with him in an upside down arc and Alton nearly plummeted to the ground. He thought he saw a glint of gold, when it was only a yellow leaf fluttering in the breeze. Olaf alighted on the ground and shifted.
Alton joined him, thinking he wanted a break, but Olaf said, “Listen, if you’re still hurting and don’t think you can make it in the games—”
“No, I’m fine. Really.”
Olaf eyed him speculatively. “Then what? I’ve never seen you so…distracted. Normally you never are and that’s why I like practicing with you. We were doing so well working as a team for that part of the games, I thought we’d take first place for sure. But if you’re really not up to this, we can plan on it for next year. If you’re not feeling well, I don’t want you to pretend you are for some stupid macho reason just to prove you can still participate and end up injuring yourself even worse.”
“I’m fine, okay?” Truth of the matter was an ache throughout the area where the bolt had struck Alton still persisted and some of the diving and arching he was doing made him grit his teeth to fight the pain. But he would participate even if it nearly killed him.
Olaf frowned at him. “Then what is the matter?” He folded his arms and cocked his head. “Don’t tell me it’s about this Kay
la. The golden fae. Halloran said you were angry he had intended to take her into custody. You said yourself she was planning to steal Ena and Brett’s gold. So, what? You had a change of heart concerning her because she rescued you? Big mistake, bro.”
“Yeah, well see how you’d feel if someone, even if she was a golden fae, saved your hide and didn’t have to. Risked her own neck in doing so, in fact. So yeah, I had a change of heart. Why wouldn’t I?”
Olaf looked around at the pine trees and bracken growing at the edge of the clearing. “Is this where she dropped her gold jewelry?”
Alton didn’t want to tell him everything that had occurred, but he figured he wasn’t going to be able to just pretend it didn’t happen.
“Listen, I took something of hers, all right? So I want to give it back.”
“You stole from her?”
“No, she left it behind.”
“Then it’s yours. Where did she leave it behind?”
“Here.”
“Then it really is yours since she had no business being over here.”
“She was watching us when we were working on our techniques for the games, curious, I guess. At the end of our practice, I saw her gold glittering. You flew home because you had a job to do, and I took off to check out what was sparkling in the fronds. I heard her fleeing, but I knew I’d catch up to her, so I grabbed her jewelry first. She had a lot. I never observed her, just saw the fronds moving. By the time I reached the river, she’d vanished. So I assumed she’d transported home again. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t done so in the first place though, instead of trying to slow me down by leaving her jewelry behind.”
“There might be iron ore in some of the areas beneath the soil. On the other hand, you don’t think it was a trick, do you? She was drawing you to the river’s edge for some devious purpose?”
All fae kind were tricksters. Alton didn’t know one who wasn’t. Well, maybe Ena. He swore she lived to work, except for the relationship she had with Brett now. As far as he knew, he hadn’t seen her play tricks on anyone ever. The rest of the fae? It was part of who they were.