There was a gasping sound, then a cough. Charlie looked at me in alarm. “Is she sick?”
“No,” Opal’s voice said between coughs. “Just not used to . . . breathing . . .”
She crawled out of the hidey-hole and leaned against the wall for a moment to catch her breath. Her face was a little red, and she’d lost some of the unnatural glow I associated with vampires.
Charlie looked at her with curiosity. “You feel weird. Like Uncle Quinn.”
Opal smiled, unoffended. “Hello. You must be Charlie.”
“And I’m John.” My brother-in-law stepped forward and held out his hand. Opal shook it with some amusement. Vampires didn’t usually shake hands with humans, because why would you exchange pleasantries with your food source? But she read the protective look on John’s face and was smart enough to play nice.
“Miss Charlie,” Opal said then, looking at my niece. “Would you maybe hold my hand on the stairs? I get a little scared sometimes.”
Charlie puffed up with importance, holding out her hand. And that was that.
Chapter 19
John helped Opal carry up two suspiciously large bags of supplies. I’d set out my card table and a folding chair in the living room again, and we spent a few minutes getting Charlie set up with her DVD and snacks. By the time Opal was spreading a protective hairstylist cape around my shoulders, my niece was seriously engrossed in The Nightmare Before Christmas. John, who had probably been forced to watch the movie about two hundred times since Halloween, sat down in my armchair with a Longmire novel and one wary eye on Opal.
The vampire, for her part, began by fussing with my hair. It was still a little damp from my shower, but she spritzed on a bit more water and picked up a very professional-looking set of shears. Since all I cared about was keeping it long enough to pull into a ponytail, I agreed to let her trim two inches off my hair and add in some layers. When she finished, handing me a mirror the size of a clipboard, I had to admit it looked kind of good.
“Thank you,” she said with a little bow. Then uncertainty crossed her face, and she glanced at Charlie with a look of longing. “Do you think I could, um . . . try some of those fish-shaped crackers?”
John looked up, raising an eyebrow. “She doesn’t usually get to eat . . . uh . . . people food,” I explained. The previous year, when Scarlett Bernard had made an appearance in Boulder, I’d seen how much Maven and Quinn enjoyed getting to try different pastries at the coffee shop. “Would you mind going to the kitchen and putting a plate together for her?”
John gave me a look that clearly said You really want me to leave my kid with the vampire? but he dutifully got up and headed into the kitchen. He returned with a plate of baby carrots, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, more goldfish crackers, and two of the organic Oreos I kept for when my cousins’ kids came to visit. He also had two juice boxes—but he had to help Opal with her straw. Charlie happened to look up from the movie long enough to see this, and she told Opal confidentially, “I think they’re tricky, too.”
After her snack—which Opal ate with much “mmm”-ing and smacking of lips—she announced that it was time to do my hair. She’d brought along a sort of gel that contained color—in this case, a bright gold—and would, she promised me, wash right out. She put on surgical gloves and began to squirt it onto my hair in chunks, combing it through with a special brush.
When the gel covered my hair, she began plaiting it on either side, tying it off with rubber bands. When she finally snapped off her gloves and handed me the mirror, I had two bright gold French braid pigtails.
“It looks so . . . cute,” I complained.
John glanced up and started snickering, and from her spot on the floor, Charlie looked up at me, her eyes practically bulging with surprise. “You look so pretty, Aunt Lex!”
“Thanks, honey,” I said in a near grumble. I always looked younger than my years, thanks to boundary magic, but now I could pass for about eighteen. “I was kind of expecting you to go with neon green or something. This almost looks natural.”
Opal took the mirror away and set it back on the shelf, out of my reach. “That’s the idea,” she told me in a low voice. Charlie had gone back to her movie. “A neon color would stand out too much, even in a group of hippie witches. It would make everyone take a second look at you, and that’s the last thing we want.”
I sighed, but nodded. She had a point. It might not have been as eye-catching, but this hair still didn’t look like something Allison Luther would ever, ever do. I tilted my head to see the bottom of the pigtails, but the braid was so tight that they were only a couple of inches long—hard for anyone to grab in a fight. It would do.
I narrowed my eyes at Opal. “Wait a minute—if you were planning to braid it, why did you cut it first?”
“Your split ends were driving me nuts,” she said, deadpan. John broke into a laugh. I glowered at both of them, but I’m sure the effect was ruined by my adorable hairdo.
Makeup took over an hour, and required more brushes, sponges, and powders than I could possibly keep track of. The entire top of the card table was eventually covered in jars and pots and compacts. Opal even put a tiny bit of putty on my nose to change the shape. When she was finally finished, she helped me put in a magnetic nose ring and handed me the mirror again.
I gasped at my reflection. “What the hell?” I almost dropped the mirror.
“Language,” John said, looking up from his book. He gaped at me, then blurted, “Holy shit!”
I looked like a complete stranger, with different cheekbones and coloring. The small amount of putty Opal had applied gave me an entirely different nose, and even though she hadn’t added any to my chin, somehow that shape also looked different. I wouldn’t have recognized a picture of myself like this.
“Daddy,” Charlie said, gazing at her father. “You gotta put a quarter in the jar.”
“You’re right, sweetheart, but just look at Aunt Lex’s makeup.”
Charlie’s head swiveled toward me. A look of complete shock came over her face; then her lower lip trembled.
“Charlie-bug? You okay?” I asked.
“I don’t like it!” she wailed. “You don’t look like you!”
“It’s okay, honey, it all comes off,” Opal promised her. “It’s a costume, like Halloween.”
Charlie’s eyes instantly went to the TV screen, where Sally was trying to save Santa from Oogie Boogie, then shifted back to me. “But it’s not Halloween anymore.”
“I have to go to a costume party tonight,” I explained. “Tomorrow I’ll look like me again.”
“Good,” Charlie grumbled, and went back to watching the movie.
Opal stepped back and surveyed me thoughtfully. “Okay, last thing before we change your clothes. Have you worn contacts before?”
“Once, in high school,” I admitted. John snorted without looking up from his book. Sam had talked John and me into volunteering for a haunted house fund-raiser for our high school. She and I had dressed as the twins from The Shining. John got to be Jack Torrance, and no matter how much I begged, he refused to trade costumes. He did help me destroy all the pictures my mother had taken, though.
“All right,” Opal said. “Same principles apply.”
It took a few tries, but I got the brown contacts in and put on the trendy, rectangular glasses she handed me. Then I went into my bedroom and changed into the ridiculous outfit she had put together: a long jersey skirt with a slit up the back for movement, a skintight camisole, and a delicate pink sweater that “brought out the roses in my cheeks,” according to Opal. Knee-high socks and actual clogs, which were easy to walk in but ugly as hell. I particularly hated the sweater, which belonged on the female lead in a teen romantic comedy. I had to admit, though, everything was the exact right size for me.
When I walked back into the living room, I expected John to start laughing, but instead his jaw dropped open.
“Well,” he said, when he’d gathered his wits. “Charlie’s right. You certainly don’t look like you.”
Opal glanced at him. “You’ve known her a long time, right? Do you think you would recognize her on the street?”
John shook his head, still looking shocked. “No way. You’re really good at this.” He glanced at Charlie, who was watching the screen a little pointedly now. She didn’t want to look at me, and I couldn’t blame her.
“Thank you.” Opal gave him a curtsy. She reached into her reusable shopping bag and pulled out a thick denim jacket lined with shearling. It looked broken-in and comfortable, and fit me perfectly. It was the only item I was wearing that I might actually have chosen for myself. “Thanks,” I told her.
“Check the pockets,” she suggested. I reached in and found a pair of gloves in one side, and a burner phone in the other. “The phone is from Quinn,” she explained. “He dropped it off last night after you went to bed.”
I nodded, turning it over in my hands. I had used this model before—Quinn favored it because it looked a lot like an iPhone. It had navigation, too, so I would be able to use it to get to the meeting. I turned the phone on and saw that Quinn had even filled the contacts with fake numbers.
Opal snapped her fingers. “That reminds me. He said to tell you he went out to the farm to check on your witch friends last night, and they’re fine.”
Something in my chest loosened. I really wished Opal had told me that the moment she woke up. I reminded myself that she had no way of knowing how worried I’d been. “Did he talk to either of them?” I asked.
She frowned. “I don’t think so. But he saw them both through the windows, and he said they’re not being hurt or starved or anything; they just have to hang around the house with no phones. There are a couple of witches there too, making sure they don’t try to contact anyone. So if you call them or whatever . . . it would be a whole thing.”
I nodded again, not needing to ask how Quinn had managed to check on the Pellars without alerting the “guards.” If there was one thing vampires could do well, it was sneak around in the night.
“Which reminds me,” Opal added. “Try not to talk much at the meeting. Your voice is the one thing I can’t change.”
“Got it.” I hesitated for a moment. I wanted to ask if I could wear my birth mother’s bloodstone—I wasn’t planning to use boundary magic, but I felt vulnerable without it, like a kid without their favorite teddy bear. But I knew the answer was no. Anyone who might recognize me by sight could conceivably recognize the bloodstone necklace.
Charlie’s movie ended. She was still clearly uncomfortable with my appearance, so John suggested the two of them walk Opal back down to the basement den, giving me a chance to take care of the dogs one more time before I left.