Plastering a smile on my face I greeted the trio of seemingly normal looking women as they came up to my desk. “Hi there, how can I help you?”
The head of the trio took off her massive sunglasses, revealing a pair of inhuman eyes. They were a bright neon green with slitted pupils, almost snake-like as she smiled down at me.
The other two women took off their own sunglasses and I saw that they had the same eyes, but blue and orange respectively.
The air around them shimmered and wavered, like heat on concrete and I had to blink a few times to clear my vision.
“I didn’t realize that Dallan hired humans,” the first woman said, her words ending on a little hiss as she examined my face.
My mouth opened as I tried to figure out how to respond to her without sounding rude.
Luckily for me, I wouldn’t have to say anything at all.
“You’re an hour late, Medusa.” Effie’s voice came from behind me as she emerged through the beaded curtain, a frown already on her face as she faced the three women.
The air seemed to crackle for a moment as the woman and the tree nymph glared at each other.
“Better late than never I always say. When you’ve been alive as long as I have, time is more of a suggestion than a rule. You’ll learn that in a thousand years or so, Euphemia,” the woman said, her smile practically lethal.
Effie’s cheeks flushed a lime green color and she opened her mouth, probably to retort something equally as nasty, but a hand gripped her shoulder and stopped her words in their tracks.
“Hello, ladies,” Dallan said as she stepped into the waiting room. “I heard you from my office. I figured you’d come in late this time as well so I moved your appointments back for you.”
I watched with disbelief as the three women, who had been nothing but hostile to me and Effie, melted into a puddle of simpering noises as soon as Dallan stepped into the room.
“Of course you did, darling, we’ve been your regular customers for nearly a hundred years. I’d trust no one else with my body,” Medusa purred as she stepped in close to the Cthulhu. There was enough of an innuendo in her words that made even me blush.
Effie stepped behind my chair as the two other women crowded around Dallan.
“Is Cashiel my artist like I requested? I just love a grumpy man like him,” one of the other women asked, fluttering her lashes up at Dallan.
“Cash and Fiero will be working on your pieces today,” Dallan assured them as he steered them through the curtain, shooting a look at Effie over his shoulder before he disappeared.
“I hate when the Gorgons come,” Effie grumbled under her breath as she slammed her tablet down onto the desk.
“They’retheGorgons?” I asked, surprised. I’d learned about them in school, but all of the history books said that they were notorious shut-ins who rarely left Greece.
Effie grimaced before sinking down into the chair next to mine, the skirts of her green poodle skirt fluttering around her legs. “Yep. They breeze through every fifteen years for new tattoos and take over the entire shop with their bullshit.”
“I didn’t see any tattoos on them.” I pointed out, pushing my pile of work aside. The three women had looked like typical sorority girls with unblemished golden skin and bright blond hair.
“That’s just the glamour they wear when they leave their mountain. It’s never the same one twice, so don’t expect them to look the same tomorrow when they inevitably come back.”
I thought about the shimmering over their heads as they spoke to me. “I haven’t been around supernaturals much, but why didn’t their eyes also look human?”
Effie shrugged a freckled shoulder. “I have yet to meet a witch or warlock that can create a glamour that is able to disguise eyes. Hence the terrible trio’s snake eyes. They’ll take their glamours off to get tattooed and put it back on before they leave.”
“And do all glamours shimmer a little bit?” I asked, nibbling on my lower lip as I thought of Farrow, the lizard man that owned the coffee shop.
Effie’s expression shifted from annoyed to surprised. “You can see the shimmering?”
“Should I not be able to?” I asked with a frown, feeling uncomfortable with the way that she was suddenly looking at me.
“If you’re fully human you shouldn’t be able to see it at all. The shimmer is the magic of the glamour in the air,” Effie confirmed, her eyes sparkling with sudden interest. “You must have a supernatural parent or grandparent somewhere.”
“My mom was fully human and so were her parents, so there’s no way of that,” I told her with a shake of my head.
“And your dad?” Effie pushed.
