The Fear Dearg had enough glamour that he could have changed his appearance, too. He simply didn’t care if they stared. But then a phone call to the right number wouldn’t make the press descend on him until we had to call other bodyguards to get us to our car. That had happened twice since we came back to Los Angeles. I didn’t want a repeat.

The Fear Dearg dropped back to talk to us. “I have never seen a sidhe able to use glamour so well.”

“That’s high praise coming from you,” I said. “Your people are known for their ability at glamour.”

“The lesser fey are all better at glamour than the bigger folk.”

“I’ve seen sidhe make garbage look like a feast and have people eat it,” I said.

Doyle said, “And the Fear Dearg need a leaf to create money, a cracker to be a cake, a log to be a purse of gold. You need something to pin the glamour to for it to work.”

“So do I,” I said. I thought about it. “So do the sidhe that I’ve seen able to do it.”

“Oh, but once the sidhe could conjure castles out of thin air, and food to tempt any mortal that was mere air,” the Fear Dearg said.

“I’ve not seen …” Then I stopped, because the sidhe didn’t like admitting out loud that their magic was fading. It was considered rude, and if the Queen of Air and Darkness heard you, the punishment would be a slap, if you were lucky, and if you weren’t, you’d bleed for reminding her that her kingdom was lessening.

The Fear Dearg gave a little skip, and Frost was forced a little back from my side, or he would have stepped on the smaller fey. Doyle growled at him, a deep rumbling bass that matched the huge black dog he could shift into. Frost stepped forward, forcing the Fear Dearg to step ahead or be stepped on.

“The sidhe have always been petty,” he said, as if it didn’t bother him at all, “but you were saying, my queen, that you’d never seen such glamour from the sidhe. Not in your lifetime, eh?”