Tempest Rising (Jane True #1)

Iris stood behind me, looking at me in the mirror and making minor adjustments. I had just realized that most of the adjustments seemed to be located right around my breastal region, when Ryu said gently, “Iris, we need to get back to business. Let Jane try on another outfit and we’ll keep talking.”

I tottered back into the dressing room as Iris thrust a dress at me, rolling her eyes. “Fine, if we must,” I heard her complain as I eased off the high heels with a sigh. “The goblin called a few days ago, saying that she wanted to speak to me about Peter, but she never showed up for her appointment. So I can’t tell you what Gretchen wanted, because I didn’t actually meet her. So why don’t we concentrate on Jane.” Her voice grew honeysuckle sweet. “I have some fantastic lingerie in back—”

“As tempting as that is,” Ryu’s dry voice cut in, “I’m afraid we need to concentrate on what you just said about Peter. You knew Peter?” he asked. “Do you know he’s dead?”

I was inching my way out of the trousers, understanding what a snake felt like shedding its skin, when I heard Iris sigh. “Yes,” she said. “He was such a lovely man. He did this thing with his—”

“I’m sure he did,” Ryu interrupted her hastily, as I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. “But someone murdered Peter. And now Gretchen, who came out to investigate Peter’s death, has been murdered as well. All we know about Gretchen’s investigation is that she was supposed to come see you, and we need to find out why.”

I slipped the dress Iris had given me over my head with pleasure. It was a silky material that felt like water caressing my skin, and it was the loveliest pattern. There were two shades of purple involved, a rich bright pink and a little white. The pattern itself was vaguely geometric but some of the lines wobbled so that they lent an organic feel to the whole thing. There was an insanely long sash that I didn’t know what to do with hanging from the waist, and if I’d shown off some cleavage before, I was practically an advertisement for it in this dress. Which was also very, very short.

There was a lull in conversation outside my dressing room, and I could tell that Ryu was trying to regroup. Iris definitely knew something she wasn’t telling us; there was a slyness to her prevarications that spoke volumes. But I was getting the feeling that questioning Iris was like asking obedience of a golden retriever. You had to interject treats, ball throwing, and belly rubs as carrots, while the stick would get you nowhere. I’d also figured out that, under these circumstances, I seemed to make a suitable Milk-Bone.

I stepped out from the dressing room with a flourish. Iris gasped theatrically, clasping her hands together. Even given his annoyance, Ryu looked pretty pleased with the effect.

“It’s a kimono mini-dress,” Iris explained, coming over to wrap the deep purple sash around my waist a bunch of times before tying it into a small knot in front. The “mini” part was obvious, and the kimono part explained the huge sleeves. She pulled out another pair of enormous heels. This time they were the same lighter-purple shade of the dress and they had small triangular cut-outs coming up from the sole so that they were sort of tiger-striped, with the stripes being the little cut-out triangles. All the shoe’s edges were lined in a thin etching of gold. “Platform pumps by Christian Louboutin, as you can probably tell from the red soles,” she told me, slipping them on my feet.

When she swiveled me around, I had to admit I was quite a sight. The dress was gorgeous, and in the mirror, at least, I looked tall and elegant. In reality, I barely came up to Iris’s chin and in those shoes I would probably walk like I’d just gotten off a horse, but if I kept still I made quite a satisfying illusion.

Iris was literally purring as she smoothed the material down over my hips. Then smoothed it again. And then again. I took my chance, and I struck.

“Iris?” I asked, quietly, not wanting to disturb her reverie.

“Yes?” she murmured, pulling the material covering my chest both slightly tighter and slightly apart, to up the boobage factor even more.

“Tell us about Peter,” I cajoled. “Did he tell you why he was in Rockabill? He told me he was writing a book.”

Iris looked me in the eyes, and I took another little involuntary step forward. This woman is dangerous, my brain observed while my irrepressible libido merrily calculated the mechanics involved in catapulting myself into a lesbian affair.

The succubus laughed, and said, “Oh, he was a naughty boy. He wasn’t writing a book; he was investigating a halfling down in Rockabill. That’s what he did. Well, that’s all he could do, really. He was practically human. He’d gotten almost none of his father’s, an incubus’s, gifts. But he could sense other halflings, for some reason.” She shrugged. “You never know what you’re going to get when you have a child with a human. Sometimes they’re just like you, and sometimes they’re just like the human parent. Sometimes they’re like nothing else at all, and they come out entirely unique.”

Iris untied and re-tied the sash around my waist, slightly tighter and wider this time. I could see that Ryu was listening intently, but he was careful not to interrupt us.

“So, Peter was investigating a halfling?” I asked, already realizing what was coming. “Was it me?”

Iris looked at me with confusion on her face. “Oh, Jane,” she whispered. Her voice was like candied plums and it nearly broke my heart. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t even realize until you said that. It must have been you.”

I smiled at her and stroked her golden hair. It was softer than the fabric of the dress I was wearing. “It’s okay, Iris,” I murmured. “You didn’t know. And we don’t know what he was doing, maybe it was innocent. Do you know what he was doing?”

“I only know that he investigated them to start a sort of… inventory of halflings. He said that his employer wanted to know about the halflings and who their parents were. And what their powers were if they had any. He said that he was making a sort of catalog… for future research.” I could tell that Iris’s concentration was breaking up. She kept stopping and starting awkwardly. She looked genuinely distressed that I had been the halfling in question.

“Iris,” I interrupted her, getting out the carrot. “Why don’t I try on something else for you?”

She smiled like dawn breaking through the folds of night. “Oh, yes. I have just the dress.”

She pulled a silver swathe of fabric from the rack, and her eyes were back to glowing slightly. “I’ll have to help you with this,” she informed me, doing a good job of keeping her buttered-rum voice professional.

I sighed. In for a penny, I thought, untying the sash around my waist and pulling the dress I was wearing over my head.

Iris took a moment to surreptitiously check me out before she held the silvery fabric over my head and pulled it down. She kept me faced toward her so that I couldn’t see myself in the mirror, which was a nice touch. Between her sensuality and her obvious sales skills, I now knew why Iris’s boutique did incredibly well despite its being so far off the beaten fashion track.

As she busied herself settling the dress where it was supposed to be, I struck again. “Iris? What Peter was doing doesn’t sound very dangerous, and yet he was murdered. Did he say anything about feeling threatened?”

I couldn’t tell if Ryu was concentrating harder on Iris’s ministrations or my words, but he nodded at what I’d said. I’m doing pretty well, for a sidekick, I thought.

“There was something odd,” Iris said. “Peter didn’t want to talk about it, and we didn’t really do much talking when we were together.” She smiled and reached around me to undo my bra as I stifled a gasp. She ran her hands down my arms to lower my bra straps and then took a firm hold of the material between my breasts, whisking my bra away so that it didn’t interfere with the cut of the dress.

“But he said that there was something fishy going on. That something was happening to the halflings he was cataloging. He didn’t say what, but it couldn’t have been good because I could taste that he was scared when he said it.” I quivered at her casual use of the word “taste” to explain how she sensed Peter’s emotions, and at her stepping behind me to zip up the dress. She trailed the fingers of her free hand along my spine, causing me to stand up straight as she zipped. The dress was snug, but I think that’s how it was supposed to be.

Ryu was gazing at me, fangs ahoy, while Iris stayed behind me adjusting the halter strap and then sweeping my hair up into a little ponytail to get it off my neck. The dress must have looked good because he was practically drooling.

Iris then slipped onto my feet another pair of red-soled ridiculous heels. I got the feeling she was insinuating I needed a little help in the height department. “More Louboutin’s,” she said. “Slingback sandals.” They were black satin with a little peephole in the toe and these adorably large satin bows lounging across the top.

“He also said he thought he had seen somebody who shouldn’t be there, wherever he was investigating. He wasn’t sure about any of this. He wasn’t sure he’d seen who he’d seen and he seemed to find it hard to believe that whoever it was would be there,” she said, confusedly, as I tried to follow her train of thought. “But he was almost certain, at the same time, that he was right.” Iris had stepped away to look me over appraisingly, and then stepped forward again to make a few minor adjustments to the dress.