businessman__A

his smooth, flawless exterior lay a creature that would gladly have torn their hearts from their living bodies and eaten them alive. In fact, he was praised by those fundamentalist leaders as a “true Christian businessman.”
A shiver of energies touched her spine as the Gate let someone through from the human world. She wasn’t worried; right now the Gate was keyed only to herself, Vidal, and Niall mac Lyr. She waited a moment, dimming the lighting with a thought. Vidal stalked through the door from Studio One shortly thereafter, closing it so carefully behind him that Aurilia knew he was angry.
Lovely. What sort of temper tantrum am I going to be treated to this morning?
She turned slowly to face him: He was still wearing his human-seeming, which meant that although he was angry, he had not been enraged so far as to lose control. It was much the same as his true-shape; raven hair replaced the silver, though he wore it longer when he was not passing among humans. The pale skin had been overlaid with a golden tan. Brown eyes with round pupils substituted for the colorless, pale green, cat’s eyes . . . But the brow was just as high, the cheek-bones just as prominent, the eyebrows still slanted winglike towards his temples, and the body was still the wiry-slender build of a gymnast or a martial artist. His face wore a cool, indifferent expression, but his body betrayed him.
She, in her turn, did not pretend she did not notice his anger. She simply waited, smoothing the cream-colored silk of her skirt with one hand. She might be the head of this triad, the one with the plans, but he was the strength. He was only a little less intelligent than she, and a better, more powerful mage than she, and she had no intention of ever forgetting that fact. Only his hatred for Keighvin Silverhair kept