Lydia finished swiftly with her guest, who looked amused at the interruption instead of annoyed. “What if we start with your hair?” she suggested, rising to stand beside Gizelle.
Gizelle cocked her head at her reflection. Her hair didn’t look like other people’s. Sometimes they had lighter strands in their hair, but Gizelle’s white streaks were unnaturally bold against her dark hair. It was long, like Magnolia’s, but it didn’t hang in such tidy waves. She wasn’t supposed to hide in it, she reminded herself, or Conall wouldn’t be able to hear her.
“Alright,” she said reluctantly.
Lydia took her hand and led her to one of the chairs by the sinks. With one smooth move, she twirled a smock over Gizelle’s dress. Lydia’s hands were even more gentle than her voice, stroking over Gizelle’s head with clever, investigative fingers.
“Do you want it cut?” Lydia said, a note of hesitation in her voice.
“No,” Gizelle said at once, nearly leaping out of the chair. If the smock hadn’t been tangled around her, she might have made it further.
“Okay, okay,” Lydia said swiftly, with gentle pressure on her shoulders. “We’ll just trim a little off the ends to even it up, that’s all.” She continued to explore Gizelle’s hair, and asked, “Have you been washing your hair, dear?”
“I don’t like the water falling on me,” Gizelle told her. “It’s too noisy on my head. So I just go swimming. Bastian showed me how.”
“Swimming in a bathtub?” Lydia said hopefully.
“No,” Gizelle said frankly. “In the saltwater pool.”
Lydia was quiet for a long moment as she tugged gingerly at the knots and tangles. “This is going to take a while,” she finally admitted. “And I’m going to need some help.”
“I’m ready,” Gizelle said.
She hoped she really was.
She let Lydia put entire bottles of scented things on her head and start massaging it in.
Laura came to help, shaking her head over the task. “What did you do to your fingernails?” she exclaimed.
“Nothing,” Gizelle said defensively. “They just do that.”
Laura put Gizelle’s hands in tubs of squishy stuff, then scolded her when she tried to play with it. “Just sit,” the wolf shifter said firmly. “Tex told me that you asked him to arrange a dinner date,” she added.
“Dinner?” Lydia exclaimed, stilling her fingers for a moment. “Don’t you want to start with something... simpler?” she suggested.
“Isn’t dinner what most people do?” Gizelle said, squirming. “Maybe we could have drinks, instead.”
“Oh, no,” Lydia and Laura both said, with voices that edged on horror.
“Stop wiggling,” Laura said. “Just sit.”
So Gizelle sat, while Laura did things to her fingernails and toes that tickled and smelled bad.
Chapter 10
After the encounter with the gardener, Conall went, resigned, to the restaurant. It was lunchtime, which was apparently a meal limited to the buffet.
He was no hungrier than he’d been the night before, but he picked some food he knew would sustain him while he continued to wait.
Conall had never been particularly good at waiting. As a child, the months before Christmas had been a torture of anticipation. More recently, waiting for the awful, ubiquitous Christmas holiday season to finally end was the real test of his patience.
As Conall picked at his plate he became aware of someone standing by his table. He looked up to find a waiter hovering.
Probably he had been clearing his throat or some other useless thing, and Conall answered with his most off-putting scowl.
But the waiter’s unexpected words made him regret it. “Gazelle wants to see you.”
It was like an electric jolt directly to his heart and Conall pushed back his plate and started to stand.