Once Megan had collected herself, cleaned up, and spent some time fixing her makeup, I officially introduced her to all of the members of my entourage. Then we gave her a bit of a primer on the Fae, and what she would need to know as one of us. Nishalle added some things that Tokh’dhraí in particular needed to know, such as drinking blood to heal when injured.

I suspected that Megan would choose to become fully Tokh’dhraí when given the choice. It wasn’t that she found being Fae distasteful. In fact, she seemed to view us with a certain amount of awe and a keen interest. Her problem was that the change had been unexpected, she had to hide it from others, and she had no idea what was happening to her until we had explained it to her.

She was most afraid of losing her job and home, being attacked, or disappearing like other Changed.
Now that she had sworn her loyalty to me, she was under my protection and would have a guaranteed home and income in Varüus’kiel. She would also be safe while there and Nishalle had told her that one of the benefits of being a Tokh’dhraí was that people didn’t screw with her and took her a lot more seriously.

Megan had only gotten out of foster care and graduated high school less than a year ago and since then she had been struggling to make ends meet. She was renting a room that was little more than a broom closet and had gone through over a dozen temporary positions in the workforce. She liked working with people and it was looking like the hotel might take her on permanently when she began changing after Christmas.

It had been getting harder for her to hide it from the couple that she was renting her room from and she had been worried about having to find a new place to live. The couple had said some really nasty things about the Changed and she had been scared of them finding out that she was changing. Finding a place that she could afford in Toronto that wasn’t a shared accommodation hadn’t been looking promising either.

With Megan somewhat calmer about her situation she finally asked, “Ummm… Your Majesty? I know that I said I can drive, but I don’t have a car. I know where we can rent a limo; I have called them for other hotel guests before, but they usually come with their own drivers.”

“I have a vehicle that we can use,” I assured her. “I will ride in the vehicle with you, along with Lissany, Harley, Pete, Nishalle, and Daenyss. Salem will stay here with some of Lilith’s girls to make sure nobody tries to mess with anything in our suites, and Lilith and Rei will keep an eye out for trouble from above.”

My Kitsune consort grinned a very vulpine grin from ear to ear. She had been in one of her ultra-feminine moods since waking up and I wasn’t all that surprised when she shifted into a voluptuous Succubus with her usual Japanese feminine features. “Cool, I’ve been wanting to try this form since meeting Lilith,” she said as scales grew to cover her body like skin-tight armor and wings, horns, and a spaded tail sprouted to match Lilith’s.

Poor Megan just stared in shock for a moment and I couldn’t help but smile. She was going to have to get used to this kind of thing sooner or later. Once she had managed to pick her jaw up off the ground, she sighed, “I should go home and change, I’m not really dressed for driving an Empress around.”

“That is what glamours are for,” I replied with a smile. “I can make you look the very picture of a proper limo driver, but I need to ask you something first. You are safe with us, we won’t let any harm come to you, and we accept you for who you are, or who you want to be. So I need to know, who do you want to be? Who am I making this glamour for? If you choose to keep looking Human, it won’t change anything, you will be accepted in Varüus’kiel either way, but think about it while you go to get anything from your home that you would like to keep.”

By lunchtime, we were ready to go. Lilith had gone all motherly over Megan and escorted her home herself so the poor girl could gather her possessions and then teleported them both back to my suite. Megan didn’t have much that she wanted to keep though, having moved through a lot of foster homes growing up. Mostly, it was just the few clothes that hadn’t been giving her an allergic reaction since she started changing and some small keepsakes from her parents. It was barely enough to fill a duffel bag.

I had been busy while the pair were gone. I had gone back to the safe house in Vancouver and cast a glamour and several powerful protective spells on the Mercedes SUV. Now, instead of the metallic red color that stood out a bit too much for my liking, the vehicle appeared to be a more subtle and sensible black. Anyone who tried to get inside who I hadn’t made an exception for would be in for a shock, literally, and the occupants would also be protected from anything short of a nuclear blast or an act of Gods. Given my life, it was about as reassuring as I could expect it to get.

Once I finished my work, I quietly teleported it into the underground parking for the hotel and left it in the spot reserved for my suite so that Megan would know where to go to retrieve it. Salem and Daenyss had been busy as well, making appointments to meet with the contacts that Vivian had given us. So by the time Megan and Lilith returned, we were about as ready as we were going to get.

All that was left was to cover ourselves with appropriate glamours, and since we were being very public this visit, those glamours would only consist of clothing for those of us who weren’t being obvious about wearing armor. That meant me, Daenyss, and Rei, though we were all wearing proper undergarments underneath. Even Daenyss suffered through wearing a pair of cotton panties with a panty liner since she was feeling a bit bloated and crampy and thought that her period might start soon.

Rei wore a glamour that consisted of a form-fitting blue velvet dress, a black bolero jacket, and black leather boots. Daenyss wore a sensible but stylish white blouse with a black blazer and knee-length skirt that made her look very much the personal assistant to someone important. Meanwhile, my glamour consisted of a violet skater dress with a black bodice and lace trim on the shoulder straps, neckline, and hem. The dress was sleeveless and form-fitting, with a plunging neckline and flared thigh-length skirt that left little to the imagination, and a pair of simple black ankle boots completed the outfit.

With this being Toronto in the middle of winter I decided to cast warmth spells on all three of us as well since we would only have our underwear between us and the elements. This wasn’t like Vancouver which was more rainy than cold or the comfortable warmth of Varüus’kiel sitting atop a caldera. It was cold and there was snow, slush, and ice to contend with on the ground. With that in mind, I made the glamours of our boots solid illusions instead of just visual, imbuing them with warmth to provide a layer of insulation between our bare feet and the cold snow and ice.

With the three of us ready to go, I turned to Megan. “Eventually, I’ll have my people design you a comfortable and Fae-appropriate uniform in materials that won’t irritate your skin, should you choose to remain Fae. For now, a glamour will suffice, and I can alter your appearance as well if you would prefer some anonymity while we’re still here in Toronto.”

“Umm… you said that my parents probably would have been like me when this Veil thing fell, right?” she asked uncertainly.

I nodded in the affirmative before explaining. “Yes, most likely one of them would have ended up looking like a Tokh’dhraí, though I can’t say which for certain. At least one of your parents had Fae ancestry though, most likely both of them for it to show up so strongly in you.”

Megan looked thoughtful for a moment, and a bit uncertain before she finally spoke again. “Could… could you show me what I would look if I were a real… umm… Tokh’dhraí, Your Majesty?”

Nishalle laughed and interjected, “You are a real Tokh’dhraí, or at least part. If you weren’t you wouldn’t have had these problems. My sister and I were both part Fae too before we were changed, though we didn’t know that until afterward. We decided to embrace our heritage. That was before Tae got the whole Empress/Demigoddess thing thrust upon her.”

“Nishalle is right, but yes, I can give you a general idea of what you would look like as a full-blooded Tokh’dhraí,” I told Megan gently as I carefully looked over her makeup-covered features before weaving a glamour over her.

I remembered the fiery orange of her eyes and changed her skin tone to the same dark blue as Nishalle’s. Then I pictured her long light blonde hair a dark purple, her features softer and slightly more angular, added a few inches to her height, a bit of muscle tone, and finished up by making her canines look more prominent and her ears longer and coming to a point with a similar shape as Nishalle’s and mine. Once I had that picture clearly in my mind, I pictured her in a chauffeur’s uniform with a feminine cut and willed the glamour into existence as I spoke and drew the sigils for the spell. “Kiara kaida nihala Megan!”

“Whoa, that was… weird?” Megan said, her eyes going wide as the magic settled. They only became wider at the sound of the huskier and slightly sultry voice that left her lips.

“Keep in mind, this is just a rough guess, but it seems about right to me,” I told her as I turned her toward a large mirror with an ornate frame hanging on the wall.

A gasp of surprise escaped her and she just stared at the mirror for several minutes before regaining her voice. “H-holy shit. I’m beautiful… a bit strange looking, but beautiful.”

“That’s because you’re used to Human standards of normalcy, and people who don’t fit those standards being shamed, ridiculed, or demonized,” Salem told her carefully. “Take it from me, you can get used to it and be happy with looking different. What others think doesn’t matter though, as long as you’re happy with yourself.”

“Tokh’dhraí are also hot as hell,” Nishalle added with a smirk. “Never seen one that’s not attractive, and us girls have that whole femme fatale thing going for us. There’s that mix of turned on and terrified that people get around us. Makes a girl feel in confident and charge.”

Megan nodded absently, but couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from the mirror. I tried not to let my smile show as I suggested, “I could change the glamour to something else if you’d like. If you don’t feel that you’d be comfortable in public like that.”

Her expression was torn, and I was pretty sure that she was worried about her safety, but I had promised that I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her and that she would be safe with us. “I… maybe I’ll keep this one for a while… just to try it out. I mean, if my parents were…” She trailed off as she tried to justify it to us and maybe herself as well.

“Sure, Megan. Sis, why don’t you escort her to the Mercedes and make sure nobody bothers her, then she can pull up to the front and pick the rest of us up. We should try to be seen leaving,” I proposed, tossing my sister the keys to the SUV.

“Yeah, I’ll keep her safe, Sis,” Nishalle quickly agreed as she snatched the keys from the air. “We can bond and stuff. And I don’t think being seen leaving is gonna be a problem with all of those people out there.” She put an arm around Megan’s shoulder companionably and led her to the door, already regaling the young woman about the perks of being a Shadow Elf.

As they left, I had a look at the time. We still had two and a half hours to kill before our first appointment, so I looked to the others, “I think we’ll stop somewhere for lunch first, so people think we’re trying to take in the city while we’re here. If we have time after that, maybe we’ll hit some of the shops, some of us could use some real clothes since we didn’t bring anything other than what we were wearing when I decided to take this trip.”

“Me and whatever girls Lilith brings in to help me with keeping our suites secure can order room service,” Salem assured us when I l cast an uncertain look in her direction. “Don’t worry about me. We can’t all fit in that SUV and at least one of us has to stay here in case those DCA assholes, or someone else, tries to get in and leave some unwelcome surprises. We all know that I’m the logical choice.”

“We need a bigger vehicle,” I grumbled, “but you’re right. Let’s go everyone; they should be bringing our ride around front any minute.”

A moment later, we left Salem under the protection of three of Lilith’s brood, who were summoned from their vigil on the rooftop. Lilith had teleported herself and Rei to take their place outside so they could follow us by air and keep an eye out for trouble once we were underway, and the rest of us headed to the elevator to head down to the lobby. We were halfway down when the elevator stopped on the ninth floor and the doors opened to reveal a well-dressed, middle-aged woman with graying brown hair.

There was this long moment where she was just standing there gaping at us, me and Daenyss standing in the center of the elevator with Pete behind us and Harley and Lissany in their full armor and animal-like faceplates to either side. Then out of nowhere, Lissany turned to Harley and asked, “You’re so quiet today, Harley. What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

The Unicorn Beastkin played the straight man to a tee as she replied to her feline counterpart, “I’m just a little horse.”

This of course set Pete to laughing and the poor woman standing outside the elevator looked like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or run away. “I’ll… umm… catch the next one.”

I managed to keep from breaking out laughing until the doors had closed and we were on our way down again. Daenyss lost her professional business face as well and was giggling madly alongside me. “You… two… are terrible,” I managed to choke out between giggles.

“Hey, that was super tense and awkward. Someone needed to lighten the mood,” Lissany replied as she giggled behind her feline faceplate.

We were all still trying to stop laughing when the doors opened in the lobby, where Nishalle stood waiting for us. I took a few deep breaths and managed to collect myself as the others attempted to do the same. My sister just looked at us in utter confusion as she asked, “What did I miss?”

Since telling her would likely just set us all off laughing again, I just shook my head and said, “Nothing important, Nishalle. I’ll tell you later, we should get going.”

My sister merely shrugged and turned around to lead the way through the lobby and outside as my forward guard. I had hoped that the crowd might have thinned some since this morning, but as we got outside it looked to have gotten even bigger. A big group of strangers, some of who most likely wanted me dead. I forced a smile onto my face and started going through my mental exercises to remain calm as we walked the gauntlet.

Police were holding both sides back and a few tried very hard to push past them once my entourage and I were in sight. If they couldn’t keep these people under control, this could get violent. I could see news cameras too. I did not want to be seen at the center of a riot on the evening news.

My aura hitting the people I passed helped to calm things, or at least distracted the majority of them long enough for us to get by without a brawl breaking out. Some were still shouting threats or bible references on the religious side, but I ignored them and let my protectors watch them for me. My protection spells would keep me safe if any of them tried to hurl anything more harmful than words.

I just kept smiling and politely waving to my supporters as I passed them by and I managed to stun most of the reporters enough to avoid questions until one woman showed a microphone out between a pair of police officers and called out, “Taelya, what brings you to Toronto?”

Daenyss turned to the camera, clearly annoyed that the woman had dared to use my name instead of my title. “If you wish her Majesty to answer questions, then perhaps you should address her properly.”

I placed a hand on my Attendant’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “It is alright this once, Daenyss,” I assured her. This was a question that I actually wanted to publically answer so I turned to the camera and let my smile slip just a little as I spoke. “Varüus’kiel has been taking in many of the Changed who have lost their homes and livelihoods due to circumstances outside of their control. With this influx of refugees, I am building a hospital and infrastructure to support thousands of people fleeing persecution in their home countries. I am here to purchase supplies and equipment for that purpose.”

“Varüus’kiel doesn’t exist, it’s not on any maps,” the woman insisted.

I arched an eyebrow. “A place must be on a map to exist? Maps are fleeting, they change with time, and though Varüus’kiel is not on any present map or accessible by mundane means, I assure you that it does exist. I wager that you’ve been seeing a lot of things that supposedly don’t exist recently, such as myself, my companions, and the other Changed that are appearing all over the world. Soon we will be ready to step out on the world stage and the world will see Varüus’kiel as well, and you will be in awe.”

With that, I turned and continued to walk the gauntlet to where the Mercedes SUV was parked on the street. Megan was a proper chauffeur and had come around to the passenger side to open the doors there for us. Thankfully, we all managed to get into the vehicle and underway without further incident with Daenyss joining Megan in the front and the rest of us in the back.

Once we were on the road, Megan asked, “Where to, Your Majesty?”

“I don’t know, Megan, what’s a nice place to eat?” I inquired.

“I usually can’t afford more than fast food, if I can afford to eat out at all,” my new driver replied with a shrug. I’ve heard that Gino’s has good Italian and a great view of the waterfront, but it’s supposed to be kind of pricey.”

I thought it over for a moment and then nodded. “Please take us there then, Megan.”

We drove in silence for a time before she pulled us up to a very nice-looking restaurant with large bay windows overlooking Lake Ontario. She quickly stepped out and around the vehicle to open the doors for us and once we were all out, she closed the doors and started to go back to the driver’s side as Rei and Lilith landed nearby. I didn’t let Megan get back inside the vehicle though before calling out, “Megan, please lock up the vehicle and come join us.”

She looked at me with a confused look on her face and asked, “Your Majesty?”

My consort smiled at her. “You’re coming to eat with us. Now let’s go, something smells really good, even from out here.”

“But… I’m just the help. I can’t…”

I walked over to lift her chin so that we were eye to eye. “Megan, you may work for me, but you’re not ‘just the help’. Nobody here is. The people that I surround myself with are people that I trust with my life and safety, just as I will defend theirs, and you all deserve better than that. You’re my friends and family, and you might be new to our group, but I think that you’ll fit in with our family nicely. Now let’s go eat something.”

The food was as good as Megan had heard and personally, I was glad that we weren’t turned away at the door and were able to try it. We had to wait a bit, but it was well worth it. The lasagna was the best that I had ever eaten and the big basket of garlic bread that they served us to whet our appetites for the main course was very good too, soft on the inside with a crispy crust and a subtle mix of garlic and herbs that you could taste without being too strong.

We had a lot of people watching us in interest but none seemed hostile and only the waitress approached our table. She was polite and friendly and I planned on giving her a very big tip for her professionalism. We could all see that she was burning with questions every time she came to our table, but she held back from asking them.

Megan seemed to relax a bit, though Lilith and I had to keep a hole in our auras for her. I was happy to see her relaxing some and trying to get to know us all better as we ate and talked. They were all still addressing me as Your Majesty since we were in public, but Megan was loosening up considerably as she saw how the others and I interacted.

It was nice to see her enjoying the meal so much and bonding with Nishalle too, as my sister told her stories about our exploits and the pair shared a medium meat supreme pizza. Yeah, she was going to fit in nicely. Lilith was already watching over her like a mama bird and Nishalle had gone all big sister, much like she was with Lissany.

Unfortunately, due to the time that it took to drive to Gino’s, and then eat lunch and just enjoy the conversations as we ate, we didn’t have time for shopping before my first appointment. When we got there, the man that Vivian had bought supplies for her practice through wasn’t able to help us. Or rather, I didn’t want his help.

The asshole was openly disdainful of us from the start when he wasn’t staring at my breasts. He couldn’t even blame my aura for that since both Lilith and I had opened a hole in our auras for him so he could focus on our business and not our assets. My physical assets apparently weren’t the only ones on his mind either since he was trying to charge me three times what Vivian had told me was the going rate for most of the tools and supplies. She hadn’t been out of practice more than six months, there was no way that prices could have risen that much for simple examination tools.

By the time we left, we had gotten nowhere, I was frustrated, and Daenyss was furious at his constant disrespect and overly familiar addresses with me. Nishalle was about ready to rob him blind before we found out that he didn’t even have any product on hand and it would all have to be ordered through a larger supplier. He was just an intermediary and had been nothing but a waste of time.

My next appointment with the person in charge of ordering supplies for Toronto General Hospital went a lot better but the only thing that we came out of it with was an address for a local wholesaler of various hospital and general medical supplies and tools. Local was being generous though since it was in Mississauga. It took us nearly an hour to drive there and the place was due to close soon when we finally did arrive.

It was enough to fray my already frazzled nerves. I had already been irritated about making appointments for information that I could have just gotten over the phone, and the long trip with a black SUV that was making no secret about following us wasn’t helping my mood. I was fully expecting more run around when we entered the massive building. So I was almost surprised when I saw what was basically a showroom floor with various lab equipment and medical paraphernalia.

“Hi there, welcome to McPherson Medical. How can I help you?” a man’s voice called out cheerfully. He was tall and a bit lanky with neatly styled black hair and a clean-shaven face that was fairly handsome. I gave Lilith a nod and we both made a hole for him in our auras before he could get close enough to feel the effects.

Daenyss stepped forward to do her thing, “May I present Her Imperial Majesty, Taelya nír Keshwaindyr: Chosen daughter of the Goddess Danu; Demigoddess of magick, the moon, the sea, nature, justice, love, sex, and doves; Empress of Varüus’kiel; ruler of all Fae; slayer of Tiamat the Dragon Queen; and Queen of the Heavens. Her Majesty is building a hospital and several clinics in Varüus’kiel and requires appropriate supplies.”

The man looked me up and down curiously. “That’s a bit of a mouthful, but it’s nice you meet you, Your Majesty, I’m Dan. If you would like to come to my office, I have a catalog that you can look through. We’re one of the leading distributors of wholesale medical-surgical supplies and equipment in the country.”

Daenyss and I followed Dan to his office with my protectors keeping in step and then watching through the open door as I looked through the catalog. They had practically everything that we needed for the clinics and hospital, including surgical equipment, custom procedure trays, prescription drugs, IV sets and solutions, and had some things in bulk that I thought would be harder to get, such as surgical masks and scrubs, needles and syringes, vaccines, and various pharmaceuticals. They even had the examination tables with stirrups and the sample freezers that Vivian said were a must for the clinics.

I reached into my purse and pulled out our full wish list of supplies for both the hospital and the clinics in the capital and the Glades of the four Courts. “This is what we need,” I said plainly, as I handed the list over to Dan.

He looked it over, making several humming noises as he did. “I notice that you don’t have any diagnostic or lab equipment, and what about diabetic supplies? Those are easy to overlook.”

“If we need the diabetic supplies we’ll order them through you later, but we won’t need the diagnostic or lab equipment. We have methods and technology available that would make them redundant. How long would it take to have an order this big ready, Dan?”

He looked at the paper thoughtfully again. “We should have most of this on hand in the warehouse, or can get it shipped here from Windsor within a couple of days if I order it tonight and have them make it a rush job. It depends on where you want it shipped to once we have the entire order though, Your Majesty.”

“Just gather it here; we’ll handle the shipping once you have it all in one place,” I told him after thinking for a moment. I didn’t want it sent to the warehouse in Vancouver because, not only would that take time, but the warehouse was in Autumn Cortez’s name and I didn’t want anyone making the connection between her and me.

With that, talk turned to payment and the arrangements. I made an account with them that would allow us to place and pay for future orders online and gave an email address that I had recently created and my secure cell phone as my contact information. For payment, I used the Cayman Islands account since they had a reputation for protecting their clients’ anonymity and the funds' transfer would only show the account number.

As we left, Dan assured me that he would contact me as soon as the order was fully assembled in their warehouse. He was guessing that would be two or three days since they would have to ship what they didn’t have on hand from Windsor and then they would have to visibly confirm the order once it had arrived. Still, I felt good that this task was done with, or at least on its way to being so. The only problem was that we would have to stay in Toronto a few more days than I was hoping to be able to send the order directly to Varüus’kiel.

The good thing was that we wouldn’t have to wait around for the order to be shipped to the warehouse in Vancouver and could get the needed hospital gear and supplies home that much sooner. Until then we would just have to keep ourselves busy. Maybe we could take in the sights and see if there was any other business that we could take care of while we were there.

So I was trying to think positively as we made our way back into Toronto and toward our hotel. We were still being followed by the black SUV but they hadn’t made a move yet so I figured that, for the moment, they were just keeping tabs on us. I wasn’t worried since I had expected that after their failed assassination attempt and when I had placed the glamour on the Mercedes earlier, I had cast one on the license plates as well. The Fae sigils that they now showed, roughly translated to a very polite ‘Fuck you’.

When we returned to the hotel, it looked like the various demonstrators had either called it quits for the night or been dispersed by the police. So I had Megan just drive straight into the parking garage so we could take the elevator from there and then we went straight up to my suite to join Salem and order room service for dinner. According to Salem and the three Succubae, nobody had attempted to enter either suite while we were gone, so the afternoon and evening had gone about as well as I could have expected on all fronts.

Since nobody but the Fae among us had gotten a decent night of sleep the night before, we all decided to call it an early night and head to bed. Megan would be staying with us and sleeping on the couch in the living area of the suite while I got cozy in the bedroom with Rei, Salem, and Daenyss, while the others shared the other suite and again took shifts sleeping and keeping watch. It was nice to get a full night’s sleep without anybody trying to kill me or something disastrous happening.