feels veil

I turned to follow the tingle in my lips and the two of us made our way to the back side of the ballroom, where doors led deeper into the facility. There were no guards on the doors, but as we got closer, Andi’s steps started to slow. She glanced over to one side, where there was a refreshments table, and I saw her begin to turn toward it.
I caught her arm and said, “Hold it. Where are you going?”
“Um,” she said, frowning. “Over there?”
I extended my senses and felt the subtle weaving of magic in the air around the doorway, cobweb fine. It was a kind of veil, designed to direct the attention of anyone approaching it away from the doorway and toward anything else in the room. It made the refreshment table look yummier. If Andi had spotted a guy, he would have looked a lot cuter than he actually was.
I’d been having a powerful faerie sorceress throwing veils and glamours at me for almost a year, building up my mental defenses, and a few months ago I’d gone twelve rounds in the psychic boxing ring with a heavyweightchampion necromancer. I hadn’t even noticed the gentle magical weaving hitting my mental shields.
“It’s an enchantment,” I told her. “Don’t let it sway you.”
“What?” she asked. “I don’t feel anything. I’m just hungry.”
“You wouldn’t feel it,” I said. “That’s how it works. Take my hand and close your eyes. Trust me.”
“If I had a nickel for every time a bad evening started with a line like that,” she muttered. But she put her hand in mine and closed her eyes.
I walked her toward the doorway and felt her growing tenser as we went, but then we passed through it and she let out her breath explosively, blinking her eyes open. “Wow. That felt … like nothing at all.”
“It’s how you recognize quality enchantment,” I said. “If you don’t know it’s got you, you can’t fight it off.” The hallway we stood in looked much like any in any office building. I tried the nearest door and found it locked. So were the next couple, but the last was an empty conference room, and I slipped inside.

Brief Cases, Bombshells, Page 250