[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight (6 page)

The hilt was leather set with gold, and I spent much of that day with my face pressed to it. I breathed in the scent of good leather, the oil that he'd used to clean the sword, and over all that was the scent of him. He had carried that sheath next to his body for centuries, and the leather had absorbed the smell of his skin. I could touch the hilt and feel where even this magical metal had shaped to the constant use of his hand.

I had slept with that sword for days, huddled around it as if I could still feel his hand on it, his body near it. I swore on the hilt of my father's sword that I would avenge his death. I'd been seventeen.

You cannot die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death.

I was thirty-three now. Sixteen years had passed since I slept beside my dead father's sword. The sword had simply vanished about a month after his death. It had gone the way of so many of our great relics, as if without Essus his sword could find no hand fit to wield it. So the sword chose to fade and vanish into the mists. Perhaps the great relics do not choose to go. Perhaps Goddess calls them home when they have done their work. Or perhaps she calls them home until someone comes again that is fit, or suited, for them. I felt that small swell of warmth and comfort that was the voice of the Goddess. That tiny quiet voice that lets you know you've thought a smart thing, or asked the right question.

I would try to use guilt to get Andais to agree to allow me to call in the police. I did not have much faith in her ability to be emotionally blackmailed, but she still did not know that one of the greatest relics of the faerie courts had returned. The chalice, the one that mankind's wishes had changed from a cauldron of plenty into a golden cup, had returned from wherever it had been. It had come to me in a dream, and when I woke it was real. The chalice had been one of the great treasures of the Seelie Court, and one reason to keep its reappearance a secret was that the Seelie might try to reclaim it. The chalice went where it would, and definitely had a mind of its own. I was almost certain that it would not stay at the Seelie Court even if we allowed them to take it back. And if it kept disappearing there and reappearing here, the Seelie would think we'd stolen it. Or at least accuse us of it, because if the chalice simply found them unworthy, that was not something that King Taranis would ever admit. No, my uncle would blame us, but never himself and his shining throng.

If guilt and family connections could not sway the queen, then perhaps the knowledge that the chalice had come to my hand would.

I still hoped, someday, to know who had killed my father, but the case was cold. Sixteen years cold. For Beatrice and the reporter, though, the case was literally still warm. The crime scene was fresh. The suspect list wasn't endless. Rhys said a few hundred as if that was a lot. I'd helped the police in a few cases where almost the entire population of Los Angeles had been suspects. What was a few hundred to that?

We could do this. If we brought in modern police work, we could get them. They wouldn't be expecting it, and they wouldn't know how to protect themselves against it. It would work. All right, I was 99.9 percent certain it would work. Only a fool is 100 percent certain, when it comes to murder. Either about committing one, or solving one. Both can be equally dangerous and hazardous to your health.

CHAPTER 4

THE QUEEN STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF HER ROOM, WRAPPED ONLY
in a fur and her own long black hair. One bare slender shoulder and the curve of her neck showed white and perfect above the ruffled grey of the fur. I would have said the fur was wolf, but no wolf that walked the earth today was ever so huge. She made certain that we all had a good view before she turned her head and looked full at us. Charcoal, storm grey, and the pale whitish grey of a winter's sky were the colors of her eyes, in three perfect circles of color around her pupil. Those same colors spread through the fur, framed her face, and made her eyes look bigger than I knew they were, richer in color. It took me a moment of staring into those eyes to realize she had some eyeliner helping to emphasize all that grey and black and white elegance.

It occurred to me for the first time that I could do with glamour what she had to do with makeup. I had never seen the queen do small personal glamour. I wondered if she could. Or had she lost that power along with so many others? I kept my face very still, empty of my speculation. I was about to be in enough trouble without questioning her magical abilities. Oh, yes, that would have guaranteed some very special aunt and niece bonding time. Or should I say some very painful bondage time. I liked pain, but not nearly as much as Aunt Andais did.

“Well, Meredith, I see that you have brought more trouble upon us.”

I opened my mouth to begin the speech I'd prepared in my head as we walked down the hallway. Now I swallowed the words because if she planned on blaming me for the deaths, even indirectly, I was sunk. Not only would I not be having the police to help me solve the crime, I would most likely be bleeding before I left this room. There is a saying in the Unseelie Court, “You visit the queen at your peril.” What sense of misguided justice had made me forget that?

I dropped to one knee, and my guards followed my lead, dropping like graceful, dangerous flowers around me. Doyle and Frost were with me, but we'd left Rhys in charge of the scene. He would have come, but after me, he'd done the most actual detective work in Los Angeles. Adair had come, and Hawthorne in their colored armor. Galen, of course. He would never have let me walk into such danger without him. Usna had surprised me, and I think Doyle, by insisting that he come with us. It wasn't that we doubted his bravery—he often took foolish chances just to amuse himself. I think it had something to do with the fact that his mother had been transformed into a cat when she had him, and his father was, well, a cat. It gave Usna a very unique perspective. He was every inch a sidhe male, except that his long hair and pale body were decorated with large patches of red and black like a calico cat. I'd left Nicca behind, because his beautiful new wings looked so fragile. I could not bear to see her shred them as some punishment to me. The moment I realized that that was why I'd left him behind, I knew that I had half-expected her to find a way to be angry with me about all this. She had to be angry with someone, and I'd always been a favorite target when I was younger. But only when my father was not at court, never when he was close enough to interfere. After his death, things had been worse in so many ways.

“Answer me, Meredith,” the queen said, but her voice didn't sound angry. She sounded tired.

“I am not certain how to answer you, Aunt Andais. I am not aware that I did anything to bring on the deaths of Beatrice and the reporter.”

“Beatrice,” she said, and she started walking toward me, toward us. Her pale feet were bare except for the silver-grey polish on her toes. Her legs were long and slender where they pulled free of the fur. She had no thighs to speak of. The sidhe women are the perfect models for this era; they have no curves, and it's not due to dieting. The sidhe do not have to diet, they are simply supernaturally thin.

Even for a sidhe woman, Andais is tall, six feet, as tall as most of her own guards. She stood with all that height over me, leaving one leg artfully bare, and bent so that the line from upper thigh to toe was graceful and framed by the charcoal grey of fur.

“Who is Beatrice?”

I would like to have thought she was toying with me, but she wasn't. She truly did not know the name of her own pastry chef. She knew her head cook, Maggie May, but beyond that, I doubted she knew any of the kitchen staff. She was queen, and there were layers of servants and lesser fey between her and someone like Beatrice.

If I had not been here to say her name, no one else would have known it. That made me angry. I fought to keep it from my voice as I answered, “The fey that was killed. Your pastry chef. Her name was Beatrice.”

“My pastry chef. I have no pastry chef.” Her voice was thick with scorn.

I sighed. “The Unseelie Court's pastry chef, then.”

She turned and whirled the fur around her like a lightweight cloak. It would have been so heavy I would not have had the strength to move it like that. I was stronger than a human, but I was not as strong as pure-blooded sidhe. I wondered if she'd done that little movement to remind me of that or just because it looked pretty.

She spoke with her back to us. “But all that belongs to the Unseelie Court belongs to me, Meredith, or did you forget that?”

I realized that she was trying to pick a fight with me. She'd never done that before. She'd struck out in anger with someone else or with me. She'd tormented me because it pleased her. She argued with me if I disagreed with her, or argued first, but she had never tried to start a fight with me. I didn't know what to do.

“I have not forgotten that you, my aunt, are queen of the Unseelie Court.”

“Yes, Meredith, remind me that I am your aunt. Remind me that I need your blood to keep my family on the throne.”

I didn't like the way she worded that, but it hadn't been a question, so I didn't try to answer. I stayed kneeling and mute.

“If you had been strong enough to protect yourself yesterday there would not have been reporters in my sithen.” There was the first warm edge of anger in her voice.

“It was my duty to keep the princess safe,” Doyle said.

I reached out to him with my good arm before I could stop myself, but he was just out of reach. I shook my head. Do not bring her anger upon yourself, I tried to tell him with my eyes.

“Our duty,” Frost said from the other side of me.

I looked at him and gave him exasperated eyes. If she was determined to be angry, I did not want that anger to fall upon them both. It wasn't just that I loved them, I needed them. If we had any hope of solving this mess, and keeping me alive despite some very determined enemies, I needed my captain of the guard and his lieutenant.

She was suddenly in front of me again, and I hadn't seen her move. Either she had clouded my mind, or she was simply that fast, even tugging along that much fur. She knelt in front of me in a pool of fur and glimpses of white flesh.

“You have stolen my Darkness from me, Meredith. You have thawed the heart of my Killing Frost. My two best warriors, taken away, as if by a thief in the night.”

I licked suddenly dry lips and said, “I did not mean to take anything that you valued, Aunt Andais.”

She touched my face gently. It made me wince, not because it hurt, but because I'd feared it would hurt. “Yes, Meredith, remind me that I neglected my Darkness and my Frost.” She caressed my face with her fingers, and the back of her hand. “Neglected so many things that were mine.”

Her hand cupped my chin, and began to squeeze. She could crush the bones of my body into splinters. “I can feel the glamour, girl, drop it. Let me see what you are hiding.”

I dropped the glamour on me and on Frost, so that the lipstick smeared across our faces.

She raised me to my feet using my chin as a handle. It hurt, and it would probably bruise. She raised me faster than I could stand. Only her harsh grip kept me from falling.

The men stood with me.

“I did not bid you stand,” she yelled at them.

They stayed on their feet. I could not look away from her to see exactly what they were doing, but this was about to go badly.

Barinthus's deep voice came from farther into the room. He must have been standing there the entire time, and I hadn't seen him. It takes a commanding presence to make you not see a seven-foot-tall, mostly blue demi-god. Andais was that commanding presence. With her hand bruising my chin, forcing me to meet her grey gaze from inches away, she was more than commanding, she was frightening.

“Queen Andais, Meredith has done nothing but as you have bid her.”

“Silence, Kingmaker!” She had glanced back at him when she yelled, and I realized that she must have made him kneel, because I could not see him in that part of the room.

She turned back to me, and her eyes shone as if there was light behind them. It was like watching the moon behind grey clouds, pushing light up through the colors of her eyes, but the eyes themselves did not truly glow. It was an effect I had never seen in any other sidhe's eyes.

“Then what is this smear of red on her mouth, and on the face of my Killing Frost?” She let the fur she'd wrapped herself in fall to the floor, as she put her thumb against my mouth and rubbed hard enough that I had to fight not to make a small pain sound. There was still enough lipstick left to stain her white thumb.

She stood there nude and pale and frightening. If she was beautiful I could not see it. Andais often stripped before she tortured people, so she wouldn't ruin her clothes. Her nudity did not bode well.

I finally realized that she intended to get angry about me playing favorites in front of the media. She was going to throw a fit, and punish me for kissing Frost, instead of dealing with the murders. Displacement is a fine coping mechanism, but this was not sane.

No logic would save me. All the arguments that I had prepared were dust before her incomprehensible anger.

“Do you think that I give orders simply to be ignored?”

I spoke carefully around her grip on my chin. “I had to distract the cameras . . .”

She let me go so abruptly that I stumbled. Doyle caught my arm, then took me into the circle of his arm, putting me farther from her and closer to the middle of the men. I couldn't argue with the precaution. She was not acting like herself. Andais was temperamental and a sadist, but she never let either interfere this badly with the business of her court. We had a dead human reporter, and cameras still in the faerie mound. It was an emergency, and we needed to act swiftly to minimize the damage, no matter what choice we made. Even if the choice was to hide the bodies and act as if it hadn't happened, it needed to be done quickly. The more people who knew the secret the less chance of keeping it.

If the police were going to bring in forensics for the crime scene, every minute contaminated the crime scene. Every second might be losing us some clue.

“Madeline told me that our Frost had lost control in front of the cameras.” She paced a tight circle, then turned back to look at Frost. It was as if any target, any problem, was better than addressing the murders. Did she think Cel's people had done this? Was that why she didn't want to decide on a course of action? Was she afraid to find the truth, afraid of where it would lead?

“Are the reporters gone then?” I asked softly.

“They were about to file out all nice and neat,” she said, and her voice was rising as she spoke and paced, naked and dangerous, “until one group realized they were missing a photographer. A photographer!” She screamed the last word. “How did he break through the spells that were supposed to make it impossible for him to leave the guarded areas?” She didn't seem to be asking anyone in particular, so no one answered.

“Was there a camera found?” she asked, and her voice was almost normal.

“Yes, my queen,” Doyle said.

“Would it have pictures of the crime?”

“Perhaps,” Doyle said.

“We'll need to send the film out to be developed,” I said.

“Have we no one of faerie who could do it for us?”

“No, my queen.”

“What else did you find on this reporter?”

“We haven't searched the body thoroughly,” I said.

“Why have you not searched the body thoroughly?” she asked, and the edge of near hysterical anger shadowed the last word.

I swallowed, and let my breath out slowly. It was now or never. Doyle's hand squeezed my arm, as if he was saying, “Don't.” But if I were ever to be queen, Andais would have to step down for me. She was immortal, and I was not, so she would always be a presence in the court. I had to get some control between her and me now, or I would never truly be queen. Never truly be safe from her anger.

“There are clues on the body that a scientific team could find. The less we touch it, the better the science will work.”

“What are you babbling about, Meredith?”

Doyle squeezed my arm tighter. “Do you remember what you said when my father was killed?”

She stopped her pacing and looked at me. Her eyes were wary. “I said many things when Essus died.”

“You said we were not to allow the human police inside the faerie mounds. That no one was to talk to them or answer their questions, because we would find the assassins with magic.”

She stood very still, and gave me unfriendly eyes, but she answered. “I remember those words.”

“We failed with magic because the assassins were as good or better at magic than those who bespelled the wounds and the body.”

She nodded. “I have long thought that among my smiling court, my toadie nobles, the murderer of my brother sits. I know that, Meredith, and it is a small constant torment that that death went unpunished.”

“As it is for me,” I said. “I want to solve these murders, Aunt Andais. I want the person or persons responsible caught and punished. I want to show the media that there is justice in the Unseelie Court, and we are not afraid of new knowledge and new ways.”