"To my knowledge the courts aren't feuding, unless you know something I don't, Maury." I actually remembered his name on my own. Smile, cock my head to one side, give them a glimpse of how young I can still look when I need to. It was my version of Bambi eyes: See how harmless and cute I am, don't hurt me.
I got laughter for the cute act, and more flashbulbs, until I was nearly dazzled blind by them. I answered the next question with spots dancing through my vision. I'd have worn sunglasses if my aunt hadn't sent word that I couldn't. Sunglasses weren't friendly. We wanted to look friendly. She'd allowed the guards who had brought sunglasses to wear them. Nearly a first. It meant that she was worried, more worried than the last time I'd been home. And still none of us knew why.
I had to admit with most of them in dark glasses, they did look like backup singers. Merry and her Merry men. That's what the media had coined for us. Not quite the name of a rock group, but I'd heard worse.
"Which of your guards is the best in bed?" This from a female reporter.
I shook my head enough to make my hair swing, and the emerald earrings catch the light. "Oh, now—" Madeline whispered the woman's name in my ear. "— Stephanie, a lady doesn't kiss and tell."
"But you're not a lady," a man's voice piped up from the back of the room. I knew the voice. He'd spoken loud enough that the room had gone quiet, so that his next shout was very clear: "Just another faerie slut. Royal blood doesn't change that."
I leaned into the microphone and made my voice low and rich. "You're just jealous, Barry."
A portion of the policemen in the circle were already working their way toward the back of the room. Barry Jenkins was always on the do-not-let-him-in list. I had a restraining order against him dating back to my father's death. He'd gotten better, or worse, photos than anyone of my father's body, and me weeping over him. The courts had agreed that what he'd done subsequently had infringed on the rights of a minor—me. They'd ruled that he could not profit by the exploitation of a minor child. That meant that all his photos that he hadn't used yet were useless. He couldn't sell them. He had to give the money he'd already received for photos and articles to charity. He'd gone from maybe winning a Pulitzer to nothing. For that and an incident on a lonely country road, where I took my own revenge, he'd never forgiven me.
He'd had his own revenge, in a way. When my once-upon-a-time fiance, Griffin, had sold intimate pictures to the tabloids, it had been with Jenkins's byline. I wasn't a minor anymore, and Griffin had gone to him, so he hadn't even had to come within fifty feet of me to write the story.
My aunt, the Queen of Air and Darkness, had declared a death sentence on Griffin. Not for hurting me, but for betraying our intimate secrets to the humans. That was not allowed. To my knowledge they were still hunting for him. I think if she could have sent Doyle after him, he'd have been dead by now, but her Darkness had better things to do than revenge. Keeping me alive, and getting me pregnant, were more important to her than Griffin's punishment. Hell's bells, they were more important to me.
I didn't want Griffin dead. His death wouldn't change what he'd done. It wouldn't change that he'd been my fiance for seven years, and that he'd betrayed me with anything he could sleep with. We'd been broken up for more than three years before he betrayed me in the press. Griffin seemed to believe that he was so good that I'd take him back. His delusions weren't my problem. So he'd gone back to the queen's guards, and because I refused him, she'd declared him celibate again. If he didn't sleep with me, he slept with no one. Part of me had enjoyed the irony of it. Part of me had enjoyed the revenge. The next day the tabloids had carried the pictures, and his interview with Jenkins.
The policemen stationed at the doors closed off Jenkins's escape so he could only stand there and wait for the other policemen to come get him. "What's the matter, Meredith, afraid of the truth?"
"The restraining order says that you must stay at least fifty feet away from me, Jenkins. This room isn't that big."
He was unpleasant enough that Major Walters sent another three men to help control the situation. I think it was more to keep the cameras back, and see that Jenkins's struggles didn't break any expensive equipment, than any thought that Jenkins was a danger to me or anyone else.
The remaining police tried to cover the front of the podium, but there weren't enough of them. If the press rushed us now, we were finished, but of course they were more interested in the scene with Jenkins. It'd make some headlines tomorrow. So far the disruption was the most interesting thing to happen, and they'd lead with Jenkins and the old feud, unless we gave them something juicy.
Doyle and Frost both moved forward to flank me. Doyle actually touched my arm to lead me back against the wall, closer to them all. I shook my head, and finally whispered, "I don't want my father's death to make front-page news again. I can't live through it twice."
He looked puzzled even behind the dark glasses.
"They'll dredge it all up, Doyle. They'll dredge it all up to explain Jenkins."
Frost touched his shoulder. "She may be right."
Doyle shook his head. "Your safety comes before anything else."
"There are different kinds of safety," Frost said. There was no trace of the petulant child I'd come to dread. Frost was acting like a grownup, and I was so happy to see it that I hugged him around the waist. It felt incredibly good to hold him that close. I hadn't realized until that moment how anxious I was.
"What do you want us to do?" Doyle said, and his voice was gentler.
Magic prickled across my skin. The three of us looked up, and all the other sidhe were searching the room. It was a spell, but from where, and for what?
One of the policemen in front of the dais stumbled, as if he'd tripped over nothing. I saw the man turn toward us, saw the wide surprise in his eyes.
Frost turned, giving his back to the man, and beginning to move me away. I'd see the pictures later, but when it was actually happening I saw nothing but Frost's shirt, felt nothing but him picking me up, starting to run. A gunshot exploded behind us, and another so close behind that it was almost one shot. Frost threw himself on the floor. I felt his body pushing us down, but could see nothing but the white of his shirt, the flare of his grey jacket. I could smell the shots like a burning in the air.
There was no sound. The roar of the guns so close in such a small place with such good acoustics had robbed me of my hearing, temporarily, I hoped. I saw feet I thought were Galen's before I felt the heavier weight as he threw himself on top of Frost, and formed a living shield around me. More weight, but I couldn't see who, not even to guess.
The first thing that let me know I wasn't deaf was the thick beat of Frost's heart against my ear. After that my hearing came back in stages, like a broken video, bits of shouting. So much shouting. Screams.
I only know what happened because of the video later, and the pictures. The video that we would see over and over again on every newscast. The officer with his gun pointed at Frost's back, trying to kill me, as if he couldn't see that Doyle had a gun pointed at his chest from less than two feet away. The police officers on either side with their guns out, looking around, not understanding that one of their own was the problem. One had his gun pointed at Doyle. The bespelled officer fired, as another officer finally understood that something had gone terribly wrong and smashed into the first one's shoulder. But Doyle had fired before the first bullet had gone wide and pierced the wall behind us. The police officers rode the bespelled cop to the ground, where he was already wounded by Doyle's shot. There would be pictures of Rhys and Nicca behind Doyle with guns in one hand and swords in the other, and Barinthus and the others forming a wall around us.
While it was happening, I was crushed under the white and grey of Frost's body while my hearing returned—and what I heard mostly was screams. Something warm dropped onto my forehead, something liquid and heavier than sweat. I couldn't move my head enough to look up, but another drop joined the first to trickle down my skin, and I caught that whiff of me
tallic sweetness that was blood.
I tried to push him off me, tried to ask how badly he was hurt, but it was like trying to move a mountain. I managed to say, "Frost, Frost, you're hurt."
If he heard me, he ignored me. Everyone ignored me. It was as if I were strangely nonessential to the events. The man had tried to kill me, but now it was the police and the bodyguards who were on stage, not me.
I heard Major Walters bellow, "Get her out of here." The cry was taken up, like a battle cry. "Get her out of here, get her out of here," so many voices yelling, so many male voices yelling it.
The weight above me lifted, and I saw the lights of the room again. More voices, "My God, she's hurt!" The cry was taken up again, "She's hurt, she's hurt, the princess is hurt." There would be a picture of me later with blood running down my face, but it wasn't my blood. I think I was the only one who knew that at first.
Kitto was still kneeling close to me, and I knew that he had been one of the bodies in my living shield. Barinthus held down his hand to me. "Merry-girl." He hadn't called me that in years. I took his hand while Galen tried to look at Frost's shoulder and the bigger man shrugged him off. It never occurred to me that Barinthus hadn't touched the ring in the other room.
His hand met the ring as he pulled me up, and he froze in midmotion, a look of startlement on his face. The guards who were new looked around for another threat, because they felt the magic. My guards felt it, but they knew it wasn't another attempt on my life. I heard Frost say, "Consort save us," and Rhys say, "Shit." Then the room was gone, swallowed in a blink of magic. The water was warm as a bath, warm as blood. Barinthus was beside me, helping me tread water. The nearly invisible webbing between his fingers had flared to life, one strong arm stroking the water, while the other held me against his body. We were both nude, and it had been the warmth of the water that had kept me from noticing. Which meant the water was the exact temperature of my body. I could feel his legs moving, keeping us afloat, keeping us in the middle of a vastness of water that was as blue as his hair, as green as his hair, as grey as his hair. His hair streamed down his shoulders into the water, and where it touched, it was as if each strand became a current, like a melting of color that swam away from us, until I couldn't tell what was hair and what was water, and still his body was solid against mine. Part of his body grew more solid as our bodies bumped against one another in the warm, warm water.
"Merry," he said, "what have you done?"
I opened my mouth but it wasn't my words that came out: "I bring you back your ocean, Manannan Mac Lir, come take it from me."
He touched my mouth with his hands, and for a moment only his strong legs kept us afloat. "Do not say that name, for I am not he. I have not been that for long years." He looked stricken, as if hearing the name had hurt him somehow.
I realized in a distant way that I wasn't entirely alone in my body, nor entirely in control of it. The thought should have frightened me, but it didn't. The power was so so soothing, so safe. It was like being wrapped in peace.
"Come, drink of me, and hold me to your lips." My body entwined around his, wrapping us together in the warm water. It was as if I'd known that he would try to push me away, but there was no way to break free now. My small, rounded arms were like gentle chains, my legs around his waist solid as the mountain's root. Strangely, I knew that he could not free himself of me. He could deny me, but he could not cast me aside. My body's weight forced him to glide onto his back, his head only barely above the quiet waves.
His eyes flashed white. "You are not Merry."
"I am Merry," and I knew it was true.
"But not Merry alone." His arms and legs fanned the water, pressing parts of him against me in a way that we had never been.
"No, not Merry, alone."
"Danu," he said, and his voice was the rushing whisper of waves on some distant shore.
I slid my hands behind his neck and raised my body along his, until my mouth hovered over his, and the tip of him caressed against the opening of my body. The feel of him touching the edge of me brought me back into myself, chased her soothing presence back, just enough. I said, "Barinthus."
"Merry, do you agree to this? The Goddess and God mean well, but I have seen them use people, and I no longer believe that the end justifies the means."
I raised back enough to gaze down at him. He floated underneath me, his hair flowing out in a halo of blue, green, grey, navy, turquoise, and his face caught like a flower in the center of all that color, all that movement. Everything around us was water, moving, flowing, slapping in tiny waves. His body was the only solid thing in all that moving vastness. But I did not cling to him, I rode him, and he held me, but there was no fear. I felt in him the same sense of peace that I held within myself. They say the ocean is a treacherous place, but sitting there staring into his blue eyes as the sea rocked us, feeling the press of him against my body, long and solid, where only the flexing of his hips or mine would close that last distance, I saw nothing but gentleness in his eyes. He would pass this by, all this, give it up, yet again, if I but said no.
I put my face next to his so that a hard breath would have made us kiss, and said, "Drink of my lips." My lips touched his, and the next words were mouth against his own mouth, as if I ate the words and gave them back to him. "Let me feel the strength of you inside me."
He drew back just enough to speak. "It will not be all it could be, for you are mortal, and might drown." With that warning, his mouth came up to meet mine, and as our lips touched, he thrust into my body. Power poured out of my mouth and spilled into his as his body pushed into mine, and it was as if the magic flowed both from me and into me. We became a circle of mouth and body, of magic given and received, of life and small death, of his strength holding us above the waves, of my softness bearing us down. It was almost as if one magic were trying to keep us afloat, and the other sought to drown us. In the midst of life, death; in the midst of joy, danger; in the midst of ocean, land. The earth itself called to me, leagues and leagues below us. The land rolled underneath its blanket of ocean, and I felt it. I felt the earth turning under us, spiraling around, and it was as if the earth felt my thoughts, and stirred in her bed,
I felt the wave of power coming up from underneath us, like some huge, dark creature, swimming up fast and faster, sleek and dark and deadly. It hit us in a wave of power that threw the sea into towering waves, and boiled the land underneath us so that steam filled the air. The water was no longer warm but hot, hot enough that I cried out and jerked my mouth free of his. I saw his face, felt his hands on my hips, felt his body thrusting up into mine, and it wasn't just the hard length of him. It was as if the miles and miles of ocean underneath me were rushing between my legs, spilling into me, through me, over me, and we were pushed into the air on a column of water that glistened like crystal, and glittered with bits of burning rock, like melting fire. I understood now why he'd asked my permission, because I wasn't a goddess, I was only Merry, and I could not hold all that he offered. I screamed, half in pleasure, as he brought me, and half in fear, because I could feel no end to it.
Over the sound of the ocean boiling underneath us, I heard him say, "Enough!"
I was on the floor on the dais with Barinthus half collapsed on top of me. We blinked up into each other's faces, and I watched my own confusion chase across his eyes. I knew where I was, and I knew what had happened, but the change was —abrupt.
I saw my Doyle and the others who were mine standing around us, facing inward, hands spread, touching one to the other so they formed a circle around us. I could see the power in that circle that they had thrown up so desperately to contain what had happened. The guards who had come with Barinthus were staring in at us, and the police were screaming, "Get her out of here!" Seconds had passed, no more.
Barinthus got to his knees and reached for the hand that did not hold the ring, to help me sit up.
That seemed to be signal enough, because they all lowered their hands in uni
son. The circle went down, and water surged outward, a miniature flood that soaked the dais, and the chairs nearest us, and all the policemen. Frost's pale grey slacks were soaked to charcoal; Rhys's white silk trench coat, ruined. Only two people stood in the center of that spray of water and stayed dry—Barinthus and me.
Major Walters came up brushing water out of his eyes. "What the fuck was that?"
Doyle started to say something, but Walters waved it away. "Fuck it, get her out of here before something else goes wrong." When they all looked at each other instead of moving, Walters leaned into Doyle and said in a voice that would have done any drill sergeant proud, "Move!"
We moved.
CHAPTER 24
I stumbled on the way out, and it was Galen who lifted me in his arms and crawled into the middle limo on his knees. There'd be a picture the next day of me with blood on my face, looking very frail in Galen's arms. Which meant that some bravely stupid reporter, instead of taking cover when the guns and magic came out, had trailed us to take more pictures. I guess you don't win Pulitzers by playing it safe.
I was actually in the limo, still in Galen's lap with the other guards piling in, when I realized it wasn't my aunt's personal car. It was just an ordinary stretch limo. Which meant it was actually bigger inside than the Black Coach, but not half so scary.
The door shut, someone slapped the roof twice, and we were moving. Doyle walked over everyone's feet and made Galen scoot down so he could sit on the other side of us, against the far door. No one argued with him. Rhys and Kitto were on the half seat across from us. Barinthus was on the swiveling seat that faced us. The seat left a sort of short hallway for others to reach more seats even deeper into the limo. When they said stretch, they meant it.
Sage and Nicca were there in the next open space, on the last two swivel seats so they could sit sort of sideways with their wings. Usna was curled on the far side, with his legs tucked under him, trying to squeeze water from his calico hair. He looked disgusted with the whole arrangement. Maybe he just didn't like being wet.
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