A Caress of Twilight mg-2

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "Is this why Andais talks to him nude and covered in men?"

  "Yes," Frost answered.

  I looked up at him, still standing by the mirror. "Surely it's an insult to do such to another ruler?"

  He shrugged. "They have been trying to seduce one another, or kill one another, for centuries."

  "Killing or seduction -- is there a third choice?"

  "They have found their third choice," Doyle said against my ear. "An uneasy peace. I think Taranis seeks to control you -- and through you, eventually the Unseelie Court."

  "Why is he so pressing about Yule?" I asked.

  "Once there were sacrifices at Yule," Kitto said softly. "To ensure the light would return, they slew the Holly King to make way for the rebirth of the Oak King, the rebirth of the light."

  We all looked at one another. It was Frost who said, "Do you think the nobles at his court are finally getting suspicious of his lack of children?"

  "I have not heard even the breath of that rumor," Doyle said. Which meant that he had his own spies in that court.

  "It was always a king to be sacrificed for a king," Kitto said. "Never a queen."

  "Perhaps Taranis wants to change custom," Doyle said, holding me close. "You will not be going to the Seelie Court before Yule. There is no reason good enough."

  I sank back against his body, let the solid circle of his arms be my comfort. "I agree," I said softly. "Whatever Taranis is planning, I want no part of it."

  "We are all agreed then," said Frost.

  "Yes," Kitto said.

  It was unanimous decision, but somehow not very comforting.

  Chapter 38

  We came out into the living room to find Detective Lucy Tate sitting in the pink wing chair, sipping tea, and looking less than happy.

  Galen was sitting on the couch and trying to be charming, which he was actually pretty good at. Lucy was having none of it. Everything from the set of her shoulders to the way she crossed her long legs to the way her foot bobbed said she was angry, or nervous, or both.

  "About damn time," she said, when I came out of the bedroom. She looked the three of us over, rather critically. "Aren't you a little overdressed for a little afternoon delight?"

  I looked from Galen on the couch to Rhys and Nicca lounging about the room. Kitto went into his "dog house" without a word. I didn't see Sage, and wondered if he was outside on the growing force of potted flowers by the door. Galen had bought several in a bid to keep the little fey happy. It hadn't worked, but Sage did spend a lot of time lounging in the plants. The three visible men gave me very innocent faces. Too innocent.

  "What have you been telling her?"

  Rhys shrugged, then pushed away from the wall where he'd been leaning. "Telling her you were having sex with both Doyle and Frost was about the only way to keep her from storming the castle walls while you finished your little business meeting."

  Lucy Tate stood up and shoved the cup of tea in Galen's direction. He grabbed it, barely in time. Her face had taken on a flush of unhealthy color. "Are you telling me that I've been out here for nearly an hour and they've been on a business call?" Her voice was dangerously low, each word very calm, very clear.

  Galen got up and walked the dripping cup into the kitchen, one hand held underneath it to keep from leaving a trail of tea behind.

  "Business call to the faerie courts," I said. "Trust me when I say that I'd rather you'd have walked in on a full-blown menage a trois than the call I just finished."

  She seemed to see me clearly for the first time. "You look shaken."

  I shrugged. "My family ... gotta love 'em."

  She looked at me a long time, almost a minute, as if she was making up her mind about something. Finally, she shook her head. "Rhys is right. Only the threat of seeing you in flagrante delicto would have kept me out here this long. But family business isn't police business, so screw it."

  "Are you here on police business?" Doyle asked as he moved smoothly past me into the larger room.

  "Yes," she said, and stepped around the couch to face him.

  He kept moving into the dining area so it wasn't so confrontational, but Lucy wanted a confrontation. She stood with her arms crossed under her breasts, looking belligerent like she wanted to pick a fight with someone.

  "What's wrong, Lucy?" I asked, moving into the room to sit down on the far edge of the couch. If she wanted to keep eye contact with me, she'd have to walk around the couch and face me. She did, settling uneasily into the pink chair again.

  She leaned forward, hands clasped together, fingers entwined as she fought with herself.

  I asked again, "What's wrong, Lucy?"

  "There was another mass killing last night." Lucy usually gave good eye contact, but not today. Today her eyes roved over the apartment, restless, not looking at anything too long.

  "Was it like the one we saw?" I asked.

  She nodded, resting a momentary gaze on me, then turned away to look at the television, the line of herbs that Galen had growing in the window. "Exactly the same except for location."

  Doyle came to kneel behind the couch, arms touching my shoulders lightly. I think he'd knelt so he wouldn't loom over us. "Jeremy has informed us that everyone at his agency has been forbidden from this case. Your Lieutenant Peterson doesn't seem too happy with us."

  "I don't know what's gotten up Peterson's craw, and I'm sitting here trying to decide if I care. If I talk to you about this case, it could mean my job." She pushed to her feet and began to pace in the small space of the living room; picture window to pink chair, caught between the couch and the white painted wood of the entertainment center.

  "All I've ever wanted was to be a cop." She shook her head, running fingers through her thick brunette hair. "But I'd rather lose my job than see another one of these scenes."

  She sat down in the pink chair abruptly, and now she looked at me, those wide eyes, that earnest face. She'd made her decision. It was there in her face. "Have you been following the case in the papers or the news?"

  "The news called the club incident a mysterious gas leak." Doyle rested his chin on my shoulder as he spoke. His deep voice vibrated down my skin, along my spine.

  I had to fight to keep how it affected me from showing on my face. I don't think it showed.

  "The second was one of those traveling clubs, raves, I believe, bad drugs."

  She nodded. "A bad batch of ecstasy, yeah. At least, that's the story we leaked. We made sure the press had something to chase so they wouldn't put two and two together and start a citywide panic. But the rave was exactly like the first two scenes."

  "First two?" I asked.

  She nodded. "The very first scene probably wouldn't even have come up on anybody's radar if it hadn't been in a ritzy area of town. Just six adults that time, a small dinner party gone very bad. It'd still be floating around on someone's weird shit pile as unsolved. But the vics were high profile, so when the club got hit, it rang bells downtown, and suddenly we had a task force. We needed one, but we never would have gotten it this quickly if one of the first vics hadn't been friends with several mayors and a chief of police or two." She sounded bitter and tired.

  "The first murders were at a private residence?" I asked.

  Lucy nodded, hands just clasped now, not wringing tight. She was tired and depressed, but calmer. "Yes, and it was the first related scene, as far as we've been able to find. I keep dreaming that there's some crack house or sweat shop that was really the first hit, and we're going to find dozens of dead bodies rotting in the December heat. The only thing worse than one of these scenes fresh would be a really old one." She shook her head again, running her hands through her hair, then she shook her head, fluffing out the hair she'd just smoothed. "Anyway, the first one was a private residence, yeah. We found the couple that lived there, two guests, two servants."

  "How far was that house from the club that we saw?" I asked.

  "Holmby Hills is about an hour away."

  I fel
t Doyle go very still behind me. The silence seemed to widen out from us like circles in a pool. We all stared at her and, I think, fought not to look at one another.

  "Did you say Holmby Hills?" I asked.

  She was looking back at us. "Yes. Why does that ring everyone's bell?"

  I looked at Doyle. He looked at me. Rhys settled in to lean against the wall as if it meant nothing, but his face couldn't quite hide the shine of excitement. The mystery was deepening, or maybe shallowing, if that was a word. Rhys couldn't help but enjoy it.

  Galen went into the kitchen and hid, fetching a cloth to dry the teacup. Frost came and sat on the couch beside me, giving enough room so Doyle wasn't crowded. Frost's face gave nothing away. Nicca looked genuinely puzzled, and I realized that he'd been out of the loop on exactly where Maeve Reed lived. He'd helped with the planning for the fertility rite, but he didn't know her address.

  "No," Lucy said. "No, you are not all going to just sit there and look innocent. When I said Holmby Hills you all looked like I'd stepped in something, something nasty. You can't give me innocent faces now and not say what's going on."

  "We can do anything we wish, Detective," Doyle said.

  She looked at me. "Are you going to stonewall me on this? I risked my career to come down here and talk to you all."

  "We are a little curious about that," Doyle said. "Why would it be worth your career to come and speak with us? You have Teresa's information, and Jeremy's assurance it was a spell. What more can we tell you?"

  She glared at him. "I'm not stupid, Doyle. There are fey everywhere I look on this case. Peterson just doesn't want to see it. The first incident is in Holmby Hills almost right next door to Maeve Reed's house. She's a sidhe royal. Exiled, or not, she's still fey. We put out calls to all the local hospitals, looking for anyone exhibiting symptoms similar to our victims. We got one bite on a live person. No new dead have come in."

  "You have a survivor?" Rhys asked.

  Her gaze flicked to him, then back to Doyle and me. "We're not sure. He's alive, and getting better every day." She stared at the two of us. "Would it make you share information with me if I told you our possible survivor is fey?"

  I don't know about the rest of them, but I didn't even try to keep the puzzlement off my face.

  Lucy smiled at us, an almost mean smile, as if she knew she had us. "This fey doesn't want to contact the Bureau of Human and Fey Affairs. Seems real eager to avoid it. Lieutenant Peterson says the fey have nothing to do with the case, says it's a coincidence that Maeve Reed lives close to the first incident. He had the fey interviewed, but insists you can never really tell what's wrong with the faeries; insists that if it had been the same sort of events the fey would be dead." She looked around the room at all of us. "I don't believe that. I've seen fey heal injuries that would have killed any human being. I've seen one of you fall off a high-rise and walk away."

  She shook her head again. "No, this has something to do with your world, doesn't it?"

  I fought not to look at anyone around me.

  "Would you talk to me, tell me the whole truth, if I let you interview the injured fey? Lieutenant Peterson has declared the fey noninvolved. So, technically, even if he finds out, he can't fire me. Or even discipline me for it. In fact, the injured fey is my cover story. Since the fey won't speak to the fey authorities, I'm looking for a few fey faces to try to talk to him, help him adjust to the big city."

  "You think he's from out of town?" I asked.

  "Oh, yeah, he's got never been to the big city written all over him. He screamed when his heart rate monitor beeped at him the first time." She shook her thick hair all around her face. "He's from somewhere where they've never seen modern equipment. The nurses say they had to take the television out of his room because he had some sort of seizure after he saw it work."

  She looked at all of us in turn, and finally came back to me, Doyle, and Frost. "Talk to me, Merry, please. Talk to me. I won't tell the lieutenant. I can't. Please help me stop this, whatever it is."

  I looked at Doyle, Frost, Rhys. Galen came back out of the kitchen, but he spread his hands wide and shrugged. "I haven't been doing much of the detective stuff lately, so I don't feel like I should get a vote."

  Nicca spoke up, which surprised us all. "The queen won't like it." His voice was clear, filling the room, but somehow soft, like a child whispering in the dark, afraid to be overheard.

  "She didn't tell us not to share with the human police," Doyle said.

  "She didn't?" Nicca's voice seemed so small, so much younger than that tall, strong body.

  I turned on the couch so Nicca could see full into my face. "No, Nicca, the queen didn't tell us not to talk to the police."

  He let out a large breath. "Okay." Again it was a child's answer. The grownups had told him he wouldn't get in trouble, and he believed us.

  We all exchanged looks one more time, then I said, "Rhys, tell her about the spell."

  He did. We emphasized that we weren't sure anyone left in the courts could still do the spell, and that it might possibly be a human magician or witch. It wasn't anyone at the Unseelie Courts, that we were sure of.

  "How can you be so sure?" Lucy asked.

  We exchanged another series of looks. "Trust me, Lucy, the queen doesn't have to sweat civil rights or review boards. She's very thorough."

  She studied our faces. "How thorough can you guys be?"

  I frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

  "I've heard rumors about what your queen does to people. Can you do anything that effective without leaving marks?"

  I raised my eyebrows at that. "Are you asking us to do what I think you're asking us to do?"

  "I'm asking you to stop this from happening again. The fey in the hospital won't talk to the police; he won't talk to the social worker that the Bureau of Human and Fey Affairs sent over. The fey went wild when I suggested we could contact the ambassador personally if he wasn't comfortable with a human social worker. Seeing how scared he was to talk to the ambassador made me think he might be even more scared of you guys."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "The ambassador isn't sidhe."

  "What do you expect us to do to this fey?" Doyle asked.

  "I expect you to do whatever it takes to get him to talk. We've got over five hundred dead, Doyle, almost six hundred. Besides, from what Rhys says, if these things aren't stopped, if we just keep letting them feed, they'll regenerate or something. I don't want a pack of newly born ancient deities with a taste for killing running around loose in my town. It's got to be stopped now, before it's too late."

  We agreed to go with her, but first we made a phone call. We called Maeve Reed and let her know that the ghosts of dead gods had been resurrected to kill her. Which meant it was somebody in the Seelie Court, and moreover they had the king's permission to do it.

  Chapter 39

  Lucy flashed her badge a lot to get us through the metal detectors with our guns and blades intact. The men even had to show the cards identifying them as queen's guardsmen before the nurse in charge would let us on the floor. But finally we stood at the bedside of a man... well, of a male. He was a tiny, misshapen thing. Sage was tiny, too, but he was perfectly proportioned. He was meant to be the size he was; clearly, the man who lay in the bed with the sheets tucked up under his arms was, even at a glance, wrong.

  I am Unseelie Court and I call many shapes right, pleasant, but something about this one made the hair on the back of my neck crawl. It made me want to look away, as if he was hideous, though he wasn't.

  I wasn't the only one having trouble. Rhys and Frost had looked away, turned their backs. Their reaction said that they either knew him or knew what had happened. It was a turning away like a shunning. Had he broken some age-old taboo? Doyle did not look away, but then he almost never did. Galen exchanged a look with me that said he was as puzzled and disturbed as I was. Kitto stayed near my side, where he'd insisted on being, one hand in mine like a child seeking comfort.r />
  I forced myself to keep looking, to try to figure out what it was about this small man that made me want to cringe. He was a little over two feet tall, his tiny feet making small bumps in the sheet. Something about his body seemed foreshortened, even though everything was there. His head was a little big for the thin torso. His eyes were large and liquid, far too large for the face. It was as if the eyes were left over from some other face. His nose matched the eyes, but because the rest of the face had receded, the nose looked too large, as well. That was what it looked like, as if his eyes and nose had been left stranded while the rest of his face had grown smaller, meaner, pinched, and wasted.

  Nicca moved through the rest of us and held his hand out. "Oh, Bucca, what has become of thee?"

  The tiny figure on the bed remained immobile at first. Then, slowly, he raised one small hand on an arm so thin it was like thick string. He laid that tiny pale brown hand against Nicca's strong brown one.

  Kitto turned a face shining with tears up to the lights. "Bucca-Dhu, Bucca-Dhu, what are you here?"

  I thought at first Kitto had left out a word or two; then I realized he hadn't. He'd asked exactly what he wished to know.

  "The two of you know him," Doyle said, making it more statement than question.

  Nicca nodded, patting the tiny hand ever so gently. He spoke rapidly in the strangely musical tones of one of the old Celtic tongues. It was too rapid for me to follow, but it wasn't Welsh and it wasn't Scots, Gaelic, or Irish, which still left several dialects, not to mention countries to go.

  Kitto joined in, speaking something close to what Nicca spoke, but not exactly -- a different dialect or maybe from a different century, like the difference between Middle English and modern English.

  I watched Kitto's face, the eagerness, the sorrow. I knew he was very sad to find this man here in this condition, but that was all I could follow.

  Doyle spoke in modern English at last. Maybe everyone else had been following just fine, but I had not. "Nicca knew him in a form not so different from this one, but Kitto remembers him as we are now, a sidhe. Bucca was once worshipped as a god."