Meredith Gentry 01 - A Kiss of Shadows

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Lucy looked at Roane and Jeremy. “Does she not know what she looks like?”

  “No,” Roane said.

  “I think, though I don’t know, that our Merry was raised somewhere where she was considered the ugly duckling,” Jeremy said.

  I met his eyes, my pulse thudding in my neck. That one comment was a little too close for comfort. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”

  “I know you don’t,” Jeremy said. There was a knowledge in his dark grey eyes, a guess that was close to a certainty. In that moment, I knew he suspected who I was, what I was. But he would never ask. He would wait until I was ready to talk, or the question would remain forever silent between us.

  I looked at Roane. He was the only fey lover I’d known had not come to my bed to further his political ambitions. To him I was just Merry Gentry, a human with fey ancestry, not Princess Meredith NicEssus. Now I stared into that familiar face and tried to read his expression. He was smilingly blank. Either it had never occurred to him that I might be the missing sidhe princess, or he’d guessed long ago, but would never be rude enough to bring it up. Or had Roane known from the first? Had that been why he’d come to me? Suddenly, all the security that I’d built up with these people, my friends, began to crumble around me.

  Some of it must have shown on my face because Roane touched me. I drew back from him. His face showed the hurt, confusion. He didn’t know. I hugged him suddenly, hiding my face from him, but I could still see Jeremy.

  As the look on Roane’s face had reassured me, so the look on Jeremy’s frightened me. All it would take was my true name being mentioned after dark, and it would float back to my aunt. She was the Queen of Air and Darkness, and that meant that anything said in the dark was hers to hear, eventually. The fact that spotting the missing Elven American Princess had become more popular than spotting Elvis helped. Her magic was always chasing blind leads. Princess Meredith skiing in Utah. Princess Meredith dancing in Paris. Princess Meredith gambling in Vegas. After three years I was still a front-page story for the tabloids, though the latest headlines had been speculating that I was as dead as the King of Rock and Roll.

  If Jeremy spoke my name aloud to my face, the words would resonate, and when they finally floated back to her, she’d know I was alive, and she’d know that Jeremy had spoken my name. Even if I ran, she’d question him, and if polite methods didn’t work, she’d use torture. I am told she is a creative lover. I know she is an inventive torturer.

  I drew back from Roane and gave them part of the truth. “My mother was the beautiful one.”

  “How do you know that?” Jeremy asked.

  I looked at him. “She told me so.”

  “You mean your mother told you you weren’t beautiful?” Lucy asked. It took a human to be that direct.

  I nodded.

  “Don’t take this wrong, but what a bitch.”

  To that there was only one thing to say—“I agree, now let’s get out of here.”

  “We wouldn’t want to keep Mr. Norton waiting,” Jeremy said.

  “I still wish we were going after him for proof on the attempted murder,” Lucy said.

  “We can’t guarantee proof that will stand up in court about the death spell,” I said.

  “But,” Jeremy said, “we might be able to prove tonight that he is using magic to seduce women. Magically aided seduction is rape under California law. We need him in jail away from his wife, and this is the surest way to do it. He won’t get bail on a felony charge that includes magic.”

  Lucy nodded. “I agree that the plan is great for Mrs. Norton, but what about Merry? What if this guy pulls out the magical aphrodisiac that he’s used on the other mistresses, the ones who just couldn’t get enough of him like Naomi Phelps?”

  “We’re counting on it,” I said.

  She looked at me. “What if it works? What if you start panting over the microphone?”

  “Then Roane breaks down the door playing the jealous lover and drags me out.”

  “If I have trouble getting her to leave, then Uther will come in as my friend and help me take my woman back home.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “Well, what Uther wants, Uther gets.” Uther was thirteen feet tall, with a head that was more pig than human, and two curling tusks on either side of his snout. He was a jack-in-irons, but he was named Uther Squarefoot. He wasn’t much good for undercover work, but he was hell on wheels when we needed muscle.

  Uther had excused himself from the room when he realized the dress was coming off. He’d said only, “It’s nothing personal, Merry, don’t make more of it than there is, but seeing any attractive female nearly naked is not good for a man when there’s no hope of relieving the thoughts that spring unbidden.” It wasn’t until he made for the door, stooping his great shoulders low enough to squeeze out the doorway, that I realized something I should have known before. Uther is thirteen feet tall, the size of a large ogre or a very small giant, and there aren’t many females his size in the Los Angeles area. He’d been here nearly ten years. That was a long time to be without the touch of another naked body. How terribly lonely.

  If no one guessed who I really was, and if I didn’t get bespelled out of my mind by Alistair Norton, I’d see about fixing Uther up with someone. Uther wasn’t the only giant-sized fey wandering outside the courts, just the only one in the immediate area. If we couldn’t find someone his size, we might be able to come up with other solutions. Sex doesn’t have to mean intercourse. There are women on the streets that will do just about anything for a couple of hundred dollars, especially if twenty is their going rate. If I were truly fey down to my toes, I’d do Uther myself. That’s what a real friend would do. But I was raised outside the court, out among the humans, from age six to sixteen. It meant that no matter how fey I was, some of my attitudes were human.

  I can’t be human because I’m not. But I can’t be completely fey because I’m not that either. I am half Unseelie Court, but I am not one of them. I am part Seelie Court, but I do not belong among the shining throng. I am part dark sidhe, part light sidhe, and yet neither side wishes to claim me. I have always been on the outside looking in, my nose pressed to the window, but never welcomed inside. I understood isolation and loneliness. It made me hurt for Uther. Made me regret that I wasn’t comfortable helping him with a little friendly, casual sex. But I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t. As usual, I was fey enough to see the problem, but too human to fix it. Of course, if I’d been pure Seelie sidhe, I wouldn’t have touched Uther at any price. He would have been beneath my notice. The Seelie do not fuck monsters. Unseelie sidhe . . . well, define monster.

  Uther wasn’t a monster by Unseelie standards, but Alistair Norton might be. Either a monster, or a kindred spirit of the dark.

  Chapter 5

  ALISTAIR NORTON DIDN’T LOOK LIKE A MONSTER. I’D EXPECTED HIM TO be handsome, but it was still disappointing. There is something in all of us that believes deep down that evil shows on the outside, that we should be able to pick out the bad people just by looking at them, but it just doesn’t work that way. I’d spent enough time at both courts to know that beautiful and good were not the same. I, if anyone, knew that beauty was perfect camouflage for the darkest of hearts, and still I wanted Alistair Norton’s face to show what he was inside. I wanted some visible mark of Cain on him. But he came smiling into the restaurant, tall, broad-shouldered, face full of clean angles, so masculine it was almost painful. His lips were a little thin for my taste, face a little too masculine, eyes a very ordinary brown. The hair that was tied back in a neat ponytail was an odd shade of brown, neither light nor dark. But I had to look for imperfections because there just weren’t any.

  His smile was quick and softened his face to something more approachable, less model-perfect. The laugh was deep and charming. His large hands wore a silver ring with a diamond as big as my thumb, but no wedding ring. There wasn’t even a telltale pale line where the ring had been removed. His skin was dark enough that ther
e should have been a tan line. He’d never worn a ring. I always felt that any man who didn’t want to wear a wedding band was probably planning to cheat. There are always exceptions, but not many.

  For his part, he seemed pleased. “Your eyes glow like green jewels.”

  I’d left the brown contact lenses at the office. My natural eye color really did glow. I thanked him for the compliment, playing shy, looking into my drink. It wasn’t shyness. I was trying to keep him from seeing the contempt in my eyes. Both human and sidhe culture abhor an adulterer. The sidhe don’t worry about fornication, but once you get married, give your word that you will be faithful, then you must be faithful. No fey will tolerate an oath breaker. If your word is worthless, then so are you.

  He touched my shoulder. “Such perfect white skin.” When I didn’t chase him away, he leaned in and placed a soft kiss on my shoulder. I stroked his face as he drew back, and that seemed to be a signal of some kind. He kissed the side of my neck, hand touching my hair. “Your hair’s like red silk,” he breathed against my skin. “Is it your natural color?”

  I turned into him, answering him with my mouth just above his, “Yes.”

  He kissed, and it was gentle, a good first kiss. I hated the fact that he seemed so sincere. What was truly horrible was that he might be sincere, that at the beginning of the seduction he might mean every word. I’d met men like that before. It’s as if they believe their own lies, that this time it will be true love. But it never lasts because no woman is perfect enough for them. Of course, it isn’t the women who aren’t perfect enough. It’s the man. He tries to fill some void in himself with women or sex. If the love is true enough, the sex good enough, then this time he’ll feel complete. This time he’ll finally be whole. Serial womanizers are like serial killers in one respect. They both believe that next time will be perfect, that the next experience will complete them and stop this unending need. But it never does.

  He whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice. I’d be doing a lot of eyes-closed kissing because sometimes I could lie with my eyes, and sometimes I couldn’t. It was going to be hard enough to keep the reluctance out of my body as he touched me. Expecting my eyes to show lust and love was asking too much.

  His car matched the rest of him: expensive, sleek, fast. A black Jaguar with black leather seats so that it was like sliding into a pool of darkness. I put my seat belt on. He didn’t. He drove fast, weaving in and out of traffic. It would have been more impressive if I hadn’t been driving in L.A. for three years. Everyone drove like this out of sheer self-defense.

  The house was neat and small, the smallest in the neighborhood, but it had the largest yard. There was actually enough land on either side that even a Midwesterner would say it had a good-sized yard. The house looked like a place for kids to wait for daddy to come home, while mom rushed around in her power suit trying to fix dinner after a hard day’s work.

  For a moment I wondered if he’d actually taken me to his home, the one he shared with Frances. If so, it was a break in his pattern, and I didn’t like that. Why would he break his pattern? I knew he hadn’t found the bug, and he hadn’t touched my purse, which meant he didn’t know about the hidden camera in it. I was saving turning it on until we got to his love nest. He couldn’t know.

  Ringo was posted outside the Norton house watching over Mrs. Norton. If Alistair got too violent before we could get him in jail, Ringo was on his own best judgment over whether to intercede. I didn’t look around for Ringo. If he was here, I didn’t want to draw attention to him.

  Alistair opened the door for me, helping me out of the car. I let him because I was trying to think. I finally tried for honesty, sort of. “You sure you’re not married?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “This looks like a house for a family.”

  He laughed and drew me into the circle of his arm. “No family, just me. I just moved in.”

  I looked up at him. “Are you buying with an eye for the future? Munchkins and the family thing?”

  He raised my hand to his lips. “With the right woman anything’s possible.”

  Lord and Lady, but he knew just how much carrot to dangle in front of most women. Imply that you could be the woman to tame him, make him settle down. Most women love that. I knew better. Men don’t settle down because of the right woman. They settle down because they are finally ready for it. Whatever woman they’re dating when they get ready is the one they settle down with, not necessarily the best one or the prettiest, just the one who happened to be on hand when the time got to be right. Unromantic, but still true.

  He’d moved out of his apartment. Why? Did it have something to do with Naomi Phelps leaving him abruptly? Did it make him nervous enough to move? Or had he been planning the move all along? No way to know without asking, and I couldn’t ask. As Alistair Norton ushered me through the door, I fought an urge to look back, to search for Jeremy and the rest. I knew my backup was out there. I knew because I trusted them. Alistair hadn’t driven fast enough to lose both vehicles. The van for the sound system and to hide Uther, and the car with Jeremy at the wheel in case they needed more maneuverability to follow Norton, or just to switch off so that he wouldn’t notice the same car behind him for too long. They were out there, listening to us. I knew that, but still I would have liked to have glanced back and seen them. Just sheer insecurity on my part.

  I felt the warding before the door opened. When I stepped over the threshold, power shivered over my skin. He noticed. “Do you know what you’re feeling?”

  I could have lied, but I didn’t. I’d like to say it was a hunch that Alistair would be pleased that I was a trained mystic, but that wasn’t it. I wanted him to know that I wasn’t helpless. “You’ve got the door warded,” I said. The air in the room pressed against my skin, and it was as if I couldn’t breathe deep enough, like there wasn’t enough air. I stepped off the tiled entryway, hoping the atmosphere would get better. It didn’t. If anything the atmosphere grew heavier, like wading into deeper water. Hot, close, skin-crawling water.

  I’d known he was powerful by the spells he’d laid on his wife and his mistress. But the amount of power that filled that empty living room was more than human. The only way for a human witch to get that much power was to bargain with things not human. I hadn’t counted on that. None of us had.

  He was talking to me, but I hadn’t heard. My mind was screaming, “Leave! Leave now!” But if I did that, Alistair was still free to kill his wife and torture other women. Me leaving would keep me safe, but it wouldn’t help our clients. It was one of those moments when I had to decide, was I going to earn my paycheck or not.

  One thing I did know. The guys in the van needed to know what I’d found out. “The ward isn’t to keep things out, is it, Alistair? Though it will keep out other powers. The ward is to keep anyone else from sensing how much power you’ve got in here.” My voice sounded breathy as if I was having trouble breathing.

  He looked at me then, and for the first time I saw something in his eyes that wasn’t pleasant or smiling. For an instant the monster was there in those brown eyes. “I should have known you’d sense it,” he said. “My little Merry, with her sidhe eyes, hair, and skin. If you were tall and willowy, you’d pass for sidhe.”

  “So I’ve been told,” I said.

  He held his hand out to me. I reached for his hand, but I had to reach through the power in the room, like pushing my hand through an invisible, skin-tingling thickness. His fingers touched mine, and a jolt of energy like static jumped between us. He laughed and wrapped his hand around mine. I forced myself not to pull back, but I couldn’t make myself smile. I was having too much trouble breathing through the power. I’d lived in places so full of power, the walls groaned with it, but this power had been allowed to fill the space available like water until there was no air space left. Alistair probably thought he was a big, powerful witch to be able to call this much power, but he was a baby
witch if he couldn’t control it better than this. A lot of people can call power. Calling is not the measure of your strength as a practitioner. It’s what you can do with the power that counts. Though as he pulled me, gently, through the brush of the hovering energy, I did wonder what he was doing with all this magic. He might be wasting a lot of it just letting it swirl around, but you don’t get this much energy without having some idea of what you’re doing and some plan of what to do with it.

  My voice sounded strange even to me, strained, and breathy. “The living room is full of magic, Alistair. What are you going to do with all of it?” I hoped everyone in the van was getting this.

  “Let me show you,” he said. We were at the closed door in the left-hand wall.

  “What’s behind the door?” I asked. It was the only door visible from the entrance. There was an open hallway that led from the rear of the living room farther into the house, and an open entranceway into the kitchen. It was the only closed door, and if the guys had to come save me, I didn’t want them wandering around. I wanted them to come straight in and get me out.

  “Let’s not pretend, Merry. We know why you’re here, why we’re both here. It’s the bedroom.” He opened the door, and it was the bedroom. It was red from the four-poster bed to the drapery that covered every wall to the carpet. It was like standing inside a crimson velvet box. Mirrors were set between the heavy drapes like jewels set to charm the eye. There were no windows. It was a closed box and the center of the magic that had been called to this place.

  The power rolled over me like suffocating fur, warm, close, choking. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. My feet stopped working, but Alistair didn’t seem to notice. He kept leading me, pulling me into the room, so that I stumbled, and the only thing that kept me from falling to the polished wood of the floor was his arms. He tried to lift me in his arms, but I collapsed the rest of the way to the floor so that he couldn’t lift me up. I wasn’t fainting. I just didn’t want to be picked up because I knew where he’d take me: to the bed. And if that was the center of all this power, I didn’t want to go there, not yet.