Meredith Gentry 01 - A Kiss of Shadows

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Helping me could be very dangerous, Jeremy.”

  “Then hurry.”

  “I don’t have my passport.”

  He tossed a small paper-wrapped packet onto the bed. It was the packet of papers that stayed taped under the seat of my car. He’d brought my new identity. “How did you know?”

  “You’ve hidden from the human authorities, your . . . relatives, and their henchmen for three years. You’re not stupid. You knew you’d be found, thus you had a plan to cover yourself. I will say that the next time I’d hide the secret papers in a different spot. It was one of the first places I looked.”

  I stared at the packet, then at him. “That wasn’t all that was under the seat.”

  He opened his jacket like a model on the runway showing off the smooth line of his shirt and tie. But he was flashing the gun tucked into the waistband of his pants. It was just a darker shape against the paleness of his shirt, but I knew it was a 9-mm LadySmith because it was my gun. He took an extra clip out of one pocket. “The box of extra ammo is in the sack with your clothes.” He laid the gun on top of the taped packet and stepped back around the bed, so that it stood between us.

  “You seem nervous, Jeremy.”

  “Shouldn’t I be?”

  “Nervous of me. I didn’t think you’d be impressed with royalty.” I watched his face, tried to read what lay underneath, and couldn’t. He was hiding something.

  He raised his left hand in the air. “Let’s just say that Branwyn’s Tears has a long shelf life. Take the shower.”

  “I don’t feel the power of the spell anymore.”

  “Good for you, but trust me about the shower.”

  I looked at him. “It’s bothering you to see me nude.”

  He nodded. “My apologies for that, but it’s why Ringo and Uther are down in the van. Just as a precaution.”

  I smiled at him, and I found myself wanting to step closer to him, to close a little of that careful distance. I didn’t want Jeremy in that way, but the urge to see just how much of a hold I could have on him was there like a dark thought. It wasn’t like me to want to push the envelope with a friend. An enemy maybe, but not a friend. Was it a leftover urge from last night, or were the Tears still affecting me more than I realized? I didn’t think about it again. I just turned and walked to the bathroom. A quick shower and we’d be on our way to the airport.

  Twenty minutes later I was ready, my hair still soaking wet. I was dressed in a pair of navy blue dress slacks, an emerald green silk blouse, and a navy suit jacket that matched the pants. Jeremy had also chosen a pair of black low-heeled pumps and included a pair of black thigh-highs. Since I didn’t own any other kind of hose, that I didn’t mind. But the rest of it . . . “Next time you pick out clothes for me to run for my life in, include some jogging shoes. Pumps, no matter how low-heeled, just aren’t made for it.”

  “I never have any problem in dress shoes,” he said. He was reclining in one of the stiff-backed kitchen chairs. He made the chair look comfortable, and he looked graceful as he reclined in it. Jeremy was too in control, in a tight modern sort of way, to ever be called catlike. But cat was what came to mind as I watched him curled around the chair. Except that cats didn’t pose. They just were. Jeremy was definitely posed and trying to appear at ease and failing.

  “I am sorry that I forgot your brown contact lenses. Not that it seems to be a problem. I like the eyes as jade green, striking. Matches the blouse, but very human. Though I’d have kept more red in the hair and made it less auburn.”

  “Red hair stands out at a glance even in a crowd. Glamour is supposed to help you hide, not single you out.”

  “I know a lot of fey that use glamour for nothing but attracting attention, being more beautiful, more exotic.”

  I shrugged. “That’s their problem. I don’t need to advertise.”

  He stood. “All this time and I never guessed you were sidhe. I thought you were fey, true fey, and hiding that for some reason, but I never guessed the truth.” He stood away from the table, hands at his sides. The tension that had been in him since he woke me vibrated from him.

  “That bothers you, doesn’t it?” I said.

  He nodded. “I’m this great magician. I should have seen through the illusion. Or is that an illusion, too? Are you a better magician than I am, Merry? Have you hidden your magic, too?” For the first time I felt the power growing around him. It could be just a shield. Then again, it could be the beginnings of something more.

  I faced him, feet apart, hands at my side, mirroring him. I called my own power, slowly, carefully. If we’d been gunslingers, he’d have had his gun out, but not pointed. I was still trying to keep my gun in its holster. You’d think after all this time I wouldn’t trust anyone, but I just couldn’t believe that Jeremy was my enemy.

  “We don’t have time for this, Jeremy.”

  “I thought I could treat you like nothing had changed, but I can’t. I have to know.”

  “Know what, Jeremy?”

  “I want to know how much of the last three years has been a lie.” I felt his power breathe out around him, fill up that small tight space that was his personal aura. He was pumping a lot of power into his shields. A lot of power.

  My shields were always in place, tight, and loaded for bear. It was automatic for me. So automatic that most people, even very sensitive ones, mistook the shielding for my normal power level. It meant that I faced Jeremy with shields at full strength. I didn’t have to do anything to add to it. My shielding was better than his, just a fact. My offensive spells on the other hand, well, I’d seen Jeremy work magic. He’d never get through my shields, but I’d never be able to hurt him magically. It would come down to blows or weapons. I was hoping it wouldn’t have to come to anything.

  “Is the ride to the airport still open, or did you change your mind while I was in the shower?”

  “The ride to the airport is still on,” he said. Most of the sidhe can see magic in colors or shapes, but I’ve never been able to do that. I can feel it though, and Jeremy was crowding the room with all the energy he was pouring into his shields.

  “Then what’s with the power trip?”

  “You’re sidhe. You’re Unseelie sidhe. That’s just a step above being a member of the sluagh.” Jeremy’s Highland accent leaked through onto the phrases. I’d never heard him lose his all-American-from-the-middle-of-nowhere accent. Made me nervous because many of the sidhe pride themselves on retaining their original accents, whatever they may be.

  “And your point is what?” But I had a sinking feeling that I knew where he was going with it. I’d almost have rather had a fight.

  “The Unseelie thrive on deception. They are not to be trusted.”

  “Am I not to be trusted, Jeremy? Does three years of friendship mean less to you than old stories?”

  Some bitter thought crossed his face. “It is not stories,” and again his accent thickened. “I was cast out as a boy from the trow lands. The Seelie Court would not deign to notice a trow boy, but the Unseelie Court, they take in everyone.”

  I smiled before I could stop myself. “Not everyone.” I don’t think Jeremy got the sarcasm.

  “No, not everyone.” He was so angry that a fine trembling had started in his hands. I was about to pay the bill for a centuries-old grievance. It wouldn’t be the first time. It probably wouldn’t be the last, but it still pissed me off. We didn’t have time for his temper tantrum, let alone one of mine.

  “I’m sorry that my ancestors abused you, Jeremy, but it was before my time. The Unseelie Court has had a publicist for most of my lifetime.”

  “To spread the lies,” he said in a brogue so thick, it was guttural.

  “You want to compare scars?” I lifted my shirt out of my pants and let him see the handprint scar on my ribs.

  “Illusion,” he said, but he sounded doubtful.

  “You can touch it if you want. Glamour fools vision, but not touch, not for another fey.” This was a part
ial truth at best, because I could use glamour to fool every sense, even of another fey, but it wasn’t a common ability even among the sidhe, and I was betting that Jeremy would believe me. Sometimes a plausible lie is quicker than an unwanted truth.

  He walked toward me slowly, distrust clear on his face. It made my chest tight to see that look on Jeremy’s face. He peered at the scar, but stayed out of touching range. He knew that the sidhe’s most powerful personal magic was touch-activated, which meant he knew the sidhe more intimately than I’d thought.

  I sighed and laced my fingers on top of my head. The shirt slid down over the scar, but I figured Jeremy could move the cloth. He kept peering up at me as he moved forward into arm’s reach. He touched the green silk, but stared into my eyes for a long time before he raised it, as if he were trying to read my thoughts. But my face had gone back to that familiar polite, slightly bored, empty look that I’d perfected at court. I could watch a friend be tortured or put a knife into someone’s gut with the same look on my face. You don’t survive at the court if your face betrays your feelings.

  Jeremy lifted the cloth slowly, never taking his eyes from my face. He finally had to look down, and I was very careful to make no move, however small, to spook him. I hated that Jeremy Grey, my friend and boss, was treating me like a very dangerous person. If he only knew how very undangerous I was.

  He ran fingertips over the raised, slightly roughened flesh.

  “There’s more scars on my back, but I just got dressed, so if you don’t mind, this is as far as I’m going.”

  “Why didn’t I see them when you were naked or in my office being fitted for the wire?”

  “I didn’t want you to see them, but I don’t bother hiding them when they’re under my clothes.”

  “Never waste magicial energy,” he said, as if to himself. He shook his head, as if he were hearing something I couldn’t hear. He looked at me, and his eyes were puzzled. “We don’t have time to stand here and argue, do we?”

  “I’ve been saying that?”

  “Shit,” he said. “It’s a spell of discontent, distrust, discord. It’s means they’re coming now.” Fear flowed over his face.

  “They could still be miles away, Jeremy.”

  “Or they could be just outside,” he said.

  He had a point. If they were just outside the door, then a safer bet might be calling the police and waiting for help to arrive. I wouldn’t say that Unseelie bad guys were hiding in the bushes, but I was pretty sure that if I called up Detective Alvera and said that Princess Meredith was about to be killed on his turf, they’d send help.

  But if I could, my preference was sneaking away. I needed to know what was out there.

  Jeremy was looking at me strangely. “You’ve thought of something. What is it?”

  “The Host isn’t made up of sidhe, except for one or two sent along as keepers, masters of the hunt. It’s part of the horror of being chased by them. I may not be able to find the sidhe if they don’t want to be found, but the rest of the Host, them I can find.”

  He made a sweeping motion with his hands. “Then by all means.”

  He didn’t argue. Didn’t ask if I could do it, or if it was safe. He just accepted it. He wasn’t acting like my boss anymore. I was Princess Meredith NicEssus, and if I said I could search the night for the Host, he believed me. He would never have believed Merry Gentry, not without proof.

  I cast outward, keeping my shields in place, but flinging my power wide. It was dangerous, because if they were on top of us then that opening might be all they needed to overwhelm me, but it was the only way to know how close they were. I felt Uther and Ringo outside, felt their beings, their magic. There was the force of the sea and a thrumming to the land, the magic of all living things, but nothing else. I cast farther and farther outward. Mile after mile and there was nothing, then, there, almost at the edge of my limit something pressed on the air like a storm moving this way, but it wasn’t a storm, or at least not a storm of wind and rain. It was too far away for me to get a clear sense of what creatures of faerie rode with the sidhe, but it was enough. We had some time.

  I pulled back inside my shields, squeezing them tight. “They’re miles from here.”

  “Then how did they do the spell of discord?”

  “My aunt could whisper it on the night wind and it would find its target.”

  “From Illinois?”

  “It might take a day or three, but yes, from Illinois. But don’t look so worried. She would never dirty her hands personally with fetch-and-carry duties. She may want me dead, but not from a distance. She’ll want to make an example of me, and for that they’ll need to get me home.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  I shook my head. “An hour, maybe two.”

  “We can get you to the airport in time then. Getting you out of town is the only thing I can offer. One sidhe magician, one not even on the spot, kept me out of Alistair Norton’s house. I can’t break sidhe magic, and that means I’m not going to be any help to you.”

  “You sent the spiders through the warding at Norton’s house. You warned me to hide under the bed. You did great.”

  He gave me a strange look. “I thought you did the spiders.”

  There was a moment when we stared at each other. “It wasn’t me,” I said.

  “It wasn’t me, either,” he said, softly.

  “I know this is a cliché, but if it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t me . . .” I left the rest unsaid.

  “Uther isn’t capable of something like that.”

  “Roane doesn’t do active magic,” I said. I was suddenly cold, and it had nothing to do with the temperature. One of us had to say it out loud. “Then who was it? Who saved me?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t know. Sometimes the Unseelie can befriend you before they break you.”

  “Don’t believe all the stories you hear, Jeremy.”

  “It’s not a story.” Anger made those simple words hot and unpleasant. I realized suddenly just how afraid he was. The anger was a shield for the fear. His reactions all had a personal taste to them. He wasn’t just afraid in a general way. It was specific, based on something besides stories or legends.

  “Have you been up close and personal with the Host?”

  He nodded and unlocked the door. “We may only have an hour. Let’s get out of here.”

  I pressed my hands to the door, stopped him from opening it. “This is important, Jeremy. If you’ve been in thrall to one of them, then that sidhe will have . . . power over you. I need to know what was done.”

  Then he did something I hadn’t expected. He started unbuttoning his shirt.

  I raised eyebrows. “You’re not still being affected by Branwyn’s Tears, are you?”

  He smiled, then, not his usual smile, but still an improvement. “I was befriended once before by a member of the Host.” He left the tie and collar tight, but unbuttoned the rest, slipped his jacket off, folded it over one arm, and gave me his back. “Lift the shirt.”

  I didn’t want to lift the shirt. I’d seen what my relatives could do when they got creative. There were so many awful possibilities, none of which I wanted to see carved into Jeremy’s flesh. But I lifted the crisp, grey cloth because I had to know. I didn’t gasp because I was prepared. Screaming was overkill.

  His back was covered in burn scars, as if someone had pressed a red-hot brand into his flesh again and again. Except this brand was in the shape of a hand. I touched his scars, as he had mine, lightly, fingers tracing them. I started to put my hand over one of the hand marks, then hesitated, and warned him. “I want to place my hand over one of the scars to see the size.”

  He nodded.

  The hand was much bigger than mine, bigger than the mark on my own body. A man’s hand, the fingers thicker than most of the sidhe. “Do you know the name of the one who did this?”

  “Tamlyn,” he said. He sounded embarrassed, and he should have.

  Tamlyn was t
he John Smith of faerie aliases. Tamlyn along with Robin Goodfellow and a handful of others were favorite false identities when true names were to be hidden.

  “You must have been very young not to suspect something when he gave that name,” I said.

  He nodded. “I was that.”

  “May I check your aura?”

  He smiled back at me over his shoulder. The movement wrinkled the skin on his back, making the scars form shapes. “Aura is a New Age word. The fey don’t use it.”

  “Personal power then,” I said, but I was staring at his back. I pushed the cloth of his shirt over his shoulders. “Were you tied while this was done?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Can you put your hands in the position they were tied in?”

  He took a breath as if he’d ask why, but he finally just raised his hands above his head, and moved into the door so that his body was flush against it. He raised his arms until they were held extended as far as they would go, slightly out from his body until he formed a Y shape.

  The shirt had slipped back into place and I had to raise it again. But when I did, I saw what I thought I’d find. The hand-shaped burns had formed a picture. It was the image of a dragon, or maybe more accurately a wyrm, long and serpentine. It was vaguely oriental-looking because of the hand shape, but it was most definitely a dragon. But the burns only formed the picture if Jeremy was in exactly the same position as when he was tortured. When he lowered his arms the skin separated and it was just scars.

  “You can lower your arms,” I said.

  He did, turning so that he could look at me. He started tucking in his shirt. I don’t think he even realized he was doing it. “You look grim. What did you see in the burns that no one else has seen?”

  “Don’t tuck your shirt in, yet, Jeremy. I need to lay a warding on your back.”

  “What did you see, Merry?” He stopped fussing with his shirt, but didn’t untuck it for me.

  I shook my head. Jeremy had carried the scars for centuries and had never known that the sidhe had played a little game upon his flesh. It showed such disdain for the victim, a callousness that was hard to wrap your mind around. Of course, it might be very practical; cruelty with a purpose, as it were. The sidhe, whoever it was, could have laid a spell on the burns. They might be able to call a dragon out of his flesh or shape-shift him into one. Probably not, but better safe than sorry.