[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  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.”

  “You are babbling again,” she said, crossing her arms under her tight firm breasts.

  “I want to contact the police and bring in a forensic team.”

  “A what?”

  “Scientists who specialize in helping the police solve crimes in the human world.”

  She was shaking her head. “I do not want the human police tramping through here.”

  “Nor do I, but a few policemen, and a few scientists. Just a few, just enough to gather evidence. All the sidhe are royal, titled; they all have diplomatic immunity, so technically we can dictate to an extent how much police involvement we allow.”

  “And you think this will catch whoever did this?”

  “I do.” I stepped a little away from Doyle, so I wasn’t huddling against him. “Whoever did this is worried about magic tracking them down, but it will never occur to them that we would use forensic science inside the land of faerie. They will not have protected against it, and in fact, they can’t protect against it, not completely.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “We, even the sidhe, shed skin cells, hairs, saliva; all of it can be used to trace back to the person. Science can use a smaller piece than is needed for a spell. Not a lock of hair, but the root of a hair. Not a pound of flesh, but an invisible fleck of it.”

  “You are certain that it will work? Certain that if I allow this intrusion, this invasion of our privacy, human science will solve this crime?”

  I licked my lips. “I am certain if there is evidence to find, they will find it.”

  “If,” she said, and she started pacing the room again, but slowly, quietly this time. “‘If’ means you are not certain. ‘If’ means, dear niece, that you may bring all this upon us and the murderer may go free. If we bring in the police and they do not solve the reporter’s death, it will undo all the good publicity I have acquired for us in the last two decades.”

  “I think it will work, but either way the media will be impressed with your willingness to allow the modern police into your faerie mound. No one has ever done that, not even at the golden court.”

  She glanced back at me, but she was moving, slowly, toward Barinthus. He was indeed kneeling at the foot of her bed, on a black fur rug. “You think we will gain media points over Taranis and his shining people.”

  “I think this will show that we meant no harm to anyone, and that such things are not tolerated among the Unseelie, contrary to all those centuries of dark talk.”

  She stood in front of Barinthus now, but still spoke to me. “You truly believe that the media will forgive us allowing one of their own to be murdered simply because we invite in the police?”

  “I think some of them would slaughter their own photographers on altars, with incense and prayers, to get a chance at covering this story.”

  “Clever, Meredith, very clever.” She turned to Barinthus then. She stroked her hand down the side of his face, like you’d touch a lover, though I knew she had never taken him to her bed. “Why did you never try to make a king of my son?”

  Unless Barinthus and the queen had been having a very different conversation, the question seemed out of nowhere.

  “You do not want me to answer that question, Queen Andais,” he said in his deep, sighing voice.

  “Yes,” she said, still stroking his face, “yes, I do.”

  “You will not like it.”

  “I have not liked many things of late. Answer the question, Kingmaker. I know that if my brother, Essus, had been willing, you would have had him kill me and put himself on the throne. But he would not slay his own sister. He would not have that sin on his heart. Still, you thought he would be a better king than I a queen, didn’t you?”

  Dangerous questions. Barinthus said again, “You do not want the truth, my queen.”

  “I know the truth of that question. I’ve known that for centuries, but I do not know why you never looked to Cel. He approached you after Essus died. He offered to help you slay me, if you would help put him on the throne early.”

  I think all of us across the room held our breaths in that moment. I had not known this. The looks on everyone’s faces around me said that most of them had not either. Only Adair and Hawthorne behind their helmets were still hidden from their surprise.

  “I warned you of his treachery,” Barinthus said.

  “Yes, and I had you tortured for it.”

  “I remember, my queen.”

  Her smile did not match her words, but then neither did the constant caressing of his face and shoulders. “When Meredith came of age, you turned to her. If she had had the magic she now possesses since her stay in the lands to the west, you would have offered her what you offered Essus, wouldn’t you?”

  “You know the answer, my queen.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I do. But Cel always had the power to be king. Why did you not put him on the throne? Why did you foster a half-breed mongrel of a princess over my pure-sidhe son?”

  “Do not ask me this,” he said.

  She slapped him twice, hard enough to stagger him even on his knees. Hard enough to have blood spill from his mouth. “I am your queen, damn you, and you will answer my question. Answer me!” The last was screamed into his face.

  Barinthus answered her, blood flowing from his mouth. “You are a better queen than Cel will ever be a king.”

  “And what of Meredith? What of my brother’s child?”

  “She will be a good queen.”

  “A better queen than Cel a king?”

  “Yes,” he said, and that one word dropped into the silence of the room like a stone thrown down a great height. You know it will make a sound, but only after a very, very long fall.

  The sound came with her words. “Meredith, you will do nothing with Barinthus that will chance you being pregnant by him. Nothing, is that clear?”

  “Yes.” My voice sounded strained and hoarse as if I’d been the one screaming.

  “Contact the police. Do what you think best. I will announce to the court and the media that you are in charge of this little problem. Do not bother me with it again. Do not report to me unless I ask it. Now go, all of you, get out.”

  We went. All of us, even Barinthus. We went, and were grateful to go.

  CHAPTER 5

  I CALLED MAJOR WALTERS OF THE ST. LOUIS POLICE DEPARTMENT, who had been in charge of our security at the airport the day before. I called from the only land line phone in the Unseelie sithen. The phone was in the queen’s office. Which always looked to me like a black and silver version of Louis the Fourteenth’s office if he had liked going to Goth dance clubs for the dissipated rich. It was elegant, dark, expensive, and exciting in that chill-up-your-spine way; modern, but with a feel of the antique; nouveau riche done right. It was also a little claustrophobic to me. Too many shades of black and grey in too small a space, as if a Goth curtain salesman had persuaded them to cover every inch of the room with his wares.

  The phone was white and always looked like bones on the secretary’s black desk. Or maybe that’s just me projecting. I did not understand the mood of the queen tonight. I’d asked Barinthus, as we walked to the office, if she’d given him any clues as to why she was behaving so oddly, and he’d said no. No clues.

  Why was I calling the St. Louis police when the faerie lands are technically in Illinois? Because Major Walters was the current police liaison for the lands of faerie and the human police. Once upon a time, a few hundred years ago, there’d been an entire police unit assigned to us. Why? Because not everyone in America agreed with President Jefferson’s decision to bring the fey to this country. The local people who were going to be close to us were especially upset. They didn’t want monsters of the Unseelie Court coming to live in their state. At t
hat time, St. Louis was the closest major city with a working police department. So even though we were technically located in Illinois, police problems had been sent to Missouri and St. Louis. They got the joyous duty of protecting us from the angry humans and also walking the perimeters of our lands so we couldn’t sneak out and wreak havoc. If the courts of faerie hadn’t come with a sizable bribe for several different branches of government, and certain powerful individuals, we might have never made it into this country. No one wanted to mess with either court after the last great human-fey war in Europe. We’d shown ourselves entirely too powerful for comfort.

  What no one really understood about us—from Jefferson on down to the yelling mob—was that a line of human police wasn’t really going to keep the fey, any fey, from leaving the area. What kept them inside and behaving themselves were threats and oaths to and from their respective kings and queens. But the police did keep the humans from harassing us.

  Gradually, when nothing bad happened, the police presence was reduced, until they left altogether, and we only called on them when they were needed. As the local humans realized that we mostly wanted to be left alone, we had to call on our private police less and less. Soon, the police assigned to us had other jobs in other areas of the police force until they were needed for faerie duty, as it came to be called. Come up to present day and the unit had become a single detective or officer. The last time he’d been used was my father’s death, but since that had been on government-owned farmland, the locals had been cut out twice. Once by the feds and once by us. All right, by the queen. I’d have taken a platoon of soldiers into the mounds if I thought they could have caught my father’s killers.

  After the liaison was so ineffective with my father’s murder, I thought the post had been abandoned. But I’d been wrong.

  Doyle had found out that Major Walters was still our liaison. The last remnants of a unit created by Thomas Jefferson himself. We’d also never had anyone as high a rank as major in the job. Major Walters had volunteered for the job, because the last person to have it had also done our security at press conferences, and that had landed Walter’s predecessor a large salary as chief of a big corporation’s security. Executives like to be guarded by someone who’s guarded royalty. It adds a certain panache to the résumé. Doyle had even learned that Walters had a very well paying job lined up. I wondered how the big corporation felt about Walters after yesterday. It looks great on your résumé to guard royalty, but not so great to let them get injured on your watch. Nope, probably the executives would be a little nervous about being guarded by someone who let Princess Meredith get shot at by one of his own officers. Humans believed in magic, but not as an excuse for screwing up. No, they liked to blame someone, not something.