[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I dialed Gillett’s number by heart, though his number had changed over the years. I’d always had to memorize it for fear of someone caring enough to look through any address book I might have. I could have saved my worry; Doyle’s reaction had shown plainly that no one had been paying me that close attention. It was a little sad, and a little frustrating. So much wasted effort in hiding from people who weren’t even looking.

  I waited for Gillette’s cell phone to ring. I’d promised him that if anyone else ever died in circumstances similar to my father’s, I’d let him know. These weren’t really that similar, but a promise is a promise. I felt half silly and half excited, as if somehow just being able to make this one call would change things. I was over thirty, but part of me was still seventeen and wanted justice. I should have known better by now.

  He answered, “Gillett.”

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Merry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Over the years he’d become protective of me. As if he felt some debt to my dead father to keep me well. If he only knew, but I hadn’t shared all the attempts on my life. The endless duels that made me flee faerie for years and let everyone think I was gone for good.

  This was the first time I had spoken to him since I’d resurfaced. “A little worse for wear, but I’m fine.”

  “I thought they’d killed you, too, three years ago. Why didn’t you call?”

  “Because if you’d spoken my real name near a darkened window the Queen of Air and Darkness would have known. The sound of our conversation would have traveled back to her. It would have endangered you. It would have endangered anyone.”

  He sighed over the phone. “And now you’re ‘princess’ again, and looking for a husband. But you didn’t call up just to chat, did you?”

  “Have you heard something?”

  “A rumor that the reporters left the faerie mound, but are now all gathered in the parking lot. The press conference is over, so why are that many national and international media types hanging around in the middle of a cornfield in Illinois?”

  I told him the broad outline of the problem.

  “I can be there with a team in less than . . .”

  “No, no team. I’ve already got a few police coming with a forensic unit. You can come, but you can’t bring dozens of agents with you. This happened inside the sithen, not on federal land this time.”

  “We could help you.”

  “Maybe, or maybe there would just be more humans to get injured. We’ve got a dead reporter, that’s bad enough. We can’t afford to have an FBI agent get killed by one of us.”

  “We’ve talked about this for years, Merry. Don’t cut me out now.”

  “My father’s murder is sixteen years old; it is secondary here, Raymond. The priority is the new deaths. Hearing your voice now, I’m not sure that would be the case for you.”

  “You don’t trust me.” He sounded hurt.

  “I’m in line to the throne now, Raymond. The good of the court outweighs personal vengeance.”

  “And what would your father say to hear that from you, his daughter?”

  “He’d say that I had grown wise. He’d agree with me.” I was wishing I hadn’t called him. I realized that Special Agent Raymond Gillett was part of a child’s wish. I couldn’t afford that kind of wishing, not anymore.

  I was suddenly tired, and my arm ached from shoulder to wrist. I turned and leaned against the desk, half sitting on it. It forced Galen farther away from me, and that was fine. He kept his hand playing lightly on the edge of my thigh, moving the skirt back and forth as he petted me. It was comforting, and I needed the comfort.

  Doyle was looking at me, and something in his eyes softened his face. I had to look away from the kindness I saw there. I wasn’t sure why such a look from him made my throat grow tight.

  “Don’t come, Gillett. I’m sorry I called.”

  “Merry, don’t do this, not after almost twenty years.”

  “When we’ve solved this one, if I’m still alive and still have the carte blanche in this area, I’ll call you, and we can talk about you coming down. But only if it’s about my father’s death.”

  “You don’t think the FBI might be helpful on a double homicide?”

  “I don’t know what we’ve got here, Gillett. If we need something fancier than the local lab can handle, I’ll let you know.”

  “And maybe I’ll answer the phone, and maybe I won’t.”

  “As you like,” I said, and I struggled not to let my voice show how tight my throat felt, how hot my eyes were. “But think on this, Gillett. Did you start all this with a seventeen-year-old child because you felt sorry for me, or because you were angry that the queen cut you out of the investigation? Was it pity that moved you, a desire for justice, or simply anger? You’d show her. You’d solve the case without the queen’s help. You’d use Essus’s daughter to help you.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then why are you angry with me now? I shouldn’t have called you, but I gave you a promise. A child’s promise to call you if ever a similar murder happened. It isn’t similar in detail, but whoever did it has similar magic at their call. If we solve this, it may get us closer to finding my father’s murderer. I thought you’d like to know.”

  “Merry, I’m sorry, it’s . . .”

  “That the murder has been eating at you all these years?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’ll call you if anything pertinent comes up.”

  “Call me if you need better forensics than the locals can give you. I can get you DNA results that they can only dream of.”

  I had to smile. “I’ll be sure to let Major Walters know that the FBI has such confidence in the locals.”

  He gave a dry little laugh. “I’m sorry if I made this harder for you. I tend to get a little obsessed.”

  “Good-bye, Gillett.”

  “Bye, Merry.”

  I hung up and leaned heavier on the desk. Galen held me against him, careful of my hurt arm. “Why didn’t you let Gillett come down?”

  I raised my face and looked at him. I searched that open face for some hint that he understood what had just happened. His eyes were green and wide and innocent.

  I wanted to cry, needed to cry. I’d called Gillett because the murders had raised ghosts for me. Not real ones, but those emotional pains that you think are gone for good until they just rise again to haunt you, no matter how deep you bury them.

  Doyle came to me. “I watch you grow more worthy of being queen every day, Meredith, every minute.” He touched my good arm lightly, as if not sure I wanted to be touched at that moment.

  My breath came out in a sharp cry, and I threw myself against his body. He held me, his arms fierce and almost painful. He held me while I cried because he understood some of what it had cost me to let go of childish things.

  Barinthus came up to us and put his arms around us both, hugging us to him. I glanced up, and found tears running down his face. “You are more your father’s daughter in this moment than you have ever been.”

  Galen hugged us from the other side, so that we were warm and close. But I realized in that moment that Galen, like Gillett, was a child’s wish. They held me, and I wept. Crying didn’t cover it. I wept the last of my childhood away. I was thirty-three years old; it seemed a little late to be letting go of childish things, but some wounds cut us so deep that they stop us. Stop us from letting go, from growing up, from seeing the truth.

  I let them all hold me while I cried, through Barinthus cried, too. I let them hold me, but part of me knew that Galen, and only Galen, didn’t understand what was happening. He’d been my closest confidant among the guards. My friend, my first crush, but he’d asked, why didn’t I let Gillett come?

  I cried and let them hold me, but it wasn’t just my father’s loss I was mourning.

  CHAPTER 7

  I CLEANED OFF THE REMNANTS OF THE MA
KEUP THAT I HADN’T cried away. Got the lipstick that still looked like clown makeup off, and even gave Frost a makeup cleansing cloth so he could do his own face. We were clean and neat and presentable when we started back to the crime scene. I felt hollow inside, as if a piece of me were missing. But it didn’t matter. Walters would be here soon with the CSU team. We needed to have finished the questioning of the witnesses before then in case they said something that we didn’t want the human police to know. I wanted justice, but I also didn’t want to make the bad publicity worse by sharing some dark secret with the human world.

  Doyle stopped so abruptly that I ran into him. He pushed me farther back into Galen and Usna’s suddenly waiting arms, as if he’d given some signal that I had not seen. With Doyle and Adair in front and Galen and Usna suddenly very close on either side of me, I could not see what had frightened everyone. Barinthus, Hawthorne, and Frost were bringing up the rear. They had turned to face back down the hall as if they were worried about someone sneaking up behind us. What was happening? What now? I couldn’t even manage a drop of fear. I’m not sure it was bravery so much as exhaustion. I was simply too tired emotionally and physically to waste the adrenaline on fear. In that second, if we’d been attacked, I’m not sure I would have cared.

  I tried to shake it off, this feeling of desolation. I called, “Doyle, what is it?”

  Barinthus answered, “The Queen’s Ravens are in the hall, blocking our way.” I guess being seven feet tall does give you a better view.

  I realized then that my guard feared almost every sidhe right now. They were right. One of the sidhe had committed murder, and I was in charge of catching the killer. Wonderful. I’d just given someone else a reason to want me dead. But what was one more?

  Adair moved to the center of the hallway to hide me behind his armored back, as Doyle moved down the hallway. Barinthus answered my question before I’d even thought it. “Doyle is conferring with Mistral.”

  Mistral was the master of winds, the bringer of storms, and the new captain of the Queen’s Ravens. He’d taken Doyle’s place when it became clear that Doyle wasn’t coming back to his old job.

  “What’s happening?” Galen asked, and his voice held enough anxiety for both of us.

  Usna bent over me, sniffing my hair. “You smell good.”

  “Keep your mind on business,” Galen said, looking up the hallway toward where Doyle had gone. He had a gun out, held down along his leg. If I’d been choosing between sword and gun, I’d have made the same choice. When I first came back to faerie, guns were outlawed inside the mounds, but after the last few attempts, my aunt had decided that my guards and hers needed all the help they could get. So our men could carry guns, if they knew how to use them. Doyle and Mistral had been the judge of who was competent to carry and who wasn’t. Some guards treated guns the way others treated the idea of carrying around a poisonous snake. It might be useful, but what if it bit you.

  Usna had a short sword in either hand, pointed both directions up and down the hallway. His grey eyes, which were the most ordinary thing about him physically, were keeping watch, but his face was pressed against the top of my head. He put first one cheek, then the other against my hair. He was looking down each end of the hallway as he did it, but he was also almost scent marking me. Cat-like and inappropriate for the situation, if he’d thought like a human. But it was Usna, and I knew that he was aware of everything in the hallway, even while trying to put the scent of his skin against my hair.

  I found it oddly comforting. Galen did not. “Usna, stop it.”

  A soft sound somewhere between a purr and a growl sounded from the other man. “You worry too much, my little pixie.”

  “And you don’t worry enough, my little kitten.” But Galen grinned as he said it. We all felt a little better for Usna’s teasing.

  “Quiet, both of you,” Frost said from behind us. They shut up, looking a little sheepish but happier. Usna stopped trying to rub his face against my hair. Which meant he’d done it almost more to tease Galen than to tease me.

  Doyle was taking too long. If something had gone horribly wrong, Barinthus or Adair would have warned us. But it was taking too long. The unnatural calm was beginning to slip away from me on tiny cat paws of anxiety.

  I had a license to carry a gun in California. I also had a diplomatic waiver that pretty much covered me anywhere, anytime, on the basis that my life was in danger often enough that being armed was a necessity. I had guns. But Andais wouldn’t let me go into the press conference armed. I was a princess; princesses did not protect themselves, they had others to do that for them. I thought the idea archaic and shortsighted and downright ironic coming from a queen whose claim to fame had been as a goddess of battle. Standing there with Galen and Usna pressed against me, with the others like a wall of flesh around me, I vowed that the next time I left my room, I’d be armed.

  Doyle returned, and Adair gave him room to pass, then moved back to the center of the hallway like some golden wall. I realized that Adair was being just that, a wall of flesh and metal to keep death from me. He’d said I was his ameraudur, another echo of my father’s ghost, for he had been the last ameraudur among the royals of either court. To be called ameraudur held more honor than king, because the men chose you, and followed you through love, the kind of love men have shared with one another on battlefields as far back as time can see. Oaths bound a guard to risk his life for his charge, queen or princess, but ameraudur meant he did it willingly. It meant that coming back from a battle alive with his leader dead was worse than death. A shame that he would never live down. Two of my father’s guards took their own lives for shame of letting their prince die. To lay your life down for your ameraudur was the highest honor.

  Seeing Adair standing there so straight, so proud, so ready to die, made me think about my new title. Made me afraid of it. I did not want anyone dying for me. I had not earned it. I was not my father and never would be. I could never ride into battle with them and hope to survive. How could I be their ameraudur if I could not do that?

  Doyle’s dark face was empty for me. Whatever he thought about Adair’s new pet name for me, he was keeping it to himself. His face was so empty now that the only thing I was certain of was that I wasn’t in immediate danger. Other than that, he could have worn the same expression for anything. I wanted to yell at him to show me what he was feeling, but he spoke before I could lose that much control.

  “The queen sent them to fetch you back when you are finished with your ‘murder business,’ as she worded it. Vague enough that they cannot fetch you immediately.” Doyle gave a small wry smile, and shook his head. “In truth, Mistral is now in charge of the crime scene.”

  “What?” Galen and I asked together.

  “Did the queen rescind her offer to Meredith?” Barinthus asked. “Are Mistral and the queen now in charge of this murder?”

  “No,” Doyle said. “Rhys thought of a different spell to search for our murderer. He wished to chase this new magical clue down, but needed someone to keep the crime scene safe. When Mistral and the others came, he put them to guard the hallway.”

  “That was rashly done,” Frost said.

  “Knowing Rhys, he got Mistral’s oath,” Usna said, “and once you have Mistral’s oath, you have his honor. He would not break it, not for all the joys of the Summerlands.”

  Doyle gave one sharp nod. “I trust Mistral’s honor as I do my own.” He looked at me, and something passed over his impassive face, but I couldn’t decipher it. Months in my bed, weeks in my body, and I could not read the look in his eyes. “He has requested an audience with you, Princess. He says that he has a message from the queen.”

  “We do not have time for this,” Frost said.

  I agreed, but I also knew that ignoring messages or messengers from the queen was not wise. “We left her less than an hour ago, what could she want?”

  “You,” said a deep voice behind them.

  Doyle looked a question at me, an
d I gave a nod. At a gesture from Doyle, Adair and he parted like a curtain to reveal Mistral.

  His hair was the grey of a sky that promised rain, held back from his face in a ponytail. I had only a glimpse of his storm cloud grey eyes before he dropped to one knee and gave me only the back of his head. It was the first time that another sidhe, any sidhe, had voluntarily showed me such . . . respect. I stared down at the broad sweep of his shoulders in their tight leather armor, and wondered why he’d done it.

  “Get up, Mistral.”

  He shook his head, sending his grey hair like a fall of water down his back, barely held in check by the leather thong that held it at the nape of his neck. “I owe you this at the very least, Princess Meredith.”

  I had no idea what he meant by that.

  I looked at Doyle. He gave a small raise of an eyebrow, a slight turn of the head, his version of a shrug.

  “Why do you owe me such a bow?” I asked.

  He raised his head just enough so he could roll his eyes at me. “If I had dreamt that you would take one look from me so seriously, I would have been more careful of you, Princess. My oath on that.”

  I knew what he meant then, for it had been the look of contempt on Mistral’s face the night before that had helped me be brave enough to confront Andais when she was in the grip of an evil spell. A spell that had made her slaughter her own men, and be a danger to anyone near her. It had been a very clever assassination ploy. Mistral had told me with his eyes alone that I was just another useless royal, and he hated us all. It wasn’t the hatred, but the uselessness that had moved me to action. Because I agreed with him. In that moment I had decided that I would rather die than see them slaughtered.

  “Are you so certain one glance from you was what moved me forward?” I meant it to be a joke, but I’d forgotten how long it had been for some of the Queen’s Ravens since they’d had a woman joke with them.

  He lowered his face quickly, his voice uncertain and uncomfortable. “I am sorry, Princess, I presumed too much.”