Divine Misdemeanors_A Novel

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I spoke as I eased the SUV over the rise at the top of the road and down the steep lip of the private driveway. “I’m on the driveway. See you in a few.”

  “We’ll be waiting.” He hung up and I concentrated on the steep drive. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like it. It was hard to tell behind the dark glasses, but I think Doyle had closed his eyes as I wound the SUV around the turns.

  The outside lights were already on, and the shortest guard I had was pacing outside the front of the house, white trench coat flapping in the ocean breeze. Rhys was the only one of the guards who had gotten his own private detective license. He’d always loved old film noir movies, and when he wasn’t doing undercover work he liked his trench coat and fedoras. They were just usually white or cream to match his waist-length curls. His hair was flying in the wind along with his coat. I realized that his hair was tangling in the wind like mine had earlier.

  “Rhys’s hair tangles in the wind,” I said.

  “Yes,” Frost said.

  “Is that why he only has it to his waist?”

  “I believe so,” he said.

  “Why does his hair tangle and yours doesn’t?”

  “Doyle’s doesn’t either. He just likes the braid.”

  “Same question. Why?”

  I pulled the car to a stop beside Rhys’s car. He started striding toward us. He was smiling, but I knew his body language well enough to see the anxiety. He was wearing a white eye patch to match his coat today. He wore them when he was meeting with clients, or out in the world at large. Most people, and some fey, found the scars where his right eye had once been disturbing. At home when it was just us, he didn’t bother with the patch.

  “We don’t know why some of our hair does not tangle,” Frost said. “It’s just the way it’s always been.”

  With that unsatisfying answer, Rhys was at my door. I unlocked it so he could help me out of the car, but the anxiety had turned his one blue eye with its three circles of blue—cornflower blue, sky blue, and winter white—to spinning slowly like a lazy storm. It meant that his magic was close to the surface, which usually took a lot of emotion, or concentration. Was it anxiety about my safety today, or was it something the Grey Detective Agency and he were working on? I couldn’t even remember, except that it had something to do with corporate sabotage using magic.

  Rhys opened the door, and I offered my hand automatically. He took it and raised it to his lips to put a kiss on my fingers that made my skin tingle. Anxiety for me then, not the case, was making his magic swirl closer to the surface. I wondered how much worse the pictures on TV had looked from the outside looking in; it hadn’t seemed that bad at the time, had it?

  He wrapped his arms around me and drew me in against his body. He squeezed and I had a moment of feeling just how very strong he was, and that there was a slight tremor to his body. I tried to push back enough to see his face, and for a moment he held me more tightly so that I had no choice but to stay against him. I let myself feel his body underneath his clothes. Bare skin would have been like his kiss; it would have tingled against my skin, but even through his clothes I could feel the pulse and beat of his power like some finely tuned engine purring against my body from cheek to thigh. I let myself sink into that sensation. Let myself sink into the strength of his arms, the muscled firmness of his body, and for just a moment I allowed myself to let go of all that had happened and all that I had seen today. I let it be chased away by the strength of the man holding me.

  I thought of him nude and holding me, and letting the promise of that deep vibrating power sink into my body. The thought made me press my groin more tightly against him, and I felt his body begin to respond.

  He was the one who raised his head enough to allow me to gaze up into his face. He was smiling, and he kept his arms tight across my back. “If you’re thinking about sex, then you can’t be that traumatized.” He grinned.

  I smiled back. “I’m better now.”

  Hafwyn’s voice turned us toward the door. She came out of the house with her long yellow hair in a thick, single braid to one side of her slender form. She was everything a Seelie sidhe woman should have been. She was an inch under six feet, slender but feminine, with eyes like spring skies. When I had been a little girl this was what I had wanted to look like instead of my all-too-human height and curves. My hair, eyes, and skin were sidhe, but the rest of me had never measured up. Many of the sidhe of both courts had made certain that I knew I was too human looking, not sidhe enough. Hafwyn had not been one of those. She had never been cruel to me when I was just Meredith, Daughter of Essus, and not likely to sit any throne. In fact, she had been nearly invisible to me in the courts, just one of my cousin Cel’s guards.

  Standing there in Rhys’s arms with Doyle and Frost moving up behind us, I did not envy anyone. How could I want to change anything about myself when I had so many people who loved me?

  Hafwyn wore a white sundress, simpler than mine, almost a shift like something they once wore under dresses, but the simplicity of the cloth could not hide her beauty. The beauty of all the sidhe reminded me often why we’d once been worshipped as gods. It was only partly the magic. Humans have a tendency to either worship or revile beauty.

  She dropped a curtsy as she came to me. I’d almost broken the new guards from such public displays but a century’s worth of habits are hard to break.

  “Do you need healing, my lady?”

  “I am unharmed,” I said.

  She was one of the few true healers that faerie had left. She could lay hands on a wound or illness and simply magick it away. Outside of faerie her powers were lessened, but then many of our powers were less in the human world.

  “Goddess be praised,” she said, and touched my arm where it lay against Rhys’s body. I’d noticed that the longer we were outside of the high courts of faerie the more touchy-feely the guards became. Touching someone when anxious was considered something that lesser fey did. We sidhe were supposed to be above such petty comforts, but I had never found the touch of a friend a petty comfort. I valued the people who drew strength from touching me, or gave me peace with their own touch.

  Her touch was brief, because the Queen of Air and Darkness, my aunt, would have either laughed at her for the need, or turned that kind gesture into something sexual and/or threatening. All weaknesses were to be exploited; all kindness was to be stamped out.

  Galen came out of the house still wearing an apron that was all white and very TV chef, unlike the sheer white one we had in the house. He wore that one without a shirt, because he knew I enjoyed watching him. But he’d fallen in love with the food channel and had some more useful aprons now. He was wearing a dark green tank top and cargo shorts under the apron. The shirt brought out the slight green tinge in his skin and short curly hair. His only sop to the long hair that the other sidhe men kept at the Unseelie Court was a long, thin braid of hair that fell to his knees. He was the only sidhe I’d ever known to voluntarily cut his hair so short.

  Rhys let me go so I could be wrapped up in Galen’s six feet worth of lean body. I was suddenly airborne as he picked me up. His green eyes were so worried. “We turned the TV on just a little bit ago. All that glass; you could have been hurt.”

  I touched his face, trying to smooth out the worry lines that would never leave a trace on his perfect skin. The sidhe did age in a way, but they didn’t really grow old. But then immortal things don’t, do they?

  I leaned up for a kiss, and he leaned down to help me reach him. We kissed and there was magic to Galen’s kiss as there had been to Rhys’s touch, but where the other man’s touch had been deep and almost electric, like some kind of distant motor humming, Galen’s energy was like having my skin caressed by a soft spring wind. His kiss filled my mind with the perfume of flowers, and that first warmth that comes when the snow has finally left and the earth wakes once more. All that poured over my skin from one kiss. It drew me back from him with wide, startled eyes, and I had to fight to catch
my breath.

  He looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Merry, I was just so worried, and so glad to see you safe.”

  I gazed up into his eyes and found them just the same lovely green color. He didn’t give as many clues as the rest of us did when his magic was upon him, but that kiss said better than any glowing eyes or shining skin that his magic was very close to the surface. If we’d been inside faerie there might have been flowers growing at his feet, but the asphalt driveway was untouched underneath us. Man-made technology was proof against so much of our magic.

  There was a man’s voice from inside. “Galen, something’s boiling over. I don’t know how to stop it!”

  Galen turned grinning toward the house with me still in his arms. “Let’s go rescue the kitchen before Amatheon and Adair set it on fire.”

  “You left them in charge of dinner?” I asked.

  He nodded happily as he began to walk toward the still-open door. He carried me effortlessly, as if he could have walked with me in his arms forever and never tired. Maybe he could have.

  Doyle and Frost fell into step on one side, and Rhys on the other. Doyle asked, “How did you get them to agree to help cook?”

  Galen flashed that hail-fellow-well-met smile of his that made everyone want to smile back. Even Doyle was not immune to the charm, because he flashed white teeth in his dark face, responding to the sheer goodwill of Galen.

  “I asked,” he said.

  “And they just agreed?” Frost asked.

  He nodded.

  “You should have seen Ivi peeling potatoes,” Rhys said. “That was something the queen had to threaten torture to get him to do.”

  All of us but Galen glanced at him. “Are you saying that Galen simply asked them and they agreed?” Doyle said.

  “Yes,” Rhys said.

  We all exchanged a look. I wondered if they were all thinking what I was thinking, that at least some of our magic was doing just fine outside faerie. In fact, Galen’s seemed to be growing stronger. That was almost as interesting and surprising as anything that had happened today, because just as it was “impossible” for the fey to be killed in the manner that they seemed to have been killed, so sidhe magic growing stronger outside faerie was just as impossible. Two impossible things in one day, I would have said it was like being Alice in Wonderland, but her Wonderland was fairyland, and none of the impossibilities survived Alice’s trip back to the “real” world. Our impossibilities were on the wrong end of the rabbit hole. Curiouser and curiouser, I thought, quoting the little girl who got to go to fairytale land twice, and come home in one piece. That’s one of the biggest reasons that no one ever thought Alice’s adventures were real. Fairyland doesn’t give second chances. But maybe the outside world was a little more forgiving. Maybe you have to be somewhere that isn’t full of too many immortal things to have the hope of second chances. But since Galen and I were the only two of the exiled sidhe who had never been worshipped in the human world, maybe it wasn’t second chances, but a first chance. The question was, a chance to do what?, because if he could convince fellow sidhe to do his bidding, humans wouldn’t stand a chance.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE ONLY LIGHT IN THE HUGE GREAT ROOM OF THE BEACH HOUSE was the glow of the roomy kitchen to one side, like a glowing cave in the growing dimness. Amatheon and Adair were in that glow panicking. They were both a little over six feet tall with broad shoulders, their bare arms in the modern T-shirts muscular from centuries of weapon practice. Adair’s honey-brown hair was knotted and braided into a complicated club between his shoulder blades; unleashed, it hit his ankles. Amatheon’s hair was a deep copper red, and curled enough so that the ponytail of knee-length hair was a foam of burnished red as he leaned down toward the chiming oven. They had kilts on instead of pants, but you just didn’t see six feet-plus of immortal warrior panicking about anything often, but panicking in a kitchen with pots in their hands and the oven open while they peered inside in a puzzled manner was a very special and endearing type of panic.

  Galen put me down gently but quickly, striding toward the kitchen to save the meal from their well-meaning but ineffectual ministrations. They weren’t actually wringing their hands, but their body language said clearly that they’d run away if they could convince themselves it wouldn’t be cowardly.

  Galen entered the fray totally calm and in control. He liked to cook, and he’d taken well to modern conveniences, but then he’d visited the outside world often all his life. The other two men had only been outside faerie for a month. Galen took the pot out of Adair’s hands and put it back on the stove on low heat. He got a towel, leaned in past Amatheon’s waterfall of hair, and began taking pies out of the oven. In moments everything was under control.

  Amatheon and Adair stood just outside the glow of the kitchen, looking crestfallen and relieved. “Please, never leave us in charge of a meal again,” Adair said.

  “I can cook over an open fire if I have to,” Amatheon said, “but these modern contrivances are too different.”

  “Can either of you grill steaks?” Galen asked.

  They looked at each other. “Do you mean over an open fire?” Amatheon asked.

  “Yes, with a wire rack so the meat sits above the flames, but it’s real fire and it’s outside.”

  They both nodded. “We can do that.” They sounded relieved. Adair added, “But Amatheon is the better cook of the two of us.”

  Galen got a platter out of the refrigerator, took plastic wrap off it, and handed it to Amatheon. “The steaks have been marinating. All you have to do is ask everyone how they like their steaks cooked.”

  “How they like them cooked?” he asked.

  “Bloody, not so bloody, brown in the middle, gray in the middle,” Galen said, wisely not even trying to explain rare, medium, and well done for the men. The last time either of them had been out of fairyland one of the Henrys was king of England. And that had been a brief outing into the human world, then back they’d gone to the only life they’d ever known. They’d had one month of modern kitchens and not having servants to do all the grunt work. They were actually doing better than some of the others who were new to the human world. Mistral was, unfortunately, not taking well at all to modern America. Since he was one of the fathers of my babies, that was a problem, but he wasn’t here tonight. He didn’t like traveling outside the walled estate in Holmby Hills that we called home. Amatheon, Adair, and many of the other guards were cuter about it, and not so frustrating to the rest of us, which was nice.

  Hafwyn joined Galen in the kitchen. Her long yellow braid moved in rhythm against the back of her body as she walked. She began to take things from him and hand things to him as if they’d done this before. Was Hafwyn helping in the kitchen more? As a healer, she didn’t have guard duty, and as a healer we didn’t feel that her having a job outside of that was a good idea, but she could heal with her hands, so no hospital or doctor would take her. Magic healing was still considered fraud in the United States. There had been too many charlatans over the centuries, so the law didn’t leave much room for the genuine article.

  Rhys was still beside me in the dimness of the huge living room, but Doyle and Frost had moved across the room past the huge dining room table that was all pale wood gleaming in the moonlight. They were silhouetted against the huge glass wall that looked directly out onto the ocean. There was a third silhouette that stood a foot taller than them. Barinthus was seven feet tall, the tallest sidhe I’d ever met. He was bending that height over the shorter men, and without hearing a word, I knew they were reporting the day’s events. Barinthus had been my father’s closest friend and advisor. The queen had feared him as both a kingmaker and a rival for the throne. He’d only been allowed to join the Unseelie Court on the promise that he would never try to rule there. But we weren’t in the Unseelie Court anymore, and for the first time I was seeing what my aunt Andais might have seen. The men reported to him and asked his advice; even Doyle and Frost did. It was as if he had an a
ura of leadership wrapped around him that no crown, title, or bloodline could truly bestow. He was simply a point that people rallied around. I wasn’t even sure how aware the other sidhe were that they were doing it.

  Barinthus’s ankle-length hair was unbound and spilled around his body like a cloak made of water, for his hair was every shade that ocean can be, from darkest blue to tropical turquoise to the gray of storm and everything in between. You couldn’t see the extraordinary play of colors in the low light from the moonlit windows, but there was something of movement and flow to his hair even in the dark that made it ripple in the glow of what little light was available as if it were indeed water. His hair actually hid his body so I couldn’t tell anything of his clothes.

  He lived at the beach house to be near the ocean, and it was as if the longer he was near it, the stronger he grew, the more confident. He had once been Mannan Mac Lir, and there was still a sea god in there trying to get out. It was as if fairyland had drained him of his powers, but being near the ocean gave him back what most of the sidhe had lost when they had left faerie.

  Rhys put an arm around my shoulders, and whispered, “Even Doyle treats him as a superior.”

  I nodded. “Does Doyle realize that yet?”

  Rhys kissed me on the cheek, and he’d gotten his power under control enough that it was just a kiss, nice, but not so overwhelming. “I don’t think so.”

  I turned and looked at him; he was only six inches taller than I, so it was almost direct eye contact. “But you noticed,” I said.

  He smiled and traced the edge of my face with one finger, like a child drawing in the sand. I leaned into that touch and he gave me more of his hand so that he cupped part of the side of my face in his hand. There were other men in my bed who could cup the entire side of my face in one hand, but Rhys was like me, not so big, and sometimes that was nice, too. Variety was not a bad thing.

  Amatheon and Adair followed Hafwyn out the sliding-glass doors that led to the huge deck and the huge grill. The ocean rolled underneath that deck. Even without being able to see clearly, you could somehow feel all that power pulsing and moving against the pilings of the house.