A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Hawthorne and Amatheon stood to either side of him, and they said nothing. Amatheon’s pale face had gone bloodless inside the hood that he had kept in place to hide his beauty from the woman. His flower-petal eyes went wide, but I doubted anyone but myself and Frost could see his face past the hood. Hawthorne’s reaction, or even if he had seen, was hidden behind his helmet.

  “What is wrong?” Arzhel asked.

  Amatheon said, “Nothing. I simply was not aware the princess was gifted with prophecy, that is all.” His voice sounded a little breathy, but otherwise normal, maybe even a little bored. You do not survive in the high courts of faerie by giving things away. We are the hidden people, and most of us earn that name.

  Arzhel put his head to one side, as if he wasn’t entirely certain he believed Amatheon, but he said nothing. I did not know Arzhel that well, but I was certain he’d never guess that I held the chalice under my cloak.

  Carmichael approached Ivi the way you’d sneak up on a statue in an art museum, afraid to touch it, compelled to run your hands down the smooth, hard curve of it. Afraid someone will tell you to stop.

  “Carmichael,” Dr. Polaski said. “Carmichael.” She touched the other woman’s arm, but she might as well have been touching the wall for all the good it did her.

  “Rhys, choose someone other than Ivi to watch her,” I said.

  Rhys grinned, and moved himself between the woman’s hesitating hand and Ivi’s body. “Andais would have ordered me. I like a queen who delegates.”

  “She’s not queen yet,” Ivi said. The bright green of his eyes still held that flash of humor that had covered his surprise.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Walters asked. He’d gone to help Polaski, taking Carmichael’s other arm. She didn’t fight them, but she didn’t look away from the men either.

  “She’s elf-struck,” Rhys said.

  “Elf-struck,” Walters said, “but that takes sex with one of you, right?”

  “Normally,” I said, “but our history is littered with people who caught a glimpse of us in the woods and spent the rest of their lives fascinated with the fey.” I sighed at the looks on most of the faces that were suddenly turned to me. “My oath, that it never occurred to me that any of you would be that susceptible to faerie.”

  “The princess is right,” Amatheon said. “It has been centuries since I’ve seen any human so overwhelmed by merely entering the land.” He spoke for them, but his face was all for me and Frost, who was standing behind me. Amatheon’s face tried to ask a dozen questions that his words only hinted at. If he hadn’t seen this reaction in centuries, what had changed? I’d known that power was returning to the sidhe, but I hadn’t understood what that would mean for the humans I had so blithely invited inside. What had I done? And was it fixable?

  “She has to leave,” I said, “now.”

  Polaski looked at me. “What did you people do to Jeanine?”

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing, I swear it.”

  “Some humans are more affected by faerie than others,” Rhys said, “but it’s usually not police, or anyone that’s seen too much of the harsher side of things. If you’re too jaded, you just don’t believe in faeries anymore.” He said it with a smile, but he was having trouble not showing how worried he was. I could tell, or maybe I was simply projecting.

  “Carmichael is new,” Polaski said. “She’s good, but she’s mostly a lab monkey.” A look of anguish and guilt came over her face. “I didn’t know not to bring her.”

  “We didn’t know either,” I said. “It’s not your fault. It just never occurred to any of us that anyone would be this affected by just coming through our door.”

  “Is this permanent?” Walters asked.

  I looked at the men. “I’ve only heard stories of this kind of thing. So, honestly, I don’t know.” I looked at the men. “Gentlemen, can you answer Major Walters’s question, truthfully?”

  “Absolutely truthfully?” Ivi asked.

  I nodded.

  He answered with a mocking smile, but I knew that the mockery was more for himself than anyone else. “Then I am not certain.”

  “What is so damned funny?”

  “Nothing,” Ivi said, “absolutely nothing. I admit to enjoying the lady’s fascination because I never thought to see such instant obsession on an woman’s face again.” The humor leaked away to show some of the sadness that underlay most of Ivi’s humor—a sorrow like some deep wound that cut through whatever he had once been, so that all that was left of Ivi was that biting humor and that sorrow.

  “That is sick,” Polaski said.

  His face showed that he had one other emotion left to him, arrogance. “And how would you feel, doctor, if once upon a time you were so beautiful that men wept as you walked down a summer’s lane, and then, one day, they no longer seemed to see you at all? A flower may be beautiful all on its own, but a person is never truly beautiful unless someone else’s eyes show him that he is beautiful.”

  Walters called over one of his uniformed officers. “Take her back to the lab, get her away from the beautiful people.”

  “Miller, go with them. Take Jeanine home,” Polaski said, “but don’t leave her alone. Stay with her all night. When the sun comes up, she may be okay.”

  I raised eyebrows at Polaski.

  “I read up on some of the things that can go wrong when dealing with your people. Nothing I read cautioned against bringing in new people, or I would have left her at the lab.”

  “The innocent have always been more susceptible to us,” Hawthorne said.

  “She’s never been in love,” I said, and was surprised to hear myself say it. “But she wants to be.”

  Polaski gave me a funny look. “How did you know that?”

  I shrugged, using my fingers to keep the cloak closed over the chalice.

  Ivi bent close to her face. “Be careful what you wish for, little one, you may get it, and not know what to do when you unwrap the bow.” Again the words were laced with sorrow.

  Jeanine Carmichael began to cry.

  “Leave her alone,” Polaski said.

  “I am leaving her with sorrow, Doctor, not lust, not happiness, not beauty. I am making as certain as I can, that when she wakes tomorrow she will remember sorrow, like a bad dream. I wish that she remembers nothing that will send her seeking us again.”

  “You’re disturbing, did you know that?” Polaski asked.

  Ivi gave that mocking smile. “You are not the first to say it, though I believe the last woman phrased it differently. She said I was disturbed.”

  Polaski looked at him as if she couldn’t decide if he was joking or telling another bitter truth.

  CHAPTER 16

  WE WAITED FOR THE POLICE TO RETURN TO US AFTER ESCORTING their befuddled colleague away. The hallway should have been a short trip, but that long expanse of grey stone had grown longer, and now there was a curve that hid the door from view. The entrance to the sithen never changed.

  “I believe the sithen wishes us to have some privacy,” Frost said.

  The chalice under my cloak grew warm against my skin. I let my breath out in a sigh, and simply nodded. I did not like the chalice appearing like this. It amplified magic, and we’d had some very strange and powerful things happen between the guards and myself when the cup was present. It was almost as if the chalice didn’t want to leave me alone to solve the murders. The cup pulsed so hard that it made me gasp.

  Hawthorne reached to steady me, but Frost caught his hand and gave a small shake of his head. Too dangerous in the open with the humans coming back so soon. Some things we did not want to explain to the police. Some things we couldn’t explain to anyone.

  If everyone in the hallway had glimpsed the chalice, it would have been a quicker conversation, but we had guards with us who had been standing where they could not see, so we talked around it.

  Ivi began, “I’m all for solving the murders. But I also think that we should be trying to make the princess que
en instead of playing copper.”

  A pulse of power shot from the chalice along my skin. It raised the hair on my body, and collapsed me to my knees. Frost and Hawthorne kept everyone else from touching me.

  “What is wrong with the princess?” Dogmaela said.

  “And why do you not want us touching her?” This from Aisling, who was still hiding behind his hood and muffler so that only the spirals of his eyes showed. He’d been one of the queen’s men, and never mine before or even now. His eyes were not the three rings of color common among the sidhe, but a spiral painted in lines of color, with his pupil at the heart of the design. As a child I’d once asked him how he could see out of them, and he had smiled and replied that he did not know.

  Frost, Hawthorne, and I exchanged glances. All the other guards looked at me where I knelt and waited. Waited for me to make up my mind.

  The sweet scent of apple blossoms filled the air, and that sense of peace that could come when you worshipped filled me. I wasn’t certain it was a good idea but I got to my feet and flung my cloak back, revealing the chalice in my hands.

  “That isn’t . . .” Dogmaela began.

  “It cannot be,” Aisling said.

  “But it is.” Ivi looked at me with a seriousness that the laughter did not touch. He shook his head. “You’ve had it since you arrived back at the courts, haven’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “How?” Dogmaela asked. “How?”

  “It came to me in a dream, and when I woke it was real.”

  Several of them were shaking their heads.

  Ivi grinned suddenly. “You fell to your knees when I said we should be trying to make you queen, instead of playing copper.”

  The chalice pulsed between my hands, and my body reacted to it. For an instant my skin glowed white, my hair was a crimson halo around me, and my eyes glowed green and gold, so that for a heartbeat I saw the color out of the edges of my vision. The power vanished as instantly as it had come, leaving my pulse thudding in my throat.

  “Hmm, that was fun,” Ivi said.

  “You just want to fuck her,” Dogmaela said, and she made it sound like a dirty thing. An unusual attitude among any fey.

  “Yes,” Ivi said, “but that doesn’t make me wrong.”

  “The police will return soon,” I said, my voice still a little breathy from the power rush.

  “And once they return, the investigation will take all your attention,” Frost said. “Whatever we are to discuss, it must be now.”

  I looked up at his face, so carefully arrogant. “Are you saying I should take time out of solving a double homicide to have sex?”

  Hawthorne’s quiet voice came. “I am sorry that Beatrice and the reporter are dead, but Ivi is correct in one way. My life and the lives of my fellow guards will not change if these murders go unsolved. Prince Cel becoming king will change a great many things.” He removed his helmet, exposing his wavy hair, held back by braids, and the green, pink, and red of his eyes. He was lovely, but all the sidhe were lovely. I’d never really thought of how he compared to the other men. It was as if I’d never really seen him before, never noticed that he was fair of face, broad of shoulder, even by sidhe standards.

  Frost made a motion that caught my eye. “Meredith, are you well?” His hand hovered just over my shoulder, as if he wanted to touch me but was afraid to.

  I dragged my gaze from Hawthorne, and I was suddenly dizzy. “Is it the chalice?”

  “Hawthorne,” Frost said, and the one word was enough.

  “I did not try to bespell her, I merely thought about how much I desire to have what Mistral had in the hallway. Not just the taste I had.”

  “I cannot blame you,” Frost said, with a sigh. “But the fact that your desire turned into magic so easily means you gained more from the hallway than just a taste of pleasure.”

  “As much as I desire an end to my celibacy,” Aisling said, “the chalice sits before us. How can you talk of anything else?”

  “Your needs must be paler things than mine,” Hawthorne said.

  Amatheon finally spoke as if to himself. “The chalice returned to Meredith’s hand. How can this be?”

  I looked up at him, watched the struggle in his flower-petal eyes. “You mean that the chalice would never return to the hand of some mongrel half-breed like me.”

  He swallowed so hard it looked as if he were choking on years of prejudice. “Yes,” he said in a voice that was a harsh whisper. He fell to his knees as if some great force had knocked him down, or he had lost the strength in his legs.

  He gazed up at me, and the many colors of his eyes glittered in the light, not with magic, but with tears. “Forgive me,” he said in that same harsh whisper, as if the words were being torn from his throat, “forgive me.” I didn’t think it was me he was begging forgiveness of.

  The chalice moved toward him, my hands held it, but it was not my will that moved it.

  He buried his face in his hands. “I cannot.” His broad shoulders began to shake, and I knew he was crying. I let go of the chalice with one hand, so I could touch his shoulder. He sobbed, and threw his arms around my waist, clutching me so hard and sudden that I half collapsed against him. The chalice touched the back of his hair, and that was all it took.

  I stood in the middle of a huge, barren plain. Amatheon was still pressed to my waist, his head buried against my body. I wasn’t certain that he knew anything had changed.

  I smelled apple blossoms again, and I turned toward the scent. The hill that I had seen over and over again in vision stood in the distance. I could see the tree on top of it. The tree that Mistral and I had stood beside while lightning struck the ground. I had seen the plain, but never stood upon it.

  Amatheon raised his head from my body so that he could look up at me. The movement of his head brushed the lip of the cup along his bound hair. When he felt the hard metal of it, he pressed himself against it, the way you would lean into the caress of a hand. Only then did he seem to see the plain.

  He was very careful not to move from between my body and the touch of the chalice, but he reached down with one hand to touch the earth. His hand came up with grey dirt so dry that it trickled from between his fingers like sand.

  He looked up at me again, eyes glittering with the tears he either refused to shed, or could not shed. “It was not like this once.” He pressed his head back against the metal of the chalice, as if seeking solace from the touch. “Nothing will grow in this.” He opened his hand wide and let the wind take the dirt. “There is no life here.”

  He raised the hand that was coated in the dry, dead earth up to me like a child that has a boo-boo, as if I could fix it.

  I opened my lips to say something soothing, but what came out wasn’t my voice and wasn’t soothing at all. “Amatheon, you kept your name, though you have forgotten who you are, what you are,” the voice said, deeper than my normal voice, rounder vowels.

  “The land has died,” he said, and the tears finally flowed.

  “Do I look dead?”

  He frowned, then shook his head. Again the chalice rubbed against his hair, but this time I felt the silken caress of his hair across my skin, down my body. It made me shiver.

  “Goddess?”

  I touched his cheek. “Has it been so long, Amatheon, that you do not know me?”

  He nodded, and the first tear fell from the edge of his jaw. That single drop of moisture fell onto the grey earth, leaving a tiny black print. But it was as if the earth underneath us sighed.

  “We need you, Amatheon,” and I agreed with the Goddess. The land needed him, I needed him, we needed him.

  “I am yours,” he whispered. He drew the sword at his belt, and held it up in his hands like an offering. Then he put his head back, so that his throat stretched tight. His eyes were closed, as if for a kiss, but it wasn’t a kiss he was waiting for. I understood then that if one tear felt so good to the land, then other body fluids would feel even better.

  I u
nderstood then what he was offering, and with the Goddess riding me, I knew that his blood would return life to the land. He was Amatheon, a god of agriculture, but he was more than that. He was the spark, the quickening, that let the seed grow in the earth. He was that magic bridge between dormant seed, dark earth, and life. His “death” would bring that back to the land.

  I shook my head. “I just saved his life, I will not take it now.”

  Her voice came from my lips again. “He will not die as men die, but as the corn dies. To rise again, and feed his people.”

  “I do not doubt that,” I said, “and if that is your will, so be it, but not by my hand. I work too hard to keep my people alive to start slaughtering them.”

  “But this is not real death. This is vision and dream. It is not real flesh and blood that Amatheon offers you.”

  Amatheon had opened his eyes and lowered his head and his sword. “The Goddess is right, Princess. This is not a real place, nor are we truly here. My death here would not be true death.”

  “You have not seen the visions that I have seen, Amatheon. I dreamt of the chalice and woke with it solid and very real in my bed. I would not slay you here, and find your bleeding corpse in the hallway.”

  “Will you leave the land barren?” the voice said, out of my mouth. Having both sides of the conversation coming out of my mouth was a little too psychotic for comfort. And this energy, this Goddess, felt heavier, not just a comforting presence.

  “Why are you not happy with me?”

  “I am very happy with you, Meredith, happier than I have been with anyone in a very long time.”

  “I hear your words, but I feel your . . . impatience. You are impatient with me, and not about this.”

  She thought her response, but I was mortal, and female, and I had to say it out loud. “You think I waste your gifts by trying to solve the murders.”