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  “Warn them, because if we don’t and it happens again, we’ll get accused of being racists, or is that speciesist?” She shook her head, walking back toward the police line. I followed her, glad to be leaving the bodies behind.

  “Humans can interbreed with the demi-fey, so I don’t think speciesist applies.”

  “I couldn’t breed with something the size of a doll. That’s just wrong.”

  “Some of them have two forms, one small and one not much shorter than me.”

  “Five feet? Really, from eight inches tall to five feet?”

  “Yes, really. It’s a rare ability, but it happens, and the babies are fertile, so I don’t think it’s quite a different species.”

  “I didn’t mean any offense,” she said.

  “None taken, I’m just explaining.”

  We were almost to the police line and my visibly anxious boyfriends. “Enjoy your Saturday,” she said.

  “I’d say you too, but I know you’ll be here for hours.”

  “Yeah, I think your Saturday will be a lot more fun than mine.” She looked at Doyle and Frost as the police finally let them move forward. Lucy was giving them an admiring look behind her sunglasses. I didn’t blame her.

  I slipped the gloves off even though I hadn’t touched a thing. I dropped them onto the mass of other discarded gloves that was on this side of the tape. Lucy held the tape up for me and I didn’t even have to stoop. Sometimes short is good.

  “Oh, check out the flowers, florists,” I said.

  “Already on it,” she said.

  “Sorry, sometimes I get carried away with you letting me help.”

  “No, all ideas are welcome, Merry, you know that. It’s why I called you down here.” She waved at me and went back to her murder scene. We couldn’t shake because she was still wearing gloves and carrying evidence.

  Doyle and Frost were almost to me, but we weren’t going to get to the beach right away either. I had to warn the local demi-fey, and try to figure out a way to see if the mortality had spread to them, or if there was magic here in Los Angeles that could steal their immortality. There were things that would kill us eventually, but there wasn’t much that would allow you to slit the throat of the winged-kin. They were the essence of faerie, more so even than the high court nobles. If I found out anything certain I’d tell Lucy, but until I had something that was useful I’d keep my secrets. I was only part human; most of me was pure fey, and we know how to keep a secret. The trick was how to warn the local demi-fey without causing a panic. Then I realized that there wasn’t a way. The fey are just like humans—they understand fear. Some magic, a little near-immortality, doesn’t make you unafraid; it just gives you a different list of fears.

  CHAPTER TWO

  FROST TRIED TO HUG ME, BUT I PUT A HAND ON HIS STOMACH, TOO short to really touch his chest. Doyle said, “She’s trying to appear strong in front of the policemen.”

  “We shouldn’t have let you come see this now,” Frost said.

  “Jeremy could have given a fey’s opinion.”

  “Jeremy is the boss and he’s allowed to turn his phone off on a Saturday,” I said.

  “Then Jordan or Julian Kane. They are psychics and practicing wizards.”

  “They’re only human, Frost. Lucy wanted a fey to see this crime scene.”

  “You shouldn’t have to see this in your condition.”

  I leaned in and spoke low. “I am a detective. It’s my job, and it’s our people up there dead on the hillside. I may never be queen, but I’m the closest they have here in L.A. Where else should a ruler be when her people are threatened?”

  Frost started to say something else, but Doyle touched his arm. “Let it go, my friend. Let us just get her back to the vehicle and be-gone.”

  I put my arm through Doyle’s leather-clad arm, though I thought it was too hot for the leather. Frost trailed us, and a glance showed that he was doing his job of searching the area for threats. Unlike a human bodyguard, Frost looked from sky to ground, because when faerie is your potential enemy, danger can come from nearly anywhere.

  Doyle was keeping an eye out too, but his attention was divided by trying to keep me from twisting an ankle in the sandals that looked great with the dress but sucked for uneven ground. They didn’t have too tall a heel, they were just very open and not supportive. I wondered what I’d wear when I got really pregnant. Did I have any practical shoes except for jogging ones?

  The major danger had passed when I’d killed my main rival for the throne and given up the crown. I’d done everything I could to make myself both too dangerous to tempt anyone and harmless to the nobles and their way of life. I was in voluntary exile, and I’d made it clear that it was a permanent move. I didn’t want the throne; I just wanted to be left alone. But since some of the nobles had spent the last thousand years plotting to get closer to the throne, they found my decision a little hard to believe.

  So far no one had tried to kill me, or anyone close to me, but Doyle was the Queen’s Darkness, and Frost was the Killing Frost. They had earned their names, and now that we were all in love and I was carrying their children, it would be a shame to let something go wrong. This was the end of our fairy tale, and maybe we had no enemies left, but old habits aren’t always a bad thing. I felt safe with them, except that while I loved them more than life itself, if they died trying to protect me I’d never recover from it. There are all sorts of ways to die without dying.

  When we were out of hearing of the human police, I told them all my fears about the killings.

  “How do we find out if the lesser fey here are easier to kill?” Frost asked.

  Doyle said, “In other days it would have been easy enough.”

  I stopped walking, which forced him to stop. “You’d just pick a few and see if you could slit their throats?”

  “If my queen had asked it, yes,” he said.

  I started to pull away from him, but he held my arm in his. “You knew what I was before you took me to your bed, Meredith. It is a little late for shock and innocence.”

  “The queen would say, ‘Where is my Darkness? Someone bring me my Darkness.’ You would appear, or simply step closer to her, and then someone would bleed or die,” I said.

  “I was her weapon and her general. I did what I was bid.”

  I studied his face, and I knew it wasn’t just the black wraparound sunglasses that kept me from reading him. He could hide everything behind his face. He had spent too many years beside a mad queen, where the wrong look at the wrong moment could get you sent to the Hallway of Mortality, the torture chamber. Torture could last a long time for the immortal, especially if you healed well.

  “I was lesser fey once, Meredith,” Frost said. He’d been Jack Frost, and, literally, human belief plus needing to be stronger to protect the woman he loved had turned him into the Killing Frost. But once he had been simply little Jackie Frost, just one minor being in the entourage of Winter’s power. The woman he had changed himself completely for was centuries in her human grave, and now he loved me: the only non-aging, non-immortal sidhe royal ever. Poor Frost—he couldn’t seem to love people who would outlive him.

  “I know you were not always sidhe.”

  “But I remember when he was the Darkness to me, and I feared him as much as any. Now he is my truest friend and my captain, because that other Doyle was centuries before you were born.”

  I studied his face, and even around his sunglasses I saw the gentleness—a piece of softness that he’d only let me see in the last few weeks. I realized that just as he would have had Doyle’s back in battle, he did the same now. He had distracted me from my anger, and put himself in the way of it, as if I were a blade to be avoided.

  I held out a hand to him, and he took it. I stopped pulling against Doyle’s arm, and just held them both. “You are right. You are both right. I knew Doyle’s history before he came to my side. Let me try this again.” I looked up at Doyle, still with Frost’s hand in mine. “You aren�
�t suggesting that we test our theory on random fey?”

  “No, but in honesty I do not have another way to test.”

  I thought about it, and then shook my head. “Neither do I.”

  “Then what are we to do?” Frost asked.

  “We warn the demi-fey, and then we go to the beach.”

  “I thought this would end our day out,” Doyle said.

  “When you can’t do anything else, you go about your day. Besides, everyone is meeting us at the beach. We can talk about this problem there as well as at the house. Why not let some of us enjoy the sand and water while the rest of us debate immortality and murder?”

  “Very practical,” Doyle said.

  I nodded. “We’ll stop off at the Fael Tea Shop on the way to the beach.”

  “The Fael is not on the way to the beach,” Doyle said.

  “No, but if we leave word there about the demi-fey, the news will spread.”

  “We could leave word with Gilda, the Fairy Godmother,” Frost said.

  “No, she might keep the knowledge to herself so she can say later that I didn’t warn the demi-fey because I thought I was too good to care.”

  “Do you truly think she hates you more than she loves her people?” Frost asked.

  “She was the ruling power among the fey exiles in Los Angeles. The lesser fey went to her to settle disputes. Now they come to me.”

  “Not all of them,” Frost said.

  “No, but enough that she thinks I’m trying to take over her business.”

  “We want no part of her businesses, legal or illegal,” Doyle said.

  “She was human once, Doyle. It makes her insecure.”

  “Her power does not feel human,” Frost said, and he shivered.

  I studied his face. “You don’t like her.”

  “Do you?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “There is always something twisted inside the minds and bodies of humans who are given access to the wild magic of faerie,” Doyle said.

  “She got a wish granted,” I said, “and she wished to be a fairy godmother, because she didn’t understand that there is no such thing among us.”

  “She’s made herself into a power to be reckoned with in this city,” Doyle said.

  “You’ve scouted her, haven’t you?”

  “She all but threatened you outright if you kept trying to steal her people away. I investigated a potential enemy’s stronghold.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “She should be frightened of us,” he said, and his voice was that voice of before, when he’d been only a weapon and not a person to me.

  “We stop by the Fael, and then we’ll talk about what to do with the other godmother. If we tell her and she tells no one, then it is we who can say that she cares more about her jealousy of me than about her own people.”

  “Clever,” Doyle said.

  “Ruthless,” Frost said.

  “It would only be ruthless if I didn’t warn the demi-fey some other way. I won’t risk another life for some stupid power play.”

  “It is not stupid to her, Meredith,” Doyle said. “It is all the power she has ever had, or will ever have. People will do very bad things to keep their perceived power intact.”

  “Is she dangerous to us?”

  “In a full frontal assault, no, but if it is trickery and deceit, then she has fey who are loyal to her and hate the sidhe.”

  “Then we keep an eye on them.”

  “We are,” he said.

  “Are you spying on people without telling me?” I asked.

  “Of course I am,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t you run things like that by me first?”

  “Why?”

  I looked at Frost. “Can you explain to him why I should know these things?”

  “I think he is treating you like most royals want to be treated,” said Frost.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Plausible deniability is very important among monarchs,” he said.

  “You see Gilda as a fellow monarch?” I asked.

  “She sees herself as such,” Doyle said. “It is always better to let petty kings keep their crowns until we want the crown and the head it sits upon.”

  “This is the twenty-first century, Doyle. You can’t run our life like it’s the tenth century.”

  “I have been watching your news programs and reading books on governments that are present-day, Merry. Things have not changed so very much. It is just more secret now.”

  I wanted to ask him how he knew that. I wanted to ask him if he knew government secrets that would make me doubt my government, and my country. But in the end, I didn’t ask. For one thing, I wasn’t certain he’d tell me the truth if he thought it would upset me. And for another, one mass murder seemed like enough for one day. I had Frost call home and warn our own demi-fey to stay close to the house and to be wary of strangers, because the only thing I was sure of was that it wasn’t one of us. Beyond that I had no ideas. I’d worry about spies and governments on another day, when the image of the winged dead weren’t still dancing behind my eyes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I DROVE TO THE FAEL TEA SHOP, AND DOYLE WAS RIGHT. IT WASN’T close to the beach, where everyone would be waiting. It was blocks away in a part of town that had once been a bad area but had been gentrified, which used to simply mean claimed by the yuppies, but had come to mean a place that the faeries had moved into and made more magical. It would then become a tourist stronghold, and a place for teens and college students to hang out. The young have always been drawn to the fey. It’s why for centuries you put charms on your children to keep us from taking the best and brightest and the most creative. We like artists.

  Doyle had his usual death grip on the door and the dashboard. He always rode that way in the front seat. Frost was less afraid of the car and L.A. traffic, but Doyle insisted that as captain he should be beside me. The fact that it was an act of bravery to him just made it cute, though I kept the cute comment to myself. I wasn’t certain how he would take it.

  He managed to say, “I do like this car better than the other one you drive. It’s higher from the ground.”

  “It’s an SUV,” I said, “more a truck than a car.” I was looking for a parking spot, and not having much luck. This was a section of town where people came to stroll on a lovely Saturday, and there were lots of people, which meant lots of cars. It was L.A. Everyone drove everywhere.

  The SUV actually belonged to Maeve Reed, like so much of our stuff. Her chauffeur had offered to drive us around, but the moment the police called, the limo stayed at home. I had enough problems with the police not taking me seriously without showing up in a limo. I’d never live that down, and Lucy wouldn’t live it down either, and that mattered more. It was her job. In a sense, the other police were right; I was just sightseeing.

  I knew that part of the problem was the car itself, all that technology and metal. Except that I knew several lesser fey who owned cars and drove. Most of the sidhe had no trouble in the big modern skyscrapers, and they had plenty of metal and technology. Doyle was also afraid of airplanes. It was one of his few weaknesses.

  Frost called out, “Parking spot.” He pointed and I maneuvered the huge SUV toward it. I had to speed up and almost hit a smaller car that was trying to outmuscle me for the spot. It made Doyle swallow hard and let out a shaky breath. I wanted to ask him why riding in the back of the limo didn’t bother him to this degree, but refrained. I wasn’t sure if pointing out that he was only this afraid in the front seat of a car would make him more afraid in the limo. That we did not need.

  I got the parking spot, though parallel parking the Escalade wasn’t my favorite thing to do. Parking the Escalade was never easy, and parallel parking was like getting a master’s degree in parking. Would that make parking a semi the doctoral test? I really never wanted to drive anything bulkier than this SUV, so I’d probably never find out.

  I could see Fae
l’s sign from the car, just a few storefronts down. We hadn’t even had to go around the block once; perfect.

  I waited for Doyle to make his shaky way out of the car, and for Frost to unbuckle and come around to my door. I knew better than to simply get out without one of them beside me. They had all made very certain that I understood that part of being a good bodyguard was to train your guardee how to be guarded. Their tall bodies blocked me at almost every turn when we were on the street. If there had been a credible threat I’d have had more guards. Two was minimum and precautionary. I liked precautionary—it meant no one was trying to kill me. The fact that it was a novelty that no one was trying said a lot about the last few years of my life. Maybe it wasn’t the happily ever after the tabloids were painting, but it was definitely happier.

  Frost helped me down from the SUV, which I needed. I always had a moment of feeling childlike when I had to climb in or out of the Escalade. It was like sitting in a chair where your feet swing. It made me feel like I was six again, but Frost’s arm under mine, the height and solidness of him, reminded me that I was no longer a child, and decades from six.

  Doyle’s voice came. “Fear Dearg, what are you doing here?”

  Frost stopped in mid-motion and put his body more solidly in front of me, shielding me, because Fear Dearg was not a name. The Fear Dearg were very old, the remnants of a faerie kingdom that had predated the Seelie and the Unseelie courts. That made the Fear Dearg more than three thousand years old, at minimum. Since they did not breed, for they had no females, they were all simply that old. They were somewhere between a brownie, a hobgoblin, and a nightmare—a nightmare that could make a man think that a stone was his wife, or that a cliff into the sea a path of safety. And some delighted in the kind of torture that would have pleased my aunt. I’d once seen her skin a sidhe noble until he was unrecognizable and then she made him follow her on a leash like a dog.

  The Fear Dearg could be taller than an average human or they could be shorter than me by a foot, and almost any size in between. The only sameness from one to the other was that they were not humanly handsome and they wore red.