A Caress of Twilight Read online

  “If you want her, Doyle, then just say so. Tomorrow night can be your turn. I think we’d all step aside for an evening if you’d break your … fast.” The moonlight softened Rhys’s scars like a white gauzy patch where his right eye should have been.

  “Put up your guns,” I said.

  They looked at Doyle for confirmation. I shouted at them. “Put up the guns. I am the princess here, heir to the throne. He’s the captain of my guard, and when I tell you to do something, you will, by Goddess, do it.”

  They still looked at Doyle. He gave the smallest of nods.

  “Get out,” I said. “All of you, get out.”

  Doyle shook his head. “I don’t think that would be wise, Princess.”

  Usually I tried to get them all to call me Meredith, but I had invoked my status. I couldn’t take it back in the next sentence. “So my direct orders don’t mean anything, is that it?”

  Doyle’s expression was neutral, careful. Rhys and Nicca had put up their guns, but neither one was meeting my eyes. “Princess, you must have at least one of us with you at all times. Our enemies are … persistent.”

  “Prince Cel will be executed if his people try to kill me while he’s still being punished for the last time he tried to kill me. We have six months’ reprieve.”

  Doyle shook his head.

  I looked at the three of them, all handsome, even beautiful in their own ways, and suddenly I wanted to be alone. Alone to think, alone to figure out exactly whose orders they were taking, mine or Queen Andais’s. I’d thought it was mine, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure.

  I looked at them, each in turn. Rhys met my gaze, but Nicca still wouldn’t. “You won’t take my orders, will you?”

  “Our first duty is to keep you safe, Princess, and only second to keep you happy,” Doyle said.

  “What do you want from me, Doyle? I’ve offered you my bed, and you’ve refused.”

  He opened his mouth, started to speak, but I held a hand up. “No, I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses. I believed the one about wanting to be the last of my men, not the first, but if one of the others gets me with child, according to sidhe tradition that person will be my husband. I’ll be monogamous after that. You’ll have missed your chance to break a thousand years of forced celibacy. You haven’t given me a single reason good enough for that kind of risk.” I folded my arms across my stomach, cradling my breasts. “Speak truth to me, Doyle, or stay out of my bedroom.”

  His face was almost neutral, but an edge of anger showed through. “Fine, you want truth, then look at your window.”

  I frowned at him, but turned to look at the window with its gauzy white drapes moving ever so gently in the breeze. I shrugged, arms still held tight. “So?”

  “You are a princess of the sidhe. Look with more than your eyes.”

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and tried not to respond to the heat in his words. Getting angry at Doyle never seemed to accomplish anything. I was a princess, but that didn’t give me much clout; it never had.

  I didn’t so much call my magic, as drop the shields I had to put in place so that I wouldn’t travel through my day seeing mystical sights. Human psychics and even witches usually have to work at seeing magic, other beings, other realities. I was a part of faerie, and that meant I spent a great deal of energy not seeing magic, not noticing the passing rush of other beings, other realities that had very little to do with my world, my purpose. But magic calls to magic, and without shields in place I could have drowned in the everyday rush of the supernatural that plays over the earth every day.

  I dropped the shields and looked with that part of the brain that sees visions and allows you to see dreams. Strangely, it wasn’t that big a change in perception, but suddenly I could see better in the dark, and I could see the glowing power of the wards on the window, the walls. And in all that glowing power I saw something through the white drapes. Something small pressed against the window. When I moved the drapes aside, nothing was on the window but the play of pale color from the wards. I looked to one side, using the edge of my sight, my peripheral vision, to look at the glass. There, a small handprint, smaller than the palm of my hand, was etched into the wards on the window. I tried to look closer at it, and it vanished from sight. I forced myself to look sideways at it again, but closer. The handprint was clawed and humanoid, but not human.

  I let the drape fall shut, and spoke without turning around. “Something tried the wards while we slept.”

  “Yes,” Doyle said.

  “I didn’t feel anything,” Rhys said.

  Nicca said, “Me, either.”

  Rhys sighed. “We have failed you, Princess. Doyle’s right. We could have gotten you killed.”

  I turned and looked at them all, then I stared at Doyle. “When did you sense the testing of the wards?”

  “I came in here to check on you.”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s not what I asked. When did you sense that something had tested the wards?”

  He faced me, bold. “I’ve told you, Princess, only I can keep you safe.”

  I shook my head again. “No good, Doyle. The sidhe never lie, not outright, and you’ve avoided answering my question twice. Answer me now. For the third time, when did you sense something had tested the wards?”

  He looked half-uncomfortable, half-angry. “When I was whispering in your ear.”

  “You saw it through the drapes,” I said.

  “Yes.” One clipped, angry word.

  Rhys said, “You didn’t know that anything tried to get in. You just came through because you heard Merry moving around.”

  Doyle didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. The silence was answer enough.

  “These wards are my doing, Doyle. I put them up when I moved in to this apartment, and I redo them periodically. It was my magic, my power, that kept this thing out. My power that burned it so that we have its … fingerprints.”

  “Your wards held because it was a small power,” Doyle said. “Something large would still get through any ward you could put in place.”

  “Maybe, but the point is that you didn’t know any more than we did. You were just as in the dark as we were.”

  “You’re not infallible,” Rhys said. “Nice to know.”

  “Is it?” Doyle said. “Is it really? Then think on this—tonight none of us knew that some creature of faerie crept to this window and tried to get in. None of us sensed it. It may have been a small power, but it had big help to hide this completely.”

  I stared at him. “You think Cel’s people risked his life tonight, by trying to take mine again.”

  “Princess, don’t you understand the Unseelie Court by now? Cel was the Queen’s darling, her only heir for centuries. Once she made you coheir with him, he fell out of favor. Whichever one of you produces a child first will rule the court, but what happens if both of you die? What happens if you are assassinated by Cel’s people and the Queen is forced to execute Cel for his treachery? She’s suddenly without heir.”

  “The Queen is immortal,” Rhys said. “She’s agreed to step down only for Merry or Cel.”

  “And if someone can plot the death of both Prince Cel and Princess Meredith, do you really think they will stop at the death of a Queen?”

  We all stared at him. It was Nicca who spoke, voice soft. “No one would risk the Queen’s anger.”

  “They would if they thought they wouldn’t get caught,” Doyle said.

  “Who would be that arrogant?” Rhys asked.

  Doyle laughed, a surprised bray of sound that startled us all. “Who would be arrogant enough? Rhys, you are a noble of the sidhe courts. The better question would be who would not be arrogant enough?”

  “Say what you like, Doyle,” Nicca said, “most of the nobles fear the Queen, fear her greatly, fear her much more than they fear Cel. You have been her champion for eons. You don’t know what it’s like to be at her mercy.”

  “I do,” I said. They all turned
to me. “I agree with Nicca. I don’t know anyone but Cel who would risk his mother’s anger.”

  “We are immortal, Princess. We have the luxury of biding our time. Who knows what tricksy serpent has been waiting centuries until the Queen was weak. If she is forced to kill her only son, she will be weak.”

  “I’m not immortal, Doyle, so I can’t speak for that kind of patience or cunning. All we know for certain is that something tried the wards tonight, and it will bear a burn on its hand, or paw, or whatever, a mark. It can be matched just like fingerprints.”

  “I’ve seen wards set up to harm something that tries to break them, or even mark the intruder with a scar or burn, but I’ve never seen anyone take imprints before,” Rhys said.

  “It was clever,” Doyle said. Which from him was a great compliment.

  “Thank you.” I frowned at him. “If you’ve never seen anyone do something like this with a ward, how did you know what you were seeing through the drapes?”

  “Rhys said that he had never seen anything like it. I did not say that.”

  “Where else did you see it?”

  “I am an assassin, a hunter, Princess. Tracks are a very good thing to have.”

  “The print on its hand will match this, but it won’t leave tracks as it travels.”

  Doyle gave a small shrug. “A pity, it would have been useful.”

  “You can make a creature of faerie leave magical tracks?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But they would see them with their own magic and ruin the spell.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve never found the world big enough to hide quarry that I tracked.”

  “You’re always so … perfect,” I said.

  He glanced past me at the window. “No, my princess, I fear I am not perfect, and our enemies, whoever they may be, know that now.”

  The breeze had become a wind, billowing out the white drapes. I could see the small-clawed print frozen in the glittering magic. I was half a continent away from the nearest faerie stronghold. I’d thought L.A. was far enough away to keep us safe, but I guess if someone really wants you dead, they’ll catch a plane or something with wings. After years of exile I finally had a little slice of home with me. Home never really changed. It had always been lovely, erotic, and very, very dangerous.

  Chapter 2

  THE WINDOWS OF MY OFFICE SHOWED A NEARLY FAULTLESS sky, like somebody had taken a single blue cornflower petal and stretched it to fill the air above us. It was one of the most perfect skies I’d ever seen over Los Angeles. The buildings of downtown sparkled in the sunlight. Today was one of those rare days that allows people to pretend that L.A. sits in an eternal summer where the sun shines constantly, the water is always blue and warm, and everyone is beautiful and smiling. Truth is that not everyone is beautiful; some people are downright grumpy (L.A. still has one of the highest homicide rates in the country, which is pretty grumpy if you think about it); the ocean is more grey than blue; and the water is always cold. The only people who go into Southern California waters without a wetsuit in December are tourists. We actually do get rain occasionally, and the smog is worse than any cloud cover I’ve ever seen. In fact, this was the prettiest, most truly summery day I’d seen in over three years. It must happen more often than that for the myth to survive. Or maybe people just need some magical golden place to believe in, and Southern California seems to be that for some people. Easier to get to and less dangerous than faerie, I guess.

  I actually hated to waste such a beautiful day inside. I mean, I was a princess; didn’t that mean I didn’t have to work? Nope. But I was a faerie princess; didn’t that mean I could just wish for gold and it would magically appear? I wish. The title, like so many royal titles, came with very little in the way of money, land, or power. If I actually became queen, that would change; until then, I was on my own. Well, not exactly on my own.

  Doyle sat in a chair by the windows almost directly behind me, as I sat at my desk. He was dressed as he’d been last night, except he’d added a black leather jacket over the T-shirt and a pair of black wraparound sunglasses. The brilliant sunlight sparkled in all those silver hoops and made the diamond studs in his earlobes positively dance, sending tiny rainbows across my desk. Most bodyguards would have worried more about the door than the windows. We were twenty-three stories up, after all. But the things Doyle guarded me against were as likely to fly as to walk. The creature that had left its tiny pawprint on my window had either crawled like a spider or flown.

  I sat at my desk with sunlight pressing warm against my back; a rainbow from Doyle’s diamond sat on my clasped hands, bringing out the green in my fingernail polish. The polish matched my jacket and the short skirt that was hidden under the desk. The sunlight and the emerald green cloth brought out the red in my hair so that it looked like spun rubies. The color also brought out the green and gold of my tricolored irises, and I’d chosen eye shadow to bring out more of the green and gold. The lipstick was red. I was all color and joyous light. One of the good things about not having to pretend to be human was I didn’t have to hide the hair, the eyes, the luminous skin. I was so tired my eyes burned, and we still had no clue what, or who, had come to my window last night. So I’d dressed up for the office, just a little extra makeup, a little extra sparkle. If I died today, at least I’d look good. I’d also added a small, four-inch knife. It was strapped to my upper thigh so the metal hilt touched my bare skin. Just the touch of steel or iron could make it harder for any fey to do magic against me. After last night Doyle had thought it wise, and I hadn’t argued.

  I had my legs politely crossed, not because of the client sitting across from me, but because a man was under my desk, hiding in the cave that it made. Well, not man, goblin. His skin was moonlight white, as pale as my own or Rhys’s, or Frost’s, for that matter. The thick, softly curling black hair cut short was the perfect blackness of Doyle’s hair. He was only four feet tall, a perfect male doll, except for the stripe of iridescent scales down his back, and the huge almond-shaped eyes a blue as perfect as the day’s sky, but with striped elliptical pupils like a snake’s. Inside his perfect cupid-bow mouth were retractable fangs and a long forked tongue that made him lisp unless he concentrated. Kitto wasn’t doing well in the big city. He seemed to feel best when he could touch me, huddle at my feet, sit in my lap, curl against me while I slept. He’d been banished from my bedroom last night because Rhys wouldn’t tolerate him. Goblins had taken Rhys’s eye a few thousand years ago, and he’d never forgiven them for it. Rhys tolerated Kitto outside the bedroom, but that was about all.

  Rhys stood in the far corner near the door where Doyle had ordered him to stand. His clothing was almost completely hidden under an expensive white trench coat just like Humphrey Bogart used to wear, except that it was made out of silk and was more for looking at than keeping off the weather. Rhys loved the fact that we were private detectives, and he usually wore either the trench coat or one of his growing collection of fedoras to work. He’d added his daywear eye patch. This one was white to match his clothes and his hair, with a pattern of tiny seed pearls sewn into it.

  Kitto smoothed a hand over my hose-clad ankle. He wasn’t trying to be overly friendly; he just needed the comfort of touching me. My first client of the day sat across from me, from us. Jeffery Maison was just under six feet tall, broad shouldered, narrow waisted, and designer suited, with blunt-fingered hands manicured and brown hair perfectly coifed. His smile was that bright perfect whiteness that only expensive dental work can create. He was handsome, but in an unremarkable bland sort of way. If he’d paid for surgery, he’d wasted his money, because it was the kind of face you recognized as attractive but you’d never remember it. Two minutes after he walked out the door you’d have a hard time remembering any one feature. If he’d been wearing less-expensive clothing, I’d have said he was a wanna-be actor, but wannabes couldn’t afford perfectly tailored designer-name suits.

  The perfect smile never faltered, but his e
yes flicked behind me, and the eyes weren’t smiling. The eyes were worried. His gaze kept flicking to Doyle, and it seemed an effort not to look behind him at Rhys. Jeffery Maison was very unhappy about the two guards being in the room. It wasn’t just the feeling that most men got around my guards, the feeling that if it came to a fight, they’d lose badly. No, Mr. Maison talked about privacy; after all I was a private detective, not a public one. He’d been so unhappy that it was tempting to have Kitto bounce out from beneath the desk and yell “Boo.” I didn’t do it. It wouldn’t have been professional. But I amused myself with the thought while I tried to get Jeffery Maison to stop harping on the guards and actually mention something that might be job related.

  Only when Doyle had said in his deep rolling voice that it was an interview with either all of us or none of us had Maison gone quiet. Too quiet, he’d sat and smiled but told me nothing.

  Oh, he’d talked. “I’ve never seen anyone whose true hair color was Sidhe Scarlet. It’s like your hair is made of rubies.”

  I’d smiled, nodded, tried to get down to business. “Thank you, Mr. Maison, but what brings you to the Grey Detective Agency?”

  He opened that perfectly detailed mouth and tried one last time. “I was instructed to speak with you in private, Ms. NicEssus.”

  “I prefer Ms. Gentry. NicEssus means daughter of Essus. It’s more a title than a name.”

  The smile was nervous, and the eyes looked self-deprecating, golly shucks ma’am. It had the feel of a look he practiced in the mirror. “Sorry, I’m not accustomed to dealing with faerie princesses.” He flashed me the full smile, the one that filled his eyes with good, clean humor, and a deeper flash of something else, something I could pursue or ignore. That one look was enough. I was pretty sure how Jeffery was paying for the designer suits.

  “Princesses are rather rare these days,” I said, smiling, trying to be pleasant. But truth was, I hadn’t gotten much sleep and I was tired. If we could just get Jeffery to go away, maybe we could have a coffee break.