Divine Misdemeanors

Chapter Fourteen

Maeve Reed’s beach house sat above the ocean, half on the cliff and half resting on wood and concrete supports designed to stand up to earthquakes, mudslides, and anything else the Southern California climate could throw at the house. It sat in a gated community complete with a uniformed guard and a gatehouse. It was what kept the press from following us. Because they’d found us. It was almost a type of magic how they always found us again, like a dog on a scent. There weren’t as many on the narrow curving road, but enough to stop and look disappointed as we went through the gates.

Ernie was at the gate. He was an older African American who had once been a soldier, but had been injured badly enough that his army career had gone away. He would never tell me what the injury had been, and I knew enough human culture not to ask outright.

He frowned at the cars parked out of reach of the gate. “I’ll call the police so we’ll have the trespassing on record.”

“They stay away from the gate when you’re on duty, Ernie,” I said.

He smiled at me. “Thank you, Princess. I do my best.” He tipped an imaginary hat at Doyle and Frost, and said, “Gentlemen.”

They nodded back and away we went. If the beach house hadn’t been behind a gate, we’d have been at the mercy of the media, and after watching the windows crack at Matilda’s deli, I didn’t think that would be a good idea tonight. It would have been nice to think that the accident would make the paparazzi back off, but it would probably make me bigger news, more of a target. It was ironic, but almost certainly true.

The car’s phone sounded. Doyle started, and I spoke into the air toward the microphone. “Hello.”

“Merry, how close to the house are you guys?” Rhys asked.

“Almost there,” I said.

He gave a chuckle that sounded tinny because of the bluetooth. “Good, our cook is getting nervous that the food will get cold before you arrive.”

“Galen?” I made it a question.

“Yep, he hasn’t even taken anything off the stove, but he’s fretting about that so he won’t fret about you. Barinthus told me you called and shared some excitement. Are you okay?”

“Fine, but tired,” I said.

Doyle spoke loudly, “We are almost to the turnoff.”

“The bluetooth only works for the driver,” I said, not for the first time.

Doyle said, “Why doesn’t it work for everyone in the front seat?”

“Merry, what did you say?” Rhys asked.

“Doyle said something.” More quietly to Doyle, I said, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?” Rhys asked.

“Sorry, still not used to the bluetooth. We’re almost there, Rhys.”

A huge black raven perched on an ancient fence post by the road. It cawed and flexed its wings. “Tell Cathbodua we’re fine, too.”

“You see one of her pets?” he asked.

“Yes.” The raven winged skyward and began to circle the car.

“She’ll know more about you than I do then,” he said, and sounded a little discouraged.

“Are you all right? You sound tired,” I said.

“Fine, like you,” he said, and laughed again, then added, “but I just got here myself. The simple case Jeremy sent me on turned out to be not so simple.”

“We can talk about it over dinner,” I said.

“I’d like your opinion, but I think there’s a different agenda for dinner.”

“What do you mean?”

Frost leaned up as far as the seat belt would let him, and asked, “Has something else happened? Rhys sounds worried.”

“Did something else happen while we were gone?” I asked. I was looking for the turnoff to the house. The light was beginning to fade. It wasn’t quite twilight, but it was still a turn I missed if I wasn’t paying attention.

“Nothing new, Merry. I swear.”

I braked sharply for the turnoff, which made Doyle grab the car tightly enough that I heard the door frame protest. He was strong enough to tear the door off its hinges. I just hoped he didn’t dent it because of his phobia.

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.