Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

“You and your lab will be available if we need your expertise?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

“I promised Mrs. Billings we would be.”

“Great,” I said, then turned to Major Walters. He was trying not to look pleased and failing. He practically beamed at me. Local police spend a lot of time getting their hats handed to them by the feds; for once the shoe was on the other foot, and Walters was enjoying it. He waited until we’d walked out into the snow with a circle of my guards hiding us from the feds before he burst out laughing. A man of iron self-control.

IT WAS FROST WHO PLACED HIS HAND AGAINST THE SNOW covered hill and called the door. The opening appeared with a peal of music that made all the policemen smile, even Major Walters. It was the door to faerie, all humans go through smiling, but they don’t always come out that way. Inside this hollow hill was a human who was going out in a body bag.

The door stretched wide and bright, though I knew the light was actually dim. It looked bright because we’d been walking in the snowy dark.

The police hit that dimly lit hallway and made exclamations of surprise. Cops do not show surprise, at least not those who have been on the job awhile. Cops are the best ever at jaded tiredness, boredom. Been there, done that, didn’t want the T-shirt. One of the uniforms said, “Oh, my God, the colors are so beautiful.”

The walls were grey and empty. There was no color.

Major Walters stared up at those bare walls, as if he saw something indescribably beautiful. All their faces showed delight, wonderment. Some oohed and aahed as if they were watching fireworks. The guards and I looked at empty grey walls.

“Rhys, did you forget to use the oil on the nice policemen?”

“The reporters didn’t need it,” he said. “How was I to know that hard-boiled police and forensic scientists would be more susceptible to faerie magic?”

“They should not be,” Frost said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The queen gave vials of oil to the guard as a precaution in case the reporters became befuddled by the magic that is intrinsic to the sithen, but it was merely a precaution. The main hallways of the sithen have not affected humans in this way for more than fifty years.”

“Well,” I said, looking at the humans who were gazing around them as if the hallway were a carnival midway, “whatever is causing this, we need it to stop or they are useless to us. They can’t do policework like this.”

“Did a spell cause it?” Arzhel asked as he pushed the dark fur of his cloak back from a face framed by thick brown curls that spilled down to his knees. That thick mane of fur was held back from his face only by a silver circlet. He was dressed in hardened leather armor, sewn here and there with silver. His body under the armor was tattooed with fur, much as Nicca’s had been with his wings. The tattoo was so real that it made you want to pet the fur that was not there. His face and most of the front of his body was bare and pale and as moonlight, like my own skin. It made the brown and gold of the fur look darker by contrast. With his armor and cloak, he could almost have passed for a human, except for the eyes. They were a reddish brown, a color that could have been human but wasn’t. They weren’t sidhe eyes either, but those of an animal of some kind. I’d found a picture in a book once, a two-page close-up of the eyes of a bear. Staring at the picture I knew I’d seen those eyes in Arzhel’s face.

“It is not a spell,” Frost said. “We would feel it.”

Arzhel nodded. “Have you searched for it?”

“I have.”

“As have I,” said Crystall, his voice like chimes in the wind. He was still hidden behind his white cloak.

“Use the oil on them,” I said. “Ears, eyes, mouth, hands, the works.”

Arzhel asked, “The works?”

“The princess means to make certain they can function completely unaffected by the sithen,” Rhys said, undoing his trench coat and taking a small stoppered bottle from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He worked the stopper out of the dark clay bottle, then stood in front of Dr. Polaski. He asked her to take her glasses off, but it was as if she couldn’t hear him, and maybe she couldn’t. He took her glasses gently off her face. She blinked at him as he touched one eye just below the brow. “That you may see truly,” he said. She jerked back from him, then stared around at the walls. She covered her eyes with her hands. “Oh, God, oh, God, what’s happening to me?”

“Let me do the other eye, and you’ll feel better,” Rhys said. “Just keep them closed until I’m done.”

He had to push her hands down from her face, but she kept her eyes closed. He touched the other eyelid, and said, “To see truly.” He pushed her hair back from her ears, and traced the oil down the curve of one ear, and then the other, with the words “That you may hear truly.”

“The music stopped,” she said, and tears began to seep out from her closed lids.

He touched her lips. “So you may speak truly of what you find.” He put her hands palm up. “So you may touch and be touched truly.” He knelt and traced the tops of her snow-soaked boots. “So you may step truly and know what lies before you.” He stood in front of her, and laid the last touch to her forehead. “So you may know and think truly.” He did more than just touch there; there he laid a protective symbol. For a moment I saw the flare of magic trace the cool spiral and circle on her forehead, then it sank into her skin.

She blinked, and looked around her as if she didn’t quite know where she was. “What the hell was that?”

“Welcome to faerie, Dr. Polaski,” Rhys said, and handed her back her glasses.

Frost handed me a bottle. “Doyle gave me his, for he does not need it.”

I took the offered bottle, and wondered where Doyle had gone, and what he had found. “I would feel better if Doyle or the others would contact us.”

“As would I,” Frost said as he began to lay oil on Walters.

I turned to the only other woman in the group. She wasn’t that much taller than myself, which was one of the reasons I chose her. When I took off the cloth cap, it revealed straight brown hair tied back in a ponytail, a little worse for the sock cap she’d been wearing. Her eyes were a solid medium brown. The face was a delicate triangle, pretty enough, but I’d been too much around the sidhe of late. She looked unfinished to me, as if her hair or eyes needed a different color to make her real.

I told her, “Close your eyes.”

She didn’t hear me, but it wasn’t the walls she was staring at. She was watching Frost while he touched Major Walters’s face. I finally touched her eyes just above her open lid, and she flinched away from me.

“Dr. Polaski, can you help her hold still?” I asked. She was one of the CSU, not the police. Polaski came to us, and said, “Carmichael, this will help. Close your eyes and let the princess touch you.”

Carmichael seemed strangely reluctant, but she did what her boss said to do. She shivered under my fingers like a nervous horse, skin jumping. She got calmer by the time I’d done her hands, and she seemed calm as I touched the tops of her hiking boots, below the wet of her jeans. When I raised up to trace her forehead, her voice seemed normal. “I’d prefer a cross as the symbol,” she said.

“A cross won’t work,” I said, tracing something much older on her forehead.

Those brown eyes opened to look at me, while I did it. “What do you mean, a cross won’t work?”

“We aren’t evil, Carmichael, just other. Contrary to popular myth, holy symbols won’t stop our magic, any more than holding up a cross would stop a blizzard from harming you.”