Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

“Oh,” she said, and looked a little embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s all right, the church has tried to vilify us for centuries, but if you’re ever in need of protection from faerie, I’d advise turning your jacket inside out instead of a prayer. A prayer can’t hurt, but the coat turning will probably be more effective.” I finished the last curve of the design and stepped back from her.

“Why does turning your jacket inside out help?”

“Most in faerie see only the surface; change your surface and the magic has trouble finding you.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Well, it doesn’t work if the person knows you really well and has never tried to deceive you.”

“Never tried to deceive you—what do you mean?”

“Never tried to appear to be other than they are.”

“Oh,” she said again.

I watched delight vanish from the other humans’ faces, as the oiling was completed. One policeman said, “I think I liked it better before. Now it’s just grey stone.”

“Where does the light come from?” Polaski asked.

“No one really knows,” I told her.

“I thought this oil was supposed to make everything look ordinary,” Carmichael said.

“It is,” I said.

“Then why is he still so damned beautiful?” She pointed at Frost.

I smiled at his face going cold and arrogant. It didn’t make him one bit less attractive. Goddess had made it impossible for him to be anything else.

“Maybe ordinary is the wrong word,” I said. “The oil helps you see reality.”

Carmichael shook her head. “He can’t be real. His hair is metallic silver, not grey, not white, silver. Hair can’t be silver.”

“It’s the natural color of his hair,” I said.

“Should the rest of us be offended?” Rhys asked.

“Maybe you should be,” Ivi said, “but she hasn’t seen most of us out of armor and cloaks.” He pushed the hood of his cloak back, and drew off the muffler that had hidden most of his face. Ivi’s face was a little thin for my tastes, and I knew his shoulders weren’t wide enough for me, but the pale green of his hair was decorated with vines and ivy leaves, as if someone had painted his namesake on his hair. When the hair was free, it looked like leaves blowing in the wind as he walked. His eyes were the startling green of emeralds. I guess if you haven’t been raised around people with multicolored eyes, the vibrant green of his eyes was worth a stare or two. Carmichael seemed to think so because her gaze went to him as if she couldn’t help but stare.

Crystall swept his own cloak back to reveal hair that caught the dim light of the hall and turned it into rainbows, as if his hair were a clear prism that shattered light into colors. His skin was whiter than mine, a white so pure it looked artificial. He flung the lesser white of his cloak back over one arm, and that arm was bare. I had a moment to wonder what he was wearing under the long cloak and above the boots that I could see. His arm shone in the light, like white metal, a gleam that no true flesh ever held.

The woman’s gaze went to him again, as if she could not help herself.

“Stop it, all of you,” I said. “Leave her alone.”

“I am doing nothing to her,” Frost said.

I looked at his arrogant face and knew he believed that. Knew that some part of him never understood how handsome he was, not really. The queen’s centuries of rejection had left their scars on our Killing Frost.

I patted his arm and turned to Rhys. “Since she seems less impressed with you and Arzhel, one of you gets to shepherd her through faerie.”

“Me, too,” Galen said.

I looked at him.

He gave a wry smile. “She isn’t drooling over me either.”

“Which one of us do you want to assign to her?” Rhys was shaking his head watching Carmichael look from one to the other of the men. The look on her face was somewhere between a kid overwhelmed in a candy store, or a small animal surrounded by predators; half eager yet half afraid.

“You choose, Rhys. You’re in charge of guarding the police while they’re inside.”

“Not Frost?”

“He’s in charge of guarding me until Doyle gets back.” The words made me wonder again where my Darkness was, and where his spell had led him.

It was as if Frost read my mind, because he said, “I will send someone to see where he is.”

I nodded.

“Galen,” he said. “Find out where Doyle is, and what he has discovered.”

I almost protested. If Doyle, Usna, and Cathbodua were all outgunned, then Galen was not enough to tip the balance, or so I feared.

I actually took a breath to say something, but Galen turned to me with a smile that wasn’t entirely happy. “It’s okay, Merry, I’ll do whatever needs doing to bring him back safe to you.”

I opened my mouth, and he touched his fingers to my lips. “Shhh,” he said, and leaned in to lay a kiss where his fingers had laid their warmth. “You showed the world how you feel about me. That’s enough. I don’t have to own your whole heart.” He left us at a jog, hand on his sword hilt, the thin braid of his hair bouncing against his back.

“Galen!” I said. But he didn’t look back, and then the hallway turned, and he was gone. A feeling of foreboding came over me. Prophecy had never been my gift, but now I was suddenly so afraid I couldn’t draw a good breath.

I grabbed Frost’s arm. “He shouldn’t be alone. Something bad. Something bad is coming.”

Frost didn’t argue. “Adair, Crystall, go with him.”

The moment the other two men vanished around the corner the panic eased. I could breathe again. And something heavy dropped into my other hand, the one that was still hidden under the furred cloak. I grasped the heavy metal stem of the chalice. I let go of Frost, and put both my hands under the cloak to help hold the heavy cup. I’d never realized how heavy it was until that moment. Power is a burden.

“Are you all right?” Rhys asked.

I nodded. “Yes, yes.” I did not want everyone in the hallway to see what I held, but I also knew that if my panic was true, it was because the chalice had warned me. I had meant to tell the queen that the chalice had come to me, but the time never seemed right to tell her. All right, she never seemed sane long enough to have a metaphysical and political discussion. Now the chalice had materialized in my hand, and that usually meant it had an agenda. Something it wanted, at this moment. Something I needed to do. If it had just wanted to help Galen, it wouldn’t have been heavy in my hand. The chalice was quite capable of helping out magically without materializing. So why was it here now? What was about to happen? The tightness between my shoulder blades said, something bad.

I took a deep breath, and used my cloak and Frost’s coat to give him and Rhys a flash of gold metal under my cloak. Rhys’s eye went wide, and Frost’s face went even more arrogant, more angry. Rhys turned surprise to that joking half smile that he wore when he wanted to hide what he was thinking. It had taken me months to realize what that smile meant.

It was Ivi’s voice, full of laughter and with an edge of that joking that hid so much. “Oh, my,” Ivi said, and I knew that he’d seen it, too. I half expected him to tell the rest of the hallway what he’d glimpsed, but he didn’t. He just looked at me with that surprised laughter all over his face, as if he had beheld some wonderful private joke.

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.