Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

“What is wrong?” Arzhel asked.

Amatheon said, “Nothing. I simply was not aware the princess was gifted with prophecy, that is all.” His voice sounded a little breathy, but otherwise normal, maybe even a little bored. You do not survive in the high courts of faerie by giving things away. We are the hidden people, and most of us earn that name.

Arzhel put his head to one side, as if he wasn’t entirely certain he believed Amatheon, but he said nothing. I did not know Arzhel that well, but I was certain he’d never guess that I held the chalice under my cloak.

Carmichael approached Ivi the way you’d sneak up on a statue in an art museum, afraid to touch it, compelled to run your hands down the smooth, hard curve of it. Afraid someone will tell you to stop.

“Carmichael,” Dr. Polaski said. “Carmichael.” She touched the other woman’s arm, but she might as well have been touching the wall for all the good it did her.

“Rhys, choose someone other than Ivi to watch her,” I said.

Rhys grinned, and moved himself between the woman’s hesitating hand and Ivi’s body. “Andais would have ordered me. I like a queen who delegates.”

“She’s not queen yet,” Ivi said. The bright green of his eyes still held that flash of humor that had covered his surprise.

“What’s wrong with her?” Walters asked. He’d gone to help Polaski, taking Carmichael’s other arm. She didn’t fight them, but she didn’t look away from the men either.

“She’s elf-struck,” Rhys said.

“Elf-struck,” Walters said, “but that takes sex with one of you, right?”

“Normally,” I said, “but our history is littered with people who caught a glimpse of us in the woods and spent the rest of their lives fascinated with the fey.” I sighed at the looks on most of the faces that were suddenly turned to me. “My oath, that it never occurred to me that any of you would be that susceptible to faerie.”

“The princess is right,” Amatheon said. “It has been centuries since I’ve seen any human so overwhelmed by merely entering the land.” He spoke for them, but his face was all for me and Frost, who was standing behind me. Amatheon’s face tried to ask a dozen questions that his words only hinted at. If he hadn’t seen this reaction in centuries, what had changed? I’d known that power was returning to the sidhe, but I hadn’t understood what that would mean for the humans I had so blithely invited inside. What had I done? And was it fixable?

“She has to leave,” I said, “now.”

Polaski looked at me. “What did you people do to Jeanine?”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing, I swear it.”

“Some humans are more affected by faerie than others,” Rhys said, “but it’s usually not police, or anyone that’s seen too much of the harsher side of things. If you’re too jaded, you just don’t believe in faeries anymore.” He said it with a smile, but he was having trouble not showing how worried he was. I could tell, or maybe I was simply projecting.

“Carmichael is new,” Polaski said. “She’s good, but she’s mostly a lab monkey.” A look of anguish and guilt came over her face. “I didn’t know not to bring her.”

“We didn’t know either,” I said. “It’s not your fault. It just never occurred to any of us that anyone would be this affected by just coming through our door.”

“Is this permanent?” Walters asked.

I looked at the men. “I’ve only heard stories of this kind of thing. So, honestly, I don’t know.” I looked at the men. “Gentlemen, can you answer Major Walters’s question, truthfully?”

“Absolutely truthfully?” Ivi asked.

I nodded.

He answered with a mocking smile, but I knew that the mockery was more for himself than anyone else. “Then I am not certain.”

“What is so damned funny?”

“Nothing,” Ivi said, “absolutely nothing. I admit to enjoying the lady’s fascination because I never thought to see such instant obsession on an woman’s face again.” The humor leaked away to show some of the sadness that underlay most of Ivi’s humor—a sorrow like some deep wound that cut through whatever he had once been, so that all that was left of Ivi was that biting humor and that sorrow.

“That is sick,” Polaski said.

His face showed that he had one other emotion left to him, arrogance. “And how would you feel, doctor, if once upon a time you were so beautiful that men wept as you walked down a summer’s lane, and then, one day, they no longer seemed to see you at all? A flower may be beautiful all on its own, but a person is never truly beautiful unless someone else’s eyes show him that he is beautiful.”

Walters called over one of his uniformed officers. “Take her back to the lab, get her away from the beautiful people.”

“Miller, go with them. Take Jeanine home,” Polaski said, “but don’t leave her alone. Stay with her all night. When the sun comes up, she may be okay.”

I raised eyebrows at Polaski.

“I read up on some of the things that can go wrong when dealing with your people. Nothing I read cautioned against bringing in new people, or I would have left her at the lab.”

“The innocent have always been more susceptible to us,” Hawthorne said.

“She’s never been in love,” I said, and was surprised to hear myself say it. “But she wants to be.”

Polaski gave me a funny look. “How did you know that?”

I shrugged, using my fingers to keep the cloak closed over the chalice.

Ivi bent close to her face. “Be careful what you wish for, little one, you may get it, and not know what to do when you unwrap the bow.” Again the words were laced with sorrow.

Jeanine Carmichael began to cry.

“Leave her alone,” Polaski said.

“I am leaving her with sorrow, Doctor, not lust, not happiness, not beauty. I am making as certain as I can, that when she wakes tomorrow she will remember sorrow, like a bad dream. I wish that she remembers nothing that will send her seeking us again.”

“You’re disturbing, did you know that?” Polaski asked.

Ivi gave that mocking smile. “You are not the first to say it, though I believe the last woman phrased it differently. She said I was disturbed.”

Polaski looked at him as if she couldn’t decide if he was joking or telling another bitter truth.

WE WAITED FOR THE POLICE TO RETURN TO US AFTER ESCORTING their befuddled colleague away. The hallway should have been a short trip, but that long expanse of grey stone had grown longer, and now there was a curve that hid the door from view. The entrance to the sithen never changed.

“I believe the sithen wishes us to have some privacy,” Frost said.

The chalice under my cloak grew warm against my skin. I let my breath out in a sigh, and simply nodded. I did not like the chalice appearing like this. It amplified magic, and we’d had some very strange and powerful things happen between the guards and myself when the cup was present. It was almost as if the chalice didn’t want to leave me alone to solve the murders. The cup pulsed so hard that it made me gasp.

Hawthorne reached to steady me, but Frost caught his hand and gave a small shake of his head. Too dangerous in the open with the humans coming back so soon. Some things we did not want to explain to the police. Some things we couldn’t explain to anyone.

If everyone in the hallway had glimpsed the chalice, it would have been a quicker conversation, but we had guards with us who had been standing where they could not see, so we talked around it.

Ivi began, “I’m all for solving the murders. But I also think that we should be trying to make the princess queen instead of playing copper.”