Лорел Гамильтон - A Caress Of Twilight

"So does Taranis," I said.

Andais sat back against one of the bedposts. She seemed almost to slump, the one bare hand playing along the black ribbons on her dress. "But neither of us listens to anyone. The emperor has no clothes."

The last comment caught me off guard. It must have showed, because she said, "You look surprised, niece of mine."

"I didn't expect you to know the story."

"I had a human lover some time ago who was fond of children's stories. He read to me when I could not sleep." There was a dreamy wistfulness to her voice now, a true note of regret.

She continued in a more normal tone. "The Nameless has been freed. It was last seen headed west. I doubt it will get as far as the Western Sea, but I thought you should know, all the same." With that, she made a gesture and the mirror went blank.

My eyes were very wide in the glass. "Can you make the mirror so that no one can get through without signaling to us first?"

"Yes," he said.

"Do it"

"The queen may take that ill."

I nodded, looking at my scared face in the mirror, because now that I didn't have to pretend, I could look as scared as I felt. "Just do it, Doyle, just do it. I don't want any more surprises tonight."

He went to the mirror and made small gestures at its edges. I felt the spell prickle along my skin as I climbed back into the bed.

Doyle turned from the mirror and hesitated by the edge of the bed. "Do you still want company?"

I held out my arms to him. "Come to bed, and hold me while we sleep."

He smiled and slipped under the sheet. He spooned his body against mine until I lay cupped in his arms, his chest, his stomach, his groin, his thighs. He encircled me and I pulled the warm silken hardness of him around me.

He spoke softly as I began to drift off to sleep. "You do not mind that my grandmother was a hound of the wild hunt and my grandfather a phouka?"

"No." My voice was thick with sleep. Then I asked, "Could I really end up having puppies?"

"It is unlikely."

"Okay." I was almost asleep, when I felt him hold me tighter, as if I was his security blanket instead of the other way around.

The Grey Detective Agency didn't usually get called to murder scenes. We had helped the police in the past when something mystical was doing something bad, but that was usually as decoys or advisers. I could count on both hands the number of murder scenes I'd seen and still have a couple of fingers left over.

I had one less finger to count today. The woman's body was already on a gurney. Her yellow hair trailed across her face, darker gold where the ocean had touched it. Her very short evening dress was pale blue on the edges but dark blue where the water had soaked into it. A broad ribbon, probably white, sat just under her breasts, tightening the dress enough to show cleavage. Her long legs were bare and tanned. Her toenails were painted a funky blue to match the fingernails. Her lips were an odd blue color, too; but it was lipstick, not some sign of her death.

"The lipstick color is called asphyxiation."

I turned to the tall woman just behind me. Detective Lucinda Tate walked up with her hands plunged inside the pockets of her slacks. She tried to give me her usual smile, but it didn't work. Her eyes stayed worried and the smile vanished before it had really gotten started. Her eyes were always cynical under the humor, but today the cynicism had spilled out and swallowed the humor.

"I'm sorry. Lucy, what did you say about the lipstick?"

"It's called asphyxiation. It's supposed to mimic the lip color of a corpse who died from suffocation. Nicely ironic," she said.

I looked down at the woman again. There were bluish and white tints around the eyes, the nose, the edges of the lips. I had a strange urge to wipe off the lipstick and see if the lips really were the same color. I didn't do it, but the urge was like a great itch across my palms.

"So, she suffocated," I said.

Lucy nodded. "Yeah."

I frowned. "She didn't drown?"

"I doubt it. None of the others did."

I stared up at her. "Others?"

"Jeremy's had to go with Teresa to the hospital."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Teresa touched a lipstick that one of the women had been about to put on before she died. Teresa started hyperventilating, then she couldn't breathe. If we hadn't had paramedics on the scene, she might have died. I should have known better than to invite one of the most powerful clairvoyants in the country into this mess."

She glanced at Frost, who was standing a little out of the way, one hand on the other wrist, very bodyguardish. The effect was somewhat ruined by his silver hair spilling around him in the wind, as if it was trying to pull loose from the ponytail. A pale pink shirt matched the show hankie in the white suit jacket that matched the slacks. The slender; silver belt matched his hair. His shiny loafers were creamy tan. He looked more like a fashion plate than a guard, though the wind gave occasional glimpses of the black shoulder holster underneath all that V white and pink.

"Jeremy said you were running late today," Detective Lucy said. "You getting much sleep lately, Merry?"

"Not much." I didn't bother to explain it wasn't Frost who had kept me up last night. We were doing friendly banter, empty, meaningless, something to say to fill the windy silence while we stood over the dead woman.

I looked down at her face, lovely even in death. The body looked thin, not exactly strong, more like she'd dieted her way to a size whatever. If she'd known she would die last night, would she have gone off her diet the day before?

"How old was she?"

"Her ID says twenty-three."

"She looks older," I said.

"Dieting and too much sun will do that to you." Any flash of humor had gone now. She was somber as she looked up on the cliff above us. "You ready to see the rest?"

"Sure, but I'm a little puzzled about why you called Jeremy and all of us in. It's sad, but she got herself killed, or choked to death, or something. She suffocated, it's horrible, but why call us in?"

"I didn't call in your two bodyguards." For the first time there was true hostility on her face. She pointed down the beach at Rhys. Frost might have been uncomfortable, but Rhys was having a very good time.

He watched everything with an eager eye, smiling, humming the theme song to Hawaii Five-O under his breath. Or at least that's what he'd been humming when he went farther down the beach to watch some of the uniforms wade in the surf. Rhys had already done Magnum, P.I., until Frost told him to stop. Rhys preferred film noir and would always be a Bogart fan at heart, but Bogie wasn't making movies anymore. In the last few months Rhys discovered reruns in color that he actually enjoyed.

He turned toward us and waved, smiling. His white trench coat billowed out around him like wings as he began to trudge his way back up the beach. He had had to take off his tan fedora to keep it from blowing into the sea.

"Rhys is creepy around murder scenes," Detective Lucy said. "He always has such a good time, like he's happy someone's dead."

I didn't know how to explain that Rhys had once been worshipped as a god of death, so death didn't bother him all that much. But that part was best not shared with the police. I said, "You know how much he loves film noir."

"This isn't a movie," she said.

"What's got you all upset, Lucy? I've seen you at worse murder scenes than this. Why are you so … bothered?"

"You just wait. You won't need to ask once you've seen it."

"Can you just tell me, Lucy, please?"

Rhys came up to us, face all shiny like a kid on Yule morning. "Hi, Detective Tate. There's no burst blood vessels in the girl's eyes, no bruising anywhere that I could find. Does anyone know how she suffocated?"