Лорел Гамильтон - A Kiss Of Shadows

He jerked his hand back as if it had hurt, rubbing it. "Where did you get that ring?" His voice sounded strained.

"It was left in the car for me."

He shook his head. "I knew it had gone missing, but I did not expect to find it on your hand." He looked at me, and if it had been anyone else, I'd have said he was afraid. The look vanished as I was still trying to puzzle it out. His face became smooth and dark and unreadable. He gave a formal bow and offered me his arm as any gentleman would.

I took his arm, encircling it with both my hands, but as my right hand rested on top of my left, it didn't touch his skin. I thought about touching him accidentally on purpose, but I didn't know exactly what the ring did. I didn't know what it was for, and until I did, it was probably not a good idea to keep invoking its magic.

We walked down the path arm in arm, at a sedate but steady pace. My heels made a sharp sound on the stones. Doyle paced beside me silent as a shadow; only the solidness of his arm, the sweep of his cloak against my body let me know he was there. I knew that if I let go of his arm, he could melt into the darkness that was his namesake—I would never see the blow that killed me unless he wished it. No, unless my aunt wished it.

I would have liked to fill the silence with talk, but Doyle had never been much for small talk, and tonight neither was I.

THE STONE PATH MET THE MAIN AVENUE, WHICH WAS WIDE ENOUGH FOR a cart and horse or a small car, if cars had been allowed, which they were not. Once upon a time, so I was told, there had hung torches, then lanterns, to light the avenue. Modern fire laws frowned on all-night torches, so now the poles that rested every eighteen feet or so held will-o'-the-wisps. One of the craftsfolk had fashioned wooden and glass cages for the lights. The lights were palest blue, ghostly white, a yellow so pale it was almost another shade of white, and a green leeched to a dim color, barely distinguishable from the faint glow of the yellow lights. It was like walking through pools of colored phantoms as we passed from one dim light to the next.

When Jefferson had invited the fey into this country, he'd also offered them land of their choice. They'd chosen the mounds at Cahokia. There are tales whispered on long winter nights about what lived in the mounds before we came. What we… evicted from the mounds. The things that lived inside the land were chased away or destroyed, but magic is a hardier thing. There was a feel to the place as you walked down the avenue with the great hulking mounds to either side. The largest mound in the city proper was at the end of the avenue. I went to Washington, D. C., during college, and when I came home it was almost unnerving how forcibly the mound city reminded me of being in Washington, standing on the plaza surrounded by those monuments to American glory. Now, walking down the center and only street, I had the sense of great time passing. This place had once been a great city as Washington was now, a center of culture and power, and now it lay quiet, cleansed of its original inhabitants. The humans had thought the mounds were empty when they offered them up to us, just bones and some pots buried here and there. But the magic had still been there, deep and slumbering. It had fought and then embraced the fey. The conquering or winning over of that alien magic had been one of the last times the two courts worked together against a common foe.

Of course, the very last time had been World War II. Hitler had at first embraced the fey of Europe. He'd wanted to add them to the genetic mix of his master race. Then he'd met a few of the less human members of the fey. Among ourselves there is a class structure as rigid and unbreakable as it is foolish; the Seelie Court especially looks down on those who do not look like blood. Hitler mistook this arrogance for lack of caring. But it was like a family with siblings. Among themselves they could fight and beat each other bloody, but let anyone turn on one of them and they became a united force against the common enemy.

Hitler used the wizards he'd gathered to trap and destroy the lesser fey. His fey allies didn't desert him. They turned on him without warning. Humans would have felt the need to distance themselves from him, to warn him of their change of heart, or maybe that was an American ideal. It certainly wasn't a fey ideal. The allies found Hitler and all the wizards hanging up by their feet in his underground bunker. They never found his mistress, Eva Braun. Every once in a while the tabloids say that Hitler's grandson has been found.

None of my direct relatives were involved in Hitler's death, so I don't know for sure, but I suspect strongly that something simply ate her.

My father had gotten two silver stars in the war. He'd been a spy. I never remembered being particularly proud of the medals, mainly because my father never seemed to care about them. But when he died, he left them to me in their satin-lined box. I'd carried them around in a carved wooden box along with the rest of my childhood treasures: colored bird feathers, rocks that sparkled in the sun, the tiny plastic ballerinas that had graced my sixth-birthday cake, a dried bit of lavender, a toy cat with fake jewel eyes, and two silver stars given to my dead father. Now the medals were back in their satin box in a drawer in my dresser. The rest of my "treasures" were scattered to the winds.

"Your thoughts are far away, Meredith," Doyle said.

I was still walking at his side, hands on his arm, but for a moment only my body had been there. It startled me to realize how far away I'd been.

"I'm sorry, Doyle, were you speaking to me?" I shook my head.

"What were you thinking about so very hard?" he asked. The lights played over his face, painting colored shadows against his black skin. It was almost as if his skin reflected the lights like carved and polished wood. I was touching his arm, so I could feel the warmth, the muscles underneath, the softness of his skin. His skin felt like anyone's skin, but light didn't reflect off skin, not like that.

"I was thinking about my father," I said.

"What of him?" Doyle turned his head to look at me as we walked. The long feathers brushed his neck, mingling with the spill of black hair that was only partially trapped down the back of the cloak. I realized that except for the small knot that captured the front pieces of his hair, the rest of his hair was spilling out underneath the cloak, loose.

"I was thinking about his medals that he won in World War II."

He kept walking but turned his face full to me, never missing a step. He looked bemused. "Why would you be thinking of that now?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. Thinking about faded glory, I guess. The mounds remind me of the plaza in Washington, D. C. All that energy and purpose. It must have been like that here once."

Doyle looked up at the mounds. "And now it is quiet, almost deserted."

I smiled. "I know better than that. There's hundreds, thousands under our feet."

"But yet the comparison of the two cities saddens you. Why?"

I looked up at him, and he looked down at me. We were standing in a pool of yellow light, but there were pinpricks of every color of will-o'-the-wisp in his eyes, swirling like a tiny cloud of colored fireflies. Except the colors in his eyes were rich and pure, not ghostly, and there were reds and purples and colors that shone nowhere near us.

I closed my eyes, suddenly dizzy and nauseated. I answered with my eyes still shut. "Sad to think that Washington may someday be a tired ruin. Sad to know that the glory days passed this place by long before we arrived." I opened my eyes and looked up at him. His eyes were just black mirrors once more. "Sad to think that the fey's glory days are passed and us being here in this place is proof of that."