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“Are the reporters gone then?” I asked softly.
“They were about to file out all nice and neat,” she said, and her voice was rising as she spoke and paced, naked and dangerous, “until one group realized they were missing a photographer. A photographer!” She screamed the last word. “How did he break through the spells that were supposed to make it impossible for him to leave the guarded areas?” She didn’t seem to be asking anyone in particular, so no one answered.
“Was there a camera found?” she asked, and her voice was almost normal.
“Yes, my queen,” Doyle said.
“Would it have pictures of the crime?”
“Perhaps,” Doyle said.
“We’ll need to send the film out to be developed,” I said.
“Have we no one of faerie who could do it for us?”
“No, my queen.”
“What else did you find on this reporter?”
“We haven’t searched the body thoroughly,” I said.
“Why have you not searched the body thoroughly?” she asked, and the edge of near hysterical anger shadowed the last word.
I swallowed, and let my breath out slowly. It was now or never. Doyle’s hand squeezed my arm, as if he was saying, “Don’t.” But if I were ever to be queen, Andais would have to step down for me. She was immortal, and I was not, so she would always be a presence in the court. I had to get some control between her and me now, or I would never truly be queen. Never truly be safe from her anger.
“There are clues on the body that a scientific team could find. The less we touch it, the better the science will work.”
“What are you babbling about, Meredith?”
Doyle squeezed my arm tighter. “Do you remember what you said when my father was killed?”
She stopped her pacing and looked at me. Her eyes were wary. “I said many things when Essus died.”
“You said we were not to allow the human police inside the faerie mounds. That no one was to talk to them or answer their questions, because we would find the assassins with magic.”
She stood very still, and gave me unfriendly eyes, but she answered. “I remember those words.”
“We failed with magic because the assassins were as good or better at magic than those who bespelled the wounds and the body.”
She nodded. “I have long thought that among my smiling court, my toadie nobles, the murderer of my brother sits. I know that, Meredith, and it is a small constant torment that that death went unpunished.”
“As it is for me,” I said. “I want to solve these murders, Aunt Andais. I want the person or persons responsible caught and punished. I want to show the media that there is justice in the Unseelie Court, and we are not afraid of new knowledge and new ways.”
“You are babbling again,” she said, crossing her arms under her tight firm breasts.
“I want to contact the police and bring in a forensic team.”
“A what?”
“Scientists who specialize in helping the police solve crimes in the human world.”
She was shaking her head. “I do not want the human police tramping through here.”
“Nor do I, but a few policemen, and a few scientists. Just a few, just enough to gather evidence. All the sidhe are royal, titled; they all have diplomatic immunity, so technically we can dictate to an extent how much police involvement we allow.”
“And you think this will catch whoever did this?”
“I do.” I stepped a little away from Doyle, so I wasn’t huddling against him. “Whoever did this is worried about magic tracking them down, but it will never occur to them that we would use forensic science inside the land of faerie. They will not have protected against it, and in fact, they can’t protect against it, not completely.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“We, even the sidhe, shed skin cells, hairs, saliva; all of it can be used to trace back to the person. Science can use a smaller piece than is needed for a spell. Not a lock of hair, but the root of a hair. Not a pound of flesh, but an invisible fleck of it.”
“You are certain that it will work? Certain that if I allow this intrusion, this invasion of our privacy, human science will solve this crime?”
I licked my lips. “I am certain if there is evidence to find, they will find it.”
“If,” she said, and she started pacing the room again, but slowly, quietly this time. “‘If’ means you are not certain. ‘If’ means, dear niece, that you may bring all this upon us and the murderer may go free. If we bring in the police and they do not solve the reporter’s death, it will undo all the good publicity I have acquired for us in the last two decades.”
“I think it will work, but either way the media will be impressed with your willingness to allow the modern police into your faerie mound. No one has ever done that, not even at the golden court.”
She glanced back at me, but she was moving, slowly, toward Barinthus. He was indeed kneeling at the foot of her bed, on a black fur rug. “You think we will gain media points over Taranis and his shining people.”
“I think this will show that we meant no harm to anyone, and that such things are not tolerated among the Unseelie, contrary to all those centuries of dark talk.”
She stood in front of Barinthus now, but still spoke to me. “You truly believe that the media will forgive us allowing one of their own to be murdered simply because we invite in the police?”
“I think some of them would slaughter their own photographers on altars, with incense and prayers, to get a chance at covering this story.”
“Clever, Meredith, very clever.” She turned to Barinthus then. She stroked her hand down the side of his face, like you’d touch a lover, though I knew she had never taken him to her bed. “Why did you never try to make a king of my son?”
Unless Barinthus and the queen had been having a very different conversation, the question seemed out of nowhere.
“You do not want me to answer that question, Queen Andais,” he said in his deep, sighing voice.
“Yes,” she said, still stroking his face, “yes, I do.”
“You will not like it.”
“I have not liked many things of late. Answer the question, Kingmaker. I know that if my brother, Essus, had been willing, you would have had him kill me and put himself on the throne. But he would not slay his own sister. He would not have that sin on his heart. Still, you thought he would be a better king than I a queen, didn’t you?”
Dangerous questions. Barinthus said again, “You do not want the truth, my queen.”
“I know the truth of that question. I’ve known that for centuries, but I do not know why you never looked to Cel. He approached you after Essus died. He offered to help you slay me, if you would help put him on the throne early.”
I think all of us across the room held our breaths in that moment. I had not known this. The looks on everyone’s faces around me said that most of them had not either. Only Adair and Hawthorne behind their helmets were still hidden from their surprise.
“I warned you of his treachery,” Barinthus said.
“Yes, and I had you tortured for it.”
“I remember, my queen.”
Her smile did not match her words, but then neither did the constant caressing of his face and shoulders. “When Meredith came of age, you turned to her. If she had had the magic she now possesses since her stay in the lands to the west, you would have offered her what you offered Essus, wouldn’t you?”
“You know the answer, my queen.”
“Yes,” she said, “I do. But Cel always had the power to be king. Why did you not put him on the throne? Why did you foster a half-breed mongrel of a princess over my pure-sidhe son?”
“Do not ask me this,” he said.
She slapped him twice, hard enough to stagger him even on his knees. Hard enough to have blood spill from his mouth. “I am your queen, damn you, and you will answer my question. Answer me!” The last was screamed into his face.
Barinthus answered her, blood flowing from his mouth. “You are a better queen than Cel will ever be a king.”