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CHAPTER 22
MAJOR WALTERS, THE POLICE, THE CSU TECHS, AND DR. POLASKI, the medical examiner, had nothing but complaints. Their laptop computer wouldn’t work. Their cell phones didn’t work. Nothing they had with them that used electricity, or even batteries, worked. Was that me screaming earlier, and why had I been screaming Galen’s name? Glamour hides a multitude of sins, and both Galen and I were good enough to hide the blood. As long as no one touched us, and found that the cloth felt tacky with blood, we were fine.
“We weren’t certain what would happen to your modern tech down here. I’m sorry it’s not working,” I said. I wanted to avoid the screaming issue altogether, but I didn’t want him angry at me. Police do not like to be fucked with, especially if they’ve just, maybe, pissed off all the local feds on your behalf. No matter how much Walters had enjoyed my handing Marquez his hat, it still might make life difficult for him.
“There are things inside the sithen that are frightening. One of them almost attacked Galen. It scared me, that’s all.” I turned, hoping to get away from Walters and his questions. I just wasn’t up to word games at that moment. Melangell’s face kept coming back to me. Frost’s assurance that her eyes would grow back if she were allowed to be in faerie and not in the Hallway of Mortality was small comfort if she couldn’t be cured of a hopeless obsession with Aisling. We had stolen something from Melangell if she couldn’t cure herself of the love.
Walters grabbed my arm. I hadn’t expected him to touch me. “Princess Meredith, what aren’t you…” His voice trailed off because the arm he grabbed was tacky with the blood that covered it. He jerked me nearly off my feet, and my concentration was simply not good enough. Frost moved in to protect me, but the glamour slipped. Walters got a flickering look at what I was hiding.
He looked past me at the others, and they were all busy trying to do their jobs, collecting evidence with none of their gadgets working. He didn’t let go of my arm. “We need to talk,” he said, his voice surprisingly calm.
“In private,” I added.
He nodded.
Frost said, “Let go of the princess.”
“It’s all right, Frost.” I led the way around the corner and a little way down the hall. Shiny white marble with veins of gold and silver was replacing the grey stone where Mistral and I had made love. It was as if something that we had done was changing the very nature of the sithen. The queen would not be pleased, but one problem at a time.
When we were alone except for my ring of guards, he said, “Show me what I’m feeling, Princess, because it’s not the same thing I’m seeing.”
Should I have tried to trick him? Maybe, but I was tired of games. We still didn’t know where Amatheon had disappeared to. The chalice had gone AWOL, and who knew when and where it would reappear. The only reason I had had Frost with me when I suddenly materialized in the other hallway was that he had grabbed me when I started to fade. But for that, I would have appeared alone, unguarded, in the middle of the fight.
I dropped the glamour, and had the small satisfaction of watching Major Walters’s eyes go wide before he found his cop face. But I’d seen the moment, and knew I must be even messier than I thought.
“What the hell happened to you?” He had let me go and now had some of the drying blood on his hand.
“There was another assassination attempt,” I said, leaving out that it wasn’t aimed at me. “Galen was injured in the fighting.” Truth, as far as it went.
Walters looked at Galen. I nodded, and Galen dropped the glamour. He even turned around so Walters could see the worst of the blood.
“How is he up walking around?”
“The sidhe heal faster than mere mortals,” I said.
“He lost that much blood and he’s healed?”
“I’m a little light-headed,” Galen said, “but give me an hour or two, and I’ll be good as new.”
“Jesus, I wish we could heal like that.”
“So do I,” I said.
He looked at me. “I forgot, you’re mortal, like us.”
I shrugged. “That’s the rumor.”
“You don’t heal as fast as the rest of them.”
“No.”
“Your arm isn’t in a sling anymore,” he said, and motioned to it.
“No, it got healed in a ritual.” The sex with Mistral had healed it, but I didn’t need to overshare that much.
He shook his head. “Is any of this blood yours?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“His last time,” he pointed at Frost, “now his,” he pointed to Galen. “You’re going to get one of them killed.”
“I hope not.” I let my voice show how tired I was, how unhappy I was at the thought.
“Go back to L.A., Princess. Take your men and go.”
“Why?”
“Because there have been two assassination attempts in two days, plus a double homicide. Someone wants you dead, and doesn’t care who gets hurt. If they want you dead bad enough, they’ll succeed. Maybe not tonight, or tomorrow, but if you stay, they will kill you.”
“Are you trying to scare me, Major Walters?”
“I’m trying to have you not die on my watch. I agreed to come into your murder scene partly to help my career, I admit that. But if you die with me inside your faerie land, I will never live it down. I’ll always be the one who let you die.”
“If they kill me, Major Walters, the only thing you could do to stop them would be to die before me. I don’t think that’s very helpful.”
“Are you making a joke?”
I sighed, and rubbed my forehead, fighting off an urge to scream. “No, Major, I am not joking. What hunts me here is nothing you can stop or protect me from. I need your help to solve these murders, but truthfully, if I’d known it was this dangerous in faerie right now, I wouldn’t have brought you in.”
“We’re police, Princess Meredith. We’re used to taking our chances.”
I shook my head. “Do you have enough evidence? Do you have what you need?”
“Dr. Polaski wanted to know what would happen if we gave you evidence that pointed to someone.”
“Did she find something?”
“She wanted to know what—” He paused over his words. “—use you would make of any evidence we gathered.”
“We’d use it to hunt down and punish the murderer,” I said.
He shook his head, wiping his big hand on the side of his jacket. “What about a trial?”
I smiled, and knew it wasn’t pleasant. “There are no trials inside faerie, Major Walters.”
“So you’ll use our evidence to kill someone?”
“The punishment for murder among us is usually death, so execute them, yes.”
“Then we’ll have to go back to the lab and contact you later.”
“You did find something,” I said.
He nodded. “If this was going to trial we’d want to run it through a computer. If what we’ve found is going to be used to execute someone without a trial, we want to be even more cautious.”
“What did you find?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“You do realize that the murderer could be the one behind the attempts on my life. By not telling me what you suspect, or who you suspect, you could be signing my death warrant. By the time you’ve analyzed your data, it could be too late for me.”
His hands made fists, and he closed his eyes. “I told the doctor that in so many words. She won’t budge.”
“So you don’t know either,” I said.
“I know it’s a print of someone we took samples from, and the only ones we had access to were the ones in the hallway.”
“The guards,” I said.
“And the kitchen staff,” he said.
I looked at him. “One of the royal guards, that’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“It’s who I’d be afraid of, if I were you.”
“I could compel her to tell me what she knows, or have one of my guards do it.”
“Using magic on anyone co
“I’m immune to prosecution.”
“You’d never again get help out of my office, or anyone else on our side of the river. You might never get help from anyone. No other human law enforcement agency would trust you. Bringing us in here and mind-raping us.” He shook his head. “I may not agree with Polaski, but I’ll fight to keep her free will and choice.”