Divine Misdemeanors

“They remembered what you were, Fear Dearg,” Doyle said.

The Fear Dearg turned to Frost. “And you, Killing Frost, why so silent? Do you have no opinions but the ones that Darkness gives you? That’s the rumor, you’re his sub.”

I wasn’t entirely sure that Frost would understand that last part, but he knew he was being taunted. “I do not remember the Fear Dearg’s fate. I woke to winter, and your people were gone.”

“That’s right, that’s right, once you were but wee Jackie Frost, just one more retainer in the court of the Winter Queen.” He did that head cock to one side again. “How did you turn into a sidhe, Frost? How did you grow in power while all the rest of us faded?”

“People believe in me. I am Jack Frost. They talk, they write books and stories, and children look out their window and see the frost on their windows and think I did it.” Frost took a step toward the smaller kneeling man. “And what do the human children say of you, Fear Dearg? You are barely a whisper in the human’s minds these days, all forgotten.”

The Fear Dearg gave him a look that was frightening, for real, because it held such hate. “They remember us, Jackie, they remember us. We live in their memories and in their hearts. They are still what we made of them.”

“Lies will not help you, only truth,” Doyle said.

“It’s not lies, Darkness, go into any theater and watch their slasher flicks. Their serial killers, their wars, the slaughter on the evening news when a man kills his whole family so they won’t know he’s lost his job, or the woman who drowns her children so she can have another man. Oh, no, Darkness, humans remember us. We were the voices in the blackest night of the human soul, and what we planted there still lives. The Red Caps gave them war, but the Fear Dearg gave them pain and torment. They are still our children, Darkness, make no mistake about that.”

“And we gave them music, stories, art, and beauty,” Doyle said.

“You are Unseelie sidhe; you gave them slaughter, too.”

“We gave them both,” Doyle said. “You hated us because we offered more than just blood, death, and fear. No Red Cap, no Fear Dearg ever wrote a poem, painted a picture, or designed something new and fresh. You have no ability to create, only to destroy, Fear Dearg.”

He nodded. “I have spent centuries, more centuries than most acknowledge, learning the lesson you set us, Darkness.”

“And what lesson have you learned?” I asked. My voice was soft, as if I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

“That people are real. That the humans aren’t just for our pleasure and slaughter, and that they are a people, too.” He glared up at Doyle. “But the Fear Dearg survived long enough to see the mighty fall as we fell. We watched the sidhe diminish in power and glory, and the few of us left rejoiced.”

“Yet you bend knee to us again,” Doyle said.

He shook his head. “I bend knee to the queen of the sluagh, not of the Unseelie, or the Seelie Court I bend knee to Queen Meredith, and if King Sholto were here I would acknowledge him. He has kept the faith with his other side.”

“Sholto’s tentacles are only a tattoo unless he calls them forth. He looks as sidhe as any of us standing here,” Doyle said.

“And if I want a fair young maiden, don’t I use my glamour to make myself look a bit better?”

“It’s illegal to use magic to trick someone into bed,” O’Brian said.

I started. I hadn’t realized that the police had moved back into hearing range.

The Fear Dearg glared at her. “And do you wear makeup on your dates, Officer? Do you put on a pretty dress?”

She didn’t answer him.

“But there’s no makeup that will cover this.” He motioned at his own face. “There’s no suit to hide my body. It’s magic or nothing for me. I could make you understand what it’s like to be twisted in the eyes of the other humans.”

“You will not harm her,” Doyle said.

“Ah, the great sidhe speaks and we all must listen.”

“You have learned nothing, Fear Dearg,” Doyle said.

“You did just threaten to use magic to deform O’Brian,” I said.

“No, my magic is all glamour; to deform I’d have to use something more solid.”

“Do not end their curse, Meredith. They would be a plague on the humans.”

“Someone explain to me what the curse was, exactly.”

“I will, in the car,” Doyle said, and he stepped forward, putting me behind him. “Fear Dearg, we might have taken pity on you after so very long, but you have shown in just a few words to a human woman that you are still dangerous, still too evil to be given back your powers.”

The Fear Dearg reached out to me, past Doyle’s leg. “But give me a name, my queen, I beg you. Give me a name and I can have a life again.”

“Do not, Meredith, not until you understand what they were and what they might be again.”

“There are only a handful of us left in the world, Darkness.” His voice was rising. “What harm could we do now?”

“If you did not need Meredith to free you from the curse, if you did not need her goodwill, the goodwill of some queen of faerie, what would you do to some human woman tonight, Fear Dearg?”

The Fear Dearg’s eyes held such hate. I actually stepped back behind Doyle, and Frost moved so that I only saw the Fear Dearg between their bodies as I had at the begi

He looked at me between the two of them, and it was a look that made me truly afraid. He got to his feet, a little heavily, as if his knees ached from being on the sidewalk so long. “Not just human women, Darkness, or have you forgotten that once we rivaled your magic, and the sidhe were no more safe than the humans?”

“I have not forgotten that.” Doyle’s voice held rage. I’d never heard quite that tone in his voice before. It sounded of something more personal.

“There is no rule to how we get our naming from the queen,” he said. “I have asked nicely, but she would name me to save herself and those babes inside her. You would let her name me to save them.”

The two men closed ranks and I lost sight of the Fear Dearg. “Do not come near her, Fear Dearg, for it will be your death. And if we hear of any crimes on humans that smack of your work, we will see that you no longer have to mourn your lost greatness, for the dead mourn nothing.”

“Ah, but how will you tell what is my work and what is the work of humans who carry the spirit of the Fear Dearg in their souls? It is not music and poetry that I see on the news, Darkness.”

“We are leaving,” Doyle said. We said good-bye to Wright and O’Brian, and the men got me into the truck. We started the engine but didn’t leave until O’Brian and Wright were lost in the mass of police down the way. I think none of us wanted to leave O’Brian close to the Fear Dearg.

It was Alice in her Goth outfit who came out of the Fael and went to the Fear Dearg. She hugged him, and he hugged her back. They went back into the tea shop hand in hand, but he cast a look back over his shoulder as I put the SUV in gear. The look was a challenge, a sort of Stop Me If You Can. They vanished into the shop. I pulled carefully out into the street and the traffic, then said, “What the hell was all that about?”

“I don’t wish to tell the tale in the car,” Doyle said, with his death grip on the door and the dashboard. “You do not tell tales of the Fear Dearg when you are afraid. It calls them to you, gives them power over you.”

To that I didn’t know what to say, because I remembered a time when I thought the Queen’s Darkness felt nothing, least of all fear. I knew that Doyle felt all the emotions everyone else felt, but admitting weakness, that he didn’t do often. He’d said the only thing that could have kept me from questioning him on the way to the beach. I used the bluetooth to call ahead to the beach house and the main house to let everyone know that we were fine. That the only ones wounded were the paparazzi. Some days karma balances out instantly.