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The sidhe agreed, and Ringo shot his fellow gang members to death. His wish was to be one of the fey. The sidhe had given their word to grant his wish. They couldn't go back on their word. To make a full human into a part fey, you have to pour wild magic, pure power, into them, and it is the human's will or desire that chooses the shape of that magic. Ringo had been in his early teens when it happened. He'd probably wanted to appear fierce, frightening, to be the toughest son of a bitch around, so the magic had given him his wish. By human standards he was a monster. By sidhe standards, ditto. By fey standards, he was just one of the gang.
I don't know why Ringo left the gangs. Maybe they turned on him. Maybe he got wise. By the time I met him, he'd been an upstanding citizen for years. He was married to his childhood sweetheart and had three kids. He specialized in bodyguard work and did a lot of celebrities that just wanted some exotic muscle to follow them around for a while. Easy work, no real danger, and he got to rub elbows with the stars. Not bad for a kid whose mother had been a fifteen-year-old junkie, father unknown. Ringo keeps a picture of his mom on his desk. She's thirteen, bright-eyed, well groomed, pretty, with the world in front of her. By the next year she was on drugs. She died at seventeen, overdose. There are no pictures of his mother after age thirteen in his office or in his home. It's as if, for Ringo, everything after that wasn't real, wasn't his mother.
His oldest daughter, Amira, looks eerily like that smiling picture. I don't think she'd survive if he found her doing drugs. Ringo says that being on drugs is worse than dead; I think he believes it.
Neither of them remarked on the gun as I slipped it back into the waistband of my pants. They'd probably been with Jeremy when he found the gun and the papers.
Jeremy got in the passenger-side seat. "Let's get to the airport" was all he said. Ringo put the car in gear and away we went.
Chapter 9
THE BACK OF THE VAN WAS EMPTY EXCEPT FOR CARPET AND A MODIFIED seat-belt harness that Jeremy had had installed on one side. Uther's seat. I started to crawl into the middle row of seats but Uther touched my arm. "Jeremy has suggested that if you sit with me my aura may serve to overlap yours, thus confusing our pursuers." Each word was carefully enunciated, because the tusks may have looked like they came out of the skin over the mouth, out of the face, but in reality the tusks were modified teeth, attached inside the mouth. It meant if he were careless, he had a tendency to slur his speech. He'd worked with one of Hollywood's leading speech coaches to learn his Midwestern college professor voice. It did not match a face that was more pig than human, with a double set of tusks curling out of it. We'd had one client faint after he spoke to her for the first time. Always fun to shock the humans.
I glanced up at Jeremy. He nodded. "I may be the better magician, but Uther's got that older-than-God energy whirling around him. I think it'll help them overlook you."
It was a great idea, and a simple one. "Gee, Jeremy, I knew there was a reason you were the boss."
He gri
"At least we won't hit rush hour," Ringo said.
I settled into the back of the van, next to Uther. The van came out on Sepulveda a little too fast, and Uther caught me before I had time to fall. His big arms pulled me against him, cradling me against a chest nearly as big as my entire body. Even with my shields firmly in place he was like a large, warm, vibrating thing. I'd met other fey who had no real magic to speak of, just the very barest of glamour, but they were so old and had been around so much magic all their lives that it was as if they'd absorbed the power into the very pores of their skin. Even the sidhe wouldn't find me caught within Uther's arms. They'd sense him, not me.
Probably. Initially.
I relaxed against Uther's broad chest, the warm safety of his arms. I don't know what it was about him, but he always made me feel safe. It wasn't just the sheer physical size. It was Uther. He had a center of calm like a fire that you could huddle around in the dark.
Jeremy turned in his seat, as far as the seat belt would allow, wrinkling his suit, which meant what he had to say was serious. "Why did you ward my back, Merry?"
"What?" Uther said.
Jeremy waved the question away. "I had an old sidhe injury on my back. Merry put a ward on it. I want to know why."
"You are persistent," I said.
"Tell me."
I sighed, cuddling Uther's arms around me like a blanket. "It's possible that the sidhe that injured you could call the dragon out of your back or force you to shapeshift into one."
Jeremy's eyes widened. "You can do that?"
"I can't, but I'm not a full-blooded sidhe. I've seen similar things done."
"Will the warding hold?"
I'd have liked to have simply said yes, but it was too close to a lie. "It will hold for a
while, but if the sidhe that did the spell is here, he may be powerful enough to breech my magic, or he could simply keep hitting the ward with his own power until he wears the magic away. The chances of the same sidhe being on this hunt are very slim, Jeremy, but I couldn't let you help me, and not ward it."
"Just in case," he said.
I nodded. "Just in case."
"I was very young when this was done, Merry. I can protect myself now."
"You're a powerful magician, but you're not sidhe."
"It makes that big a difference? "he asked.
"It can."
Jeremy fell silent and turned in his seat to help Ringo find the quickest way to the airport.
Uther said, "You are tense."
I smiled up at him. "And you're surprised?"
He smiled, that very human mouth under the curved bone of the tusks, the piggish snout. It was like part of his face was a mask, and underneath was just a man, a big one, but just a man.
He ran thick fingers through my still-wet hair. "I take it Branwyn's Tears were still active when Jeremy went up?"
I'd have never taken time for a shower otherwise, and Uther knew that. "So Jeremy told me." I sat up so that I wasn't soaking his shirt with my hair. "Didn't mean to get you wet. Just forgot. Sorry."
He pressed my head, gently, back to his chest with a hand as big as my head. "I was not complaining, just remarking."
I settled back against him, my cheek resting on his upper arm.
"Roane left just after we arrived. Did he go for help?"
I explained about Roane and his newfound skin.
"You didn't know you could heal him?" Uther asked.
"No."
"Interesting," he said. "Very interesting."
I looked up at him. "Do you know something I don't about what happened?"
He gazed down at me, small eyes almost lost in his face. "I know that Roane is a fool."
That made me stare at him, searching his face, trying to read what lay behind those eyes. "He's a roane, and I've given him back the ocean. It's his calling, his heart of hearts."
"You're not angry with him?"
I frowned, shrugging awkwardly in his arms. "Roane is what he is. I can't blame him for that. It would be like yelling at the rain for being wet. It just is."
"So it does not bother you, at all?"
I shrugged again, and his arms settled around me, cradling me almost like a baby, so I could gaze up at him more comfortably. "I'll admit to being disappointed, but not surprised."
"Very understanding."
"I might as well be understanding, Uther-I can't change things." I rubbed my cheek against the warmth of his arm and realized what part of Uther's charm was. He was so large and I was so small, it was like being a child again. That feeling that if someone could hold you in their arms completely, nothing could hurt you. It hadn't been true when I believed it as a very little girl, and it certainly wasn't true now, but it was still nice. Sometimes false comfort is better than no comfort at all.