A Lick of Frost

"Cheer up, Veducci," Rhys said. "The days when we used to put your eye out for seeing the wee folk are long past. The sidhe never held with that. If you could see us, the biggest danger from the sidhe was abduction. We were always intrigued with the humans who could see faerie." Rhys's voice was light and teasing, but there was an edge of seriousness to it that made Veducci look wary.

Was I missing part of this conversation? Maybe. Did I care? A little. But I'd care more after I got to the hospital and checked on Doyle and Abe.

"You can all be mysterious later," I said. "I want to go check on Doyle and Abe now."

Veducci reached into his jacket pocket and held something out to me. "I thought you might want these."

It was Doyle's sunglasses. One side of them was melted, as if some hot giant hand had crushed them into melted wax. My stomach fell into my shoes, then back up to my throat. I thought for a second that I'd throw up, then my head thought I just might faint. I hadn't seen Doyle's face underneath the bandages. How bad was it?

"Do you need to sit down, Princess?" Veducci asked, and he was all solicitous. He actually moved to take my arm as if I wasn't already standing between two strong arms.

Frost moved so that the lawyer couldn't touch me. "We have her."

Veducci took a step back. "I see that." He gave a small bow and went back to the security guards who were talking to the police. A uniformed officer was waiting for us.

"I need to ask you a few questions," he said.

"Can you ask them on the way to the hospital? I need to check on my men."

He hesitated. "Do you need a ride to the hospital, Princess Meredith?"

I glanced at the clock behind the desk. We'd been driven here by Maeve Reed's driver in her limo. He'd pla

CHAPTER 8

DOYLE AND ABE HAD A ROOM TO THEMSELVES IN THE HOSPITAL, though when we hit the door with our nice escort of uniformed officers it was hard to tell who belonged in the room and who didn't. There was a crowd of my other guards and medical staff, way more medical staff than needed to be here, and predominantly female. And why did the uniforms who drove us come inside? Apparently, the police were a little fuzzy on whether the attacks on my guards was another attempt on my life. Better safe than sorry, they seemed to think. Seeing the number of men Rhys had ordered to meet us at the hospital, apparently he had thought the same thing.

Abe was on his stomach, trying to talk to all the pretty nurses. He was in pain, but he was still who and what he'd always been. He had once been the god Accasbel, the physical embodiment of the cup of intoxication. It could make you a queen. It could inspire poetry, bravery, or madness. So the legends said. He'd opened the first pub in Ireland, and was the original party boy. If he hadn't been wincing every so often, I might have said he was having a good time. Instead, he might just be putting on a brave face. Or he might be enjoying the attention. I still didn't understand Abe well enough to guess.

I had to weave my way through the crowd of my own lovely guards. On most days, I might have noticed them, but today they were just blocking my view of the one guard I wanted to see.

Some of them tried to speak to me, but when I answered no one, they finally seemed to understand. They parted like a curtain of flesh, and I could finally see the other bed.

Doyle lay terribly still. There was an I.V. hooked up to one arm, feeding him clear fluid. There was a small drip with knobs, which probably meant that some of the clear liquid was painkiller. Burns hurt.

Halfwen stood tall and blond and beautiful beside his bed. She wore a dress that had been in style in the 1300s or earlier, a plain sheath that clung in all the right places, but was short enough at the ankles to give her room to move. When I'd met her she'd been in armor, a guard in my cousin Cel's service. He'd forced her to kill things for him and forbade her to use her amazing healing gifts because she refused his bed. True healers were rare among the sidhe now, and even the queen had been shocked at the waste of Halfwen's talents. She'd been one of the female guards who had left Cel's service to join me in exile. Queen Andais was also shocked, I think, at the number of female guards who chose exile over staying to serve Cel. I wasn't shocked. Cel had come out of his months of imprisonment crazier and more sadistic than when he'd gone in. He'd been put away for trying to kill me, among other things. His freedom had been the deciding factor of me going back into exile. The queen admitted in private that she could not guarantee my safety around her son.

Halfwen and others had come west with tales of what Cel did to the first female guard he took to his bed. It was the stuff of serial killers. Except she was sidhe, and she would heal, she would survive. Survive to be his victim again, and again, and again.

At last count I had a dozen female "volunteers." A dozen in a month's time. There would be more, because Cel was insane, and the women had a choice now. Andais hadn't understood how so many of them could prefer exile to Cel's attentions, but then the queen had always overestimated his charms and underestimated his repulsiveness. Don't let me mislead you. Prince Cel was as handsome as most of the Unseelie sidhe, but pretty is as pretty does, and what he did was ugly.

I stood by Doyle's side, but he didn't know I was there. If I still had the wild magic of faerie at my command, I could have healed him in an instant. But the magic had spilled out into the autumn night and done wonders and miracles, and was still working them in faerie. However, we weren't in faerie. We were in Los Angeles in a building built of metal and man-made things. Some magics would not even work in such a place.

"Halfwen," I said, "why have you not tried to heal him?"

A doctor short enough that he had to look up at Halfwen but could look down at me said, "I ca

I looked at him, gave him the full-on stare with the triple irises. Some humans, if they've never had to meet our eyes, are bothered by it. It can be a help in negotiations, or persuading. "Why can you not," I read his nameplate, "Dr. Sang?"

"Because it is magic that I do not understand, and if I do not understand a treatment I ca

"So if you understood you'd stop interfering," I said.

"I am not interfering, Princess Meredith, you are. This is a hospital, not a royal bedchamber. Your men are disrupting the operation of this hospital by their very presence."

I smiled at him, and felt my eyes stay cool and untouched by it. "My men have done nothing. It is your staff that is failing. I thought all the hospitals in the area had been briefed about what to do if one of us was brought in. Didn't they tell you what to wear, or carry, to help the staff function?"

"The fact that your men are using active glamour to bespell our nurses and female doctors is an insult," Dr. Sang said.

Galen spoke from the other side of the room. He was slumped down in one of two chairs. "I've told him over and over that we aren't doing anything. It isn't active glamour, but he won't believe me."

He looked tired, a tightness around his eyes and mouth that I hadn't noticed before. The sidhe don't age, really, but there are signs of wear. The way a diamond can be cut by the right kind of blade.

"I do not have time to explain to you, but I won't allow you to stand between my people and my healers," I said.