A Shiver of Light

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

A SOUND IN the darkened room had frightened me at first, and then I’d seen the nightflyers plastered to the wall around the window, and my heart had lifted, because only Sholto could have brought them to L. A. He wasn’t dead? Had it been another dream? No, it had been real. I held Doyle’s hand in mine and looked around the room for Sholto.

Galen was on the other side of the bed. “I told you what she’d think when she saw the nightflyers. I’m sorry, Merry, but Sholto is still dead.”

“How did they get to L. A. without him?”

“Kitto brought them,” Doyle said.

I looked from one to the other of them. “Am I still dreaming?”

Galen smiled. “I could pinch you to prove we’re real.”

It made me smile a little. I tried to reach for his hand, but I was still hooked to an IV, so he took my hand instead. “No pinching necessary,” I said, “but how did Kitto bring the sluagh across the country?”

Doyle answered, “He used his hand of power.”

“The hand of reaching only lets him bring someone through a mirror during a call.” I looked at the mass of nightflyers covering the far wall and clinging to part of the ceiling. There had to be at least two dozen of them, though the way their flat bodies overlapped it was hard to get an accurate count, but still … “It would take hours to bring through this many of the sluagh. How long was I trapped in dream?”

My heart was pounding in my throat again, because though Doyle was here safe beside me, Mistral was not.

“You have only been asleep a short time, Merry; it has not been hours,” Doyle said.

“Where is Mistral?” I asked.

“At the main house, in charge of seeing that no harm comes to the babies. A hate group had claimed responsibility for trying to assassinate you, so I made Mistral stay at the house and see to the defenses there. He made me swear I would explain that only duty to our children would keep him from your side.”

“Doyle, you and Mistral are in terrible danger. Taranis means to have you both killed, as he killed Sholto. He fears the three of you the most of my men, and he intends to strip me of you, and then try to claim me for himself.”

Doyle touched my face, looking very hard into my eyes, as if trying to tell if I was telling the truth, or mad, or still dream befuddled.

“It was not just a nightmare, Doyle. Taranis was in my dreams again.”

Galen cursed softly. “Damn it, we let them put you to bed without the herbs in your pillow. I am so sorry, Merry; I should have thought of it.”

“We know that it is not a human hate group, but traitors among the sidhe themselves,” Doyle said.

“How do you know? Did Taranis invade someone else’s dreams?”

“No, but Rhys and Barinthus went to the beach house to make certain the sidhe there cooperated with the police, and forced them all to let the police take their fingerprints.”

“Are you saying one of the sidhe at the beach killed … shot Sholto?”

“Rhys and the police both quickly realized that the angle of the shot meant it could not have come from the hillside, but had to come from one of the upper windows of the house itself.”

“A lot of them didn’t want to cooperate with the police,” Galen said.

“I understand the murderer not wanting to cooperate with the police, but why did the rest refuse?”

Doyle and Galen exchanged a look, and it was Doyle who said, “They felt that the human authorities had no sway over them. I sent Rhys and Barinthus to convince them that they were mistaken.” There was something ominous in the way he said the last; at another time I might have asked how harsh the methods of persuasion had been, but frankly, I didn’t care. How dare they not want to help solve Sholto’s … murder.

“They refused to help when they thought that I’d been the attempted target?”

“They said that Sholto was not their king, and that he died so easily proved he was either not sidhe or contaminated by your mortality.”

I just stared at him for a few seconds. “What?”

They exchanged another look between them.

“What was that look just now? You’ve mentioned almost everybody but Frost; where is he?”

“He’s with a doctor,” Doyle said.

I started to sit up, and he held me down with one hand on my shoulder. “He is all right, or as all right as when he entered the hospital,” Doyle said.

“What does that mean?” I asked, and it was as if the fear from the dream had just been waiting below the surface, because it came bubbling up now. I fought the panic, and knew it was at least partly the nightmare and Taranis, but … sometimes there was so much that I felt as if I’d been on the edge of panic for months.

As if talking about him had conjured him, the door opened and Frost was there, looking tall and unbelievably handsome. His hair glinted in the dim light of the room the way the Christmas tree had looked on Christmas Eve when I was little, all gleaming and beautiful as my father turned out the lights because Santa wouldn’t come if the lights were on. We celebrated Yule and the winter solstice as a religious holiday, but he wanted me to have a more American holiday when I was very small, and had even been willing for me to go to Christian church with some of my school friends, and to temple with my friends who were Jewish. My father had wanted me to understand my country, not just our people. Frost’s hair looked like that long-ago Christmas tree tinsel, and the Christmas mornings I’d seen on television, but that never quite happened to me. I’d so wanted brothers and sisters, and family holidays that hadn’t been full of political debate, or photo opportunities for the press. Frost coming through that door made me feel like Christmas morning was supposed to feel, and never had.

Whatever he saw on my face made him smile, that bright, too-wide one that made his face both less model perfect and more amazing all at the same time. Galen moved back so Frost could take my hand and lean in to kiss me. He hesitated somewhere in the middle of standing back up, as if something in the middle of his body had caught, or hurt.

“What did the doctor say?” Doyle asked.

“He gave me some antibiotics and told me not to do anything physically taxing for at least three more days.”

“Wait, are you saying that the dog scratches are infected?” I asked.

“It would seem so,” he said; he held my hand in his, and smiled down at me.

“You can’t get infection from a wound, except through poison, or an evil spell. None of the fey can just get an infection.”

“Nonetheless, it is why I am not healing as I should.”

“Frost, you … I’ve seen you heal bullet wounds in less time than these scratches. They were deep, but not that deep.”

“The doctor assures me that these are natural antibiotics, not man-made, so I should not have an allergic reaction to them, and because I have never had antibiotics before, the infection shouldn’t be immune to it, as it might be if I had had more modern medical care.”

“Frost, are you saying you’re healing human-slow, as slowly as I might heal?”

Frost wouldn’t look at me. I looked at Doyle and Galen at the foot of the bed. “Someone talk to me, now,” I said.

“Some of the newer sidhe were not happy that Frost isn’t healing as he did before he left faerie,” Doyle said.

“Before he was with me, you mean,” I said. I held both their hands in mine, squeezed them tight.

“It doesn’t matter what caused it,” Frost said, and his face was still serene, peaceful, even happy.

“You were immortal and unaging. You would have been this beautiful and amazing forever, and loving me has stolen that from you. How? How did just being my lover damage your immortality?”

He raised my hand and rubbed his lips along my knuckles. It felt wonderful, but all I could think was that he would age now. That in loving him I’d killed him.

“We do not know why or how it happened,” Doyle said.

“So Sholto dying is my fault; that he couldn’t heal it like a nightflyer might, or a sidhe might, is because he loved me? How can that be?”

I wasn’t panicked now, I was horrified.

There was a hissing from the nightflyers and one of them slid to the floor and rose upward as if a manta ray could stand. It spoke with the flat, lipless mouth on its underside, gesturing with its tentacles that were so like Sholto’s.

“Our queen, it was a fearsome wound; even we might have died of it.”

There was a hissing, sibilant chorus from the others.

“Do not blame yourself, and if your mortality did spread to our king, he was still the happiest we had ever seen him.”

One of the others peeled itself back enough from the wall to say, “So young and so sad, until you came.”

The one that was standing, swaying like a fleshy carpet, was able to walk forward. “We will see you safe, and the killer punished. Your little goblin shamed us into coming to protect you and the babes; it is the last duty we can do the best king in all of faerie.”

All the nightflyers were very old, so saying thank you was potentially an insult, but I wanted to say something. “What is your name?” I asked.

“Barra, my queen.”

“Sholto was the best of rulers in all of faerie, and a good man. I am honored that you, Barra, and so many of the nightflyers have traveled so far to help keep me and Sholto’s children safe.”

He bowed, and it was clumsy, because among the sluagh they weren’t expected to do something that worked so awkwardly for their anatomy.

“The bow is much appreciated, but I know that among your own people that is not a gesture expected of you, and I will not expect it either.”

He looked at me with huge dark eyes. “You are wise in our ways.”

“I am your queen until you elect another king; I will do my best by you all, until that time.”

It was as if the mantle of his body flowed, or waved from top to bottom. “It was voted on; we will elect no new king until we have avenged King Sholto.”

“That might be months,” I said. “Won’t you need a ruler before that?”

“You are our ruler until we have a new king.”

I said the only thing I could say. “I am honored, and I will do my best to rule as Sholto would have wished.”

Doyle put his hand over his heart and bowed to all the nightflyers. “We are all honored by your presence here, but I do not think it will be months before Sholto is avenged.”

We all looked at him. “Rhys’s last phone call said that they had linked a fingerprint to one of the sidhe at the beach. Rhys and Barinthus and some of the Red Caps have taken the suspect to the police station.”

“Is he the one who shot Sholto, or did he just load the rifle?” I asked.

Doyle looked down at me, and it was an approving look. “Sometimes in these months of you being pregnant I have forgotten that you were a detective here in the Western Lands before I found you.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve been pregnant forever, and never anything else, but being a mother doesn’t make me not Merry Gentry, private detective.”

“We do not know if he pulled the trigger, or if he was part of a conspiracy. Until we are certain we have no other traitors among the sidhe, we will surround you with guards we are certain of, like all in this room.”

“We appreciate the trust you show us,” Barra said.

“The sluagh have more honor than most of the guard of any court,” Doyle said.

Barra gave another of those strangely graceless, graceful bows.

“We need to know everything the suspect knows,” I said.

“He is not wanting to talk.”

“I’m assuming he’s claiming diplomatic immunity as a noble of the court,” I said.

“Of course,” Doyle said.

“Good,” I said.

He looked at me. “Good, Merry? That means the police cannot question him at all.”

“It also means that the sidhe has put himself firmly in the hands of faerie, and I am a queen of faerie. We will treat our traitor as a noble of the faerie courts, and he will tell us everything we want to know.”

“If you torture him, the police will likely stop you.”

I smiled and could feel that it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “I don’t think we’ll have to resort to traditional torture.”

“What are you planning?” Galen asked, and he sounded suspicious.

“How much of the sluagh is here in the Western Lands? Is it just nightflyers?”

“No, our queen, we are many. Your goblin sidhe brought many of us through the mirror.”

“Even better,” I said.

“Merry,” Galen said, “what are you planning to do?”

“I am the Queen of the Sluagh, and he’s slain my king; I am within my rights to use the sluagh to question him.”

“Some of the sluagh seen without magic to protect the mind can cause madness,” Doyle said.

“I think he’ll talk before that happens,” I said.

“Ruthless, and practical,” Barra said. “We approve.”

There was another hissing sound like a Greek chorus from some Lovecraftian nightmare. It made me smile, because it would likely scare the hell out of our traitor.

“I brought you fresh clothes,” Galen said.

I smiled at him. “Then let’s get me dressed and go help Rhys question our prisoner.”

“Let the doctor say you are well enough to go, first,” Doyle said.

“I am well enough.”

“Galen, fetch the doctor.”

Galen turned without a word and went for the door. One of the nightflyers slithered across the ceiling, poured like thick water down the wall, and crawled sideways out the door. Galen held the door without being asked, as if he expected it.

“There are more guards outside the door, both human and fey. It has been decided that none of your lovers go anywhere without extra guard.”

“I agree,” I said.

“We will lose no more princes of faerie to this plot,” Barra said.

I let go of Doyle’s hand so I could hold Frost’s with both of mine. “But we will lose this prince of faerie, eventually. I am so sorry, Frost.”

Frost smiled down at me. “We will grow old together, my Merry. What could be better than that?”

Doyle leaned in and put his dark hand over our clasped ones. I realized he was crying, the tears gleaming in the lights. “Do not leave me all alone, not both of you, I do not think I could bear it. I would rather age and fade with the two of you than live the rest of eternity without either of you.”

We opened our arms and the Darkness laid himself across the bed so we could hold him while he cried, because we would age and he would not.