Divine Misdemeanors (38 page)

“Just go, Galen, just go,” I said.

He went, his clothes still bundled in his arms, nude and beautiful from the back as he walked out the door and slammed it behind him.

“I’m scared,” I said.

“I’d be worried if you weren’t,” Rhys said.

“That’s not comforting,” I said.

“Being the leader isn’t about comfort, Merry. You know that better than any leader we’ve had since we landed in this country.”

Royal was just suddenly big enough to hold me. He wrapped his arms around me, his wings flicking out behind him, fanning the red-and-black underwing as the moth would to scare a predator away. “Tell me not to show off my new power and I will hide it away.”

“No, Royal, we want them to know.”

He pressed his face to mine and looked at Rhys. “Is it really that dangerous?”

“It could be,” he said.

“My vote with the green knight won’t change your mind, will it?”

“No,” I said.

“Then I’ll do what you want, my princess, but you must promise that nothing will happen to you.”

I shook my head, my hands tracing up his back to the strange stiff delicateness of his wings. “I am a royal of faerie. I can’t make a promise I know I can’t keep without being foresworn.”

“We’ll talk to Doyle and the rest,” Rhys said. “Maybe they’ll have a safer plan.”

I agreed. Royal held me, but in the end no one had a better plan.

ON WEDNESDAY WE WENT TO THE FAEL AND HAD ROYAL SHOW OFF
his new talent. A hurried towel thrown his way by Alice the barista and he was covered enough for human law. The flock of demi-fey in the tea shop had been beside themselves fluttering around him, and when he told how it had happened they came to me. I was covered in little hands, little bodies, all wanting to touch me, to swing from my hair, and crawl on my clothing. I had to drag one little female out from my blouse where she’d nestled between my breasts.

I had a moment of claustrophobia; so many little bodies. Doyle, Rhys, and the rest helped me step out of them, and we went home with the trap baited. I was never anywhere, not even in the house, without at least four guards with me. I was protected, but what we hadn’t thought about was that I had friends in L.A., people I cared about, and we hadn’t protected all of them.

I was getting ready for bed. Doyle was watching me brush my teeth, which I thought was a little too much caution, but since we didn’t know everything that Steve Patterson’s magical items could do I didn’t argue, though never having a minute to myself was getting old and it had only been three days.

My cell phone rang in the bedroom. I called, “Can someone get that?”

Frost came with my phone, holding it out to me. The ID said it was Julian. I picked up and said, “Hey, Julian, can’t get enough of me at work?”

“This isn’t your friend.” It was a man’s voice, but I didn’t recognize it.

“Who is this?” I asked. I had one of those moments where you know something bad is about to happen, but there’s nothing you can do because the mistake was made days ago.

“You know who it is, Princess.”

“Steve, right?”

“See, I knew you’d know.”

The men had gone very still listening.

“Do I ask how you got Julian’s phone?”

“You know that, too,” he said, and his voice was too controlled. Not cold, but it lacked fear, or excitement. I didn’t like that he had no affect on the phone.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“That’s better. He’s with us. Humans are so much easier to take with my magic than the fey.”

“Let me talk to Julian.”

“No,” he said.

“Then I think he’s dead, and if he’s dead you have nothing to bargain with.”

“Maybe I just don’t want to let you talk to him.”

“Maybe, but if I don’t talk to him then he’s dead. Something went wrong with your plan to kidnap him and he’s already dead.” My own voice sounded matter-of-fact and not excited or scared either. Maybe after a while so much happens that you just don’t have enough energy to get excited at the beginning of the emergency. Maybe that’s what was wrong with Patterson too.

I heard a sound on the other end that I wasn’t sure of, and then Julian’s voice, “Merry, don’t come. They’re going to …” I knew the next sound, flesh hitting flesh. I’d heard enough to remember.

“I’ve gagged him again. I promise you that I won’t kill him if you come and make Bittersweet big like your Royal.”

“I can’t guarantee that the magic will work for every demi-fey,” I said.

“She’s part brownie. She has the genetics inside her for being bigger, and both her father and her brother can do it. She can be whatever she wants to be.” Now there
was
emotion in his voice. This he wanted to believe. This was his lie to himself, that there was a way to be with his lady love in a real way that wouldn’t kill her. He needed to believe that, just as I needed to believe that he wouldn’t kill Julian.

“I can try, but Julian goes free whether it works or not.”

“Agreed,” he said, and his voice was back to no affect. I was almost certain he was lying. “Come alone,” he said.

“I can’t do that. You know that.”

“You’ve seen Bittersweet’s work. She’s very creative, Princess.” There was another sound that I wasn’t certain of, and then a sound from a man. It wasn’t a scream, but it wasn’t a good sound either.

I heard the higher-pitched voice of a woman. “Scream for me, human, scream for me!”

Julian’s voice came thick and low with effort. I knew the sound of strain in his voice as he fought not to scream. “No.” He said it calmly and clearly.

Steve’s voice rose. “No, Bitter. If you kill him, she won’t make you big.”

Her voice was a high-pitched whine now. “I’ll just cut this part off. He won’t miss it.”

“If you hurt him too badly there won’t be anything to save,” I said, and it was my voice’s turn to be emotional. Fuck.

“Bitter, you want to be big, don’t you?”

“Yes.” And her voice was already changing. “Oh, God, what have I done? Where are we? What’s happening? Steve, what’s happening?”

“You need to come tonight. No police or he dies. No guards or he dies.”

“They won’t let me come without guards. I’m pregnant with their children. They won’t let me come alone.” We’d already had that talk days ago, and Galen had won this one point. If the bad guys called and wanted me to meet them alone I wouldn’t do it.

Bittersweet was crying, and from the sound of it she was on his shoulder near his ear as she sobbed. At least this side of her personality wouldn’t hurt Julian. In fact, I raised my voice and said, “Bittersweet, it’s Princess Meredith. Do you remember me?”

“Princess Meredith,” she said and her small voice was closer to the phone, “why are you on the phone with Steve?”

“He wants me to make you bigger.”

“Yes, like you did for Royal,” she said and her voice was calming as she talked more.

“He says if I don’t do it he’ll kill my friend.”

“He just wants us to be able to love each other.”

“I know, but he says that you’ll torture my friend if I don’t do it.”

“Oh, I could never …” and then she saw something and started to make little screams. “Blood, blood on me, what did I do? What’s happening?” Her voice got farther away and Steve was back on the phone.

“I need you to meet us tonight, Princess.”

“She needs help, Steve.”

“I know what she needs,” he said, and again there was emotion in his voice.

“Let Julian go.”

“You should have guarded your friends and lovers better, Meredith.”

I started to say that Julian wasn’t my lover but Doyle touched my arm and shook his head. I trusted his judgment and said, “Believe me, Steve, I know we screwed up.”

“Meet us tonight. You can bring two guards, but if I sense that they’re casting spells then I will shoot your lover in the head. He’s human; he won’t heal.”

“I know he’s human,” I said.

“With all the talent in your bed, why take a human?” he asked.

I thought that wasn’t an idle question for Steve. “He’s my friend.”

“Do you love him?”

I hesitated because I wasn’t sure which answer would keep Julian safest.

Doyle nodded.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then come with just two guards and it can’t be the Darkness or the Killing Frost. If I see either of them I’ll just shoot him.”

“Okay, I won’t have them with me as my guards. Now where do I meet you?”

He gave me an address. I wrote it down on the paper that Frost brought from the bedside, and repeated it to him so there wouldn’t be a mistake. Lives have been lost over a transposed number more than once.

“Be here at eight. By eight-thirty we’ll assume you’re not coming and I’ll let Bitter do what she wants to him.” He lowered his voice and whispered, “You saw the last bodies. She’s getting better at killing. She enjoys it now. She’s picked her illustration and it’s not from a child’s book.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a textbook, a medical textbook image. Don’t be late.” The phone went dead in my hand.

“Did you hear that last part?” I asked.

They had.

“Fuck, I didn’t think Julian was in danger. Why him?”

“That day you snuggled up to him on the street they must have been watching,” Rhys said.

“There were police wizards at the scene. Rhys, he might have been working his own crime scene.”

“Makes sense.”

“And if they were watching the house they know he stayed over and didn’t leave until morning,” Doyle said.

“He’s been living with another man for more than five years. Why wouldn’t they assume he was sleeping with one of you?”

“Because Steve Patterson is heterosexual and he’ll think girl before he thinks boy because of it,” Rhys said.

“A medical textbook. She’s going to butcher him.”

Rhys leaned in the doorway as Frost and Doyle looked at each other. “The question is, are they already at this address or will they move Julian to the meeting spot?” Rhys said.

“Do we tell Lucy? Do we tell the police?” I asked.

The men exchanged a look. Doyle said, “If we don’t bring the police in we can simply kill them. They don’t want me at your side, that’s fine. I am the Darkness. They won’t see me until it’s too late.”

“If we just plan to kill them, it’s easier,” Rhys said, “simpler.”

“What gives Julian the best chance to get out of this alive and whole?” I asked.

They exchanged a look among them again. “No police,” Doyle said.

Rhys nodded. “No police.”

Frost hugged me, and whispered it into my hair. “No police.”

And just like that the plan changed again. We wouldn’t call the police. We’d just kill them. I should have been human enough to be bothered by that, but I kept hearing Julian’s voice over the phone and her voice asking him to scream for her. I kept seeing their victims. I remembered my dream with Royal dead in it. I thought about what they planned on doing to Julian and might be doing to him right this minute. I didn’t feel bad as we planned how to find the address, scout it undetected, and decide how best to save Julian. If we could take them alive, we would, but we only had one priority: Julian as unhurt as possible, and the only dead: Steve and Bittersweet. Beyond that it was all fair game.

Rhys was right. It was much simpler.

THE ADDRESS WAS A HOUSE IN THE HILLS. IT WAS A NICE HOUSE, OR
had been before the bank got it and the housing market crashed. Apparently our serial killers were squatting in the house. I wondered what they’d do if the estate agent brought prospective buyers around unexpectedly. Probably best that that didn’t happen.

Sholto came back to L.A. He was the Lord of That Which Passes Between. The tree line and the yard of the house was a between place, just like where the beach met the ocean, or where a cultivated field abutted a wild place. He could bring more than a dozen soldiers to the edge of the yard itself. But that was as close as he could get. Doyle had been in charge of scouting the area and had found the house thick with magical wards. They might be crazed serial killers but they knew their magical wards. It was a mix of human and fey magic, as good as any he’d seen in years, which was high praise.

It meant we would have to be inside the wards and just trust that either we wouldn’t need Sholto and his backup, or that we could stall until they smashed through the walls. He was going to bring the Red Caps because the magical wards wouldn’t stop them. They’d just avoid the windows and doors, which were the most heavily warded, and make new doors in the walls themselves where there were no wards.
Demi-fey were strong, but they didn’t think about that kind of brute force any more than humans did. It was an edge for us, but we needed more.

Frost was coming with Sholto and the Red Caps. Doyle would go in ahead with Cathbodua and Usna, who were the other two guards about whom he actually said, “They hide almost as well as I do. I would trust them to do this.” Again, high praise.

The question was, who would go in as my two overt guards? Barinthus asked to go. “I have failed you, Merry. I have been arrogant and unhelpful, but for this I am ideal. I can take more damage than even most of the sidhe. I have used diplomacy for centuries but it’s not because I lack skill with any weapon.” Doyle had backed him on that.

Barinthus had added, “And I am proof against most magic no matter what it is.”

I’d studied his face, not sure if he was just bragging again.

“I am the sea made into flesh, Merry. You cannot set the sea on fire. You cannot drain it dry. You cannot even poison all of it. You can hit it, but the blow does you no good. Being by the ocean has given me back much of my power. Let me do this for you. Let me prove that I was worthy to be Essus’s friend, and that I am yours.”

In the end both Doyle and Frost agreed that he was a good choice and so he was one.

“The other one has to be me,” Rhys said. “I’m third in charge and almost as good with weapons as the two big guys here, better with an axe. And I’m almost back to my old power level. I can kill fey with a touch of my hand; you’ve seen me do it.”

“Have you tried doing it when faerie wasn’t touching either you or the victim?” I asked.