“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.
Chapter Fourteen
Maeve Reed’s beach house sat above the ocean, half on the cliff and half resting on wood and concrete supports designed to stand up to earthquakes, mudslides, and anything else the Southern California climate could throw at the house. It sat in a gated community complete with a uniformed guard and a gatehouse. It was what kept the press from following us. Because they’d found us. It was almost a type of magic how they always found us again, like a dog on a scent. There weren’t as many on the narrow curving road, but enough to stop and look disappointed as we went through the gates.
Ernie was at the gate. He was an older African American who had once been a soldier, but had been injured badly enough that his army career had gone away. He would never tell me what the injury had been, and I knew enough human culture not to ask outright.
He frowned at the cars parked out of reach of the gate. “I’ll call the police so we’ll have the trespassing on record.”
“They stay away from the gate when you’re on duty, Ernie,” I said.
He smiled at me. “Thank you, Princess. I do my best.” He tipped an imaginary hat at Doyle and Frost, and said, “Gentlemen.”
They nodded back and away we went. If the beach house hadn’t been behind a gate, we’d have been at the mercy of the media, and after watching the windows crack at Matilda’s deli, I didn’t think that would be a good idea tonight. It would have been nice to think that the accident would make the paparazzi back off, but it would probably make me bigger news, more of a target. It was ironic, but almost certainly true.
The car’s phone sounded. Doyle started, and I spoke into the air toward the microphone. “Hello.”
“Merry, how close to the house are you guys?” Rhys asked.
“Almost there,” I said.
He gave a chuckle that sounded tinny because of the bluetooth. “Good, our cook is getting nervous that the food will get cold before you arrive.”
“Galen?” I made it a question.
“Yep, he hasn’t even taken anything off the stove, but he’s fretting about that so he won’t fret about you. Barinthus told me you called and shared some excitement. Are you okay?”
“Fine, but tired,” I said.
Doyle spoke loudly, “We are almost to the turnoff.”
“The bluetooth only works for the driver,” I said, not for the first time.
Doyle said, “Why doesn’t it work for everyone in the front seat?”
“Merry, what did you say?” Rhys asked.
“Doyle said something.” More quietly to Doyle, I said, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?” Rhys asked.
“Sorry, still not used to the bluetooth. We’re almost there, Rhys.”
A huge black raven perched on an ancient fence post by the road. It cawed and flexed its wings. “Tell Cathbodua we’re fine, too.”
“You see one of her pets?” he asked.
“Yes.” The raven winged skyward and began to circle the car.
“She’ll know more about you than I do then,” he said, and sounded a little discouraged.
“Are you all right? You sound tired,” I said.
“Fine, like you,” he said, and laughed again, then added, “but I just got here myself. The simple case Jeremy sent me on turned out to be not so simple.”
“We can talk about it over dinner,” I said.
“I’d like your opinion, but I think there’s a different agenda for dinner.”
“What do you mean?”
Frost leaned up as far as the seat belt would let him, and asked, “Has something else happened? Rhys sounds worried.”
“Did something else happen while we were gone?” I asked. I was looking for the turnoff to the house. The light was beginning to fade. It wasn’t quite twilight, but it was still a turn I missed if I wasn’t paying attention.
“Nothing new, Merry. I swear.”
I braked sharply for the turnoff, which made Doyle grab the car tightly enough that I heard the door frame protest. He was strong enough to tear the door off its hinges. I just hoped he didn’t dent it because of his phobia.
I spoke as I eased the SUV over the rise at the top of the road and down the steep lip of the private driveway. “I’m on the driveway. See you in a few.”
“We’ll be waiting.” He hung up and I concentrated on the steep drive. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like it. It was hard to tell behind the dark glasses, but I think Doyle had closed his eyes as I wound the SUV around the turns.
The outside lights were already on, and the shortest guard I had was pacing outside the front of the house, white trench coat flapping in the ocean breeze. Rhys was the only one of the guards who had gotten his own private detective license. He’d always loved old film noir movies, and when he wasn’t doing undercover work he liked his trench coat and fedoras. They were just usually white or cream to match his waist-length curls. His hair was flying in the wind along with his coat. I realized that his hair was tangling in the wind like mine had earlier.
“Rhys’s hair tangles in the wind,” I said.
“Yes,” Frost said.
“Is that why he only has it to his waist?”
“I believe so,” he said.
“Why does his hair tangle and yours doesn’t?”
“Doyle’s doesn’t either. He just likes the braid.”
“Same question. Why?”
I pulled the car to a stop beside Rhys’s car. He started striding toward us. He was smiling, but I knew his body language well enough to see the anxiety. He was wearing a white eye patch to match his coat today. He wore them when he was meeting with clients, or out in the world at large. Most people, and some fey, found the scars where his right eye had once been disturbing. At home when it was just us, he didn’t bother with the patch.
“We don’t know why some of our hair does not tangle,” Frost said. “It’s just the way it’s always been.”
With that unsatisfying answer, Rhys was at my door. I unlocked it so he could help me out of the car, but the anxiety had turned his one blue eye with its three circles of blue—cornflower blue, sky blue, and winter white—to spinning slowly like a lazy storm. It meant that his magic was close to the surface, which usually took a lot of emotion, or concentration. Was it anxiety about my safety today, or was it something the Grey Detective Agency and he were working on? I couldn’t even remember, except that it had something to do with corporate sabotage using magic.