"I suppose that's one way of looking at it," I said.
Rhys hugged me, bumping his cheek against my hair. "Cheer up, sweets, we won."
"No, the Seelie came to the rescue and saved our asses," I said.
The female EMT came to touch Biggs's shoulder. "We're ready to go."
Nelson was strapped to a gurney and looked unconscious. Cortez was beside her, looking more annoyed than worried.
"Did Ms. Nelson get burned, too?" I asked.
Biggs opened his mouth to answer, but the med techs made him go with them. Veducci answered me. "She seems to be having an adverse reaction to the spell that the king put on you."
The look he gave me was entirely too knowledgeable. He knew magic. He wasn't a registered practitioner, but that didn't mean anything. A lot of humans who had psychic ability chose not to use it as a job.
"A look like that used to get a question," Rhys said.
"What question would that be?" Veducci asked.
"Which eye can you see me with?" Rhys said.
I tensed beside him, because I knew how this story always ended.
Veducci grinned. "The answer you're supposed to give is neither."
"The truth is both eyes," Frost said, and his voice was way too solemn for comfort.
Veducci's grin faded around the edges. "None of you are trying to hide what you are. Everyone can see you."
"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 planned on doing some errands for Ms. Reed, then coming back to pick us up in about three hours, or at least check on us. Surprisingly, it hadn't been three hours yet. "A ride would be lovely. Thank you, Officer," I said.
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 cannot allow the use of magic on my patient."
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 cannot authorize it."