“Silence, Kingmaker!” She had glanced back at him when she yelled, and I realized that she must have made him kneel, because I could not see him in that part of the room.
She turned back to me, and her eyes shone as if there was light behind them. It was like watching the moon behind grey clouds, pushing light up through the colors of her eyes, but the eyes themselves did not truly glow. It was an effect I had never seen in any other sidhe’s eyes.
“Then what is this smear of red on her mouth, and on the face of my Killing Frost?” She let the fur she’d wrapped herself in fall to the floor, as she put her thumb against my mouth and rubbed hard enough that I had to fight not to make a small pain sound. There was still enough lipstick left to stain her white thumb.
She stood there nude and pale and frightening. If she was beautiful I could not see it. Andais often stripped before she tortured people, so she wouldn’t ruin her clothes. Her nudity did not bode well.
I finally realized that she intended to get angry about me playing favorites in front of the media. She was going to throw a fit, and punish me for kissing Frost, instead of dealing with the murders. Displacement is a fine coping mechanism, but this was not sane.
No logic would save me. All the arguments that I had prepared were dust before her incomprehensible anger.
“Do you think that I give orders simply to be ignored?”
I spoke carefully around her grip on my chin. “I had to distract the cameras…”
She let me go so abruptly that I stumbled. Doyle caught my arm, then took me into the circle of his arm, putting me farther from her and closer to the middle of the men. I couldn’t argue with the precaution. She was not acting like herself. Andais was temperamental and a sadist, but she never let either interfere this badly with the business of her court. We had a dead human reporter, and cameras still in the faerie mound. It was an emergency, and we needed to act swiftly to minimize the damage, no matter what choice we made. Even if the choice was to hide the bodies and act as if it hadn’t happened, it needed to be done quickly. The more people who knew the secret the less chance of keeping it.
If the police were going to bring in forensics for the crime scene, every minute contaminated the crime scene. Every second might be losing us some clue.
“Madeline told me that our Frost had lost control in front of the cameras.” She paced a tight circle, then turned back to look at Frost. It was as if any target, any problem, was better than addressing the murders. Did she think Cel’s people had done this? Was that why she didn’t want to decide on a course of action? Was she afraid to find the truth, afraid of where it would lead?
“Are the reporters gone then?” I asked softly.
“They were about to file out all nice and neat,” she said, and her voice was rising as she spoke and paced, naked and dangerous, “until one group realized they were missing a photographer. A photographer!” She screamed the last word. “How did he break through the spells that were supposed to make it impossible for him to leave the guarded areas?” She didn’t seem to be asking anyone in particular, so no one answered.
“Was there a camera found?” she asked, and her voice was almost normal.
“Yes, my queen,” Doyle said.
“Would it have pictures of the crime?”
“Perhaps,” Doyle said.
“We’ll need to send the film out to be developed,” I said.
“Have we no one of faerie who could do it for us?”
“No, my queen.”
“What else did you find on this reporter?”
“We haven’t searched the body thoroughly,” I said.
“Why have you not searched the body thoroughly?” she asked, and the edge of near hysterical anger shadowed the last word.
I swallowed, and let my breath out slowly. It was now or never. Doyle’s hand squeezed my arm, as if he was saying, “Don’t.” But if I were ever to be queen, Andais would have to step down for me. She was immortal, and I was not, so she would always be a presence in the court. I had to get some control between her and me now, or I would never truly be queen. Never truly be safe from her anger.
“There are clues on the body that a scientific team could find. The less we touch it, the better the science will work.”
“What are you babbling about, Meredith?”
Doyle squeezed my arm tighter. “Do you remember what you said when my father was killed?”
She stopped her pacing and looked at me. Her eyes were wary. “I said many things when Essus died.”
“You said we were not to allow the human police inside the faerie mounds. That no one was to talk to them or answer their questions, because we would find the assassins with magic.”
She stood very still, and gave me unfriendly eyes, but she answered. “I remember those words.”
“We failed with magic because the assassins were as good or better at magic than those who bespelled the wounds and the body.”
She nodded. “I have long thought that among my smiling court, my toadie nobles, the murderer of my brother sits. I know that, Meredith, and it is a small constant torment that that death went unpunished.”
“As it is for me,” I said. “I want to solve these murders, Aunt Andais. I want the person or persons responsible caught and punished. I want to show the media that there is justice in the Unseelie Court, and we are not afraid of new knowledge and new ways.”
“You are babbling again,” she said, crossing her arms under her tight firm breasts.
“I want to contact the police and bring in a forensic team.”
“A what?”
“Scientists who specialize in helping the police solve crimes in the human world.”
She was shaking her head. “I do not want the human police tramping through here.”
“Nor do I, but a few policemen, and a few scientists. Just a few, just enough to gather evidence. All the sidhe are royal, titled; they all have diplomatic immunity, so technically we can dictate to an extent how much police involvement we allow.”
“And you think this will catch whoever did this?”
“I do.” I stepped a little away from Doyle, so I wasn’t huddling against him. “Whoever did this is worried about magic tracking them down, but it will never occur to them that we would use forensic science inside the land of faerie. They will not have protected against it, and in fact, they can’t protect against it, not completely.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“We, even the sidhe, shed skin cells, hairs, saliva; all of it can be used to trace back to the person. Science can use a smaller piece than is needed for a spell. Not a lock of hair, but the root of a hair. Not a pound of flesh, but an invisible fleck of it.”
“You are certain that it will work? Certain that if I allow this intrusion, this invasion of our privacy, human science will solve this crime?”
I licked my lips. “I am certain if there is evidence to find, they will find it.”
“If,” she said, and she started pacing the room again, but slowly, quietly this time. “‘If’ means you are not certain. ‘If’ means, dear niece, that you may bring all this upon us and the murderer may go free. If we bring in the police and they do not solve the reporter’s death, it will undo all the good publicity I have acquired for us in the last two decades.”
“I think it will work, but either way the media will be impressed with your willingness to allow the modern police into your faerie mound. No one has ever done that, not even at the golden court.”
She glanced back at me, but she was moving, slowly, toward Barinthus. He was indeed kneeling at the foot of her bed, on a black fur rug. “You think we will gain media points over Taranis and his shining people.”
“I think this will show that we meant no harm to anyone, and that such things are not tolerated among the Unseelie, contrary to all those centuries of dark talk.”
She stood in front of Barinthus now, but still spoke to me. “You truly believe that the media will forgive us allowing one of their own to be murdered simply because we invite in the police?”