She smiled more fully. She paused, her eyes shifting as she received a sending, probably several under the circumstances. Her eyes came back to mine. “Leonard Murdock is here and one of his brothers . . . Gerard? . . . Yes, Gerard. I need to be out there.” She moved to the door. “You can stay here tonight. I can protect you from what’s coming for a while.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, as she slipped out into the grand hall.
I reached down and closed the commissioner’s eyes. His sons didn’t need to see the damage. Guests clustered outside the door, shock and excitement on their faces. The music had stopped long ago. Police officers marched in, Leo and Gerard pushing to the front. My chest ached at the pain on their faces. When they reached me, I held my hand lightly to Murdock’s chest. “He’s on the floor. He was essence-shocked. I don’t think he even knew what hit him.”
Gerard muscled in front of Leo. “Let me through, dammit.”
I let them pass and followed another four officers inside. They closed the doors. A strangled sob came from Gerard as he stood with hunched shoulders. Leo knelt on one knee and checked his father for a pulse. He knew what essence shock looked like. His hand fell away slowly, and he stared at his father as the other officers spread around the room. He rose, and Gerard clung to his lapel, shaking it with his fist. Murdock hugged his brother close as he shook with sobs. Our eyes met.
“You’ve got blood on you,” he said.
“It’s mine. He . . . I was shot,” I said. It didn’t seem like a good time to tell them their dead father shot me.
Gerard whirled around. “Who did this?”
“Manus ap Eagan. He’s in a coma,” I said as neutrally as possible.
Gerard’s face became redder. “I want to see him. I want to see the bastard. Where is he?”
I lightly put my arm across his waist as he tried to pass. “Give yourself a minute, Gerry.”
Leo hugged him from the side, his body shield flickering. I gently squeezed Gerry’s arm, then dropped my hand. Murdock closed his eyes and touched his forehead to his brother’s.
Paramedics and more police entered. The medical examiner hovered in the background like a carrion crow. I didn’t know the Chestnut Hill police, but they were a lot more professional in a fey situation than I was used to. Maybe because Chestnut Hill had a lot of fey folk—a lot of rich fey folk. One of the officers moved me to a couch on the far side of the room and began to interview me. He asked several times if I were injured, confused by all the blood on me. A paramedic made me take off the jacket, convinced I was in shock and bleeding profusely somewhere. I didn’t blame them. I was uninjured, yet soaked in my own blood.
The interview was thorough. It helped that I was a druid. Between my inborn talent for instant recall and my understanding of what the police needed to hear, it went quickly under the circumstances. I did not hide the fact that Manus killed the commissioner. There was no need. Eagan’s essence signature saturated the commissioner’s body. When his body arrived at the morgue, Janey Likesmith would have no difficulty registering it. Besides, the Guildmaster was acting in my defense in the confusion of the moment, though why he used so much essence I didn’t understand.
The real aggressor in the room was dead.
31
I waited on the second floor of the Guildmaster’s house. At either end of the hall, Danann security agents guarded the stairs. The Guild and police had locked down the entire property while the local police went through the list of guests and released them one by one. Commissioner Murdock’s body was long since gone. Ryan macGoren had arrived shortly after the first responders, along with the mayor of Boston and the governor of Massachusetts. They spent time behind closed doors in a meeting room downstairs, emerging hours later with grim faces.
Tibbet came out of Eagan’s bedroom, and we hugged. As a fey, she could count on a resilient physical constitution, but that didn’t prevent deep worry lines from forming around her eyes. She idly rubbed my arm. “I’ve had a room prepared for you upstairs.”
I adjusted some of her braids away from her forehead. “I’ve been thinking about that, Tibs, and decided I should go home. Eagan had his reasons for keeping a public distance from me. I don’t think he’d want me here. You have enough to deal with anyway without me complicating things.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“I’m sure,” I said.
A commotion at the top of the main stairs drew our attention. Several police officers—Leo and Gerard among them—were arguing with the Danann agents. I trailed after Tibs as she rushed toward them. Halfway down the flight of stairs, Barnard and Kevin Murdock waited with intent, angry faces. Davis Jones, the Superintendent in Chief and the commissioner’s second-in-command, gestured for the officers to step back as Tibbet approached.
“I need to see the Guildmaster,” Jones said.
“This has already been discussed. The Guildmaster is in a coma. You need to coordinate any further inquiries through the governor’s office and the Guild,” Tibbet said.
“I would like to confirm that he’s really in a coma.” Jones leaned his wide, imposing frame between the guards and toward Tibbet.
I knew that type of thing didn’t work on Tibbet. To prove my point, she calmly pressed the Danann agents to the side and moved closer. Tibbet is tall for a brownie, but she had to look up into Jones’s face. “I am the Guildmaster’s attorney. My client is unavailable.” She relaxed her stance and placed a sympathetic hand on Jones’s arm. “It’s been a long night, Davis. We all need to rest.”
Jones dropped his voice. “I’ve got angry men, Tibbet. They want to know why he’s not under arrest.”
“I’m going in there,” Gerard Murdock said. He pushed past Jones, but a Danann agent stepped in front of him. Leo pulled him back.
Gerard was not in the best frame of mind. I needed to do something for the Murdocks. “Tibbet, will you let Leo through?” I asked.
She considered my request and moved aside. Leo stepped between the guards, and I escorted him down the hall. “How are you holding up?” I asked.
“Barely. They’re already rumbling about diplomatic immunity,” he said.
“That’s expected, Leo. That’s why I thought you should see Eagan’s out of it. People will know you’re not using political games for a cover-up.”
I opened the door to the bedroom. The pungent odor of burning herbs hung in the air. Gillen Yor chanted under his breath as he leaned over Eagan’s still body. A mix of druid and brownie assistants worked quietly behind him. On the opposite side of the bed, Briallen moved into the pool of light from the lamp on the nightstand. I hadn’t known she was there. She immediately stopped whatever she was doing and hugged Murdock. “I’m so sorry, Leonard,” she whispered into his ear.
He cleared his throat. “Thank you. What’s his status?” “Critical. His wasting disease had already compromised his health, and the expenditure of essence almost depleted what was left. He might die,” she said.
Eagan’s ashen skin pulled over a shrunken frame. His wings—normally large and lit with the powerful reserves of essence of a Danann fairy—curled dim and opaque like swaddling around his body. I had seen something similar before. Briallen once showed me a dead flit. When fairies die, their wings eventually close around them like a cocoon. Eagan was on his way out.
“Why did he do it, Briallen? Why did he kill my father?” Murdock asked.
Briallen studied the dying fairy. “We have to hope he wakes up, Leonard. Maybe it was instinctive. Maybe he couldn’t control it because of what’s wrong with him. I don’t know. If nothing else, Manus is a shrewd politician. I cannot imagine why he would have intentionally caused an international incident of this proportion.”
Murdock nodded, a tiny muscle on his jawline twitching. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and handed me his keys. “Can you get my car? It’s in the driveway somewhere. I need to get my brothers out of here.”