“The queen would say, ‘Where is my Darkness? Someone bring me my Darkness.’ You would appear, or simply step closer to her, and then someone would bleed or die,” I said.

“I was her weapon and her general. I did what I was bid.”

I studied his face, and I knew it wasn’t just the black wraparound sunglasses that kept me from reading him. He could hide everything behind his face. He had spent too many years beside a mad queen, where the wrong look at the wrong moment could get you sent to the Hallway of Mortality, the torture chamber. Torture could last a long time for the immortal, especially if you healed well.

“I was lesser fey once, Meredith,” Frost said. He’d been Jack Frost, and, literally, human belief plus needing to be stronger to protect the woman he loved had turned him into the Killing Frost. But once he had been simply little Jackie Frost, just one minor being in the entourage of Winter’s power. The woman he had changed himself completely for was centuries in her human grave, and now he loved me: the only non-aging, non-immortal sidhe royal ever. Poor Frost—he couldn’t seem to love people who would outlive him.

“I know you were not always sidhe.”

“But I remember when he was the Darkness to me, and I feared him as much as any. Now he is my truest friend and my captain, because that other Doyle was centuries before you were born.”

I studied his face, and even around his sunglasses I saw the gentleness—a piece of softness that he’d only let me see in the last few weeks. I realized that just as he would have had Doyle’s back in battle, he did the same now. He had distracted me from my anger, and put himself in the way of it, as if I were a blade to be avoided.

I held out a hand to him, and he took it. I stopped pulling against Doyle’s arm, and just held them both. “You are right. You are both right. I knew Doyle’s history before he came to my side. Let me try this again.” I looked up at Doyle, still with Frost’s hand in mine. “You aren’t suggesting that we test our theory on random fey?”

“No, but in honesty I do not have another way to test.”

I thought about it, and then shook my head. “Neither do I.”

“Then what are we to do?” Frost asked.

“We warn the demi-fey, and then we go to the beach.”

“I thought this would end our day out,” Doyle said.

“When you can’t do anything else, you go about your day. Besides, everyone is meeting us at the beach. We can talk about this problem there as well as at the house. Why not let some of us enjoy the sand and water while the rest of us debate immortality and murder?”

“Very practical,” Doyle said.

I nodded. “We’ll stop off at the Fael Tea Shop on the way to the beach.”

“The Fael is not on the way to the beach,” Doyle said.

“No, but if we leave word there about the demi-fey, the news will spread.”

“We could leave word with Gilda, the Fairy Godmother,” Frost said.

“No, she might keep the knowledge to herself so she can say later that I didn’t warn the demi-fey because I thought I was too good to care.”

“Do you truly think she hates you more than she loves her people?” Frost asked.

“She was the ruling power among the fey exiles in Los Angeles. The lesser fey went to her to settle disputes. Now they come to me.”

“Not all of them,” Frost said.

“No, but enough that she thinks I’m trying to take over her business.”

“We want no part of her businesses, legal or illegal,” Doyle said.

“She was human once, Doyle. It makes her insecure.”

“Her power does not feel human,” Frost said, and he shivered.

I studied his face. “You don’t like her.”

“Do you?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“There is always something twisted inside the minds and bodies of humans who are given access to the wild magic of faerie,” Doyle said.

“She got a wish granted,” I said, “and she wished to be a fairy godmother, because she didn’t understand that there is no such thing among us.”

“She’s made herself into a power to be reckoned with in this city,” Doyle said.

“You’ve scouted her, haven’t you?”

“She all but threatened you outright if you kept trying to steal her people away. I investigated a potential enemy’s stronghold.”

“And?” I asked.

“She should be frightened of us,” he said, and his voice was that voice of before, when he’d been only a weapon and not a person to me.

“We stop by the Fael, and then we’ll talk about what to do with the other godmother. If we tell her and she tells no one, then it is we who can say that she cares more about her jealousy of me than about her own people.”

“Clever,” Doyle said.

“Ruthless,” Frost said.

“It would only be ruthless if I didn’t warn the demi-fey some other way. I won’t risk another life for some stupid power play.”

“It is not stupid to her, Meredith,” Doyle said. “It is all the power she has ever had, or will ever have. People will do very bad things to keep their perceived power intact.”

“Is she dangerous to us?”

“In a full frontal assault, no, but if it is trickery and deceit, then she has fey who are loyal to her and hate the sidhe.”

“Then we keep an eye on them.”

“We are,” he said.

“Are you spying on people without telling me?” I asked.

“Of course I am,” he said.

“Shouldn’t you run things like that by me first?”

“Why?”

I looked at Frost. “Can you explain to him why I should know these things?”

“I think he is treating you like most royals want to be treated,” said Frost.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Plausible deniability is very important among monarchs,” he said.

“You see Gilda as a fellow monarch?” I asked.

“She sees herself as such,” Doyle said. “It is always better to let petty kings keep their crowns until we want the crown and the head it sits upon.”

“This is the twenty-first century, Doyle. You can’t run our life like it’s the tenth century.”

“I have been watching your news programs and reading books on governments that are present-day, Merry. Things have not changed so very much. It is just more secret now.”

I wanted to ask him how he knew that. I wanted to ask him if he knew government secrets that would make me doubt my government, and my country. But in the end, I didn’t ask. For one thing, I wasn’t certain he’d tell me the truth if he thought it would upset me. And for another, one mass murder seemed like enough for one day. I had Frost call home and warn our own demi-fey to stay close to the house and to be wary of strangers, because the only thing I was sure of was that it wasn’t one of us. Beyond that I had no ideas. I’d worry about spies and governments on another day, when the image of the winged dead weren’t still dancing behind my eyes.

Chapter Three

I drove to the Fael tea shop, and Doyle was right. It wasn’t close to the beach, where everyone would be waiting. It was blocks away in a part of town that had once been a bad area but had been gentrified, which used to simply mean claimed by the yuppies, but had come to mean a place that the faeries had moved into and made more magical. It would then become a tourist stronghold, and a place for teens and college students to hang out. The young have always been drawn to the fey. It’s why for centuries you put charms on your children to keep us from taking the best and brightest and the most creative. We like artists.

Doyle had his usual death grip on the door and the dashboard. He always rode that way in the front seat. Frost was less afraid of the car and L.A. traffic, but Doyle insisted that as captain he should be beside me. The fact that it was an act of bravery to him just made it cute, though I kept the cute comment to myself. I wasn’t certain how he would take it.

He managed to say, “I do like this car better than the other one you drive. It’s higher from the ground.”