"You're just no fun," he said.

I frowned at him, but looked back at Galen, still kneeling before me and looking disappointed. I knew part of his look was from the ring not working for him as it had for the others, but that might not have been all of it. "How about you?" I asked him, gently. "Do you like electricity, too?"

He looked puzzled, but said, "I've never tried it in anything but small appliances."

"Did what the ring do just now feel good to you?"

"Yes."

I made a mental note. Even if I didn't like electricity as foreplay, if some of the men did, then things could be worked out. I was willing to use it on them for their pleasure, as long as I didn't have to experience it more than to check the strength of it. You never hook anything up to anyone else that you haven't let bite your own skin. Just a rule. You don't have to enjoy it yourself, but you do have to know what it's doing to the person who does.

"It would seem," Doyle said, "that the ring has grown in strength in every way."

I nodded. "I don't remember it ever giving that strong of a power surge before."

"But it didn't do between us what it did with Rhys and Frost," Galen said, sounding as unhappy as he looked. Whatever emotion flowed through Galen, you always knew it. It filled his face, his eyes. He'd begun to have moments when he could hide his feelings. I'd both been happy to see it and mourned the necessity of it. Galen with every thought clear in his eyes for all to read was damn near a political liability in the courts. He needed to master his outward emotions, but I had not enjoyed watching the process. It felt like we were stealing some of the innocent joy that made Galen, Galen.

I touched his face with my left hand, the hand I didn't wear the ring on. The queen had always worn the ring on her left hand, and I had first put it on the same hand, out of habit, and found the ring preferred being on my right hand. So it got to be on my right hand. I did not argue with relics of power any more than I could help it.

I pressed my hand against his cheek. He raised sad green eyes to me. "Rhys and Frost have come into their godhead. I think that's all the extra sensation between us meant."

"I'd love to argue," Rhys said, "but I agree with Merry."

"You really think so?" Galen asked, the way a child would, trusting that if you said a thing, then it would be true.

I stroked my fingers down the side of his face, from the soft warmth of his temple to the curve of his chin. "I don't just think it, Galen, I believe it."

"I believe it as well," Doyle said. "So as long as Meredith touches the other guards only briefly, it should not be a problem. All of the Unseelie Court knows that the ring is alive once more on her hand. Though perhaps not how very alive it has become."

"It was growing stronger even before the chalice returned," I said.

He nodded. "That is why we put it away in a drawer, so it would not discomfort our lovemaking."

Rhys did an exaggerated pout. "And I was having such fun."

My hand was still touching Galen, but I said to Rhys, "Do you want to be strapped down and have me run electricity along your skin?"

Rhys reacted as if I'd slapped him. The reaction of just thinking about it shuddering through his body. Watching him respond that strongly to the idea of it made me want to do it. Made me want to give him that much pleasure. "That was a big yes," I said.

He managed a breathy, "Oh, yes."

Galen was laughing, softly.

Rhys frowned at him. "What's so funny, green man?"

Galen was laughing so hard that it took him two tries to say, "You're a death god."

"Yeah, so what?" Rhys asked.

Galen sat flat on the floor, his knees tucked up in the smaller space, but turned so he could see Rhys. "I have this image in my head of you hooked up like Frankenstein's monster."

Rhys started to get angry, then he couldn't manage it. He smiled, a little, and the smile just got bigger until he was laughing with Galen.

"Who is Frankenstein's monster?" Frost asked.

That got them laughing even harder, and spread the laughter through the plane to those who knew the answer. Only Doyle and Frost were left out of the joke. The others had embraced television and all it could offer while in California. Even Kitto was laughing from under his blanket in the back. I don't know if the joke was that good, or you just had to be there, or if it was tension. I was betting on tension, because when the pilot told us we'd be landing in fifteen minutes, it just didn't seem that funny anymore.

CHAPTER 20

It seemed even less funny half an hour later. Of course, when you're about to walk into a major press conference, and you're certain they're going to ask questions you can't answer truthfully, nothing seems very funny.

More St. Louis city policemen than I'd seen in a while met us on the tarmac and closed ranks around us. With the guards around me, and the police around them, I felt like a very short flower inside some very tall walls. Next time I'd have to wear higher heels.

We entered the lounge that is just for private planes and there met the rest of my guards. The only one I knew well was Barinthus. I saw him when the police parted like a curtain, just a glimpse between Doyle's dark back and Galen's brown leather. Frost was behind me in a silver fox coat that nearly trailed on the ground. When I'd pointed out how many animals had died for the coat, he'd informed me that he'd owned the coat for more than fifty years, long before anyone thought badly of owning fur. He'd also touched my long leather coat and said, "Please don't complain to me when you're wearing half a cow."

"But I eat cow, so wearing leather uses the entire animal; it's not wasteful. You don't eat fox."

He'd gotten a strange look on his face. "You have no idea what I've eaten."

I didn't know what to say after that, so I gave up. Besides, the January cold had hit us like a hammer when we stepped out of the plane. Coming from Los Angeles to St. Louis in the middle of winter was almost a physical wrenching. It made me stumble on the steps. Frost steadied me, toasty in his immoral fur coat. Fur was warmer than leather, even if it was lined. But I huddled in my long leather coat, hands in leather gloves, and walked down the steps with Frost's bare hand on my elbow the whole way. When I was on flat ground he let me go, and everyone fell back into a bodyguard circle. Sage and Nicca brought up the rear. If we were attacked, no one was expecting much of Nicca. One, he wasn't used to having huge wings to deal with when he moved. Two, he was huddled in a cotton blanket over a bare chest. The sidhe can't freeze to death, but some of them can still be cold. Nicca was spring energy; he could be cold. His wings were held tight together, drooping like a frostbitten flower behind him.

Rhys cursed softly. "I should have gone shopping for a heavier coat."

"Told you so," Galen said, though he wasn't much better in his leather jacket. It was too damn cold for something that left your ass and legs bare.

Kitto was probably the warmest of us non-fur-bearing sidhe in a bulky down coat that was nearly a Day-Glo blue. It wasn't attractive, but he was warm.

The private lounge was warm enough that the difference between cold and hot fogged my dark glasses. When I took them off, Barinthus's hair gleamed through the forest of bodies around me. His hair isn't as shiny as Frost's, though few sidhe could boast that, but Barinthus has some of the most unusual hair in either court.

His hair was the color of ocean water. The heartrending turquoise of the Mediterranean; the many deeper blues of the Pacific; the bluish grey of the sea before a storm, melting into a blue that was nearly black. The color of water when it is deep and cold, and the currents run thick and heavy like movement of some great ocean beast. The colors moved, and flowed into each other, with every trick of the light, every turn of his head, so that it didn't seem like hair at all. But it was hair, hair like a cloak to the ankles of his nearly seven-foot frame. It took me a blink or two to realize that he was wearing a long leather coat dyed a deep sky blue like a robin's egg. His hair seemed to blend into the soft leather. He came toward us with his hands extended and a smile on his face.