A Shiver of Light (Merry Gentry #9)(43)

“Your goblin twin lovers, Holly and Ash, are quite frightening. That you’ve armed them with your hand of flesh and blood respectively makes them very dangerous.”
“I did not share my hands of power with them, it just happened to be their latent magic.”
“Are you sure of that?” she asked, and gave me a very direct look out of those famous blue eyes.
“Kitto’s hand of power isn’t one of mine.”
“He can bring people through a mirror even against their will; that is almost useless as a hand of power.”
“It helped him and Rhys kill the goblin who tormented both of them,” I said.
“His hand of power is so useless there is no name for it.”
“It’s incredibly rare, but it has a name: the hand of reaching,” I said.
“The hand of reaching allowed small armies to be brought through a reflective surface. Your goblin cannot do that.”
“Perhaps not, but the name is for the ability, not the degree of power.”
“It needs a new name, something grand,” she said.
I shrugged.
She frowned at me. She frowned a lot, actually; if she’d been human she’d have had frown lines by now, but she was sidhe and would never truly wrinkle. She could get some lines here and there, but she’d never have the lines of her unhappiness carved into her face like most people would.
“It’s not just me who thinks the twins have only inherited your own magic, Meredith, nor am I the only one who thinks Kitto’s hand of power is weak.”
“I know that,” I said, “but the others don’t say it to my face as much.”
“You are their ruler; they dare not speak their minds to you.”
“And you are Maeve Reed, the Golden Goddess of Hollywood, and you don’t plan on going back to faerie, even if Taranis lifted your exile.”
She looked startled for a second, and then smiled. “How did you know that? I wasn’t even certain myself until recently.”
“I may not be your ruler, but I try to be your friend, and friends notice things.”
She looked embarrassed then. “I am sorry, Meredith; I’ve been rude by human standards, and you’re right. I’ve been exiled long enough that human culture is more natural to me than any in faerie, so my apologies.”
“Please don’t treat Kitto as less than the others anymore. He is my lover and maybe one of the fathers of my children. I would ask that you respect him for that, if for no other reason.” 
She gave a nod that was almost a bow, but not quite. “If you wish the goblins to be thought better of, then you do need to bring one into a power that isn’t one of yours, and is more impressive than mirror-whatever.”
“I’ve been discussing that with Doyle, Rhys, and the others. When I am able to have sex again, I will try to do just that.”
Maeve shuddered. “I honestly don’t know how you can have sex with Holly and Ash. Kitto, I sort of understand, he’s like this beautiful miniature man, and he’s kind to the point I’m amazed he survived among such a savage race, but the twins … they are savages, Meredith.”
“What they are, or are not, is my business. I’m not asking you to compromise your racial purity.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that, Meredith. You seem determined to take insult.”
“And you seem determined to give it.”
We stood there looking at each other, almost glaring at each other. I was tired of Maeve’s attitude issues. She hadn’t been like this before she went to Europe to make the last movie. I didn’t know if something had happened on the trip, or if it was something that had happened here, but something had changed, and not for the better.
“I do not mean to give offense,” she said.
“I’d believe that if you didn’t keep doing it. What happened in Europe, Maeve? Or what did you find here when you came home to make you angry with me, and my men?”
“My son treats you and your men as his parents, more than me. That hurts, Meredith.”
“I am sorry for that, and we are willing to take the reality show offer to help you afford to stay home more.”
“I told you at the hospital what I made on my last film, Meredith; there is no way that a reality TV contract will come close to that. We will be giving up our privacy for nothing. If anything, the cameras will record that Liam doesn’t think of me as his mommy except as an empty word. Do you think I want to be humiliated like that on national television?”
“You’re making it sound like Liam is dumping you for someone else. He’s a baby, he doesn’t understand.”
“I am Maeve Reed, the Golden Goddess of Hollywood; I can’t be seen as losing to anyone, not even the first American-born faerie princess.”
“You aren’t talking about Liam now, are you?”
“I’ve been a sex symbol since the early sixties, Meredith, and yet you have all the attention of the most desirable men in the household. I understand why, but my image is everything for my job. My agent and my publicist think that a reality show here could harm the image that I’ve built up over decades. I’m one of the most desirable, and desired, women in Hollywood, but I can’t compare to you in my own home.”
“Is that your agent and publicist talking, or just you?”
“All three of us.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, Meredith, perception is everything in this town. If people believe that someone like you is this much more desirable than me, it will hurt my earning power, and maybe my box office draw.”
“What do you mean, ‘someone like me’?”
She blinked those big, beautiful eyes at me and did an expression I’d seen her do in a dozen films. I’d learned that was one of the ways she hid her true feelings in the real world. I didn’t know if other actors did it, but she did; she acted to hide. It was her version of a cop face: actor face.
“Answer me, Maeve; what did you mean, ‘someone like me’?”“Someone who isn’t a movie sex symbol,” she said.
I shook my head. “That’s not what you meant.”
“Now you’re telling me what I mean, as if I don’t know my own mind?”
“Do you think the reason that Bryluen can bespell my mind so easily is because I’m not pure enough sidhe, just like Kitto?”
“I did not say that.”
“And that is you avoiding answering the question; very sidhe of you, because we don’t lie outright. We just prevaricate until the listener reads into our words whatever they want to hear, and we let them believe it.”
“You’re overthinking this, Meredith.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, and that was a clear answer,” she said.
“The one you just gave, yes, it was, but it’s not the answer to my question, is it?”
“Drop this, Meredith, please. I’m sorry if I implied anything.”
“What if I don’t drop it?”
“What is wrong with you today, Meredith?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I had a meeting at the studio and they’re already trying to pressure me to go right back to filming. I told them I wanted some time with my son, but I’m one of their solid moneymakers and any year without a Maeve Reed film hits their profits.”
“You haven’t been home a week yet,” I said.
“If I leave again, Liam is going to just forget who I am.”
I went to her then and touched her arm. “Can you say no?”
“I can always say no.”
“Will it hurt your career, or put you in breach of a contract?”
She smiled and put her hand over mine where I was touching her arm. “You understand more than most people do about what really goes on at this level of ‘stardom.’” She raised her hand to do one set of quote marks.
“I’ve watched what you’ve been through in the last year. I’m amazed at how badly you get treated sometimes.”
“I have true power in this town; imagine what happens to actors who don’t.”
“It must be brutal,” I said.
“Hollywood will eat you, if you let it.”
“I wonder if reality TV stars have as big a challenge?”
“I don’t know, honestly; I only meet them after they’ve become stars and then it’s about their publicists trying to keep them in the news. I don’t know how different it is in the beginning, but you wouldn’t be like most reality stars. You’re already famous.”
“And that fame, like all my noble titles, doesn’t pay the bills.” 
“You could go back to being a private detective.”
“That won’t help you say no to the studio. For that, we need more money than a detective makes.”
“Thirty million dollars, Meredith; that is what I made for my last film. Nothing you can do will bring that kind of money in. I’m sorry, but it just won’t.”
“We have offers for a million here, a few hundred thousand there.”
“What’s the million dollars for?”
“They’ve been after me for a while to be a centerfold.”
“No, no, because I know some of your publicity offers are from family-oriented things. You can be the sexy young thing, or the beautiful mother with babies, but you can’t do both in the media, not in this country anyway.”
“I’d appreciate your advice on the offers coming in, then, because I’m tempted to go for the most money. I hadn’t thought about building an image.”