CHAPTER 5
I CALLED MAJOR WALTERS OF THE ST. LOUIS POLICE DEPARTMENT, who had been in charge of our security at the airport the day before. I called from the only land line phone in the Unseelie sithen. The phone was in the queen’s office. Which always looked to me like a black and silver version of Louis the Fourteenth’s office if he had liked going to Goth dance clubs for the dissipated rich. It was elegant, dark, expensive, and exciting in that chill-up-your-spine way; modern, but with a feel of the antique; nouveau riche done right. It was also a little claustrophobic to me. Too many shades of black and grey in too small a space, as if a Goth curtain salesman had persuaded them to cover every inch of the room with his wares.The phone was white and always looked like bones on the secretary’s black desk. Or maybe that’s just me projecting. I did not understand the mood of the queen tonight. I’d asked Barinthus, as we walked to the office, if she’d given him any clues as to why she was behaving so oddly, and he’d said no. No clues.
Why was I calling the St. Louis police when the faerie lands are technically in Illinois? Because Major Walters was the current police liaison for the lands of faerie and the human police. Once upon a time, a few hundred years ago, there’d been an entire police unit assigned to us. Why? Because not everyone in America agreed with President Jefferson’s decision to bring the fey to this country. The local people who were going to be close to us were especially upset. They didn’t want monsters of the Unseelie Court coming to live in their state. At that time, St. Louis was the closest major city with a working police department. So even though we were technically located in Illinois, police problems had been sent to Missouri and St. Louis. They got the joyous duty of protecting us from the angry humans and also walking the perimeters of our lands so we couldn’t sneak out and wreak havoc. If the courts of faerie hadn’t come with a sizable bribe for several different branches of government, and certain powerful individuals, we might have never made it into this country. No one wanted to mess with either court after the last great human-fey war in Europe. We’d shown ourselves entirely too powerful for comfort.
What no one really understood about us—from Jefferson on down to the yelling mob—was that a line of human police wasn’t really going to keep the fey, any fey, from leaving the area. What kept them inside and behaving themselves were threats and oaths to and from their respective kings and queens. But the police did keep the humans from harassing us.
Gradually, when nothing bad happened, the police presence was reduced, until they left altogether, and we only called on them when they were needed. As the local humans realized that we mostly wanted to be left alone, we had to call on our private police less and less. Soon, the police assigned to us had other jobs in other areas of the police force until they were needed for faerie duty, as it came to be called. Come up to present day and the unit had become a single detective or officer. The last time he’d been used was my father’s death, but since that had been on government-owned farmland, the locals had been cut out twice. Once by the feds and once by us. All right, by the queen. I’d have taken a platoon of soldiers into the mounds if I thought they could have caught my father’s killers.
After the liaison was so ineffective with my father’s murder, I thought the post had been abandoned. But I’d been wrong.
Doyle had found out that Major Walters was still our liaison. The last remnants of a unit created by Thomas Jefferson himself. We’d also never had anyone as high a rank as major in the job. Major Walters had volunteered for the job, because the last person to have it had also done our security at press conferences, and that had landed Walter’s predecessor a large salary as chief of a big corporation’s security. Executives like to be guarded by someone who’s guarded royalty. It adds a certain panache to the résumé. Doyle had even learned that Walters had a very well paying job lined up. I wondered how the big corporation felt about Walters after yesterday. It looks great on your résumé to guard royalty, but not so great to let them get injured on your watch. Nope, probably the executives would be a little nervous about being guarded by someone who let Princess Meredith get shot at by one of his own officers. Humans believed in magic, but not as an excuse for screwing up. No, they liked to blame someone, not something.
Walters would be needing to recoup. He’d need to redeem himself in the public eye. Though my guards and I knew that he’d had no chance to prevent what had happened, the humans wouldn’t accept it. The major had been in charge. He’d take the fall. It was simply how they thought.
Christine, my aunt’s secretary, was petite, well-endowed, and more plump than was the fashion. In her day she’d been perfect. Her blond hair curled over her shoulders, and her youthful face was eternally beautiful. One of our noblemen had lured her away centuries ago, but he’d grown tired of her. To stay in faerie she needed to be useful, so she learned shorthand and computer skills. She was probably one of the most technologically savvy people in either court.
She suggested that we call the Bureau of Human and Fey Affairs. Logical, I suppose, but they were more useful for social difficulties or diplomatic problems. If you want something done, don’t call a politician or a bureaucrat. Call a cop.
I took a deep breath, said a little prayer to the Goddess, and dialed the number the secretary had given me.
He answered on the second ring. “Your Highness,” he said.
He must have had caller I.D. “Not exactly,” I said. “Princess Meredith, actually.”
His first words had been professional, his next held the hint of suspicion. “Princess, to what do I owe this honor.” In fact, he sounded positively hostile.
“You sound angry at me, Major Walters.”
“The newspapers say you don’t trust my men to keep you safe. That human cops aren’t good enough for your guard detail.”
I hadn’t expected him to be so blunt. He was more cop than politician. “I can only say that I never even hinted to the media that I doubted your men.”
“Then why were we barred from the second press conference?”
Hmm, that was a sticky wicket. “You and I both know that it was a spell that made your officer shoot at me, correct?”
“Yeah, our unit psychic found the magical remnants on him.”
“I’m safer here in the sithen, but your officers won’t be. Someone did a spell in a building of metal girders and beams, with technology all over the place. Put that same spell caster inside the sithen, inside faerie, with no damper of metal and technology on them, and your officers would be in even greater danger of being bespelled.”
“What about the human reporters; aren’t they in danger of being bespelled?”
“They aren’t armed,” I said. “They can’t do that much damage.”
“So we just aren’t up to your standards, is that it?” He was angry, and I wasn’t sure why.
The queen’s secretary must have caught enough of the conversation to give me a hint. She flashed the headline of the St. Louis Post Dispatch: POLICE FAIL TO PROTECT THE PRINCESS. Oh.“Major Walters, I’ve just been shown a newspaper. My apologies for not understanding the effect this situation was having on your life. I was a little too preoccupied with my own being in danger.”
“I don’t need your apologies, Princess. I need my men to be good enough to protect you at public events.”
“How much crap are you getting about what happened? Are they trying to scapegoat you?”
“That’s not your business,” he said, which was almost as good as a yes.
“I think we can help each other, Major.”
“How?”
“You sitting down?”
“Yeah,” and that one word was not happy.
I told him the briefest version I knew about the reporter and Beatrice, and that the queen had given it to me to clean up.
There was utter silence on the other end of the phone for so long that I finally said, “Major, you still there?”
“I’m here,” he said, in a hoarse voice.
“I’m sorry that being on faerie duty has just gotten so horribly complicated. I’m sorry that it is screwing with your plans.”
“What do you know about my plans?”
“I know you want to be chief of security at a certain place of business when you retire early next year. I know you took the job as liaison to us for your résumé. I know that letting me get shot at probably didn’t win you any points at your soon-to-be new job.”
“You know a damn lot for a princess.”
I let that go, not sure if it was compliment or insult. “But what if I show, plainly, that I have utter confidence in you, Major Walters?”
“What do you want from me?” The suspicion was thick enough to walk on.
“I want a Crime Scene Unit down here. I’ve got the crime scene itself isolated, but I need science, not magic, on this one.”
“Didn’t you just lecture me about my men being in danger from enchantments if we came into your place?”
“Yes, that’s why I want only you, the CSU, and maybe one or two others, tops. My guards can protect you individually from magic if you are a small enough group.”