A Stroke of Midnight (Merry Gentry #4)(42)

I dropped the glamour, and had the small satisfaction of watching Major Walters’s eyes go wide before he found his cop face. But I’d seen the moment, and knew I must be even messier than I thought.
“What the hell happened to you?” He had let me go and now had some of the drying blood on his hand.
“There was another assassination attempt,” I said, leaving out that it wasn’t aimed at me. “Galen was injured in the fighting.” Truth, as far as it went.
Walters looked at Galen. I nodded, and Galen dropped the glamour. He even turned around so Walters could see the worst of the blood.
“How is he up walking around?”
“The sidhe heal faster than mere mortals,” I said.
“He lost that much blood and he’s healed?”
“I’m a little light-headed,” Galen said, “but give me an hour or two, and I’ll be good as new.”
“Jesus, I wish we could heal like that.”
“So do I,” I said.
He looked at me. “I forgot, you’re mortal, like us.”
I shrugged. “That’s the rumor.”
“You don’t heal as fast as the rest of them.”
“No.”
“Your arm isn’t in a sling anymore,” he said, and motioned to it.
“No, it got healed in a ritual.” The sex with Mistral had healed it, but I didn’t need to overshare that much.
He shook his head. “Is any of this blood yours?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“His last time,” he pointed at Frost, “now his,” he pointed to Galen. “You’re going to get one of them killed.”
“I hope not.” I let my voice show how tired I was, how unhappy I was at the thought.“Go back to L.A., Princess. Take your men and go.”
“Why?”
“Because there have been two assassination attempts in two days, plus a double homicide. Someone wants you dead, and doesn’t care who gets hurt. If they want you dead bad enough, they’ll succeed. Maybe not tonight, or tomorrow, but if you stay, they will kill you.”
“Are you trying to scare me, Major Walters?”
“I’m trying to have you not die on my watch. I agreed to come into your murder scene partly to help my career, I admit that. But if you die with me inside your faerie land, I will never live it down. I’ll always be the one who let you die.”
“If they kill me, Major Walters, the only thing you could do to stop them would be to die before me. I don’t think that’s very helpful.”
“Are you making a joke?”
I sighed, and rubbed my forehead, fighting off an urge to scream. “No, Major, I am not joking. What hunts me here is nothing you can stop or protect me from. I need your help to solve these murders, but truthfully, if I’d known it was this dangerous in faerie right now, I wouldn’t have brought you in.”
“We’re police, Princess Meredith. We’re used to taking our chances.”
I shook my head. “Do you have enough evidence? Do you have what you need?”
“Dr. Polaski wanted to know what would happen if we gave you evidence that pointed to someone.”
“Did she find something?”
“She wanted to know what—” He paused over his words. “—use you would make of any evidence we gathered.”
“We’d use it to hunt down and punish the murderer,” I said.
He shook his head, wiping his big hand on the side of his jacket. “What about a trial?”
I smiled, and knew it wasn’t pleasant. “There are no trials inside faerie, Major Walters.”
“So you’ll use our evidence to kill someone?”
“The punishment for murder among us is usually death, so execute them, yes.”
“Then we’ll have to go back to the lab and contact you later.”
“You did find something,” I said.
He nodded. “If this was going to trial we’d want to run it through a computer. If what we’ve found is going to be used to execute someone without a trial, we want to be even more cautious.”
“What did you find?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“You do realize that the murderer could be the one behind the attempts on my life. By not telling me what you suspect, or who you suspect, you could be signing my death warrant. By the time you’ve analyzed your data, it could be too late for me.” 
His hands made fists, and he closed his eyes. “I told the doctor that in so many words. She won’t budge.”
“So you don’t know either,” I said.
“I know it’s a print of someone we took samples from, and the only ones we had access to were the ones in the hallway.”
“The guards,” I said.
“And the kitchen staff,” he said.
I looked at him. “One of the royal guards, that’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“It’s who I’d be afraid of, if I were you.”
“I could compel her to tell me what she knows, or have one of my guards do it.”
“Using magic on anyone connected with the police is a felony, Princess.”
“I’m immune to prosecution.”
“You’d never again get help out of my office, or anyone else on our side of the river. You might never get help from anyone. No other human law enforcement agency would trust you. Bringing us in here and mind-raping us.” He shook his head. “I may not agree with Polaski, but I’ll fight to keep her free will and choice.”
I looked into his pale eyes, and knew he meant it. I could maybe get something useful out of Polaski and never be able to trust or be trusted by the police again, or I could let them go and hope that the doctor knew what she was doing. If I hadn’t wanted their expertise, then why had I brought them into the sithen in the first place?
“I trust Dr. Polaski’s judgment, and your stubbornness. I’ll abide by the rules.”
Frost moved beside me, as if he would have disagreed. “We will all abide by the rules of my agreement, is that clear?”
Some nodded. Ivi was smiling as if he couldn’t quite believe me. Or maybe he was just amused at some private joke of his own. You never knew with Ivi.
“I understand,” Frost said. “I do not agree, but I will abide by it.”
Walters nodded. “I’ll try to hurry the doctor and her techs and get it to you as soon as I can, but a print out of place isn’t proof of murder. It isn’t proof enough to execute someone.”
“Not in a human court,” I said.
“See, talk like that will make Polaski sit on her evidence. You’ll never get it.”
“But I’m not saying it to her, am I.”
“You think I’d give it to you, if I had it.”
“I think you understand, more than she does, how dangerous things are right now for me and my guards.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “Maybe, but I agree with Polaski on one thing: I wouldn’t want to be the person who gave you just enough evidence to get the wrong person killed. Once someone’s dead, Princess Meredith, there’s no fixing it. No going back. I’d want to be dead certain that I had the right person before anyone got the ax.”
“So would I, Major, and I’ll push to see that we get more proof.”
“You said they’d use the evidence to simply execute.”
“I said they could and probably will, but I, like you, want to be sure. Fairplay and all, but more than that, Major Walters, once someone is executed for the crime the investigation stops. If we execute the wrong person, then the murderer is still free to kill again. I don’t want that.”
“So it’s not about executing the wrong person for you but about letting the guilty go free.”
“A guilty murderer that gets away with it once may try again.”
He nodded. “If they get away with it once, most of them seem to get a taste for it.” He looked at me. “If everyone but you is supposed to be immortal down here, then how did this Beatrice die?”“That is another problem, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps . . .” Aisling said.
I didn’t want to look at him. I realized I was angry with him. Angry about what he’d done to Melangell. Angry that he didn’t seem to feel bad about it. His tone of voice had sounded almost as if he had enjoyed it.
Mistral suddenly joined our group. “Excuse me, Princess. Queen Andais longs greatly to speak with you.” His face was utterly neutral as he said it. Too neutral. Something was wrong.
“Princess Meredith, why not appeal directly to this doctor?” Aisling said.
I took in a lot of air and let it out slow, then I turned very deliberately and looked at Aisling. “It’s not a bad idea,” I said, my voice sounding more matter-of-fact than my face felt.
Aisling smiled. I could see just enough of his face through the gauze to know that.
I looked away from him. I tried to make it casual, but I don’t think he, or any of the other men, was fooled. Maybe Mistral wouldn’t understand why I didn’t want to see that ghostly smile, but then he didn’t know that I’d unleashed Aisling’s smile on someone else.
“No,” Walters said.
We all looked at him. “Why not?” I asked.
“I shouldn’t have told you.”
“You’re in charge here, right? Of the human side, at least.”
“Technically, but she’s the chief medical examiner, and she’s in charge of her people. If I were the chief of police, yeah, but I’m not.”