A Stroke of Midnight (Merry Gentry #4)(44)

Frost, Galen, and I exchanged glances. Frost said, “I trust Rhys to have done everything possible to protect you from overt spells.”
“But could someone have magically imposed one handprint on another?” she asked.
“They would have to understand how prints work,” I said, “so that leaves out anyone who hasn’t watched television, which is most of the guard. But if they understood how prints worked, they might be able to make one print appear to look like another.”
“Would they be able to switch prints?”
“I don’t believe so, but I cannot be certain,” Frost said.
Mistral said, “I do not know how these prints work, exactly, but they seem to be like tracks of an animal.”
“Not a bad analogy,” Polaski said.
“Then I agree with Frost, it would be hard to change them in reality.”
“So they’re more likely to mess with what I think I’m seeing than with what I’m actually seeing?”
We all agreed on that.
“Then I need to get out of here and check my findings with a working computer outside faerie.”
“Your early questions point at one of the demi-fey on the kitchen staff,” I said.
She nodded. “But only if they can change shape so that they are as big as you. The handprint is about the size of my own hands, but matches one of the demi-fey.”
“Which one?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I won’t tell you that.”
“If you don’t tell us, we’ll simply imprison all of them.”
“All of them?” she asked.
I nodded. “Careful for you is not falsely imprisoning someone. Careful for us is imprisoning too many to make sure we get the guilty one behind bars.”
She sighed, then nodded again. “All right, Peasblossom.”The surprise showed on my face before I could stop it.
“Why the surprise?”
“Because she and Beatrice were very close. I’ve known her a long time by human standards. I can’t imagine Peasblossom hurting Beatrice.”
“Then someone’s messing with me because I got a handprint on Beatrice’s back.” She looked up at the men. “Can I use someone as an example?”
Aisling started to step forward but I said, “Ivi.” He stepped forward with a teasing look in his eyes that I didn’t like.
Aisling stepped back with a smile.
“If you could turn around, please?” Polaski said to Ivi. The man turned without a word, giving her his back. “Could you remove the cloak, please?”
“With pleasure,” he purred suggestively. He undid the neck of his cloak, and let it fall to the floor to lie across Dr. Polaski’s feet. She was now looking at the full fall of his hair, medium and dark green with its pattern of white vines and leaves like his namesake.
She reached to move his hair back, but the moment she touched it, she froze.
“Stop it, Ivi,” I said.
“I have done nothing,” he said, but the smile was satisfied now, as if he was happy with the effect he was having on her.
“Step away from her,” Frost said.
“I obey the princess, not you.”
“Step away from her,” I said.
He put on his mocking smile, but his green eyes held some fierce knowledge that I did not understand. But he obeyed. The moment Polaski wasn’t touching his hair, she seemed to blink awake. “Sorry, what were we saying?”
“What’s happening?” I asked Frost.
“He has regained some of his old powers.”
“And that would be?”
“To say someone was like Ivi’s hair was to say that they were compelling, whether you willed it or no. To be caught in ivy meant to be entrapped. To be ivy climbed meant that your lover was destroying you in some way,” Frost said.
“I don’t remember any of these sayings,” I said.
“You would have no reason to know them,” Hawthorne said. “It has been centuries since we spoke of Ivi in this manner.”
“No wonder you look so terribly satisfied,” I said.
“I have gained much simply by being in the hallway with you while you . . .”
“Enough,” Frost said, “we are not alone.”
Ivi dropped to his knees in front of me. “I would do anything to be in your bed for a night, for an hour.” His eyes weren’t mocking now. His face was as serious as he ever got.
“Get up,” I said. 
“The queen likes us on our knees.”
“Well, I don’t.”
I looked at Frost. “Who can she touch without a problem, just in case?”
“Hawthorne will do as he is told, and his enchantment is more active magic,” Frost said.
I nodded. “Hawthorne, go help the doctor demonstrate.”
He went to her, having to walk around the pool of hair that had spread around Ivi’s kneeling body.
“You must choose two of the green men, let me be one of them,” Ivi said.
“Don’t make the princess ask you twice. Get up,” Mistral said.
Hawthorne gave his armored back to the doctor. “I guess the armor doesn’t make a difference for this.” She touched the smooth crimson armor tentatively, then with more assurance, as if she’d expected something to happen. “Beatrice was stabbed here.” She pointed to a place on his back where you’d be almost certain to get the heart. “The knife went in deep.” She left two fingers at the spot where the knife went in, then placed her other hand flat alongside it. “I have an almost perfect handprint right here, where someone braced to take out a deeply embedded blade. I have almost the same print pattern on the second victim. But I also have partial fingerprints where the knife was wiped clean of blood. They may or may not be Peasblossom’s.”
“If we are sure it is her print, then she would be our murderer,” I said.
“Yes, but if she is, then where’s the blade? Rhys traced it to your bottomless pit. The other kitchen help say that once Peasblossom found the bodies, she didn’t leave the area. She didn’t have time to go all the way to your pit to dispose of the knife.”
“Someone else did it for her,” Mistral said.
“We found one good, clear handprint on the wall near the reporter’s body. It doesn’t match any of the guards in the hallway, but the hand is of a similar size.”
“Sidhe,” Adair said.
“Probably,” she said.
“So either Peasblossom is a ruthless killer and had an accomplice, or the killer is imposing her print over his to hide his guilt.”
She nodded.
“Can’t we check her for spells?” Galen said.
Frost shook his head. “We have no one with us who is good enough at subtle magic. Humans tend to reek of magic once they’ve been in the underground for an hour or more. To differentiate between the things that might simply cling and those that are deliberate we would need Doyle, or Crystall, or Barinthus.”
“I could do it,” Aisling said.
“No,” I said.
“Don’t you trust me?” he asked, with that ghostly smile.
“Not around Dr. Polaski and her people, no.”
“You were able to gaze upon my naked body and not be bespelled. Perhaps I have lost some of my allure for mortals.”
“Or perhaps Meredith is a sidhe princess,” Mistral said, “and not mortal.”
“Using your powers has made your tongue bold, Aisling,” Hawthorne said.
Nobody seemed to like him much. Had everyone been as shaken as I had been by his little show?
Aisling looked at Hawthorne. “You gazed upon me without anything between my face and your eyes. That is a hero’s task, or was it harder to resist my beauty than you let on?” He sighed, and the teasing left his voice, replaced by sorrow. “After going so long with our needs unmet, there is no shame in being attracted to what you once would not have been. We all crave the touch of another sidhe. Sometimes I think I will go mad without the touch of another being.”
Hawthorne did a brave thing then, clasping Aisling’s shoulder in a brotherly way. I wondered if he would have risked it if the man had still been shirtless. “We have a chance to break our long fast.”“With the princess,” Aisling said.
Hawthorne nodded.
Aisling stepped away from Hawthorne’s hand and moved to me. It took a great deal for me not to flinch away from him. He knelt beside Galen and me.
“There will be no princess for me,” Aisling said. “She will not risk it now.” He looked down at me. “Will you, Princess?”
I didn’t know what to say because he was right. I did not want him touching me. I said the only thing I could think of: “I will not rule it out, but I fear you now, Aisling, where I didn’t before.”
“I’m missing something,” Polaski said.
“Be happy you missed it,” I said.
She walked toward me. “No, you’re hiding too many things from me, Princess. I need to know what is happening here, or you get nothing from me and my people.”
As she came to stand over us, she brushed against Aisling and started to fall. Galen and I reacted, knowing that Aisling must not touch her with his bare skin. I stood between them, pushing Aisling backwards. Galen came to his knees and caught Dr. Polaski before she could hit the floor.
The doctor was safe with Galen, but I was in Aisling’s arms, and I wasn’t safe at all.
CHAPTER 23

HE CAUGHT HIS BALANCE, AND ME, WITH HIS ARMS AND HIS BODY. Perhaps he stumbled more than he needed to, so he would be able to hold me tighter, but it wasn’t him that made my hand slip underneath his tunic to glide along bare skin. Fear choked me, ran along my skin so that it was like small electric shocks, tingling out to my fingertips. I saw Melangell’s face, her empty, bloody eyes, and waited for his magic to take me. I stared up into those odd eyes, with their inner knot, bound in four empty loops. There was no sign of the blue of his eyes. Something was missing.