“What happens if he steps down?” she asked.
“He ceases to be king,” Doyle said.
“That part I figured, but is he exiled from faerie?”
“No, why do you ask?” I said.
She shrugged. “Because exile would explain why he’s so desperate to prove one of the babies is his.”
“I think it’s simpler than that, Lucy. I think he just can’t stand the thought of not being absolute ruler of the Seelie Court after all these centuries. I think he’d do anything to keep his throne.”
“Define anything,” she said, and I didn’t like the very shrewd look in her brown eyes. She was smart and very good at her job.
One of the babies made a sound from the cribs. Lucy had ignored them except for a brief glimpse at the cloth-wrapped bundles. She was here on business, not to see babies, but the noise made us turn to find out which baby was waking up.
It was Bryluen, moving fitfully in her basket like a crib within a crib. Doyle picked her up with his big, dark hands. The baby looked even tinier. Some of the fathers had been awkward holding them, but Doyle held our daughter with the same physical ease and grace with which he did everything. Bryluen’s eyes were open enough to gleam in the light like dark jewels.
“May I hold her?” Lucy asked, and the request surprised me.
Doyle looked to me, and I said, “Of course. We’re waiting for the nurse to bring the wheelchair; they won’t let me walk out, and most of the other men are helping load the gifts.”Lucy didn’t seem to hear me as Doyle laid Bryluen in her arms. Lucy didn’t know how to hold the baby, which said she’d never really been around them. Doyle helped move her arms into place, and once she had the baby tucked into the crook of her arm she just stared down. Lucy’s face got this happy, almost beatific glow to it, as if the world had narrowed down to the baby in her arms.
I hadn’t expected Lucy to be that entranced with babies, but maybe she was having that “I’m in my midthirties and the clock is ticking” moment.
“Detective Tate,” Doyle said.
She never reacted, just started humming softly and rocking Bryluen gently.
“Detective Tate,” he said again, with a little more force to his voice.
When she didn’t react this time, I moved closer to her and said, “Lucy, can you hear me?”
She never reacted, as we hadn’t spoken.
“Lucy!” I said it sharply this time.
She blinked up at me as if she were waking from a dream. She stared at me, trying to say something, but she had to blink twice more to finally say, “What did you say?”
“I need to get Bryluen ready to go downstairs.” I took the baby from her arms, and she was reluctant to let her go, but once she wasn’t holding the baby Lucy seemed to recover herself. She shook visibly, like shaking off a nightmare, and said, “Wow, I just had that sensation like someone walked over my grave.”
I nodded. “It happens.”
She shivered again, and when she looked at me her eyes looked normal. Detective Tate was in there again.
“I’m sorry, Lucy, and I hope it doesn’t get you in trouble with the higher-ups in your department, but we need to take more precautions against my uncle, and Maeve Reed’s estate is more magically guarded than any safe house would be.”
“We’ll have police wizards on the detail, Merry.”
“The last time you and I worked together, one of the bad guys was one of those wizards,” I said.
“That’s not fair, Merry.”
“Perhaps not, but it’s still true.”
“You’re saying that you don’t trust the police?”
“No, I’m saying that no matter how safe you think you are, you’re probably wrong.”
“That sounds pretty hopeless,” she said.
“I thought it sounded realistic.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t entirely a happy one. “We’ll put extra patrols in your neighborhood. Call and we’ll be there.”
“I know that,” I said.
“Promise if anything goes wrong you’ll call the police and not try to handle it yourselves.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Because you’re not allowed to lie,” she said.
I nodded.
“You’ll handle this internally, if you can, won’t you?”
I nodded again, cuddling Bryluen to me.
She turned to Doyle. “Don’t you or any of the people she loves play hero and get killed when we could have prevented it, okay?”
“We will endeavor not to,” he said.
“I mean it. Merry loves you, and I don’t want to hold her hand while she mourns you, or Frost, or Galen, or any of you guys. We’re the police; it’s our job to risk our lives to protect and serve.”
“It is our job, as well, where Merry and the babes are concerned.”
“Yeah, but Merry won’t be devastated if we get hurt, and police dying in the line of duty won’t lose the babies their dads.”
He gave a small bow from his neck. “I will remember what you said, and thank you for putting our lives above yours for Merry’s sake.”
“I don’t want to die, none of us do, but it’s our job to stop this bastard from hurting her again.”
“And ours,” he said.
She frowned and made a little push-away gesture. “You’re going to do what you’re going to do; I’ll tell them I tried.”
“We really do appreciate you coming down, Lucy.”
She smiled at me. “I know you do. I just really want to get this guy.”
I realized that Lucy had taken my rape more personally, because we were friends. It made me care for her even more, and say with real feeling, “Thank you, Lucy.”
She smiled a little wider. “I’ll leave you to get the little tykes ready to leave, and go join the cops helping to keep back the crowd.”
“I assume the press,” I said.
“And just people wanting to see the little prince and princess; it’s not every day that America gets newborn royals.”
“True,” I said, and smiled at her.
She smiled back and then left us with, “I’m not usually into babies, but she’s a cute one.”
We thanked her, and once the door closed behind her, Doyle and I looked at each other. He came to stand beside me, and we both looked down at Bryluen.
“Mustn’t bespell the humans,” I said to her.
She blinked those exotic-looking eyes at me. The little knit cap was tucked over most of her red curls and completely hid the horn buds. She was tiny and perfect, and already magical.
“Do you think she understands?” I asked.
“No, but that answers one question.”
I looked up at him. “What question?”
“Maeve Reed has a human nanny for her baby, but we cannot risk human caregivers.”
“You mean we can’t risk the human caregivers being ensorcelled by the babies.”
“Yes, that is what I mean.”
I looked down at our little bundle of joy. “She’s part demi-fey, or part sluagh, one has the best glamour in all faerie, and the other is some of the last of the wild magic left in faerie.”
“There is wild magic about, my Merry.” He motioned at the tree and the wild rose vines.
I smiled. “True, but I’ve never seen a baby bespell someone that quickly and that well. Lucy has a strong will, and was likely wearing some protections against faerie glamour just as a precaution. Most police that deal with us do.”
“Yet Bryluen clouded her mind and senses as if it were nothing,” Doyle said.
“It was very quick and well done. I’ve known sidhe with centuries of practice who couldn’t have done it.”
He placed his hand gently on top of her head, so very dark against the multicolored cap. Bryluen blinked up at us. “They are going to be very powerful, Merry.”“How do we teach them to control their powers if they have them this early, Doyle? Bryluen can’t understand right from wrong yet.”
“We will have to protect the humans from them until they are old enough to learn control.”
“How long will that be?”
“I do not know, but we know now that they have come into the world with instinctive magic and there is no waiting until puberty for their powers to manifest.”
“It would have been easier if their magic had waited,” I said.
“It would, but I do not think our path was ever meant to be easy, my Merry; wondrous, beautiful, exciting, thrilling, even frightening, but not easy.”
I raised Bryluen to lay a kiss upon her cheek. I loved her already; she was mine, ours, but I was a little frightened now. If she could make humans like her, want to hold and rock her, what else could she make them do? Child psychologists say that children are born sociopaths and have to learn to have a conscience. It happens around the age of two, usually, but until then there’s no conscience to appeal to, no way to understand that something is wrong or right.
I held our beautiful little sociopath and prayed to the Goddess that she wouldn’t hurt anyone before we’d had time to teach her that it was wrong.
The scent of roses filled the room, and it wasn’t just the clean sweetness of the wild rose vine, but that richer musk that is more from cultivation than nature. It was a heady scent, and reassurance from the Goddess. Normally, it would have been enough to lay my fears to rest, but this time there was a kernel of unease that stayed inside my heart. How could I doubt her, after all she’d shown me, all she’d awakened around me? But it wasn’t the Goddess I doubted, it was more just worry. I was a new mother, and mothers worry.