O’Brian said, “Detectives?”
We all stood and began to move carefully after the demi-fey. Lucy came close to me and whispered, “What kind of damage can she really do?”
“Enough to blast the door off its hinges,” I said.
“With my people between her and the door,” Lucy said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, shit.”
I agreed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A VOICE CAME THROUGH THE DOOR, HIGH AND MUSICAL; JUST HEARING it made me start to smile. “Bittersweet, my child, do not fear. Your fairy godmother is here.”
Bittersweet dipped toward the floor again. “Gilda,” she said in an uncertain voice. The bee sounds were fading along with the scent of summer-browned grass.
“Yes, dearie, it’s Gilda. Calm down in there and the nice policeman will let me through.”
Bittersweet floated to the floor in front of the surprised Wright and O’Brian. The little fey laughed and the two officers laughed with her. The demi-fey were our smallest people, but some of them had glamour to rival the sidhe, though most of my people would never admit it.
I found myself wanting to help Gilda get through that door. I glanced at the detectives to see the glamour working on them, but it wasn’t. They just looked puzzled, as if they heard a song but it was too distant to understand the words. I could hear the song too, something like a music box, or the tinkling of chimes, or bells, or … I shielded harder, a flexing of the mind and will, and the song was pushed away. I didn’t want to smile like a fool or help Gilda get through that door.
Bittersweet laughed again and Lucy’s partner did too, nervously, as if he knew he shouldn’t. Lucy said, “Did you leave your anti-charm at home again?”He shrugged.
She reached into her pocket and handed him a small cloth bag. “I brought extra today.” She flicked her eyes at me as if wondering if I’d take offense.
“Sometimes even I wear protection,” I said. I didn’t add out loud, “but usually only around my own relatives.”
Lucy gave me a quick smile of thanks.
I whispered to Doyle and Frost, “Do you feel Gilda’s persuasion?”
“Yes,” Frost said.
“It’s aimed at fey only,” Doyle said, “but she has not the precision to aim only at Bittersweet.”
I glanced behind me at Robert. He seemed fine, but he came closer to us at my glance. “You know brownies are solitary faeries, Princess. We’re not so easily taken by such things.”
I nodded. I did know that, but somehow the plastic surgery made me think of Robert as less than pure brownie.
“But just because I can fight it off doesn’t mean I don’t feel it,” he said, and shivered. “She’s an abomination, but she’s got juice.”
I was a little startled at his using the word “abomination.” It was reserved for humans who had fallen afoul of wild magic and been changed to something monstrous. I’d met Gilda, and “monstrous” wasn’t a word I would have used to describe her. But I’d only met her once, briefly, in the days when everyone in L.A. thought I was just another human with a lot of fey blood in my family tree somewhere. I wasn’t important enough or a big enough toadie for her to be interested in me then.
The detectives moved out of the little partitioned area. Robert motioned for us to go first. I gave him a look, and he whispered, “She will make this about queens. I want it clear which queen I would choose.”
I whispered back, “I am not queen.”
“I know you and tall, dark, and handsome gave it all up for love.” He grinned and there was something of the old brownie in that grin; it needed less-than-perfect teeth and a less-than-perfect face, but it was still a leer.
It made me smile back.
“I’ve got it on good authority that Goddess herself came down and crowned you both.”
“Exaggerations,” I said. “The power of faerie and Goddess, but there was no physical materialization of Deity.”
He waved it away. “You’re splitting hairs, Merry, if it’s still all right to call you that, or do you prefer Meredith?”
“Merry is fine.”
He grinned up at my two men, who were intent on the far door and its opening. “The last time I saw these two they were the queen’s guard dogs.” He looked at me with those shrewd brown eyes. “Some men are drawn to power, Merry, and some women are more queen without a crown than others are with one.”
As if on cue the door opened and Gilda, Fairy Godmother of Los Angeles, swept into the room.
CHAPTER NINE
GILDA WAS A VISION OF LIGHT, LACE, AND SPARKLES. HER FLOOR-LENGTH dress seemed to have been scattered with diamonds that caught the light so that she moved in a circle of bright white sparkles. The dress itself was pale blue, but the diamond flashes were so numerous they almost made an overdress that covered the pale blue lace, so the illusion was that there was a dress made of light and movement over the actual dress. It seemed a little flashy to me, but it matched the rest of her, from her crystal-and-glass crown towering over her blond ringlets to the two-foot-long wand complete with a starred tip.
She was like a magical version of a movie fairy godmother, but then she’d been a wardrobe mistress in the movies in the 1940s, so when the wild magic found her and offered her a wish, clothes were important to her. No one knew the truth about how she’d been offered the magic. She’d told more than one version over the years. Every version made her look more heroic. The last story was something about rescuing children from a burning car, I think.
She waved the wand around the room like a queen waving her scepter at her subjects. But there was a prickling of power as the wand moved past us. Whatever else was illusion about Gilda, the wand was real. It was faerie workmanship, but beyond that no one had been able to say what the wand was, and where it had come from. Magic wands were very rare among us, because we didn’t need them.
When Gilda had made her wish, she hadn’t realized that almost everything she wanted marked her as fake. Her magic was real enough, but the way she did it, everything about her was more fairy tale than faery.
“Come here, little one,” she said, and just like that Bittersweet flew to her. Whatever sort of compulsion spell she had in her voice, it was strong. Bittersweet nestled into those golden ringlets, lost in the dazzle of light. Gilda turned as if to leave the room.
Lucy called, “Excuse me, Gilda, but you can’t take our witness just yet.”
“I am her queen. I have to protect her.”
“Protect her from what?” Lucy asked.
The light show made Gilda’s face hard to read. I thought she looked annoyed. Her perfectly bowed mouth made an unhappy moue. Her perfectly blue eyes narrowed a little around her long diamond-sparkled lashes. When I’d last seen her, she’d been covered in gold dust, from her eyelashes to a more formfitting formal dress. Gilda was always gilded, but it changed substance with her clothes.
“Police harassment,” she said. Again she turned as if to leave.
“We aren’t done with our witness,” Lucy said.
Robert said, “You seem in a hurry to leave, Godmother, almost as if you don’t want Bittersweet to speak with the police.”
She turned back then, and even through all the silly lights and sparkles she was angry. “You have never had a civil tongue in your head, brownie.”
“You liked my tongue well enough once, Gilda,” he said.
She blushed in that way that some blonds and redheads do, all the way into her hairline. “The police wouldn’t let me bring all my people inside here. If Oberon were here you wouldn’t dare say such things.”
Frost said, “Oberon? Who’s Oberon?”
She frowned at him. “He is my king, my consort.” Her eyes narrowed again, but more like she was squinting. I wondered if the diamond lights were bright enough to affect her vision. She was acting as if they were.
Her face softened suddenly. “The Killing Frost. I had heard you were in L.A. I’ve been waiting for you to visit me.” Her voice was suddenly sweet and teasing. There was some power to her voice, but it washed over me like the sea on a stone. I didn’t think it was my improved shields. I think this compulsion spell was simply not meant for me.She turned and said, “Darkness, the Queen’s Darkness, now exiled to our fair land. I’d hoped that you would both pay court to me. It has been so long since I’ve seen anyone from faerie. I would dearly love it if you would visit me.”
“Your magic will not work on us,” Doyle said in his deep voice.
A little shiver ran down her, making the top of her crown shake, the blue lace quiver, and the diamonds send little rainbows around the room. “Come over here and bring that big, deep voice with you.”
Frost said, “She’s insulting you.”
“More than us,” Doyle said.
I took in a lot of air, let it out slowly, and moved forward past the police. My men moved with me, and I felt that Gilda genuinely thought her spell was working. Now that we’d seen what she did to Bittersweet, and what she had tried to do to my men, we were going to have to take a harder look at how she got the other lesser fey to obey her. If it was all magic and compulsion and no free will, then that was bad.
“Both of you coming to me, how marvelous,” she said.
“Am I missing something?” Lucy asked as I passed her.