A woman spoke as she came out of the back. “You’ll not be getting out back there, I’m afraid, Princess and Princes. I had to bar the door to keep the hounds of the press from outflanking you.”
At first glance she matched her husband, all soft folds and comfortable roundness, human, then I realized that she’d had the same kind of surgery that Robert at the Fael had had done, though she had only done enough to pass for human, not tried to make herself gorgeous. Pretty had been enough for her, and when she came around the counter and looked at me with those brown eyes, it reminded me so much of my grandmother that it made my chest and throat tight. I would not cry, damn it.
She knelt in front of me and put her hands over mine. Her hands were cool to the touch as if she’d been working with something cold in the back.
Her husband said, “Get up, Matilda. They’re taking pictures.”
“Let them,” she said over her shoulder, then turned back to me. She looked up at me with those eyes that echoed Gran’s.
“I’m cousin to Maggie Mae what cooks in the Unseelie Court.”
It took me a moment to realize what that meant for me personally. Once I knew that I had no sidhe relatives exiled outside faerie, I’d not thought that there might be other relatives here who weren’t sidhe. I smiled. “Then you’re cousin to my Gran.”
She nodded. “Aye,” and there was an accent in that one word thick enough to walk on. “If it’s a brownie from Scotland who came to the new world, then we’re cousins. Robert down the way, well he’s Welsh, so not related to me.”
“To us,” I said.
She gave me a brilliant smile that flashed teeth too white to be anything but dentist whitened, but then we were in L.A. “So you would own me as kin?”
I nodded. “Of course,” I said. Some tension that I hadn’t even realized just went out of them all, as if until that moment they’d been nervous, or even afraid. It seemed to free them all up to come closer.
“Most of the highborn like to pretend there’s nothing but pure sidhe in their veins,” she said.
“He doesn’t pretend,” the punk pixie said. He nodded toward Doyle. “Nice rings. You got anything else pierced?”
“Yes,” Doyle said.
The boy smiled, making the rings in the edge of his nose and his bottom lip curl cheerfully with it. “Me too,” he said.
Matilda patted my hands. “You look pale. Are you having a hungry pregnancy or a starving one?”
I frowned at the phrasing. “I don’t understand.”
“Some women are hungry all the time and some don’t want to look at food when they carry babes.”
The frown eased and I said, “I’m craving roast beef. Protein.”
She flashed that brilliant smile again. “That we have.” She called back over her shoulder to the man. “Harvey, get some roast beef for the princess.”
He started to protest about the photographers and such, but she turned and gave him such a look that he just turned away and did what she said. But apparently he wasn’t doing it fast enough, because she patted my hand again and got up to oversee, or help.
We were all pretending that there wasn’t a growing crowd of people pressed against the windows and door. I kept my back to the flashes against the glass and wished for my sunglasses.
The young-looking man, who was probably older than me by a century, sidled closer to Doyle and Frost. “Are you hiding pointy ears?”
It took Frost a moment to realize that he was the one being addressed. “No,” he said.
The boy gazed up at him. “So you’re what pure sidhe looks like?”
“No,” Frost said.
“I know you don’t all look the same,” the boy said.
“I am not pure sidhe any more than Doyle.”
I turned in the chair and said, “Or me.”
The boy looked from one to the other of us. He was smiling, and pleased.
A throat-clearing sound made me turn to see the woman with her human-looking child. The woman dropped a bobbing curtsey, blinking her hawk eyes at me. The boy with her started to try to do the same, but she caught him by the arm.
“No, no, Felix, she’s a fey princess, not a human one. You don’t bow to her.”
The boy frowned, trying to understand.
“I’m his nanny,” she said, as if she needed to explain. “Fey nannies have become quite popular here.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
She smiled brightly. “I would never leave Felix here. I’ve been with him since he was three months old, but I can recommend a few others if they’re between charges, or are willing to leave their charges.”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but… “Do you have a business card?” I asked.
She smiled and got one out of her purse. She put it on the table and wrote on the back of it. “This is my home phone so you don’t have to go through the agency. They won’t understand that you need different things than most clients.”
I took the card and put it in the small wristlet wallet that was all I’d brought with me. We’d been headed to the beach; I’d wanted my ID and not much more.
Matilda brought me a small plate with roast beef folded artfully on it. “I’d put something else with it but when a lady’s expecting you never know what to add.”
I smiled at her. “It’s perfect. Tha—sorry. I know better.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ve been out among the humans for centuries. It takes more than a thank-you to lay this brownie, eh, Harvey?” She laughed at her own joke. Harvey behind the counter looked both embarrassed and pleased.
The roast beef was tender, just the right side of rare, and exactly what I wanted. Even the little hint of salt was perfect. I’d noticed that about the cravings, that if I gave in to them the food tasted amazing. I wondered if that was typical.
Matilda pulled up a chair, and the nanny, whose name was Agnes, did the same. It wasn’t like any of us could leave. We were walled in with the press. In fact, the reporters and paparazzi in the front were being squashed against the windows and door. They were beginning to try to push back, but there was too much weight behind them.Doyle and Frost stayed standing, keeping an eye on the people outside. The young-looking man stood with them. He was obviously enjoying being one of the guys, and was showing his shoulder tattoo to Doyle and Frost.
Matilda had told Harvey to put coffee on. I realized with a start that this was the first time in weeks that I’d sat down with other women and not felt either like a princess, a detective, or someone else in charge of everyone I was dealing with. We’d brought sidhe women with us out of faerie, but they’d all been part of the prince’s guard. They’d spent centuries serving my father, Prince Essus, and he’d been friendly, but not overly so; he’d been as careful of the boundaries as the queen, his sister, had been careless. Where she’d treated her guard as her harem and her toys to torment, he’d treated his guard with respect. He’d had lovers among them, but sex wasn’t looked down on among the fey. It was just normal.
The female guards would give their lives to keep me safe, but they were meant to guard a prince, and there were no more princes in the Unseelie Court in or out of faerie. I’d killed the last one before he could kill me. The guards didn’t mourn their lost prince. He’d been a sexual sadist like his mother. One thing we’d managed to hide from the media so far was how many of the guard, both male and female, were traumatized from the tortures they’d endured.
Some of them wanted Doyle, or Frost, or one of the other fathers to be named prince so they could be their guard. Traditionally, making me pregnant would have made the father a prince and future king, or at least royal consort. But with so many fathers, there was no precedent for making them all princes.
I sat with the women and just listened to them talk about normal things, and realized that sitting in the kitchen at my Gran’s or in the kitchen with Maggie Mae had been the closest to normal I’d ever known.
For the third time that day I felt tears at the back of my eyes, in my throat. It was that way every time I thought about Gran. It had only been a month since her death. I guess I was entitled.
Matilda said, “Are you well, Princess?”
“Merry,” I said. “Call me Merry.”
That earned me another bright smile. Then there was a sound behind us.
We all turned to see the glass begin to crack under the weight of the reporters crushing one another against it.
Doyle and Frost were at my side. They got me to my feet, and we were running for the counter and the back area. Agnes picked up the little boy and we ran for cover. We heard screams, and the glass gave with a high, thin cracking.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THERE WERE AMBULANCES, POLICE, AND GLASS EVERYWHERE. NONE of us in the shop were hurt, but some of the paparazzi were taken to the hospital. Most of the people plastered against the glass had been photographers trying to get that one special picture that would make them rich. Certain shots were rumored to go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. After today, I believed the rumors.
Lucy was standing over me as the ambulance medic checked me out. My protests of, “I’m fine. I wasn’t hurt,” fell on deaf ears. When Lucy had found me inside the glass-covered deli she’d been pale. I looked up at the tall brunette and realized that though we might never go shopping together, she was my friend.