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Chapter Thirty-seven

I was dressed for dinner, which had become a semi-formal occasion, which meant I was a little overdressed for the police forensics lab, ical division Jeremy had phoned before we could actually eat because he&039;d been called by one of the police wizards to coive an opinion on Gilda&039;s confiscated wand The one that had made a policeman fall down and not wake up for hours

Jereht it was sidhe workmanship He&039;d offered for me to stay houards, Rhys had gone early to co to know much about our older enchanted sidhe items But the three of us were the only ones with private-detective licenses The others could only coh thehad been on all the news and YouTube, so the police believed that I wouldn&039;t go out without a shitload of guards So I was "protected" and Jereot the sidhe he wanted to look at the wand The only downside was I had to eat soh heels dyed to match the yellow, belted dress, coht, were the wrong shoes for standing on the concrete floors

The as in a Plexiglas rectangle There were symbols literally pressed into the case It was a portable anti- was found the police could put it inside the case and negate it until forensics could figure out adown at the wand, and by all I meant the two police wizards, Wilson and Carmichael, plus Jeremy, Frost, Doyle, Barinthus (who had shown up just as ere leaving), Sholto, Rhys, and me Rhys had cut his sithen exploration short to solve cri but noas only two feet of pale white and honey-colored wood, clean and free of all the sparkle that Gilda was so fond of, and that I remembered clearly "It doesn&039;t look like the same wand," I said

"You ?" Car her brown ponytail bobbing over her lab coat "Some of the stones had ic, but it was all just to , smoothly polished wood "Why hide it?"

"Don&039;t look at it with just your eyes, Merry," Barinthus said He towered over all of us in his long crea a suit under the coat, though he&039;d left the tie off It was the ot to California He&039;d put his hair back in a ponytail, but even contained, the hair stillhere in this very reatest scientific equipment around us there was still so with his hair He wasn&039;t doing it on purpose; it was just his hair this close to the ocean, apparently

I didn&039;t like that - it sounded like an order - but I did it, because he was right Most huic I was part human, but in one way I was all fey I had to shield every day, every ic I had shielded heavily when I entered this area of the forensics labs because it was the rooical items that they didn&039;t knohat to do with, or were in the process of de- out a way to destroy that wouldn&039;t blow up other things Soic items once made are difficult to destroy safely

I had upped h all the s fro able to study the I took a deep breath, let it out, and dropped my shields just a little bit

I tried to concentrate on just the wand, but of course there were other things in the roo in the roorant you a wish" So else smelled like chocolate, no, hard cherry candy, no, it was like the scent of everything sweet and good, and with the scent there was a desire to find it and pick it up so I could have all that goodness

I shook my head and concentrated on the wand The pale as covered inyellow and white, and here and there a spark of orange/red flaic were sparking I&039;d never seen that before

"It&039;s alic has a short in it," I said

"That&039;s what I said," Carht be extra power like little pieces of ical battery meant to up the spell" He was tall, taller than all thefroray after he&039;d detonated aabout the end of the world Anything ht actually do it was always destroyed The proble that powerful wasn&039;t always the safest occupation Wilson was on the ical equivalent of the bomb squad He was one of a handful of huh-holy-relic disposal Soht Wilsonhad literally had a decade of his life span bloith his old hair color

He pushed his wire-fralasses more firmly up his nose He still looked like a really tall bookish coic nerd, and according to the other ic techs either the bravest of the The fact that only Wilson and Car on it and that it was in this roo unpleasant

"Did the police?" I asked

"No," Carmichael said

"No What have you heard?" Wilson asked

She frowned at his that scare the police Major relics, things designed to do bad things that you haven&039;t figured out how to de-ick or destroy yet What did Gilda&039;s wand do to earn a place here?"

The tizards looked at each other

"Whatever you hold back," Jere this wand&039;s power"

"Tell us what you see first," Wilson said

"I&039;ve told you what I think," Jereht be sidhe workmanship I want to knohat some sidhe think of it" Wilson looked from one to another of us; his face was very serious now He was studying us the way he&039;d study anythingtendency to see the fey as another type ofsometimes, as if he&039;d study us to see e&039;d do

The ical sy over the ith those odd sparks of orangey red The sy That&039;s unusual Magical sylow sometimes to the inner eye, but they aren&039;t thisfresh, like the paint hasn&039;t dried"

The ht be a sidhe creation," Jeremy said

"I don&039;t follow," I said

"The last tiic that stayed that fresh, it was an enchanted itereat wizards They hide the core of the reenery that is kept fresh by the ic, but it&039;s all pretend, Merry It&039;s just meant to hide the core"

"I understand what you&039;re saying, but why does that make it sidhe workmanship?"

"Your people are the only ones I&039;ve ever seen who could keepthis fresh and vital"

"We&039;ve never seen anything able to do this," Wilson said

"What makes it sidhe?" I asked

"It isn&039;t," Barinthus said

We looked at him

Jeremy looked a little uncomfortable, but he looked at the tall ic?"

Barinthus ed to look as disdainful as I&039;d ever seen hiht it was personal at first, but realized it was so a Trow It was like a racial thing for Barinthus, as if a Troasn&039;t worthy enough to be the boss of us

"I doubt I could explain it in a way you would understand," Barinthus said

Jeremy&039;s face darkened

I turned to Wilson and Car, and said, "Could you excuse us for a minute? I&039;m sorry, but if you could just step over there somewhere"

They looked at each other, then at Jereure, and they went to stand away froht next to the seven-foot-tall ht

I turned back to the seven-foot-tall er into his chest, hard enough to move him a little "Jeremy is my boss He pays usyou, Barinthus"

He looked down at hty work really well, but I&039;d had all I was taking fro in anyto the upkeep of the fey here in LA, so before you go all high and hty on us, I&039;d think about this Jeremy is more valuable to h the haughtiness, and I saw uncertainty on his face He hid it, but it was in there "You didn&039;t say that you neededMaeve Reed&039;s houses for free, but we can&039;t keep letting her feed the army of us When she comes back from Europe she may want her house back, all her houses back What then?"

He frowned

"Yeah, that&039;s right We arethe Red Caps, and they&039;re ca out on her estate because the houses already won&039;t hold everyone You don&039;t get it We have what amounts to a faerie court, but we don&039;t have a royal treasury, or ic to clothe and feed us We don&039;t have a faerie er as we need it"

"Your wild ates of Maeve&039;s land," he said

"Yes, and Taranis used that piece of faerie to kidnap uarantee that our enemies can&039;t use it to attack us"

"Rhys has a sithen now More will come"

"And until we know that our enemies can&039;t use that new piece of faerie to attack us, too, we can&039;t , Barinthus, not a traditional sithen," Rhys said

"An apartically appeared on a street and s so that it could appear in theIt&039;s definitely a sithen, but it&039;s like the old ones I open a door one time and the next time there&039;s a different rooic, Barinthus We can&039;t move people in there until I knohat it does, and what plans it has"

"It is that powerful?" he said

Rhys nodded "It feels it, yes"

"More sithens will come," Barinthus said

"Maybe, but until they do, we needin money That includes you"

"You didn&039;t telljobs he offered"

"Don&039;t call him &039;he&039;; his na out here a the humans for decades, and those skills are a hell of a lot more useful to me now than your ability to make the ocean come up and smash into a house Which was childish, by the way"

"The people in question don&039;t need bodyguards They simply want me to stand around and be stared at"

"No, they want you to stand around and be handsome and attract attention to them and their lives"

"I am not a freak to be paraded for cameras"

"No one remembers that story from the fifties, Barinthus," Rhys said

One reporter had called Barinthus the Fish Man because of the collapsible webbing between his fingers That reporter had died in a boating accident Eyewitnesses said that the water just came up and slapped the boat

Barinthus turned away fro into his coat pockets Doyle said, "Frost and I have both guarded hu We have stood and let them admire us and pay money for it"

"You did one job and then you refused after that," Frost said to Barinthus "What happened to make you say no after that?"

"I told Merry it was beneathher"

"Did the client try to seduce you?" Frost asked

Barinthus shook his head; his hair moved more than it should have, like the ocean on a windy day "Seduction is not crude enough for what the woman did"

"She touched you," Frost said, and just the way he said it made me look at him

"You say that like it&039;s happened to you, too"

"They invite us to the parties to do uard them, Merry, you know that"

"I know they want otten that out of hand"

"We&039;re supposed to be protecting you, Meredith," Doyle said, "not the other way around"

"Is that why you and Frost are back to guarding mostly just me?"

"See," Barinthus said, "you&039;ve distanced yourself froations We didn&039;t just stop doing the parties and then hide away by the sea," Doyle said

"Part of the problem is that you haven&039;t picked a partner," Rhys said

"I don&039;t knohat you mean by that"

"I ith Galen, and atch each other&039;s backs, and make sure that the only hands that touch us are the ones ant touching each other A partner isn&039;t just to watch your back in a battle, Barinthus"

That arrogance that Frost hid behind was back on Barinthus&039;s face, but I realized that for him it wasn&039;t just a version of a blank face

"Do you honestly believe that no one a the men is worthy to partner with you?" I asked

He just looked at h, I supposed He looked at Doyle "Once I would have been happy to ith Darkness"

"But not now that I&039;ve partnered with Frost," he said

"You have chosen your friends"

I wondered for a moment if Barinthus had a crush on Doyle, or did his words mean only what he said The fact that I&039;d never realized he was more than s

"It&039;s okay," Rhys said "You and I have never gotten along"

"It doesn&039;t matter," I said "Old news If you want to stay here, then you need to contribute in a real way, Barinthus You&039;re going to start by explaining to Jereic" I gave as good eye contact as I could with a two-foot height difference I guess with the three-inch heels it was a little less, but it was still a neck-craning h when you&039;re looking that far up at someone

His hair flared out around hih I kneould be dry to the touch It was a ne of growing power, but I&039;d already noticed that it seemed to be an emotional reaction for him

"Is that a no, or a yes?" I asked

"I will try to explain," he said at last

"Fine, good, let&039;s get this done so we can go home"

"Are you tired?" Frost asked

"Yes"

Barinthus said, "I am a fool You may not look it yet, but you are with child I should be taking care of you Instead I as harder for you"

I nodded "That&039;s about what I was thinking" I led the way back to the police and Jereain Barinthus didn&039;t apologize, but he did explain

"If it was truly sidhe workmanship it would not have the power flares If I understand what electrical shorts are, then that&039;s accurate The flaring points ic, as if the person who enchanted it didn&039;t have enough power topoints are also as Wizard Wilson says, er I believe one of those power flares is what harinally hurt"

"So if you had ical marks would be smooth and the poould be even," Wilson said

Barinthus nodded

"Not to be rude," Carmichael said, "but aren&039;t the sidhe less powerful than they once were ically?"

There was that unco that everyone knows, but no one is supposed to talk about It was Rhys who said, "That would be true"

"Sorry, but if that&039;s true, then why couldn&039;t this be a sidhe with less control of his, or her, ic? Maybe it&039;s the best the wizard could do?"

Barinthus shook his head "No"

"Her logic is sound," Doyle said

"You see the symbols; you knohat they are for, Darkness We are forbidden such ic, and have been for centuries"

"These syh that I&039;ned to harvest ic," Rhys said

I frowned at hirow more powerful?"

"Nope"

I frowned harder

"It&039;s designed to steal other people&039;s power," Doyle said

"But you can&039;t do that," I said "Not that we&039;re not allowed to do it, but it&039;s not possible to steal soic It&039;s intrinsic to theence, or their personality"

"Yes and no," he said

I was beginning to be tired, really tired I hadn&039;t had any real pregnancy syly so "Can I have a chair?" I asked