A conflicted look passed over her face as she stared down at Scott Murdock. “I did love him then, you know. That surprised me more than anything. He was a strong and attractive man. I knew he hated the fey, but my heart ruled my head, and I didn’t want to lose him. So I said nothing and married him. I never intended any of this to happen, Connor, but I didn’t deserve what he did.”
I frowned. Her story kept getting better all the time. “If you expect me to say ‘boohoo,’ don’t hold your breath.”
Tibbet allowed six brownie servants into the room and closed the door again. “Bring him up the back way. I have Dananns guarding the upper floors.”
They lifted the old man with care, shifting and folding his wings gently around him. Tibbet let them through a door at the back of the room.
“The police are arriving,” she said.
Moira went to the door. “I will be tending Manus.”
“Stop right there, Cashel,” Tibbet said. “I am barring you from his presence. Once you deal with the police, you will be escorted to your rooms to retrieve your possessions. They are being packed as we speak. You are no longer welcome in this house.”
Moira drew herself up in a classic court hauteur. “The Queen’s Herbalist does not take orders from a servant.”
Tibbet strode toward her with a predatory grace, her fingers elongating as she edged toward her boggart nature. I followed, ready to pry them apart if necessary. She stopped inches from Moira. “Listen carefully, Cashel. You will leave this house on my orders. Maeve is far away, and I am very, very near. Do not think for one moment you can best me in the house of Manus ap Eagan, underKing.”
Moira didn’t completely back down, but the truth of what Tibbet said penetrated. “As you wish, then. Maeve will hear of this.”
Tibbet nodded once sharply. “As will all the underKings and -Queens. Now, go.”
Moira slipped out the door. Tibbet’s eyes glowed with a fierce yellow light. She touched my face. “Gillen Yor is on his way. Are you okay?”
I took her hand in both of mine and kissed it. “All I remember is the muzzle flash and a sharp pain, then waking up.”
She examined my jawline. “It was horrible, Connor. After the commissioner shot you, a bright flash came from your body. When you sat up, I thought I was seeing something I only wished to see.”
“I’ll let Gillen look me over. Right now, we have an international disaster on our hands,” I said.
She gave me a crooked smile. “My hands, handsome. It’s my job. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s damage control.”
“You are good at more than that. You and Manus would not have stayed together all these years otherwise,” I said.
She smiled more fully. She paused, her eyes shifting as she received a sending, probably several under the circumstances. Her eyes came back to mine. “Leonard Murdock is here and one of his brothers . . . Gerard? . . . Yes, Gerard. I need to be out there.” She moved to the door. “You can stay here tonight. I can protect you from what’s coming for a while.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, as she slipped out into the grand hall.
I reached down and closed the commissioner’s eyes. His sons didn’t need to see the damage. Guests clustered outside the door, shock and excitement on their faces. The music had stopped long ago. Police officers marched in, Leo and Gerard pushing to the front. My chest ached at the pain on their faces. When they reached me, I held my hand lightly to Murdock’s chest. “He’s on the floor. He was essence-shocked. I don’t think he even knew what hit him.”
Gerard muscled in front of Leo. “Let me through, dammit.”
I let them pass and followed another four officers inside. They closed the doors. A strangled sob came from Gerard as he stood with hunched shoulders. Leo knelt on one knee and checked his father for a pulse. He knew what essence shock looked like. His hand fell away slowly, and he stared at his father as the other officers spread around the room. He rose, and Gerard clung to his lapel, shaking it with his fist. Murdock hugged his brother close as he shook with sobs. Our eyes met.
“You’ve got blood on you,” he said.
“It’s mine. He . . . I was shot,” I said. It didn’t seem like a good time to tell them their dead father shot me.
Gerard whirled around. “Who did this?”
“Manus ap Eagan. He’s in a coma,” I said as neutrally as possible.
Gerard’s face became redder. “I want to see him. I want to see the bastard. Where is he?”
I lightly put my arm across his waist as he tried to pass. “Give yourself a minute, Gerry.”
Leo hugged him from the side, his body shield flickering. I gently squeezed Gerry’s arm, then dropped my hand. Murdock closed his eyes and touched his forehead to his brother’s.
Paramedics and more police entered. The medical examiner hovered in the background like a carrion crow. I didn’t know the Chestnut Hill police, but they were a lot more professional in a fey situation than I was used to. Maybe because Chestnut Hill had a lot of fey folk—a lot of rich fey folk. One of the officers moved me to a couch on the far side of the room and began to interview me. He asked several times if I were injured, confused by all the blood on me. A paramedic made me take off the jacket, convinced I was in shock and bleeding profusely somewhere. I didn’t blame them. I was uninjured, yet soaked in my own blood.
The interview was thorough. It helped that I was a druid. Between my inborn talent for instant recall and my understanding of what the police needed to hear, it went quickly under the circumstances. I did not hide the fact that Manus killed the commissioner. There was no need. Eagan’s essence signature saturated the commissioner’s body. When his body arrived at the morgue, Janey Likesmith would have no difficulty registering it. Besides, the Guildmaster was acting in my defense in the confusion of the moment, though why he used so much essence I didn’t understand.
The real aggressor in the room was dead.
31
I waited on the second floor of the Guildmaster’s house. At either end of the hall, Danann security agents guarded the stairs. The Guild and police had locked down the entire property while the local police went through the list of guests and released them one by one. Commissioner Murdock’s body was long since gone. Ryan macGoren had arrived shortly after the first responders, along with the mayor of Boston and the governor of Massachusetts. They spent time behind closed doors in a meeting room downstairs, emerging hours later with grim faces.
Tibbet came out of Eagan’s bedroom, and we hugged. As a fey, she could count on a resilient physical constitution, but that didn’t prevent deep worry lines from forming around her eyes. She idly rubbed my arm. “I’ve had a room prepared for you upstairs.”
I adjusted some of her braids away from her forehead. “I’ve been thinking about that, Tibs, and decided I should go home. Eagan had his reasons for keeping a public distance from me. I don’t think he’d want me here. You have enough to deal with anyway without me complicating things.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“I’m sure,” I said.
A commotion at the top of the main stairs drew our attention. Several police officers—Leo and Gerard among them—were arguing with the Danann agents. I trailed after Tibs as she rushed toward them. Halfway down the flight of stairs, Barnard and Kevin Murdock waited with intent, angry faces. Davis Jones, the Superintendent in Chief and the commissioner’s second-in-command, gestured for the officers to step back as Tibbet approached.
“I need to see the Guildmaster,” Jones said.
“This has already been discussed. The Guildmaster is in a coma. You need to coordinate any further inquiries through the governor’s office and the Guild,” Tibbet said.
“I would like to confirm that he’s really in a coma.” Jones leaned his wide, imposing frame between the guards and toward Tibbet.
I knew that type of thing didn’t work on Tibbet. To prove my point, she calmly pressed the Danann agents to the side and moved closer. Tibbet is tall for a brownie, but she had to look up into Jones’s face. “I am the Guildmaster’s attorney. My client is unavailable.” She relaxed her stance and placed a sympathetic hand on Jones’s arm. “It’s been a long night, Davis. We all need to rest.”
Jones dropped his voice. “I’ve got angry men, Tibbet. They want to know why he’s not under arrest.”
“I’m going in there,” Gerard Murdock said. He pushed past Jones, but a Danann agent stepped in front of him. Leo pulled him back.
Gerard was not in the best frame of mind. I needed to do something for the Murdocks. “Tibbet, will you let Leo through?” I asked.
She considered my request and moved aside. Leo stepped between the guards, and I escorted him down the hall. “How are you holding up?” I asked.
“Barely. They’re already rumbling about diplomatic immunity,” he said.
“That’s expected, Leo. That’s why I thought you should see Eagan’s out of it. People will know you’re not using political games for a cover-up.”
I opened the door to the bedroom. The pungent odor of burning herbs hung in the air. Gillen Yor chanted under his breath as he leaned over Eagan’s still body. A mix of druid and brownie assistants worked quietly behind him. On the opposite side of the bed, Briallen moved into the pool of light from the lamp on the nightstand. I hadn’t known she was there. She immediately stopped whatever she was doing and hugged Murdock. “I’m so sorry, Leonard,” she whispered into his ear.
He cleared his throat. “Thank you. What’s his status?” “Critical. His wasting disease had already compromised his health, and the expenditure of essence almost depleted what was left. He might die,” she said.
Eagan’s ashen skin pulled over a shrunken frame. His wings—normally large and lit with the powerful reserves of essence of a Danann fairy—curled dim and opaque like swaddling around his body. I had seen something similar before. Briallen once showed me a dead flit. When fairies die, their wings eventually close around them like a cocoon. Eagan was on his way out.
“Why did he do it, Briallen? Why did he kill my father?” Murdock asked.
Briallen studied the dying fairy. “We have to hope he wakes up, Leonard. Maybe it was instinctive. Maybe he couldn’t control it because of what’s wrong with him. I don’t know. If nothing else, Manus is a shrewd politician. I cannot imagine why he would have intentionally caused an international incident of this proportion.”
Murdock nodded, a tiny muscle on his jawline twitching. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and handed me his keys. “Can you get my car? It’s in the driveway somewhere. I need to get my brothers out of here.”
He left us standing at the foot of Eagan’s bed. Briallen held her hands up to me. “May I?”
She placed her hands on either side of my face. I closed my eyes as a warm surge of essence flowed through my skull. The dark mass in my head didn’t even react but sat like a pinpoint of pressure deep in my mind. Briallen released me, her face troubled.
“You have new bone in your jaw and new teeth, if I’m not mistaken,” she said.
I remembered the sensation of cold washing over my body after the pain of the gunshot. “I think I was paralyzed, too.”
Briallen crossed her arms and compressed her lips. “The dark mass is smaller, almost as small as it was last summer. Do you think it healed you?”
I rubbed my hand over my face. “I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like it’s trying to kill me, and sometimes it seems to keep me alive.”
She rested a hand on the footboard of the bed. “What do you see in him? Your sensing ability is more acute than ours.”
The mass in my head normally didn’t care if I used my sensing ability, but its low, steady pressure pulsed as if to draw attention to itself. The druids moved in auras of gold and green, the brownies in a more subtle amber. Eagan should have glowed brighter than all of us, except perhaps Gillen and Briallen. Instead, a dim white spark smoldered in his chest and head, casting a shadowed wash of light through the rest of his body. A haze threaded through his aura, speckles of darkness like pinholes in his body signature. I withdrew.
