"I will make certain Taranis knows that." She gave a short, abrupt laugh. "You may be right after all, Galen Greenknight; perhaps love is frightening enough all on its own without any torture needed."
She laughed again, and then just walked out of sight of the mirror. It was Eamon who came forward, reaching to blank the glass. He spoke to me before he did it. "Princess Meredith, Prince Galen." And we were staring at our own startled reflections before I could give him his title in return.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
MAEVE REED STALKED around the main bedroom in a pair of cream slacks, cut wide so they swung enough to give glimpses of the pale taupe stiletto boots underneath. The boots matched her tailored suit jacket, the dress shirt buttoned up to her neck was almost pure white, and her thin man-style tie was metallic gold and cream to pick up the gold of her chain-link belt. The chain was tied into a loose knot to trail across her hip, swinging to cross her groin as she moved, more like jewelry for the waist than an actual belt.
"You look wonderful in this outfit," I said.
She stopped stalking the white carpet and turned to look at me. "You think so?" She trailed long, slender hands down the chain links, which drew the eye down to her groin again. It wasn't accidental, but it wasn't exactly flirting with me either. Maeve had made her living in Hollywood for decades; sex appeal had been one of the commodities that had helped her stay at the top, especially back in the fifties, when she'd have been considered too tall, too thin, and not curvy enough to be a sex symbol. Now she was very chic and very in, but then Maeve Reed, the Golden Goddess of Hollywood, had been one of the reasons the fashion had changed from curvy to a thinness that was almost impossible for a human woman to duplicate without starving herself. The sidhe were built differently, like fashion models with a bit more body fat so they still had breasts and ass, but they could eat a Thanksgiving feast every day and not gain weight. Humans couldn't, and yet they tried.
"I had to go into the studio today. I'm a movie star; people expect an effort."
"You don't have to explain it to me. You could have just dressed to be around the house. It's your clothes, your house, wear what you want."
She looked at me, blue eyes narrowing. She was using glamour to appear more human, hiding her very inhuman eyes with their tricolor blue and copper and gold lines that went out like miniature lightning bolts, changing her golden skin to a human tan, and even making her straight waist-length hair more yellow than her natural white-blond. I never understood why she darkened her hair; it was within human bounds either way. The skin and eyes she'd had to make more human, but the hair could have stayed.
"Why do you make your hair more yellow-blond than it is naturally? Humans have hair both colors."
"The yellow-blond looks better on camera," she said.
"Oh, that makes sense." I sat on the edge of the bed, swinging my feet, because I was far too short to sit and reach the ground. I was still wearing the purple dress, though I'd changed to a pair of black low-heeled pumps. I might get back into the stilettos in a few weeks, but right now having to fight my body on heels that high and thin just took too much effort. I'd lost most of my weight in an almost magically short time, but I still wasn't quite myself. The extra cup size in my breasts alone made me feel unbalanced. I'd been generously endowed before, but now it was a true embarrassment of riches.
"I'm sorry that you disagree about hiring lesser fey to work in the house, Meredith, but I just don't see the point in it. There are plenty of humans in L. A. needing jobs. If we hire only fey, then the media will accuse us of racism."
"Really?" I asked.
Maeve nodded. "Trust me on that."
"I do trust you, but we can't have human nannies around the triplets, or more specifically around Bryluen. Her ability to fascinate seems automatic; until she's old enough for us to teach her to control it, humans are nearly helpless around her."
"She's a baby, it can't be that bad."
"Come to the nursery and see for yourself. Perhaps your more pure sidhe blood will keep you proof against Bryluen's glamour."
"I'm not just sidhe, Meredith; I was a goddess and I'm still worshipped in a way as a celebrity, so if your babe cannot bespell me it's not really a good test."
"But if she can, then it's a very good test," I said.
Maeve looked thoughtful and then said, "Good point. Who is taking care of her besides you?"
"Kitto ..."
"A goblin has no resistance to sidhe magic; of course he would be ensnared by her."
"Kitto is also half sidhe and has come into his hand of power."
She waved it away. "He was raised goblin; he will never be as sidhe as he is goblin."
"Why should that make a difference to his magic resistance?" I asked.
"You were taught certain skills from childhood, skills that your little man was not."
I slid to my feet, settling the skirt in place. "Don't call him a little man."
"Why not? He is the smallest of your men."
"If you were sidhe, yes, but you've lived with the humans long enough to understand it's an insult."
"What do you mean, if I were sidhe?"
"If Kitto's goblin upbringing undermines his ability to be sidhe, then a similar argument can be made that your centuries of exile out among the humans have made you more human than you would have been had you stayed in faerie as a member of the Seelie Court."
"I was the goddess Conchenn; how dare you compare me to some sidhe-sided goblin?"
"The goblins are every bit as fey as any sidhe, and this attitude of looking down on them because they have no magic, when it is the sidhe that stole their magic in the first place, really is racist, and arrogant. It's like an abusive spouse who blames his wife for not being able to walk gracefully, when he's the one who broke her leg."
"That is not a fair comparison, Meredith. The goblins and the sidhe were at war; they would have won had we not done the spell that took their magic."
"So I'm told by both sides, but that was a very long time ago, Maeve, a very long time ago."
"You weren't there, Meredith; you didn't see your friends die at their hands."
"No, but I have seen that the sidhe-sided goblins do fine magic once they're brought into their power."
"Your goblin twin lovers, Holly and Ash, are quite frightening. That you've armed them with your hand of flesh and blood respectively makes them very dangerous."
"I did not share my hands of power with them, it just happened to be their latent magic."
"Are you sure of that?" she asked, and gave me a very direct look out of those famous blue eyes.
"Kitto's hand of power isn't one of mine."
"He can bring people through a mirror even against their will; that is almost useless as a hand of power."
"It helped him and Rhys kill the goblin who tormented both of them," I said.
"His hand of power is so useless there is no name for it."
"It's incredibly rare, but it has a name: the hand of reaching," I said.
"The hand of reaching allowed small armies to be brought through a reflective surface. Your goblin cannot do that."
"Perhaps not, but the name is for the ability, not the degree of power."
"It needs a new name, something grand," she said.
I shrugged.
She frowned at me. She frowned a lot, actually; if she'd been human she'd have had frown lines by now, but she was sidhe and would never truly wrinkle. She could get some lines here and there, but she'd never have the lines of her unhappiness carved into her face like most people would.
"It's not just me who thinks the twins have only inherited your own magic, Meredith, nor am I the only one who thinks Kitto's hand of power is weak."
"I know that," I said, "but the others don't say it to my face as much."
"You are their ruler; they dare not speak their minds to you."
"And you are Maeve Reed, the Golden Goddess of Hollywood, and you don't plan on going back to faer
ie, even if Taranis lifted your exile."
She looked startled for a second, and then smiled. "How did you know that? I wasn't even certain myself until recently."
"I may not be your ruler, but I try to be your friend, and friends notice things."
She looked embarrassed then. "I am sorry, Meredith; I've been rude by human standards, and you're right. I've been exiled long enough that human culture is more natural to me than any in faerie, so my apologies."
"Please don't treat Kitto as less than the others anymore. He is my lover and maybe one of the fathers of my children. I would ask that you respect him for that, if for no other reason."
She gave a nod that was almost a bow, but not quite. "If you wish the goblins to be thought better of, then you do need to bring one into a power that isn't one of yours, and is more impressive than mirror-whatever."
"I've been discussing that with Doyle, Rhys, and the others. When I am able to have sex again, I will try to do just that."
Maeve shuddered. "I honestly don't know how you can have sex with Holly and Ash. Kitto, I sort of understand, he's like this beautiful miniature man, and he's kind to the point I'm amazed he survived among such a savage race, but the twins ... they are savages, Meredith."
"What they are, or are not, is my business. I'm not asking you to compromise your racial purity."
She sighed and rolled her eyes. "I didn't mean it like that, Meredith. You seem determined to take insult."
"And you seem determined to give it."
We stood there looking at each other, almost glaring at each other. I was tired of Maeve's attitude issues. She hadn't been like this before she went to Europe to make the last movie. I didn't know if something had happened on the trip, or if it was something that had happened here, but something had changed, and not for the better.
"I do not mean to give offense," she said.
"I'd believe that if you didn't keep doing it. What happened in Europe, Maeve? Or what did you find here when you came home to make you angry with me, and my men?"
"My son treats you and your men as his parents, more than me. That hurts, Meredith."
"I am sorry for that, and we are willing to take the reality show offer to help you afford to stay home more."
"I told you at the hospital what I made on my last film, Meredith; there is no way that a reality TV contract will come close to that. We will be giving up our privacy for nothing. If anything, the cameras will record that Liam doesn't think of me as his mommy except as an empty word. Do you think I want to be humiliated like that on national television?"
"You're making it sound like Liam is dumping you for someone else. He's a baby, he doesn't understand."
"I am Maeve Reed, the Golden Goddess of Hollywood; I can't be seen as losing to anyone, not even the first American-born faerie princess."
"You aren't talking about Liam now, are you?"
"I've been a sex symbol since the early sixties, Meredith, and yet you have all the attention of the most desirable men in the household. I understand why, but my image is everything for my job. My agent and my publicist think that a reality show here could harm the image that I've built up over decades. I'm one of the most desirable, and desired, women in Hollywood, but I can't compare to you in my own home."
"Is that your agent and publicist talking, or just you?"
"All three of us."
"Are you serious?"
"Yes, Meredith, perception is everything in this town. If people believe that someone like you is this much more desirable than me, it will hurt my earning power, and maybe my box office draw."
"What do you mean, 'someone like me'?"
She blinked those big, beautiful eyes at me and did an expression I'd seen her do in a dozen films. I'd learned that was one of the ways she hid her true feelings in the real world. I didn't know if other actors did it, but she did; she acted to hide. It was her version of a cop face: actor face.
"Answer me, Maeve; what did you mean, 'someone like me'?"
"Someone who isn't a movie sex symbol," she said.
I shook my head. "That's not what you meant."
"Now you're telling me what I mean, as if I don't know my own mind?"
"Do you think the reason that Bryluen can bespell my mind so easily is because I'm not pure enough sidhe, just like Kitto?"
"I did not say that."
"And that is you avoiding answering the question; very sidhe of you, because we don't lie outright. We just prevaricate until the listener reads into our words whatever they want to hear, and we let them believe it."
"You're overthinking this, Meredith."
"Am I?"
"Yes, and that was a clear answer," she said.
"The one you just gave, yes, it was, but it's not the answer to my question, is it?"
"Drop this, Meredith, please. I'm sorry if I implied anything."
"What if I don't drop it?"
"What is wrong with you today, Meredith?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
"I had a meeting at the studio and they're already trying to pressure me to go right back to filming. I told them I wanted some time with my son, but I'm one of their solid moneymakers and any year without a Maeve Reed film hits their profits."
"You haven't been home a week yet," I said.
"If I leave again, Liam is going to just forget who I am."
I went to her then and touched her arm. "Can you say no?"
"I can always say no."
"Will it hurt your career, or put you in breach of a contract?"
She smiled and put her hand over mine where I was touching her arm. "You understand more than most people do about what really goes on at this level of 'stardom.'" She raised her hand to do one set of quote marks.
"I've watched what you've been through in the last year. I'm amazed at how badly you get treated sometimes."
"I have true power in this town; imagine what happens to actors who don't."
"It must be brutal," I said.
"Hollywood will eat you, if you let it."
"I wonder if reality TV stars have as big a challenge?"
"I don't know, honestly; I only meet them after they've become stars and then it's about their publicists trying to keep them in the news. I don't know how different it is in the beginning, but you wouldn't be like most reality stars. You're already famous."
"And that fame, like all my noble titles, doesn't pay the bills."
"You could go back to being a private detective."
"That won't help you say no to the studio. For that, we need more money than a detective makes."
"Thirty million dollars, Meredith; that is what I made for my last film. Nothing you can do will bring that kind of money in. I'm sorry, but it just won't."
"We have offers for a million here, a few hundred thousand there."
"What's the million dollars for?"
"They've been after me for a while to be a centerfold."
"No, no, because I know some of your publicity offers are from family-oriented things. You can be the sexy young thing, or the beautiful mother with babies, but you can't do both in the media, not in this country anyway."
"I'd appreciate your advice on the offers coming in, then, because I'm tempted to go for the most money. I hadn't thought about building an image."
"I'd be happy to help, but you will have to choose what kind of image you want to project."
I laughed. "Isn't it a little late for me to be the perfect mother since I've just given birth to triplets out of wedlock?"
"It's not that making the mother image hard to sell, it's the multiple fathers, and the fact that rumor has it that Frost and Doyle are lovers, too, that has really hurt their image in the mainstream media."
"Very homophobic," I said.
"Yes, it is, but it's still the truth."
"Can I be the sexy young thing having just given birth to triplets?" I asked.
It was her turn to laugh. "I don't know; I've never seen anyone recove
r their figure as fast as you who wasn't full-blooded sidhe. You're built human, but you're certainly getting your figure back more like a sidhe."
"Especially with triplets," I said.
She laughed again. "Yes, especially with triplets. The human media will want to know your secret for postbaby weight loss."
"There's no secret; apparently it's just good genetics."
"They won't want to hear that, Meredith. They want some exercise plan, or better yet some magic food, or pill, that will make them all pre-baby thin without any effort on their part."
"I'm getting my figure back without much effort, but every other good thing in my life has come with a lot of effort."
Her face sobered, and she hugged me. "I know that, and I'm sorry that I've been taking my mood out on you."
I hugged her back. "Now I'm supposed to say, 'That's all right,' but it's not. I will never again be anyone's whipping girl for their issues." I hugged her tighter and looked up into the face that had launched a thousand blockbuster movies. "Not even the most beautiful movie star in Hollywood."
"Do you really think so?" she asked, looking down from all that six-plus feet height in her high heels.
I smiled. "Of course I do."
She leaned down, and I went up on tiptoe to meet her kiss. It was a chaste kiss by fey standards, though if some paparazzi had gotten a picture they'd have sold it for a bundle, and the rumor would have been that Maeve and I were lovers. We had made wonderful magical love once, but it wasn't what we were to each other. I wasn't sure if we were extended family, or if she was a member of my inner circle of courtiers. Once such things had been more formalized, and they still were at the Seelie Court, but less so at the Unseelie, and if this was a court then it was the most informal of all.
She smiled down at me, her pinkish lipstick slightly smeared. I wasn't wearing lipstick, just not bothering with glamour so my lips looked red. Humans would assume I was wearing something, but the proof was in the kissing, and the only lipstick smeared was hers.
I pulled out of the embrace with a smile.
"I appreciate you letting me choose lovers from among the new sidhe guards," she said.
"They are free to choose and so are you."
"It's been a long time since I was surrounded by people who truly felt that way. Among humans and the Seelie there is always a price to pay, or strings attached."
"The Unseelie who are not under the queen's direct control are more like the rest of the fey. Sex is another need, like food."