JК
A Stroke Of Midnight :: Гамильтон Лорел
Страница: 43 из 293Which always looked to me like a black and silver version of Louis the Fourteenth’s office if he had liked going to Goth dance clubs for the dissipated rich. It was elegant, dark, expensive, and exciting in that chill-up-your-spine way; modern, but with a feel of the antique; nouveau riche done right. It was also a little claustrophobic to me. Too many shades of black and grey in too small a space, as if a Goth curtain salesman had persuaded them to cover every inch of the room with his wares.
The phone was white and always looked like bones on the secretary’s black desk. Or maybe that’s just me projecting. I did not understand the mood of the queen tonight. I’d asked Barinthus, as we walked to the office, if she’d given him any clues as to why she was behaving so oddly, and he’d said no. No clues.
Why was I calling the St. Louis police when the faerie lands are technically in Illinois? Because Major Walters was the current police liaison for the lands of faerie and the human police. Once upon a time, a few hundred years ago, there’d been an entire police unit assigned to us. Why? Because not everyone in America agreed with President Jefferson’s decision to bring the fey to this country. The local people who were going to be close to us were especially upset. They didn’t want monsters of the Unseelie Court coming to live in their state. At that time, St. Louis was the closest major city with a working police department. So even though we were technically located in Illinois, police problems had been sent to Missouri and St. Louis. They got the joyous duty of protecting us from the angry humans and also walking the perimeters of our lands so we couldn’t sneak out and wreak havoc. If the courts of faerie hadn’t come with a sizable bribe for several different branches of government, and certain powerful individuals, we might have never made it into this country. No one wanted to mess with either court after the last great human-fey war in Europe. We’d shown ourselves entirely too powerful for comfort.
What no one really understood about us—from Jefferson on down to the yelling mob—was that a line of human police wasn’t really going to keep the fey, any fey, from leaving the area. What kept them inside and behaving themselves were threats and oaths to and from their respective kings and queens. But the police did keep the humans from harassing us.
Gradually, when nothing bad happened, the police presence was reduced, until they left altogether, and we only called on them when they were needed. As the local humans realized that we mostly wanted to be left alone, we had to call on our private police less and less.
The phone was white and always looked like bones on the secretary’s black desk. Or maybe that’s just me projecting. I did not understand the mood of the queen tonight. I’d asked Barinthus, as we walked to the office, if she’d given him any clues as to why she was behaving so oddly, and he’d said no. No clues.
Why was I calling the St. Louis police when the faerie lands are technically in Illinois? Because Major Walters was the current police liaison for the lands of faerie and the human police. Once upon a time, a few hundred years ago, there’d been an entire police unit assigned to us. Why? Because not everyone in America agreed with President Jefferson’s decision to bring the fey to this country. The local people who were going to be close to us were especially upset. They didn’t want monsters of the Unseelie Court coming to live in their state. At that time, St. Louis was the closest major city with a working police department. So even though we were technically located in Illinois, police problems had been sent to Missouri and St. Louis. They got the joyous duty of protecting us from the angry humans and also walking the perimeters of our lands so we couldn’t sneak out and wreak havoc. If the courts of faerie hadn’t come with a sizable bribe for several different branches of government, and certain powerful individuals, we might have never made it into this country. No one wanted to mess with either court after the last great human-fey war in Europe. We’d shown ourselves entirely too powerful for comfort.
What no one really understood about us—from Jefferson on down to the yelling mob—was that a line of human police wasn’t really going to keep the fey, any fey, from leaving the area. What kept them inside and behaving themselves were threats and oaths to and from their respective kings and queens. But the police did keep the humans from harassing us.
Gradually, when nothing bad happened, the police presence was reduced, until they left altogether, and we only called on them when they were needed. As the local humans realized that we mostly wanted to be left alone, we had to call on our private police less and less.