A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

“I thought as much, but think of the damage we coulddo before she took back her new gifts.”

We sat on the floor and contemplated new possibilities for even larger disasters. Doyle hugged me tight, then stood up, and shook himself like a dog. He settled the leather coat around his tall frame, and said, “I thought to keep the news of Cel and his new madness until after we had brought the police inside, but…” He slid the dark glasses over his eyes, so that he was the tall, dark, inscrutable Darkness. Only the silver shine of his earrings gave him color. “We will escort you to the police and the FBI. I am sorry for losing control as I did, Princess, and for delaying us further.”

I let Frost help me to my feet. “One fit in over a thousand years, I think you’re overdue.”

Doyle shook his head. “It is my fault that Rhys and the police are waiting in the cold. Inexcusable.”

I touched his arm, but it was hard muscle encased in leather, as if he could not allow himself any softness. “I don’t think it’s inexcusable.”

“If she comforts us again, we will be even later,” Frost said.

Doyle smiled, a quick flash of teeth. “It is nice to be comforted instead of punished.” He held up the fur cloak. “Please, just for now. We will find something else more to your liking, but just for now.”

I still didn’t like the idea of wearing the cloak, but after what I’d just heard about Cel and his guard, it seemed a lesser evil. I allowed him to put the cloak around me. “How does it look?” I asked.

The wall quivered like a horse’s skin when a fly lands. Doyle shoved me behind him. Frost already had his sword naked in his hand. Doyle aimed a gun at the rock wall.

A full length mirror surrounded by a gilt frame floated up through the stone, shining in the darkness of the room.

I peered at it around Doyle’s body, my pulse in my throat. “Where did that come from?”

Doyle still had a gun pointed very steadily at the bright surface. “I do not know.” Almost all the fey could use mirrors to make a sort of phone call. Doyle and some of the other sidhe could travel through mirrors. We stood waiting for a figure to appear, for something terrible to happen. But the mirror just hung on the wall, as if someone had put it there to be a mirror and nothing more.

The tip of Frost’s sword lowered.

Doyle glanced at us. “Why did it appear? Who sent it?”

Frost stepped closer to the mirror. “Meredith, look at yourself in the mirror.”

Doyle looked skeptical but he moved so I could see myself.