A Kiss Of Shadows   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

"What's happened?"

"Nothing yet," he said.

I stared at him. "What do you think is going to happen?" I couldn't quite keep the suspicion out of my voice.

Jeremy laughed. "Don't worry, I haven't made any calls, but I'm sure the police have by now. I don't know why you've been hiding all this time, but if you're hiding from the sluagh, the Host, then you're in deep trouble."

"Sluagh" was a rude name for the lesser Unseelie fey. The Host was the polite phrase. Rude first, polite was an afterthought. Oh, well. Only another Unseelie could say "sluagh" and not have it be a mortal insult.

"I'm an Unseelie princess. Why should I be hiding from them?"

He leaned back against the wall. "That is the question, isn't it."

Even across the room in the dark I could feel the weight of his gaze, the intensity of it. It was impolite for a fey to ask another direct questions, but, oh, he wanted to ask. You could feel the unasked questions like something touchable in the air between us.

"Jump in the shower like a good girl." He lifted a bag from the floor near his feet. "I brought you clothes. The van is downstairs with Ringo and Uther in it. We'll get you to the airport."

"Helping me could be very dangerous, Jeremy."

"Then hurry."

"I don't have my passport."

He tossed a small paper-wrapped packet onto the bed. It was the packet of papers that stayed taped under the seat of my car. He'd brought my new identity. "How did you know?"

"You've hidden from the human authorities, your… relatives, and their henchmen for three years. You're not stupid. You knew you'd be found, thus you had a plan to cover yourself. I will say that the next time I'd hide the secret papers in a different spot. It was one of the first places I looked."

I stared at the packet, then at him. "That wasn't all that was under the seat."

He opened his jacket like a model on the runway showing off the smooth line of his shirt and tie. But he was flashing the gun tucked into the waistband of his pants. It was just a darker shape against the paleness of his shirt, but I knew it was a 9-mm LadySmith because it was my gun. He took an extra clip out of one pocket. "The box of extra ammo is in the sack with your clothes." He laid the gun on top of the taped packet and stepped back around the bed, so that it stood between us.

"You seem nervous, Jeremy."

"Shouldn't I be?"

"Nervous of me. I didn't think you'd be impressed with royalty." I watched his face, tried to read what lay underneath, and couldn't. He was hiding something.

He raised his left hand in the air.