damned before I did such a thing.” She shook her head. “I have done enough for you down the years; there are no debts between us, and I will not help you now.”
Not even being slapped would have surprised me more. “But, my lady, Evening was murdered, with iron—”
“Don’t tell me how she died!” I rocked back on my heels, clapping my hands over my ears in a vain attempt to block out the voice of the Queen. Maybe time had diluted the blood of her Banshee and Siren ancestors enough that her scream wasn’t fatal, but I’ve never been much for roulette. “Don’t tell me!”
The Court was buzzing again, but this time, their whispers were directed at the Queen. She was shaking where she stood, eyes gone moonstruck-mad with fury. Her rage might have been impressive if it was focused on something else, but it was focused on me, and that made it terrifying. Humanity has instincts that kick in around the fae, forcing them to be good and humble. Changelings don’t get the full brunt, but we get some of it, until sometimes even our own parents can scare us away. I backed up several steps, dropping a hasty curtsy. “Your Majesty, if we’re done, I . . .”
“Get out!” She snapped her head from side to side, an unearthly wail seeping into her voice. “Now!”
I didn’t need another invitation. Whirling, I ran toward the far wall, and through it, back into the darkness of the cave on the other side. My shoes were made for dancing, not running over seawater-slippery rocks. After the third time I nearly fell, I pulled them off, carrying them in the hand that wasn’t being used to keep my skirt as far out of the water as possible. Bruising my feet was a small price to pay if it meant I could get away from the queen before she decided to shut me up herself, or worse, forbid me to involve myself in Evening’s murder.
The air outside the cave was so cold that running into the open was like being slapped. It didn’t matter; I didn’t stop. I ran across the beach, stopping only when I hit the pavement, and there only long enough to put my shoes back on. My original clothes hadn’t come back, and I doubted they would—the Queen is strong enough that a transformation of the inanimate was likely to be forever. I didn’t care. I kept running.
SIX
MY CAR HADN’T BEEN DISTURBED. I dug the spare key from under the bumper and fumbled with the lock until I managed to stop the shaking in my fingers and get the door open. I climbed into the driver’s seat, nearly slamming the trailing hem of my dress in the door as I closed it and started the engine. Evening’s liege wouldn’t help me. This wasn’t a mortal problem. Mortal tools wouldn’t solve it, and my camera wasn’t going to save my ass this time. The police could study Evening’s “body” forever if they wanted to, but a lot of the fae don’t leave fingerprints. They’d never find anything, and that meant there wouldn’t be anything I could steal from them.
Slamming my human disguise back into place, so that I just looked like a hard-used brunette in a party gown, I slumped in the driver’s seat and scowled. I needed to look at things from a different direction. Maybe I couldn’t do anything as an investigator, but as a knight . . . there are resources in Faerie that don’t exist in the human world, and this was a faerie crime. I could solve it, if I found the right spells and called in the right favors. But still . . . I’m just a changeling. Evening was ten times more powerful than I’ll ever be. Whatever took her down wasn’t just lucky; it had to have been strong, too, or it wouldn’t have scared her that way. That meant I needed some power of my own, or I wouldn’t stand a chance.
Asking the Queen for help after she’d all but thrown me out of her knowe might be rude enough to get me killed. Dying wasn’t part of my plan for solving the case—it was bad enough that it might be the price of failure—and that meant our Lady of the Mists was actually a hindrance, because if I got in her way, I wouldn’t have time to run. There were other Courts and nobles I could go to, but