"You really did hire Kane and Hart to protect you from us, didn't you?"
Maeve turned a perfect look on me, pleasant, bemused, incredulous: eyes wide, beautifully lipsticked mouth open in a small o. It was a look for a camera, for a screen that would make her face twenty feet tall. It was a face to win over audiences and the heads of studios.
It was a great face, but it wasn't that great. "A simple yes or no will suffice, Ms. Reed."
"I'm sorry," she said, voice apologetic, face soft, eyes a little confused. Her grip on Julian's arm was too tight; it gave a lie to that casual confused act.
"Did you hire Kane and Hart to protect you from us?"
She gave the laugh that People magazine had once called the five-million-dollar laugh, the one where her eyes crinkled and her face shone and her mouth was just a little open. "What a strange idea. I assure you, Ms. Gentry, I am not afraid of you."
She'd avoided a direct answer. She wasn't afraid of me; that much had to be true, because it is taboo among us to truly lie. If Doyle hadn't suggested in the van that I be rude, I'd have let it go, because pursuing it relentlessly would have been more than rude; it would have been insulting, and duels had started over less. But only among highborn sidhe could one be expected to know the rules. We were counting on Maeve assuming I'd been raised by savages -- Unseelies and humans.
"Are you afraid of my guards, then?" I asked.
The laughter was still making her face shine, her eyes sparkle as she looked at me. "Whatever gave you such an absurd idea?"
"You did."
She shook her head, sending that long yellow sheet of hair sliding around her body. The glow of the laughter still shone in her face, and her eyes were just a little more blue. I realized suddenly that it wasn't the glow of laughter, which should have faded, but a very subtle type of glamour. She was purposefully making herself glow, just a little. And if she was glowing, she was using magic to try to persuade me to believe her.
I frowned, because I couldn't feel magic being used against me. Usually when another sidhe uses magic, you know it.
I glanced behind me at the guards. Doyle and Frost were standing, but they were unreadable now, imperious even. Kitto was still standing beside the couch where I'd left him. One small hand had a death grip on the white back, as if touching anything was better than standing untouched.
I wondered if he was feeling things I couldn't. I was only part fey; I was always willing to believe that I'd missed parts by that mixed heritage. I'd gained things, too -- being able to do major magic surrounded by metal, for instance -- but with every gain there can be a loss.
"Ms. Reed, I'll ask you one more time, did you hire Kane and Hart to protect you from my guards?"
"What I told Julian and his men was that I had some overzealous fans."
I didn't bother to look at Julian for confirmation. "I believe that's what you told Julian, Ms. Reed. Now, what's the real reason that you hired them?"
She stared at me with mock horror, or maybe it was real. She glanced at Frost and Doyle, and said, "Have you taught her no manners?"
"She has what manners she needs," Doyle said.
A look flickered through Maeve's eyes, fear, I think. She looked back to me, and down in those softly glowing blue eyes, that flicker remained. She was afraid. Very, very afraid. But of what?
"Did you really hire Julian and his people because of some overzealous fan?"
"Stop this," she whispered.
"Do you really believe that we will harm you?" I asked.
"No," she said, and she said it too quickly, as if she was relieved to finally be able to give a straightforward answer.
"Then why are you afraid of us?"
"Why are you doing this to me?" she asked, and her voice held all the sorrow of every maiden who had ever asked that question of a lover gone astray.
It tightened my throat to hear it. Julian looked stricken. "I think you've asked enough questions, Meredith."
I shook my head. "No, I haven't." I met those pain-filled blue eyes, and said, "Ms. Reed, you don't have to hide yourself from us."
"I don't know what you mean."
"That is entirely too close to a lie," I said softly.