"Do it."
"The queen may take that ill."
I nodded, looking at my scared face in the mirror, because now that I didn't have to pretend, I could look as scared as I felt. "Just do it, Doyle, just do it. I don't want any more surprises tonight."
He went to the mirror and made small gestures at its edges. I felt the spell prickle along my skin as I climbed back into the bed.
Doyle turned from the mirror and hesitated by the edge of the bed. "Do you still want company?"
I held out my arms to him. "Come to bed, and hold me while we sleep."
He smiled and slipped under the sheet. He spooned his body against mine until I lay cupped in his arms, his chest, his stomach, his groin, his thighs. He encircled me and I pulled the warm silken hardness of him around me.
He spoke softly as I began to drift off to sleep. "You do not mind that my grandmother was a hound of the wild hunt and my grandfather a phouka?"
"No." My voice was thick with sleep. Then I asked, "Could I really end up having puppies?"
"It is unlikely."
"Okay." I was almost asleep, when I felt him hold me tighter, as if I was his security blanket instead of the other way around.
The Grey Detective Agency didn't usually get called to murder scenes. We had helped the police in the past when something mystical was doing something bad, but that was usually as decoys or advisers. I could count on both hands the number of murder scenes I'd seen and still have a couple of fingers left over.
I had one less finger to count today. The woman's body was already on a gurney. Her yellow hair trailed across her face, darker gold where the ocean had touched it. Her very short evening dress was pale blue on the edges but dark blue where the water had soaked into it. A broad ribbon, probably white, sat just under her breasts, tightening the dress enough to show cleavage. Her long legs were bare and tanned. Her toenails were painted a funky blue to match the fingernails. Her lips were an odd blue color, too; but it was lipstick, not some sign of her death.
"The lipstick color is called asphyxiation."
I turned to the tall woman just behind me. Detective Lucinda Tate walked up with her hands plunged inside the pockets of her slacks. She tried to give me her usual smile, but it didn't work. Her eyes stayed worried and the smile vanished before it had really gotten started. Her eyes were always cynical under the humor, but today the cynicism had spilled out and swallowed the humor.
"I'm sorry. Lucy, what did you say about the lipstick?"
"It's called asphyxiation. It's supposed to mimic the lip color of a corpse who died from suffocation. Nicely ironic," she said.
I looked down at the woman again. There were bluish and white tints around the eyes, the nose, the edges of the lips. I had a strange urge to wipe off the lipstick and see if the lips really were the same color. I didn't do it, but the urge was like a great itch across my palms.
"So, she suffocated," I said.
Lucy nodded. "Yeah."
I frowned. "She didn't drown?"
"I doubt it. None of the others did."
I stared up at her. "Others?"
"Jeremy's had to go with Teresa to the hospital."
"What happened?" I asked.
"Teresa touched a lipstick that one of the women had been about to put on before she died. Teresa started hyperventilating, then she couldn't breathe. If we hadn't had paramedics on the scene, she might have died. I should have known better than to invite one of the most powerful clairvoyants in the country into this mess."
She glanced at Frost, who was standing a little out of the way, one hand on the other wrist, very bodyguardish. The effect was somewhat ruined by his silver hair spilling around him in the wind, as if it was trying to pull loose from the ponytail. A pale pink shirt matched the show hankie in the white suit jacket that matched the slacks. The slender silver belt matched his hair. His shiny loafers were creamy tan. He looked more like a fashion plate than a guard, though the wind gave occasional glimpses of the black shoulder holster underneath all that V white and pink.
"Jeremy said you were running late today," Detective Lucy said. "You getting much sleep lately, Merry?"
"Not much." I didn't bother to explain it wasn't Frost who had kept me up last night. We were doing friendly banter, empty, meaningless, something to say to fill the windy silence while we stood over the dead woman.
I looked down at her face, lovely even in death. The body looked thin, not exactly strong, more like she'd dieted her way to a size whatever. If she'd known she would die last night, would she have gone off her diet the day before?