"Not here, Galen."
Galen glanced, too, and saw Jenkins. "He really hates you, doesn't he?"
"Yes," I said.
"I've never understood his animosity toward you," Barinthus said. "Even when you were a child, he seemed to despise you."
"It does seem to have become personal, doesn't it?"
"Do you know why it's so personal for him?" Galen asked, and there was something in the way he asked it that made me look away, to avoid his eyes.
My aunt had decreed years before I was born that we could not; our darkest powers in front of a member of the press. I'd broken that rule only once, for Jenkins's personal edification. My only excuse was thai I'd been eighteen when my father died. Eighteen when Jenkins plastered my pain across the media of the world. I'd pulled his darkest fear from his mind and paraded them before his eyes. I'd made him shriek and beg. I'd left him a quivering mass curled beside a lonely country road. For a few months he'd been kinder, gentler, then he'd come back I with a vengeance. Meaner, harsher, more willing to do anything to get a story than he was before. He'd told me that the only way I could stop him was to kill him. I hadn't tamed him, I'd made him worse. Jenkins was what helped me learn the lesson that you either kill your enemies or you leave them the f**k alone.
My suitcase was one of the first to come sliding along the carousel. Galen picked it up. "Your chariot awaits, my lady."
I looked at him. If it had just been Galen, I might have believed it, but Barinthus wouldn't do the publicity stunts, and a chariot was definitely a stunt.
"Queen Andais sent her own personal car for you," Barinthus said.
I glanced from one to the other of them. "She sent the black coach of the wild hunt for me? Why?"
"Until dark this evening," Barinthus said, "it is merely a car, a limousine. And that your aunt offered it to you with me as your driver is a great honor that should not easily be dismissed."
I stepped in close to him and lowered my voice as if the waiting reporters could hear us. I couldn't keep calling magic to hide our words because, though I couldn't sense it, I couldn't be sure we weren't observed. "It's too great an honor, Barinthus. What's going on? I don't usually get the royal treatment from my relatives."
He looked down at me, silent so long I thought he wouldn't answer. "I do not know, Meredith," he said finally.
"We'll talk in the car," Galen said, smiling and waving for the reporters. He shepherded us out to the automatic doors. The limo was waiting like a sleek black shark. Even the windows were tinted black so that you could see nothing of what lay inside.
I stopped on the sidewalk. The two men walked past me, then stopped, looking back at me.
"What's wrong?" Galen asked.
"Just wondering what might have crawled into the car while we were inside the airport."
They glanced at each other, then back to me. "The car was empty when we left it here," Galen said.
Barinthus was more practical. "I give my most solemn word that to my knowledge the car is empty."
I smiled at him, but it wasn't a happy smile. "You always were cautious."
"Let us say that I do not give my word on things that I cannot control."
"Like my aunt's whims," I said.
He gave a small bow that swirled his hair like a multihued curtain. "Indeed."
My aunt had chosen well. There were three times three times three royal bodyguards. Twenty-seven warriors dedicated to my aunt's every wish. Of those, the two I would have trusted most were standing beside me. Andais wanted me to feel secure. Why? My security or lack thereof had never interested her before. Barinthus's words came back to me. The queen wanted something from me, something only I could give her, or do for her, or for the court. The question was what was that one thing that only I could do? Off the top of my head, I couldn't think of a single thing that only I could give her.
"In the car, children," Galen said through smiling, gritted teeth. There was a television news van in the distance, caught in traffic but coming closer. If they pulled in and blocked our escape, which had happened in the past, we'd have other troubles than just my paranoia. No matter how well justified that paranoia happened to be.
Barinthus took keys out of his pocket and hit a button on the key chain. The trunk popped open with a hiss of escaping air like it was hermetically sealed. Galen put my suitcase in it and held his hand out for my carry-on bag.
I shook my head. "I'll keep this with me."
Galen didn't ask why-he knew, or could guess. I wouldn't have come home without more than the weapons I was carrying.
Barinthus held the rear door for me. "The news van will be here soon, Meredith. If we are to make a-how do they say?-clean getaway, we must do so now."
I took half a step toward that open door and stopped. The upholstery was black, everything was black. The car had too long a history not to ring every psychic bell I had. The power from that open door crept along my skin and raised the hair on my arms. It was the dark coach of the wild hunt, sometimes. Even if there were no tricks waiting inside it now, it was an object of wild power, and that power flowed over me.
"By the Lord and the Lady, Merry," Galen said. He moved past me and slid into the blackness of the car. He slid all the way in out of sight, then slid back out, holding his pale hand out to me. "It won't bite, Merry."
"Promise?" I said.
"Promise," he said, smiling.
I took his hand, and he drew me toward the open door. "Of course, I never promised that I wouldn't bite." He pulled me into the car, both of us laughing. It was good to be home.