Someone cleared their throat and I looked past Galen to find Barinthus. If Galen looked unique, Barinthus looked alien. His hair was the color of the sea, the oceans. The turquoise of the Mediterranean; the deeper medium blue of the Pacific; a stormy greyish-blue like the ocean before a storm, sliding into a blue that was nearly black, where the water runs deep and thick like the blood of sleeping giants. The colors moved with every touch of light, melding into each other as if it wasn't hair at all. His skin was the alabaster white of my own. His eyes were blue, but the pupils were slits of black. I knew for a fact that he had a clear membrane like a second eyelid that came up over his eyes when he was underwater. When I was five he taught me to swim, and I'd loved the fact that he could blink twice with one eye.
He was taller than Galen, nearly seven feet tall, as befit a god. He was wearing a royal blue trench coat open over a black designer suit, but the shirt was blue silk with one of those high round collars that the designers are trying to sell so men don't have to wear ties anymore. Barinthus looked splendid in it all. He'd left his hair loose and flowing free around him like a second cloak. And I knew that someone else, probably my aunt, had picked his clothes for him. Left to his own devices Barinthus was a jeans-and-T-shirt- or less-man.
Galen and Barinthus had been two of the most frequent visitors to my father's house, out among the humans. Barinthus was a power among the sidhe; he was pure Old Court. The sidhe still whispered about the last duel he'd fought, long before I was born, in which a sidhe had drowned in a summer meadow miles from any water. Barinthus, like my father, never agreed to fight a duel unless mortality was invoked. Anything less was not worth his time.
Galen let me slide to the ground. I went to Barinthus, holding out both my hands in greeting. He drew his hands out of his coat pockets carefully, keeping them in loose fists until my own hands could be placed in his. He had webbing between his fingers, and he had been sensitive about it ever since a reporter in the fifties had called him "the fish man." Hard to believe that someone once worshiped as a sea god could be embarrassed by a twentieth-century hack, but there it was. Barinthus had never forgotten that little bit of publicity.
The webbing was completely retractable, just a thin extra line of skin between his fingers unless he chose to use it. Then he could expand the skin and swim like... like a, well, um, fish. Though this was not a compliment to be paid out loud, ever.
He took my hands in his and leaned down from his great height to plant a civilized but well-meant kiss on my cheek. I returned the favor. Barinthus liked to be civilized in public. His personal side was not for Public consumption, and he had the power to make sure that even the queen herself couldn't change his mind. Gods, even fallen ones, should be treated with a certain respect. That reporter in the fifties, the one who had plastered the fish man headline along the worldwide news service, had died in a freak boating accident on the Mississippi that summer. The water just rose up and slapped the boat, eyewitnesses said. Strangest thing they'd ever seen.
The cameras kept taking pictures. We kept ignoring it. "It is good to have you back among us, Meredith."
"It's good to see you, too, Barinthus. I hope the court is safe enough for me to make this more than an extended visit."
The clear second eyelid blinked over his eyes. When he wasn't swimming, it was a sign of nervousness. "That you will have to discuss with your aunt."
I didn't like the sound of that. The reporter shoved a tiny tape recorder in my face. "Who are you?" That he had to ask meant he was on the job since I left home.
Galen moved in, smiling, charming. He opened his mouth to answer, but another voice filled the bustling hush.
" Princess Meredith NicEssus, Child of Peace."
The man who'd spoken pushed away from the far windows where he'd been leaning.
"Jenkins, how unpleasant to see you," I said.
He was a tall thin man, though next to Barinthus he wasn't that tall. Jenkins had a permanent five-o'-clock shadow, so heavy that I'd asked him once why he didn't just grow a beard. He'd replied that his wife didn't like facial hair. I'd replied that I couldn't believe anyone would marry him. Jenkins had sold pictures of my father's hacked body. Not in the United States, of course, we're too civilized for that, but there are other countries, other newspapers, other magazines. People bought the pictures and published them. He was also the one who'd surprised me at the funeral and snapped pictures of me with tears trailing down my cheeks, my eyes so angry they had a glow to them. That one had been nominated for a prize of some kind. It lost, but my face and my father's dead body were worldwide news thanks to Jenkins. I still hated him for that.
"I heard a rumor that you'd be coming back for a visit. Are you staying the whole month until Halloween?" he asked.
"I can't believe that anyone would risk my aunt's displeasure talking to you," I said, ignoring his question. I'd had lots of practice ignoring reporter's questions.
He smiled. "You'd be surprised who talks to me and about what."
I didn't like the phrasing on that. It sounded vaguely threatening, vaguely personal. No, I didn't like it one little bit.
"Welcome home, Meredith," he said and gave a small but strangely stylish bow.
What I wanted to say to him wasn't fit for public consumption, but there were too many tape recorders. If Jenkins was here, then the television people couldn't be far behind. If he couldn't have an exclusive, he'd make sure there was a crowd.
I said nothing. I let it go. He'd been baiting me since I was a child. He was only about ten years older than I was, but he looked twenty years older, because I still looked like I was in my early twenties. Maybe I wasn't going to live forever, but I was going out well preserved. I think that really bothered Jenkins, covering people who either didn't age or aged more slowly than he did. There were moments when I was younger that it had been a comfort that he would probably die first.