That got through the haughtiness, and I saw uncertainty on his face. He hid it, but it was in there. "You didn't say that you needed me to contribute in that way."
"We may be getting Maeve Reed's houses for free, but we can't keep letting her feed the army of us. When she comes back from Europe she may want her house back, all her houses back. What then?"
He frowned.
"Yeah, that's right. We are more than a hundred people, counting the Red Caps, and they're camping out on her estate because the houses already won't hold everyone. You don't get it. We have what amounts to a faerie court, but we don't have a royal treasury, or magic to clothe and feed us. We don't have a faerie mound to house us all that will just grow bigger as we need it."
"Your wild magic created a new piece of faerie inside the gates of Maeve's land," he said.
"Yes, and Taranis used that piece of faerie to kidnap me, so we can't use it to house anyone until we can guarantee that our enemies can't use it to attack us."
"Rhys has a sithen now. More will come."
"And until we know that our enemies can't use that new piece of faerie to attack us, too, we can't move many people in there."
"It's an apartment building, Barinthus, not a traditional sithen," Rhys said.
"An apartment building?"
Rhys nodded. "It magically appeared on a street and moved two buildings so that it could appear in the middle of them, but it looks like a rundown apartment building. It's definitely a sithen, but it's like the old ones. I open a door one time and the next time there's a different room behind the door. It's wild magic, Barinthus. We can't move people in there until I know what it does, and what plans it has."
"It is that powerful?" he said.
Rhys nodded. "It feels it, yes."
"More sithens will come," Barinthus said.
"Maybe, but until they do, we need money. We need as many people as possible bringing in money. That includes you."
"You didn't tell me that you wanted me to take the bodyguarding jobs he offered."
"Don't call him 'he'; his name is Jeremy. Jeremy Grey, and he's been making a living out here among the humans for decades, and those skills are a hell of a lot more useful to me now than your ability to make the ocean come up and smash into a house. Which was childish, by the way."
"The people in question don't need bodyguards. They simply want me to stand around and be stared at."
"No, they want you to stand around and be handsome and attract attention to them and their lives."
"I am not a freak to be paraded for cameras."
"No one remembers that story from the fifties, Barinthus," Rhys said.
One reporter had called Barinthus the Fish Man because of the collapsible webbing between his fingers. That reporter had died in a boating accident. Eyewitnesses said that the water just came up and slapped the boat.
Barinthus turned away from us, his hands going into his coat pockets. Doyle said, "Frost and I have both guarded humans who didn't need guarding. We have stood and let them admire us and pay money for it."
"You did one job and then you refused after that," Frost said to Barinthus. "What happened to make you say no after that?"
"I told Merry it was beneath me to pretend to guard someone when I should be guarding her."
"Did the client try to seduce you?" Frost asked.
Barinthus shook his head; his hair moved more than it should have, like the ocean on a windy day. "Seduction is not crude enough for what the woman did."
"She touched you," Frost said, and just the way he said it made me look at him.
"You say that like it's happened to you, too."
"They invite us to the parties to do more than guard them, Merry, you know that."
"I know they want media attention but none of you told me that the clients had gotten that out of hand."
"We're supposed to be protecting you, Meredith," Doyle said, "not the other way around."
"Is that why you and Frost are back to guarding mostly just me?"
"See," Barinthus said, "you've distanced yourself from it, too."
"But we help Meredith with her investigations. We didn't just stop doing the parties and then hide away by the sea," Doyle said.
"Part of the problem is that you haven't picked a partner," Rhys said.
"I don't know what you mean by that."
"I work with Galen, and we watch each other's backs, and make sure that the only hands that touch us are the ones we want touching each other. A partner isn't just to watch your back in a battle, Barinthus."
That arrogance that Frost hid behind was back on Barinthus's face, but I realized that for him it wasn't just a version of a blank face.
"Do you honestly believe that no one among the men is worthy to partner with you?" I asked.
He just looked at me, which was answer enough, I supposed. He looked at Doyle. "Once I would have been happy to work with Darkness."
"But not now that I've partnered with Frost," he said.
"You have chosen your friends."
I wondered for a moment if Barinthus had a crush on Doyle, or did his words mean only what he said. The fact that I'd never realized he was more than my father's friend had made me question a lot of things.
"It's okay," Rhys said. "You and I have never gotten along."
"It doesn't matter," I said. "Old news. If you want to stay here, then you need to contribute in a real way, Barinthus. You're going to start by explaining to Jeremy and the nice police wizards why that isn't sidhe magic." I gave as good eye contact as I could with a two-foot height difference. I guess with the three-inch heels it was a little less, but it was still a neck-craning moment. It's always hard to look tough when you're looking that far up at someone.