[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight by Laurell K. Hamilton

this country. The local people who were going to be close to us were especially upset. They didn’t want monsters of the Unseelie Court coming to live in their state. At that time, St. Louis was the closest major city with a working police department. So even though we were technically located in Illinois, police problems had been sent to Missouri and St. Louis. They got the joyous duty of protecting us from the angry humans and also walking the perimeters of our lands so we couldn’t sneak out and wreak havoc. If the courts of faerie hadn’t come with a sizable bribe for several different branches of government, and certain powerful individuals, we might have never made it into this country. No one wanted to mess with either court after the last great human-fey war in Europe. We’d shown ourselves entirely too powerful for comfort.
    What no one really understood about us—from Jefferson on down to the yelling mob—was that a line of human police wasn’t really going to keep the fey, any fey, from leaving the area. What kept them inside and behaving themselves were threats and oaths to and from their respective kings and queens. But the police did keep the humans from harassing us.
    Gradually, when nothing bad happened, the police presence was reduced, until they left altogether, and we only called on them when they were needed. As the local humans realized that we mostly wanted to be left alone, we had to call on our private police less and less. Soon, the police assigned to us had other jobs in other areas of the police force until they were needed for faerie duty, as it came to be called. Come up to present day and the unit had become a single detective or officer. The last time he’d been used was my father’s death, but since that had been on government-owned farmland, the locals had been cut out twice. Once by the feds and once by us. All right, by the queen. I’d have taken a platoon of soldiers into the mounds if I thought they could have caught my father’s killers.
    After the liaison was so ineffective with my father’s murder, I thought the post had been abandoned. But I’d been wrong.
    Doyle had found out that Major Walters was still our liaison. The last remnants of a unit created by Thomas Jefferson himself. We’d also never had anyone as high a rank as major in the job. Major Walters had volunteered for the job, because the last person to have it had also done our security at press conferences, and that had landed Walter’s predecessor a large salary as chief of a big corporation’s security. Executives like to be guarded by someone who’s guarded royalty. It adds a certain panache to the résumé. Doyle had even learned that Walters had a very well paying job lined up. I wondered how the big corporation felt about Walters after yesterday. It looks great on your résumé to guard royalty, but not so great to let them get injured on your watch. Nope, probably the executives would be a little nervous about being guarded by someone who let Princess Meredith get shot at by one of his own officers. Humans believed in magic, but not as an excuse for screwing up. No, they liked to blame someone, not something.
    Walters would be needing to recoup. He’d need to redeem himself in the public eye. Though my guards and I knew that he’d had no chance to prevent what had happened, the humans wouldn’t accept it. The major had been in charge. He’d take the fall. It was simply how they thought.
    Christine, my aunt’s secretary, was petite, well-endowed, and more plump than was the fashion. In her day she’d been perfect. Her blond hair curled over her shoulders, and her youthful face was eternally beautiful. One of our noblemen had lured her away centuries ago, but he’d grown tired of her. To stay in faerie she needed to be useful, so she learned shorthand and computer skills. She was probably one of the most