Laurell K. Hamilton - 02 A Caress of Twilight - Merry Gentry.pdf

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Books By Laurell K Hamiton
Mary Gentry Series
--02 A Caress of Twilight (2002)
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
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Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
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Mary GentrySeries
--02 A Caress of Twilight (2002)--
Copyright (c) 2002 by Laurell K. Hamilton
This one's for J., who brought me endless cups of chai and, for the first time, watched the process from
beginning to end. He loves me still, and for all of you married to us artistic types, you know just how
much that says about both of us.
Acknowledgments
For Shauna Summers, my new editor, thanks for the professionalism. Darla Cook, who helped proof this
book when there wasn't time to send it around. To my long-suffering writing group: Tom Drennan, Rhett
MacPherson, Deborah Millitello, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn, and Mark Sumner. Thanks for having
patience with me while my world fell apart and remade itself.
Chapter 1
Moonlight silvered the room, painting the bed in a hundred shades of grey, white, and black. The two men
in the bed were deeply asleep. So deeply that when I'd crawled out from between them, they'd barely
stirred. My skin glowed white with the kiss of moonlight. The pure bloodred of my hair looked black. I'd
pulled on a silk robe, because it was chilly. People can talk about sunny California, but in the Generated
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wee hours of the night, when dawn is but a distant dream, it's still chilly. The night that fell like a soft
blessing through my window was a December night. If I'd been home in Illinois, there would have been
the smell of snow, crisp enough, almost, to melt along the tongue. Cold enough to sear the lungs. So cold it
was like breathing icy fire. That was the way air was supposed to taste in early December. The breeze
crawling through the window at my back held the dry tang of eucalyptus and the distant smell of the sea.
Salt, water, and something else, that indefinable scent that says ocean, not lake, nothing usable, nothing
drinkable. You can die of thirst on the shores of an ocean.
For three years I'd stood on the shores of this particular ocean and died a little bit every day. Not literally
-- I'd have survived -- but mere survival can get pretty lonely. I'd been born Princess Meredith NicEssus,
a member of the high court of faerie. I was a real-life faerie princess, the only one ever born on American
soil. When I vanished from sight about three years ago, the media had gone crazy. Sightings of the missing
Elven American Princess had rivaled Elvis sightings. I'd been spotted all around the world. In reality I'd
been in Los Angeles the entire time. I'd hidden myself, been just plain Meredith Gentry, Merry to my
friends. Just another human with fey ancestry working for the Grey Detective Agency, where we
specialized in supernatural problems, magical solutions.
Legend says that a fey exiled from faerie will wither and fade, die. That's both true and untrue. I have
enough human blood in my background that being surrounded by metal and technology doesn't bother me.
Some of the lesser fey would literally wither and die in a man-made city. But most fey can manage in a
city; they may not be happy, but they can survive. But part of them does wither, that part that knows that
not all the butterflies you see are actually butterflies. That part that has seen the night sky filled with a
rushing of wings like a hurricane wind, wings of flesh and scale to make humans whisper of dragons and
demons; that part that has seen the sidhe ride by on horses made of starlight and dreams. That part begins
to die.
I hadn't been exiled; I'd fled, because I couldn't survive the assassination attempts. I just didn't have the
magic or the political clout to protect myself. I'd saved my life but lost something else. I'd lost the touch of
faerie. I'd lost my home.
Now, leaning on my windowsill with the smell of the Pacific Ocean on the air, I looked down at the two
men and knew I was home. They were both high-court sidhe, Unseelie sidhe, part of that darkling throng
that I might someday rule if I could stay ahead of the assassins. Rhys lay on his stomach, one hand hanging
off the bed, the other lost under his pillow. Even in repose that one visible arm was muscled. His hair
was a shining fall of white curls caressing his bare shoulders, trailing down the strong line of his back.
The right side of his face was pressed to the pillow, and so I couldn't see the scars where his eye had
been taken. His cupid-bow mouth was turned upward, half smiling in his sleep. He was boyishly

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