“I’m sorry to drag you out to something like this on a Saturday, Merry,” she said. “I did try to call Jeremy.”

“He’s got a new girlfriend and keeps turning off his phone.” I didn’t begrudge my boss, the first semi-serious lover he’d had in years. Not really.

“You look like you had a picnic planned.”

“Something like that,” I said, “but this didn’t do your Saturday any good either.”

She smiled ruefully. “I didn’t have any plans.” She stabbed a thumb in the direction of the other police. “Your boyfriends are mad at me for making you look at dead bodies while you’re pregnant.”

My hands automatically went to my stomach, which was still very flat. I wasn’t showing yet, though with twins the doctor had warned me that it could go from nothing to a lot almost overnight.

I glanced back to see Doyle and Frost, standing with the policemen. My two men were no taller than some of the police—six feet and some inches isn’t that unusual—but the rest stood out painfully. Doyle had been called the Queen’s Darkness for a thousand years, and he fit his name, black from skin to hair to the eyes behind their black wraparound sunglasses. His black hair was in a tight braid down his back. Only the silver earrings that climbed from lobe to the pointed tip of his ears relieved the black-on-black of his jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket. The last was to hide the weapons he was carrying. He was the captain of my bodyguards, as well as one of the fathers to my unborn children, and one of my dearest loves. The other dearest love stood beside him like a pale negative, skin as white as my own, but Frost’s hair was actually silver, like Christmas tree tinsel, shining in the sunlight. The wind played with his hair so that it floated outward in a shimmering wave, looking like some model with a wind machine, but even though his hair was near ankle-length and unbound, it did not tangle in the wind. I’d asked him about that, and he’d said simply, “The wind likes my hair.” I hadn’t known what to say to that so I hadn’t tried.