The wind was cold off the water—not winter cold, it was L. A., but still plenty cold as it whipped my short skirt around my thighs. I was happy for the thigh-high hose with their lace edges, because it was at least something between my legs and the wind. I was standing on the next-to-last step on the long stairs that led from the house on the cliff above to the pale sand. The high-heeled pumps would look awesome as I walked back up the stairs, but they weren’t meant for protection from the elements. I’d dressed for cute and sexy, not standing beside the ocean in the early-morning chill. Even in June, Southern California could have mornings that felt more like Midwestern fall.

“Princess Meredith, please take my jacket.” Becket, one of the human DSS guards, held out his suit jacket, which left most of his arsenal of weapons very visible against his white dress shirt. His tie was like a black stripe down his chest, held in place against the wind with a tie bar, so generic I wondered if it had come standard government issue. He was broad through the shoulders, and without the jacket on, the shirt sleeves seemed to strain just a touch over the muscles of his arms, which meant his jacket was going to be huge on me.

His partner, Cooper, said, “Let her have mine, Becket; yours will swallow her.”

Cooper was a few inches taller, a few years younger, and a lot more slender. If I hadn’t had so many sidhe to compare him to I’d have used words like willowy and graceful to describe Cooper, but he was only human, and that put more bulk on his thin frame, and meant that he’d never have the speed or dancing grace of the nonhuman guards. His hair was truly black, and he had the skin tone to match. Becket was one of those blonds with a ruddy complexion as if he’d burned years ago and never been able to get rid of all of it. He had his pale hair cut so close to his head that it was as if he had started to shave himself bald, but stopped most of the way through. Coop’s hair was thick, and longer on top than any of the other diplomatic specialists assigned to us. I wondered if he put hair gel in it and went out to clubs in his spare time.

He helped me slip into the jacket. It was still warm from his body, and smelled faintly of nice aftershave. I was betting he fought to keep his hair long enough to style. I didn’t blame him, but it was just interesting. He was also one of the few of the men who weren’t married or in a serious relationship.

Becket and most of the others had been eager to have a diplomatic assignment in the States so they could be with their loved ones more. It was hard to maintain a relationship from halfway around the world, and usually in a place too dangerous to bring your family. Los Angeles was dangerous, but not in the same way as Pakistan.

“We really appreciate you asking for us this morning, Princess Meredith,” Coop said.

“You’re welcome, Agent Cooper, Agent Becket.” I wrapped his jacket around me. It covered me to midcalf, as if I’d borrowed my father’s coat to wear, but I was warmer, and that seemed more important than looking sexy, for now.

“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Becket said, “but why us?”

I smiled at him, because I’d already learned that he could never quite leave well enough alone. He had to ask that one more question, take that one more small chance. Cooper would never have asked.

“I saw you practicing with the other guards.”

He looked embarrassed, rubbing his big blunt-fingered hands down his sides. “Yeah, that wasn’t such a great idea.”

“I told you that before we did it,” Cooper said.

Becket shrugged those big shoulders. “Hey, how do we tell the princess here that we can take care of her, if we don’t know how we stack up against her main guards?”

“That was the reasoning that made me agree to it,” Cooper said, but he didn’t look happy about it.

“You both acquitted yourselves well,” I said.

“Acquitted ourselves well; if that means got our asses handed to us, then I’ll agree,” Becket said.

I laughed, and a distant flight of seagulls seemed to laugh back at me, as they arched their wings and let the wind carry them closer to us.

“Yeah, it was pretty embarrassing,” Cooper said.

“Becket’s turn of phrase was what made me laugh. You both did well in practice—Doyle said as much, and he never gives praise unless it’s earned.”

“Yeah, your … main … person,” Becket stopped and looked across me at his partner.

Cooper said, “Captain Doyle is reserved about a lot of things when we’re around.”

“And by ‘we,’ he means humans,” Becket said.

Cooper frowned at him. “I said what I meant, Beck.”

Becket shrugged. “We’re the odd people out here, Cooper. The princess knows that; why not say so?”

I smiled again and let the banter go on around me. Doyle hadn’t liked me coming out to the beach house without him or Frost, but our shared man was still healing, and I’d felt that we needed to use the human guards more, at least the ones who had braved hand-to-hand practice with Doyle and the others. I had brought Saraid and Dogmaela with me, but they were inside the house. One of the other female guards needed a word with them. The shared abuse had made many of the guards more comfortable talking to each other, so I’d let them handle it. I’d also reminded Doyle that there were other sidhe guards at the beach house. We’d started putting anyone we weren’t sure was entirely trustworthy here first. The main estate was building more rooms, but there were still more sidhe than rooms. The other sidhe had been very insulted that I’d come down to the beach with only the human guards, until I’d asked them if they thought humans were lesser beings, bearing in mind that I was part human. To that they’d said the only thing they could—“Of course not,” which was a lie, but a political lie. When everybody knows it’s a lie, it isn’t like lying at all, just doing what I wanted them to do, and we could all live with that. The sidhe had been impressed that Becket and Cooper had joined practice at the main house. That the men had even tried to hold their own with the fey had earned them points with me and with Doyle. He’d said, “They aren’t bad, and for humans they are really quite good.” If Becket only knew what high praise that was from him, he’d have been happier about it.

“It’s okay, Agent Cooper, you and the rest of the human guards are the outsiders at the house.”

“See, told you so,” Becket said.

“But it’s not just because you’re human, it’s because you’re new. We don’t know you yet, and you don’t know us; that makes you all the odd people out. There’s a learning curve when new sidhe join the guards, too,” I said.

“You usually give very good eye contact, but you’re staring at the horizon while we’re talking. What are you looking for, Princess Meredith?” Cooper asked.

“King Sholto.”

“What?”

“You asked what I was looking for, and I answered the question.”

“I thought his title was Lord Sholto,” Becket said.

“He’s the only sidhe noble with a different title in another court,” I said.

“Is Lord, or King, Sholto coming in by boat?” Cooper asked.

“No,” I said.