Divine Misdemeanors (27 page)

“Or,” Jeremy added, “there are some metals and man-made medicines that are deadly to us, especially the lesser fey.”

“Some anesthesia doesn’t work on us at all,” I added.

“See, this is why I wanted you here. None of the rest of us would have thought of the doctor and what it would mean if she were full brownie. We need a fey officer to help us deal with things like this.”

“I heard you were recruiting pretty heavily trying to get one of us to come on board,” Jeremy said.

“For scenes like this, and just for community relations. You know how it is, the fey don’t trust us. We’re still the same humans who chased them out of Europe.”

“Not the exact same ones,” he said.

“No, but you know what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I do.”

“Has anyone come forward to join?” I asked.

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“How human looking would they have to be?” I asked.

“To my knowledge, they aren’t limiting it to a particular type of fey. They just want someone on our force who is fey. Most of us feel that that would help smooth things. I mean, we’ve got what amounts to a pedophile ring using the fey who look like children.”

“It’s not pedophilia,” Jeremy said. “The fey are consenting and are usually hundreds of years old, so very legal.”

“Not if money is exchanged, Jeremy. Prostitution is still prostitution.”

“You know the fey don’t understand that as a concept,” he said.

“I know that. You see regulating sex the same as regulating what you can do with your own bodies, but it’s not that. Frankly, and I’ll never admit this in public, but if the fey involved look like kids and can satisfy these perverts, more power to them. It keeps them away from the real kids, but we need to talk to the fey involved with the pedophiles to see if they know if any children are involved.”

“We protect our children,” Jeremy said.

“But some of the older fey don’t see under eighteen as children.”

“That is another cultural difference,” Jeremy agreed.

“If you made an exception for the adult fey who catered to the pedophiles, they would help you find the ones who are still targeting children,” I said.

Lucy nodded. “I know they look like kids, fresh meat, some very human, and they get treated like fresh meat, but if they defend themselves with magic it can turn into a federal crime.”

“And what started out as maybe their first arrest for prostitution is suddenly use of magical force, which is a lot more serious jail time,” I said.

“Or what about the fey who killed a man trying to rape him in jail, and now he’s up on murder charges?” Jeremy said.

“He smashed the man’s head like an egg, Jeremy,” Lucy said.

“Your human legal system still treats us like monsters if we don’t have diplomatic immunity and a celebrity princess.”

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“Not fair? There’s never been a sidhe in jail in this country. I’m one of the lesser folk, Merry. Trust me when I say that the humans have always treated your people as different from the rest of us.”

I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. “Did you ask the plastic surgeon if he’s done more fey?”

“No, but we can,” she said.

“The demi-fey at the first scene looked typical, but check and see if they were doing anything to pass for human.”

“They couldn’t. They’re the size of Barbie dolls or smaller,” Lucy said.

“Some demi-fey can shift to a larger size, between three and five feet tall. It’s an uncommon ability, but if you could make yourself that tall you could strap down the wings, depending on the kind of wings they are.”

“Really?” Lucy asked.

I looked at Jeremy. “One of your silent film stars was a demi-fey who hid her wings. I knew a saloon worker who did it, too.”

“And none of her customers found out?” Lucy asked.

“She used glamour to hide them.”

“I didn’t know the demi-fey were that good at glamour.”

“Oh, some of them are better at glamour than the sidhe,” I said.

“That’s news,” Lucy said.

“There’s an old saying among us that where the demi-fey go faerie follows. It implies that the demi-fey are the first of us to appear, and not the sidhe or the old gods grown small, but actually they are the first form of us.”

“Which is true?” she asked.

“To my knowledge no one knows,” I said.

“It’s the fey version of the chicken and the egg. Which came first, the demi-fey or the sidhe?” Jeremy said.

“The sidhe will say that we did, but honestly, I’ve never met anyone old enough to answer the question.”

“Some of the demi-fey who were killed had day jobs, but I assumed that they were demi-fey. It didn’t occur to me that they could pass for human.”

“What are the jobs?” I asked.

“Receptionist, owner of their own lawn-care business, florist assistant, and dental hygienist.” She frowned at that last one. “I did wonder about that last one.”

“I’d look at the receptionist and the dental hygienist,” Jeremy said.

“What about the rest of them?” I asked.

“One of them worked at the lawn-care business with the boss, and the other two were unemployed. As far as I can tell, they were flower faeries full-time, whatever that means.”

“It means they tended their special flower or plant and didn’t feel the need for money,” Jeremy said.

“It meant they had enough magic to not need a job,” I added.

“Is that typical of the demi-fey, or unusual?” she asked.

“It depends,” I said.

Her cell phone rang. She slipped it out of her pocket, said a few “Yes, sirs,” then hung up. She sighed. “You better go and show yourself, Merry. No hiding with magic. That was my immediate supervisor. He wants you out so the press will disperse. There’s so many of them they’re afraid they can’t get through to take the bodies out.”

“I’m sorry, Lucy.”

“No, the information was all stuff I couldn’t have gotten with just human cops. Oh, and he said to take your men with you just in case.”

“He means the sidhe, not me, right?” Jeremy asked.

She smiled. “We’ll go on that assumption. I’d like to keep at least one of you here until we clear the scene.”

“You know that the Grey …”

Julian added, “And Hart.”

Jeremy smiled at him. “Grey and Hart Detective Agency is happy to help.”

“I sent Jordan home. He’s a little more of an empath than I am, and the residual emotions were getting to him.”

“That’s fine,” Lucy said.

“If you hurry he’s just outside in the hallway,” Julian said.

I studied his pleasant face and asked, “Does he need a ride?”

“He won’t ask for one, but if you go out at the same time he’ll take the ride from you, Merry.”

“All right, then I’ll go and I’ll drop Jordan off at the office so he can type up his report and I’ll maybe see you tonight after dinner.”

He nodded. “I hope you don’t see me.”

“Me, too,” I said and went to the other room to get Rhys and Galen, who as licensed detectives were allowed past the apartment door, and pick Saraid and Cathbodua up from the hallway, which was as far as the police would let her get without a detective license. It was also why Sholto wasn’t allowed at the murder scene. I hoped Jordan was still in the hallway. Julian wouldn’t have mentioned him if he wasn’t badly shaken. I couldn’t sense emotional debris from murder scenes, and any time I watched the effect of it on an empath I was glad all over again that it wasn’t one of my gifts.

WE FOUND JORDAN IN THE STAIRWELL LEADING DOWN. HE WAS
sweating and pale, his skin clammy to the touch. I’d been afraid we’d missed him when he wasn’t in the hallway, but he actually leaned on Galen going down the stairs, which meant he was in bad shape. Jordan wasn’t the touchy-feely one of the Hart brothers.

He had the same short-on-the-sides, spiky-on-top hair as his brother, but his jacket was a reddish-brown tweed over the brown slacks, and his shirt was a tomato red. All the extra color must have looked good when Jordan started the day, but now it just emphasized the sick paleness of his skin.

We’d all dropped the glamour so when we stepped out into the sunlight there were cries of, “There she is!” “Princess!” “Princess Meredith, over here!” One reporter did actually ask a question about something else. “What’s wrong with Hart? Why does he look ill?”

A female voice rang out, “Is the murder that gruesome?”

It was nice to know that the mass of humanity on the other side of the police barriers wasn’t all here just for fairy-princess pictures. People were dead; that should have been more important.

A man in a suit stepped forward and yelled in a voice used to yelling above noise, “The princess and her people aren’t authorized
to answer any questions about the crime.” He turned to a pair of uniforms near him, and they started walking toward us. I was betting that they were supposed to be our escort to our car. I glanced out at the crowd of reporters. They had spilled into the street until even if the police hadn’t blocked off the road there wasn’t room for a moped, let alone a car. We were going to need more uniforms.

Then there was movement across the road, almost a restless roll of the press, like water when you stir it with a big enough stick. Uther waded into the mob. Maybe we wouldn’t need more uniforms. One nine-foot-tall Jack-in-Irons might just be enough.

It wasn’t just Uther’s sheer size that was impressive. His face was part human and part that of a boar, complete with tusks that curled up and out so big that they’d begun to do that spiral curl that only long years will give to tusks. The last time Uther had helped with crowd control the press had parted like the proverbial Red Sea, as some did now, too, but others turned to him, and started shouting questions at him, too. But they weren’t about the murder, or me.

“Constantine, Constantine, when’s your next movie coming out?”

Another reporter yelled out, “How big are you?”

“Did they just ask what I think they asked?” I asked.

Jordan’s knees went out from under him, and Galen picked him up in his arms and carried him toward the edge of the barricades. Rhys touched his hand to the man’s forehead. “He’s in a bad way.”

“What is wrong with him?” Sholto asked.

“Wizard’s bane,” Rhys said.

“Oh,” Sholto said.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s an old term for wizards who overextend themselves. I figured it was a quicker explanation to Sholto.”

“Which I’ve just made longer,” I said with a smile.

Rhys shrugged.

I saw Uther shaking his great tusked head, and even without hearing him I knew he was denying that he was this Constantine. Apparently
Uther wasn’t the only Jack-in-Irons in L.A., and whoever the other one was, he’d made a movie. I loved Uther as my friend and coworker but he didn’t exactly have a face made for the movies.

One of the EMTs who had managed to get here before the crowd converged came up to us. He was medium height with blond hair that had streaks of color that humans didn’t have, but he gave off that wave of competence that the best healers seem to have. “Let me look at him.” He touched Jordan’s face as Rhys had, but also took his pulse, and checked his eyes. “Pulse is okay, but he’s in shock.” As if on cue, Jordan began to shiver enough that his teeth started to chatter.

We ended up having to take him to the back of the ambulance. They put him on the gurney. He started panicking when they surrounded him, and he reached out to us. “I need to talk to you guys before it fades.” I knew what he meant; Jordan, like a lot of psychics, could only hold on to his visions for a short time, and then details would begin to fade.

The EMT named Marshal said, “There isn’t room for all of you in here.”

As the physically smallest I crawled in, took his hand, and tried to stay out of the way. Marshal and his partner wrapped Jordan in one of the insulated blankets, and started making up an IV.

Jordan started pushing at them. “No, not yet, not yet.”

“You’re in shock,” the EMT said.

“I know that,” Jordan said. He grabbed my hand and stared up at me with his eyes too wide, showing too much white like a horse about to bolt. “They were so afraid, Merry, so afraid.”

I nodded. “What else, Jordan?”

He looked past me to Rhys. “Him, I need him.”

“If you let us put the IV in,” Marshal said, “we’ll let in your other friend.”

Jordan agreed, they hooked him up, and Rhys crawled in with us. Galen did his bit by distracting the EMTs so we could talk. Saraid, her hair flashing like metal in the sunlight, joined him, smiling and
at ease to distract. Cathbodua stayed by the open doors of the ambulance on guard. Sholto joined her. We just might have enough guards today.

Jordan looked at Rhys, his face wild with fear. “What did the dead tell you?”

“Nothing,” Rhys said.

“Nothing?” Jordan asked.

“Whatever killed the brownie made it impossible to speak with the dead.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I mean they took everything. There’s no spirit, ghost, if you will, to talk to.”

“Not all the dead like to talk to you,” Jordan said, but he was calmer now, either from the fluids or from getting his way.

“True,” Rhys said, “but this wasn’t a choice. They’re just gone. Both of them as if they never existed.”

“You mean whatever killed them ate their souls,” Jordan said.

“I won’t debate semantics, but yeah, that’s what I mean.”

I said, “That’s impossible, because that would mean they’ve been taken out of the cycle of death and rebirth. Nothing but a true God could do that.”

“Don’t look at me for answers on this one. I’d have said it was impossible, too.”

Jordan let go of my hand and grabbed Rhys’s jacket, wadding it in one fist. “They were so afraid, both of them, and then there was nothing. They were just snuffed out like a candle. Poof.”

Rhys nodded. “That would be how it might feel.”

“But you didn’t say how afraid they’d be. Oh, my dear God, so afraid!” He looked up into Rhys’s face as if looking for comfort, or confirmation. “There were wings, something with wings. Angels wouldn’t do this, can’t do this.”

“Angels aren’t my gig,” Rhys said, “but there are other things with wings. What else did you sense, Jordan?”