Divine Misdemeanors (37 page)

He nodded. “Yes, and it worked. She was more powerful the last time I saw them. She used glamour on me, made me … want her, see her as bigger, but she wasn’t. I …” He was obviously embarrassed.

He leaned on the desk, stretching his hand out, beseeching me. “I did things. Things I didn’t want to do.” He shook his head. “No, no, you’re not going to believe me. I can see it in your eyes.”

I wanted him to tell us everything he knew and I would tell the police he’d come to us. We were allowed to use magic to help our clients. Hell, it was one of the things our agency was known for, and I knew I was justifying what I would do next.

I stood up so I could reach across the desk and touch his hand. “It’s okay, I know what it’s like to have the powerful demi-fey affect you.”

He looked at my hand on his. “May I hold your hand?”

“Why do you want to?”

“Because I’m elfstruck and just holding your hand would be more than I ever thought I’d get.”

I studied his eyes. There was pain there and it was real. I thought about it, and knew that the more he touched me, the more likely he was to tell me everything. If he was truly elfstruck for the touch of my body, he’d give up every secret he’d ever known. I said, “Yes.”

He took my hand in his, and there was a tremble to his hand as if it was much more important than it should have been. Frost touched his shoulder, but instead of being afraid, Donal stared up at him as if the touch was wonderful. He did have it bad.

“My therapist says that I got messed up because I got to watch elf porn when I was twelve. He says that’s why I’m elfstruck, and why all my interests are the sidhe, because I watched them glow on screen when my sexuality was just forming.” He turned from Frost to me, and his eyes were tormented. “Once you’ve seen a pair of you light up a room, how can any human compare?”

I blinked at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know any sidhe had made porn.”

Rhys answered, “There are a few who came out when Maeve Reed did, but they didn’t have her acting ability.”

I looked back at him. “Are you saying that there are currently sidhe who are acting in porn?”

He nodded. “Hell, there’s even Glimmer porn.”

“Royal mentioned it last night,” I said.

“I’ll just bet he did,” Rhys said.

I gave him an unfriendly look.

“Sorry,” he said.

I held Donal’s hand and felt his happiness at such a small touch. To be elfstruck for a human was truly terrible. It meant that nothing and no one satisfied the need. Humans had wasted away for lack of our touch, but it was usually a human whom we’d captured and taken to faerie and then released, or someone who’d escaped but found that
you never really escaped faerie. That was in the old days, long before I was born, but the human was ruined for regular life. They longed for things that humans couldn’t give them.

Then I thought of something. “Rhys, how did you find out about Glimmer porn?”

“When we watched Constantine’s movies there were a few extra films with fey.”

“That’s why she wanted to be big,” Donal said, “so they could have sex for real. She was a camera girl for a while.”

“What does a camera girl do?”

“They have an online site where you can watch demi-fey do things to themselves and with each other, and sometimes with humans. You subscribe like to any porn site.”

“And that’s what his girlfriend did for a living?” I asked.

“They met through the site. She broke the rules by dating a client and they fired her.”

“So a camera girl is a demi-fey.”

“Not just demi-fey, humans, too. They’re just girls you can pay and they’ll act out your fetish,” Rhys said.

Donal nodded.

“And how do you know all this, Rhys?” I asked.

“I have a house outside faerie, Merry, remember? When you’re not allowed to touch anyone else, porn is a wonderful thing.”

I glanced at Doyle. “I thought the queen didn’t even let the guards pleasure themselves.”

“She made that rule for only her most trusted men. With time and distance, I think only the men she thought she might want again someday.”

“Should I be insulted?” Rhys asked.

“No, happy. At least you had a release.”

Rhys nodded. “Fair enough.”

“Did you see them kill anyone?” I asked.

“No, I swear I would have gone to the police.”

“So why are you sure that they did it?”

“It was when I found out who some of the demi-fey were who died. She hated the ones who could hide and play human, and she hated the ones who were more powerful than she was, but only sometimes. Sometimes she was their friend, but other times she seemed to hate them. She really earned her name.”

“What name?” I asked.

“Bittersweet. Sometimes she’d call herself Sweet and she would be, but other times she called herself Bitter, and she was crazy mean.”

I had one of those moments when things fall into place. She hadn’t been our witness, she’d been one of our killers, but why had she hung around? Why not stay away?

“She pretended to be a witness to the first murders,” I said.

“She might not have been pretending,” Donal said.

“What do you mean?”

“If she was Bitter and did bad things, when she came back as Sweet she’d be puzzled. I would never do such horrible things, she’d say. I thought it was an act at first, but at the end I realized that she honestly didn’t remember.”

“Can demi-fey go bogart?” Rhys asked.

“I thought only brownies did the Jekyll-and-Hyde thing,” I said.

“She was half brownie,” Donal said. “She said she was like Thumbelina, born to a full-sized mom, but the size of her thumb. Her sister is normal sized, but looks like a brownie.”

I remembered Jordan’s message as he came out of his drug-induced sleep. “Thumbelina wants to be big.” “What about her dad?” I asked.

“A demi-fey who can be human sized. She’s got a brother like that, too.”

“What’s her sister’s name?” I asked.

He gave it, but it wasn’t our victim. I had another thought. “Did her mother and sister have the surgery to build up their face?”

“They look human, noses, mouths, the whole thing. And the fey heal much better than humans, so their surgery actually looks good.”

“So her mother and sister, though brownies, can pass for human?”

He nodded. “If her father and brother could hide their wings, so could they.”

“She’s the only one who can’t shape change?” I asked.

He nodded. He began to rub his thumb across my knuckles. I fought not to pull away from him, but if he was elfstruck and had become so through just seeing movies, then his whole life had been ruined by some of our people.

I looked at Rhys. “Have you seen the sidhe porn?”

“Some,” he said.

“Could that be enough to make a human elfstruck?”

“If they were susceptible, being a child would make it worse.” He looked at the man in our client chair and he just nodded. He believed it, too.

“Give us Liam’s real name,” I said.

“You believe me?”

“I do.”

He smiled and looked relieved. “Steve Patterson, and it’s just Steve, not Steven. He always hated that his whole first name was a nickname.”

I took my hand back and he let me go reluctantly. “I have to call the police and tell them his name.”

“I understand.” But his eyes had filled with tears and he turned to gaze up at Frost, who still had his hand on his shoulder. It was as if any touch from us was better than no touch.

I called Lucy and gave her everything we had. “You believe this Donal wasn’t involved?”

I looked at him gazing up at Frost as if he was the most beautiful thing in the world. “Yeah, I do.”

“Okay, I’ll let you know when we have Patterson. I can’t believe he’s one of our own. The media are going to go apeshit.”

“Sorry, Lucy …” but I was talking to empty air. She was on her way to catch our murderer and we were left with Donal who had been doomed from the age of twelve to want only us. Who knew that our magic worked so well on film? And was there any cure for it?

PATTERSON WASN’T HOME OR AT WORK OR ANYWHERE THAT THE POLICE
looked for him. He’d packed up and simply vanished. But a whole human man was easier to find in L.A. than a demi-fey smaller than a Barbie doll. They finally put their pictures up on the news as persons of interest who might have information on the killings. They were afraid of what the fey community might do if the news got out that they were our suspected killers. I had mixed feelings because saving the taxpayers the cost of a trial had its appeal.

That night I dreamed about the last murder scene. But it was Royal suspended from the top of the arch, his body limp in death, and then he’d opened his eyes, but they’d been clouded like the eyes of the dead. I woke covered in sick sweat, calling his name.

Rhys and Galen had tried to pet me back to sleep, but I couldn’t go back to sleep until they woke Royal up and brought him to me. I had to see him alive before I could go back to sleep.

I woke up sandwiched between Rhys and Galen, with Royal on the pillow by my head curled up and looking somewhere between a child’s daydream and a very grown-up fantasy.

He woke with a lazy smile and said, “Good morning, Princess.”

“Sorry I woke you last night.”

“That you care enough about me to worry so is not a bad thing.”

“It’s too early to be talking,” Galen mumbled into his pillow and then snuggled lower in the bed so he could hide his eyes against my shoulder.

Rhys just rolled over and threw an arm across my waist and part of Galen. I could feel that Rhys was awake, but if he wanted to pretend he could.

Royal and I lowered our voices and he moved down the pillow so he could snuggle against the side of my face and whisper into my ear. “The other demi-fey are jealous,” he said.

“Of the sex?” I whispered.

He traced his hand along the curve of my ear the way a bigger lover might caress a shoulder. “That, but to be able to grow in size is a rare gift among us. None here in this house can do it except for me. They are wondering if a night with you would do the same for them.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I don’t know if I want to share you with them, but I am like all new lovers, jealous and infatuated. We’ve even been approached by some demi-fey who are not ours. They want to know if ’tis true that I’ve gained such a power.”

Rhys raised his head, done with pretense. “What did you tell them?”

Royal sat up next to my face, wrapping his arms around his knees. “That it was true, but they didn’t believe me until I showed them.”

“So you can do it at will,” Rhys said.

He nodded happily.

“What do you think would happen if we went down to the Fael and you changed in front of everybody?”

“Merry would be pestered silly by other demi-fey wanting to be big.”

I looked at Rhys, and Galen raised his head. “No, Rhys, no.”

“It’s been two days and the police still have no clue where they are,” Rhys said.

“You are not going to make Merry into bait for these monsters.”

“I think that’s up to Merry,” Rhys said.

Galen turned his unhappy face from him to me. “Don’t do it.”

“I think Bittersweet wouldn’t be able to resist,” I said.

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he said.

“We’d have to run it by Detective Tate,” Rhys said.

Galen propped himself up on both elbows and looked down at all of us. “You woke up screaming, Merry. That’s just from seeing their victims. Do you really want to put yourself out there as a potential victim for them?”

In truth, no, but out loud I said, “I know I don’t want to go to another murder scene, especially if I could flush them out into the open.”

“No,” Galen said.

“We’ll discuss it with Lucy,” I said.

He went up on his knees and even nude and lovely he was so angry that it wasn’t sexy. “Does my vote not count at all here?”

“What kind of ruler would I be if I kept myself safe and let more of the fey die?”

“You gave up the damned crown for love; well, don’t do this for the same reason. I love you, we love you, and this human has some of the most powerful enchanted items that the oldest among us have seen in centuries. We don’t know what he’s capable of, Merry. Don’t do this. Don’t risk yourself and our babies.”

“The police may not even let me play bait. They seem worried I’ll get hurt just by the media.”

“And if the police say no, you’ll still go down to the Fael and have Royal show off, won’t you?”

I didn’t say anything. Rhys looked at me, not Galen. Royal just sat there as if waiting to see what the sidhe would decide as his kind had done for centuries.

Galen got out of bed and picked his clothes up from the floor where they’d been dropped last night. He was as mad as I’d ever seen him. “How can you do this? How can you risk everything like this?”

“Do you really want to see another murder?” I asked.

“No, but I’ll survive it. I’m not sure I’d survive seeing your body in the morgue.”

“Get out,” I said.

“What?”

“Get out.”

“You can’t unman her before a battle,” Rhys said.

“What the hell does that mean?” Galen asked.

“It means that’s she’s scared and doesn’t want to do this, but that she’ll do it for the same reason we picked up a weapon and ran toward the fighting and not away from it.”

“But we’re her bodyguards. We’re supposed to run toward the problem. She’s who we’re supposed to guard. Doesn’t part of that job mean keeping her from taking risks?”

Rhys sat up, pulling the sheet into his lap and a little off me. “Sometimes, but in the old days we rode into battle beside our leaders. They led from the front, not the rear. The only failure for a king’s guard was not dying at their side, or them dying before we did.”

“I don’t want Merry to die at all.”

“Neither do I, and I’ll bet my life that I can keep that from happening.”

“This is insane. You can’t, Merry, you can’t.”

I shook my head. “I hope I don’t have to but you having hysterics doesn’t make me feel any better about it.”

“Good, because you shouldn’t feel better about it. You shouldn’t do it at all.”