Chapter Twenty-eight

Galen hit the corner of wall just to the side of the windows. The wall cracked with the impact of his body, crumbling around him like one of those cartoon moments where people go through walls. It wasn't a perfect outline of his body, but as he sagged against the wall, I could see where his arm had flung out and back trying to take some of the impact.

He was shaking his head, trying to get up as Barinthus strode toward him. I tried to run forward, but Sholto held me back. Doyle moved faster than I ever could to put himself in the bigger man's path. Frost went to Galen.

"Get out of my way, Darkness," Barinthus said, and a wave rose against the glass, spilling across it. We were far too high for the sea to reach us without aid.

"Would you steal a guard from the princess?" Doyle asked. He was trying to look at ease, but even I could see his body tensed, one foot dug into the floor in preparation for a blow, or some other very physical action.

"He insulted me," Barinthus said.

"Perhaps, but he is also the best of us at personal glamour. Only Meredith and Sholto can compare with him for disguise, and we need him to use his magic this day."

Barinthus stood in the middle of the floor glaring down at Doyle. He took a deep breath, then let it out in one sharp gust. His shoulders lowered visibly, and he shook himself hard enough to make all that hair ruffle like feathers, though no bird I'd ever known could boast so many shades of blue on them.

He looked across the room at me with Sholto's hand still holding my arm. "I am sorry, Meredith. That was childish. You need him today." He took another deep breath and let it out again so that it was loud in the thick silence of the room.

Then he looked past Doyle's still-ready form. Frost was helping Galen to his feet, though he seemed a little unsteady, as if without Frost's hand he might have been unable to stand.

"Pixie," Barinthus called out, and the ocean slapped against the windows higher and stronger this time.

Galen's father had been a pixie who had gotten the queen's lady-in-waiting pregnant. Galen stood a little straighter, the green of his eyes going from its usual rich green to something pale and edged with white. His eyes going pale was not a good sign. It meant that he was well and truly pissed. I had only seen his eyes that pale a handful of times.

He shook Frost's hand off, and the other man let him go, though his face showed clearly that he wasn't sure it was a good idea.

"I'm as sidhe as you are, Barinthus," Galen said.

"Don't ever try to use your pixie wiles on me again, Greenman, or the next time I won't miss the windows."

I realized in that moment that Rhys had been right. Barinthus was beginning to take on the role of king, because only a king would have been so bold to the father of my child. I could not let it stand unchallenged. I could not.

"It wasn't the pixie in him that let him almost bespell the great Mannan Mac Lir," I said.

Sholto's hand squeezed my arm, as if trying to tell me that he wasn't sure this was a good idea. It probably wasn't, but I knew I had to say something. If I didn't I might as well concede my "crown" to Barinthus now.

Barinthus turned those angry eyes on me. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that Galen has gained powerful magic through being one of my lovers, and one of my kings. He'd have never come so close to fogging the mind of Barinthus before."

Barinthus gave a small nod. "He has grown in power. They all have."

"All my lovers," I said.

He nodded, wordlessly.

"You truly are angry that I have not taken you to my bed at least once, not because you want sex from me, but because you want to know if it would give you back everything you have lost."

He would not look at me, and his hair washed around him again with that sense of underwater movement. "I waited until you came back into the room, Meredith. I wanted you to see Galen put in his place." He looked at me then, but there was nothing I could understand on his face. My father's best friend and one of the most frequent visitors to the house we had lived in in the human world was not the man before me now. It was as if his few weeks here by the sea had changed him. Was this arrogance and pettiness what he'd been like when he first came to the Unseelie Court? Or had he already been diminished in power even then?

"Why would you want me to see that?" I asked.

"I wanted you to know that I had enough control not to send him out the window, where I could use the sea to drown him. I wanted you to see that I chose to spare him."

"To what purpose?" I asked. Sholto drew me in against his body so that I wrapped my arms around him almost absently. I wasn't sure if he was trying to protect me or just to comfort me, or maybe even just to comfort himself, though touch is more comfort to the lesser fey than to the sidhe. Or maybe he was warning me. The question was, warning me about what?

"I wouldn't drown," Galen said.

We all looked at him.

He repeated it. "I am sidhe. Nothing of the natural world can kill me. You could shove me under the sea but you couldn't drown me, and I wouldn't explode from pressure changes either. Your ocean can't kill me, Barinthus."

"But my ocean can make you long for death, Greenman. Trapped forever in the blackest depths, the water made near solid around you as secure as any prison, and more torturous. The rest of the sidhe cannot drown, but it still hurts to have the water go down your lungs. Your body still craves air and tries to breathe the water. The pressure of the depths cannot crush your body, but it still presses down. You would be forever in pain, never dying, never aging, but always in torment."

"Barinthus," I said, and that one word held the shock I felt. I clung to Sholto now, because I needed the comfort. It was a fate truly worse than death that he threatened Galen with, my Galen.

Barinthus looked at me, and whatever he saw on my face didn't please him. "Don't you see, Meredith, that I am more powerful than many of your men?"

"Are you doing this in some twisted bid to make me respect you?" I asked.

"Think how powerful I could be at your side if I had my full powers."

"You'd be able to destroy this house and everyone in it. You said as much in the other room," I said.

"I would never harm you," he said.

I shook my head, and pulled away from Sholto. He held on to me for a moment, then he let me stand on my own. It was how this next part had to be done.

"You would never hurt my person, but if you had done that terrible thing to Galen, stolen him as husband and father for me, it would be harming me, Barinthus. Surely you see that?"

His face fell back into that handsome unreadable mask.

"You don't understand that, do you?" I asked, and the first trickle of real fear wormed its way up my spine.

"We could form your court into a force to be feared, Meredith."

"Why would we need it to be feared?"

"People only follow out of love or fear, Meredith."

"Don't go all Machiavellian on me, Barinthus."

"I don't know what you mean by that."

I shook my head. "I don't know what you mean by any of the things you've done in the last hour, but I do know that if you ever harm any of my people and condemn them to such a terrible fate, I will cast you out. If one of my people vanishes and we can't find them, I will have to assume that you've done what you threatened, and if that happens, if you do that to any of them, then you will have to free them, and then ..."

"And then what?" he asked.

"Death, Barinthus. You would have to die or we would never be safe, especially not here on the shores of the Western sea. You're too powerful."

"So, Doyle is the Queen's Darkness, still to be sent out to kill on command like the well-trained dog he is."

"No, Barinthus, I will do it myself."

"You cannot stand against me and win, Meredith," he said, but his voice was softer now.

"I have the full hands of flesh and blood, Barinthus. Even my father didn't have the full hand of flesh, and Cel didn't have the full hand of blood, but I have both. It's how I killed Cel."

"You would not do such a thing to me, Meredith."

"And moments ago I would have said that you, Barinthus, would never have threatened people I loved. I was wrong about you; do not make the same mistake."

We stared at each other across the room, and the world narrowed down to just the two of us. I met his gaze, and I let him see in my face that I meant what I'd said, every word of it.

He finally nodded. "I see my death in your eyes, Meredith."

"I feel your death in my heart," I replied. It was a way of saying that my heart would be happy to have his death, or at least not sad.

"Am I not allowed to challenge those who insult me? Would you make a different kind of eunuch out of me than Andais did?"

"You can protect your honor, but no duel is to the death, or to anything that will destroy a man's usefulness to me."

"That leaves little that I can do to protect my honor, Meredith."

"Maybe, but it's not your honor I'm worried about, it's mine."

"What does that mean? I have done nothing to besmirch your honor, only the pixie brat."

"First, never call him that again. Second, I am the royal here. I am the leader here. I have been crowned by faerie and Goddess to rule. Not you, me." My voice was low and careful. I didn't want it to break with emotion. I needed control in this moment. "By attacking the father of my child, my consort, in front of me, you proved that you have no respect for me as a ruler. You do not honor me as your ruler."

"If you had taken the crown as it was offered, I would have honored what Goddess chose."

"She gave me a choice, Barinthus, and I have faith that she wouldn't have done that if the choice offered was a bad one."

"The Goddess has always allowed us to choose our own ruin, Meredith. Surely you know that."

"If by saving Frost I chose ruin, then it was my choice, and you will either abide by that choice or you can get out of my sight, and stay out of it."

"You would exile me?"

"I would send you back to Andais. I hear she has been in a blood-lust since we left faerie. She mourns her only child's death in the flesh and blood of her people."

"You know what she is doing to them?" He sounded shocked.

"We still have our sources at court," Doyle said.

"Then how can you stand there, Darkness, and not want us all brought back into our power so we can stop the slaughter of our people?"

"She has killed no one," Doyle said.

"It is worse than death what she does to them," Barinthus said.

"They are all free to join us here," I said.

"If you bring us all into our power then we can go back and free them from her dungeon."

"If we rescued her torture victims we'd have to kill her," I said.

"You freed me and everyone else in her Hallway of Mortality when you left this last time."

"Actually, I didn't," I said. "That was Galen's doing. His magic freed you and the others."

"You say that to make me think better of him."

"I say it because it is true," I said.

He looked at Galen, who was glaring at him. Frost was just a little behind the other man, his own face the arrogant mask he wore when he didn't want anyone to read his thoughts. Doyle moved out from between Barinthus and Galen, but he didn't go far. Ivi, Brii, and Saraid were all standing a little apart from each other, the better to draw weapons. I remembered Barinthus's words that I'd left a vacuum of power and the guards at the beach house had turned to him because I neglected them, and seemed not to trust the women at all. I had a moment to wonder where their loyalty would lie, with me or Barinthus.

"Your magic filled the Hallway of Immortality with plants and flowers?" Barinthus asked.

Galen simply nodded.

"I owe you my freedom then."

Galen nodded again. He wasn't one for silence. The fact that he wasn't talking was a bad sign. It meant he didn't trust what he might say.

Rhys came in from the opposite hallway. He took one look at all of us, and said, "I see what the noise was that I heard. That was Jeremy. He needs us at the crime scene soon if we're coming. Are we?"

"We're coming," I said. I looked away from Barinthus to Saraid. "I'm told your personal glamour is good enough to hide in plain sight."

She looked startled, then nodded and even bowed. "It is."

"Then you, Galen, Rhys, and Sholto, come with me. We need to look human so the press doesn't interfere again." My voice sounded so sure of itself. The pit of my stomach was still clenched tight, but it didn't show, and that was what it meant to be in charge. You kept your panic to yourself.

I went to Hafwyn and Dogmaela still on the couch. Dogmaela had stopped crying, but she was pale and still shaken. I sat down beside her, but was careful not to touch. She'd had enough touching for one day apparently.

"I'm told your glamour would be up to the job, too, but I'll leave you here to recuperate."

"Please, let me come. I want to be useful to you."

I smiled at her. "I don't know what kind of crime scene this is, Dogmaela. It could be one that would remind you strongly of something that Cel did. For today, stay here, but in future you and Saraid will be part of my guard rotation."

Her blue eyes went a little wide, and then under the drying tears she looked pleased. Saraid came to us and dropped to one knee, head bowed low. "We will not fail you, Princess," she said.

"You don't have to bow like that," I said.

Saraid raised her head enough to give me those blue eyes with their white starbursts. "How would you like us to bow? You have but to ask and we will do as you prefer."

"In public don't do any of that, okay?"

Rhys walked wide around Barinthus, but was careful not to give his back to the other man. He was nonchalant about it, but if I noticed, I knew the other man did, too. "If you keep dropping to one knee in public, all the glamour in the world won't hide the fact that she's the princess and you're her guards."

Saraid nodded, then asked, "May I rise, your highness?"

I sighed. "Yes, please."

Dogmaela dropped to one knee in front of me as the other woman stood. "I am sorry, Princess, I did not give you the honor due your station."

"Please, stop that," I said.

She looked up, clearly puzzled. I stood and offered her my hand. She took it, frowning. "Have you noticed that the men don't kneel for me?"

The women exchanged glances. "The queen did not insist upon it always, but our prince did," Saraid said. "Just tell us which greeting you prefer and we will give it to you."

"A hello will be fine."

"No," Barinthus said, "it will not."

I turned and gave him a less-than-friendly look. "This is not your business, Barinthus."

"If you do not have their respect then you have no control over the sidhe," he said.

"Bullshit," I said.

He actually looked shocked, as if it wasn't a term he'd thought to hear from me. "Meredith ..."

"No, I've had all I'm taking from you today. All the bowing and scraping in the world didn't make any of them respect Cel or Andais. It made them afraid of them, and that is not respect, that is fear."

"You threatened me with the full hands of flesh and blood. You want me to fear you."

"I'd prefer your respect, but I think you will always see me as the daughter of Essus, and no matter how much you might care for me you can't see me as fit to rule."

"That is not true," he said.

"The fact that I gave up the crown to save Frost's life has made you doubt me."

He turned so I couldn't see his face, which was answer enough. "It was the choice of a romantic, not a queen."

"And am I a romantic, and not a king?" Doyle asked, moving a little toward the other man.

He looked from one to the other of us, and then said, "It was most unexpected that you, Darkness, would make such a choice. I thought you would help make her into the queen we needed. Instead she has made you into something soft."

"Are you calling me weak?" Doyle asked, and I didn't like the tone in his voice at all.

"Enough!" I didn't mean to shout it, but that's how it came out.

They all looked at me. "I've seen our courts ruled by fear my whole lifetime. I say that we will rule here out of fairness and love, but if there are those among my sidhe who will not take fair treatment or love from me, then there are other options." I walked toward Barinthus. It was hard to be tough when I had to crane my neck so far up to meet his eyes, but I'd been tiny among them all my life and I managed.

"You say you want me to be queen. You say you want me to be harsh, and you want Doyle to be harsh. You want us to rule the way the sidhe need to be ruled, correct?"

He hesitated, and then nodded.

"Thank the Goddess and the consort that I am not that kind of ruler, because if I was I would kill you as you stand there so arrogant, so full of your power from only a month beside the sea. I should kill you now, before you gain more power, and that is exactly what my aunt and my cousin would do."

"Andais would send her Darkness to kill me."

"I already told you I am too much my father's daughter for that."

"You would try to kill me yourself," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"And you could only defend yourself," Rhys said, "by killing both Essus's daughter and his grandchildren. I think you'd let her kill you before you'd do that."

Barinthus turned on Rhys. "Stay out of this, Cromm Cruach, or did you forget that I know your first name, a much older name?"

Rhys laughed and it startled Barinthus. "Oh, no, Mannan Mac Lir, you can't play true naming with me. I am no longer that name, and haven't been in so long that it is no longer a true name at all."

"Enough of this," I said, my voice calmer this time. "We are leaving, and I want you, Barinthus, at the main house tonight."

"I will be glad of dinner with my princess."

"Pack an overnight bag. You're going to be at the main house for a while."

"I would prefer to remain near the sea," he said.

"And I don't care what you would prefer. I say that you will move into the main house with the rest of us."

He looked almost pained. "It has been so long since I lived near the sea, Meredith."

"I know. I've seen you swimming in the water of it happier than I'd ever seen you and I would have let you stay here by your element, but today you proved that it goes to your head like some rich liquor. You are drunk with the nearness of wave and sand, and I say that you will go to the main house and sober up."

Anger filled his eyes, and his hair did that odd underwater movement in the air again. "And if I refuse to move to the main house?"

"Are you saying that you will disobey a direct order from your ruler?"

"I am asking what you will do if I do not comply," he said.

"I will exile you from this coast. I will send you back to the Unseelie Court and you can find out firsthand how Andais sacrifices the blood of all the fey to try to control the magic that remakes her kingdom. She thought that if I left, the magic would stop and she would be able to control it again, but the Goddess herself is moving again. Faerie is alive again, and I think all you old ones have forgotten what that means."

"I have forgotten nothing," he said.

"That is a lie," I said.

"I would never lie to you," he said.

"Then you lie to yourself," I said. I turned to the others. "Come on, everybody. We have a crime scene to visit."

I started for the door and most of the people in the room followed me out. I called back over my shoulder. "Be at the main house tonight in time for dinner, Barinthus, or be on a plane back to St. Louis."

"She will torture me forever if I go back," he said.

I stopped in the doorway and the crowd of guards had to make an opening so I could see him. "And isn't that exactly what you threatened to do to Galen just minutes ago?"

He looked at me, just looked at me. "You are still moved by your heart and not your head, Meredith."

"You know what they say. Never come between a woman and what she loves. Well, don't threaten what I love, for I will move the Summerlands themselves to protect what is mine." The Summerlands was one of our words for Heaven.

"I will be there for dinner," he said, and he bowed. "My Queen."

"I look forward to it," I said, and that last I didn't mean at all. The last thing I wanted at the main house was an egotistical, angry ex-deity, but sometimes decisions aren't about what you want, but about necessity. Right now, we needed to go to a crime scene and try to earn the paychecks that helped support the mass of people we'd become. If only my title had come with more money, more houses, and less trouble, but I'd yet to meet a princess of faerie who wasn't in trouble of some kind. Fairy tales are true in one respect. Before you get to the story's end, bad things and hard choices are lived through. In a way I'd come to my happily ever after ending, but unlike fairy tales, in real life there's no ending, happy or otherwise. Your story, like your life, goes on. One minute you think you have your life relatively under control, and then the next minute you realize that all that control was just an illusion.

I prayed to the Goddess that Barinthus wouldn't force me to kill him. It would hurt my heart to do it, but as we walked out into the California sunshine and I slid my sunglasses on, there was something hard and cold inside me. It was a surety that if he pushed hard enough I would do exactly what I'd threatened. Maybe I was more my aunt's niece than I cared to think about.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Doyle and Frost, with Usna driving, took the Suv, and Usna used glamour to make him appear as me. It had surprised me that he had his driver's license, but apparently years before I was born he had left faerie to explore the country. When I'd asked why, he'd replied, "Cats are curious." And I knew just by the look on his face that that was all the answer I would get.

Usna wasn't good enough at glamour to walk through a crowd. One bump and the illusion would have shattered, which was why he wasn't going with me. There'd be a crowd where I was going. But we were hoping the more elementary illusion would lure the press from the outer gates, so we could drive off unmolested.

But his partner, Cathbodua, was good enough to go with us. There was a moment when she stood in the middle of the living room in her raven-feather cloak with that shoulder-length hair mingling with the feathers so that she, like Doyle, was dark enough that where one blackness ended and the other began the eye couldn't sort out. It made her skin seem to almost float against all the darkness.

Then the feathers smoothed out, and she was wearing the long black trench coat that it so often appeared to be. Cathbodua only had to soften her skin from the otherworldly paleness to a more human shade of pale. Most of the women had been so little photographed with me that they wouldn't even have to change anything but their eyes, hair, and some clothing. Saraid turned her golden hair to a brown-gold and her skin to a sun-kissed tan. Her blue-and-star eyes were simply blue. She was still beautiful, but she could pass for human. Even the fact that she was six feet even and naturally thin didn't make her stand out here in L.A. the way it would have back in the midwest. There were a thousand tall, gorgeous women here who had started out trying for acting and had had to settle for a day job.

Galen made his short curls a nondescript brown, and changed his eyes to match. He darkened his skin so he looked truly tanned, and he did subtle things to his face and body so that he looked ordinary. You'd seen a laughing, cute guy like him on every beach you'd ever been on. Rhys gave himself back the illusion of his missing eye, and painted both eyes to a good blue, but not too eye-catching. He simply piled his waist-length curls up under his fedora, left his signature trench coat at the beach house, and went in just the suit coat that he'd worn last to work, putting it over jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans were his, but the T-shirt he'd had to borrow. It fit through the shoulders, but lots of it was tucked into the stylishly faded jeans. He slipped back into his boots and he was dressed.

I came out of the bedroom with my hair an auburn that was almost brown. I'd also put it up into a French twist. The deep, chocolate-brown skirt suit was a little short for business, but I was short enough that long just wasn't good on me. I'd borrowed a holster and gun from Rhys and put them at the small of my back so I would be armed. It still left him a gun, a sword, and a dagger. I had my own folding knife in a thigh holster under the skirt. The knife actually wasn't just for defense; it was also so there would be some cold steel touching my naked flesh. Steel and iron help against faerie magic, but it's best if they touch your skin. There were a lot of fey, even sidhe, who couldn't have done glamour this detailed with cold metal touching their skin. My human and brownie ancestry helped me work magic no matter how much metal and technology surrounded me. The knife was nothing compared to the city itself. Out here by the ocean it was easier for the rest of them, but there were lesser fey who couldn't do much magic in the heart of any modern city.

The thought made me wonder about Bittersweet and whether Lucy had found her. I pushed the thought aside and checked the mirror one last time to make sure neither gun nor knife showed in the suit. The skirt was lightweight but flouncy, moving with me. I had a lot of skirts that were formfitting enough that even a small weapon showed against the material.

I walked back out into the great room. Galen met me, smiling. "I forgot you make your eyes brown, too."

"Green eyes are too unusual. Humans remember them."

He grinned at me, and moved to take me in his arms. I let him, pretty sure what he was going to say. "We should test the glamour and see if touching makes either of us lose our concentration."

We kissed, and it was a nice, thorough kiss. He drew away and I was staring up into a pair of dark brown eyes set in a face more tan than his would ever be by nature.

I smiled.

It was Rhys who said, "Come on you two, we all know our glamour holds up. Amatheon and Adair checked in. The press took the bait with Doyle and Frost, so we can go do some work." We followed him out the door, dropping each other's hands as we walked outside. I trusted the other guards that the main force of the press had gone away, but if we hung all over each other like lovers, no amount of glamour would keep them from snapping pictures, and not all glamour holds up to cameras. We don't know why, but even with the best of us sometimes a picture will reveal the truth when the naked eye will not.

Sholto had gone ahead of us all.

"All doors are in place."

"So you'll just appear," Galen said.

"Yes."

"How do you make certain someone isn't in the doorway when you appear."

"I can feel if it's empty," he said.

"Nifty."

"I didn't know you could do doorways," I said.

"Its a power that has returned since we were crowned."

"Don't tell Barinthus," Galen said.

"I will not." He'd been solemn when he said it. "But I will scout the area and if reporters seem aware you are on your way; tipped off, I believe they say."

"They do," I said with a smile.

"Then I will call if they have been tipped off." He'd gone with his blond hair looking short, his golden eyes as brown as Galen's and mine. Sholto even made his face less handsome so he wouldn't even attract attention as a too handsome human.

Rhys drove since it was his car. We put Saraid in the front with him, and the rest of us scattered in the back. We could actually see the distant flash of police lights when Rhys pulled over into a small parking lot. Julian or Jordan Hart leaned against one of the company cars. It wasn't until he turned and gave me that smile of his that I knew it was Julian and not his twin brother. They both had short, rich brown hair cut so it was short on the sides, but a little longer on top, where it was gelled into small spikes. But Jordan didn't have such a careless, devil-may-care smile. He had a good smile. They both did. They'd made enough money from modeling to first start their own detective agency and then to buy into the Grey Detective Agency. They were both six feet of tanned and easy handsome, but Julian was lighter, more of a tease. Though oddly it was the teasing brother who had found a monogamous relationship and done happily so for more than five years. Serious brother Jordan was still quite the ladies' man, though even in his single days Julian had never been a ladies' man. A gentleman's man, if that was a phrase, would have been more accurate.

He was wearing small-framed glasses with yellow-tinted glass that complemented his shades of brown and tan clothes. He came to me laughing. "You should have called, dear. I'd have worn another color so we wouldn't have matched."

I smiled and gave my cheek for a kiss, which I got and returned. His face still held that edge of laughter, but his eyes behind their almost-silly tinted glasses were very serious.

"You haven't been to the crime scene yet, have you?" I asked.

"No," he said, his voice as serious as his eyes, but if anyone was watching, his face still laughed and was pleasant. "But Jordan has."

Now I understood why his eyes were already a little grim. The twin brothers could let each other see what they were looking at, if they wanted to. When they'd been little they'd had no control over it, but they'd gone to the afterschool psychic programs along with all the other little gifted children and now they only shared if they chose. Whatever Julian's brother had shown him was bad enough to take the shine from his eyes.

He looked past me to the men with me, and the smile climbed back up into his eyes. There were other human wizards who would have had to ask before being certain who was hiding behind the glamour, but Julian really was that good, and so was his brother. So he went to Galen and exchanged a cheek kiss like he had with me and a handshake with Rhys. The fact that he knew who to kiss and who to just shake hands with said that the disguises weren't really fooling him. That was not good, since some police were now wizards, but most didn't specialize in "seeing" the truth.

Julian hesitated at the women, which meant that it wasn't what they looked like to his physical eyes that let him know who to kiss. It was something more mystical than that. He didn't know the female guards well at all, so he shook their hands. He was actually more careful of the women than the men.

Of course, even Julian hadn't quite been his exuberant self since more than half of Kane and Hart's detective agency had gotten eaten by a very big, bad piece of magical beastie called the Nameless. We - my men and I - had eventually entrapped it, but Kane and Hart had been ground down to only four employees, which was why the Grey Detective Agency was now the Grey and Hart Detective Agency. Both agencies had been going after the same niche market, so it made sense to join forces, and maybe Julian and Jordan Hart just felt that mixing their human magic with our not-so-human magic might be healthier for their remaining employees.

Adam Kane, Julian's longtime boyfriend, had lost his younger brother Ethan in the fight. I think Adam would have agreed to anything in those first few weeks. Even now Adam was doing mostly office work, seeing clients, but not much fieldwork. I wasn't sure whether that was still grief, or whether Julian couldn't stand the thought of endangering him. Eventually, if it had to be asked, Jeremy would do it, because at the office he was the boss. It was actually nice that I wasn't the boss every damn where.

"It's actually quicker to walk from here," Julian said. His hands went to his jacket pocket and started to lift a pack of cigarettes out, then he hesitated. "Do you mind if I smoke as we walk?"

"I didn't know you smoked," I said.

He gave a brilliant smile, flashing the perfect white teeth that he'd gotten as a model and that now made him picture-perfect when he was working with the local celebrities. "I quit years ago, but lately I've felt the need again." Something passed over his face, some thought or emotion, and not a good one.

"Is the crime scene that bad?" Galen asked, proving that he'd noticed the expression, too.

Julian looked up almost absentmindedly, as if he weren't really seeing the here and now. I'd seen that look before when he was seeing through his brother's eyes. "It's bad enough, but not so bad it makes me want to smoke."

I debated on whether to ask him what was bad enough to send him to smoke, as he lit a cigarette and began to stride down the sidewalk. He walked as he usually did, as if the sidewalk was a runway and everyone should be looking at him. Sometimes they did. Rhys moved ahead of us, with Saraid by his side. Galen and Cathbodua took up the rear position behind Julian and me. I realized that we could use all the glamour we wanted, but they were clearly being bodyguards. That would be a clue that Julian and I weren't what we seemed.

He seemed to notice that when I did, because he offered me his arm, and I took it. He began to touch my arm too much, and smile down at me too much. He was playing the part of wealthy lover and businessman or celebrity who needed the bodyguards. I played with him, bumping my head against his shoulder, and laughing at comments that weren't funny at all.

He leaned over and spoke quietly, smiling brilliantly. "You always were a quick study on undercover work, Merry."

"Thank you, you, too."

"Oh, I'm very good under the covers." And he laughed. He also tossed his half-smoked cigarette into the first trash can we came to.

"I thought you needed the cigarette," I said, smiling up at him.

"I'd almost forgotten that flirting is better than smoking." He leaned over me, putting one arm across my shoulders to draw me in against his body. I'd had a lot of practice walking like that with people about six feet tall, though he moved differently than most of my men. I slid my arm around his waist, underneath the jacket, brushing against his own gun that was at the small of his back so it didn't ruin the line of his suit coat. We strolled up the street like that, our hips rubbing against each other as we walked.

"I didn't think you liked flirting with women," I said.

"I'm an equal-opportunity flirt, Merry, you should know that."

I laughed, and this one was for real. "I do remember that, but not usually this much for me."

He kissed the skin of my temple, lightly, but there was an intimacy to it, a reality to it that he'd never used when undercover on my arm. There had always been an edge of teasing with it. It let you know he didn't mean it, so you wouldn't hold it against him later.

Julian was always touching people, and that gave me a thought. I leaned into him even more tightly and spoke quietly for his ears only. "Are you not getting much touch lately?"

It startled him enough that he stumbled and caused our easy rhythm to falter. He caught himself and me, and we continued our almost lazy stroll up the sidewalk toward all the blinking lights.

"Isn't that awfully direct for fey culture?" He whispered it against my hair.

"Yes," I whispered back, "but we'll be at the crime scene in minutes, and I want to know how my friend is doing."

He smiled, though I was close enough to know that it left his eyes empty. "No, I'm not getting much touch at home. Adam seems to have buried his heart with his brother. I'm starting to look around, Merry. I'm starting to shop seriously, and I realized it's not just sex, it's the touch I miss. I think if I could get more touch I would be able to wait out his grief better."

I stroked my hand across the flat planes of his stomach, and he gave me a speculative look. I smiled up at him and said, "You can have touch, Julian. Our culture doesn't see touch as necessarily sexual."

He laughed then, an abrupt and happy sound of surprise. "I thought you saw every touch as sexual."

"No, sensual, but not sexual."

"And there's a difference?" he asked.

I traced my hand across his stomach again, while my other hand clung to his waist. "Yes."

"Which is this?" he asked.

That made me frown. "You don't like women, remember?"

He laughed again, and put his hand over mine where it rested on his stomach. "Yes, but you won't share your men."

"That would be a question for the individual men," I said.

He raised his eyebrows at me. "Really?"

His expression made me laugh. "See, you'd rather sleep with them than with me."

He rolled his eyes a little and made a waffling gesture with his hands, then grinned at me. "True." He leaned down, still smiling, but his next words didn't match. "But if I cuddle you Adam will forgive me, while he might not forgive me a man."

I studied his face from inches away. "It's that bad?"

He nodded, and lifted my hand off his stomach so he could lay little kisses on my fingers as he spoke. "I love Adam more than I ever thought I'd love anyone, but I'm not good without attention." He let my hand fall and leaned our faces as close together as the height difference and my heels would allow. "It's a weakness of mine, but I need touch, and flirting, something."

"Come to the house for dinner tonight and we'll do a big cuddly pile while we watch something on the movie-size TV."

His steps hesitated, and he almost broke rhythm but caught himself, so neither of us lost a step. "Are you sure?"

"Trust me, as long as it's not sexual you can get touch."

"And if I wanted it to be sexual?" he asked.

That made me frown at him, and he looked away, not meeting my gaze. He pretended he was looking at the police and all the emergency vehicles, but I knew he was hiding his face from me, because whatever was in his eyes in that moment he didn't want to share.

I stopped him, by stopping my own walk. I turned him to face me. "You told me once that your commitment to Adam was your first happiness, that you'd fucked and worked, but never been happy, not really."

He gave a small nod.

"If you tell me your priority is to keep your commitment to him, then I'll help you keep it, but if you're telling me that it's over and you want sex, that's a different conversation."

I watched the pain in his eyes. He drew me into a hug that left no daylight between our bodies. He'd never hugged me like that, and seldom other men unless he was teasing and trying to see if he could make them uncomfortable. But it wasn't a hug about sex, or teasing. He held me too tightly and too desperately. I held him back and spoke with my face pressed to his chest. "Julian, what's wrong?"

"I'm going to cheat on him, Merry. If he leaves me this alone for much longer, I'm going to cheat. I think that's what he's waiting for, so he can use it as an excuse to break up."

"Why would he want to do that?" I asked.

"I don't know, maybe because Ethan always hated the fact that his only brother was gay. He always hated me and blamed me for turning his brother into a fag."

I drew back enough to try to see his face, but he curled around me so I couldn't. "Ethan didn't believe that. Adam's always liked men."

"He had a few girlfriends here and there. He was engaged once before me."

I touched his face and turned him to look at me. "Is he making noises about being into women again?"

He shook his head, and I realized there were tears glittering behind those tinted glasses. He wasn't crying yet, but he was a blink away from it. "I don't know. He doesn't want me to touch him. He doesn't want anyone to touch him. I don't know what's in his head anymore."

The tears trembled on the thickness of his eyelashes. He kept his eyes wide so the tears wouldn't fall.

"Come over for dinner. You can at least have some touch."

"We're supposed to have dinner together tonight; if it works out I might not need the touching from anyone else."

I smiled up at him. "If you don't show up, then we know you and your main squeeze are having fun, and that will be great."

He smiled at me, and wiped hastily at the unshed tears. He was gay but he was still a man, and most of them hated to cry, especially in public. "Thank you, Merry. I'm sorry to bring this to you, but my other friends, they're mostly gay men and ..."

"They see it as a chance to poach you," I said.

He made that waffling motion again. "Not poach, but I am learning how many of my friends would be happy to be in my bed again."

"That's the problem with staying friends with most of your ex-lovers," I said.

He laughed and this time it sounded happy. "What can I say? I'm just a friendly guy."

"So I've heard," I said. I hugged him, and he hugged me back, more a friend hug this time. "Have you talked to Adam about couple's therapy?" I asked.

"He says he doesn't need therapy. He knows what's wrong with him. He lost his damn brother and he's allowed to mourn."

Rhys made a throat-clearing sound and we turned to him. "We have to show ID and get through the line." He was utterly neutral as he said it, but I knew that he'd caught some of what we'd been doing. One, all fey have better-than-human hearing, and two, after a thousand years you get to read people.

"I'm sorry," Julian said. "I am being unprofessional and that's not acceptable." He stepped away from me, straightening his jacket, smoothing his lapels, and gathering himself at the same time.

Galen leaned in and said, "We'll cuddle you without wrecking your marriage."

"Oh, that is a blow to the ego," Julian said with a smile. "That you're not even tempted to seduce me."

Galen grinned. "I don't think I'd be the one doing the seducing."

Julian grinned back at him. Cathbodua frowned and said, "I will not be cuddling anyone but Usna tonight."

"How sad for you," I said.

Cathbodua frowned harder. I shook my head, but said, "No one has to cuddle anyone they don't want to cuddle. It's all about touching because you want to, not because you're forced to."

She exchanged a look with Saraid. "That is very different from the prince."

Saraid said, "Happily so."

Julian glanced from one to the other of the women, and then said, "Were you honestly thinking that Merry would force you to touch me when you didn't want to?"

The women just looked at him. Julian shivered. "I don't know what your life was like before this, but I'm not into force. If my charming personality doesn't make you want my company, then so be it."

The women exchanged another look. Cathbodua said, "Give us a few more months of this new world and we may even believe that of both you and the princess."

"Tell Jeremy to keep all the female guards off undercover duty for a while," Julian said.

I thought about how either of the women might have taken the little walk with Julian. Would it have seemed like force, a kind of sexual abuse? So many walking wounded to take care of, and I'd just offered to help take care of Julian. But I didn't mind that last, because I knew how weak you could grow from lack of attention, until you began to look at strangers while the person who was supposed to love you neglected you. Humans saw it as a weakness on the part of the cheater, but I knew through my first fiance that a person can leave a relationship in more ways than just walking away. You can leave your partner so bereft of attention that it's like not being in love at all.

If we could help Julian through this rough patch with Adam, then we would. I understood that you could die a little bit every day from lack of the right touch from the right person. I'd spent three years without the touch of another sidhe. I didn't want to see anyone else go through that if I could help them. And Adam wouldn't see me as a threat, because I was a woman.

We fished out our IDs and waited for someone in charge to give us permission to cross past the uniforms. We were private detectives, not police detectives, and that meant that no uniform was going to just say, "Come on down."

We waited in the brilliant sunlight while Julian held my hand and I held his back. I'd have rather helped him with his need than seen more dead bodies, but I wasn't getting paid to touch my friend, I was getting paid today to look at the dead. Maybe we'd have a nice divorce case next. That was sounding pretty good as we followed the nice police detective through the crowd of police and rescue workers. They were all avoiding each other's eyes. I'd learned that that was a bad sign - a sign that whatever lay ahead was disturbing to the people who saw a hell of a lot of disturbing things. I kept walking, but now holding Julian's hand wasn't just so he could get some touch for the day; it was because touching made me feel just a bit braver.

Chapter Thirty

There was no hand-holding at the crime scene. We were all civilians being allowed into a police investigation. I was a woman and not all human, so I had to uphold the honor of both my sex and my ancestry.

The first victim was curled before the fireplace. It wasn't a real fireplace, but one of those plug-in electric ones. The killer, or killers, had positioned the body in front of it to match the illustration that Lucy had shown us safe in its plastic evidence wrap, tagged and bagged. She, because it was a she, had been dressed in the same ragged sack clothing as the illustration. It was a story I remembered reading as a child. I'd liked stories about brownies because of Gran. The brownie fell asleep before the fire and was caught napping, literally, by the household children. Gran had said, "Na brownie worth 'er salt would fall asleep on th' job." The rest of the story was about the children going with the brownie to fairyland and I knew that was made up, because I'd been there as a child and it was nothing like the book.

"Well, another childhood memory ruined," I said softly.

"What did you say?" Lucy asked.

I shook my head. "Sorry, but my grandmother read me this book as a child. I was thinking about reading it to my own kids, but maybe not now." I stared down at the dead woman and forced myself to look at what they'd done to her face. There was a brownie in the story, so they'd made her into a brownie by taking her nose and her lips, and paring her down to what they needed to make the picture.

Rhys came up beside me and said, "Don't look at her face."

"I can do my job," I said, and I didn't mean to sound defensive.

"I mean, look at all of her, not just her face."

I frowned, but did what he asked, and the moment I could see her bare arms and legs without the horror of her face getting in the way I understood what he meant. "She's a brownie."

"Exactly," he said.

"She's been butchered to look like one," Lucy said.

"No, Rhys means her arms and legs. They're longer, shaped a little differently. I would bet she's had some kind of electrolysis to get rid of the more-than-human body hair."

"But her face was human. They cleaned up the blood but they carved her face down to that," Lucy said.

I nodded. "I know of at least two brownies who have had plastic surgery to give them a nose and lips, a human face, but there's no good procedure for the arms and legs being a little thin, a little different."

"Robert lifts weights," Rhys said. "It gives more muscle tone and helps shape the limbs."

"Brownies can lift things five times their size. Normally they don't need to lift weights to be stronger."

"He does it just so he looks more human," Rhys said.

I touched his arm. "Thank you. I couldn't see anything but the face. They cleaned it up and hid the blood but it's obviously fresh wounds."

"Are you saying she really was a brownie?" Lucy asked.

We both nodded.

"There's nothing in any of her background that says she's anything but a native Los Angeles human."

"Could she be part brownie and part human?" Galen had come up behind us.

"You mean like Gran?" I asked.

"Yes."

I thought about it, and looked at the body, trying for dispassionate. "Maybe, but she'd still have to have a parent who wasn't human. That shows up in census records, documents of all kinds. There's got to be some record of her real background."

"A surface check said human, and she was born here in town," Lucy said.

"Dig deeper," Rhys said. "Genetics this pure aren't that far away from a fey ancestor."

Lucy nodded and grabbed one of the other detectives. She spoke gently to him and he went away at a fast walk. Everyone likes something to do at a murder scene; it gives the illusion that death isn't that bad, if you keep busy.

"The electric fire looks brand-new," Galen said.

"Yes, it does," I said.

"Was the first scene like this?" Rhys asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Staged with props brought in to make the illustration work."

"Yes," I said, "but a different book. A different story altogether, but yeah, props brought in so the staging was as perfect as they could make it."

"The second victim isn't as perfect as this one," Galen said.

We both agreed that it wasn't. We were assuming that this was Clara and Mark Bidwell, who lived at this address. They fit the height of both, and overall description, but honestly, unless they could be identified by dental work or fingerprints we couldn't be certain. Their faces weren't the faces smiling down at us from the pictures on the wall. We'd assume that it was the couple who lived here, but it was an assumption. The police were assuming it, too, so I felt better about that, but I knew it was breaking one of the first rules that Jeremy taught me: never assume anything about a case. Prove it, don't assume it.

As if my thought had conjured him, Jeremy Grey stepped into the room. He was about my height, five feet even, and was dressed in a designer suit in black that made his gray skin a darker, richer shade of gray, and though it would never be a human skin tone, somehow in the black suit it seemed like one. He'd stopped wearing all gray just this year. I liked the new colors on him. He'd been dating a woman seriously for about three months. She was a costumer at one of the studios and took clothing rather seriously. Jeremy had always dressed expensively in designer suits and shoes, but somehow everything fit him better. Maybe love is the best accessory of all?

His triangular face was dominated by a large hooked beak of a nose. He was a Trow - that was his race - and he'd been cast out centuries ago for stealing a single spoon. Theft had been a very serious crime back then among any of the fey, but the Trow were known for their puritanical views on a lot of things. They also had a reputation for stealing human women, so they weren't puritanical about everything.

He moved as he always did, gracefully; even the plastic booties over his designer shoes couldn't make him anything but elegant. Trow did not have a reputation for elegance, but Jeremy did, and it always made me wonder if he was the exception to his people, or if they were all like that. I'd never asked, because it would be reminding him of how he lost everything so long ago. You could ask after tragically dead relatives more politely among the fey than about their exile from faerie.

"The man in the bedroom is human," he said.

"I'll have to go back and look again, because honestly, all I could see were the facial cuts," I said.

He patted my arm with his gloved hand. We'd had to put on all the protective gear but if any of us touched anything we'd have gotten yelled at. It was strictly look but don't touch. Though honestly, I wasn't really tempted to touch.

"I'll walk you through," he said. That let me know he wanted to talk to me alone. Galen started to follow me, but Rhys held him back. Jeremy and I moved through the strangely dark apartment on our own. It was decorated in shades of brown and tan. That was typical coloring for an apartment, but even the furniture was shades of brown. It was all very somber and vaguely depressing. But maybe I was projecting.

"What's up, Jeremy?" I asked.

"One Lord Sholto is out in the hallway with the rest of your non-licensed people."

"I knew he'd be along," I said.

"Warn a Trow next time the King of the Sluagh is expected."

"Sorry, didn't think."

"But Lord Sholto just confirmed the call I got from Uther. I've got him across the street with eyes on this place."

"He saw something?"

"Not about the case," Jeremy said, and ushered me into the bedroom where the second body lay. The man had had his face treated the same as the woman, but now that I could look away from the faces, I realized that Jeremy and Rhys were right, he was human. The legs, the arms, and the body build were all proportional. He was wearing a robe that the killers had cut up to resemble the rags the brownie wore in the story, but it didn't come close to the perfect match of the victim in the other room.

The killers had left an illustration behind, and it did match, but they'd had to improvise the set pieces. They had him flat on his back to match the image of the brownie drunk on faerie wine. Again it was a mistake. Brownies didn't get drunk, bogarts did, and if a brownie went bogart it became very dangerous, sort of a Jekyll-and-Hyde type of problem. A drunk brownie did not pass out peacefully like a human, but I'd found that a lot of the fairy stories were like that: parts were dead-on and parts were so far off it was laughable.

"They brought the book with them, or they chose this illustration late, so late that they couldn't get all the props they needed to make it match."

"I agree," Jeremy said.

Something about the way he said it made me look at him. "If it's not about the case, then what could Uther have seen that would be important?"

"Someone on the press out there did a little math and decided that the short woman hanging all over Julian had to be the princess in disguise."

I sighed. "So they're out there waiting for me again?"

He nodded. "I'm afraid so, Merry."

"Crap," I said.

He nodded again.

I sighed. I shook my head. "I can't worry about them now. I need to be useful here."

He smiled at me, and patted my arm again. "That's what I needed to know."

I frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"If you'd said something different, then I was going to assign you to the party circuit and leave you off the real cases."

I looked at him. "You mean send me to the celebrities and would-be celebs who just want the princess at their house?"

"It pays extremely well, Merry. They make up cases for us, and I send you or your beautiful men and they get more press attention. It works for everyone, and we're making money in an economy where most agencies aren't."

I had to think about that for a moment and then said, "So you're saying the extra publicity is actually bringing in more money than if we didn't have it?"

He nodded and smiled, showing the white, straight smile that was the only "cosmetic" work he'd had done on coming to L.A. "You're like any celebrity in one way, Merry. The moment the press doesn't care enough to make your life miserable you are on the downslide."

"The weight of the press following me crashed through a window last week," I said.

He shrugged. "And that made worldwide news, or did you avoid the television all weekend so you wouldn't see it?"

I smiled. "You know I avoid the shows where I'll see myself, and we had other things to do this weekend besides watch television."

"I guess if I had as many girlfriends as you have boyfriends I'd be too busy to watch TV, too."

"You'd be exhausted, too," I said.

"Are you insulting my stamina?" he asked, smiling.

"No, I'm a woman, you're a man. Women rule on the multiple orgasms, men not so much."

That made him laugh. One of the uniforms said, "Jesus, if you can laugh looking down at that then you really are cold-blooded bastards."

Lucy spoke from the doorway. "I think I hear your patrol car wondering where you are."

"They're laughing at the body."

"They aren't laughing at the body. They're laughing because they've seen things that would make you run home to your mommy."

"Worse than that?" he asked, motioning to the body.

Jeremy and I both nodded and said, "Yes."

"How can you laugh?"

"Go get some air," Lucy said, "now." And she made the last word very firm.

The uniform looked like he wanted to argue, thought better of it, and left. Lucy turned to us. "Sorry about that."

"It's okay," I said.

"No, it's not," she said, "and the press have found you, or think they have."

"Jeremy told me," I said.

"We're going to have to get you out of here before the press looking for you gets bigger than the press about the bodies."

"I'm sorry about this, Lucy."

"I know you don't enjoy it."

"My boss has just informed me that I make more by going to pretend crimes for parties for celebrities than when I do real crime-stopping."

Lucy raised an eyebrow at Jeremy. "Really?"

"Absolutely," he said.

"Still, we need to have you show yourself outside so the press hounds don't mess up our investigation."

I nodded. "Did you find out anything more about the woman, the brownie?"

"It turns out she's been passing for human, but she's actually full-blooded brownie. You were right about the plastic surgeon needing to know her background before he reconstructed her face. Why is that so important?"

"Fey heal differently from humans, much faster. If a plastic surgeon didn't know she was a brownie, her skin could actually heal faster than he could work," I said.

"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.

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