Divine Misdemeanors_A Novel

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  There was a polite knock on the door, which meant it wasn’t Lucy and her people. Most police have very authoritative knocks. Robert called, “Come in.”

  Alice pushed through the door with a small tray of pastries. “Here’s something for you to munch on while I take your orders.” She’d flashed a smile at everyone, showing dimples in the corners of her full red mouth. The red lipstick was the only deviation to her black-and-white outfit. Did her smile linger a little on the Fear Dearg? Did her eyes harden just a little at his closeness to O’Brian? Perhaps, or maybe I was looking for it.

  She hesitated with the sweets as if unsure who to serve first. I helped her make the decision. “Is Bittersweet cool to the touch, Robert?”

  Robert had moved over to sit with the demi-fey and she was still sobbing quietly on his shoulder, huddled against the smooth line of his neck. “Yes. She needs something sweet.”

  Alice gave me a thankful smile, then offered the tray first to her boss and the little fey. Robert took an iced cake and held it up toward the little fey. She seemed not to notice it.

  “Is she hurt?” Officer Wright asked, and he was suddenly more alert, more something. I’d seen other police do that, and some of my guards. One minute they’re just standing there, the next they are “on;” they are cop, or warrior. It’s like some internal switch is hit and they are just suddenly more.

  Officer O’Brian tried to follow suit, but she was too new. She didn’t know how to turn on the hyperalert mode yet. She’d learn.

  I felt Frost tense beside me on the couch arm. I knew that if Doyle had been on my other side, I’d have felt the same from him. They were all warriors, and it was hard for them not to react to the other man.

  “Bittersweet has used up a lot of energy,” I said, “and needs to refuel.”

  Alice was now offering the tray of sweets to Frost and me. I took the second frosted cake, which was somewhere between a cupcake and something smaller, but the frosting was white and frothy, and I was suddenly hungry. I’d noticed that since I got pregnant. I’d be fine, and then I’d suddenly be ravenous.

  Frost shook his head. He was keeping his hands free. Was he hungry? How often had he and Doyle both stood at a banquet at the Queen’s side and guarded her safety while the rest of us ate? Had that been hard for them? It had never occurred to me to ask, and I couldn’t ask now in front of so many outsiders. I filed the thought away for later and began to eat my cake by licking off the frosting.

  “She looks like she’s had a hard day,” Wright said.

  I realized that they might not even know why they were here to guard Bittersweet. They might simply have been told that there was a witness to guard, or maybe even less. They’d been told to show up and keep an eye on her, and that’s what they were doing.

  “She has, but it’s more than that. She needs fuel.” I ran a finger through the icing and licked the tip of my finger. It was homemade-frosting sweet, but not too sweet.

  “You mean eat?” O’Brian asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, but it’s more than that. We don’t eat and we just get hungry, maybe a little sick. When you’re warm-blooded, the smaller you are the harder it is to maintain your body temperature and your energy level. Shrews have to eat about five times their own body weight every day just to keep from starving to death.”

  I gave up with my finger and just licked the icing off the cake. Officer Wright glanced at me, then quickly away and ignored me. Neither officer took anything off the tray, wanting to keep their hands free, too, maybe, or were they told not to take food from the faeries? That was only a rule if you were inside faerie and were human. But I didn’t say anything, because if they were passing on the cakes because of fear of faery magic, it was an insult to Robert.

  The Fear Dearg took a piece of carrot cake from the tray, smiling his wicked smile up at Alice. Then he stared at me. There was no glancing out of the corners of his eyes; he simply stared. Among the fey if you were trying to be sexy and someone didn’t notice, it was an insult. Was I trying to be sexy? I hadn’t meant to. I just wanted my icing first, and without silverware there were only so many options.

  Robert was still holding the iced cake up to the small fey on his shoulder. “For me, Bittersweet, just a taste.”

  “You mean she could die just from not eating enough?” O’Brian asked.

  “Not just from that. The hysteria and her use of magic all eat up some of the power that enables her to function at this size and still be a reasoning being.”

  “I’m just a cop, you need to uses smaller words, or more of them,” Wright said. He looked at me as he said it, then quickly away. I was making him uncomfortable. Among the humans I was being rude. Among the fey, he was being rude.

  Frost slid one arm around me, his fingers lingering on the bare skin of my shoulder. He was still watching the room, but his touch let me know that he’d noticed, and that he was thinking what it would mean to have me use the same skills on his body. Humans who try to play by these rules often get it wrong and are too sexual about it. It’s polite to notice, not to grope.

  I talked to the officers as Frost’s fingers traced my shoulder in delicate circles. Doyle was at a disadvantage. He was too far away to touch me, but he needed to keep his attention on the far door, so how could he acknowledge my behavior and not be a bad guard? I realized that this was the dilemma that the queen had put him in for centuries. He’d shown nothing to her; the cold, unmovable Darkness. I left the icing to itself while I talked to the police and thought about that.

  “It takes energy to use a complicated brain. It takes energy to be bipedal, and to do all the things we do at our size. Now shrink us down and it takes magic to make fey like Bittersweet able to exist.”

  “You mean without magic she couldn’t survive?” O’Brian asked.

  “I mean she has a magical aura, for lack of a better term, that encircles her and keeps her working. She is by all laws of physics and biology impossible; only magic sustains the smallest of us.”

  Both officers were looking at the little faery as she scooped icing off the cake and ate it as delicately as a cat with cream on its paw.

  Alice said, “I’ve never heard it explained that clearly before.” She gave a nod to Robert. “Sorry, boss man, but it’s the truth.”

  Robert said, “No, you’re right.” He looked at me, and it was a more intent look than before. “I forgot that you were educated at human schools. You have a bachelor of science in biology, correct?”

  I nodded.

  “It makes you uniquely able to explain our world to their world.”

  I thought about shrugging but just said, “I’ve been explaining my world to their world since I was six and my father took me out of faerie to be educated in public school.”

  “Those of us who were exiled when that happened always wondered why Prince Essus did it.”

  I smiled. “I’m sure there were plenty of rumors.”

  “Yes, but not the truth, I think.”

  I did shrug then. My father had taken me into exile because his sister, my aunt, the Queen of Air and Darkness, had tried to drown me. If I’d been truly sidhe and immortal, I couldn’t have died by drowning. The fact that my father had to save me meant that I wasn’t immortal, and to my aunt Andais that meant that I was no different than if someone’s purebred dog had accidentally gotten pregnant by the neighbors’ mongrel. If I could be drowned, then I should be.

  My father had taken me and his household into exile to keep me safe. To the human media he did it so I would know my country of birth, and not just be a creature of faerie. It was some of the most positive publicity the Unseelie Court had ever gotten.

  Robert was watching me. I went back to my icing, because I did not dare share the truth with anyone outside the court. Family secrets are something the sidhe, both flavors, take seriously.

  Alice had set the tray on the coffee table and was taking orders, starting at the opposite side of the room with Doyle. He ordered an exotic coffee t
hat he’d ordered the first time we’d come here, and that he liked to have at the house. It wasn’t a coffee that I’d ever seen in faerie, which meant that he’d been outside enough to grow fond of it. He was also the only sidhe I’d ever seen with a nipple piercing to go with all his earrings. Again, it spoke of time outside faerie, but when? In my lifetime he hadn’t been that far from the queen’s side for any length of time that I remembered.

  I loved him dearly, but it was one of those moments when I realized, again, that I honestly didn’t know that much about him, not really.

  The Fear Dearg ordered one of those coffee drinks that has so much in it that it’s more milk shake than coffee. The officers passed, and then it was my turn. I wanted Earl Grey tea, but the doctor had made me give up caffeine for the duration of the pregnancy. Earl Grey without caffeine seemed wrong, so I ordered green tea with jasmine. Frost ordered straight Assam, but took cream and sugar with it. He liked black teas brewed strong, then made sweet and pale.

  Robert ordered cream tea for himself and Bittersweet. It would come with real scones, clotted cream thick as butter, and fresh strawberry jam. They were famous for their cream teas at the Fael.

  I almost ordered one, but scones don’t go well with green tea. It just wasn’t the same, and I suddenly didn’t want anything else sweet. Protein sounded good. Was I starting to get cravings? I leaned to the table and laid the half-eaten cake on a napkin. The icing was totally unappealing now.

  Robert said, “Go back to the officers, Alice. They need at least coffee.”

  Wright said, “We’re on duty.”

  “So are we,” Doyle said in that deep, thicker-than-molasses voice. “Are you implying that we hold our duty less dear than you hold yours, Officer Wright?”

  They ordered coffee. O’Brian went first and ordered black, but Wright ordered frozen coffee with cream and chocolate—a coffee shake even sweeter than the Fear Dearg had ordered. O’Brian did that quick look at Wright, and the look was enough. If she’d known he was going to order something so girlie, she’d have ordered something besides black coffee. I watched the thought go over her face; could she change her order?

  “Officer O’Brian, would you like to change your order?” I asked. I wiped my fingers on another napkin. I suddenly didn’t even want the sticky residue of the icing.

  She said, “I … no, thank you, Princess Meredith.”

  Wright made a sound in his throat. She looked at him, confused. “You don’t say that to the fey.”

  “Say what?” she asked.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Some of the older fey take thanks as a grave insult.”

  She blushed through her tan. “I’m sorry,” she said, then she stopped in confusion and looked at Wright.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not old enough to see ‘thank you’ as an insult, but it is a good general rule when dealing with us.”

  “I am old enough,” Robert said, “but I’ve been running this place too long to be insulted about much of anything.” He smiled, and it was a good smile, all white, perfect teeth and handsome face. I wondered how much all the work had cost. My grandmother had been half brownie, so I knew just how much he’d had changed.

  Alice went to get our orders. The door shut behind her, and then there was a very firm, loud knock. It made Bittersweet jump and touch Robert’s shirt with her icing-covered hands. Now that was the police. Lucy came through the door without waiting for an invitation.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “THEY RAN DOWN THE HILL,” BITTERSWEET SAID IN A HIGH, ALMOST musical voice, but it was music that was off-key today. It was her stress showing through even as she tried to answer questions.

  She was hiding between Robert’s collar and his neck, peeking at the two plainclothes detectives like a scared toddler. Maybe she was that frightened, or maybe she was playing to her size. Most humans treat the demi-fey like children, and the tinier they are, the more childlike humans view them. I knew better.

  The two uniforms, Wright and O’Brian, had taken up posts by the far door, where the detectives had told them to stand. The Fear Dearg had gone back into the outer room to help in the shop, though I had given a thought to how much help he would be with customers. He seemed more likely to frighten than to take orders.

  “How many ran down the hill?” Lucy asked in a patient voice. Her partner had his notebook out writing things down. Lucy had once explained to me that some people got nervous watching their words being written down. It could help you intimidate suspects, but it could also intimidate witnesses when that was the last thing you wanted. The compromise was that Lucy let her partner write down when she interrogated. She did the same for him on occasion.

  “Four, five. I’m not sure.” She hid her face against Robert’s neck. Her thin shoulders began to shake, and we realized she was crying again.

  All we’d learned so far was that they’d been male elf wannabes complete with long hair and ear implants. There were anywhere between four and six of them, though there could have been more. Bittersweet was only certain of four, or more. She was very fuzzy on time, because most fey, especially ones who still do their original nature-oriented jobs, use light, not clocks, to judge time.

  Robert got the demi-fey to eat a little more cake. We’d already explained to the detectives why the sweets were important. Oh, and why were we still here? When we’d gotten up to leave, Bittersweet had gotten hysterical again. She seemed convinced that without the princess and royal guards to make the human police behave, they would drag her off to the police station and all that metal and technology, and they would kill her by accident.

  I’d tried to vouch for Lucy being one of the good guys, but Bittersweet had lost someone she loved to just such an accident decades ago when she and he first came out to Los Angeles. I guess if I’d lost one of my loves to police carelessness, I might have trouble trusting too.

  Lucy tried again, “Can you describe the wannabes who ran down the hill?”

  Bittersweet peeked out with frosting smeared on her tiny mouth. It was very innocent, very victim-looking, yet I knew that most demi-fey would take fresh blood over sweets.

  “Everyone is tall to me, so they were tall,” she said in that little piping voice. It was not the voice that had screamed at us. She was playing the humans. It might be suspicious, or it might simply be habit, camouflage so the big people didn’t hurt her.

  “What color was their hair?” Lucy asked.

  “One was black as night, one was yellow like maple leaves before they fall, one was paler yellow like roses when they fade from the sun, one had hair like leaves when they’ve fallen and lost all color save brown, though it’s the brown after a rain.”

  We all waited, but she went back to the cake that Robert held up for her.

  “What were they wearing, Bittersweet?”

  “Plastic,” she said, at last.

  “What do you mean, ‘plastic’?” Lucy asked.

  “Clear plastic like you wrap leftover food in.”

  “You mean they wore plastic wrap?”

  She shook her head. “They had plastic over their hair and clothes, and their hands.”

  I watched Lucy and her partner both fight not to give away the fact that the news excited them. This bit of description must help explain something at the crime scene, which gave credence to Bittersweet’s statement. “What color was the plastic?”

  I sipped my tea and tried not to draw attention to myself. Frost, Doyle, and I were here because Bittersweet trusted us to keep her out of the clutches of the human police. She trusted as most of the lesser fey did that the nobles of her court would be noble. We would try. Lucy had insisted that Doyle sit on the couch with me rather than looming over them. So I sat on the couch between the two of them. Frost had even moved from the couch arm to the actual couch, so he wouldn’t loom either.

  “It had no color,” Bittersweet said, and whispered something in Robert’s ear. He reached carefully to bring the china teacup up so she could drink
from it. It was large enough for her to bathe in.

  “Do you mean,” asked Lucy, “that it was colorless?”

  “That is what I said,” and she sounded a little more irritated. Was it glamour, which the demi-fey were very, very good at, that gave an edge of bee buzzing to her words?

  “So you could see their clothes underneath the plastic?”

  She seemed to think about that, then nodded.

  “Can you describe the clothes?”

  “Clothes, they were clothes, squished behind the plastic.” She rose suddenly upward, her clear dragonfly wings buzzing around her like a moving rainbow halo. “They are big people. They are humans. They all look alike to me.” The high angry buzzing was louder, like an undercurrent to her words.

  Lucy’s partner said, “Does anyone else hear bees?”

  Robert stood, raising his hand toward the hovering fey like you would to encourage a bird to land on your hand. “Bittersweet, they want to help find the men who did this terrible thing. They are here to help you.”

  The sound of angry bees rose high and higher, loud and louder. If I’d been outside, I’d have been running. The tension level in the room had gone way up. Even Frost and Doyle were tense beside me, though we all knew it was a sound illusion that would keep curious big people from coming too close to the small fey, or her plants. It was a noise designed to make you nervous, to make you want to be elsewhere. That was the point of it.

  There was another loud knock on the door. Lucy said, “Not now.” She kept her eyes on the hovering demi-fey. She wasn’t treating Bittersweet like a child now. Lucy was like anyone who had been on the job long enough; they get a sense for danger. All the best cops I know listen to that crawling sensation on the back of their necks. It’s how they stay alive.