Divine Misdemeanors_A Novel

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “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.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “What is wrong with him?” Sholto asked.

  “Wizard’s bane,” Rhys said.

  “Oh,” Sholto said.

  “What?” I asked.

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

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

  Rhys shrugged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You’re in shock,” the EMT said.

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

  I nodded. “What else, Jordan?”

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

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

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

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

  “Nothing,” Rhys said.

  “Nothing?” Jordan asked.

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

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Something flew because she was envious. She always wished she could fly. I got that very clearly, as if it had been a wish since childhood, and beauty. She thought whatever was flying was beautiful.”

  “And the man?” Rhys asked.
r />   “He’s just fear, all fear, but fear for his wife more than himself. He loved her.” Jordan said it like “loved” should have been in all capital letters.

  “Did the woman know what magic they used against her?”

  Jordan frowned, and had that distant look that I’d seen on his face before, as if he were looking at things I’d never see. “She thought beautiful and wings, and wished she could fly, and then her husband came in and there was love and there was fear. Such fear, but she died too quickly to fear for her husband much. They killed her first. There was confusion about the man. Two killers, two, one female, one male. They’re a couple. Sex, lust, killing made them feel both, and love. They love each other, too. They don’t know that what they’re feeling isn’t right. It’s love for them, and out of that love they do horrible things, terrible things.” He gave frightened eyes to both of us, looking from one to the other. “This wasn’t the first time. They’d had this feeling together before, the power rush of the kill together before … they’ve killed … before.”

  His voice was trailing off, his eyes losing their franticness. His fist began to open, and he fought to hold onto Rhys’s jacket. “Man, woman, couple … killing. Power … they want power … magic. Enough to do something.”

  “To do what?” I asked.

  His hand slid away from Rhys to flop boneless on top of the blanket. “To do …” And he passed out.

  Rhys called out, “Marshal, did you put something besides fluids in the IV?”

  Marshal appeared at the doors of the ambulance, giving a longer-than-necessary look at Cathbodua all black and Goth and scary by the doors. Sholto looked much less scary, though I know he wasn’t. He nodded. “I put something to calm him down. It’s standard for psychic shock. They calm down, and the shock goes away. He’ll be fine when he wakes up.”

  “He’ll also have no memory of what he picked up from the murder upstairs,” Rhys said.

  “I had one psychic stroke out from severe shock. I know you lost some information, but it’s my job to keep him alive and well, and I did my job.”

  Rhys was angry enough that he just got out of the back of the ambulance without another word. I think he didn’t trust himself to talk to Marshal anymore.

  “Could he really have hurt himself if this had continued?” I asked.

  Marshal nodded. “The odds are against it, but I took that chance with one psychic and he’s still in rehab learning how to tie his own shoes. I’m not going to let that happen to another person, not if I can help it. It’s my job to keep everyone healthy, not to solve crime. I’m sorry if it made it harder on you guys.”

  I touched Jordan’s face. The sweat was already drying on his skin. He was warmer, and his breathing had evened out into something like normal sleep. “Thank you for helping him.”

  “Just doing my job.”

  I smiled at him. “Will you transport him to the hospital?”

  “I will if the crowd ever thins enough, and I’m told that that won’t happen until you leave, Princess.”

  I nodded. “Maybe not, but he needs someone to ride with him to the hospital. His brother is upstairs. I’ll call him, and I need your word that you won’t transport Jordan until his brother is with him.”

  “Fine, I give you my word.”

  I shook a finger at him. “I’m a princess of faerie. We take the giving of our word very seriously. You seem like a nice guy, Marshal the EMT. Don’t give me your word unless you really mean it.”

  “Are you threatening me?” he asked.

  “No, but magic works around me sometimes, even here in L.A., and that magic takes your word of honor very seriously sometimes.”

  “You’re saying that magic works around you whether you want it to or not?”

  I wanted to take it back, because I didn’t want the press to get hold of that fact, but Marshal had helped my friend, and he seemed like a nice guy. It would be a shame to have him hurt just because he didn’t understand what his word was supposed to mean to the power of faerie.

  “Talk to the reporters and I’ll say you made it up, but yes, sometimes. You seem like a nice guy. I’d hate for you to have a problem with some stray bit of magic. So you have to stay here until Julian, his brother, gets here.”

  “Or something bad could happen to me?” He made it a question.

  I nodded.

  He frowned as if he didn’t believe me, but finally nodded. “Okay, call the brother. I think the crowd won’t thin out too fast.”

  I slid out of the ambulance. Cathbodua fell in at my side in that practiced bodyguard move that I’d begun to take for granted. Sholto mirrored her on the other side. I used my cell phone to call Julian. He’d want to know that his brother was doing this poorly anyway; of course, I’d forgotten that both brothers were powerful psychics.

  He picked up his phone about the time I saw him through the crowd of cops. He was already on his way to his brother’s side. I flipped the phone closed and waved at him. He waved back, pocketing the phone he’d been about to answer. They were psychics. They didn’t need telephones.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  UTHER JOINED US AT THE BARRIERS ALONG WITH OUR UNIFORMED escorts. This pair of policemen was male, one young and African American and the other on the far side of fifty and Caucasian. In fact, he looked like he’d been dropped on the scene by a casting agent who’d filled the order for an older white cop, a little overweight, a little jaded, and very world-weary. His eyes said he’d seen everything and been impressed by none of it.

  His partner was a rookie, and seemed bright and shiny in comparison. The young officer was Pendleton; the older one was Brust.

  Pendleton stared up at the nearly giant-sized fey. Brust gave Uther the same dull look he’d given everything else, and said, “You coming with the princess?”

  “Yes,” Uther said in a deep, rumble of a voice that sounded perfect for his size. He’d taken voice lessons to get rid of the speech impediment that the tusks had given him so that he could sound like he was speaking the queen’s English when he wanted to. He did it mostly because it hurt people’s heads to hear someone who looked like him speaking like a college English professor. It amused him, and most of the rest of us.

  “I think with four guards and us we’ve got this,” Brust said.

  I moved in smiling. “I’m sure you do, Officer Brust, but Uther is also a coworker and we need to discuss the case with him.”

  Both officers looked the big guy up and down. I’d seen the looks before, and so had Uther. He said, “Would you prefer that I quote Keats, Milton, or the football scores? What works for you so you don’t think I’m as stupid as I look?”

  Pendleton said, “We don’t … I mean, I don’t … We didn’t say anything like that.”

  “Save it, Penny,” Brust said, and looked up at Uther. He said in a voice as dry and serious as any I’d heard, “So you’re saying you’re not just another pretty face?”

  “Brust,” Pendleton said, and sounded offended on Uther’s behalf. It made me shave years off Pendleton’s age, or he’d joined the force later than he looked. His offense was civilian businessman offense, not cop offense.

  Uther laughed his rumbling chuckle. “No, I’m not just another pretty face.”

  Brust actually gave a little smile. “Then by all means help us move these fine citizens back.”

  Pendleton looked from one man to the other, puzzled that they’d somehow bonded. I understood it. Uther knew what he looked like, and he hated it when people pretended that he didn’t. He liked people who honestly weren’t bothered by his appearance, but the ones who were bothered but pretended they weren’t always made his hackles rise.

  “Come on, big guy,” Rhys said, “let’s see if we can clear out some of this crowd for the nice policeman.”

  Uther smiled down at him. “I don’t think you’re going to be much help, little man.”

  Rhys grinned up at him. “One of these days I’ve got to take you into a mosh pit.”

/>   Galen made a happy sound. “Only if I get to go,” he said.

  “What is a mosh pit?” Saraid asked.

  Cathbodua surprised us all by answering. “It’s an area at a music concert where people dance oddly and often get hurt.” She gave a small smile of her own. “I think Uther in one of them would be worth seeing.”

  “I didn’t know you liked modern music,” I said.

  “I doubt you know much of anything that I like, Princess Meredith.”

  I could only agree. Uther moved out in front of us and the reporters did back up, because he was simply that physically intimidating, but some of the reporters started asking him questions. Again, they seemed to believe he was this Constantine person.

  Rhys and Galen stayed wedged on either side of me, with Brust in front, Pendleton in back, and Saraid and Cathbodua to the sides and back of all of us. Sholto stayed at my side as Julian did on the way up, but there was still no hand holding, not until we were clear of the crime scene.

  Uther finally came to a stop, because the press was so thick that it was either stop or start stepping on people. Brust used his shoulder mic, probably calling for more help to clear the crowd. I was going to be persona non grata at crime scenes after this, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  Uther tried to make things better. “I am Uther Boarshead. I work for the Grey and Hart Detective Agency. I do not make films.”

  One female reporter shoved a recorder at him, and said, “Your tusks are bigger than his, more curved. Does that mean that other things are bigger, too?”

  I asked Rhys in a low voice, “What kind of movies does the other guy make?”

  “Porn,” he answered.

  I stared at him.

  Rhys grinned, and nodded. “Yep.”

  “Recent films?” I asked.

  “Apparently the films are popular. The big guy has been getting asked for autographs and propositioned when he’s in public.”

  I stared at him in horror, because Uther was a very private person. I couldn’t think of many things that would bother him more. I also couldn’t think of a way for it to stop. Most people would just see the outer packaging, and this Constantine was probably the only other Jack-in-Irons in L.A. It was like being the body double for Brad Pitt. People wanted it to be him, and so they didn’t believe you when you said that it wasn’t.