Divine Misdemeanors_A Novel

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “A lot of pretty things fly,” Lucy said.

  “Yes, but look at them. When they were alive they were beautiful.”

  “You keep saying that maybe a demi-fey did this, but even if one of these guys hated themselves enough to do this, they couldn’t get twenty of them to hold still while they did all this.” She didn’t try to keep the disbelief out of her voice.

  “Don’t underestimate the demi-fey, Lucy. They have some of the most powerful glamour left to us, and they’re insanely strong for their size, more so than any other type of fey.”

  “How strong?” she asked.

  Rhys answered, “They could toss you around.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “It’s true,” he said.

  “One of them could knock you on your ass,” I said.

  “But could a pair of them do this?”

  “I think they’d need at least one half of the pair to be regular size,” I said.

  “And they could control this many demi-fey, control them enough to do this to them?” she asked.

  I sighed, and then tried to breathe less deeply. “I don’t know. Honestly, Lucy, I don’t know anyone powerful enough to make this many fey of any kind allow themselves to be tied up and murdered like this, but if they were dead before the pins went in, dead by magic somehow, I know some fey powerful enough to kill this many at once.”

  I leaned in and spoke quietly to Rhys. “Could a Fear Dearg do this?”

  He shook his head. “They never had enough glamour to work the demi-fey like this. It’s one of the reasons they liked humans so much. It made them feel powerful.”

  “Don’t whisper. Share with the class,” Lucy said.

  I moved closer to her, just in case one of the many police in the garden overheard and made problems with her for failing to do another part of her job. “Have you found Bittersweet yet?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry you lost her because of what happened with the reporters.”

  “It’s not your fault Merry.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  “Why did they go so far from the illustration this time? There’s only one shadow hanging up and there are twenty of them here.”

  “Maybe they wanted to kill more of them,” Rhys said.

  “Why?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “Neither do I, damn it,” she said.

  To that the only thing I could add was “Me either.” It wasn’t helpful, and until we found Bittersweet to help give us an eyewitness account we were stuck.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  I WAS BACK AT THE OFFICES TAKING CLIENTS LATER THAT DAY AS IF nothing unusual had happened. It seemed like after seeing those hanging bodies I shouldn’t have had to do anything else for the day, but life doesn’t work like that. Just because you start the day off with nightmares doesn’t mean you don’t still have to go to work. Sometimes being a responsible grown-up sucked a lot.

  Doyle and Frost were standing at my back for the client sessions. I was never allowed to see anyone alone. I’d given up arguing about it. This was one battle I was not going to win, and sometimes wisdom is saving your energy for the battles you can win. Rhys had two hours before he had to be on a stakeout, so he was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. It was part of our ongoing theory of “more guards were better.”

  But when I saw who went with the name on my list I was glad they were all there. The client name was John MacDonald, but the man who walked into the room was Donal, who I’d last seen in Fael’s Tea Shop the day Bittersweet disappeared and Gilda’s wand knocked down a policeman.

  He was still tall and overly muscled with long blond hair and a very nice set of ear implants so he had a graceful curve to his ears. They were actually a good match for Doyle’s except that his were black and Donal’s were human pale.

  “The police have been looking for you,” I said, my voice calm.

  “I heard,” he said. “May I sit down?”

  Rhys was on his feet. Even though he didn’t know who Donal was, he’d picked up on our tension. “After we search you for magic and weapons, yes,” Doyle said.

  Rhys put the man up against the wall and searched him very thoroughly top to bottom. “He’s clean.” Rhys sounded like he wished he’d found some excuse to be rough with the man, but he did his job and stepped back.

  “Now you can sit down,” I said.

  “If you keep your hands where we can see them at all times,” Doyle added. Rhys followed Donal as he went for the chair and took up a post to his left shoulder.

  Donal nodded as if he’d expected that, then sat down in the client chair with his hands spread flat on his thighs.

  I studied his face and told my too-fast heartbeat that it was being silly, but one of Donal’s friends had almost raped me, and nearly gotten me killed. It had been Doyle’s magic that had saved me, but it had been a near thing, not to mention that they’d tried to steal some of my life essence. It had been a nasty spell.

  “If you know the police are looking for you, why not just turn yourself in?” I asked.

  “You know that I was part of the group that worked with Alistair Norton.”

  “You were one of the people helping him steal the life essence of women with fey ancestry.”

  “I didn’t know that’s what the spell was doing. I know you don’t believe me, but the police did. I was stupid, but stupid doesn’t make you guilty.”

  “Since your friend tried to rape me I’m not going to be very sympathetic. I would think the police might like you better than we do.”

  His eyes flicked to Frost and Doyle at my back—he fought not to glance back at Rhys—then back to me. “You may hate me, but you understand magic better than the police and I need you to help me explain to them about the magic.”

  “We already know everything about your friend and what he tried to do to me, and did successfully to a lot of other women.”

  “Liam, my friend, was involved with it, too. The police never found out because he’s one of their wizards. If they’d known, he’d have lost his certification with them.”

  “You mean the Liam that they never found was one of theirs.”

  He nodded. “But his real name isn’t Liam. He always used that when dealing with other sidhe wannabes, because he wanted a name that showed his heritage.”

  “What heritage?” Doyle asked.

  “I don’t know if it’s true, but his mother always told him that he was from a one-night stand with a sidhe. He’s tall enough, and his skin is paler than human normal, like yours,” he said, looking at me. “And his,” he said, indicating Frost.

  “How old is your friend?” I asked.

  “He’s under thirty, like me.”

  I shook my head. “Then his mom was either lying or delusional.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m the last child born to the sidhe and I’m over thirty.”

  Donal shrugged. “I just know what he said, and what his mother told him, but he was obsessed with the fact that he was half sidhe.” He touched his ear implants. “I know I’m pretending, but I’m not sure he did.”

  “What’s his real name?” I asked.

  “You’ll call the police and that will be that, if I tell you, so I’ll explain first and then give you his name.”

  I wanted to argue, but finally nodded. “We’re listening.”

  “Liam still wanted fey magic so he could be sidhe enough for his heritage so he began to try to design a spell to steal magic from other people.”

  “You mean their essence, like your other friend was doing?”

  “No, not exactly. He wanted magic, not life force. I was naive last time, or maybe I wanted to be fooled, but I knew when Liam started saying similar things it was going to be bad. He found a way to create wands that help people with magic steal other people’s magic. It won’t help people without magic, but it’s designed for wizards and other fey.”

&nbs
p; “Did you say wands?” I asked. I felt Doyle go very still beside me, and Frost moved around the desk to join Rhys at the man’s side, not like bodyguards but more like prison guards.

  Donal gave Frost a nervous glance, but said, “Yes, and I’ve seen it work. It’s not a permanent stealing. It’s like the wand takes a charge and their magic is a battery. They regain their power, and the wand loses power.”

  “So you have to keep recharging it,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “How do you steal power?” I asked.

  “Touching them with it, but he theorized that he could steal more power if he was willing to kill them. He seemed to believe that if he could take the person’s soul all their magic would go into the wand.”

  “Did it work?” Doyle asked.

  “I don’t know. When he started talking crazy I cut ties with him, I didn’t want anything to do with him. After what happened with Alistair, I’d learned that sometimes it’s not just crazy talk. Sometimes people you thought were your friends will actually do the terrible things they talk about. It’s not bragging; sometimes it’s just crazy.”

  “Why not go to the police?” I asked.

  “And tell them what? I barely got away without charges from the last time, so I’m a person of interest when things get weird, but more than that I wasn’t sure he was going to test his theory. I couldn’t tell the police I thought he might do it; what if he never did? He was one of their wizards, for the love of Goddess. They’d believe him over me.”

  “So you came to us because you’re afraid to go to the police.”

  “Yes, but more than that, you understand magic and power better than they do. Even their other wizards aren’t quite the same as you are.”

  “What changed your mind? What made you think to tell us?” I asked.

  “The fey murders. I’m afraid that my ex-friend is behind them.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “It would take a lot of power to kill the supposed immortal, right?”

  “Does your friend have that kind of power?”

  “No, but his girlfriend does. She’s this little thing and you think she’s harmless and cute. A little sick, but cute.”

  “She’s sick as in crazy?”

  “Well, yeah, but I mean the relationship is sick. I mean, she’s a demi-fey and he’s my size.”

  “She’s not one who can change size?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “But she wants to, and she hates all the fey who can hide what they are since she can’t.”

  “Isn’t her glamour good enough for her to hide?”

  “She can pretend to be a butterfly, but she isn’t really good at glamour, or people always seem to see through her illusions. I’ve known others who were much better at it.”

  “So the wand wasn’t for him, it was for her,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

  “Why do you want to?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Royal mentioned it last night,” I said.

  “I’ll just bet he did,” Rhys said.

  I gave him an unfriendly look.

  “Sorry,” he said.

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

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

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

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

  “What does a camera girl do?”

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

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

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

  “So a camera girl is a demi-fey.”

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

  Donal nodded.

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

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

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

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

  “Should I be insulted?” Rhys asked.

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

  Rhys nodded. “Fair enough.”

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

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

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

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

  “What name?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

  “What do you mean?”

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

  “Can demi-fey go bogart?” Rhys asked.

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

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

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

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

  “What’s her sister’s name?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Some,” he said.

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

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

  “Give us Liam’s real name,” I said.

  “You believe me?”

  “I do.”

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