Divine Misdemeanors

O’Brian, the female rookie, was five foot eight at least, which was tall to me, but not standing there with her partner and my guards. But I was betting that she was used to that on the force; what she wasn’t used to was the Fear Dearg at her side. He’d worked himself within inches of her. He’d done nothing wrong, nothing she could complain about except invade her personal space, but I was betting that she’d taken to heart the lectures on human/fey relations. One of the cultural differences between us and most Americans was that we didn’t have the personal-space boundaries that most did, so if Officer O’Brian complained, then she was being insensitive to our people with Princess Meredith sitting right there. I watched her try not to be nervous as the Fear Dearg moved just a fraction closer to her. I watched the thought in her blue eyes as she tried to work out the political implications of telling the Fear Dearg to back off.

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.”