Divine Misdemeanors

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 that 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 ru

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 wa

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 wa

Bittersweet peeked out with frosting smeared on her tiny mouth. It was very i

“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.”