Divine Misdemeanors

“He doesn’t think about it,” I said, and slid onto the bar stool near the front of the outside counter.

He got the mugs down, and turned with a grin. “Were you watching my ass?”

“Yes, and the rest of you. I’m enjoying watching you move around the kitchen in nothing but your smile.”

That made him grin again as he put the mugs by the coffeemaker, which was now making the happy noises that said coffee was on its way.

He came to me, face going solemn. He gave me the full attention of that one blue-ringed eye. He raised his hand again, and touched the blood and grit on my face.

“I take it Bre

“A small cut on his palm, and it was that hand that he gripped the nail with.”

“He’s still wearing it around his neck,” Rhys said.

I nodded.

“You know the rumors about the soldiers who fought beside us?”

“No,” I said.

“They’re healing people, Merry. They’re laying on hands.”

I stared at him. “I thought that was just for that night, just with faerie’s magic bleeding all over everything.”

“Apparently not,” he said. He studied my face, as if looking for something specific.

“What?” I asked, nervous under his so-serious scrutiny.

“You never left the bed, Merry. I swear to that, but Bre

He turned and started searching the drawers of the cabinets for something. He came up with ziplock bags and a spoon.

I must have given him a suspicious look, because he chuckled and explained. “I’m going to take a sample of the dirt and blood. I want to know what a modern lab will make of it.”

“To get the Grey Detective Agency to pay for it you’ll have to explain.”

“Jeremy is a good boss, a good fey, and a good man. He’ll let me put it through as part of a case.”

I couldn’t argue with anything he said about Jeremy. He’d been one of my few friends when I first came to Los Angeles.

Rhys opened one of the bags and leaned toward my cheek with the spoon. “This isn’t exactly chain of evidence. If it was a real case the zip lock bag might let the other side argue that it was contaminated by anything and everything.”

“I wasn’t thinking when I touched it, so my skin is in there, and you’re right about the method of collection, but this isn’t a real case, Merry.” He very carefully scraped some dirt into one of the open bags. He was so gentle I felt only a slight pressure.

When he had enough dirt he closed the bag. He got a new spoon and a new bag, and scraped some of the dirt, but I was betting that he had more blood in this one. He took more time with this one, and it actually scraped my skin a little. It didn’t hurt, but it might have if he’d kept doing it long enough.

“What do you hope to gain by testing these?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll know more than we do right this minute.” He started opening drawers until he found a Sharpie in the drawer closest to the phone. He wrote on the bags, dated them, signed his name, and had me sign them, too.

The rich smell of coffee filled the kitchen. It always smelled good. He poured coffee into one of the mugs, but I stopped him from doing it twice.

“No caffeine, remember?”

He hung his head enough for the white curls to fall forward. “I’m an idiot. I’m sorry, Merry. I’ll put on water for tea.”

“I should have said something earlier, but honestly, the dream spooked me.”

He filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove, then came back to stand beside me. “Tell me about it while we wait for the water to boil.”

“You can drink your coffee,” I said.

He shook his head. “I’ll get fresh when you can have tea.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“I know.” He put his hand over mine. “Your hands are cold.” He took my hands in his and raised them to his mouth to lay a gentle kiss on them. “Tell me about the dream.”

I took a deep breath and told him. He listened, made encouraging noises here and there, and held my hands, when he wasn’t making tea. When I finished telling the story, my hands were a little warmer, and there was a pot of tea steeping on the counter.

“Traveling through a dream or vision isn’t unheard-of for us in the far past, but to manifest physically so that a follower could touch us and be touched or rescued from danger, that is really rare, even when we were in our prime as a people.”

“How rare?” I asked.

The timer went off for the tea, and he went to hit the button. “I was willing to believe that we’d been quiet enough not to wake anyone, but I purposefully put on that a

I thought about that. “Doyle and Frost should have been up when we walked past the door to the bedroom they’re in, but they didn’t.”

“This buzzer would wake the dead.” He seemed to find that fu

“I’m not sure I get the joke,” I said.

“Death deity,” he said, half pointing at himself as he put the teapot down.

I nodded, as if that made perfect sense, which it didn’t, but … “I still don’t get the joke.”

“Sorry, it’s an insider sort of thing. You aren’t a death deity, so you wouldn’t get it.”

“Okay.”

He brought my mug of tea to me, then went back to pour out his cold coffee, and pour fresh for himself. He took a sip, closed his eye, and just looked happy. I raised my tea so I could smell the jasmine before I tasted it. With some of the gentler teas, scent was as important as taste.

“Why do you think that no one else has woken up? I mean, Galen and Wyn were right there through all of it.”

“I think Goddess isn’t done with you tonight, and it’s something she wants us to do together.”

“Do you think it’s because you’re the only death deity we have out here?”

He shrugged. “I’m not the only death deity in Los Angeles, I’m just the only Celtic one in Los Angeles.”

I frowned at him. “Who do you mean?”

“Other religions have deities, Merry, and some of them like to walk around pretending to be people.”

“You make it sound like they’re not the same kind of deity that you and the others are.”

He shrugged again. “I know that this particular deity is choosing to walk around in human shape, but he can be simply spirit. If you see me walking around without being in human form, I’m dead.”

“So you mean not just something else with magic over the dead, but something that is truly a deity, a god with a capital ‘G’ like the Goddess and the Consort.”

He nodded, sipping his coffee.

“Who is it? I mean, what is it? I mean, …”

“Nope, not going to tell you. I know you too well. You’ll tell Doyle and he won’t be able to resist a closer look. I’ve already spoken to the deity in question and he and I have a deal. I’ll leave him alone and he’ll leave us alone.”

“Is he that scary?”

“Yes and no. Let’s just say that I’d rather not test his limits when all we have to do is leave him alone.”

“He’s not harming anyone in the city, is he?”

“Leave it alone.” He frowned. “I should have kept my big mouth shut.”

I sipped my tea, enjoying the jasmine flavor, but honestly, the scent of Rhys’s coffee overpowered the delicate perfume of flowers. Coffee would have been nice. I could try caffeine free.

“What are you thinking about so hard?” he asked suspiciously.

“I’m wondering if I could get caffeine-free coffee and how it would taste.”

He laughed then, and leaned up to kiss my cheek. “We should clean you up.”

He went to the sink again, and got a paper towel off the roll by the sink. He set his coffee down so he could get it wet. But the moment he came toward me with the towel, I smelled roses, not jasmine.