Divine Misdemeanors

If anyone ever asked for a plastic surgeon recommendation, I’d send them to Robert’s doctor.

He smiled, only his dark brown eyes showing the edge of his worry, but none of the customers would see it. “I’ve got your order in the back. Come back and have a cup before you approve it.”

“Sounds good,” I said, all happy to go with his tone. I’d lived in the Unseelie Court when the only magic I could do was glamour. I knew how to pretend to feel things that I wasn’t feeling at all. It had made me good at undercover work for the Grey Detective Agency.

Robert handed the cloth to a young woman who looked like a pinup girl for Goth Monthly, from her black hair to her black velvet minidress, striped hose, and clunky retroish shoes. She sported a neck tattoo and a piercing through her dark lipsticked mouth.

“Mind the front for me, Alice.”

“Will do,” she said and smiled brightly at him. Ah, a perky Goth, not a gloomy one. Positive attitude makes better counter help.

The Fear Dearg stayed behind, twisting his face into a smile for the tall human girl. She smiled down at him, and there wasn’t a shadow in her face that saw anything but attraction in the small fey.

Robert was moving and we were following, so I left off speculating on whether Alice and the Fear Dearg were a couple, or at least hooked up. He wouldn’t have been my cup of tea, but then I knew what he was capable of; did she?

I shook my head and pushed it all away. Their love life was not my business. The office space was neat and modern but all warm earth tones, and had a wall of photographs from home so that all the staff, even those without a desk, could bring family photos in and see them during the day. Robert and his partner were pictured in tropical shirts in front of a beautiful sunset. Goth Alice had several pictures, each with a different friend; maybe she was just friendly. There was a partition, still in that warm shade between tan and brown, that separated the break area from the office space. We heard the voices before we could see around the partition. One was low and masculine, the other high-pitched and feminine.

Robert called out in a cheerful voice, “We have visitors, Bittersweet.”

There was a little scream, and the sound of china breaking, and then we were around the corner of the partition. There was nice leather furniture with cushions, a large coffee table, some drink and snack machines almost hidden by an oriental screen, a man, and a small flying faery.

“You promised,” she shrieked, and her voice was thin with anger so that there was an edge of buzz to it, as if she were the insect she resembled. “You promised you wouldn’t tell!”

The man was standing, trying to comfort her as she hovered near the ceiling. Her wings were a blur, and I knew when she stopped moving that it wouldn’t be butterfly wings on her back, but rather something faster, slimmer. Her wings caught the artificial light with little winks of rainbow color. Her dress was purple, only a little darker than my own. Her hair fell around her shoulders in white-blond waves. She would barely fill my hand, tiny even by demi-fey standards.

The man trying to calm her was Robert’s partner, Eric, who was five foot eight, slender, neatly dressed, ta

Robert spoke sharply. “Bittersweet, we promised not to tell everyone, but you were the one who flew in here babbling hysterically. Did you think no one would talk? You’re lucky that the princess and her men are here before the police.”

She flew at him, tiny hands balled into tiny fists, and her eyes blazed with rage. She hit him. You would think that something smaller than a Barbie doll wouldn’t pack much punch, but you’d be wrong.

She hit him, and I was behind him, so I felt the wave of energy that came before and around her fist like a small explosion. Robert was airborne, and pitched backward toward me. Only Doyle’s speed put him between me and the falling man. Frost yanked me out of the way of both as they hit the floor.

Bittersweet turned on us, and I watched the ripple of power around her like heat on a summer’s day. Her hair formed a pale halo around her face, raised by the wind of her own energy. It was the magic that kept a “human” that small alive without her having to eat multiple times her own body weight every day like a hummingbird or a shrew.

“Do not be rash,” Frost said. His skin ran cold against mine as his magic woke in a skin-tingling winter’s chill. The glamour that I’d used to hide us fell away, partly because to hold it with his magic coming was harder, and partly because I hoped it would help bring the small fey to her senses.

Her wings stopped, and I had a moment to see the crystal of dragonfly wings on her tiny body as she did the airborne equivalent of a human stumbling on uneven ground. It made her dip toward the ground before she caught herself and rose to eye level with both Frost and Doyle. She’d turned sideways so she could see both of them. Her energy quieted around her as she hovered.

She bobbed an awkward curtsey in the air. “If you hide yourself with glamour, Princess, then how’s a fey to know how to act?”

I started to come around Frost’s body, but he stopped me partway with his arm, so I had to speak from the shield of him. “Would you have harmed us if we had simply been humans who were part fey?”

“You looked like those pretend elves that the humans dress up as.”

“You mean the wa

She nodded. Her blond curls had fallen around her tiny shoulders in beautiful ringlets, as if the power had curled her hair tighter.

“Why would human wa

Her eyes flicked to him, and then back to me as if the very sight of him frightened her. Doyle had been the queen’s assassin for centuries; the fact that he was with me now didn’t take away his past.

She answered his question while looking at me. “I saw them coming down the hill from where my friends were …” Here she stopped, put her hands in front of her eyes, and began to weep.

“Bittersweet,” I said, “I’m sorry for your loss, but are you saying you saw the killers?”

She just nodded without moving her hands from her face, and began to weep louder, an amazing amount of noise from a being so small. The weeping had an edge of hysteria to it, but I guess I couldn’t blame her.

Robert moved around her to Eric, and they held hands as Eric asked Robert if he was hurt. Robert just shook his head.

“I have to make a call,” I said.

Robert nodded, and something in his eyes let me know that he understood both who I was going to call and why I wasn’t doing so in this room. The little fey didn’t seem to want anyone to know what she’d seen, and I was about to call the police.

Robert let us go back into the storage room that was behind the offices, but not before he had the Fear Dearg come in and sit with Eric and the demi-fey. Extra security seemed like a really good idea.

Frost and Doyle started to come with me, but I said, “One of you stay with her.”

Doyle ordered Frost to do so, while he stayed with me. Frost didn’t argue; he’d had centuries of orders followed from the other sidhe. It was habit for most of the guards to do what Doyle said.

Doyle let the door close behind us as I dialed Lucy’s cell phone. “Detective Tate.”

“It’s Merry.”

“You think of something?”

“How about a witness who says she saw the killers?”

“Don’t tease,” she said.

“No tease, I plan to put out.”

She almost laughed. “Where are you, and who is it? We can send a car down and pick them up.”