A Kiss of Shadows

"That she was part sidhe. He really got off on that, if the women were part sidhe. He called them his royal whores."

"Why fey women?" Jeremy asked.

"He never said," Frances answered.

"I think it had something to do with the ritual," Naomi said.

We all turned to her. Jeremy and I asked in unison, "What ritual?"

"The first night he took me to the apartment he's rented. The bedroom has mirrored walls and this huge circular bed. The floor was this beautiful gleaming wood with a Persian carpet under the bed. Everything seemed to glow. When I climbed up on the bed, I felt something, like I'd walked through a ghost. I didn't know what it was that first night, but one night I slipped on the rug, and underneath was a double circle set into the wood of the floor with symbols in a band around the circle. I realized the bed was the center of the circle. I didn't recognize the symbols, but I knew enough to know it was a circle of power, a place to work magic."

"Did he ever do anything in the bed that seemed like ritual magic?" I asked.

"Nothing that I recognized. We just had sex, lots of it."

"Was there anything that was the same every time?" Jeremy asked.

She shook her head. "No."

"Was the sex always in this apartment?" Jeremy asked.

"No, sometimes we met at a hotel."

That surprised me. "Is there anything he does in the apartment inside the circle that he doesn't do anywhere else?"

She blushed bright red. "It's the only place he brings other men."

"Other men to have sex with him?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, with me." She looked up at us, as if waiting for the cry of horror, or maybe whore. Whatever she saw reassured her. We all knew how to give good blank face when we needed it. Besides, a little group sex seemed tame after knowing that he showed pictures of his lovers to his wife, with details. That was a new one. Group sex had been around a lot longer than Polaroids.

"Was it always the same men?" Jeremy asked.

She shook her head." No, but they knew each other. I mean, it wasn't like he brought in strangers off the street." She sounded defensive, as if that would have been so much worse, and it wasn't as bad as all that.

"Were there any repeats?" Jeremy asked.

"There were three men that I saw more than once."

"Do you know their names?"

"Just their first names. Liam, Donald, and Brendan."

She seemed very sure of the names. "How many times did you see these three men?"

She wouldn't meet our eyes." I don't know. Many times."

"Five times," Jeremy asked, "six, twenty-six?"

She looked up startled. "Not twenty times, not that many."

"Then how many?" he asked.

"Maybe eight, maybe ten, but no more than that." It seemed important to her that it hadn't been more than ten. Was that the magical cutoff? More than ten times and you were worse than just eight?

"And the group sex, how many times for that?"

She blushed again. "Why do you need to know?"

"You called it a ritual, not us," Jeremy said. "So far there doesn't seem much ritual to it, but numbers can have mystical significance. The number of men inside the circle. The number of times you were inside the circle with more than one man. Believe me, Ms. Phelps, this is not how I get my jollies."

She looked down again. "I didn't mean to imply..."

"Yes, you did," Jeremy said, "but I understand why you'd be suspicious of any male, human or not." I saw the idea float over his face. "Were all the men human?"

"Donald and Liam both had pointed ears, but other than that they all seemed human."

"Were Donald and Liam circumcised?" I asked.

Her voice came out in a hurried rush, color high in her cheeks again. "Why do you need to know that?"

"Because a real male fey would be hundreds of years old, and I've never heard of a Jewish fey, so if they were fey, they wouldn't be circumcised."

She met my eyes. "Oh," she said, then she thought about the original question. "Liam was, but Donald wasn't."

"What did Donald look like?"

"Tall, muscular, like a weight lifter, blond hair to his waist."

"Was he pretty?" I asked.

She had to think about that one, too. "Handsome, not pretty, handsome."

"What color were his eyes?"

"I don't remember."

If they'd been one of the more colorful shades of eyes that the fey are capable of, she'd have remembered. Except for the pointed ears he could have been any of a dozen men at the Seelie Court. There were only three blond men at the Unseelie Court, and none of my three uncles lifted weights. They had to be more careful of their hands than that for fear they'd rip the surgical gloves they always wore. The gloves kept the poison that their hands naturally produced from rubbing off on anyone else. They'd been born cursed.

"Would you recognize this Donald if you saw him again?"

"Yes."

"Was there anything the same about all the men?" Jeremy asked.

"They all had long hair like he has, shoulder-length or longer."

Long hair, possible cartilage implants in the ears, Celtic names- sounded like faerie wa

"Good, Ms. Phelps," Jeremy said. "How about tattoos, symbols written on their bodies, a piece of jewelry that they all wore?"

"No to all of it."

"Did you meet only at night?"

"No, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes at night."

"No special time of the month, not close to a holiday?" Jeremy asked.

She frowned at him. "I've been seeing him only a little over two months. There haven't been any holidays, but no special time."

"Did you have sex with him or others a certain number of times a week?"

She had to think about that one, but finally shook her head. "It varied."

"Did they chant or sing?" Jeremy asked.

"No," she said.

It didn't sound like much of a ritual to me. "Why did you use the term ritual, Ms. Phelps? Why didn't you say spell?"

"I don't know."

"You do know," I said. "You're not a practitioner. I don't think you'd use the term ritual without a reason. Just think for a minute. Why that word?"

She thought about it, eyes staring into space, seeing nothing, tiny frown lines between her eyebrows. She blinked and looked at me. "I heard him talking on the phone one night." She looked down, then up, defiant again, and I knew she didn't like what she was about to say. "He'd tied me to the bed, but he'd left the door open a little. I could hear him talking. He said, 'The ritual will be good tonight,' then his voice dropped too low for me to hear, then he said, 'The untrained ones give it up so easily.' She looked at me. "I wasn't a virgin when we met. I was ... experienced. Before him, I thought I was good in bed."

"What makes you think you're not?" I asked.

"He told me that I wasn't good enough at straight sex to satisfy him, that he needed the abuse to spice it up, so he wouldn't be bored." She tried to stay defiant and failed. The hurt showed in her eyes.

"Were you in love with him?" I tried to make the question gentle.

"What difference does that make?"

Frances took her hand, held it in her lap. "It's all right, Naomi. They're going to help us."

"I don't see what love has to do with any of this, she said.

"If you love him, then it will be harder to free you of his influence, that's all," I said.

She didn't seem to notice that I'd changed loved to love. She answered the question. "I thought I loved him."

"Do you still love him?" I hated having to ask, but we needed to know.

She gripped the other woman's small hand in both of hers, knuckles whitening with the strength of her grip. The tears finally slid down her face. "I don't love him, but..." she had to take a few deep breaths before she could finish, "but if I see him, and he asks for sex, I can't seem to say no. Even when it's awful and he's hurt me, the actual sex is still better than anything I've ever felt before. I can say no over the phone, but if he shows up, I let him ... I mean, I fight if he's beating me, but if it's during sex... it gets all confused."