Divine Misdemeanors (Merry Gentry #8)(55)

“No.”
“I’m sorry you lost her because of what happened with the reporters.”
“It’s not your fault Merry.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“Why did they go so far from the illustration this time? There’s only one shadow hanging up and there are twenty of them here.”
“Maybe they wanted to kill more of them,” Rhys said.
“Why?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“Neither do I, damn it,” she said.
To that the only thing I could add was “Me either.” It wasn’t helpful, and until we found Bittersweet to help give us an eyewitness account we were stuck.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I WAS BACK AT THE OFFICES TAKING CLIENTS LATER THAT DAY AS IF nothing unusual had happened. It seemed like after seeing those hanging bodies I shouldn’t have had to do anything else for the day, but life doesn’t work like that. Just because you start the day off with nightmares doesn’t mean you don’t still have to go to work. Sometimes being a responsible grown-up sucked a lot. 
Doyle and Frost were standing at my back for the client sessions. I was never allowed to see anyone alone. I’d given up arguing about it. This was one battle I was not going to win, and sometimes wisdom is saving your energy for the battles you can win. Rhys had two hours before he had to be on a stakeout, so he was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. It was part of our ongoing theory of “more guards were better.”
But when I saw who went with the name on my list I was glad they were all there. The client name was John MacDonald, but the man who walked into the room was Donal, who I’d last seen in Fael’s Tea Shop the day Bittersweet disappeared and Gilda’s wand knocked down a policeman.
He was still tall and overly muscled with long blond hair and a very nice set of ear implants so he had a graceful curve to his ears. They were actually a good match for Doyle’s except that his were black and Donal’s were human pale.
“The police have been looking for you,” I said, my voice calm.
“I heard,” he said. “May I sit down?”
Rhys was on his feet. Even though he didn’t know who Donal was, he’d picked up on our tension. “After we search you for magic and weapons, yes,” Doyle said.
Rhys put the man up against the wall and searched him very thoroughly top to bottom. “He’s clean.” Rhys sounded like he wished he’d found some excuse to be rough with the man, but he did his job and stepped back.
“Now you can sit down,” I said.
“If you keep your hands where we can see them at all times,” Doyle added. Rhys followed Donal as he went for the chair and took up a post to his left shoulder.
Donal nodded as if he’d expected that, then sat down in the client chair with his hands spread flat on his thighs.
I studied his face and told my too-fast heartbeat that it was being silly, but one of Donal’s friends had almost raped me, and nearly gotten me killed. It had been Doyle’s magic that had saved me, but it had been a near thing, not to mention that they’d tried to steal some of my life essence. It had been a nasty spell.
“If you know the police are looking for you, why not just turn yourself in?” I asked.
“You know that I was part of the group that worked with Alistair Norton.”
“You were one of the people helping him steal the life essence of women with fey ancestry.”
“I didn’t know that’s what the spell was doing. I know you don’t believe me, but the police did. I was stupid, but stupid doesn’t make you guilty.”
“Since your friend tried to rape me I’m not going to be very sympathetic. I would think the police might like you better than we do.”
His eyes flicked to Frost and Doyle at my back—he fought not to glance back at Rhys—then back to me. “You may hate me, but you understand magic better than the police and I need you to help me explain to them about the magic.”
“We already know everything about your friend and what he tried to do to me, and did successfully to a lot of other women.”
“Liam, my friend, was involved with it, too. The police never found out because he’s one of their wizards. If they’d known, he’d have lost his certification with them.”
“You mean the Liam that they never found was one of theirs.”
He nodded. “But his real name isn’t Liam. He always used that when dealing with other sidhe wannabes, because he wanted a name that showed his heritage.”
“What heritage?” Doyle asked.
“I don’t know if it’s true, but his mother always told him that he was from a one-night stand with a sidhe. He’s tall enough, and his skin is paler than human normal, like yours,” he said, looking at me. “And his,” he said, indicating Frost.“How old is your friend?” I asked.
“He’s under thirty, like me.”
I shook my head. “Then his mom was either lying or delusional.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the last child born to the sidhe and I’m over thirty.”
Donal shrugged. “I just know what he said, and what his mother told him, but he was obsessed with the fact that he was half sidhe.” He touched his ear implants. “I know I’m pretending, but I’m not sure he did.”
“What’s his real name?” I asked.
“You’ll call the police and that will be that, if I tell you, so I’ll explain first and then give you his name.”
I wanted to argue, but finally nodded. “We’re listening.”
“Liam still wanted fey magic so he could be sidhe enough for his heritage so he began to try to design a spell to steal magic from other people.”
“You mean their essence, like your other friend was doing?”
“No, not exactly. He wanted magic, not life force. I was naive last time, or maybe I wanted to be fooled, but I knew when Liam started saying similar things it was going to be bad. He found a way to create wands that help people with magic steal other people’s magic. It won’t help people without magic, but it’s designed for wizards and other fey.”
“Did you say wands?” I asked. I felt Doyle go very still beside me, and Frost moved around the desk to join Rhys at the man’s side, not like bodyguards but more like prison guards.
Donal gave Frost a nervous glance, but said, “Yes, and I’ve seen it work. It’s not a permanent stealing. It’s like the wand takes a charge and their magic is a battery. They regain their power, and the wand loses power.”
“So you have to keep recharging it,” I said.
He nodded.
“How do you steal power?” I asked.
“Touching them with it, but he theorized that he could steal more power if he was willing to kill them. He seemed to believe that if he could take the person’s soul all their magic would go into the wand.”
“Did it work?” Doyle asked.
“I don’t know. When he started talking crazy I cut ties with him, I didn’t want anything to do with him. After what happened with Alistair, I’d learned that sometimes it’s not just crazy talk. Sometimes people you thought were your friends will actually do the terrible things they talk about. It’s not bragging; sometimes it’s just crazy.”
“Why not go to the police?” I asked.
“And tell them what? I barely got away without charges from the last time, so I’m a person of interest when things get weird, but more than that I wasn’t sure he was going to test his theory. I couldn’t tell the police I thought he might do it; what if he never did? He was one of their wizards, for the love of Goddess. They’d believe him over me.” 
“So you came to us because you’re afraid to go to the police.”
“Yes, but more than that, you understand magic and power better than they do. Even their other wizards aren’t quite the same as you are.”
“What changed your mind? What made you think to tell us?” I asked.
“The fey murders. I’m afraid that my ex-friend is behind them.”
“What makes you think that?”
“It would take a lot of power to kill the supposed immortal, right?”
“Does your friend have that kind of power?”
“No, but his girlfriend does. She’s this little thing and you think she’s harmless and cute. A little sick, but cute.”
“She’s sick as in crazy?”
“Well, yeah, but I mean the relationship is sick. I mean, she’s a demi-fey and he’s my size.”
“She’s not one who can change size?” I asked.
He shook his head. “But she wants to, and she hates all the fey who can hide what they are since she can’t.”
“Isn’t her glamour good enough for her to hide?”
“She can pretend to be a butterfly, but she isn’t really good at glamour, or people always seem to see through her illusions. I’ve known others who were much better at it.”
“So the wand wasn’t for him, it was for her,” I said.
He nodded. “Yes, and it worked. She was more powerful the last time I saw them. She used glamour on me, made me … want her, see her as bigger, but she wasn’t. I …” He was obviously embarrassed.
He leaned on the desk, stretching his hand out, beseeching me. “I did things. Things I didn’t want to do.” He shook his head. “No, no, you’re not going to believe me. I can see it in your eyes.”