A Caress of Twilight (Merry Gentry #2)(56)

Chapter 38
We came out into the living room to find Detective Lucy Tate sitting in the pink wing chair, sipping tea, and looking less than happy.
Galen was sitting on the couch and trying to be charming, which he was actually pretty good at. Lucy was having none of it. Everything from the set of her shoulders to the way she crossed her long legs to the way her foot bobbed said she was angry, or nervous, or both.
"About damn time," she said, when I came out of the bedroom. She looked the three of us over, rather critically. "Aren't you a little overdressed for a little afternoon delight?"
I looked from Galen on the couch to Rhys and Nicca lounging about the room. Kitto went into his "dog house" without a word. I didn't see Sage, and wondered if he was outside on the growing force of potted flowers by the door. Galen had bought several in a bid to keep the little fey happy. It hadn't worked, but Sage did spend a lot of time lounging in the plants. The three visible men gave me very innocent faces. Too innocent. 
"What have you been telling her?"
Rhys shrugged, then pushed away from the wall where he'd been leaning. "Telling her you were having sex with both Doyle and Frost was about the only way to keep her from storming the castle walls while you finished your little business meeting."
Lucy Tate stood up and shoved the cup of tea in Galen's direction. He grabbed it, barely in time. Her face had taken on a flush of unhealthy color. "Are you telling me that I've been out here for nearly an hour and they've been on a business call?" Her voice was dangerously low, each word very calm, very clear.
Galen got up and walked the dripping cup into the kitchen, one hand held underneath it to keep from leaving a trail of tea behind.
"Business call to the faerie courts," I said. "Trust me when I say that I'd rather you'd have walked in on a full-blown menage a trois than the call I just finished."
She seemed to see me clearly for the first time. "You look shaken."
I shrugged. "My family ... gotta love 'em."
She looked at me a long time, almost a minute, as if she was making up her mind about something. Finally, she shook her head. "Rhys is right. Only the threat of seeing you in flagrante delicto would have kept me out here this long. But family business isn't police business, so screw it."
"Are you here on police business?" Doyle asked as he moved smoothly past me into the larger room.
"Yes," she said, and stepped around the couch to face him.
He kept moving into the dining area so it wasn't so confrontational, but Lucy wanted a confrontation. She stood with her arms crossed under her breasts, looking belligerent like she wanted to pick a fight with someone.
"What's wrong, Lucy?" I asked, moving into the room to sit down on the far edge of the couch. If she wanted to keep eye contact with me, she'd have to walk around the couch and face me. She did, settling uneasily into the pink chair again.
She leaned forward, hands clasped together, fingers entwined as she fought with herself.
I asked again, "What's wrong, Lucy?"
"There was another mass killing last night." Lucy usually gave good eye contact, but not today. Today her eyes roved over the apartment, restless, not looking at anything too long.
"Was it like the one we saw?" I asked.
She nodded, resting a momentary gaze on me, then turned away to look at the television, the line of herbs that Galen had growing in the window. "Exactly the same except for location."
Doyle came to kneel behind the couch, arms touching my shoulders lightly. I think he'd knelt so he wouldn't loom over us. "Jeremy has informed us that everyone at his agency has been forbidden from this case. Your Lieutenant Peterson doesn't seem too happy with us."
"I don't know what's gotten up Peterson's craw, and I'm sitting here trying to decide if I care. If I talk to you about this case, it could mean my job." She pushed to her feet and began to pace in the small space of the living room; picture window to pink chair, caught between the couch and the white painted wood of the entertainment center.
"All I've ever wanted was to be a cop." She shook her head, running fingers through her thick brunette hair. "But I'd rather lose my job than see another one of these scenes."
She sat down in the pink chair abruptly, and now she looked at me, those wide eyes, that earnest face. She'd made her decision. It was there in her face. "Have you been following the case in the papers or the news?"
"The news called the club incident a mysterious gas leak." Doyle rested his chin on my shoulder as he spoke. His deep voice vibrated down my skin, along my spine.I had to fight to keep how it affected me from showing on my face. I don't think it showed.
"The second was one of those traveling clubs, raves, I believe, bad drugs."
She nodded. "A bad batch of ecstasy, yeah. At least, that's the story we leaked. We made sure the press had something to chase so they wouldn't put two and two together and start a citywide panic. But the rave was exactly like the first two scenes."
"First two?" I asked.
She nodded. "The very first scene probably wouldn't even have come up on anybody's radar if it hadn't been in a ritzy area of town. Just six adults that time, a small dinner party gone very bad. It'd still be floating around on someone's weird shit pile as unsolved. But the vics were high profile, so when the club got hit, it rang bells downtown, and suddenly we had a task force. We needed one, but we never would have gotten it this quickly if one of the first vics hadn't been friends with several mayors and a chief of police or two." She sounded bitter and tired.
"The first murders were at a private residence?" I asked.
Lucy nodded, hands just clasped now, not wringing tight. She was tired and depressed, but calmer. "Yes, and it was the first related scene, as far as we've been able to find. I keep dreaming that there's some crack house or sweat shop that was really the first hit, and we're going to find dozens of dead bodies rotting in the December heat. The only thing worse than one of these scenes fresh would be a really old one." She shook her head again, running her hands through her hair, then she shook her head, fluffing out the hair she'd just smoothed. "Anyway, the first one was a private residence, yeah. We found the couple that lived there, two guests, two servants."
"How far was that house from the club that we saw?" I asked.
"Holmby Hills is about an hour away."
I felt Doyle go very still behind me. The silence seemed to widen out from us like circles in a pool. We all stared at her and, I think, fought not to look at one another.
"Did you say Holmby Hills?" I asked.
She was looking back at us. "Yes. Why does that ring everyone's bell?"
I looked at Doyle. He looked at me. Rhys settled in to lean against the wall as if it meant nothing, but his face couldn't quite hide the shine of excitement. The mystery was deepening, or maybe shallowing, if that was a word. Rhys couldn't help but enjoy it.
Galen went into the kitchen and hid, fetching a cloth to dry the teacup. Frost came and sat on the couch beside me, giving enough room so Doyle wasn't crowded. Frost's face gave nothing away. Nicca looked genuinely puzzled, and I realized that he'd been out of the loop on exactly where Maeve Reed lived. He'd helped with the planning for the fertility rite, but he didn't know her address. 
"No," Lucy said. "No, you are not all going to just sit there and look innocent. When I said Holmby Hills you all looked like I'd stepped in something, something nasty. You can't give me innocent faces now and not say what's going on."
"We can do anything we wish, Detective," Doyle said.
She looked at me. "Are you going to stonewall me on this? I risked my career to come down here and talk to you all."
"We are a little curious about that," Doyle said. "Why would it be worth your career to come and speak with us? You have Teresa's information, and Jeremy's assurance it was a spell. What more can we tell you?"
She glared at him. "I'm not stupid, Doyle. There are fey everywhere I look on this case. Peterson just doesn't want to see it. The first incident is in Holmby Hills almost right next door to Maeve Reed's house. She's a sidhe royal. Exiled, or not, she's still fey. We put out calls to all the local hospitals, looking for anyone exhibiting symptoms similar to our victims. We got one bite on a live person. No new dead have come in."
"You have a survivor?" Rhys asked.
Her gaze flicked to him, then back to Doyle and me. "We're not sure. He's alive, and getting better every day." She stared at the two of us. "Would it make you share information with me if I told you our possible survivor is fey?"
I don't know about the rest of them, but I didn't even try to keep the puzzlement off my face.
Lucy smiled at us, an almost mean smile, as if she knew she had us. "This fey doesn't want to contact the Bureau of Human and Fey Affairs. Seems real eager to avoid it. Lieutenant Peterson says the fey have nothing to do with the case, says it's a coincidence that Maeve Reed lives close to the first incident. He had the fey interviewed, but insists you can never really tell what's wrong with the faeries; insists that if it had been the same sort of events the fey would be dead." She looked around the room at all of us. "I don't believe that. I've seen fey heal injuries that would have killed any human being. I've seen one of you fall off a high-rise and walk away."