Divine Misdemeanors (Merry Gentry #8)(40)

The killers had left an illustration behind, and it did match, but they’d had to improvise the set pieces. They had him flat on his back to match the image of the brownie drunk on faerie wine. Again it was a mistake. Brownies didn’t get drunk, bogarts did, and if a brownie went bogart it became very dangerous, sort of a Jekyll-and-Hyde type of problem. A drunk brownie did not pass out peacefully like a human, but I’d found that a lot of the fairy stories were like that: parts were dead-on and parts were so far off it was laughable.
“They brought the book with them, or they chose this illustration late, so late that they couldn’t get all the props they needed to make it match.”
“I agree,” Jeremy said.
Something about the way he said it made me look at him. “If it’s not about the case, then what could Uther have seen that would be important?”
“Someone on the press out there did a little math and decided that the short woman hanging all over Julian had to be the princess in disguise.” 
I sighed. “So they’re out there waiting for me again?”
He nodded. “I’m afraid so, Merry.”
“Crap,” I said.
He nodded again.
I sighed. I shook my head. “I can’t worry about them now. I need to be useful here.”
He smiled at me, and patted my arm again. “That’s what I needed to know.”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“If you’d said something different, then I was going to assign you to the party circuit and leave you off the real cases.”
I looked at him. “You mean send me to the celebrities and would-be celebs who just want the princess at their house?”
“It pays extremely well, Merry. They make up cases for us, and I send you or your beautiful men and they get more press attention. It works for everyone, and we’re making money in an economy where most agencies aren’t.”
I had to think about that for a moment and then said, “So you’re saying the extra publicity is actually bringing in more money than if we didn’t have it?”
He nodded and smiled, showing the white, straight smile that was the only “cosmetic” work he’d had done on coming to L.A. “You’re like any celebrity in one way, Merry. The moment the press doesn’t care enough to make your life miserable you are on the downslide.”
“The weight of the press following me crashed through a window last week,” I said.
He shrugged. “And that made worldwide news, or did you avoid the television all weekend so you wouldn’t see it?”
I smiled. “You know I avoid the shows where I’ll see myself, and we had other things to do this weekend besides watch television.”
“I guess if I had as many girlfriends as you have boyfriends I’d be too busy to watch TV, too.”
“You’d be exhausted, too,” I said.
“Are you insulting my stamina?” he asked, smiling.
“No, I’m a woman, you’re a man. Women rule on the multiple orgasms, men not so much.”
That made him laugh. One of the uniforms said, “Jesus, if you can laugh looking down at that then you really are cold-blooded bastards.”
Lucy spoke from the doorway. “I think I hear your patrol car wondering where you are.”
“They’re laughing at the body.”
“They aren’t laughing at the body. They’re laughing because they’ve seen things that would make you run home to your mommy.”
“Worse than that?” he asked, motioning to the body.
Jeremy and I both nodded and said, “Yes.”
“How can you laugh?”
“Go get some air,” Lucy said, “now.” And she made the last word very firm.
The uniform looked like he wanted to argue, thought better of it, and left. Lucy turned to us. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” she said, “and the press have found you, or think they have.”
“Jeremy told me,” I said.
“We’re going to have to get you out of here before the press looking for you gets bigger than the press about the bodies.”
“I’m sorry about this, Lucy.”
“I know you don’t enjoy it.”
“My boss has just informed me that I make more by going to pretend crimes for parties for celebrities than when I do real crime-stopping.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow at Jeremy. “Really?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“Still, we need to have you show yourself outside so the press hounds don’t mess up our investigation.”I nodded. “Did you find out anything more about the woman, the brownie?”
“It turns out she’s been passing for human, but she’s actually full-blooded brownie. You were right about the plastic surgeon needing to know her background before he reconstructed her face. Why is that so important?”
“Fey heal differently from humans, much faster. If a plastic surgeon didn’t know she was a brownie, her skin could actually heal faster than he could work,” I said.
“Or,” Jeremy added, “there are some metals and man-made medicines that are deadly to us, especially the lesser fey.”
“Some anesthesia doesn’t work on us at all,” I added.
“See, this is why I wanted you here. None of the rest of us would have thought of the doctor and what it would mean if she were full brownie. We need a fey officer to help us deal with things like this.”
“I heard you were recruiting pretty heavily trying to get one of us to come on board,” Jeremy said.
“For scenes like this, and just for community relations. You know how it is, the fey don’t trust us. We’re still the same humans who chased them out of Europe.”
“Not the exact same ones,” he said.
“No, but you know what I mean.”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“Has anyone come forward to join?” I asked.
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“How human looking would they have to be?” I asked.
“To my knowledge, they aren’t limiting it to a particular type of fey. They just want someone on our force who is fey. Most of us feel that that would help smooth things. I mean, we’ve got what amounts to a pedophile ring using the fey who look like children.”
“It’s not pedophilia,” Jeremy said. “The fey are consenting and are usually hundreds of years old, so very legal.”
“Not if money is exchanged, Jeremy. Prostitution is still prostitution.”
“You know the fey don’t understand that as a concept,” he said.
“I know that. You see regulating sex the same as regulating what you can do with your own bodies, but it’s not that. Frankly, and I’ll never admit this in public, but if the fey involved look like kids and can satisfy these perverts, more power to them. It keeps them away from the real kids, but we need to talk to the fey involved with the pedophiles to see if they know if any children are involved.”
“We protect our children,” Jeremy said.
“But some of the older fey don’t see under eighteen as children.”
“That is another cultural difference,” Jeremy agreed.
“If you made an exception for the adult fey who catered to the pedophiles, they would help you find the ones who are still targeting children,” I said. 
Lucy nodded. “I know they look like kids, fresh meat, some very human, and they get treated like fresh meat, but if they defend themselves with magic it can turn into a federal crime.”
“And what started out as maybe their first arrest for prostitution is suddenly use of magical force, which is a lot more serious jail time,” I said.
“Or what about the fey who killed a man trying to rape him in jail, and now he’s up on murder charges?” Jeremy said.
“He smashed the man’s head like an egg, Jeremy,” Lucy said.
“Your human legal system still treats us like monsters if we don’t have diplomatic immunity and a celebrity princess.”
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“Not fair? There’s never been a sidhe in jail in this country. I’m one of the lesser folk, Merry. Trust me when I say that the humans have always treated your people as different from the rest of us.”
I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. “Did you ask the plastic surgeon if he’s done more fey?”
“No, but we can,” she said.
“The demi-fey at the first scene looked typical, but check and see if they were doing anything to pass for human.”
“They couldn’t. They’re the size of Barbie dolls or smaller,” Lucy said.
“Some demi-fey can shift to a larger size, between three and five feet tall. It’s an uncommon ability, but if you could make yourself that tall you could strap down the wings, depending on the kind of wings they are.”
“Really?” Lucy asked.
I looked at Jeremy. “One of your silent film stars was a demi-fey who hid her wings. I knew a saloon worker who did it, too.”
“And none of her customers found out?” Lucy asked.
“She used glamour to hide them.”
“I didn’t know the demi-fey were that good at glamour.”
“Oh, some of them are better at glamour than the sidhe,” I said.
“That’s news,” Lucy said.
“There’s an old saying among us that where the demi-fey go faerie follows. It implies that the demi-fey are the first of us to appear, and not the sidhe or the old gods grown small, but actually they are the first form of us.”