As we arrived, the officer we had left at the door was blocking the entrance, preventing people from getting inside, including one very attractive and angry fairy. The officer looked relieved when he saw us. “Here he is now, ma’am. Lieutenant Detective Murdock is ranking officer. Sir, this is Community Liaison Officer macNeve.”

“We’ve met,” said Murdock.

Keeva macNeve spun on her heel to face us in full intimidation mode. She had her wings unveiled and shot a little essence into them to make the silvery gossamer flicker yellow and white. All five-foot-eight of her projected anger and authority. I love Keeva in a lather. She’s very good at it. She even somehow gets her mop of red hair to undulate. And to her credit, it works most of the time to get her what she wants.

“You two. I should have guessed,” she said.

“Hi, Keeva,” I said. “You’re up early. New job keeping you on your toes?” Keeva and I used to work together at the Guild. When I say “work together,” I mean we worked in the same general geographic area trying not to pummel each other as we solved cases. That’s just as much a comment on my behavior as on hers. She recently got promoted to Community Liaison Officer for Community Affairs due to a rather sudden vacancy. It’s a polite title. Internally at the Guild, the job is really Chief of Investigations.

“We have a major situation here, Connor. This is a Guild case.”

“We were just securing the scene,” said Murdock.

“Did you touch anything?” Keeva asked him. I resisted the urge to smirk.

Murdock smiled tightly. “No, ma’am. Would you like to fill us in?”

“No,” she said. She turned back to the officer. “Move.” He looked at Murdock, who nodded. Bowing politely, he stepped aside, and Keeva strode through the door, followed by a rather sallow-skinned druid that I guessed was the Guild coroner.

“Left-hand door,” I called out. Through the plate glass, we watched them cross the room and walk directly to the archway. The coroner backed out immediately, even more sickly colored if that were possible, and bolted through the front door. He made sounds behind his vehicle that we all tried to ignore out of professional courtesy as well as our own need not to join him. I could only guess he hadn’t been on the job very long. After several moments, Keeva reappeared and paused at the archway as she obviously pulled herself together. She lifted her head and came outside.

“You could have warned me,” she said. I have to give her credit; she still looked more angry than ill.

I feigned innocence. “You seemed in a rush.”

“My people will be here momentarily. You need to pull everyone out,” Keeva said. The coroner returned from behind the car with his kit over his shoulder.

For someone just arriving, she seemed too much in a hurry to get rid of us. “Who do you think the victim is, Keeva?”

She gave me a long tense look, then relaxed. “You’ll know soon enough. It’s Alvud Kruge.”

That gave me a “whoa” moment. If someone told me I would find an elf with international diplomatic ties smeared across the back room of a storefront on the edge of the Tangle, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. My gaze went up to the sign above the storefront. Unity. Of course, he would be here. Alvud Kruge has been an advocate for peace for decades, often at odds with his own people in the Teutonic Consortium back in Germany. Had been. He’d even been on the board of directors at the Boston Guildhouse, something that also didn’t endear him to his compatriots.

Murdock rubbed his eyes. “God, I’ve had better mornings.”

“How did you know it was him?” I asked.

Keeva gazed at me without speaking for a long moment. I’ve known her a long time. That look means either she’s weighing how much she wants to share or how much she’s going to lie. “Kruge was a Guild director. His addresses get flagged for security. You know that, Connor.”

That was true. Guild members have a lot of enemies for one reason or another. The higher up in the food chain you go, the more people you have waiting to knock you down. Above all else, the Guildhouse protects its own. Even though they had the ill grace to kick me out when I was down, they still provided me a fair amount of security. Nothing flashy, but enough to let me sleep at night in my own bed in my own apartment without worrying about spells in the dark. As head of the crime unit, Keeva was at the top of the contact list for anything associated with Guild execs. So she went for the plausible. Nothing I could call her on. Yet. But that hesitation before answering intrigued me. As usual with her, more than the obvious was probably going on. I decided to play on her side for the moment.

“Someone used a weather spell last night. It extended almost from this exact location back up to Oh No,” I said.

Keeva looked up at the sky. The sun was fully up, and any trace of the essence haze I had seen earlier was gone.

“I thought the cold might be related. Did you notice anything else?” She even sounded like she was treating me like a colleague. While she’s not given to admitting inadequacies, Keeva knows that druids have higher sensitivity to more types of essence than fairies, even a member of the Danann clan like her. Dananns may be some of the most powerful beings on the planet, but they still can’t find a dwarf in a tunnel without a flashlight.

It was an easy thing to share for now. Her druid coroner would tell her the same thing later anyway. “Some conflicting troll and human essence in the back room and the alley. I’m getting multispecies hits everywhere. No one I recognized.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How did you get here so fast? It may be early for me, but I know damn well you don’t usually roll out of bed until noon.”

“Murdock called me in on another murder nearby when this call came in,” I said.

“It’s a kid. Looks like a fairy might have dropped him,” Murdock said.

Keeva nodded absently as she examined the front door. She might have heard Murdock, she might not have. Boston P.D. calls were not that interesting to her or the Guild. She reached out and held the doorknob. It’s a little Danann trick. What they cannot always perceive with their eyes and nose, they can sometimes do by touch. She moved her hand to the doorjamb, then back to the knob. Her brow creased.

“Are you getting something?” I asked.

She looked up. “Hmm? I’ll read your report when it gets sent over, Detective. If you’re only at ‘might-have-dropped,’ it doesn’t sound like something the Guild needs to take. Kruge’s going to suck up a lot of resources.”

Murdock and I exchanged knowing looks. No surprises. Even if the Weird wasn’t involved, Kruge would have taken precedence. It’s the way of the world. His death was going to make international headlines. The kid up the street might make a quick mention on the early news, but after that it would be twenty-four-hour Kruge.

I could hear a low-level hum that was beginning to build. I knew that sound. Keeva and I both looked up, but no one else did yet. They’d catch it in a moment. The hum turned into a whirring noise, and six fairies came into view above us. A Guild security unit. Gods, I miss showing up with them. All tricked out in black leather, chrome helmets, and white energy pulsating in their wings. People get out of the way when they show up. Even cops. Like the cops standing next to us who sidled down to the sidewalk. It only takes “accidentally” getting hit once with a little essence bolt to get the message that you don’t mess with them. They landed in a loose circle around me, Keeva, and Murdock. I could feel Murdock give off one of his odd essence surges.

“It’s fine, guys,” Keeva said to them. “They were just leaving.” She looked at me with a cocked eyebrow.

I smiled. “It was nice seeing you, too, Keeva.”