Rhys joined us in the circle. “Not the way I wanted to start the day,” he said.

“None of us wanted this,” Lucy snapped at him.

He held up his hands as if to say “ease up.” “Sorry, Detective, just making conversation.”

“Don’t just make conversation, Rhys, tell me something that will help catch this bastard.”

“Well, from Jordan we know it’s bastards, plural,” he said.

“Tell me something we don’t know,” she said.

“The elderly lady who lives here lets the demi-fey come and dance in her rose circle at least once a month. She sits in the garden and watches them.”

“I thought it was against the rules for them to let humans watch,” Lucy said.

“Apparently her husband was part fey so technically they counted as fey.”

“What kind of fey was he?” I asked.

“I’m not sure he was, but the woman believes it, and who am I to tell her that there’s a difference between being a little bit fey as in artistic or crazy and being descended from the fey?”

“Is she senile?” I asked.

“A touch, but not badly. She believes what her beloved husband told her, that he was the product of a fey lover whom his mother had for a brief time.”

“Why can’t it be true?” Lucy asked.

Rhys gave her a look. “I’ve just spent the last hour looking at pictures of him. If he was part fey it was way back in the family tree, nothing recent.”

“You can tell just by looking?” she asked.

He nodded.

“It leaves a mark,” I said.

“So it’s another circle where people would know the demi-fey came regularly.”

“Jordan said that there was something with wings at the murder scene, and the brownie who died had thought whatever was flying was beautiful.”

“A lot of pretty things fly,” Lucy said.

“Yes, but look at them. When they were alive they were beautiful.”

“You keep saying that maybe a demi-fey did this, but even if one of these guys hated themselves enough to do this, they couldn’t get twenty of them to hold still while they did all this.” She didn’t try to keep the disbelief out of her voice.

“Don’t underestimate the demi-fey, Lucy. They have some of the most powerful glamour left to us, and they’re insanely strong for their size, more so than any other type of fey.”

“How strong?” she asked.

Rhys answered, “They could toss you around.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true,” he said.

“One of them could knock you on your ass,” I said.

“But could a pair of them do this?”

“I think they’d need at least one half of the pair to be regular size,” I said.

“And they could control this many demi-fey, control them enough to do this to them?” she asked.

I sighed, and then tried to breathe less deeply. “I don’t know. Honestly, Lucy, I don’t know anyone powerful enough to make this many fey of any kind allow themselves to be tied up and murdered like this, but if they were dead before the pins went in, dead by magic somehow, I know some fey powerful enough to kill this many at once.”

I leaned in and spoke quietly to Rhys. “Could a Fear Dearg do this?”

He shook his head. “They never had enough glamour to work the demi-fey like this. It’s one of the reasons they liked humans so much. It made them feel powerful.”

“Don’t whisper. Share with the class,” Lucy said.

I moved closer to her, just in case one of the many police in the garden overheard and made problems with her for failing to do another part of her job. “Have you found Bittersweet yet?”

“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 Fourty-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.”