Divine Misdemeanors - By Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,1

center of all this activity. The police were never that fond of the private detective, no matter what you see on television, and I wasn't even human. Of course, if I'd been human they wouldn't have called me down to the murder scene in the first place. I was here because I was a trained detective and a faerie princess. One without the other wouldn't have gotten me under the police tape.

I stared at the page. The wind tried to snatch it from her hand, and she used both hands to hold it steady for me. It was an illustration from a children's book. It was dancing faeries with flowers in their hands. I stared at it for a second more, then looked down at the bodies on the ground. I forced myself to study their dead forms, then looked at the illustration.

"They're identical," I said.

"I believe so, though we'll have to have some kind of flower expert tell us if the flowers match up bloom for bloom, but except for that our killer has duplicated the scene."

I stared from one to the other again, those laughing happy faces in the picture and the very still, very dead ones on the ground. Their skin had begun to change color already, turning that bluish-purple cast of the dead.

"He, or she, had to dress them," I pointed out. "No matter how many illustrations you see with these little blousy dresses and loincloth things, most demi-fey outside of faerie don't dress like this. I've seen them in three-piece suits and formal evening wear."

"You're sure they didn't wear the clothes here?" she asked.

I shook my head. "They wouldn't have matched perfectly without planning it this way."

"We were thinking he lured them down here with a promise of an acting part, a short film," she said.

I thought about it, then shrugged. "Maybe, but they'd have come to the circle anyway."

"Why?"

"The demi-fey, the small winged fey, have a particular fondness for natural circles."

"Explain."

"The stories only tell humans not to step into a ring of toadstools, or a ring of actual dancing fey, but it can be any natural circle. Flowers, stones, hills, or trees, like this circle. They come to dance in the circle."

"So they came down here to dance and he brought the clothes?" She frowned at me.

"You think that it works better if he lured them down here to film them," I said.

"Yes."

"Either that or he watched them," I said, "so he knew they came down here on certain nights to dance."

"That would mean he or she was stalking them," Lucy said.

"It would."

"If I go after the film angle, I can find the costume rental and the advertisement for actors for his short film." She made little quote marks in the air for the word film.

"If he's just a stalker and he made the costumes, then you have fewer leads to follow."

"Don't say he. You don't know that the killer is a he."

"You're right, I don't. Are you assuming that the killer isn't human?"

"Should we be?" she asked, her voice neutral.

"I don't know. I can't imagine a human strong enough or fast enough to grab six demi-fey and slit their throats before the others could escape or attack him."

"Are they as delicate as they look?" she asked.

I almost smiled, and then didn't feel like finishing it. "No, Detective, they aren't. They're much stronger than they look, and incredibly fast."

"So we aren't looking for a human?"

"I didn't say that. I said that physically humans couldn't do this, but there is some magic that might help them do it."

"What kind of magic?"

"I don't have a spell in mind. I'm not human. I don't need spells to use against other fey, but I know there are stories of magic that can make us weak, catchable, and hurtable."

"Yeah, aren't these kind of fey supposed to be immortal?"

I stared down at the tiny lifeless bodies. Once the answer would have simply been yes, but I'd learned from some of the lesser fey at the Unseelie Court that some of them had died falling down stairs, and other mundane causes. Their immortality wasn't what it used to be, but we had not publicized that to the humans. One of the things that kept us safe was that the humans thought they couldn't hurt us easily. Had some human learned the truth and exploited it? Was the mortality among the lesser fey getting worse? Or had they been immortal and magic had stolen it away?

"Merry, you in there?"

I nodded and looked