the fey noninvolved. So, technically, even if he finds out, he can't fire me. Or even discipline me for it. In fact, the injured fey is my cover story. Since the fey won't speak to the fey authorities, I'm looking for a few fey faces to try to talk to him, help him adjust to the big city."
"You think he's from out of town?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah, he's got never been to the big city written all over him. He screamed when his heart rate monitor beeped at him the first time." She shook her thick hair all around her face. "He's from somewhere where they've never seen modern equipment. The nurses say they had to take the television out of his room because he had some sort of seizure after he saw it work."
She looked at all of us in turn, and finally came back to me, Doyle, and Frost. "Talk to me, Merry, please. Talk to me. I won't tell the lieutenant. I can't. Please help me stop this, whatever it is."
I looked at Doyle, Frost, Rhys. Galen came back out of the kitchen, but he spread his hands wide and shrugged. "I haven't been doing much of the detective stuff lately, so I don't feel like I should get a vote."
Nicca spoke up, which surprised us all. "The queen won't like it." His voice was clear, filling the room, but somehow soft, like a child whispering in the dark, afraid to be overheard.
"She didn't tell us not to share with the human police," Doyle said.
"She didn't?" Nicca's voice seemed so small, so much younger than that tall, strong body.
I turned on the couch so Nicca could see full into my face. "No, Nicca, the queen didn't tell us not to talk to the police."
He let out a large breath. "Okay." Again it was a child's answer. The grownups had told him he wouldn't get in trouble, and he believed us.
We all exchanged looks one more time, then I said, "Rhys, tell her about the spell."
He did. We emphasized that we weren't sure anyone left in the courts could still do the spell, and that it might possibly be a human magician or witch. It wasn't anyone at the Unseelie Courts, that we were sure of.
"How can you be so sure?" Lucy asked.
We exchanged another series of looks. "Trust me, Lucy, the queen doesn't have to sweat civil rights or review boards. She's very thorough."
She studied our faces. "How thorough can you guys be?"
I frowned at her. "What do you mean?"
"I've heard rumors about what your queen does to people. Can you do anything that effective without leaving marks?"
I raised my eyebrows at that. "Are you asking us to do what I think you're asking us to do?"
"I'm asking you to stop this from happening again. The fey in the hospital won't talk to the police; he won't talk to the social worker that the Bureau of Human and Fey Affairs sent over. The fey went wild when I suggested we could contact the ambassador personally if he wasn't comfortable with a human social worker. Seeing how scared he was to talk to the ambassador made me think he might be even more scared of you guys."
"Why?" I asked.
"The ambassador isn't sidhe."
"What do you expect us to do to this fey?" Doyle asked.
"I expect you to do whatever it takes to get him to talk. We've got over five hundred dead, Doyle, almost six hundred. Besides, from what Rhys says, if these things aren't stopped, if we just keep letting them feed, they'll regenerate or something. I don't want a pack of newly born ancient deities with a taste for killing running around loose in my town. It's got to be stopped now, before it's too late."
We agreed to go with her, but first we made a phone call. We called Maeve Reed and let her know that the ghosts of dead gods had been resurrected to kill her. Which meant it was somebody in the Seelie Court, and moreover they had the king's permission to do it.
Chapter 39-40
Chapter 39
Lucy flashed her badge a lot to get us through the metal detectors with our guns and blades intact. The men even had to show the cards identifying them as queen's guardsmen before the nurse in charge would let us on the floor. But finally we stood at the bedside of a man... well, of a male. He was a tiny, misshapen thing. Sage was tiny, too, but he