A Kiss of Shadows(6)

She shook her head. "No."

"Was the sex always in this apartment?" Jeremy asked.

"No, sometimes we met at a hotel."

That surprised me. "Is there anything he does in the apartment inside the circle that he doesn't do anywhere else?"

She blushed bright red. "It's the only place he brings other men."

"Other men to have sex with him?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, with me." She looked up at us, as if waiting for the cry of horror, or maybe whore. Whatever she saw reassured her. We all knew how to give good blank face when we needed it. Besides, a little group sex seemed tame after knowing that he showed pictures of his lovers to his wife, with details. That was a new one. Group sex had been around a lot longer than Polaroids.

"Was it always the same men?" Jeremy asked.

She shook her head." No, but they knew each other. I mean, it wasn't like he brought in strangers off the street." She sounded defensive, as if that would have been so much worse, and it wasn't as bad as all that.

"Were there any repeats?" Jeremy asked.

"There were three men that I saw more than once."

"Do you know their names?"

"Just their first names. Liam, Donald, and Brendan."

She seemed very sure of the names. "How many times did you see these three men?"

She wouldn't meet our eyes." I don't know. Many times."

"Five times," Jeremy asked, "six, twenty-six?"

She looked up startled. "Not twenty times, not that many."

"Then how many?" he asked.

"Maybe eight, maybe ten, but no more than that." It seemed important to her that it hadn't been more than ten. Was that the magical cutoff? More than ten times and you were worse than just eight?

"And the group sex, how many times for that?"

She blushed again. "Why do you need to know?"

"You called it a ritual, not us," Jeremy said. "So far there doesn't seem much ritual to it, but numbers can have mystical significance. The number of men inside the circle. The number of times you were inside the circle with more than one man. Believe me, Ms. Phelps, this is not how I get my jollies."

She looked down again. "I didn't mean to imply..."

"Yes, you did," Jeremy said, "but I understand why you'd be suspicious of any male, human or not." I saw the idea float over his face. "Were all the men human?"

"Donald and Liam both had pointed ears, but other than that they all seemed human."

"Were Donald and Liam circumcised?" I asked.

Her voice came out in a hurried rush, color high in her cheeks again. "Why do you need to know that?"

"Because a real male fey would be hundreds of years old, and I've never heard of a Jewish fey, so if they were fey, they wouldn't be circumcised."

She met my eyes. "Oh," she said, then she thought about the original question. "Liam was, but Donald wasn't."

"What did Donald look like?"