I nodded. I did know that, but somehow the plastic surgery made me think of Robert as less than pure brownie.
"But just because I can fight it off doesn't mean I don't feel it," he said, and shivered. "She's an abomination, but she's got juice."
I was a little startled at his using the word "abomination." It was reserved for humans who had fallen afoul of wild magic and been changed to something monstrous. I'd met Gilda, and "monstrous" wasn't a word I would have used to describe her. But I'd only met her once, briefly, in the days when everyone in L.A. thought I was just another human with a lot of fey blood in my family tree somewhere. I wasn't important enough or a big enough toadie for her to be interested in me then.
The detectives moved out of the little partitioned area. Robert motioned for us to go first. I gave him a look, and he whispered, "She will make this about queens. I want it clear which queen I would choose."
I whispered back, "I am not queen."
"I know you and tall, dark, and handsome gave it all up for love." He grinned and there was something of the old brownie in that grin; it needed less-than-perfect teeth and a less-than-perfect face, but it was still a leer.
It made me smile back.
"I've got it on good authority that Goddess herself came down and crowned you both."
"Exaggerations," I said. "The power of faerie and Goddess, but there was no physical materialization of Deity."
He waved it away. "You're splitting hairs, Merry, if it's still all right to call you that, or do you prefer Meredith?"
"Merry is fine."
He grinned up at my two men, who were intent on the far door and its opening. "The last time I saw these two they were the queen's guard dogs." He looked at me with those shrewd brown eyes. "Some men are drawn to power, Merry, and some women are more queen without a crown than others are with one."
As if on cue the door opened and Gilda, Fairy Godmother of Los Angeles, swept into the room.
Chapter Nine
Gilda was a vision of light, lace, and sparkles. Her floor-length dress seemed to have been scattered with diamonds that caught the light so that she moved in a circle of bright white sparkles. The dress itself was pale blue, but the diamond flashes were so numerous they almost made an overdress that covered the pale blue lace, so the illusion was that there was a dress made of light and movement over the actual dress. It seemed a little flashy to me, but it matched the rest of her, from her crystal-and-glass crown towering over her blond ringlets to the two-foot-long wand complete with a starred tip.