"What the fuck did you say?" I leapt up as Menolly and Delilah snorted. "They said I was out for a roll in the hay with the trolls? Oh gods, I'll never live this one down—not among my customers, and not among the other Fae here in Seattle."
"Let's see… apparently, you're supposed to be in league with the grays from outer space. They say here that you're the bait they use to lure in unwitting abductees and that you seduce them, then help with the… probing… after you drag your victims back to the mother ship." He let out a bark of laughter.
"That sounds more up my alley," Menolly said, cracking a smile.
I cringed. "You can't be serious?" Closing my eyes, I winced as the headache I'd had the day before thundered back, bringing reinforcements. "Not only am I insulted—likening Fae to aliens is just all sorts of wrong—but I can't believe that the Tattler believes the public would fall for that."
"John Q. Public believes a lot of things that aren't good for him. Like that the government is honest, that global warming is due to the liberal Faeries dumping woo-woo powder in the scientists' coffee, and that the world was created in seven days." Chase let out a long sigh. "Trust me, even people who know the story's a hatchet job don't care. They eat up anything that hints of scandal. Just like pigs at the trough."
I grumbled. "But I'm half-Fae. We're real. The aliens are… well… we dunno, but they aren't around to answer any questions, now are they?" Pausing, I contemplated what it might take to reduce the Tattler's offices to a pile of rubble. "You think the city would object if I leveled their building by asking Smoky to sit on it?"
Iris let out a chortle. "That'd show them, all right" She flipped another pancake on the stack and carried it over to the table. "Breakfast in ten minutes, girls. Set the table."
Delilah jumped out of her chair and opened the cupboard, taking out three settings of the Old Country Roses china we'd picked out when we first arrived.
"I've got to get underground. Can we hurry this up?" Menolly said in the direction of the phone. "You also mentioned sublime and scary news. What else should we know?"
"Just a minute. I have to put you on hold," Chase said as another voice echoed through the speaker. The line went mute.
"Well, good for him," Iris said. "Promotions are important in the human sphere of things."
"In the OIA, too, which is why we knew we were doomed when they reassigned us over Earthside." Delilah carried the maple syrup, butter, and honey over to the table.
Iris dished up the sausages and bacon while I poured orange juice and tea for the three of us. Menolly didn't eat, of course, and Maggie had been fed before Iris cooked our own breakfast. Now she was curled in her pen, snuggled into a ball as she snoozed gently with little moophs and ummphs occasionally escaping from her nose. Menolly bent over the playpen to lay a light blanket over her. The house was drafty, and even though she was in a warm place near the stove, we tried to make sure she didn't catch a chill.
Chase came back on the line as we settled at the table. "Okay, quick rundown on the rest. In a turn nobody expected, the United Faith Foundation has accepted the Order of Bast as an official church. This appears to be spurring on some of the Earthside Fae to register their own spiritual groups with the UFF. Of course, the fundies are giving them hell over it, but the government's already acknowledged them as a bona fide religion. The UFF is calling for tolerance and acceptance of all faiths."
"Score one for common sense," I said. "At least the Order of Bast will have the law on their side if the zealots take action against them. Okay, bad news next, I guess."
Chase let out a long sigh. "This is really bad, girls. A group of Freedom's Angels are on the run down in Portland. They trashed a pastry shop owned by an Elf, gang-raped her, and beat her so bad that the doctors don't know if she'll recover. I contacted the Elfin ambassador down there. He's talking vigilante action. The Portland cops are asking for our help, since we have the best FH-CSI team in the nation. In fact, every unit in the country is based on ours."
Ashen-faced, Delilah dropped her fork.
Menolly's eyes flared red. She stood, fists clenched. "Those mother-fucking sons of bitches. They haven't caught them yet?"
"No, that's why Portland asked for our help. They need to round up these guys before the Elves send out a posse." I could hear the catch in his words. This had hit Chase hard. He worked on a daily basis with Sharah and Jacinth, two elfin women. "Because you and I both know that if the elves reach them first, there won't be enough of the Freedom's Angels left to use as a dust rag."
"At least they came to the right place," I said.
When Chase had brainstormed the first FH-CSI, the cops in other states had hastened to set up their own versions, though Seattle was the only place using actual OW citizens to help out, and all other states sent their OW forensic evidence to the lab here in Seattle for analysis, and their trauma cases to the OW Medical Unit we'd helped set up when we first arrived.
"I'm dispatching your cousin Shamas to Portland, along with Mercurial, to see what they can do." Mercurial was half-elf, half-Fae, and he'd joined the team a month ago, sent over with two other medics from Elqaneve by Queen Asteria. That woman was proving to be one of our staunchest allies, and I wondered just what she'd ask when it came time to repay the debt.
I glared at my plate, trying hard not to imagine the scene. "Didn't anybody hear her scream? Or see who did it?"
"Nobody's owning up to anything. We know it was a group of Freedom's Angels, they left their calling card. And she was conscious enough to tell the police that there were at least five assailants—maybe more. Odds are that somebody knows something but is afraid to open their mouths. I've told your cousin to use that natural Fae charm you guys possess to jog their memories. I've also agreed that when we catch them, we'll extradite them over to the elves for punishment." Chase ruffled some papers, and we heard the pop as he opened a can of soda. "Okay, I've got to get moving. The work is piling up here."
As he hung up, Delilah let out a small sound that sounded like a mew. Her wide emerald eyes were teary, and she bit her lip. I slid out of my chair and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, holding her gently, calming her so she wouldn't shift. Usually family arguments set off the unexpected transformations, but I had the sense she was feeling vulnerable. The black crescent embedded on her forehead sparkled.
"Okay, it's bad. It's sick, and we all want those perverts dead. But we have things to do. We'll have to hope Shamas and Mercurial can find the bastards who hurt her. And if they do, there's a chance the pervs may never make it alive to Elqaneve for punishment. Even if they survive, they'll be extradited per the agreement the elves have with the government."
"I'd better get downstairs." Menolly yawned and headed toward the secret entrance to her lair. "I'll tell you this, though. If anybody ever tries to pull the same crap around here, I'll hunt them down and rip them to shreds. And I won't ask Chase for his blessing, either."
I blew her a silent kiss, and Delilah nodded, still pale, as Menolly slipped through the bookcase opening and silently shut the door behind her.
"We have to focus on what we can do now," I said, giving Delilah one last peck on the cheek. "Why don't we make up a to-do list?" One thing I'd learned when our mother died and I'd taken over running the household: attending to practical matters kept the mind from dwelling on things we couldn't change.
"Good idea." Delilah slowly picked up her fork again and bit into her pancake. "We can plan our schedule while we eat." She let out another sigh and then sniffed back her tears. "These pancakes are incredible, Iris. What did you use in them? They taste different this morning."
Iris had taken over most of the cooking since she moved in. She was far better than either one of us, and she enjoyed it more. "Oh, a splash of vanilla and some grated cinnamon. Camille, will you be needing me at the store today?"
I nodded. "Looks that way. We've got a wayward pixie to find, the third spirit seal to locate, and a Raksasa to track down." I couldn't just close up shop anymore when I felt like it—not now that we were relying on our incomes to pay our way. The OIA had given us a tidy salary, but that was in the past now. Our cover jobs had become a very real necessity, so Iris was pulling a lot of hours as my assistant there.
She grimaced. "I was hoping to get to the spring cleaning today. What do you think about hiring someone to work part time at the shop? I think Henry might accept minimum wage if you supplement his pay with free books. He usually goes for the used books, anyway."
"Henry Jeffries, you mean?" I hadn't even considered hiring someone from the outside, but it made sense. "I thought you were still avoiding him." Henry suffered a serious case of unrequited love.
"Ever since Bruce and I started dating, Henry's backed off. He's too much of a gentleman to interfere." Her eyes twinkled, a brilliant blue against her peaches-and-cream skin and golden hair. Iris was far older than me or my sisters, but she still looked in her mid-twenties, and she beguiled men in that girl-next-door way. They never seemed to care that she was barely four feet tall. A couple of months ago, she'd met Bruce O'Shea, a leprechaun with his roots in Ireland and a voice that could make any woman melt. Every time Iris invited him over, we begged him to sing to us, and he always gave in with goodwill.
"Is that fair to Henry, though?" Delilah asked. "It seems kind of mean to put him through being near you so much. I mean, he's got a crush on you, and you're dating somebody else."
"Pish. Henry fancies me, yes, but he'll survive. He loves his space stories more than anything, and I think he'd rather be at the shop any day, rather than spend time at home with that shrew of a mother he's got."
At our startled looks. Iris shrugged. "What? Just because I don't want to date him doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good conversation with him. He lives with his mother, yes. She's in her mid-eighties, and she's a mean-tempered bitch."
Delilah gasped, clapping her hand to her mouth. "Iris, that's not nice—she's old—"
"And I'm short. So what? Just because the woman's old doesn't give her the right to treat her son like a slave. He does everything for her, and she never thanks him for it. Henry told me that he can't put her in a nursing home because he doesn't have enough money to keep her there, and she refuses to sell her house. She reminds me of Grandma Buski."
Delilah and I exchanged glances. We'd heard a lot of Iris's stories about her life in Finland, but this was a new name.
"Who?" I asked.
"Grandma Buski. When I was a child and lived in the Northlands, long before I moved back to Finland and was bound to the Kuusis, my best friend took me to meet her grandmother. The Buski sprites weren't Talon-haltija like I am. They were part brownie, part something else—probably kobold or urcadines. I don't remember what, right now, but they were a handsome family. Anyway, Greta took me to see her Grandma Buski, who was a sprite of rare beauty, even in her old age."
Iris paused to take a sip of juice, then continued. "I remember she wore a brilliant crimson and cobalt dirndl dress that showed off every curve. But Grandma Buski was also a spiteful old woman. She was all brownie and had married into the Buskis. Now, you think brownie and you think helpful, cheerful, sometimes annoying but never downright vicious, right?"
Speechless, Delilah and I nodded. Iris was on a roll, and whenever she talked about the "old days," we listened. She was a natural-born storyteller.
"Well, imagine my shock then, when Greta introduced me, and that bitter old hag reached out and pinched my cheeks so hard I burst into tears. She leaned down and, with breath that smelled like tallow and suet, called me a dirt-eater—that was a terrible insult back in those days among the sprites of the Northlands. And then the old hag had the nerve to cast aspersions on my mother's fidelity."
"What did you do?" Delilah asked, her eyes wide. I repressed a smile. Having Iris around was a lot like having our mother alive again.
"Well, I hauled off and slapped her a good one. And I cursed her and told her I hoped a wolf would devour her, but that he'd probably throw her back because she was so old and tough and stringy." Iris giggled, then rolled her eyes.
Delilah giggled. "I'll bet you got in trouble for that."
Iris nodded. "You know it. By the time I got home, word had traveled ahead to my mother and father. My father put me to work in the stables for three weeks after that. And my mother made me fetch my favorite hen over to Grandma Buski as a token of apology. I never told anybody, but on the way over there, I turned Kirka free in the forest and stole a hen from a nearby farm to take in her place. I couldn't bear the thought of giving my sweet hen to such a mean old biddy."
As she finished, Iris held out her teacup. I poured us all refills out of the bone china pot. The fragrant steam from the peppermint rose to soothe my mind.
"'Henry's mother is a carbon copy of Grandma Buski," Iris finished. "Only she looks a lot like Whistler's Mother and sounds like Oscar the Grouch. Which is why the poor man never married. He told me that he was engaged once, but Mrs. Jeffries ran his fiancee off. And she's healthy as a horse—doctors expect her to live till she's in her nineties."
"No wonder Henry spends so much time at the store," I said. His life had suddenly come into much sharper focus.
