"I've already checked, Merry. There are no other homicides even close to this one. No demi-fey killed in a group. No costumes. No book illustration left. This is one of a kind."
"Maybe it is, but you helped teach me that killers don't start out this good. Maybe they just planned it perfectly and got lucky that it was this perfect, or maybe they've had other kills that weren't this good, this thought-out, but it would be staged, and it would have this feel to it."
"What kind of feel?" she asked.
"You thought film not just because it would give you more leads, but because there's something dramatic about it all. The setting, the choice of victims, the display, the book illustration; it's showy."
She nodded. "Exactly," she said.
The wind played with my purple sundress until I had to hold it to keep it from flipping up and flashing the police line behind us.
"I'm sorry to drag you out to something like this on a Saturday, Merry," she said. "I did try to call Jeremy."
"He's got a new girlfriend and keeps turning off his phone." I didn't begrudge my boss, the first semi-serious lover he'd had in years. Not really.
"You look like you had a picnic planned."
"Something like that," I said, "but this didn't do your Saturday any good either."
She smiled ruefully. "I didn't have any plans." She stabbed a thumb in the direction of the other police. "Your boyfriends are mad at me for making you look at dead bodies while you're pregnant."
My hands automatically went to my stomach, which was still very flat. I wasn't showing yet, though with twins the doctor had warned me that it could go from nothing to a lot almost overnight.
I glanced back to see Doyle and Frost, standing with the policemen. My two men were no taller than some of the police - six feet and some inches isn't that unusual - but the rest stood out painfully. Doyle had been called the Queen's Darkness for a thousand years, and he fit his name, black from skin to hair to the eyes behind their black wraparound sunglasses. His black hair was in a tight braid down his back. Only the silver earrings that climbed from lobe to the pointed tip of his ears relieved the black-on-black of his jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket. The last was to hide the weapons he was carrying. He was the captain of my bodyguards, as well as one of the fathers to my unborn children, and one of my dearest loves. The other dearest love stood beside him like a pale negative, skin as white as my own, but Frost's hair was actually silver, like Christmas tree tinsel, shining in the sunlight. The wind played with his hair so that it floated outward in a shimmering wave, looking like some model with a wind machine, but even though his hair was near ankle-length and unbound, it did not tangle in the wind. I'd asked him about that, and he'd said simply, "The wind likes my hair." I hadn't known what to say to that so I hadn't tried.
His sunglasses were gunmetal gray with darker gray lenses to hide the paler gray of his eyes, the most unremarkable part of him, really. He favored designer suits, but he was actually in one of the few pairs of blue jeans he owned, with a silk T-shirt and a suit jacket to hide his own weapons, all in grays. We actually had been planning on an outing to the beach, or I'd have never gotten Frost out of slacks and into jeans. His face might have been the more traditionally handsome of the two, but it wasn't by much. They were as they had been for centuries, the light and dark of each other.
The policemen in their uniforms, suits, and more casual clothes seemed like shadows not as bright, not as alive as my two men, but maybe everyone in love thought the same thing. Maybe it was not being immortal warriors of the sidhe but simply love that made them stand out to my eye.
Lucy had gotten me through the police line because I'd worked with the police before, and I was actually a licensed private detective in this state. Doyle and Frost weren't, and they had never worked with the police on a case, so they had to stay behind the line away from any would-be clues.
"If I find out anything for certain that seems pertinent about this kind of magic, I will let you know." It wasn't a lie, not the way I worded it. The fey, and especially the sidhe, are known for never lying, but we'll deceive you until you'll think the sky is green and the grass is blue. We won't tell you the sky is green and the grass is blue, but we will leave you with that definite impression.
"You think there'll be an earlier murder," she said.
"If not, this guy, or girl, got very lucky."
Lucy motioned at the bodies. "I'm not sure I'd call this lucky."
"No murderer is this good the first time, or did you get a new flavor of killer while I was away in faerie?"
"Nope. Most murders are pretty standard. Violence level and victim differs but you're about eighty to ninety percent more likely to be killed by your nearest and dearest than by a stranger, and most killing is depressingly ordinary."
"This one's depressing," I said, "but it's not ordinary."
"No, it's not ordinary. I'm hoping this one perfect scene kind of got it out of the killer's system."
"You think it will?" I asked.
"No," she said. "No, I don't."
"Can I alert the local demi-fey to be careful, or are you trying to withhold the victim profile from the media?"
"Warn them, because if we don't and it happens again, we'll get accused of being racists, or is that speciesist?" She shook her head, walking back toward the police line. I followed her, glad to be leaving the bodies behind.
"Humans can interbreed with the demi-fey, so I don't think speciesist applies."
"I couldn't breed with something the size of a doll. That's just wrong."