"There's not as much blood. How did they die?" I asked.
"Look at their chests," she said.
I started to say that I didn't want to, but I squared my shoulders and bent closer to one of the female victims. She had a cloud of pale blond hair like spun sunshine. Her tiny eyes were a blue as bright as the sky above us, but beginning to cloud a little. I forced myself to look at the gauzy purple dress she was wearing and there was a pin through her chest. It was one of those long slender pins like you'd use for pinning a butterfly to a mount as you waited for it to die and for rigor mortis to give you the fanned wings and perfect display you wanted.
I stepped back from the body and looked at the double row of hanging victims. They were dressed like the first demi-fey victims in the gauzy dresses or kilts, depending on the sex of the fey in question, but they were the children's book versions of the gauzy clothes covering everything. I knew, from very recent experience, that the demi-fey were very grown-up, and most of them liked to show more skin. Standing here in the cool morning air seeing the lifeless bodies with their wings flared out behind their bodies it was hard not think about Royal and how he'd risen above me with his wings framing him. I wondered if any of these demi-fey had been able to grow bigger?
"We have some hints that one of the killers is a demi-fey, but how could another demi-fey do this to their own kind?" Lucy asked.
"Whoever it is hates being a demi-fey. The pin through the heart like they were really the butterflies they resemble and not people shows a real hatred, or disdain," I said.
She nodded and handed me the plastic-wrapped illustration. It was a scene from Peter Pan where his shadow is hanging up. It was not exact, not even close. "This one's different," I said.
"It's not a close copy," Lucy said.
"It's almost as if the killers wanted to do this murder, this way, and searched for an image that would justify it, but the murders came first in the plan, not the picture."
"Maybe," she said.
I nodded. She was right; I was guessing. "If you don't want my guesses then why am I here, Lucy?"
"You have somewhere better to be?" she asked, and there was an edge of hostility to it.
"I know you're tired," I said, "but you called me, remember?"
"I'm sorry, Merry, but the press is crucifying us, saying we aren't working hard enough because the victims aren't human."
"I know that's not true," I said.
"You know it, but the fey community is scared. They want someone to blame, and if we can't give them a killer then they'll blame us. It didn't help that we had to arrest Gilda on charges of magical malfeasance."
"Bad timing," I said.
She nodded. "The worst."
"Did she give up the name of the person who made her wand?"
Lucy shook her head. "We offered to drop the charges if she'd give up the name but she seems to think that if we can't find the manufacturer, we won't be able to prove what the wand did."
"It is hard to prove magic in a court. Your wizards will only be able to explain the magic on this one. Magic is easier to prove when you can demonstrate it for the jury."
"Yeah, but there's nothing to see when someone sucks some of your magic, or at least that's what the wizards tell me," Lucy said.
Rhys joined us in the circle. "Not the way I wanted to start the day," he said.
"None of us wanted this," Lucy snapped at him.
He held up his hands as if to say "ease up." "Sorry, Detective, just making conversation."
"Don't just make conversation, Rhys, tell me something that will help catch this bastard."
"Well, from Jordan we know it's bastards, plural," he said.
"Tell me something we don't know," she said.
"The elderly lady who lives here lets the demi-fey come and dance in her rose circle at least once a month. She sits in the garden and watches them."
"I thought it was against the rules for them to let humans watch," Lucy said.
"Apparently her husband was part fey so technically they counted as fey."
"What kind of fey was he?" I asked.
"I'm not sure he was, but the woman believes it, and who am I to tell her that there's a difference between being a little bit fey as in artistic or crazy and being descended from the fey?"
"Is she senile?" I asked.
"A touch, but not badly. She believes what her beloved husband told her, that he was the product of a fey lover whom his mother had for a brief time."
"Why can't it be true?" Lucy asked.
Rhys gave her a look. "I've just spent the last hour looking at pictures of him. If he was part fey it was way back in the family tree, nothing recent."
"You can tell just by looking?" she asked.
He nodded.
"It leaves a mark," I said.
"So it's another circle where people would know the demi-fey came regularly."
"Jordan said that there was something with wings at the murder scene, and the brownie who died had thought whatever was flying was beautiful."
"A lot of pretty things fly," Lucy said.
"Yes, but look at them. When they were alive they were beautiful."
"You keep saying that maybe a demi-fey did this, but even if one of these guys hated themselves enough to do this, they couldn't get twenty of them to hold still while they did all this." She didn't try to keep the disbelief out of her voice.
"Don't underestimate the demi-fey, Lucy. They have some of the most powerful glamour left to us, and they're insanely strong for their size, more so than any other type of fey."