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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.>"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."
