He moved as he always did, gracefully; even the plastic booties over his designer shoes couldn't make him anything but elegant. Trow did not have a reputation for elegance, but Jeremy did, and it always made me wonder if he was the exception to his people, or if they were all like that. I'd never asked, because it would be reminding him of how he lost everything so long ago. You could ask after tragically dead relatives more politely among the fey than about their exile from faerie.
"The man in the bedroom is human," he said.
"I'll have to go back and look again, because honestly, all I could see were the facial cuts," I said.
He patted my arm with his gloved hand. We'd had to put on all the protective gear but if any of us touched anything we'd have gotten yelled at. It was strictly look but don't touch. Though honestly, I wasn't really tempted to touch.
"I'll walk you through," he said. That let me know he wanted to talk to me alone. Galen started to follow me, but Rhys held him back. Jeremy and I moved through the strangely dark apartment on our own. It was decorated in shades of brown and tan. That was typical coloring for an apartment, but even the furniture was shades of brown. It was all very somber and vaguely depressing. But maybe I was projecting.
"What's up, Jeremy?" I asked.
"One Lord Sholto is out in the hallway with the rest of your non-licensed people."
"I knew he'd be along," I said.
"Warn a Trow next time the King of the Sluagh is expected."
"Sorry, didn't think."
"But Lord Sholto just confirmed the call I got from Uther. I've got him across the street with eyes on this place."
"He saw something?"
"Not about the case," Jeremy said, and ushered me into the bedroom where the second body lay. The man had had his face treated the same as the woman, but now that I could look away from the faces, I realized that Jeremy and Rhys were right, he was human. The legs, the arms, and the body build were all proportional. He was wearing a robe that the killers had cut up to resemble the rags the brownie wore in the story, but it didn't come close to the perfect match of the victim in the other room.
The killers had left an illustration behind, and it did match, but they'd had to improvise the set pieces. They had him flat on his back to match the image of the brownie drunk on faerie wine. Again it was a mistake. Brownies didn't get drunk, bogarts did, and if a brownie went bogart it became very dangerous, sort of a Jekyll-and-Hyde type of problem. A drunk brownie did not pass out peacefully like a human, but I'd found that a lot of the fairy stories were like that: parts were dead-on and parts were so far off it was laughable.
"They brought the book with them, or they chose this illustration late, so late that they couldn't get all the props they needed to make it match."
"I agree," Jeremy said.
Something about the way he said it made me look at him. "If it's not about the case, then what could Uther have seen that would be important?"
"Someone on the press out there did a little math and decided that the short woman hanging all over Julian had to be the princess in disguise."
I sighed. "So they're out there waiting for me again?"
He nodded. "I'm afraid so, Merry."
"Crap," I said.
He nodded again.
I sighed. I shook my head. "I can't worry about them now. I need to be useful here."
He smiled at me, and patted my arm again. "That's what I needed to know."
I frowned at him. "What do you mean?"
"If you'd said something different, then I was going to assign you to the party circuit and leave you off the real cases."
I looked at him. "You mean send me to the celebrities and would-be celebs who just want the princess at their house?"
"It pays extremely well, Merry. They make up cases for us, and I send you or your beautiful men and they get more press attention. It works for everyone, and we're making money in an economy where most agencies aren't."
I had to think about that for a moment and then said, "So you're saying the extra publicity is actually bringing in more money than if we didn't have it?"
He nodded and smiled, showing the white, straight smile that was the only "cosmetic" work he'd had done on coming to L.A. "You're like any celebrity in one way, Merry. The moment the press doesn't care enough to make your life miserable you are on the downslide."
"The weight of the press following me crashed through a window last week," I said.
He shrugged. "And that made worldwide news, or did you avoid the television all weekend so you wouldn't see it?"
I smiled. "You know I avoid the shows where I'll see myself, and we had other things to do this weekend besides watch television."
"I guess if I had as many girlfriends as you have boyfriends I'd be too busy to watch TV, too."
"You'd be exhausted, too," I said.
"Are you insulting my stamina?" he asked, smiling.
"No, I'm a woman, you're a man. Women rule on the multiple orgasms, men not so much."
That made him laugh. One of the uniforms said, "Jesus, if you can laugh looking down at that then you really are cold-blooded bastards."
Lucy spoke from the doorway. "I think I hear your patrol car wondering where you are."
"They're laughing at the body."
"They aren't laughing at the body. They're laughing because they've seen things that would make you run home to your mommy."
"Worse than that?" he asked, motioning to the body.
Jeremy and I both nodded and said, "Yes."