Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives

Under the Hill and Far Away: A Black London Story by Caitlin Kittredge

A shadow fell across Pete Caldecott like a bird flickering across the sun. She looked up from her drink, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

The Fae was a head and a half taller than she was. Pete was short for a human, so that likely made him short for a Fae. He tilted his head when Pete made eye contact. “Madam Caldecott?”

Pete straightened up, fixed him with her worst copper stare. “I think you have the wrong Madam Caldecott, mate.”

The Fae spread his hands. “No, miss. I’m quite certain it’s you she wants.” He had pupiless eyes, silver. Beautiful, if you were into that Tolkien bullshit. Or Shark Week.

Pete deliberately put her eyes back on her pint. The Lament was theoretically a neutral zone in the Black, the ebb and flow of magical London that existed out of most people’s sight. No fighting, no magic and no Fae.

Pete told it, “I’m waiting for someone.”

“Sir Jack Winter.” The Fae inclined its head again. It looked a bit like David Bowie and a bit like it wanted to turn her into a skin handbag. Pete felt the back of her neck crawl and a faint scent of orchids and earth crawled up her nose. The Fae had its magic up — it would have to, to cross the iron bands in the Lament’s door and the assorted protection hexes that surrounded the pub like a cocoon of ethereal razor wire. To penetrate it, the Fae was stronger than any Pete had ever seen. Not that her experience with Fae was vast.

“It’s none of your bloody business,” Pete said, “but, yes.”

“He won’t be coming,” the Fae intoned. “Madam Caldecott…”

“Look, if you insist on speaking to me, lay off of that before I call the bouncer and get you thrown right the fuck out,” Pete ordered.

“Petunia,” the Fae tried, her given name looking like it caused it — him? — pain. “I bear a request from the Senechal of the Seelie Court. I need you to come at once.”

The Fae reached for her, and Pete lost what little patience she had for the creatures. “You lay that pretty hand on me and you’re getting a pretty stump back,” she said, swatting. Contact with its skin sent a spiraling jolt of power up her arm and into her heart. Pete didn’t make it her practice to cause a scene in the middle of pubs — at least not when she was sober — and when the Lament’s few patrons looked over, she felt herself flush. “Look, I’m sorry,” she said. “But here, you don’t just swan in and grab people…” she waited for the Fae’s name.

“You can call me Rowan,” it said. Pete crinkled her nose.

“That’s a bit swishy for a strapping thing like yourself.” The expression on Rowan’s face showed he had no idea what she meant. Pete sighed. “Rowan, what do you want? You’re making me conspicuous.”

“You must come,” Rowan said. “If I don’t deliver you…” The magic about him changed subtly, a darkening, a chill across Pete’s bare skin. “If I don’t,” Rowan whispered, “they cut off my head.”

Pete blinked. “How medieval,” she said dryly. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Don’t you know?” he said. “Seelie Fae can’t lie. We are bound by blood. Our very nature forbids it.”

That caused Pete to consider. Jack, the one with actual experience of the pasty bastards, had only spoken of Fae in the most dismissive of terms. She had no idea whether to trust Rowan or laugh at the audacity of his put-on.

“They told me you were smart,” Rowan said. “That you were a detective.”

Pete took a sip of her dark beer. “Used to be. Not any more.” It was hard to reconcile murders and robberies and the orderly procession of the Metropolitan Police with magic and curses and a place like the Lament Pub. Too hard. Six months next week, she’d been off the job.

“That’s why they want you,” Rowan continued. “The puzzle. The bloody business. Human eyes are needed.”

Pete raised her eyebrow at that. Rowan was growing more fidgety by the second, like a first-former itching to tattle on a classmate. “Come out with it!” she said.

“A murder,” Rowan said. “It’s the first in … well, a very, very long time, even for us. Honor killings are one thing. Duels. Assassination. But this…” He scrubbed his hand against his forehead. “It has no sense behind it.”

Pete sighed. “You look for murder to make sense, you might as well be looking for meaning in ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’. Don’t Fae have … I dunno, investigative types?” The idea of Fae police, in everyday Met uniforms, made her smirk a bit. Most of the Black was lawless as the American West, and it was by pure meanness and cunning that you kept your blood and entrails inside your body. Jack had taught her that. Where the fuck was Jack?

“We used to have Inquisitors,” Rowan said. “But the Queen disbanded them, long ago. It’s said … they said Petunia Caldecott was the cleverest human in the Black. And this needs a human’s eyes.”

Pete looked at the door again, at Rowan’s haggard face, and finally back at her mostly-still-full pint glass. “Fine,” she sighed, tossing down a few pounds for it. “Let’s have a look at your corpse, then.”

They left the Lament, which opened onto an alley that was never in the same place twice. Rowan visibly relaxed once they were outside, and Pete felt him shift something, the enchantment that had allowed him inside in the first place, though his magic still prickled her. “Have you ever visited Faerie?” he asked Pete. His voice was stronger, with the clearbell-like quality she associated with Fae.

“Never have, never wanted to,” she said. Feeling in her pockets for her pack and a lighter, she lit up, inhaled, and added a small blue cloud to the low wet fog that fell around them like frayed lace.

“This way,” Rowan said, starting down the stairs of a long-abandoned tube station. In the light world, it would be full of people, buskers, newsagents. In the Black, it was boarded up and painted with graffiti in a dozen arcane languages, the steps slippery and the air dank. Pete hesitated on the top step.

“If this is a setup to get me eaten by something nasty, I’m going to be very bloody upset with you, Rowan.”

Rowan held out his long pale hand, the color of a drowned man’s. “I mean you no harm. I swear.”

Pete didn’t take his hand, but she did take the first step down to the tube platform. A shadow passed over the clouded moon, and for a moment there was perfect blackness. Something whistling and unearthly breathed in her face.

Pete’s cigarette went out.

When she could see again, she was in Faerie.

Pete didn’t know what she’d expected, exactly — perhaps some Froud-esque fantasy of pixies at play under giant, Alice in Wonderland mushrooms. Or perhaps a palace of tall, pale, ridiculously good-looking Fae straight out of Hellboy. She’d expected soft things, silver eyes, the scent of elderflower.

Faerie was hard, instead. It was brick and iron, blackened to the same color by soot and grit. A sign was worked into the tiles of the tube station, in a language that looked like twisting vines to Pete’s eye.

Rowan slowed when she did. “Is something the matter, Lady?”

“It’s, um…” Pete gestured at the wood track, broken and empty. “You have the tube here?”

“Used to,” Rowan said. “When people and the Fae were much closer. We shared a great deal.”

He hopped from the platform and started to walk. “The court is this way.”

Pete shivered. Things lived in the dark, of the Black and of the light world. That she knew. Demons, murderers, angry ghosts. If it was a toss-up between the Fae and the dark, Pete knew which she’d choose. She hopped the platform, her feet crunching into shifting gravel between the ties, and followed Rowan into the tunnel.

The Seelie Court loomed from nowhere, when Rowan and Pete emerged onto a rail trestle. Below her, in the dark, Pete heard the rush and burble of a creek, and laughter that sounded like water on rock. Selkies, or naiads. Maybe a kelpie.

“I thought it was always summer here,” she said to Rowan. Another tidbit from Jack.

“It is,” he said. “The Prince’s death has changed that.”

Prince. “Bloody fucking hell,” Pete muttered to herself. Not only was she supposed to Sherlock Holmes a culprit out of the thin Fae air, the victim was royalty. Pete had worked an overdose case once, an MP’s son, and the MP himself, his supercilious face and veiled threats, still haunted her. He’d wanted it swept neatly under the rug, had actually sent a bloke in a dark suit to Pete’s flat to offer her fifteen thousand pounds to say his son’d had a heart attack and blot out all mention of the pharmacy floating in his bloodstream.

Pete had told him to fuck off, in exactly those words. But she had a notion that her usual routine wouldn’t play well with the ruling members of the Seelie.

She wasn’t even a DI any longer. Why the fuck had she agreed to come?

Before she could find a decent answer, they had been swept through a private entrance, past a coterie of guards armed with billy clubs and short, brutal swords that Pete had no doubt would do the job they were intended for, and into chambers guarded with a twined seal of two oak leaves. “Bow your head,” Rowan muttered. “You’re about to receive an honor few humans ever dream of.”

“Aren’t I a fucking prizewinner,” Pete said under her breath. Then she remembered those blades, and thought better of finishing the thought.

The Queen of the Seelie wasn’t a person Pete had ever fancied meeting, and she could tell the reverse was also true. The Queen drew herself up and in when Pete and Rowan came in, patting at her cheeks with a handkerchief spun from something white and translucent. She wore a simple black gown, the kind of thing you saw in old photos of Victorian mourning. Flanking her were three more Fae, two men and a girl.

Pete took their measure even as she smiled and inclined her head. She’d treat this like any other homicide. “You’re the mother?”

The Queen’s throat worked, tightening, but not with sorrow. “I am the Queen.”

Pete nodded, as if that explained everything. “I’m sorry for your loss, madam.” It all came back, like getting on a bloody bike. The somber tone, the sympathetic yet determined demeanor, letting the family take the lead to get the information you really needed. “I realize this is hard for you,” Pete said, “but anything you can tell me about your son’s last hours will likely be helpful.”

The bigger of the two men stepped in. “Anything you need to know, ask me.”

Pete gave him the eye. “Don’t tell me you’re the family barrister.”

The Fae’s lip curled back. His two front teeth came to points. “I am the captain of the Ash Guard.”

“Ah,” Pete said. A security heavy. This was familiar ground as well. “And your name, Captain…?”

“Tolliver,” the Fae said gruffly. “The Queen is indisposed. You speak to me.”

“Tolliver,” Pete said, grasping him by the arm, “can I speak to you over here, please?” She led him to a shadowy corner, where a leaded window looked out on the storm-tossed hills of Faerie. “I understand,” Pete told him.

Tolliver blinked, clearly having expected to be lectured. “You do?”

“’Course,” Pete said. “You’re responsible for the family, and the boy getting done in was your cock-up. But being a pillock to me is not going to find the bloke, so how about you step aside while the chance is still there to catch him? Or her?”

His throat worked. Pete saw a scar there, under his jaw. His clothes were fine as the rest of the group, but his hands were roughed at the knuckles, bent and square from bare-fisted fighting. Tolliver was a man who believed in blunt force. Pete hoped that also meant he believed in honesty.

“I found him,” he said, and his voice went rough. “I came to get him for our daily fencing lesson and he was on the floor, like a doll with all of the stuffing gone out…” Tolliver’s jaw worked and he looked away from her, out at the boiling thunderheads illuminated by a sickly green light in the eastern sky. “Unseelie land,” he murmured. “They’ll be putting up a ruddy festival. This is their dream come true.”

“Could an Unseelie have done this?” Pete asked. Her hands felt restless and she wished for her leather-bound reporter’s notebook. Ollie, her old partner in the met, had used his PDA to take notes, but Pete preferred the feel of paper and ink.

“No.” Tolliver was back in control. “Our borders prevent it. The Courts are neutral ground. So it’s been since the accords long past, when we made the Seelie and Unseelie lands half each of Faerie.”

“So who’s your money on?” Pete asked. Tolliver’s eyes expanded, then contracted. Wrinkles sprouted like weeds at his cheekbones. After a moment he said, “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

Pete allowed herself a flicker of a smile. “You thought of someone,” she said. “When I asked. You have an answer back there behind that big, ugly scar.”

“I protect the Queen,” Tolliver said brusquely. “I protect the family. And I’ve told you all I’m fit to tell.” He turned his back, and stared out the window.

Pete sighed, and returned to the icy stare of the Queen. She was beautiful, of course. It was hardly remarkable in Faerie. Her beauty was that of statues, and ice — remote, chill and unearthly. Hair of the whitest white, like Rowan’s, skin to match, traced only by blue veins. A young face with eyes ancient as the stones under Pete’s feet. There was a little pink around them from crying, and they made Pete think of animal eyes. Hungry eyes.

“Tolliver’s given me leave to ask you a few questions,” Pete said.

The magic in the room, slithering and sliver, came to a boil when the Queen spoke. “I am in mourning. I have nothing to say.”

Pete normally didn’t open herself to the Black. Being a Weir meant she was a repository rather than a conductor, and too much magic could turn her to cinder, surely as fire. She felt it, though. Every flux and flow. Every push and pull. And the Queen was at the center of something that was alien and frozen as the surface of another planet. Pete bit her lip, and let the magic lap at the back of her mind.

“You know who we look at in my world, when someone dies?” she asked quietly. “Family. Parents. Wives. Brothers. Family knows you best. Family can hate you more than anyone else in the world.”

The Queen shot a glance at the other man, who was slender as Tolliver was enormous. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps Miss Caldecott would care to examine the body and the scene of the deed?”

Pete knew when she was being brushed off, but she didn’t expect the young woman next to the Queen to pipe up. “I’ll come.”

“Snowblood, no,” the man insisted. “You’ll only upset yourself.”

“Shut up, Crowfoot,” she hissed. “You may have my aunt fooled but you don’t fool me!”

“Snowblood!” The Queen’s voice snapped like the lightning outside. “That’s enough.”

“All right,” Pete spread her hands. “You, young miss — you’re with me. The rest of you, stay put. I’ll have more questions once I’ve seen the body.”

The prince was kept in a chamber below the Court, older than the building above, cool arches dripping water into drains that lead to places only rats would know. Pete scented the familiar rotten-orchid scent of decay, along with something foreign, a bit like char. Blood, she guessed. Fae blood.

“Snowblood’s quite a name,” she said to the girl. “You the queen’s niece?”

“Yes,” Snowblood said tightly. “And the prince’s intended.”

The body was covered with a sheet, whiter than white — like any white in Faerie — but dotted all over with blossoms of red, like a first bloom after a snowfall. Pete stopped her hand before she moved it back.

“The prince … he’s your cousin.”

Snowblood lifted one boneless shoulder. “That’s the way it works, isn’t it?”

Pete let that one go. It wasn’t like royals and inbreeding were strangers. “And Crowfoot?”

“He’s the leader of the majority. The Seelie Council.” Snowblood paused. “He’s perfectly hideous.”

“Politicians usually are,” Pete said, and twitched the sheet back. She wasn’t looking at the prince, but at Snowblood’s face. The girl betrayed absolutely no reaction. Her eyes were dull and glassy as a stagnant pond.

“Crowfoot wanted to marry me. Before my cousin,” Snowblood said. Pete looked at the body. It was a clean job, exit wounds in the chest ragged and black and, when she rolled the body, two stab wounds in the back, angled upward into the heart and lungs.

Pete realized something. “I don’t know his name,”

“Oh,” Snowblood said carelessly. “Don’t you? It’s Caliban. Like the play.”

“Half-savage mortal man?” Pete said. “Bloody odd choice, for your firstborn son.”

“Yes,” Snowblood agreed tonelessly. “For your firstborn.”

“Mind if I ask you some questions while I get this business done?” Pete asked. The little stone room didn’t have any tools, but she got out her pen light and flashed it over Caliban’s hands and fingers. They were limpid, like flower bulbs. The damp wasn’t doing him any favors of preservation.

“I suppose not,” Snowblood sighed. She sat on a ledge, kicking her feet and dislodging mortar.

“Caliban was a fencer?” Pete asked. She examined the wounds more closely. They hadn’t even had time to bleed much.

“A good one,” Snowblood said, perking for the first time. “He could beat any man but Tolliver. Tolliver wanted him made a captain of the Ash Guard, rather than taking up his royal duties. Caliban was merciless in battle and in the court. Tolliver said he didn’t have the delicacy for politics, but he had the blood for battle. They’re similar, I suppose.”

“Both big smashy bastards?” Pete peeled back the prince’s eyelid and checked his eyes. Wishing for a glove, she stuck a finger in his mouth and checked his tongue as well.

“I suppose,” Snowblood said. “Tolliver knew him better than anyone. Better than me.”

“Ah,” Pete said. She stepped back and looked at the dead prince. She had a fair notion now, but it was only a notion. She didn’t have any facts.

“And the Queen, at last,” she asked Snowblood. “Some dodgy magic on her — what’s that about?”

Snowblood chewed one shockingly crimson lip. “The Unseelie took her, many years ago, kept her for a time before Tolliver and the Ash Guard brought her back. They placed a wasting curse. It’s held at bay with other magic, but she was with them a long time. It clings.”

It did, indeed. The winding, smoky trail of the curse was apparent to Pete even now, here, layers and layers below the Queen’s chamber. “Bit of a short stick for her,” Pete said. “Might explain that temper.”

“Rowan did the right thing bringing you here,” Snowblood said suddenly. Pete cocked an eyebrow at her as she pulled the bloody sheet over Caliban’s face once more.

“Really?”

“This is rotten,” Snowblood said. “It’s not the kind of thing we do. Not the Fae.”

“‘Course,” Pete muttered, thinking that every fairy tale in her world would disagree with the slender girl. “I’m done. Can you do me a favor and get everyone together in one room? The smaller and hotter the better?”

Snowblood looked curious, but she bit down on her question and merely nodded. “Of course.”

“I’ll be in after a time,” Pete said. “Can you have Rowan show me the place where he died?”

That’d give the Queen and her entourage time to get good and pissy about being locked up.

“Just you and me,” Pete told Caliban, after Snowblood’s footsteps faded away. The prince made no reply.

Caliban’s rooms would be opulent even by Las Vegas standards. Heavy velvet in waterfalls of blue and green and midnight purple cascaded from the walls. The bed was gold, and enormous. A mirror made in the shape of an oak leaf stared back at Pete from the ceiling.

“He did like his creature comforts, eh?” she said to Rowan.

He shrugged, staying far away from the bloodstain in the center of the rich blue carpet. Pete didn’t even smell the coppery — or charred, she supposed, as this was a Fae–scent that usually accompanied a fresh stabbing scene. The prince’s chamber was heavily perfumed, and a garden of scents cloyed at Pete’s nose.

She noted that the door locked from the inside with a heavy bolt, and the windows were barred over with grates that had rusted into place.

Pete brushed off her knees reflexively and stood, coming back to Rowan. “I’ve seen enough. Go join the others, and I’ll make an entrance in a bit.”

Rowan obeyed, and Pete was alone again, with the last moments of Caliban’s life.

She could hear the Fae long before she came upon the door to what the guard told her was Crowfoot’s private library. They were complaining. Vociferously. That was good. She wanted them off balance and receptive to the truth.

The member of the Ash Guard outside the door tightened his grip on his short blade when she approached. “Lady,” he said, just the proper amount of deference in the tone.

“You can just call me Pete,” Pete told him. “What’s your name?”

“Juniper,” he said. Pete winced. The flower names, to her mind, were just cruel.

“You know how to use that pig-sticker, Juniper?” she inquired. He gave a curt nod, much less polite. He could use it well enough that the question had offended him.

“Good,” Pete said. “Stay sharp.” She shoved the door open. Tolliver exploded out of the seat he occupied next to the Queen, jabbing his finger into her face.

“How dare you herd us together like cattle? Like we’re criminals?”

Crowfoot was on his heels. “Do you have any idea my position in the Seelie Court? I am Senechal… I brought you here.”

The Queen didn’t get up, she just raised her voice. “I am the Queen of all Faerie…”

Only Rowan and Snowblood stayed silent, and they looked anxious as pigs on market day.

“Oi!” Pete made a slashing motion through the air at the trio of shouters. “Simmer down, yeah? The lot of you. You’re in here for a reason.”

Tolliver’s scarred throat worked. “And that’d be…?”

Pete shooed them back to the four corners of the room. She went to Tolliver, then Crowfoot. Rowan, Snowblood, and lastly the Queen. She asked them each a question. Then she went to the fire and warmed up her hands. It was stuffy in the library, but outside the storm was only getting worse.

“Lady Caldecott,” Crowfoot huffed. “I really must insist that you share your findings.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Pete rubbed her hands together and then faced them. As a point of self-preservation, she made note of the heavy fireplace poker near her right hand. “I know who killed your Prince Caliban.”

“First,” Pete held up a finger. Her stomach was twisting and her heart was thudding, even though she kept her face blank. Hercule Poirot never had to face down a roomful of fucking Fae. “Snowblood tells me that Caliban was one hell of a fighter, and he was a big bastard besides. Nobody was taking him by force.”

“So?” Crowfoot said rudely. Pete crimped her mouth into her smuggest smile just for him.

“So he was topped by someone he trusted, someone he opened the door to.”

“And?” Crowfoot demanded. Pete reached up and patted his bony shoulder.

“And that lets you out. You’re a bit of a slimy fuckwit, according to everyone here, and you were sniffing around his woman. Sorry, mate.”

Crowfoot blinked, confusion and relief flitting on his features. “I didn’t … I mean … of course I didn’t! My loyalty is to the Court!”

“You didn’t,” Pete said. “But somebody here did.”

Tolliver’s eyes darted to the door. Pete folded her arms. “That’s Juniper outside. One of yours. You trained him, I imagine. Like you trained the prince.” She approached Tolliver. “I asked you if the Prince could beat you in a low-down brawl, and you said yes. You’re not the kind who stabs in the back, and I don’t think you did it.” Pete lowered her voice. Tolliver was a big man, and probably had some magic riding him to boot. If he didn’t like her next words, she’d be in two pieces before she could help it. “But I think you know why it happened.”

“Excuse me,” the Queen. “But where do you—”

“Not that you’re any better,” Pete interrupted her. It was the MP and his son all over again, and she was bloody sick of it. “What kind of a mother names her only son after a monstrous savage? I asked you and all you said? “That was his name.” That’s cold, miss. Ice water all through your veins, no mistake.”

“Please.” Snowblood’s word cut off the Queen’s outcry. “Just tell me. Who killed Caliban?”

Pete swiveled, her finger landing on Rowan. “He did.”

Silence, for a tick of clock-hands. Then Snowblood exploded toward Rowan, who yelped and ducked, but not quickly enough. Snowblood’s small, sharp fist landed a blow on his perfect nose and blood blossomed, trickling over Rowan’s lips.

Pete slapped the door with the flat of her hand. “Juniper, get your arse in here!”

Juniper and another of the Ash Guard held Snowblood and Rowan apart. Snowblood panted, her face crimson, while Rowan folded in on himself, trapped in the far corner of the library. Crowfoot and the Queen were talking all at once, their words tripping over each other like tangled vines.

Tolliver came to Pete’s shoulder. “How did you know?”

Pete gave Rowan a regretful smile. “Flowers.” She sighed, her head suddenly throbbing. “I smelled flowers when Rowan came into a supposedly Fae-proof pub to find me, and again when we were in Caliban’s room. I thought it was some kind of shield hex, but it’s not, is it?” She fixed Rowan with the copper stare. To his credit, he didn’t flinch or change his visage, he just stared back, his eyes like drops of mercury on glass, blood the only motion on his form.

“It’s a glamour,” Pete continued. “And that means he’s not who he says he is.”

Snowblood turned her head to Rowan, her small frame quivering. “Who are you?”

“Burn in the Underworld,” Rowan said quietly. Snowblood turned back to Pete.

“Who is he?” she demanded, voice sharp and high with distress.

“My guess?” Pete said. “He’s an Unseelie.” She stepped closer to Rowan, close as he must have been to Caliban when he stabbed him with one of the short, vicious blades the Ash Guard carried. “And that means he can lie. Been spinning me a fat one since the start of things.”

She ticked off the points she’d assembled while she went over the prince’s body. “Your Queen was a prisoner of the Unseelie some time ago. I’m guessing, about as long ago as you are old. Is that right, Rowan?”

Crowfoot was the first to catch on. “You begot an heir?” he whispered. “A half-breed heir?”

“Caliban is an odd name for a beloved firstborn son. But he wasn’t her firstborn,” Pete said. “It’s you, Rowan. Isn’t it?”

She saw all of the defiance run out of him. The strange ethereal gleam of his skin dulled, and his eyes turned from silver to plain grey as he let the glamour flow out of his grasp. His hair was the same, though — white as the Queen’s.

“He was plotting against you, Mother,” he said softly. “Tolliver told me one night, in his cups. He would have let the death-curse overwhelm you so he could take your place and obliterate anyone who stood in his path.”

“Could be,” Pete said. “Could be a load of bollocks. We’ll never know, will we?” She jerked her chin at Tolliver. “In any event, Tolliver guessed, did he? He knew what you were going to do, after he found out what you were?”

“I loved my mother,” Rowan went on, softly. “I knew what I had to do, even if she wanted nothing to do with me.” He raised his eyes to the Queen as Juniper started to drag him away. “Hate is strong. But love is stronger. Mother. Please.”

The Queen raised her head, nostrils flaring. Pete saw no tears on her face, just unfathomable rage. “Never speak that word to me. I am not that. Not to you.”

“Mother—” Rowan shouted, but more Ash Guard surrounded him and led him away.

“And him,” said Crowfoot, pointing at Tolliver. “He’s a conspirator. He knew full well and did nothing to stop it.”

Tolliver stopped by Pete, walking under his own power, dignity holding his spine straight. “I knew what he was,” he murmured. “I saw it when we trained. Cruel. Honorless. He’d torture a lesser opponent for the sport of it. He talked about the mockery he’d make of his cousin’s virtue and the atrocities he’d visit on the Unseelie when his mother passed on from her curse. He would have left the Seelie Court in embers if he took the throne.” Tolliver swallowed, hard. “You won’t get any guilt from me, Lady.”

Pete nodded. “I’m sorry you got caught,” she told him. “Rowan was blinded, but you aren’t.”

“Don’t be sorrowful,” Tolliver said. “You bested me at wits, fairly. No shame in that.”

Pete watched Rowan and Tolliver disappear down the opulent hall, no doubt bound for a place much darker and much less sympathetic to his motives.

Crowfoot gripped her arm. “You’ve done very well, Lady Caldecott. And you’ve earned a favor of the Fae. Anything you wish. Ask it.”

Pete glared at the hand, and then at Crowfoot, until he removed it. “Yeah, I’ve got a favor,” she said. “Take me the bloody hell back to the pub.”

When Pete walked back into the Lament, she saw a familiar platinum-dyed head hunched on the far stool at the bar. She practically tripped over her own feet to join him.

Pete didn’t know how she felt about condemning a man only trying to help his mother. She didn’t know how she felt about the sudden attention of the Fae.

But she did know that she’d enjoyed being a detective again. It had felt good.

She missed it.

In the morning, she’d probably end up calling her old DCI, Nigel Newell, and inquiring about positions that were open in the Major Crime Squad. But for now, at least, she was content to bask in the knowledge that she’d still got her old skillset.

Jack regarded her over a whiskey glass. “Where’ve you been, then? Missed you, luv.”

Pete signaled the publican for a glass of the same. “Trust me, Jack,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”