Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

the streets of Houston and Baltimore that provided the impetus to confine the fae on reservations.
    But it was Zee who mattered. The rest of the fae could rot as long as Zee was safe.
    â€œI haven’t heard anything about people dying in Fairyland.”
    â€œWhy would you?” I asked. “They don’t bring in outsiders.”
    â€œThen how do you know about it?”
    I’d told him I wasn’t a fae or a werewolf—but some things bear repeating so eventually they believe you. That’s the theory I was working with. “I told you I’m not fae,” I said. “I’m not. But I know some things and they thought I might be able to help.” That sounded really lame.
    â€œThat’s lame, Mercy.”
    â€œSomeday,” I told him, “I’ll tell you all about it. Right now, I can’t. I don’t think I’m supposed to be telling you about this either, but it’s important. I believe O’Donnell has killed”—I had to go over it in my head—“seven fae in the past month.” Zee hadn’t taken me to the other murder scenes. “You aren’t looking at a law enforcement agent who was killed by the bad guys. You are looking at a bad guy who was killed by—” Whom? Good guys? More bad guys? “Someone.”
    â€œSomeone strong enough to rip a grown man’s head off, Mercy. Both of his collarbones were broken by the force of whatever did it. Our high-paid consultant seems to think Zee could have done it.”
    Oh? I frowned at my cell phone.
    â€œWhat kind of fae does she say that Zee is? How much does she know about them?” I figured if Zee hadn’t told me any of the stories about his past, and I had looked for them, this consultant could not possibly know any more than I did.
    â€œShe said he’s a gremlin—so does he, for that matter. At least on his registration papers. He’s not said a word since we picked him up.”
    I had to think for a minute on how to best help Zee. Finally I decided that since he was actually innocent, the more truth that came to light, the better off he would be.
    â€œYou’re consultant isn’t worth squat,” I told Tony. “Either she doesn’t know as much as she says she does, or she’s got her own agenda.”
    â€œWhy do you say that?”
    â€œThere are no such things as gremlins,” I told him. “It’s a term made up by British pilots in the Great War as an explanation for odd things that kept their planes from working. Zee is a gremlin only because he claims he is.”
    â€œThen what is he?”
    â€œA Mettalzauber, one of the metalworking fae. Which is a very broad category that contains very few members. Since I met him, I’ve done a lot of research on German fae out of sheer curiosity, but I’ve never found anything quite like him. I know he works metal because I’ve seen him do it. I don’t know if he’d have had the strength to rip someone’s head off, but I do know that there is no way that your consultant would know one way or another. Especially if she’s calling him a gremlin and acting like that is a real designation.”
    â€œWorld War One?” asked Tony thoughtfully.
    â€œYou can look it up on the Internet,” I assured him. “By the Second World War, Disney was using them in cartoons.”
    â€œMaybe that’s when he was born. Maybe he’s where the legends come from. I could see a German fae tampering with the enemy’s planes.”
    â€œZee is a lot older than World War One.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    It was a good question, and I didn’t have a proper answer for it. He’d never really told me how old he was.
    â€œWhen he is angry,” I said slowly, “he swears in German. Not modern German, which I can mostly understand. I had an English prof who read us Beowulf in the original language—Zee sounds like that.”
    â€œI thought Beowulf was written in an old version of English, not German.”
    Here I was on firmer ground. History degrees aren’t entirely useless. “English and German both come from the same roots. The differences between medieval English and German are a lot smaller than the modern languages.”
    Tony made an unhappy noise. “Damn it, Mercy. I have a brutal murder and the brass wants it solved yesterday. Especially as we have a suspect caught red-handed. Now