Snippet: Unnamed Detective Fae story.

I was feeling bad about the fact that I didn’t do much today with the site, until I realized that I spent a good part of it writing the below. And it’s not bad, I think. The problem is that I have no idea why the Fae’s dead, who killed him, and why people should care. Although I am pretty sure that the Fae in this story took copious notes from the Vietnamese-American community when it came to adapting and overcoming.

So. Thoughts welcome. Because, really, I dunno where this goes next.

I got the call just before I decided to lock up the office for the night; the precinct has me on retainer for the weird stuff, and even five years after the Migration a dead Fae in an alley was still weird stuff.  More common than it used to be, but more Fae able to raise a stink about it, too. It kind of evens out.

He had been a pretty little thing, I thought as I looked down at the body, flat on its face with a nasty-looking knife still wedged in its back.  But all the Fae are pretty, to human eyes. Even the ones that ate marrow straight from the living bone. Not that we had any of those in the city, of course.  What was more important was that he didn’t look like a bum or a kneecapper; he had on decent clothes and a sturdy messenger bag. That and the carefully-groomed wings said ‘courier,’ but not the kind that carried packages worth killing over.

“What’s the guy’s name?” I said. Behind me, Detective Sunset Yewflower stopped trying to pretend not to loom and flipped open his notebook instead.  He’s one of the Fae who don’t have wings, in case you didn’t catch that hint.

“According to his wallet, the victim’s name is Drowsy Whispers of the Glade.  Works as a message deliverer for Quick Transport, no priors, green card is from the Second Wave, no known gang associates.” Sunny closed his notebook. “They’re checking the bag now to make sure nothing was stolen, but he had a list and everything’s in there. We don’t think this was a botched robbery.”

I nodded: neither did I.  QT did documents delivery, contracts, things like that.  Nothing worth a mugging, even when it didn’t go wrong. Besides, Drowsy here had a steel knife in his back, which meant that it wasn’t fallout from a fight between the local dolmens over territory.  Somebody human wanted this guy dead.

And the cops absolutely call me in when there’s even a chance that a human’s going around killing Fae.  That can get bad real quick. Five years is just enough familiarity to breed some contempt.

…

We weren’t expecting the Fae to show up, of course. We really weren’t expecting them to come in via refugee fleets, either.  But they did. And we let ‘em. I mean, what choice did we have? Our own legends told us that it’s not the easiest thing in the world for a human to tell a Fae ‘No,’ especially when they really do need our help.

They all said that they were fleeing invasion, oppression, and now extermination in their own lands, and the things that followed some of the fleets definitely backed up that last part.  But the things hated cold iron a hell of a lot more than Fae did, so at least we don’t have all the really nasty Faerie species around. Just the arrogant and kind of petulant ones.

But they were hard workers, too; and with gloves they were fine with the cold iron thing.