It would figure that, out of all the Goth girls sneaking out of the club that night, the man with the bird head would run into her.

The show, at least, hadn't been what she was expecting. Between the kind of crowd control that would enrage the fire marshal and the collective scent of hundreds of occasional bathers it had been kind of disappointing, which was why Coreen had wormed her way back to the stage door and crept out early. Maybe she would get started on that research tomorrow morning. That would make Vicki happy, at least.

Running into someone was awkward at the best of times. Running into someone while balancing on four-inch stiletto heels and trying to stuff your cell phone back into your purse was a recipe for disaster. Coreen slipped and went sprawling on the pavement. The wet, sticky pavement. Oh God, she knew what that smell was. She hadn't been working for a detective for the last year or so just for kicks.

Coreen picked her hand up and held in front of her face, just to be sure. God, wet and red and sticky. Yep, that was blood. Gross. And it was never going to come off her skirt, and she would look like she'd had some kind of horrible feminine accident in it.

She finally looked across the tips of her semi-expensive Wicked Witch of the West pointed-toe boots at the person she had run into. He was pretty tall, pretty lean, probably built like Michael Phelps under that black swanky suit he was wearing. Parts of his suit were black on black, which meant that he was probably the source of the blood she had fallen in. Which meant that she had to get help, and soon. Of course, it would be hard to find help; she couldn't exactly take the man with the head of a raven on his shoulders where a normal person's head should be to the hospital. They tended to frown on animal-human hybrids.

"All right," she said, in a tone that was entirely too resigned and steady for her to believe her life was anything like normal anymore. "What do you need?"

The bird head tilted at her with that look that ravens had when they were staring at something they were interested in.

"Sheep's blood, warm milk, raw meat, I can probably get you bread and honey, if you really want. I draw the line on human sacrifice, though. We already got one..." Just in time Coreen decided it might not be wise to tell the stranger about Henry.

"Help," it said, or at least she thought it said help. It might have said yelp. Or it might've been telling her to go to hell for all she knew.

Coreen leaned forward, "What are you saying?"

"Help," it said again, and disappeared.

"Great," she snapped, shrugging and rolling her eyes. "That's a great way to get someone to help you. Cough out one cryptic word and disappear. Sure, I'll be happy to help. Just as soon as I figure out what the hell is going on here."

Not that she would be doing that, of course. That was Vicki's department. Coreen just got to be the damsel.

"Why do I always have to be the damsel?"

"A bird head."

Coreen's expression couldn't have been all that different from Vicki's. Flat, disapproving mouth, lips pressed thin and eyes narrowed in disbelief, eyebrows high. Well, with Coreen, there had probably been more eye rolling.

"I'm telling you, he had a bird head. A big fat raven head where his, you know, real head should have been." Coreen shrugged. It wasn't the strangest thing they had ever come across, and possibly wasn't even in the top ten for the year. But it definitely made their weirdness radar for the week.

Vicki shook her head, going to sit down behind her desk and dropping her head in her hands. "And he asked you for help?"

"That's what I thought he said, but I wasn't sure. Anyway, he disappeared, so he can't have needed help that badly." Coreen sounded as if she thought Vicki would be just as happy to be rid of the strange creature. It wasn't a hard leap to make. She had been very outspoken about the fact that they had enough weirdness going on right now, what with Henry and Mike and all, without taking cases that were any weirder than they needed to be. Coreen would have agreed, except that would be bringing up any weirdness at all between Vicki and Henry and Mike, and she still wasn't ready to confront that after Vicki had bitten her head off the last time.

Henry had been in town for six months now, and Vicki didn't know if she would ever be ready to deal with what had happened.

"Anyway," Coreen shuffled the stack of files together and clacked them on the desk, "we've got a few other things we can deal with. Such as the Billingslea case, they're asking for a background check on their new employee. I think he might be," Coreen hooked two fingers in front of her mouth and made a kind of clawing biting gesture.

"A vampire?" That was all Vicki needed, more vampires in her life. More vampires in Henry's territory.

"No." Coreen looked amused. "A werewolf."

"Oh." Vicki had forgotten about the werewolves.

Coreen moved around the desk with the folders clutched to her corseted, lacy breast. "You know, if it comes to that, I'm sure Henry could help you out, if you really wanted to investigate the bird man. Or the werewolf," she added hastily.

"I thought you said you thought he might be a werewolf." Vicki was quick to point out. She wasn't sure she wanted to deal with werewolves. Or bird men, or anything else that she might have to call Henry in on. Or, for that matter, anything she might have to call Mike in on.

Ever since Henry had come back, things between the three of them had been awkward. So much for stating your romantic intentions; she hadn't done anything even in the same realm as making a decision. Neither of the men in her life seemed to be bothered by that. Henry had as much as said outright that he would accept them both, but Mike was so straight you could use him to level pictures, and that didn't even touch his ability to cope with the bloodsucking undead thing. Mike, on the other hand, had finally agreed that there wasn't anything he could do to change her mind, let alone her heart, but Henry wouldn't let her go either. They had struck a truce and kept to the most polite of interactions, and they were sincere about it. And yet, they didn't seem to be getting along any better than they had before, either. She wasn't sure what was going on. They had settled into a routine, and none of them mentioned the R-word, much less the L-word.

Coreen was staring at her. Okay, not really staring, but looking at her expectantly like she knew Vicki had made a decision and wanted to know what it was. Vicki pushed up from the desk by slamming her hands onto the surface and rolling the chair back into the wall.

"All right," she sighed. "Let's go find your bird man."

Because when it came right down to it, at least none of the three of them knew about bird people, that Vicki knew of anyway. And she would rather have a problem she had to plug through on her own than go to either of the men in her life for help, right now.

They started back at the alley where Coreen had been the previous night. Apart from the faint traces of blood here and there, which Vicki only saw because Coreen pointed out where the creature had been staggering, there was nothing to indicate that anything untoward had happened. Vicky frowned, kneeling down and trying to get a good mental picture of what had happened before Coreen had walked in on it.

"So, he was bleeding pretty bad," Vicki said, more to herself than Coreen but the extra confirmation would be helpful.

The younger woman shrugged. "Either he was, or someone else he'd been talking to was. There was a lot of blood, though."

There didn't seem to be a lot of blood now, or at least, no very large bloodstains. Disappearing blood? Or maybe there was another vampire involved. Boy, Henry wouldn't like that. Vicki shook her head, trying to banish any thoughts of the bastard. "Looks like someone cleaned up after themselves," she muttered, standing. That was more likely, anyway, then disappearing blood. Come on, Vicki, and get your head out of your weirdness. Not everything has to have a supernatural explanation.

No, just most things in her life these days.

"Blood has a lot of magical properties," Coreen offered. "Maybe the bird man didn't want anyone following him with it, or making some kind of voodoo doll or something."

"Blood has power," came the awkward, hissing and high pitched voice from behind them.

Vicki and Coreen spun around, Vicki's baton snapping out with a speed that surprised even her, while Coreen only yelped and held up her hands. The man was dressed all in black, lean to the point of being downright scrawny and standing polite and calm with his hands clasped in front of him. He also did, indeed, have a raven's head. Vicki's first thought, incongruously, was to wonder how the hell he spoke as good English as he did. Or at all. Parrots spoke, didn't they? She could ask someone who knew about parrots. Why was she thinking about that at a time like this?

"You look like you're in pretty good shape for someone who was practically bleeding to death the night before," Vicki said. She was proud of herself for how calm she sounded. Then again, this wasn't her first were-turkey shoot.

"I was in no danger," he told them. "Your young lady misinterpreted the situation."

"I've known this young lady for some time, and she's pretty good at interpreting situations. Even the weird ones." Vicki wasn't backing down, mostly because he seemed about to tell her to leave it alone. She didn't take orders well. "I'd say, from what she told me, it looked like you needed some help."

"I was temporarily incapacitated."

"You always ask for help from strange girls when you're temporarily incapacitated?"

He clacked his beak in what Vicki was sure was an irritated manner. "There is no need for you to trouble yourselves further. What you saw has been resolved, and I am in no need of help."

Coreen folded her arms at him. "That why you come back to the scene of the crime?"

The bird man clacked his beak again, but this time it was a series of small clacks rather than one big one. Vicki didn't know what that meant, but she pressed forward anyway. "You know, you actually got pretty lucky that night," she said. "Coreen works for me, and I investigate things that..." Oh God, how did she explain this. "That most people wouldn't believe if they saw it with their own eyes. Most of my people, anyway." Now she sounded like Henry. When had humanity become 'her people'?

"This needs no investigation by human agents." He seemed determined. "You are unfamiliar with our ways and practices, and you would only hinder us in finding the ... That which we are looking for."

Well, hello. "I disagree." Vicki could be just as determined as anyone. And she had had a lot of practice at being stubborn when it came to things that went bump in the night. Especially annoying, male things that went bump in the night. "And when it comes to my city," and now she sort of wondered when it had become her city. Maybe when they all started talking like Henry. "I think my opinion on what needs investigating and what doesn't overrules yours."

There was a series of small beak-clacks again. He didn't look happy, but he also didn't look as though he was going to argue further. It was the kind of posture, Vicki realized, of a man who is out of options. She had seen that expression and posture on Mike often enough. Why was he out of options, and what was he looking for? These were questions that needed answering, maybe more so than she'd thought. Maybe Coreen was right about her needing to take the case. The last few times inhuman creatures had needed things in this city it involved hellfire and demons. She had the scars to prove it.

"There is nothing you can do to help me," he said after a momentary silence. "Though I appreciate the offer."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that?" Vicki told him, turning and heading back to the car. Behind her, she heard Coreen moving to take the bird man's arm. That girl would cuddle up to anything out of the pure faith that people could be just good, and in need of help. Sometimes Vicki envied her that kind of innocence, especially after all that they had both been through.

She did roll her eyes a little, listening to them talk behind her. "Are you a meat eater?" Coreen was saying. "Or do you eat insects? I know this place where you can get the best chocolate covered grasshoppers..."

"It was meant to be a simple job," the bird man said, without any preamble or even an introduction. "I was sent to recruit a half-blood child to the faerie court. I should say, he had been a child, many centuries ago."

Both Coreen and Vicky were looking at him with skepticism. "You mean, a grown man."

"A son of the Sluagh King."

Vicky looked at Coreen, who shrugged. "The Sluagh are part of the faerie court, the Unseelie court. The bad guys," she clarified.

"I see," Vicki said, although she didn't. "Why didn't this son of a king..." and then she realized she'd said it kind of in the way that someone might say son of a bitch. "Sorry, I just don't see why anyone would turn down a whole faerie Kingdom, or whatever else comes with this."

Coreen and the bird-headed man exchanged a look, as if to say that Vicki was perhaps being a little naïve. "More than likely he has heard stories of what goes on at the Unseelie court, at least half of which are most likely true."

"Most of the stories that people hear, the really bad ones, those are about the Unseelie court. The bad fairies and all the curses and things to happen to babies? That's the Unseelie court. No offense intended." She added that last, Vicki thought, because the bird person was clacking his beak at her again. "Not that the other guys are much better, but the Unseelie court, they have this reputation, you know?"

"Oh, of course."

"He would have grown up around the time before Christianity reached the land in which he lived. He would have grown up with the stories of the fair folk, all the old legends and all that that entails. To be perfectly honest, Ms. Nelson, I cannot blame him for not wanting any part of court life when he has built his own life for so many centuries."

"You seem pretty reasonable and understanding, Mr..."

The creature's beak opened in what Vicki decided had to be a smile. "You may call me Nicodemus."

That wasn't his name. She had been around the supernatural world long enough to know that names had power, and no fairy person type thing would give his name to a stranger. At least she had something to call him now, though. "Mr. Nicodemus. You seem pretty reasonable and understanding. So may I take it that the person who sent you to recruit this Sluagh..."

"Half-Sluagh."

They were classist. Or speciesist, or whatever it was. Interesting. "Half-Sluagh. May I take it that this person isn't interested in being reasonable?"

"You may. But then, what father is not a little bit unreasonable about his son?"

Oh. Vicki and Coreen exchanged a look. That explains a few things, and opened up a whole bunch of other questions. Not the least of which was, just how bad were fairy politics, anyway? "I guess that's true," Vicki said, slowly. "But if this prince is as old as you say he is, it doesn't sound like he's going to come quietly. Which puts you kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place."

"I told you," Nicodemus said. "You need not involve yourselves."

Coreen shrugged. Vicki folded her arms over her chest and gave the bird man a wary look. At this point it was more a matter of stubbornness and not wanting to watch as some kind of faerie war took over her city. She had already watched that happen with demons, and be damned if she let it happen again. Literally, possibly. Never mind. Although she did put her hands a little further beneath her arms, trying to hide the demon brands. She had no idea if a fairy would recognize a demon's work, and she didn't want to find out.

"I don't plan on going back on my word, and I don't scare easily." It was bravado, pure boasting, but if she was lucky that would buy her points with Nicodemus. At least, he seemed to be more approving of audacity than caution. Which went right along with accepting the whole suicide mission thing. Or trying to go it alone, and winding up bloody and injured in the back of an alley.

"No," he said, rolling the word around in his beak with care. "I don't believe you do."

And then, of course, he turned to Coreen, his beak dropping wide-open again in that bizarre smile. "Now, I believe you said something about chocolate-covered grasshoppers..."

"Chocolate-covered grasshoppers?"

Vicki shrugged, stealing a piece of chicken from Mike's container of Szechuan. "That's what she said, I didn't ask, I still don't want to know."

From behind her, Henry chuckled. "Chocolate-covered grasshoppers are actually considered a delicacy in some countries." The other two said those last few words along with him. It wasn't the first time.

"Delicate my ass." Mike snorted. "I don't care if you roll them around in deep-fried ecstasy, I still don't want to eat them."

Vicki chuckled. Not that she wanted to eat the chocolate-covered grasshoppers either. But the arguments between the two of them were still funny. Not that they were arguments anymore, either, more like debates. Somehow, over the last six months, the three of them had gotten used to each other. Maybe it was because the alternative had been ten times worse.

"Anyway, he's a bird-person. He probably likes grasshoppers, covered in chocolate or au naturel. Leave the grasshoppers alone, the point is that it sounds like we might have some kind of fairy invasion on our hands."

Mike ignored her, pointing his chopsticks at Henry. "Hey, how does Captain Fang know what's delicate in other countries these days, anyway? He doesn't eat anymore."

Henry rolled his eyes at the police detective. "I do read, you know. And I have friends..."

"Anyway!" Vicki neither wanted to know about his friends nor wanted to hear about what strange, unusual, possibly not yet dead things people were eating in other countries. "Back to the bird-people."

"Bird-people?" Henry returned his attention to the subject immediately, with the kind of focus only a vampire could sustain, at least as far as she knew. It still made her a little uncomfortable when he looked at her like that. "Was there more than one?"

"No, I don't think so. At least, there wasn't more than one that I was talking to, just the one Coreen found. Faerie people, then. There's more to this than he's telling, I think we're all agreed on that, yes?" Nods all around. It wasn't that hard, given the almost total lack of detail. "So, what do we have? Nicodemus was sent to bring some guy back to the Unseelie court. Nicodemus tried. Nicodemus failed."

Henry frowned a little. "Do we know whether or not it was the man himself, this half-Sluagh, who attacked Nicodemus?"

"If that were the case, wouldn't he have said?" Mike could play nice, too, and he leaned over Vicki's feet to set his Chinese food down as he thought out loud. "I mean, if this guy isn't exactly in good standing, what would Nicodemus Bird-Head have to lose by going back and saying, hey, the half-breed tried to shiv me?"

"One of the many very good questions I mean to ask him if he ever shows up again." Noodles weren't the easiest thing to eat with a pair of chopsticks, but she gave it her best shot. Her best shot involved slurping, to Henry's amusement. "I get the feeling that this guy hands out information in crumbs, and if you're lucky you got enough to make a whole loaf. Henry, what do you know about court politics among these... Faerie people?"

Henry was caught off guard, for once, eyebrows up. "What makes you think I know anything about court politics among the Fae?"

Vicki slurped a last knot of noodles and leaned her head back into the vampire. "Because of the three of us, you know more about court politics than me and Mike have forgotten. Put together. Because you've probably been in and out of courts since you were born into one. And because of all of us, you're the one most likely to actually know any Fae or have known them for very long."

"I don't think I have ever actually met one." Henry pondered. "There was that one minor lord from Bally-something, although possibly he was just rather effeminate and given to abusing narcotics." He chuckled. "He did this thing with a wolfhound--"

Their looks told him they did not care to hear what was done with wolfhounds. Vicki's look in particular seemed to suspect him of saying that on purpose.

"My point is that aristocrats keep to themselves. They're too busy forming factions and stabbing each other in the back to go around explaining their politics to outsiders. Observation, however intriguing, never supplies the entire picture. One minute people are your loyal companions, the next they're sending asps or king cobras to bite you in your sleep so they can place themselves in line for the throne." Henry's mouth twitched up at one corner in something that could be called a nostalgic smile. "One wrong hand shake and Robert is suddenly your uncle."

Vicki looked skeptically at him. "Robert."

"Arthur Balfour," Henry said and then, off her continued stare, "Really! But it is a long and implausible story of no relevance to the discussion at hand, except to say that things become different when magic is involved; different, and far more complicated.

"So what do we know about the factions of the fae court?" Mike asked. "You must have some general ideas, maybe an educated guess? A witty limerick." Sarcasm pooled on the floor under his jaw.

"Without further investigation, I certainly couldn't tell you," Henry said, a little huffily. "A court is a curious, subtle, inconstant thing, full of endless, minute, careful maneuvers. It's not like you can just waltz into the ballroom and demand they announce their goals and affiliations."

"Shoot," said Vicki. "That's my plan off the list, then."

They both stared at her.

"If you want to know," Henry finished, "I suggest you ask the one person we all are familiar with who we know to have extensive experience in the fae court. If he'll talk."

"He'll talk," Vicki muttered. "He's just not my first choice of conversation companions."

Back to the alley. During the day it didn't look half so seedy as it did when it was full of pounding rhythms and half stoned teenagers. Vicki turned over and discarded half a dozen used condoms, candy wrappers, even picked up a couple of used needles with a tissue and a disgusted look. Henry insisted on handling the physical evidence after that, on the basis that he wasn't susceptible to blood borne illnesses. She couldn't really argue with that logic.

"This isn't human blood."

Vicki looked over at where he'd crouched by the dumpster, dark stains on the ground that could have been anything at this hour. Spilled soda, spilled food, spilled blood. She would trust Henry to know what human blood smelled like. Maybe he wasn't so familiar with Fae blood, but after their conversation previously she wasn't willing to bet on that, either.

"Can you tell what it is?" She asked, going back to her section.

Henry didn't seem to be acting any differently from a forensic investigator on a TV show, if not exactly working with the usual sanitation protocols of an actual investigator. Nevertheless, anyone walking by would think they were on legitimate business from the way they examined their surroundings with authority and confidence. Which was probably a good thing if they were going to have an open conversation in normal tones about blood and dead bodies. He examines the stain a little longer and then stood, and brushed his hands off on his trousers.

"I'm not sure, but it's not human." He shook his head. "And if any human had left this much blood behind they'd be in the hospital, not wandering around the streets still."

Well, that was a fair argument, too.

They continued to go over the alley. Vicki was starting to run a tally in her mind of how much crap she was having to go through, bubblegum, detritus of sex and drugs and all the expected vices of the club, pieces of litter with phone numbers written on them. How many poor people would be sitting by the phone waiting for a call that would never come? God, maybe she had been reading too many of those romance novels Henry had a secret stash.

"I've got a feather, here." She stared at it, wondering how exactly it had gotten wedged in between two bricks. The mortar crumbled when she tugged it out. She wondered if it was kind of like breaking a fingernail. "How many of these do you think he left behind?"

"Are you asking me how many times I think they bounced his head off of something, or if I think he has feathers on more than just his raven's head?"

Vicki hadn't considered that possibility, and actually blushed when he mentioned it. And then she punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow."

"Big baby."

He grinned at her, and she found herself smiling back despite the grease and remnants of bubblegum on her fingers. He took another step closer, his mouth open to say something that was forgotten in the next second with whatever put that distracted look on his face. "What?" She asked.

Henry frowned. "I smell something."

"That never gets any less creepy, you know." She followed him to the far end of the alley, though. More dark stains that could have been anything.

He knelt down by one of them at the bottom of the wall and spreading on the floor, rubbed his fingertips over the surface and then sniffed. "This isn't human blood either."

"Either? You mean it's not human blood, and it's not the blood of that bird-headed guy?" Vicki frowned. She didn't like this. One fairy bastard in the city was enough, and now there were two. Maybe more than that. "Can you tell what it is? Better yet, can you track the source?"

Henry gave her a look that was equal parts affection and exasperation. "I'm not a bloodhound, Vicki."

Vicki shrugged. "Just a thought."

They picked around the non-human blood stain. When they got back to the dumpster Henry shouldered her out of the way, pouncing on something that she had missed before. Something the debris had been covering over, but when he held it up it looked like a piece of bone or horn or something. Maybe a piece of a tooth. The thought made Vicki shudder. "What is that?" She asked, with the air of someone who doesn't actually want an answer to her question.

"I'm not sure yet," Henry said, distracted. "When I find out, I'll let you know."

"That's very reassuring."

"This is such a bad idea."

This time it wasn't Vicki, it was Mike who was questioning the judgment of just about everyone there. Or maybe he was just saying what everyone was thinking.

Nothing about this case was making Vicki happy. Not the client, not the way the case was progressing, and certainly not Coreen's suggestion that they could get all the answers they wanted if they used that bit of horn to summon the creature to whom it had belonged. It was a good idea, in theory. It looked fine on paper but when you got into the mechanics of summoning anything, and especially summoning something that could knock around a fairy creature like a baseball off the bat, then you got into the whole principle of confinement circles. And then you got into the kind of arcane magic for which are required Henry, who you really should have had there anyway just to make sure there was someone else there with supernatural strength, and by now Vicki was starting to wonder if she wasn't working herself up to star in her own horror movie.

"I should've worn heels," she muttered.

Mike and Henry both stared at her. "Why?"

"Nothing."

Coreen dusted her hands off and stood up. "All right, that should do it."

Vicki looked around at the intricate pile of diagrams, glyphs, and drawings that surrounded them. She, Mike, and Henry had all been pressed into service for this ritual, to lend their energy, whatever that meant. As long as it worked. "Do I even want to know what any of this says?"

Her young and enthusiastic assistant started to point and explain. "Well, it starts with that symbol over there that represents the..."

"Wasn't really asking." Vicki held up her hand to stop Coreen from going on and wasting the rest of the night. "We only have about five hours left before Henry there turns into a pumpkin, and we lose the only person in this group capable of withstanding a fairy attack." She had to stop there. "I can't believe I just said that."

"I can't believe you said that either," Mike snickered.

"Shut up."

Coreen clapped her hand like a schoolteacher after lunch. "Okay, let's focus, people."

"Focus on what?" Vicki muttered. They all took their positions along the outside of the circle, feeling more or less like idiots for doing so. Mike and Vicki, more, and Henry, who was rather used to supernatural dealings by now, rather less.

Focusing. It was harder than she thought.

First, there was the thought that if she screwed up, she might wind up with the Stay-Puff Marshmallow man. Ravaging through Toronto, now there was a thought. And then she had to stop and discipline herself for thinking that, which led to wondering if thinking that would actually summon the damn thing. Which led to, of all things, wondering if Henry had seen Ghostbusters and would even recognize it if he saw it. Which led to trying to gather her thoughts and focus them on the center of the circle, bringing to it what she wanted, and not letting it out to wander through the city like Godzilla in Tokyo. Had Henry seen Godzilla?

"Focus!"

Focusing.

It was probably only the fact that she had been used in rituals before, well, and the whole chanting thing, that helped her realize there was energy flowing out of her and into the whatever it was Coreen was doing in the circle. It was a little like having blood drawn. Only more unnerving.

Her first hint that something was going wrong was Coreen's muttered "oh, shit." and that came only seconds before the muffled thud. Like something large and heavy hitting the ground from a very short distance, possibly floating above it. There hadn't been anything floating in the room before she had closed her eyes. When had she closed her eyes? Probably when she had been trying to focus.

"Um. Vicki."

Vicki opened her eyes. Henry and Mike were staring at it, and Coreen looked kind of as though she wanted to do the damsel in distress thing, and jump into Henry's arms. Probably Henry's, because Coreen didn't seem to have much of a thing for Mike. Not that Vicki knew why, Mike was damn good looking, for as much of a jerk as he could be. Great in bed, too. And now she was just distracting herself from the fact that she had a body on the floor of her office that hadn't been there a few minutes ago.

"Coreen."

"Yeah?"

"Why is there a body on the floor of my office?"

They all stared at it for a moment. "I guess the summoning spell worked."

Vicki shook her head. "I could give you a pair of sunglasses and a soundtrack by The Who, if that would make you any wittier." Henry and Coreen just stared at her. "I figured the summoning spell worked, what I want to know is, what is this, and why is it dead on my office floor?" Because if the summoning spell had killed it, she was going to have a lot of questions about where Coreen had gotten that grimoire.

"I have no idea..." she sounded just as unnerved as Vicki felt.

"Well. Shit."

Vicki banished Coreen from the office for this meeting. Just in case things got ugly, the fewer people Henry had to worry about hitting with something large and heavy, the better off everyone would be.

"You've been holding out on me."

She hated it when normal people do that. The fact that she had to confront the bird-man with it, and being unable to read his expressions clearly, really annoyed her. He tilted his head to one side and his beak dropped open a little bit. "What do you mean?"

They were taking a guess here. But from what Henry had said, the creature they had found in the middle of the summoning circle wasn't all that powerful either politically or magically. It didn't look very powerful physically, either. If, and this might be a big if, all that were true, it would mean that the creature had been a sacrifice of some kind. Either the kind of sacrifice that involve the words collateral damage and necessary casualties, or the kind of sacrifice that involved a ritual circle and a lot of obscure chanting.

Talking about that had led both Henry and Coreen to start spouting off about how once upon a time certain cultures, and especially the British Isles ones, had done a lot of King sacrificing to make the crops grow. Vicki had put an end to the discussion by commenting that yes, she had read the Golden Bough, but the thought had stayed in her mind.

"You weren't collecting this Prince for a warm welcome home, you were collecting him for a ritual sacrifice. For something, I don't know what, whatever it was he has a damn good reason not to want to come home."

On the other hand, she didn't need to be able to read a bird's expression to tell that the temperature in the room had just dropped several degrees. Mike stirred at her left shoulder, in that way that she knew from so many years on the streets meant that he was reaching for his weapon. Not obviously, but just in case. Henry didn't stir at all, but all of a sudden he was paying attention in the kind of way that meant black eyes and longer teeth.

"You would do well to change this line of questioning."

Vicki's eyebrows arched, ice cold. This was just another interrogation room, and he was just another recalcitrant suspect. "Is that a threat?" She smiled a little. Lips upturned beneath the lower edge of her glasses. She didn't look much, but she was no longer afraid of the supernatural or unwilling to believe her senses no matter how much they went against the so-called real world. Not when a vampire was leaning against the desk at her right shoulder.

"That is merely stating a fact. You do not belong in this world, and you should not pursue this investigation."

This, Vicki would have known even if they hadn't done their research on the fairy world. "We have a contract." It meant something more to them, she knew, than it did to your average human being. Of course, they had more ways of getting out of loopholes than a pack of lawyers, but still. "We have a contract, and I'm going to fulfill my end of the bargain. Unless you think that, as a human, I have less honor than you do?"

The bird-head hissed. That was an insult; that was an obvious insult both to her as a party whose honor had been impugned and to him that she thought he might impugn her honor in the first place. Of course, she only realized it after the fact, but it was a little heartening. Maybe she was getting the hang of this.

Maybe not. He advanced on her, beak clacking, and for a split second all she could think about were all of those movies with corpses and crows pecking out their eyes. "I only suggested that you might, for your own safety, wish to be released from it. I would understand, and gladly end the contract if you decided to back down."

Both Mike and Henry, as one, took a step in front of her. Closing ranks. She pulled her hands up, backs of her hands to their shoulders, one on each, and pushed them aside. "Now, now, boys. We're just talking. No need to get all macho."

The beak dropped open, avian laughter. "Your champions move to defend you," it said, "What have you done to inspire such loyalty, I wonder?"

Vicki spared a moment to be amused at how angry the two of them were for this. "That's not the first time I've been called a whore, and you'll have to be more creative than that if you want to make me angry."

"Both of them?"

"That's none of your damn business." Still perfectly polite, and smiling. "I have no intention of asking to be released from this contract, and I will pursue this investigation until I'm satisfied. Now, are you going to talk? About things that are actually relevant," she added. God damn fairies and their way of taking things literally at the most annoying possible moment.

He did not look happy. Even for an inscrutable bird-man, she could tell he didn't look happy. "The workings of fae court politics are intricate and go back for many of your human generations."

"No, there is too much, you may sum up." The bad accent was lost on him, though. Mike snickered, at least.

"The Sluagh Prince is still unknown to the court. There are many factions, with many goals, and not all of them wanted to see him alive. I answered to no one but the King of the Unseelie court himself, though he seems now to have changed his mind."

"Assuming he actually meant you to be able to complete your little errand in the first place," Vicki said. And then, off of the head tilting that resulted: "What? You think that I can't think on more than one level at once?"

It was clear that Nicodemus didn't like this, but they all had to accept it as a possibility. "You are, I will admit, quicker in mind that I had expected."

She let that one slide. "Regardless of whatever it was you were sent here to do, I think we can assume that other people are pulling other shit now, trying to get this guy for other things. One of them tried to kill you, another one succeeded in killing that guy. They may or may not be related, but before I can know that I need you to tell me everything about who that is, who you are, what the most powerful factions want, say, in the order of the first ten most powerful, and where this dead guy fits in the court."

"That," he told her, both of them ignoring the somewhat incredulous looks from the other two men in the room, "That is a lot of information for one evening."

Vicki moved around Henry and his sighing and went over to her desk drawer, pulling out a notepad and a pen. "Then you'd better get started, hadn't you?"

Mike, in Vicki's opinion, was way too smug about this.

Nicodemus had insisted that there would be no way to find the ritual site. He had agreed, upon seeing the body, that the poor bastard had died in a ritual sacrifice, but he had asserted that whoever had sacrificed him had covered their tracks too well. Anyone who could perform that kind of complex magical would surely also have the foresight to include some kind of obfuscating, something to prevent anyone from tracking it back to its source. The fact that they had been able to pull the body out of the unused circle was probably nothing; it may well have been dumped after the fact, after they had tried the ritual and failed.

After he had pulled out that argument, though, Mike had leaned against the desk and drawled out something about modern forensic technology working wonders, these days. Henry, of all people, snickered and agreed. Or maybe it was just that he didn't like someone else playing the Royal on his turf. He could be so territorial.

As it turned out, though, the bird-creature had no awareness of modern forensic technology, and the idea that someone could be identified by parts of their body in purely scientific ways was fascinating. The idea that the story of the last few days of their lives could be told in soil samples, detritus from underneath fingernails, and combed out bits of dust from their hair was entirely new to him.

"Maybe I should just sit him down in front of the TV and make him watch CSI," Vicki muttered.

Mike chuckled. "What you should do is extract some kind of bonus from him. You have any idea the kind of strings I had to pull to get all that processed on a case that doesn't technically exist? Especially that quickly," but Vicki interrupted him with a rolling of the eyes and a hand on his shoulder.

"There's a lock on the door," she pointed. And she didn't have the authority to go breaking it down, anymore.

Mike considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "I have no idea what's going on here," he told her, "but we have reason to believe that these people won't stop at just one human," and the word "human" came with a heavy dose of irony. "And they might try and kidnap someone and kill again."

Not that either of them needed him to say that. Well, maybe he did, for conscience-soothing if not legal purposes. Vicki nodded, made an impatient gesture, to which Mike stepped aside and gestured for her to pick the lock.

"You would ask me to do this while it's overcast outside," she muttered again. Still, kneeling down in front of the lock, it didn't take very long before it popped open.

Inside it was even darker, though she waited until Mike had closed the door behind them to turn on the flashlight. Stupid god damn failing eyesight. "This place probably hasn't been used in ten years," Mike said, behind her.

"Not for its intended purpose, anyway."

She wished Henry were here. Among other things, so he could tell her if that metallic scent in the air was blood or rust or something else. She didn't like going into things blind, and in this case that blindness was both literal and figurative. It was too dark, and she knew way too little about what was going on. Even with the explanations that Nicodemus had provided.

"You really think that this is all some sort of plot to consolidate power?" Mike was right behind her. That was sort of reassuring.

Vicki shook her head. "Gain power, consolidate power, something like that. People always get cranky when there is political power being shifted around. I don't know about the whole magic mojo thing." But it stood to reason. Especially if the magic of the faerie kingdoms was fading, as Nicodemus had said. It was just a little too Lord of the Rings for her. "The last great faerie Lords going into the West," she snorted.

"Hey, the human race is driving all kinds of species into extinction, what's a few more, right?"

She looked over her shoulder at him, cracking maybe half a smile. "Somehow, I never figured you for an environmentalist."

Mike shrugged. "It's true. I mean, I don't know if I'd be willing to put elves and things on the international registry of endangered species, but if this whole city and technology and paving over everything deal is encroaching on their whole... whatever, I can believe that they'd want their land back. I mean, would it be any different if bears or dolphins could take up arms and come marching into Toronto waving posters and shouting slogans about equal rights for..."

Vicki was trying hard not to laugh out loud by now. Mike grinned. "Okay, you're doing that on purpose, now."

"Maybe just a little."

"Thanks."

They made it to the main room. What had been a gymnasium at one point, maybe a cafeteria, and now was a collection of broken tables, rusting chairs, God knew what else. Vicki trained her flashlight on the floor, not even a little bit surprised when it cast a white circle on what looked like black wax tablet drawings, candle drippings, and bloodstains. Small piles of feathers, bits of antler or fingernail or something, bits of rope. There had been a ritual sacrifice, all right. There might have been a fight, too.

"All right," she sighed, "let's get some pictures of these over to Coreen and see what we're dealing with."

Thank God for cell phones. She and Mike spent the next fifteen minutes taking pictures of all the symbols in the room, anything that could be a magical symbol whether it looked like graffiti or wax ritual meetings, and e-mailing them to Coreen. Text message updates beeped every so often as she looked through the Internet and the books in the library, coming up with possible solutions. After a while, they were able to narrow it down to a few ideas. Henry might be able to help from his own collection, but nightfall was a few hours away, still.

"I'm not liking this," Mike muttered.

"Did you ever like this?" Vicki retorted, trying to get an angle that would capture both light and symbol without getting any glare off of the linoleum floor. Mike could always be counted on to take a hard-line stance against most things supernatural, and all the ones that looked like they might present a danger to human beings. Which was most of them. In the beginning, they had tried to argue for Vicki getting out of that world. After they had established that Henry was a permanent part of her life now, or at least as permanent as anything, he had thankfully stopped.

The detective shook his blond head, flipping over his phone to send Coreen his last picture. "This case? No, not really."

Vicki's phone beeped again, and she scanned the message and sighed. "Well, we were right about one thing. That poor idiot was sacrificed, right here, and you know that thing about how it turned out that he should have had way more blood in him or on the floor here than there was in either place?"

"No, I hadn't noticed that, but trust you and Captain Fang to figure that one out." Mike made a face. "Why? What did they want the blood for."

"Well, let's just say that you were right about that whole blood makes the crops grow thing."

Mike made a gagging noise. "What the hell kind of crops are they growing, anyway?"

Vicki closed the cell phone and moved to one side of the room, pacing up and down along the wall. "In this case, it doesn't look like 'crops' is all that literal. There's a lot of stuff about the fertility of the land, and a lot of stuff about blood being used to replenish and renew, but there's not a lot about actual plants or food or anything like that. There's something about birth, something about rebirth, it's all really arcane and none of us is exactly a specialist in Celtic mythology."

Mike took another few pictures and then stopped, looking over at her. "What do you mean, arcane?"

She closed her cell phone and tapped it against her lips a couple of times, pressed it to her forehead. "It's not just the land or the territory of these people that's diminishing, it's everything about them. It's like whatever influenced the modern world is having on them is like some sort of radiation, like a nuclear winter would be on us. Part of what this sacrifice was supposed to do was to put up a barrier against that nuclear winter."

"Like... what? Like duct tape and plastic sheeting on the windows?" He didn't sound all that enthusiastic about the idea, or maybe just not all that convinced that it would work. Probably because it hadn't.

"From what Nicodemus said, and what we've seen here, that's probably a pretty apt description. Even if the sacrifice of one small, low-ranking person would do anything, it damn well wouldn't be enough to restore power to a whole race of people. Not the way this stuff seems to work."

"Oh God."

She looked over at him. "What?"

"I may be going out on a limb here," he said, doing that thing where he looked at nothing and pointed a finger at an imaginary case board. "But what if there really is no Sluagh Prince at all? What if this King of theirs knows that? What if all of this is just to get enough bodies on the ground and blood in the sacred whatever's to bring back power to the fairy people? It's the perfect excuse. They create this guy who's half a nightmare, give him a past and the background and history among the humans who they're trying to protect themselves from, and make him out to be some ancient bad ass. Then send a bunch of mid-range people out to get this guy, people who are important and powerful but maybe not so important and powerful that you can't spare them, and quietly have them killed."

Vicki stared at him. The insidious part was that it made sense, and there was very little way to prove it with what they had right now. "You are a god damn conspiracy theorist, you know that?"

"It makes sense." Mike shrugged.

"Yeah, it does." She shook her head. "That's what scares me. Because if this guy is willing to do that to his own people, if we figure that out? What do you think he would do to us?"

"What are you saying, you want to back down?"

Vicki snorted. "Bite your tongue. If this crap is going down in my city, I want to know about it. And if it's going to explode all over and get people possibly caught in the crossfire we need to do something about it."

"I can't believe you convinced her to try and do something about this."

"I didn't convince her to do anything!"

Mike and Henry were arguing. Again. Vicki had taken over Henry's workspace in his apartment, by virtue of the argument that it was bigger than either hers or Mike's, and bigger than her office. She had spread out all the notes that she had, blown up pictures of the symbols, everything, all over the floor. And the table. And tacked some of them up to his corkboard. "If you guys are going to fight, could you at least take it in the bedroom?" She waved a hand at them distractedly, not paying attention to whether or not they responded.

Mike and Henry looked at each other, then at her, then back at each other again. "See what you did," Mike hissed at the vampire, but with no real anger behind it. More like irritation.

"What are you thinking?" Henry moved over and sat behind Vicki by way of getting back at Mike for that comment, rubbing her shoulders with gentle, strong fingers. She flipped her hair out of the way and almost into his face.

"I'm thinking..."

Mike came down and sat on her other side, not interfering, just listening.

Vicki rubbed her eyes. "I have no idea what I'm thinking."

Henry leaned over and brushed her hair back from her neck, placed a gentle kiss on the nape of her neck and rested his forehead against the back of her head. "You've been working on this for too long," he told her. "You need to take a break."

"Do you know how many times that hasn't worked?" Mike snorted, one hand shoving the vampire aside as he pulled Vicki into his lap. Impressively, for him, he didn't let go after Henry had fallen to one side on his forearm, but kept that hand lightly curled around his shoulder. It made Henry less inclined to yell at him for the displacement.

Vicki shook her head, though her eyes were also on Mike's hand on Henry's shoulder. "I don't like pitched battles on my streets, whether they're being bought by gangs of drug dealers and pimps, or gangs of faeries and trolls and God knows what else."

Mike threw Henry a resigned look. "She thinks she's still a cop. God help you."

"Us," Henry reminded him, but he smiled and reached out a hand to the other man's arm. "God help us, because we both have to deal with her."

She looked back and forth from one to the other of them, mock-scowling. "It's not fair when you both gang up on me like that," she told him. "And you, you shouldn't be encouraging this." Though it was hard to tell who was being accused of which.

The mood relaxed. After another moment to let Mike get used to Henry's proximity Vicki reached out and tugged the vampire onto both of them. It was still a little strange, being with someone who was almost her height. It had to be even stranger for Mike, as little as they had to do with each other. Although possibly that would change, given the look of things.

Maybe not. Mike was far from homophobic, but that didn't mean...

"What are you thinking?"

She tilted her head back and looked up at the detective. "Hmm?"

Mike dropped a kiss on her forehead. "You've got this little grin on your face there, says you're up to something."

There was only so much of her private fantasies involving Mike, Henry, and a bottle of scented oil that she was willing to share. She made her eyes wide and innocent and said nothing.

"At least it's better than..." Henry only got so far before Mike shoved him away again. This time, at least, just to shut him up rather than because he was actually uncomfortable.

"Better than...?" Vicki wanted to know, although she suspected she had an idea of what the rest of that sentence had been. Henry righted himself, but didn't say anything, off the glare from Mike. Apparently the silence was a condition of being allowed back into the fold, because when he didn't finish that sentence Mike actually held out his arm, and the vampire scooted in under it. It was surprisingly cozy. Mike felt relaxed, and Henry was warm and heavy against her as she pulled him half into her lap as well.

It was nice. It was a nice respite from the case, a nice break to the evening. For a little while she occupied herself with combing her fingers through Henry's curly and slightly wild hair, snuggling back into her old friend's warm chest, pulling his suit jacket around her. As useless a gesture that was. Maybe it was the case, or maybe it was just things that had been happening around her that she hadn't noticed, but when her fingers collided with Mike's in Henry's hair she definitely noticed that. He withdrew his hand, abrupt and self-conscious.

"You..."

Vicki nudged Henry's angle with her foot a little. Him saying anything wouldn't help. But she caught Mike's hand and returned it back to where it had been, curled it around the back of Henry's neck, while she went back to playing with his hair. Both men were tense for the first minute or so. Henry relaxed first, as she had sort of expected.

"Do you think we'll ever actually figure out what's going on here?" Mike asked. She couldn't tell what his hand was doing now, but at least he hadn't moved much.

Henry shook his head, but just barely, not wanting to dislodge either of them Vicki imagined. "I'm not sure anyone will ever know all of what's going on here, and I'm certain that we'll never find out what sort of political manipulations went into what's been happening."

Mike grunted, which sounded odd from her vantage point of having an ear pressed his chest. Not that Vicki disagreed. She also was pretty sure she didn't want to know all of what was going on in terms of the fairy politics, just so long as she knew enough to keep it out of her city. Let them kill each other off if they wanted, but keep the streets as safe as she could manage. Was that prejudiced of her? "Is it a bad thing that I don't want to actually know what's going on in their reindeer games?"

"I'd say it's a sign of growing wisdom," Henry said, and turned his head into her neck mostly, she suspected, so she wouldn't see his grin. Which didn't matter when Michael bloody Cellucci was chortling above her head.

"I'm being ganged up on," she grumbled. Mike shifted so that his arm was more securely around Henry's shoulders. Evidently keeping her out of trouble was a way for them to bond. Still.

None of them said anything. The night was sliding by, and she had meant to get more work done on this case, maybe trying come up with a few other angles of investigation, but nothing was going to get done while she was contained in a warm and cuddly pile of two very sexy men. Then again, maybe they were right. Maybe a night off for all three of them to just settle down was what they needed. Was there any deadline to this case beyond racing a clock they couldn't see to try and stop a murder that they couldn't anticipate? No, not really. Coreen hadn't found any time markers specific to any events in the ritual pictures they had taken. They weren't racing against the next full moon, the next equinox-solstice-whatever.

Henry had covered Mike's hand with his when she wasn't looking, but was making no further advances. She'd have to remember to thank him for that. Mike was awkward enough just knowing that she was, well, spending time with Henry also. And then, the fact that Henry was pushing to close their little circle, that had made him draw back. Oddly enough, whenever the subject came up in discussion between her and Mike during the daytime, his biggest objection was that Henry was a damn vampire. She would make a bigger deal of teasing him about that if the goal here wasn't to make him more comfortable instead of less.

More comfortable... "Maybe he wasn't murdered." Vicki said, sitting up and almost knocking Mike's chin with her head. "Maybe he volunteered."

Mike sighed, exasperated. "You are not going to stop thinking about that, are you?" he sniped. Vicki actually saw Henry's hand tighten on Mike's.

"What do you mean?" he asked, more softly than the detective had.

She compromised by settling back against Mike, snuggling back into Henry, but didn't let go of the subject. "What if he wasn't a victim at all, what if he was a willing sacrifice? Most of the cultures that have living sacrifices, that aren't animals, anyway, everything implies that the sacrifices are willing. I mean, I'm not exactly ready to believe that everyone who died on the Aztec altars just lay down and waited for their heart to be cut out, but people nowadays sacrifice their lives for each other all the time, right? Throwing themselves on the grenade? What if this is just a more long-thinking version of that?"

"You are incredibly twisted, you know that?"

Henry sat up, though. "It's not unlikely. That would be the sort of thing that people who were raised and live in the Unseelie court are familiar with. But if this Prince has been lost all his life, he doesn't know any of that, and if that's really what they intend to do to him then it's highly unlikely that he would be anything like willing."

"Assuming he exists," she added. She still thought Mike's theory had some merit.

"Assuming he exists," Henry admitted.

They waited in silence for any of them to say anything, again. No one really seemed inclined to bring up the subject of just asking Nicodemus, or doing any more investigating or discussing the rest of the night. When the fan clicked on again and sent a fresh burst of cold air through the room, Vicki stirred.

"Okay, I don't know about you guys, but I could use some rest." She stood, and made what would probably be the boldest move of their relationship yet. Taking those steps towards Henry's bedroom, turning around to look over her shoulder at both of them. Then she blinked, stopped. Mike still had one arm around Henry's shoulder, almost had the other man in his lap, and neither of them looked like they minded very much. She found herself smiling. "You guys coming?"

Coreen was more surrounded by books than usual. Vicki picked her way through the piles, looking around with eyebrows raised above the rim of her glasses. "Think you got enough research material here?"

One hand flapped at her in a gesture Vicki didn't understand. "Do you know how much mythology there is on the faeries of Ireland alone? I mean, there's hundreds of years of mythology, not including the Christian-influenced stuff, and not including the rest of the British Isles, or all of Europe for that matter. I mean, most of Western Europe had some kind of faerie culture, and anything at the right latitude had blackbirds, these guys could be from anywhere..."

"Whoa, whoa, slow down." Vicki held up her hands to stop the torrent of babble coming from her assistant. "First of all, we know where they're from. They're from wherever the Sluagh are from. And second of all, we're not looking for all the mythology and all the histories on all these people. We are looking for a ritual that requires a blood sacrifice. One that's connected with the faeries, and that requires faerie blood."

"Oh." Even Coreen hadn't realized that, or she just hadn't thought of it in her enthusiasm to read every single book on faerie mythology ever.

Vicki chuckled, sitting down at her desk and going through her paperwork for the last three cases. Boring cases, and boring paperwork, most of it financial. "I want a fairy servant to do this for me," she muttered.

"Hey. Don't say things like that."

She looked up. "Why?"

Coreen had a look that was somewhere between amused and disgruntled. Lips twisted up and down, eyes bright. "Well, for one thing, now that you've already gotten their attention, they might hear you. For another thing, never ever say anything that amounts to I wish... when you think they might be listening. Or, just, when they might be listening at all."

She didn't have to ask why, that time. Even if she hadn't heard of all the various monkeys-paw stories kids told around campfires, she'd seen Labyrinth. "Who needs a Goblin King when I have Henry," she muttered. Of course, then she was distracted by thoughts of Henry and David Bowie. She wondered if Henry had known him back in his Ziggy Stardust days. She wondered if there were pictures.

"Vicki?"

"Yes?"

"You're drooling a little."

Vicki snickered and went back to her finances.

"Oh, here's something."

She wasn't sure, but she thought the sun had gone down sometime between when she'd started working on the papers and when Coreen finally said something. At least, it looked darker outside from the lack of light between the blinds. Vicki scrubbed at her eyes. "Too much time staring at the computer monitor makes the Vicki go blind," she muttered.

"I think I found something. Listen to this, this passage in..." she flipped the book over on her thumb, reading the title of the spine. "Legends of Bristol and... something. It rubbed off. Anyway, listen... blah blah, famine, crops dying... leader of the tribes was sacrificed under the oak, and the ground was watered in his blood. He was stripped and bound in flaxen rope, and upon the burial of his heart at the foot of the great tree his body was drawn into the earth and choked with vines. The following year, the crops grew high and the people feasted... So, it's not the archives of Scientific American or anything, but it's a direct reference, and it goes on to describe..." Coreen, Vicki thought, was taking far too much joy in describing the exact method by which people had ritually butchered other people long ago.

She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. "That sounds... pretty grim, actually." The mildest term she could afford right now, thinking about the body that has landed at her feet. Thinking about how it had gotten to that state. Although, hearing what they would have thought they had to gain, she could understand that kind of desperation. Never empathize with that, but she could understand.

"Yeah, but, doesn't it sound like something that they would be doing? Or, I mean, it fits with what we discovered on the body..."

"You are way too ghoulish for this line of work," Vicki shook her head. Coreen had a point, though. It fit. A lot of it fit. Not the specific details of the rituals used, but a lot of the general ones. The same plants kept cropping up over and over again, the same words. The same rituals described, motions, a set of behaviors and acts and motions that repeated often enough that they must have something to do with the underlying principle. And that could definitely have had something to do with the unnamed faery's death.

It was circumstantial. It was nothing that would come to trial.

At least, not any human court in any civilized world would have brought it to trial.

"We need to talk to Nicodemus again, don't we?"

Coreen nodded, eyes wide with trepidation and nerves, lips parted with excitement. "He's the only one who seems to know what's going on."

"I really hate it when the other guys know more about what's going on than I do."

Vicki had seen disgruntled birds once or twice. Usually at the zoo, when they had decided they'd had enough of kids throwing pebbles and sticks at them and threw one last tantrum before flying off somewhere inaccessible and hidden. They had puffed up, she decided, exactly like this. Kind of like a disgruntled cat, but with feathers.

Nicodemus looked like that right now. His feathers were all standing on end, almost exactly on end, too, which made him look like a feather duster someone had shaken out too hard. His eyes weren't glowing, they weren't red or anything like that, they were still black and beady and right now they were glaring at her. His beak clacked, noisy in the reverberating silence between her, Henry, and Coreen not saying anything. If Mike had been there he would have undoubtedly said something not all that wise, and the silence wouldn't have remained for long. But Mike was on duty right now, and she felt strangely alone.

"I don't like it when a client holds out on me," she told him. "And I really don't like it when it happens twice. The last time you told us anything, it was very vague, but it wasn't helpful to the situation. Now, you're going to tell us a few things that are helpful to the situation."

Nicodemus made a couple of noises, then crossed his arms over his chest in a very human and oddly self-protective gesture and began to pace around her small office. If he were actually a bird he would have been hopping from one side of the branch to the other.

He turned just as Vicki was opening her mouth to tell him to spit it out already. "I explained to you about the factions and their varying opinions on the Prince."

She nodded. "You said most of them want him dead and only a couple want him alive."

"And others are still waiting to form an opinion, yes. After we last spoke I did some investigating of my own." His expression suggested amusement at her dubious glare. "Yes, I am capable of being subtle and asking questions when it is necessary. If I were not, I would not have lasted so long at court."

From what little she heard of Henry's time in his father's court, and what Nicodemus had told her the last time they talked, this was true. She glanced at Henry, who nodded. "Go on."

"Most of the factions are watching, only, and have not moved yet. It is in the interests of the Unseelie High King and the House of Ru that the Prince does not survive, but if he remains ignorant of his heritage they have no objections to leaving him to live a semi-mortal life. He will not have learned anything he did not already know, and all that has happened thus far is that he has been menaced by people whose names, natures, and motives are unknown."

"Menaced." She frowned.

Nicodemus shook his head, feathers ruffling every which way. "Some have appeared to him, tried to persuade him by threats or bribes. It is a mystery, but he does not seem inclined to pursue it."

"Lucky for them," Coreen muttered. She didn't like threats of any kind, especially when they were levied against people she believed to be innocent. From what they had found out in the past week about the Unseelie faeries and the Sluagh Vicki didn't think anyone connected with them could be innocent, whether he knew about it or not. But she wasn't going to argue, either.

"The Unseelie High King and the Sluagh King are nervous. They see these murders as a sign that their power is weakening and they are moving to consolidate, to join ranks. The nobles are restless as a result. The ones who are pushing to bring him into the fold as he is are becoming louder; the ones who think he shouldn't be even touched are becoming louder. Everything is chaos."

Vicki shook her head, exasperated. "Well, that doesn't sound very..."

"In this chaos, the missing have gone unnoticed."

That meant one of two things. Neither of those two things was good. "What missing," Vicki drew out the words into two sentences, one sentence per word. Henry stepped away from the wall against which he'd been leaning and paid attention with extreme severity.

"There is a sorcerer..."

The door didn't open. It didn't even burst in off of its hinges. As far as dramatic interruptions went it wasn't very, until she saw what was happening to her office door. It was melting away, as though reality had become a popsicle in summertime.

Apparently, melting reality smelled of burnt plastic.

Vicki stared. The man who filled the doorway was wrong somehow. She didn't know, maybe it was the fact that someone so thin shouldn't fill the doorway so completely, maybe it was the fact that his lips were too thin and his teeth were too large, maybe it was the color of his eyes but she didn't really see his eyes that close, but something about him was deeply, maddeningly wrong. He smiled when he raised the crossbow, and he smiled as he took a step forward, and he smiled as he pulled the trigger or release or whatever it was called and shot a crossbow bolt straight into the breast bone of the bird-man.

Time slowed. She had seen this on TV, once. Time didn't slow, the human mind accelerated to cope with the increased speed of events. Even with an accelerated mind she was having trouble following what was happening.

First Nicodemus had been talking about missing people in the courts. Then a man-shaped thing melted her door and fired a crossbow bolt into the raven-man. Then Henry was crossing the room and had his hand around the man-shaped thing's throat. Then there was blood on the floor and time resumed with Nicodemus staggering backward, one hand clutched around the bolt.

There was blood in the air, blood over Henry's hand, and his teeth were out. This could be a problem.

The problem wasn't that someone had attacked them in their own home, or at least, place of business. It wasn't even that the girls had almost been killed.

The problem was that if Henry and Nicodemus didn't get back quickly with information, Vicki would decide that she had recovered sufficiently and go out looking for it herself. Henry knew her, well enough to know that she wasn't the kind of person to sit still. It was one of the things he loved about her. And sometimes, it was one of the things that irritated him the most about her.

At least Mike was with her. Even if she wouldn't sit still, he would take care of her. Henry knew him well enough by now to know that.

"Are you sure you are all right?" Nicodemus cocked his head and opened his beak at Henry; likely it was meant to be an expression of concern.

There was too much blood, even with magical healing, there was still blood all over his chest and his beak, his fingers. It was in the air, and down his throat, and he wanted more of it. Henry closed his eyes, pushed the Hunger back again. Dammit. He was a civilized person, he was a prince, and a man, and a good Catholic. He was many things, and only one of them was Vampire. One hand leaned on the wall as he pulled himself back upright again, opening his eyes to find the beak half-open and the black eyes fixed on him.

Henry nodded. "I'll live. You?" Short words. Short sentences. Deep breaths. Even if, well, he didn't need to breathe.

"I will be healed within the day." Whatever was left of the wound didn't seem to concern Nicodemus. He kept moving through the building, stepping carefully, and Henry followed in his exact footsteps. Not that he could see any one path separate from the uniformly bland linoleum, but that didn't mean it wasn't there.

Henry waited, at least, until they had come to a more lit section of the floor before he asked. "You knew that man."

Black feathers ruffled, stood up a bit, but he didn't say anything.

"You knew that man from somewhere. You recognized him, and he, you." Henry was sure of it, now, and there was something more behind that. He wondered if he should press, but Vicki's startled look was still vivid in his mind, and pushing a little at Nicodemus to talk about uncomfortable things would keep her safe, then he had absolutely no problem with that. "You've encountered him before."

Nicodemus paused in his steps for a moment, then kept walking at the same deliberate pace. "He killed my mate," he said, in the same tone of voice he had used for his comment of mind your step earlier.

"I see." Henry stopped. Hundreds of years of memories, deaths, women, one man, remembering them. Some of them, natural deaths. Some of them, unnatural. He remembered the screaming down the stone walls of the torture chambers of the Inquisition. All in the name of God, who he supposedly believed in as well, but their God was not his own. Did the faeries suffer these kind of confusions? People who should share a common belief system attacking each other because of those beliefs. It all turned round and round in his mind.

"What will you do?"

He shook his head, curls bouncing a little around his cheeks, distracting him with the brush of hair on skin. "What do you mean?"

Nicodemus turned his head almost all the way over his shoulder. "What will you do when they pass?"

Henry didn't like to think about that. "Move on. Survive, the way I always have. This is not my first time," he added, with a hint of a princely smile. He ignored the little voice inside of him that reminded him of the truth. That Vicki was different.

The bird-man didn't seem to be buying it. "If she dies first, will you and the other be able to make a life together?"

Unusually insightful. It was rare enough that an outsider picked up on the nuances of their relationships, let alone just how close and intimate all of them were. Not all of them to the same degree, but each of them to whatever degree. Henry swallowed, looked up at the stairs. They had reached a moment ago. "Mike and I are coming to an understanding," he said, realizing after he did so what he'd just said. He called Michael Cellucci "detective," or something of the sort. Rarely by his first name. Interesting. "You may have noticed..."

"... but he is not the sort to tolerate unconventional relationships." Nicodemus seemed to be laughing at him. Henry tried not to bristle too much.

"In any case, that isn't relevant to the hunt." There. Yes. The scent did go up the stairs. Centuries ago, he would have gone charging up the stairs and demanded bloody satisfaction. Centuries ago, he had been so very young. "They are on the roof."

"You are certain?"

Henry shrugged. "The scent is faint enough that they passed through here some time before. The roof is the only area above us that is large enough for a ritual of that kind. With luck, the ritual takes time and we are not too late. They will be carrying equipment and there will be a number of them to assemble, so we can count on a certain amount of preparation before they'll be ready."

Nicodemus looked impressed, head still for a moment before his feathers ruffled from nares to back. "A hunter who thinks. I am impressed."

"These days I believe they call them detectives." Henry smiled. He'd learned a lot from Vicki, though she might not believe it.

The bird-man's beak clacked as they continued to walk. "You are very human, for a nightwalker. You all but live with her, use human methods..."

Henry's eyebrows shot up. "I was human, if you recall your vampire lore. And there is much to recommend the modern way of investigation. Finding out truths and determining likely causes from clues left behind, observation and deduction." He turned back to the stairs, walking slow so that he didn't miss a crucial sound. "It is better, by far, than torture."

"It is slower than torture." From Nicodemus's tone Henry couldn't tell if he agreed or not.

"It is more reliable than torture. A man on the rack or a woman pressed by stones will tell you anything to be relieved of the pain, even by death."

"True enough." The bird head turned back to look at him. The creature's fingers were twitching, and his head kept tilting this way and that. "Are you ready?"

The roof.

They came up in the middle of it. Henry remembered Coreen saying something about open air and rituals and how it empowered then, but he lost track of it in all the New Age fluffy talk in which all the magic he had lately heard of was steeped. Whatever the cause or rationale, it was accurate. He could feel the energy running electric along his skin, raising hair on his arms and making him jittery. He could feel his teeth lengthening again. They hadn't seen him coming yet, but it was only a matter of time. The moment he got out of the door to the roof he moved to one side, not yet trusting how Nicodemus would react.

Heads popped up as they entered, some furious, some afraid. Fear was not what he had expected, but was welcome on its own merits. Fury was expected. Henry took quick stock of the creatures that were looking at them; a host of pale gray faces with matted hair and woven rush caps on their heads. It was the blood scent in the air that gave them away.

Surrounding the Red Caps were twisted creatures, human shaped but with moss growing out of their skin and knots at their elbows. Trolls, he thought. If that was the proper name for them. Smaller creatures yet than the Red Caps, little things with puffed up faces and too many teeth played around their ankles and had been, until he and Nicodemus lunged in, poking at the man on the ground. The bound man in blue jeans and a grayed flannel shirt. That, then, would be the lost Prince. He looked like a dissolute who would be found holding up a bar.

A clattering sound next to him drew his attention. Nicodemus was making clawing gestures with his hands, arms locked to his sides. As Henry listened more than watched, the faerie's bones cracked, and avian talons grew out of his fingernails, sending more blood into the air.

"Little Head of the House of Ru, you are charged with unlawful magic by the High King and the King of the Sluagh and..."

Henry was about to tell him that wouldn't likely work when the boggarts charged. The small things with too many teeth were boggarts, weren't they? He couldn't remember, but that didn't matter when the first one sank its teeth into Nicodemus's leg and bit off a great big chunk.

Too much blood in the air. Too much magic and power. The next boggart that charged towards him was grabbed, goes flying off the roof. The next one had its neck broken; he didn't know if that killed it and he wasn't going to stop to find out. The third bit his leg.

Blood frenzy was a delicate thing. There were rumors that such a state could be achieved, but he hadn't put any stock into them. Not on the basis of the scent of blood alone. When he was hungry, starved, yes, the Hunger took over and that was nothing but basic survival, but he was well fed. This should not be happening. And yet, the only part of his mind that was able to think such rational thoughts was the part that was observing, not the part that was in control of his actions. He bit, tore, savaged at anything that came his way.

Above his head, a gunshot rang out.

Henry lay on the cold concrete with stars in his vision. Shook his head to clear his ears of the ringing, wondering to himself when he had wandered into the Raymond Chandler novel. It was a device he'd used in his own graphic novels, but it wasn't supposed to save the day in real-world situations. Although, honestly, someone walking in with a gun and inclination to save your life could be a good thing, sometimes. Everyone stopped. Nicodemus stopped trying to get up, the battalion of pixies or boggarts or whatever stopped trying to coordinate attacks, and the Red Caps stopped trying to kill them. Which was a big bonus, in his books.

He twisted his head just enough to be able to see behind them. Hopefully, not enough movement to draw the attention of the murderous bastards trying to kill them. Detective Cellucci blocked the light from the stairwell down to the building, a very large revolver in his hand. "I've died," Henry muttered, "Somehow I've died again and gone to mystery novel hell."

"Don't be so dramatic," Vicki murmured in his ear. "It's easier to find a high-iron content revolver than a semi-automatic, and if he runs out of bullets he can always hit them with it."

Well, that made sense.

"Now, here's what we're going to do," Mike said, in his best talk-down-the-psycho voice. Henry had wondered, once, if all policemen practiced that voice or if it just came naturally to him. "You all are going to put down the sword... axe… things... and you're going to go back to where you came from. We are going to take the vampire, the bird brain, and..."

Vicki pointed.

"Your guy Friday, there, and we're going to leave. No one's going to shoot anyone else with cold iron rounds. No one's going to be doing any stabbing, or slicing, or any hurting of any kind. You got it?"

No one spoke.

"You guys speak English?"

Henry rolled his eyes. "Detective, they were speaking English before your grandparents were crawling on the Villa floor."

Mike said something to him in undoubtedly rude Italian and kept the gun pointed at the Red Caps. It had to be getting heavy in his hand, a revolver that size with bullets like that, but he stood there, still and straight. Vicki's fingers curled into Henry's shirt and clenched tight. Henry could hear and count her heartbeats.

"Henry." Mike drawled, when no one had said anything. "Get up."

Vicki tugged him to his feet as Henry staggered upright, almost resulting in the both of them toppling over to the other side. As quickly as the rush of energy had arrived it had left, and now he was scrambling to muster his resources.

"Detective," he rasped, through exhaustion and Hunger both. "I suggest we leave. As much as I would like to stay and assist..." He couldn't see the faerie. There was a black shadow on the floor between the legs of the creatures; maybe that was Nicodemus. He didn't know. "... we are clearly ... not of any use to this situation."

Out of their depth, was what he meant, and what Vicki and Mike at least heard. If the other faeries on the rooftop heard that, too, they gave no sign. Which was good. Henry did not mean to betray weakness to them, and had to fight to bring together enough focus to arrange his words in the strongest possible way.

"You should never have been involved in the first place."

That voice rumbled out between the legs of the trolls, higher than the heads of the boggarts. He wasn't sure what it was, not a Red Cap, that strange thatched hat was missing from the head of the creature that walked out. Similar gray skin, but different. Wild hair, and whirling red on gold eyes. Autumn colored eyes.

"If you leave now, you will leave alive, and intact." There was a smile with lots of pointed teeth. Henry wondered with brief irritation why it was always lots of teeth, and resolved to make his next villain have no teeth whatsoever.

Henry pulled himself straighter, pulling Vicki with him as well. "Are we to trust your word on that?" It didn't sound likely that they would be allowed to leave; backing off or backing down at least without a word would be seen as weak.

"You have no choice. You will leave, or you will die with this half-breed here." It kicked the man on the ground, who didn't stir. Henry's eyes narrowed. There was blood on the man's scalp, likely his own. "My people have not waited so long to be disappointed now."

Henry had been hoping for a continuation to that, but it stopped after the one ominous statement. No monologue, no treatise, no explanation of what was meant to happen or what kind of sacrifice they would be made a part of if they stayed. Mike's arm was lowering. His arm must be killing him.

"Do not interfere again," it said, and turned back to the unconscious faeries. Nicodemus in the process of being dragged by the nameless Prince, and the man himself still sprawled on the ground. Henry's lips peeled back in a silent snarl. He might not have liked or approved of Nicodemus, but the fae creature was a client of Vicki's, and therefore entitled to some measure of protection.

Which Henry couldn't give, as weakened as he was now. "Celluci..." he murmured.

"No," Mike gritted through a clenched jaw. "Get her out of here. I'll be right..."

Henry opened his mouth to argue, as the leading faerie raised its head to give them enough notice to tell them off again. Then there was a flurry of black feathers.

The impact of the gray creature's body hitting the opposite wall jolted even Henry's teeth. Bones crunched. It was debatable whether or not that would do any permanent damage given that they had just seen Nicodemus pull a crossbow bolt out of his chest, but the raven-headed man followed it up by rising in a poof-ball of black feathers and fists, laying about him with more crushing blows.

Henry was in mid-sentence when Mike's gun first went off. He shook his head in irritation at the man, trying to make the ringing in his ears stop. By the time it did, the fight was over. At least, the majority portion of it.

Nicodemus was standing over the fallen Prince with his feathers all a-ruffle and a very large, very thorny whip in his hands. No one asked where he'd pulled that from.

"..." Vicki said. Henry still could barely hear her.

"What?"

"I said..." Louder than normal volume, but his hearing was returning. "Are you all right?"

"No. Your detective..."

Mike glared at him.

"... shot a very large gun next to my head. No, I am not all right. What is going on?"

Vicki looked back at the tableau. Most of the faeries had scattered. "Far as I can tell, Nicodemus just kicked everyone's asses. With a little help from his friends," she added, one hand coming up to caress Mike's shoulder with a proud smile. Henry would have been more inclined to agree if his ears weren't still ringing.

Ah well. He looked around again. It was down to just the five of them.

"What will you do now?"

Nicodemus looked down at the unconscious man and clacked his beak a couple of times in irritation. "None of this happened by chance, and we only saw the pawns, as I believe you call them. The red caps, the boggarts, they are soldiers for hire. I don't know what is going on in my court any longer, but I will need to make my own way back and report to my liege."

Mike spoke up, surprising everyone. "Turning in the schmuck here could get you a lot of credit with the people in power, as I understand it."

Another clack of his beak, and he shook his head, feathers ruffling. "I will not. I am not inclined to trade this man's safety for my own. I am not blind to the games of the court, though I had believed myself more valuable to my King than it seems I was. That does not mean that I enjoy playing them, or that I will return to those habits, given a choice." None of them were certain that he did have a choice, but Henry didn't hear anyone speaking out. "I will do the best I can with what credit I still have. With regards to your concerns," he nodded to Vicki, "I will see what can be done. I can promise no more than that, not even that I will survive the coming months."

Everyone kept staring. Vicki took a step forward, folding her arms over her chest. "It doesn't sound like you think you're going to."

Nicodemus smiled, or what approximated a smile on him. "Good luck, to all of you."

Mike blinked, shook his head at empty air, and swore again. "I really hate when you people do that."

"I do not, by the way, do that as often as you seem to accuse me of."

They were watching, at Vicki's insistence, A Midsummer Night's Dream. The more recent version. Henry was making appreciative noises every time Demetrius came on the screen, which amused Vicki and caused Mike to ask, halfway through the movie, if Henry wanted to be alone for the rest of it. Henry only commented back of it if Mike wanted to take advantage of his interest all he had to do was ask.

"You do." He reached behind Vicki and shoved at the vampire's shoulder, though it was more of a friendly gesture. In the spirit of that, Henry tapped Vicki's leg, who elbowed Mike in turn. "Ow! Hey!"

"Do what?" Henry wasn't the only one distracted by the movie.

"That disappearing thing. That whole," Mike waved his hands a bit, "one minute here the next minute gone thing. Vanishing before your eyes. It's annoying."

Vicki dug her shoulders further back into Mike's chest, snuggling down and digging her heel into the outside of Henry's thigh. "You do," she told Henry. "You do do it pretty often, you know. But Mike was wrong about the whole you people thing."

Both men stared at her, not having the first idea what she was talking about. She didn't elaborate, either. They looked up at each other, exchanged a glance, and shook their heads. Mike combed his fingers through her hair, mostly because it was better than listening to Henry and her discuss that actor who was playing Demetrius. Shakespeare wasn't his thing, that much, anyway. But curling up on the couch after a long day and a really weird case seemed like exactly what he needed. Even if the damn vampire was on the other side of her.

Actually, the damn vampire was starting to grow on him.

"Vicki?" The movie was almost over. Vicki had stopped talking, had mostly stopped moving except for shifting her position here and there. He looked over at Henry, who shook his head.

"She's asleep," he mouthed at him.

Probably a good thing. None of them had gotten very much sleep in the last few days.

"You should sleep, as well."

Mike grumbled something deliberately inaudible, at least until the last couple of words when he remembered that Henry had that damn vampire hearing. After another second he dared to look up, to see the other man's expression. Henry was grinning.

"Don't get excited," he pointed a finger at Henry. "That doesn't mean anything."

"On the contrary. It means a great deal, detective." It did. But that didn't mean Henry wasn't grinning at the sheer hilarity of it all, Mike's embarrassment, everything. "Thank you."

"Henry. You're sleeping with my girlfriend,"

"Our. Our girlfriend."

That still struck him as weird. He ignored it. "You could at least call me by my name once or twice. You keep calling me that, makes me feel like I'm a hooker or something."

Henry turned away, which alarmed Mike only until he saw the other man burying his face in the side of the couch, shoulders shaking with laughter. He shook his head, reaching around to smack the vampire the head with a pillow. Henry blocked it, of course. Stupid vampire reflexes. Or maybe he had a point about Mike being tired. His aim was worse than it could have been.

"Yeah, well. If we move, we'll wake her up."

"No we won't."

Mike narrowed his eyes at the other man. "Did you put the whammy on her?"

"I didn't need to. She was exhausted, just as you are." To prove his point, Henry eased out from beneath her feet and moved to the loveseat collect the blanket and throw it over her. Mike took his time inching out from beneath her and following his lead, at least until Henry caught her around and behind her shoulders and at the back of her head, easing her down while Mike moved away. Henry had been right. She didn't move, didn't say anything. Didn't wake up. After another few minutes of both of them staring at her, she began to snore.

"Come on," Henry reached out to Mike, resting a hand on the back of his shoulder. "Let's go to bed."

He was with him right up until Henry had said that. "Don't do that." He shook his hand off his shoulder.

Henry's face darkened, just slightly. "Sorry."

That hadn't been what Mike had expected. Anger, maybe, yes, but not disappointment. Not hurt. "Don't say that like we're, you know." He said, his tone gruff and his words stuttering from uncertainty. "We're not. I don't swing that way, and even if I did, you're not my type."

"Do you think that's what matters?" Henry moved around the coffee table Mike realized he had put between the two of them, but didn't step up into Mike's personal space. "Is that why you and Vicki were together, because she is your type? Type may carry an attraction but it is not what makes a relationship."

"Is that we have?" For some reason this answer was important. Then again, so was the question. Huh.

Henry shrugged. Stared at Mike. If he wanted an answer before he gave one, that wasn't going to happen. Mike was uncomfortable enough with the conversation already. But then again, the way he was staring at him was kind of an answer in and of itself. You didn't get that kind of intensity without... well, in Henry's case, being a few hundred years old. But also without caring about someone. Mike wasn't sure how to take that. Except, he didn't mean to hurt the old bastard. He kind of liked him, in fact. In ways that also made him uncomfortable, and that he wasn't looking at too closely yet.

Mike shook his head and dropped his gaze. "Never mind. Stupid question. Forget I asked."

Henry nodded, and moved towards his coat.

"Hey. Where are you going?"

The vampire gave him an inquiring stare.

"Well," Mike made himself say, "I'm going to bed. You coming or not?"

Henry wouldn't push the boundaries. He knew how uncomfortable Mike was with all this. So he wouldn't push, not yet. But Henry was growing on him, and they had to get along for Vicki's sake at least, and the guy was a good friend. Mike knew he had his back. He'd never really been against that way of life, it just wasn't his thing. But apparently, at least according to Henry, relationships weren't about things at all. Henry had been a part of Vicki's life more and more the past few weeks. A part of his life, too. He thought back to the night a few nights ago, realized how it had been actually pretty damn nice once he'd finally relaxed.

That didn't mean he wasn't a little freaked out by this, but it nudged him to sling an arm around the shorter man's shoulders and steer them towards the bedroom. "Sleep. I'm going to sleep. So don't you go getting your hopes up."

Henry chuckled, and the pressure eased a little. "Not this first night, anyway."

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