Free Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs Page A

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