Free Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs Page B

ground. History degrees aren’t entirely useless. “English and German both come from the same roots. The differences between medieval English and German are a lot smaller than the modern languages.”
    Tony made an unhappy noise. “Damn it, Mercy. I have a brutal murder and the brass wants it solved yesterday. Especially as we have a suspect caught red-handed. Now you’re telling me that he didn’t do it and that our high-paid, expert consultant is lying to us or doesn’t know as much as she says she does. That O’Donnell was a murderer—though the fae will probably deny that any murders ever took place—but if I so much as ask about it, we’re going to have the Feds breathing down our necks because now this crime involves Fairyland. All this without one hard, cold piece of evidence.”
    â€œYes.”
    He swore nastily. “The hell of it is that I believe you, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how I’m going to tell any of this to my boss—especially as I’m not really in charge of this case.”
    There was a long silence on both our parts.
    â€œYou need to get him a lawyer,” he said. “He’s not talking, which is wise of him. But he needs to have a lawyer. Even if you are sure he is innocent, especially if he is innocent, he needs a very good lawyer.”
    â€œAll right,” I agreed. “I don’t suppose I could get in to get a look”—a sniff, actually—“at the crime scene?” Maybe I’d be able to find out something that modern science could not—like someone who’d been at one of the other murder sites.
    He sighed. “Get a lawyer and ask him. I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you with that. Even if he gets you in, you’ll have to wait until our crime scene people are through with it. You’d do better to hire a private investigator, though, someone who knows how to look at a crime scene.”
    â€œAll right,” I said. “I’ll find a lawyer.” Hiring a human investigator would either be a waste of money—or a death sentence for the investigator if he happened upon some secret or other that the Gray Lords didn’t want made public. Tony didn’t need to know that.
    â€œTony, make sure you are looking farther than the length of your nose for a killer. It wasn’t Zee.”
    He sighed. “All right. All right. I’m not assigned to this case, but I’ll talk to some of the guys who are.”
    We said our good-byes and I looked around for Kyle.
    I found him standing in a small crowd a little ways away, far enough from the stage that their conversation didn’t interfere with the next performer’s music. Samuel and his instrument cases were in the center of the group.
    I put my cell phone in my back pocket (a habit that has destroyed two phones so far) and tried to blank my face. It wouldn’t help with the werewolves, who would be able to smell my distress, but at least I wouldn’t have complete strangers stop and ask me what was wrong.
    There was an earnest-looking young man wearing a tie-dyed shirt talking at Samuel, who was watching him with amusement apparent only to people who knew him very well.
    â€œI haven’t ever heard that version of the last song you played,” the young man was saying. “That’s not the usual melody used with it. I wanted to find out where you heard it. You did an excellent job—except for the pronunciation of the third word in the first verse. This”—he said something that sounded vaguely Welsh—“is how you said it, but it should really be”—another unpronounceable word that sounded just like the first one he’d uttered. I may have grown up in a werewolf pack led by a Welshman, but English was the common language and neither the Marrok nor Samuel his son used Welsh often enough to give me an ear for it. “I just thought