“The nerve! Asking me to help you, when you didn’t want me, want to help me.”
A tear welled up in the corner of Tammy’s eye and she bit into her bottom lip.
“I did help you, Tammy,” Griffen said.
“Humph. Not enough! So I scried about for a big, nasty-looking power that looked unconnected to the conclave, and led the garou to it. Figured while they were getting the tar beat out of them, I could skip town.”
Griffen nodded, having figured out that much. What he couldn’t figure out was how the other shifters had caught her. The only possibility seemed to be…
“You were following the garou, figuring that they were better trackers after all but that you might be able to beat them back to me with any information they found?” Griffen said to the lesser shifters.
There were some embarrassed glances about, and one of those who wasn’t holding Tammy at the time nodded. In other circumstances, Griffen might have smiled at how the young man blushed.
“Not all of us, just one, me, keeping tabs on them. I saw Tammy break away from them as they went into a building, and a few seconds later the sound of fighting. I called the others and decided to follow Tammy. When she caught us, she tried to shove her fingers through my skull, and that kind of clinched the whole thing for us.”
Griffen looked through the crowd for Jay, Tail, and Kane. The various representatives of the shifters gave embarrassed looks and shrugs back. Silently, he agreed with them; there were other things that took precedence just now.
“You are all missing something very important,” Harrison said.
The crowd turned its attention to him, and, one-handed, he drew a cigarette and lit it, taking a long drag. The other hand still held his firearm, but it was almost as if he had forgotten it was there.
“I don’t know what you all are, or why you are all here. But I know perps and murderers. I can buy this kid doing something like this, but not thinking it up. You said, ‘sounded like a good idea at the time,’ but you said it oddly. So I have to ask—who did you hear it from?”
Griffen played back the conversation in his head. Harrison was right. Tammy’s tone had tightened just a bit, her eyes glancing away for just a moment. She hadn’t come up with the scheme. Someone had played her like a violin.
At the moment she just glared at the cop and clenched her jaw. It was clear she wasn’t going to answer.
Tink, who no one seemed to pay attention to till he moved, slapped her again.
“Answer,” he said, and this time Griffen could practically feel a chill breeze off his words.
“He’s wrong; it was my idea!”
“Bullshit. Maybe your impulse, but you never have been one for planning,” Tink said.
“It was just a guy in a bar, pointed out I couldn’t take Griffen, or Tail, or anyone else I was really mad at. Suggested who I might get at.”
“What guy?” Griffen said.
“Why should I help you?!” Tammy spat, and struggled again in the shifters’ hands.
Tink raised his hand, and Tammy subsided.
“It was just a guy, tall, dark hair. No smell of serious power on him. Said he worked for a dragon. Someone who didn’t want your life to be all roses. Never said more,” Tammy said.
It was Valerie who spoke up next, a handful of words that expressed all the frustration Griffen was suddenly feeling.
“Well,
Griffen agreed, the list was long in his head. Stoner he hadn’t heard anything from in a while. Flynn he had begun to mistrust. It was the kind of indirect move that could be the style of Melinda, or even George if Tammy had been wrong about the dragon part.
For that matter, where had Mai gone to when Lizzy appeared?
And now he had no idea what to do. Tammy was half-right when she said he wouldn’t punish her. He didn’t really know how.
Harrison was pulling a pair of handcuffs out.
“Right, that’s enough for here. I will get more out of her behind bars. Will these hold her?”
“Links of iron? Oh yes. But you aren’t taking her with you,” Tink said.
And with those simple words the tension level in the room skyrocketed once more. The fairy, still dressed like Alice just out of the looking glass, squared off with the detective, his sheet of a costume lying forgotten on the floor somewhere.
“She is under arrest,” Harrison said.
“Oh? You think you will get her to sign a confession? Think you can prove anything she has said? Hell, if you have a wire on you, I’ll bet you your pension it’s fried and with nothing usable on it,” Tink said.
“You are just going to let a murderer go free?” Harrison shouted.
“No, we will take her, and punish her. She was our responsibility; it is a matter of honor that one of ours who violated this conclave be dealt with by our hand,” Tink said.
Griffen spoke up, feeling the weight of his responsibilities.
“And just what ‘punishment’ do you have in mind, Tink?”
“Death would seem appropriate, or the stripping of her glamour. Or we could just force her form into something else. Does this hotel need a new potted plant?” Tink asked.
“I’m not sure I can let you do that. Another murder won’t erase the first, and I am responsible for this conclave and any decisions of this magnitude,” Griffen said.
“Decisions between the groups perhaps; this is between us changelings.”
“It’s vigilantism, and I won’t tolerate it,” Harrison said, outshouting the other two.
George moved, and something about the swirl of his cape drew eyes all around the room. He bent next to Lizzy, glancing sidelong at Val, and picked up his fallen sword. The room watched as he wiped it off on a table napkin and slid it into its sheath.
“Murderer aside, may I ask just what you plan to report about all this?” George asked.
“That’s evidence, and self-defense for the brawl. I don’t think anyone needs to see jail time for it. But don’t push me. You were a chief agitator, and, at very least, I could drag you in for aiding and abetting.”
George smiled.
“No, you can’t.”
He turned, took Val’s hand, and kissed it. She was too tired and shocked to pull it away. “Thank you for a lovely night.” He stood and vanished.
“Show-off,” Valerie muttered.
Harrison stared at where he had been and turned back to Tink and Tammy. Griffen could tell some of his resolve had been eaten away.
“She has to go in. This must be settled by due process,” Harrison said.
“Due process, yes, but not yours. This is outside your law,” Tink said.
“No, nothing is outside the law.”
Griffen fought down a clever remark, but it was a funny thing to hear from a vice detective. The room was beginning to fill with life again, people milling about. This was good and fascinating entertainment, but things were relaxing, with the immediate danger well past.
There was a soft sigh behind him, one he recognized. He spoke softly, under his breath, as the two argued.
“What took you so long, Rose?” he said.
“Wrong kind of magic flaring up, things have only just settled down enough for my sort,” she said.
“Did you know how much of a mess you were pulling me into?”
“Would you be happier if I said yes or no? I only wanted what’s best for the conclave,” Rose said.
“And what’s best, out of this mess?”
Griffen waved his hand at the two men still arguing. Tammy had slumped in her captors’ grips, defeated. Tears running down her face. The shifters holding her kept looking about, not sure what to do next.
“I am glad you asked, but you won’t like the answer.”
Rose cleared her throat loudly enough to draw attention. A few of the voodoo practitioners gasped, including
