“So, that’s my answer. None of us is perfect, but one of your biggest jerks we’ve come across was still decent to the hobgoblins, who you have to be evil inside to be mean to. That tells me a lot about you guys. I like the dragons—I have a lot of dragon friends—but we’re getting too many reports that they abused hobgoblins.”
“Excessively,” Mel spat. “Kicking them all the time. The ones being rescued in Africa were some of the worst treated. It makes me sick.”
“Plus, there’s no benefit to you betraying me,” I admitted, addressing the elephant in the room and making everyone freeze. “You didn’t wear telepathy blocking charms around me. I’ve not used it because you didn’t try to hide from me, but you guys are excited too. I would put money on that being the new talk that one of my parents was a fairy and I’m some super witch whose mother died in childbirth.
“But more than that, I’m good to my friends, and the other councils stab each other in the back. You try to get in with me to find out anything useful to them and they’ll burn you to keep me all to themselves and then you’ve burned that bridge with me. So, there is no scenario where betraying me could ever help you. If there is something you want, you have to know being straight with me is your best bet.”
“We would have taken this meeting before the latest rumors about you—most likely pushed by your people to amuse the idiots for a while—simply to get the chance to meet you,” Brooks replied.
That was good to know, but the rumors weren’t pushed by us. They were way too close to home about me having a fairy parent to ever risk someone on my side reacting badly or giving too much away. We were trying to quietly squash them before someone made a bad—but logical—conclusion about me.
“We are also curious as to why it was only the three of us invited,” Councilman Chin muttered.
“That’s both easy and complicated,” I sighed. “The easy is Zack and/or Ray have personally dealt with you in wolf or police matters and worked with your people. They felt comfortable vouching for you after doing a bit of digging you were still good people.”
“And the complicated?” Duncan pushed.
“Some of your counterparts aren’t as clean as you are and have some misdeeds I take issue with,” I admitted. “Two have some white collar crimes going on with the humans and some shit hedge fund stuff that would make me want to trust them like never, but one goes way over the line. One is quite the sinner wearing the pope hat and thinks as long as he does bad things with humans, it doesn’t count.”
“What sins has he committed?” Brooks asked, looking as if he didn’t buy that in the slightest.
Mel cleared her throat, letting me know she wanted to take over as the adult they would listen to more.
Fine by me.
“You are all smart enough to have looked into what Tamsin and I were doing before she came into our fold and while I was away from the community,” she hedged, waiting until they nodded. “We came across one of your council before, and I immediately called Tamsin off of him, thinking she knew she was a supe, and we stayed away from supe issues.
“Clearly, she didn’t, and us always being around humans led me to make many mistakes, but in this, we weren’t wrong. The evidence was extensive, and from what we know, still ongoing. We are stirring up a lot of trouble on several fronts for such crimes, and we’ve always done exactly what we’re doing right now—allowing parties to handle matters privately first. So, we will leave the evidence with you to handle.”
There was a long pause before Chin focused on Zack. “Have you seen this evidence, Captain?”
“I have, and I have spoken with these people they found years ago that Melody pointed me towards. It is true and extensive. He’s not only guilty, but there is a mess to clean up in the human world so as to not embarrass the wolves. They even offered help on that front since they have a genius hacker who can cover a lot of it up.”
“As long you don’t try for her name and keep her out of it as she’s human,” I interjected. I would be fine covering up human stuff, but not outing this world to her and putting her in danger.
“What has our colleague been doing behind our backs?” Brooks ground out.
“Putting human sex workers in the hospital with too rough of sex they didn’t agree to is the worst offense on my list,” I answered. “But there’s an illegal gambling ring with the Bratva that is going to be your biggest issue to handle and clean up. Oh, and some serious gun smuggling to them as well.”
Needless to say, there was a lot of cussing in the room.
I had that effect on people.
We went over details during dinner and then talked more about the cloaking invention. They asked a bit about my dealings with Geoff, and I had a feeling there were some politics going on there I didn’t understand, as I knew the wolf had said he’d wanted to back away from council stuff… But I had thought not his own. Maybe?
Hell if I could keep up with it all.
The evening went way better than planned, even some teasing about the hobgoblins mysteriously disappearing from bad houses. Clearly, they knew it was me and weren’t going to push it. They could joke like that because I hadn’t been to a single wolf shifter house, and I didn’t have one on the list to go to.
No
