“It’s okay,” I said, and awkwardly embraced the girl. As Pepper huddled against me, her one sleeve pushed up and I saw scales. I rubbed my finger over them.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

“Her glamour’s broken.” Melanie hesitated, and her voice cracked. “She’s broken.”

I rubbed Pepper’s shoulders, and she snuggled closer, her body warming as she absorbed my heat.

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“There was a man. A client. She’d been seeing him for a while, and he seemed fine, but I guess he was … what do they call it? Grooming her? He invited her to his place for a night. Promised her a lot of money. Only it wasn’t just him, and it wasn’t just a night. We didn’t find her for a week, and by then … Lamiae can handle a lot. We’re used to it. But sometimes …” She walked over and hugged Pepper. “Sometimes even we break.”

Melanie backed up, hands going into her hoodie pockets. “Aunika helps with her. We—the others and I—we feed her. We’d never expect her to … She couldn’t … Not after that. We can feed her our energy. It’s not enough to fix her, though. Nothing’s enough.” Melanie exhaled. “Anyway, that’s Pep. She’d never hurt anyone. But she can be hurt. Easily. With this psycho hunting us, Aunika was trying to figure out a safe place for Pepper. Where he can’t find her, and where we won’t have to worry about her so we can focus on protecting ourselves until someone catches this guy. That’s what you’re doing, right? Trying to catch him?”

“Let’s get her someplace warm,” Ricky said, his first words since we arrived. “Do you guys eat?” He looked at Pepper. “Or I guess public places are out of the question, with those eyes.”

“She has contacts. Aunika got them.” Melanie squeezed Pepper’s shoulder. “Hey, Pep. Can you put in your contacts? We’re going someplace warm. Get you some soup, maybe.” Pepper’s empty eyes lighted as she dipped her chin in a nod. Then she hurried to a backpack in the corner and riffled through it.

“She doesn’t talk, but she understands,” Melanie said. “Aunika says she’s like a five-year-old. She can follow instructions. She just doesn’t always want to.” She forced a smile. “Right, Pep?” The girl was putting in contacts. When she straightened, her eyes were unnaturally dark but close enough to normal.

“Okay, Pepper,” I said. “We’re going to take you in a special car where even the seats heat up. Does that sound good?”

Her enthusiastic nod said it sounded very good. I mouthed, “Sorry,” to Gabriel—in case having lamiae in his Jag wasn’t quite what he had in mind—but he only waved for us to head out.

It was past dawn. Breakfast time. I offered to find a place that would still serve soup if that’s what Pepper wanted, but Melanie said she’d be fine with anything hot. We stopped at a diner. Pepper got a steaming bowl of oatmeal and a large hot chocolate, and settled into the corner of the booth, blissfully warming her insides as we talked to Melanie.

The first big question was, how’d she know who we were?

“Rina told me about you before she died.”

“Rina—that’s one of the victims, right?”

Melanie ate a mouthful of oatmeal before replying. From the bliss in her eyes as she ate, hot food didn’t help just Pepper.

“She’s one of the two girls who died. We call them girls. Or sisters. It’s about assimilating. That’s what Aunika’s mom said. Use the human words so we fit in better. Talk like teenagers so we fit in better. Anyway, the two girls who died were Rina and Steph. We use human names, too. Like most assimilated fae. But I guess you knew that.”

A long drink of her coffee. Then she continued. “You met Rina and Steph. Or they met you. You wouldn’t have known what they were. It was months ago, back when that stuff about your parents came out.”

“The girls outside the apartment. I was trying to find a place to stay, and I saw them by the street, and then in an alley, where they were threatening …” I trailed off, not wanting to speak ill of the dead.

“Threatening a bogart,” Melanie said. “Rina told me. It was a territorial issue, and those two could be …” She shrugged. “Some of us are more aggressive with other fae. Rina and Steph would rattle their cages, which is what you saw. When Steph died—she was the first one killed—Rina came to me. The two of them stuck together. They were theegateers—from the same family—like me and Pepper. They kept apart from the rest of us. But then Steph died, and Rina wanted me to get Aunika to contact you.”

“Me?”

“She knew who you were, after it all came out a few months ago. Other fae were talking, and she realized you were the one who’d caught them with the bogart. She wanted your help.”

“Because I’m an investigator?”

“No, because you’re Matilda. Rina thought you could intercede on our behalf with the Cainsville fae to get their help stopping the killer. Which I know you can’t,” Melanie added quickly. “So I put her off by saying I’d think about it. Then she disappeared, and we discovered she was dead. Before I could decide what to do, Aunika disappeared, and I heard you’d been to see her. When you left that message for me, I looked you up and learned that you’re a private investigator. I’d been trying to decide whether to phone you back about Aunika and the murders, to see if that’s what you’d been talking to her about.”