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  As long as the rumors about the braggart attitude of the elf had only reached him trough other people, Shim had done his best to just ignore them, as difficult as it was.

  When, however, he had accidentally seen him telling the great story of how he had defeated the killer monster single-handedly, he'd been no longer able to resist and he had spat on his face what he thought of all that, recalling the thirteen dead people that should have been on the elf's conscience.

  That could have ended there, if the elf hadn't replied that he had had nothing to do with the missing transfer, and that probably Crew was to blame for delaying it. Then Shim, who had no need to know how things had gone to be absolutely sure of that, had climbed on top of a desk and knocked him out with a straight punch of which a boxing champion would have been proud, soliciting the applauses of the beholders.

  From then on, or better from the moment he had come back to his senses, the elf had no longer spoken to him, leaving him to wonder why – considering the result – he hadn't punched him much earlier.

  Celen went on his path, steadily intentioned not to have that meeting ruin his day.

  Apparently he didn't think that having to survey the scene of a homicide was enough in itself to ruin a day. After all, that was his job.

  A short time later he was on the roof of the building, where some officers had been waiting for him, ready to leave on board of their carpets. The elf sat on one of the vehicles and said they could leave.

  It didn’t take them long to reach an elegant villa in the suburbs, in the eastern part of the city. The whole area had already been enclosed by the patrol who had answered the first call, so to prevent any stranger to walk in.

  The carpets landed directly within the perimeter. Celen left his vehicle and moved swiftly toward the corpse, lying face down on the entry alleyway, not far from the gate facing the street. The body was that of a woman, slender and fair-skinned. Her long blond hair covered it like some kind of transparent shroud. The clothes she wore where much too thin for the season, and on her left foot she had a simple, heelless sandal. The one she used to have on her right was nearby, probably slipped away while she was falling.

  An unnaturally pale bloodstain spread around her head like a halo, flooding the cracks between the stones paving the alleyway. The elf examined it with live interest.

  Right then, one of the two officers who had already started to inspect the scene approached him with a small purse in his hands, probably belonging to the victim. He fished out of it a small rectangle of some rigid stuff and gave it to the elf, who examined if, frowning for a while. That explained the color of the blood, but in turn it made a whole new series of questions arise.

  «Odd,» he murmured, rather to himself than for the benefit of the others, «a fairy with an identification card.»

  «Evidently she had obtained citizenship», one of the agents replied, kneeling over the body. Fortunately for him, Celen was deep in his thoughts and didn't stress out how useless and obvious that unasked for information was.

  The fact that a fairy, or any other creature coming from Faerie actually, asked for citizenship in any place of the prime plane was quite rare. Usually those beings were less than inclined to conform to laws that weren't theirs, as well as to mingle with mortals, if not at their own conditions, mostly inexplicable to anyone else. As far as he was concerned, Celen had never seen anyone belonging to the fairy Kingdom sporting a valid identification card.

  «I thought fairies were immortal», added the same officer, challenging his luck and losing miserably.

  The elf answered him with such an acrid tone that his words could have dissolved the corpse, not even leaving the bones. «They are», he hissed. «They can't die of old age, or illness. Violent death is a different thing. I thought you learned such things at academy.»

  The agent seemed to become suddenly much smaller.

  «No... I...» For a second he was about to tell him that maybe courses of that kind where planned for lab technicians, and that he didn't belong to the crime scene investigation unit, being just a simple patrol agent. That, however, should have already been clear by his uniform, and pointing it out would probably make the elf even sourer.

  The elf solved his problem by starting to ignore his very existence completely and moving to one of the small columns the gate was hinged to.

  «There's blood on this», he remarked.

  One of the officers who had come there with him immediately moved closer to examine the area he was looking at. A pinkish stain, the same color as the blood on the stones, could be seen in the inner corner of the column.

  «Probably she hit her head on the corner, here», he said, pointing a finger at the column, careful not to touch it. «The impact could have been enough to kill her.»

  «No, you idiot», Celen replied, huffing. The officer turned to him a perplexed look.

  «She must have hit this», the elf added, pointing at the metal ornament on the top of the column, more or less at the height of his head. It was an elaborated decoration shaped like something halfway between a pineapple and a pine cone. There weren't any visible traces on it, even though it would have probably been hard to see that clear fluid on its dark surface without any aid.

  Judging by the reaction of his subordinate, Celen concluded he hadn't understood a thing, and didn't restrain from telling him.

  «It's iron!» he shrieked, almost hysterically «A fairy doesn't die for hitting her head on a stone, it's not that simple. Cold iron is extremely dangerous for them. She must have hit this, then the blood flowed down the stone.»

  He turned again his attention to the document.

  «She didn't live here. Whose is this villa?»

  The first officer was quick to answer, glad that the conversation had turned back on a subject he knew some more about.

  «It's doctor Grace Elmond's», he replied, then hurriedly added. «The surgeon.»

  Celen knew the name, but not the person. He had never met her. Till then.

  «Is there anyone home?»

  «No, no one.»

  «Then find this Grace Elmond and bring her to the precinct for questioning. Any witness?»

  «None. The area is quite secluded, the ideal place for people who want some degree of privacy. Between each villa and the others there is...» he was about to say there was a lot of free space, but the left eyebrow of the elf arching made him desist, before he could strike him just for having said something he was able to see by himself. He immediately changed subject. «We tried to question the neighbors but there is no one home at this time of the day. The person who informed us of the body did not leave any name.»

  «Detective,» the officer who was still looking into the bag of the victim cut in, «I think you might be interested in this.»

  He handed him a small sheaf of papers. They were creased, and it was obvious from the folds they sported that they had been folded in three, maybe to put them into an envelope that wasn't there.

  The elf took it and carefully read the first page. An expression of live interest appeared on his face.

  «Good. Very good. I'm going back to the precinct. You finish the examination of the scene and have the body brought away as soon as possible.»

  As soon as Celen walked away, the remaining policemen sighed in relief.

  The patrol officer waited for a while before speaking, unsure whether it was the case to. Finally he couldn't restrain himself any longer and asked: «Is he always like that?»

  The other officers exchanged a look. «Even worse, at times», the one holding the bag said.

  «No, no, sometimes he is not worse. All the rest of the time he is», the one who had been called an idiot for his remark about the column, and who was now examining that very place, specified.

  «Anyway, there is no blood on this thing», he remarked.

  «It doesn't matter», the patrol officer replied without having been asked.

  «What does it mean it doesn't matter?» asked the first, sur
prised.

  «Your chief said a fairy does not die simply for banging her head. Whatever he meant, I guess she didn't die just because she fell and hit that.»

  «He also said that iron...» started the first, beginning to think that, maybe, the elf hadn't been too wrong treating his colleague like he had.

  «Yes, I heard what he said. But that's not iron, that's bronze.»

  CHAPTER 4

  Celen entered the questioning room with his usual cocky countenance. From the way he walked he gave the impression that he felt to be above any other living being, which by the way, with a few exceptions, was true.

  Grace was sitting stiffly at the table, with a gaze in her eyes which forebode a thug struggle between the two of them to conquer the first place in the ranks of self-confidence.

  She wore a tight dark-blue skirt, a matching racket and a plain white shirt, mostly unbuttoned. She had untied her hair, which she usually tied in a flowing ponytail, and looked like someone who is about to explode. Actually she almost always looked like that, even without a sound reason. In this case, however, the reason was obvious; she had been taken from her clinic by two agents in uniform who had forced her to go to the police headquarters. Granted, they had made it clear that she was only to be questioned, still this was no proper justification for such a behavior, from her point of view. It wasn't the first time that the police had to ask her something – as if just being a necromancer meant she had to be suspected of any crime which was even marginally related to her arts – but usually they had the good taste of visiting her in her office instead of dragging her there and waste her precious time. The fact that, at the moment, her time was everything but precious – since she had nothing better to do than sitting in her room whirling her thumbs and hoping for a patient to show up – didn't change the situation. Furthermore, the police couldn't know this.

  «I am detective Delmenar», the elf introduced himself. «I am sorry for having you brought here, I have some questions for you». The tone he used to state that he was sorry mostly conveyed the fact that he couldn't have cared less. If Grace had made him notice, that would have been much less annoying for him than what she actually said.

  «I was expecting the dwarf.»

  «Which dwarf?» he asked, as if he really could have any doubt about the subject of the conversation.

  «Your colleague, Stonehand. Usually he's the one to bother me when you decide I might have broken some law.»

  «Detective Stonehand is not involved in this case. You will have to answer to me. I hope you're not disappointed». Also this time the meaning of the sentence was completely negated by the tone he had used.

  «I still don't know», she replied.

  Celen decided to get to the point. «Do you know a miss Lyana?»

  «I know a fairy with that name, she works for me. I don't know if she is the same Lyana you are talking about.»

  «You have a fairy working for you?»

  «I have many people working for me.»

  «Doing what exactly?»

  «If you really need me to tell you, you must be the only one in the whole city not to know my clinic.»

  «I didn't want to know what you do. I was speaking about your employee, Lyana.»

  «Adding subjects to sentences helps sometimes, didn't you know?» she said in a sharp tone. «Lyana is a witch, one of the best in her field, like anyone working for me actually. She is specialized in breast modeling.»

  The elf seemed a little embarrassed by that. It wasn't the mention of breasts to irk him, rather he was one of those people who cannot accept the idea of someone wanting to modify the shape they were given at birth and trying to change it with the help of supernatural means. Of course he could understand why some inferior races felt the need to improve themselves, but he also knew how hopeless that was.

  He let the subject drop.

  «When did you see her last time?»

  «This morning.»

  «Where?»

  «At the clinic», she answered impatiently. «I see her there every day, we work in the same place, I thought I had been clear.»

  «So this morning she was at work.»

  «Should I say it again?»

  «It's odd because, see, we found her dead recently.»

  «Dead?» unlike the elf, Grace didn't even try not to show the surprise she had felt at that statement. After all, there was nothing she should be ashamed of in not knowing already what she had just been said. The contrary would have been more worrisome.

  «So?»

  «So what?»

  «How do you explain that you said you saw her at the clinic?»

  Grace reserved him the same look a frog must reserve to a bug.

  «I have nothing to explain. I saw her this morning at the clinic. I never said she was there all morning. She left a few hours earlier because she had something to do.»

  «Why didn't you say so before?»

  «Because you only asked me when I had seen her last time», she hissed.

  «I suppose you don't know what it was that she had to do.»

  «I'm not used to mess with the private life of my employees as long as it doesn't come in the way of their work.»

  «What if I told you it did?»

  «I'd tell you that obviously you know more than me and that I would really appreciate if you got to the point and let me go, I have things to do too». The last thing wasn't true, but even the idea of staying in her office doing nothing was more pleasant than that of dragging on that conversation any longer.

  «Fine, then I will tell you what happened. You found out that your employee was about to sign a contract with another clinic...»

  «Ah, really?» she interrupted him sarcastically.

  He went on, ignoring her. «You had her come to your house, you argued, then...»

  «My house?» This time hers was a simple question, with no particular aftertaste.

  «The body was found in your garden.»

  «In my garden? You found a body in my garden?» she seemed deeply upset rather than surprised.

  «Exactly. Are you still sure that you saw her for the last...» Grace didn't leave him the time to complete the question.

  «So you're telling me that I found that Lyana wanted to cross over to the competition, although I don't understand which competition we are talking about, and for this I invited her to my house with some mysterious excuse, then argued with her without even inviting her in, killed her and finally went back to work as if nothing had happened?»

  «That's what...»

  «Leaving the body in my garden!» she had slightly raised her voice, still not enough to be screaming. «So that anyone who found it would think I had killed her! I hope you don't really think I am that stupid!»

  «I think you might have panicked...»

  «Panicked?»

  «... and ran away to find yourself an alibi, not thinking about the consequences.»

  Grace stood up, deliberately slowly, ending up towering over the elf and looking him from up above with a killer light in her eyes.

  «I», she said stressing the word, «do not panic in front of a corpse. And if I had killed Lyana in my garden I would have commanded her to stand up and go die for good somewhere else; I wouldn't have left them there waiting for some idiot to find her and try to charge me with homicide.»

  «Are you saying I am an idiot?» Celen shrieked, almost hysterically.

  «There is no need to», she replied. «Now send me the dwarf. I just decided I prefer him».

  The face of the elf changed color, first becoming red, then livid. He was about to say something, then he stopped, mouth half open, and left the room, banging the door.

  CHAPTER 5

  Amanda was alone in an empty and unknown street. She didn't know how she had gotten there, or why.

  The darkness pressed around her as if it was trying to clench her, suffocate her. Obviously it was just darkness, there was no way it could harm her, still it seemed alive... evil.
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br />   Apart from the ground under her feet, she could see nothing else, just darkness all around, in which the street itself disappeared after a few feet.

  She tried to turn and look behind, but there was only more darkness to be found.

  A sense of anguish pervaded her, then she thought she saw a glimmer in the dark.

  Two small lights, intensely green, were in front of her, at the edge of what she could see of the road. There seemed to be nothing holding them, still there they were, motionless, like the only real things in an imaginary universe.

  She took a step in their direction, then another. The distance between them didn't seem to change. Something else, though, had changed, but she couldn't say what it was.

  She took another step, then another. The lights weren't any nearer, but the darkness seemed less ominous, more distant.

  She kept walking, one step after another. The more she moved towards the two bright objects, the more the world around her seems to shed its dark shroud. Black became less black, then grey, and finally melted into a nondescript color halfway between white and azure.

  Amanda looked around to try and understand where she was, now that she could see, but saw only and endless desert of dark and flat rock.

  When she looked again in front of her, the lights which had lead her so far were no more, if they had ever been there in the first place. In their place she saw something peeling out from the rock.

  She tried to get closer and check, and was almost surprised when her steps really carried her forward and near the mysterious thing.

  It was small, black and pyramid-shaped. It seemed to be lying on the ground, but when she bent and tried to pick it up she found that it was stuck, just as if part of it had been under the layer of rock which paved the whole surroundings.