5: No Postcode EnvyThe egg-shaped craft vanished into the darkness, and Beri was left alone in an alley in Denver, of all the incongruous pces. Bouncers poured out through the back door. They took one look at the blood puddles on cement only now beginning to darken with rain, and at the clearly foreign-born inhabitant with his heaving shoulders and his wounded hand pulled close to his chest, before they called an ambunce. Someone asked Beri if he spoke English, and then they asked what happened. He was never sure what stammering answer he gave afterward, but it was clearly the wrong one. Two of the bouncers shared a confused look. One of them tried to take Beri’s good elbow as if he had become an invalid.

  Beri yanked his arm back, then stopped, calming with a breath. He reminded himself he was trying to communicate in a nguage not his own, with people who weren’t accustomed to his accent. He tried again. “We need the police. They’ve taken our…our friend. They hurt her and then they took her. We have to go after them.” He made a helpless gesture. “Somehow.”

  The police came in company with the ambunce and a squad car with fshing lights. While the paramedics inspected the iron burn on his palm, Beri expined what had happened to the police as clearly and concisely as he could, in as much detail as he could remember. When they, too, exchanged looks of arm, Beri sighed. “We know it sounds mad. It’s not. That’s exactly what happened.”

  “‘We’?” The female cop asked. “Is there somebody else we should be talking to, sir?”

  Exasperated, Beri sighed. If these were his people, he’d be giving orders already, and they would be scrambling to obey. “No, it’s–it’s royal speech. We’re the High King of Faerie. Shouldn’t we be trying to find Katie? She’s in very grave danger.” He wouldn’t let himself think she was dead.

  The woman’s eyes widened while her male partner’s eyebrows climbed his tall forehead. The paramedic who still held Beri’s wrist spoke to the police. “Sometimes iron burns make them hallucinate. It must be worse than it looks.” She turned her attention back to Beri. “Are you a magus, sweetheart? I think I’m going to take you in just to be safe.”

  She didn’t believe him. Well, why should she? What human paramedic responded to a call in an alley behind a club, only to find that the injured party was a foreign monarch? He was wearing leather and denim; he hardly looked the part. He gave it up. “Yes. Yes, we are a magus. Contact the Faerie Embassy. We have the ambassador’s card in our wallet.”

  Beri went peacefully with the paramedics, even though the trip in the steel cage of an ambunce compounded the iron poisoning until he was certain he’d puke, and he allowed himself to be taken inside to have his wounds dressed while the pair of police officers from the alley outside the club asked him the same questions, over and over and over.

  The trouble was that following Katie through the Ways was always an impromptu operation, and he hadn’t thought to bring his passport or indeed, any identification at all. The police vanished, leaving him alone in a cubicle in an American ER that had been hastily scrubbed out to accommodate his racial allergies, and after a few minutes a detective appeared in pin clothes with his badge hanging from a nyard around his neck.

  Beri waited in silence while the detective pulled over a chair, which he sat on backward, with his legs spyed out as if he was riding a horse. In Faerie no one sat in his presence until he gave them permission to do so.

  “I’m Detective Jordan.” The man had food in his mustache. Beri considered the idea that some Gentry would have lost their patience already and turned him into something too mute to annoy them further. “May I have your name, please?” Jordan took out a little notebook and pen, then flipped the cover open with one hand while he clicked the pen with another.

  While he sat here with the police, Katie was somewhere with kidnappers who found no compunction in harming her. Beri snapped, “We have given you our name seven different times. If we didn’t know better we’d think you were pnning a ritual.”

  Detective Jordan scoffed. Beri had never used transmogrification on a person before, but he was sorely tempted now.

  “You’ve given us a name seven times. At this point it’s pretty clear you’re not hallucinating, and it’s just as clear you had a pretty girl with you earlier tonight who nobody has seen since you took her into an alley. Now what you have is a puddle of blood and a bunch of cops who want to know why you won’t give us your name.”

  For a brief moment, Beri was too stunned to reply. “Are you implying we had some hand in Katie’s disappearance? We told you what happened to her! We’ve also told you she’s in danger and needs help! Why isn’t anyone doing anything?”

  Jordan nodded. “You’re clearly not from around here. You ever heard of Brian Petersen?”

  Beri shook his head.

  He continued. “Happened right here in Thornton. Real good-looking guy. Pretty young wife, baby on the way. One day he reports her missing out of the blue.”

  At his tone, Beri’s vague interest tipped into sharp arm.

  “Then we found her body down a sewer grate where he’d shoved her. He had a mistress; can you imagine that? Why do you kill your own wife and baby so you can have an affair? Colorado has no-contest divorce, you know? Well. You probably don’t know. Anyway, it’s not like it is in Faerie. We don’t have any ws against getting human girls pregnant. For example, if you knocked up that pretty brunette you were dancing with earlier, nobody here would care. You could even just get an abortion. There’d be no reason to kill her. You don’t have to bme space aliens. You could just, you know. Tell us where she is.”

  Beri’s mouth fell open even as his skin flushed. His emotions were a bck, incomprehensible swirl. He forced his jaw shut and swallowed hard before he managed to answer. “You think Katie was pregnant, and I–I harmed her to hide it?”

  Jordan raised an eyebrow. “Huh. That royal plural comes and goes, I guess.”

  It was too hard to catch his breath while his hands were beginning to shake. Beri knew from experience he had about thirty seconds before he completely fell apart, but he was smart enough to use those seconds wisely. “We’ve said all we’ll say without a wyer.”

  “That’s probably wise.” Jordan flipped the notebook shut. “We left a message with the Faerie Embassy. I’m not expecting to hear back until business hours. Stick around, huh?”

  Beri asked, “Are we under arrest?”

  “No. But I’ll be frank with you, kid. You better hope we find that girl alive tonight, or it’s not going to go well for you.”