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Two hours after Megan left, I decided fairies were too fucking chatty. I only managed to talk to two of the four remaining members of the admittance committee. After an hour and five minutes on the phone with the second one, she offered to set up a herd meeting for the next evening, so I could interview the entire herd membership without my phone exploding from overuse. Fairies knew they were horrendously chatty. Jerome came in and plopped down on the couch.
“I’m about angeled out,” he said to me with a sigh.
“So you came in here? I’m an angel, too,” I said.
“Every time I stand up or make a noise that isn’t a complete sentence, Azrael asks if I’m okay. Turns out, I make a lot of noises without realizing it.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Go hide in your game room.”
“Your sister took the girls in there to watch Masha and the Bear and I just can’t get into Masha or the bear,” Jerome told me.
“What are Azrael and Krystal doing?” I asked.
“Fretting over me. Between moments of fretting, they are watching some movie about a guy with a pornstache driving a Trans Am and moving illegal beer across the country while trying to outwit some idiot sheriff with an even dumber son. Both of them might benefit from demonic possession.”
The movie industry was surprisingly human, without many supernatural actors or actresses, unless one was needed for a villain in a sci-fi thriller or horror movie. One of the things I didn’t sleep through in school was learning that new inventions were not universally loved and accepted by supernaturals. This reluctance was especially true of the twentieth and twenty-first century when technology made huge leaps and advancements. Supernaturals like my father wouldn’t be caught dead acting in a movie, and some of that attitude trickled down to those born since the invention of film. Only now, with my generation, were supernaturals starting to take to movies and television, but we were really the first generation to have access to them our entire lives. For ease, my generation starts in 1942 at the end of Nazism and goes to the present. It will end when there’s either another major conflict, global upheaval, or serious new advancement in technology. Oddly, despite the 27-year age difference, Jerome and I are of the same generation.
“If you want to watch TV, go to my room,” I said.
“Actually, I came to get permission to go to my workshop. Azrael said I had to have your permission.”
“You need my permission to go to your workshop?” I asked.
“I guess so.”
“Well that’s dumb.” I stood up and hobbled into the living room. The guy with the pornstache was still on TV. Azrael and Krystal were both sitting on the couch half asleep. “Where’s my mom and dad?” I asked them.
“Your dad went to deal with the devil. Your mom went with him to keep him from killing him,” Azrael said. “We called Gabriel and sent him, too.” Well, that explained why my sister and her daughters were hiding in Jerome’s game room.
“Okay, Jerome wants to go to his workshop, which is fine. I don’t normally make him ask permission to go out there and I don’t micromanage him when he is out there,” I said, looking pointedly at Azrael.
“It’s been a weird and emotional couple of days. I just wanted to make sure you, as his guardian, were aware he was going to be doing magic and not chop off my head should he blow something up,” Azrael replied.
“I’d be more worried about it if you went with him. He understands magic way better than either you or I do, despite our age and abilities,” I reminded my uncle, and returned to my office. This last statement was more accurate than anyone wanted to admit. Jerome knew about magic in many forms. He could work spells by instinct just as well as if he had learned them in a class, and once he was familiar with someone else’s magic, he just automatically understood how it worked. The small amount of formal training he has now received made him even better at knowing how different types of magic worked. Even to my father and uncles, it was mystical.
I looked at the picture of Jacinda Merkle again. I believed Megan was correct, and she was dead. But how and why kill a fairy? Remiel had done the initial report and interviewed the husband and he didn’t believe the husband was suspect or involved. Considering Remiel could read minds, I trusted he was right, especially since it wasn’t exactly well known that Remiel read minds, and therefore most people don’t try to shield their thoughts around him.
Most murders are committed by loved ones and usually involve sex, money, or power. Spouses killed each other because of infidelity, life insurance payouts, or inheritance of estates. If Remiel was right, that wasn’t the case here, though. So why kill Jacinda Merkle? Like Megan, I struggled to believe that not being allowed to join their herd was a strong enough motive. According to the registry, their herd wasn’t even in the top ten most powerful and influential in the St. Louis area. They didn’t have a ton of influential members, unlike the mayor of St. Louis’s herd. I booted up my laptop and googled “magic spells that require a fairy to be killed” and got back a half-dozen results. I hadn’t really expected to get any results, so getting six disturbed me. I couldn’t believe there were six spells that required a fairy to die—that was extreme.
I clicked on the first link and discovered it was a book on an author’s webpage called “Using Magic to Kill Fairies.” I clicked on the description, which claimed it was a mystery novel. I pulled up my local library app and searched for the title. The book was in my digital library options, and I downloaded the ebook. It was a murder mystery and by page ten, I knew who the love interest was, how much the main character wanted to have sex with the love interest, and of course, that the main character was positive her crush didn’t know she even existed. It was supposed to be a murder mystery, not a trashy romance. I read until chapter ten just to ensure it really was a murder mystery and not some kind of grimoire with ways to kill fairies while masquerading as a mystery novel. At the end of chapter ten, I knew who the murderer was, why they’d killed three fairies, and felt like I had wasted part of my life.
In the book, the killer murdered fairies to collect their wings to build a flying machine, which was weird because airplanes existed in the book. I couldn’t imagine why someone would want to build a strange flying contraption with fairy wings when they could just book a commercial flight. However, since I had no other leads, I jotted down “build flying machine with fairy wings” on my notepad as a possible motive, along with “promote book sales."
The second link was just as promising as the first one, and it was also a book. I searched my library app, found the book and checked it out, too. I read another ten chapters, again ensuring it wasn’t a disguised grimoire meant to start a fairy genocide. It was hardcore porn disguised as a romance novel, and the title, The Magic of Killing Fairies, seemed to refer to a sex act that I didn’t understand. I wasn’t going to read beyond ten chapters to see if I could figure it out with more descriptions of it, either. So now I wasted even more of my life.
The third link was not a book, and I felt I might be making progress until the site loaded and I learned there was a band called Killing Fairies. They had some freebie tracks on the site, and since I’d read the books, I listened to them. If I had to describe the music, I’d use the words “really bad,” but as far as style, they were screamo-techno-goth-punk. It definitely left an impression, and I couldn’t think of a single band to compare them to. I wasn’t sure it was entirely intentional on their part to be that original. After listening to the music and understanding maybe one word in 15, I clicked the link that gave me the lyrics in text form. I read all the lyrics and didn’t find they were calling for the start of a fairy genocide either. Mostly, the lyrics were about the beauty of death and fairies and meadows. I found understanding the words in the songs didn’t make them anymore intelligible and wondered if I was getting old.
Finally, the fourth link brought up a spell—like a real spell. Well, it was sort of a real spell. It was a spell to grow wings. It required fairy blood and a pinch of dried fairy wing, neither of which required the fairy to be dead. Eventually, I found an About Us section on their page that took me to a foundation called “Becoming Fairies.” Now I knew I was getting old. Why would someone want to imitate a fairy? I found a forum and read a few pages. It appeared to be a fairy fan site and most of the forum posts were about how amazing fairy wings and fairy eyes were. It turned out there was also a fetish section involving fairy wings that made me blush, and explained the sex act from the book way better than the book had.
The fifth link brought up a hardcore porn site dedicated to fairies, and the sex act from the book went from description to video. I wondered if anyone could erase it from my memory. There were just some places fairy wings didn’t belong. As a caveat, there was a link that said, “Click Here for the Angel Version of The Magic of Killing Fairies.” I clicked it. If I hadn’t been glad to lose my wings before, I totally was now. I wasn’t even sure how an angel did that with one of their wings. Now I needed both things erased from my memory, and I had to remember to clear my browser history, since Jerome occasionally used my laptop.
The sixth and final result was more fairy porn. I was only slightly less disturbed by the porn than the fact that there were six results for “magic spells that require a fairy to be killed.” I tried the search term “fairy murder” and got far more results. There were a lot of books about fairies being murdered, and I decided they were a favorite for cozy mystery writers to kill off, probably due to the beauty of their wings. As I clicked links, I realized a lot of the sites detailed the grisly unsolved murder of a fairy in 1479. The suspected motive for the murder was a black magic ritual, but since no one was ever caught, it wasn’t a definitive motive. The killer had ripped off the fairy’s wings, disemboweled her, cut off her head, and then removed her uterus and stuck her own head in its place. Then they sewed the body back up with the head inside and hung it by the ankles from the tower of a fortress near Aigues-Mortes, a town in France. Or maybe that was the name of the fortress. I wasn’t sure because the 13 sites I looked at hadn’t clarified and I didn’t read French, so the pictures with captions didn’t make sense to me.
Considering the wings were ripped off and not cut off, it had to be a supernatural that did it. However, I couldn’t think of a reason to rip off wings and carry away a uterus unless the killer was more like Jack the Ripper than Rasputin the Black Magician. I could see a reason for a sexual sadist to steal a uterus, but black magic used energy, not body parts. The person was killed to allow their energy to be released and used by the killer to cast a powerful spell. It’s the only way to harness and use death magic. They would have known that in 1479, so why did they think it was related to black magic? Mom and Dad were busy with Mark and the courts, so I called Remiel.
“Hello?” he said on the first ring.
“Hard at work?” I asked.
“Yes. You are supposed to review the case files, not investigate them.”
“I talked to Megan, and she was in the same herd as Jacinda Merkle. She says they know Jacinda is dead.”
“Given that they are in the same herd, they would. And?” Remiel asked.
“Well, I started looking into fairy murders, and I found a case from 1479. A fairy had her wings ripped off and the killer stole her uterus. All the sites say it was suspected she was killed as part of a black magic ritual or spell, but you don’t steal organs to perform black magic. I don’t understand why even in 1479 they thought black magic was involved, or why the thought has persisted. Are there any spells that use the uterus of a fairy in the banned grimoires?”
Most supernaturals keep a spell book. They do this to write down incantations for spells, ingredients for potions, and other relevant magical information. I don’t keep one because I don’t create new spells or new potions. But I am discovering I failed to get an education, and not keeping a grimoire could be a side effect of my failure to learn about anything non-demonic.
Most grimoires are passed down through families. However, once in a while, a supernatural goes off the rails like Rasputin the Black Magician did. When a supernatural is caught practicing black magic, their grimoire is collected by an agency known as the All Encompassing Supernatural Collective Protection Agency. It is a 50-being panel with at least one representative of each breed of supernatural, as well as a human. The positions are filled once every ten years by democratic worldwide vote.
If you can prove you are alive and over 15, you are allowed to vote. Those seeking election are not allowed to campaign or advertise that they are seeking election. They register with the AESCPA voting division as a candidate, and when it comes time for the vote, you are given a ballot based on your heritage. You can only vote for candidates belonging to your own heritage. As a nephilim, I get to vote for both the angel and human positions.
The AESCPA Grimoire Division collects grimoires from black magic practitioners and holds them in an archive. Special access can be granted to the archive, but usually if you want information from the banned grimoires, you have to submit a written request to the AESCPA. They will have a researcher look up the information and get back to you. It usually takes a couple of weeks. To fight corruption, the division uses magic and soul purity detectors on all who enter the archive, including their own researchers. If a researcher fails the purity examination at any time, they are magically locked out of the archive and immediately fired. When I’d been in exorcism school, I was allowed special access for three hours. At the end of my three hours, I was magically forced from the archive. I’d been looking at demonic summoning spells, which set off an alarm, and I had to be checked before I was allowed to leave. On my way out, I failed the purity tests and am now permanently banned. But I could submit a research request.
“It might be worthwhile, or it might not,” Remiel said. “Do you know how Jacinda Merkle died?”
“Nope, and the body obviously hasn’t been recovered. But the only two unsolved fairy murders for the last thousand years available online are Blanche Lesassier and Rebecca Dusfrain, the fairy in France. I cannot find a single motive for killing Jacinda Merkle. Most likely it’s nothing, but it seems strange to me that I have a dead woman, no body, and every fairy murder except Blanche Lesassier and Rebecca Dusfrain was solved. Apparently, the murder of Blanche Lesassier had a very strong suspect but they just couldn’t find proof, which is why I didn’t discuss it. In Rebecca’s case they only stole her uterus, but in Jacinda’s they stole her entire body. I am open to suggestions and opinions based on years of life experience I don’t yet have, and anything else you’ve got.”
“I helped investigate Blanche’s murder. It absolutely was her husband. I can’t prove it, but I would bet my wings on it. Send a request to the archive.” Remiel said. “It’s most likely nothing, but who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Thanks to the internet, the research request could be submitted online. The request required an explanation of why you wanted the information as well as the names of anyone you may possibly ever share the information with. I listed Remiel, Janet, and Jerome, then added my father, the rest of my uncles, my sister, and my mom as possible receivers of the information. I was filling out the essay portion as to why I wanted the information when Jerome came into my office.
“We have an appointment,” he said to me and looked meaningfully at the giant wall clock across from my desk. It was 2:58 p.m., but if I didn’t finish this request right now, I’d have to start over. I continued typing. “I’ll tell her we’re going to be about 15 minutes late,” Jerome said, and I nodded as he pulled out his cell phone. I was a jerk. I filled in the description of why I wanted it as quickly as possible, and did the same with the “what I wanted” box. Thankfully, I typed fast and we were only six minutes late.