Read Online Dragon Justice by Laura Anne Gilman - Free Book Online

table when Og decided I’d make a good appetizer.
    “You know we make good on useful data,” I said, not quite
answering. It paid to remind informants about that: PSI appreciated free info,
especially when solving the case benefited everyone, but we didn’t expect our
informants to put themselves on the line without some kind of compensation. It
was also a reminder to my companions that I wasn’t a private citizen, as it
were: if they screwed with me, it wouldn’t be just me pissed off with them.
Stosser and Venec had reputations both independently and together that would
make anyone seriously reconsider trying to scam their people.
    “I can’t tell you shit until you ask a question, puppy.” The
da-esh looked me up and down, while Og climbed back into his chair and glared at
me from across the table, brave again now that its pack leader had taken
control. “You’re Torres, right?”
    “Right.” There were enough of us in the office now that it
could get confusing to fatae, I supposed. Not like when we started, and there
were only five of us, and nobody ever mistook me for Sharon, more’s the
pity.
    “Huh.”
    I had absolutely no idea how to decode that, so I just
waited.
    It took three sips of whatever the da-esh was drinking for him
to decide. “You pups have done fair by us so far. If I know anything useful, and
it don’t get me killed to tell, I’ll share.”
    That was a better offer than most I got. I nodded agreement of
the terms. Unlike the others I’d spoken to today, he only got the driest of
details. “Missing-persons case. Three persons. Child, teenager, and a young
adult—all female, all missing from the city in the past month. Null, or at least
non-declared.” Sometimes Talent popped up out of nowhere, and the two youngest
were young enough to be uncertain. “I’m looking for trace of any of them.” I
reached—carefully, with an eye on Og—into my bag and pulled out three
photographs. Spread out on the table in the dim light, I could barely see the
details, but brownies and their kin make up for their lack of external ears by
having rather spectacular night vision.
    “Human. Two overtly Caucasian, one with a definite Asian
parent. No similarity in coloring or in face shape. They are all coddled little
brats, but no meanness in them.”
    My jaw might have dropped open just a little bit, because Og
chuckled, a nasty little sound.
    “We are not, how do they call it, apex predators,” my informant
said, ignoring his companion. “Survival often involves being able to read
information quickly, off limited data. That is why you came to me, isn’t
it?”
    It was. I just hadn’t expected it to be quite so detailed.
    “Have you heard anything about missing females, human, or
anyone who might have an interest in them?” I was choosing my words carefully,
something you had to do when dealing even with the most friendly of fatae.
“Interest either in having them, having them harmed, or having harm come to
them.” The last two weren’t the same thing, and you could hide a lot of malice
in the space between.
    “You mean other than the usual steal, molest, eat, and
otherwise do evil with?”
    I sighed. “Yeah, other than that.”
    The da-esh showed his teeth in a grin, and I really wished he
hadn’t. Their kind were carrion-eaters, when they couldn’t get fresh cat, and
not much on hygiene. “There was a case a while back, of gnomes dusting teenage
girls. I guess they couldn’t get dates for the prom. But nothing else. Mostly
when someone’s little girl goes missing, she does it of her own free will. My
pretty unicorn or elf-prince of something.” The scorn practically dropped off
his words. I really couldn’t blame him.
    “Now, if it were boys gone missing, that would be unusual.
Unless an elf-wench’s gone hunting, they tend to be safe.”
    Elf-wench. That was even worse than “trooping fairies.” I was
so never going to use that in a Lady’s hearing. In fact, I was never even