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A Stroke Of Midnight :: Гамильтон Лорел
Страница: 22 из 293Magic is like everything else; if you can do goodwith it, some people will find a way to do bad with it. Our agency specialized in Supernatural problems, Magical solutions. It was on the business cards and everything.
I’d also learned that all bodies are an it, not he, not she—it. Because if you think of the dead body as a he or a she, they begin to be real for you. They begin to be people, and they aren’t people, not anymore. They’re dead, and outside of very special circumstances they are just inert matter. You can have sympathy for the victim later, but at the crime scene, especially in the first moments, you serve the victim better by not sympathizing. Sympathy steals your ability to think. Empathy will cripple you. Detachment and logic, those are your salvation at a fresh murder. Anything else leads to hysterics, and I was not only the most experienced detective in the hallway, I was also Princess Meredith NicEssus, wielder of the hands of flesh and blood, Besaba’s Bane. Besaba was my mother, and my conception had forced her to wed my father and live, for a time, at the Unseelie Court. I was a princess and I might one day be queen. Future queens do not have hysterics. Future queens who are also trained detectives aren’t allowed hysterics.
The problem was that I knew one of these bodies. I’d known her alive and walking around. I knew that she liked classical literature. When she was cast out of the Seelie Court and had to come to the Unseelie Court, she’d changed her name, as many did, even among the Seelie. They changed their names so they wouldn’t be reminded daily of who and what they had once been, and how far they had fallen. She called herself Beatrice, after the love interest in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante’s Inferno. She said, “I’m in hell, I might as well have a name to match.” I’d taken world literature as one of my forced electives in college. When I finished the class, I gave most of my books to Beatrice, because she would read them and I wouldn’t. I could always buy extra copies of the handful of books that I actually enjoyed. Beatrice couldn’t. She couldn’t pass for human, and she didn’t like being stared at.
I stared at her now, but she wouldn’t mind. She wouldn’t mind anything ever again. Beatrice looked like a delicate human-size version of the tiny demi-fey that still clung to Rhys’s hair. Once Beatrice had been able to be that small, but something happened at the Seelie Court, something she would never talk about, and she lost the ability to change sizes. She’d been trapped at around four foot two, and the delicate dragonfly wings on her back had been useless.
I’d also learned that all bodies are an it, not he, not she—it. Because if you think of the dead body as a he or a she, they begin to be real for you. They begin to be people, and they aren’t people, not anymore. They’re dead, and outside of very special circumstances they are just inert matter. You can have sympathy for the victim later, but at the crime scene, especially in the first moments, you serve the victim better by not sympathizing. Sympathy steals your ability to think. Empathy will cripple you. Detachment and logic, those are your salvation at a fresh murder. Anything else leads to hysterics, and I was not only the most experienced detective in the hallway, I was also Princess Meredith NicEssus, wielder of the hands of flesh and blood, Besaba’s Bane. Besaba was my mother, and my conception had forced her to wed my father and live, for a time, at the Unseelie Court. I was a princess and I might one day be queen. Future queens do not have hysterics. Future queens who are also trained detectives aren’t allowed hysterics.
The problem was that I knew one of these bodies. I’d known her alive and walking around. I knew that she liked classical literature. When she was cast out of the Seelie Court and had to come to the Unseelie Court, she’d changed her name, as many did, even among the Seelie. They changed their names so they wouldn’t be reminded daily of who and what they had once been, and how far they had fallen. She called herself Beatrice, after the love interest in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante’s Inferno. She said, “I’m in hell, I might as well have a name to match.” I’d taken world literature as one of my forced electives in college. When I finished the class, I gave most of my books to Beatrice, because she would read them and I wouldn’t. I could always buy extra copies of the handful of books that I actually enjoyed. Beatrice couldn’t. She couldn’t pass for human, and she didn’t like being stared at.
I stared at her now, but she wouldn’t mind. She wouldn’t mind anything ever again. Beatrice looked like a delicate human-size version of the tiny demi-fey that still clung to Rhys’s hair. Once Beatrice had been able to be that small, but something happened at the Seelie Court, something she would never talk about, and she lost the ability to change sizes. She’d been trapped at around four foot two, and the delicate dragonfly wings on her back had been useless.