Properly, the wide variety of Faerie-descended humanoids each have their own individual taxonomic classifications indicating the subtle differences between one group of pointy-eared, graceful, beautiful people and then next. Practically, they are all lumped under Elves, unless you happen to be dealing with the kind of elves who are very particular about bloodlines and mystical heritage, in which case, the authors would like to offer their condolences, and recommend that if you require strong drink, you do not take it from them. When dealing with elves, it’s always BYOB.

Of particular concern are the sort of elves who insist on being called by euphemistic code names, such as “The Good People” or “The Gentlemen of the Woods”. One should always count any children both before and after a visit from that sort of elf, and make sure that they haven’t suddenly changed in temperament or demeanor.

In a mystery play, the elves are almost always a leading suspect in any case of a mysterious disappearance.

-Quote from an internally circulated employee email at Mystery Play LLC, presumably not for public consumption.

Leaving the bookstore and heading back to the car, I saw someone sitting on the hood. The car’s engine was revving in what I think was meant to be irritation, and the lights were flashing. When I realized who it was, I almost turned around and went back inside. But she’d probably follow me, and I’d rather not expose Sam, who seemed nice enough, even with his weird, tiny teeth, to Lorraine Stevens.

There are a lot of people I’d rather just not deal with who also work for Mystery Play, LLC. Lorraine, the woman seated on the hood of my car, was a Changeling, which in this case meant “Someone who’d been stolen by elves and then brought back before she’d completely become one, rather than ‘an elf disguised as a human’.

But with Lorraine, the line can be pretty thin.

The elven lineage she was almost adopted into are sort of like big cats- obligate carnivores, incredibly lazy, very dangerous across short distances. She’s got a habit of looking at you like you’re a meal.

And by whatever standards she judges by, apparently I counted as T-bone steak, which isn’t a comfortable place to be in.

She’s surprisingly good at -acting- like she’s not going to eat you, though, so she usually gets cast as things like gentle elven healers in diaphanous gowns, which just aren’t a thing, but a lot of people want to believe the fantasy. It’s really weird to watch when she code-switches from on-screen to off.

But as far as I knew, she wasn’t cast for this Play. I looked around for any of the recording drones or for signs that we were being watched, as she waved cheerily to me, stepped up, and slipped her arms around my waist. Well. That was unnerving. She whispered, as she buried her face in my chest. “Hi, Ray. Followed your scent.” And that was even worse.

From the outside, Lorraine’s an attractive blonde, with pointed ears and sharp features and the teeth of a predator, which were now uncomfortably close to my internal organs. “Why are you here, Lorraine?” I asked, also quietly.

“You need a bodyguard, boss’s orders. So I’m now in as your former lovely magician’s assistant who’s trying to convince you to come back to the stage while helping with cases.”

I stared. “That seems a little abrupt.”

“It’s your own fault, actually. You told the boss that it’d be nice to find out who might have wanted to kill the client, and he grilled Lawson on possible suspects, so then a name came up. It’s possible our killer is with the Rinconete family.”

I just kept staring. At least I could be sure that no one was overhearing this- Lorraine wouldn’t break character if there was a chance the killer was around. “So we’ve got a possible mob involvement in the fake story and a real mob doing real murders of real people all at the same time, and now I’m playing target for both fake killers and real killers.”

Lorraine smiled brightly. “Yep! And so I’m now your girl Friday- literally. My character’s called Friday Summerfield. I get your coffee, answer your phone, and type up the paperwork and if the real killer comes after you instead of the fake one, I eat his liver. I’ve never had a Rinconete for dinner before.” She was probably kidding. Mostly. I hoped.

The Rinconete are probably one of the oldest established Organized crime outfits in the world, dating back to one of the first “Thieves’ guilds” in Seville, Spain. Just about anyone doing magical organized crime stories is going to pattern them on the Rinconete.

“So we still don’t have a way to track them yet?”

Lorraine shook her head, and her blonde updo came slightly undone. “Not yet. They’re staying glamoured up or invisible or are really good at detecting and evading our cameras. But most Gyges devices don’t block smell. And my nose is better than any of the therianthropes we have on staff at the moment.

This was broadly true, but that was mostly because we only had a Swan-maiden, and swans aren’t known for their sense of smell.

“So we’re going back to the office so you know what the guy smells like, I guess.”

She beeped my nose. “Got it in one, you win a prize.”

I gave her my best dubious look. “What prize?”

“Why, my company, of course!” And she finally let go of me to slide into the passenger seat of the haunted car. I felt a bit ridiculously patting the hood of a red convertible to try and reassure it that the elf wasn’t its fault, but it seemed necessary, somehow.

The drive back to the office wasn’t silent- Lorraine spent the time fighting with the car over who got to control the radio, switching back and forth between the car’s favored oldies station and Lorraine’s. (The car liked ‘50s rock, Lorraine preferred the eighties.)

Once we were inside- the decor had already been changed around to match the new story of me having always had an assistant- Lorraine got to work, pacing around the room and sniffing. After a moment’s pacing, she sprinted towards the bathroom, and looked out the window we theorized the killer had escaped through.

After a moment, she came back to the main office. “He’s clever, our boy, but not clever enough. He can change his scent, a little, but not enough to fool my nose. So I’ll know him when I smell him. We’ll just have to stick close together so I’ll know when he targets you.”

I made a note to punch the boss, the next time I saw him.

It’s not that I didn’t trust Lorraine to do her twin jobs- she was excellent at pretending to be something she wasn’t, and she was definitely terrifying enough to serve as a bodyguard; pound for pound, she’s stronger than I am, and her senses were the sharpest of anyone we had on staff.

But she’s also at least half a predator, and that gives me weird flashbacks to when my maternal grandmother did the babysitting. I mean I’m reasonably sure my Troll-wife grandmother loved me and was happy to help, but there’s just something about knowing “This is a thing that would eat you if it were so inclined” that’s sort of instinctively uncomfortable.

Hell, feeling like my grandmother may be why Lorraine makes me uncomfortable- no matter how big I get, I always perceived grandma as larger than both me and my parents. So Lorraine, who reminds me of her, looms larger than she actually is.

It’s as good a thought as any.

She was standing there, head cocked and waiting for me to reply.

“I hope we get this wrapped up before tomorrow night, then. I’m not sure I could explain in-character why I’d be dragging my secretary along to the funeral of my client’s husband when she’d specifically invited me as her escort.”

Lorraine immediately waved this off. “Oh, for that I’ll just hide in the rafters, don’t worry about it.”

I didn’t doubt that she could. “Fair enough. So what are the script pointers about my relationship with Friday? Your character’s new, I didn’t get a dossier update.”

“Oh, that! Here.” She pulled a crumpled folder out from under her jacket and handed it to me.

“They didn’t want to just update the app? Weird.”

I flipped through the dossier. Friday Summerfield had been Derek Criss’ on-stage assistant and had transitioned to secretarial work after he started consulting with the police. She didn’t actually approve of him dropping the stage act, but was too loyal to just quit. I wasn’t sure why there were glossies of her in her stage outfit included, since that probably wouldn’t ever come up in the play. Lorraine saw me looking, and noted, “Oh, I took those to get into character. I thought you might appreciate the look.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Thanks.” The rest of the dossier was fairly standard. It took me a beat or two to realize. Establish sexual tension with client, “...wait, these instructions are like if I were Carrefour.”

“Well, only a few folks know it’s you’re not, right? The boss isn’t the one who prepped the dossier.”

I groaned. “Right. That explains that, I guess. No need to go overboard with establishing your character, by the way, hopefully we won’t be doing this very long.”

Lorraine faked offense. I think she faked it, anyway. “I’m a professional, you know. I’m not going to stint on my character development just because it’s short term.”

The headache got worse. “Okay, fine. Let’s grab some lunch, it’s nearly noon. We can sort out the character stuff and talk about the Play case and maybe lure our friend out for another attack.”

“Food and attempted murder! Two of my favorite things!” Lorraine pumped her fist in the air.

I looked up to the sky with a sigh, and followed her back out.

Once we got back to the car, rather than being Lorraine, she was Friday, whose personality profile was ‘straightlaced and a little bit in love with her boss, if disappointed in his life choices’

I was rapidly developing the impression that Carrefour had been hugely insecure about his relationships with women, if the profiles for cast members written with him in mind were any indication.

As Friday, Lorraine didn’t fight with the car over the radio, just went over the notes from the case so far as I drove. She really does a fantastic job of switching over. Me, I’m typecast, and it’s not like the parts I’m good for really require much in the way of acting range, so maybe I was a tiny bit jealous.

“Any preference on lunch, Ms. Summerfield?”

Lorraine looked up from organizing my notes, glasses a bit askew. “Hmm! Oh. uh. Wherever you like, boss. Probably not the Hibachi place,, I’d rather not fry the paperwork.”

With that important consideration in mind, and the need for a workspace, we wound up at a slightly upscale burger chain, which provided large tables, extra sheets of paper meant for children to draw on, and multiple baskets of popcorn while we waited for the food to get there.

“So,” Lorraine-as-Friday said, “You think the smart money’s on either, “He was already dying and was using magic to stay alive,” or “He made a deal with something that slowly ate his kidneys magically.”

I ate a fistfull of popcorn, which, given my mitts, was about half a basket. “Both ideas seem viable, but I’ll know more when I talk with Mrs. Delacourt later today. I lean towards the latter, because it seems like the best way to make the Spider Bonaparte angle fit. Otherwise I can’t figure out where they’d get involved. ”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea, Derek? Getting involved with these sort of folks? Bonaparte and the Delacourts...this could be dangerous, and not just because Spider Bonaparte’s a crook.”

“Little late to un-involve myself, to be honest. Someone’s tried to blow me up and we’ve already got Bonaparte’s attention.”

Lorraine sighed. “Of course they did, lord knows I've wanted to plenty of times, especially when you botched it with the sword basket, but just...be careful, okay?” She rested a hand on mine as I went for another handful of popcorn, and did the soulful stare, glasses magnifying her eyes. Her hand lingered on mine, and then the waiter showed up with food, whereupon she promptly let go and coughed, cheeks flushed. “So what’s your next step, besides talking to the client again?

“Gotta couple of folks digging, so that’s a matter of waiting for them to get back to me. And the funeral tomorrow. Other than that, wait and see if the car bomb was a warning from Bonaparte or if they’re going to send Moran after me to make an offer again. Everything I know about him says he likes to do the iron fist in the velvet glove, and if I survived the explosion he -should- try to play nice again.”

Lorraine nodded, and picked up her burger- she didn’t want or actually couldn’t digest grain or greens, so hers was actually just a enormous meat patty between two slices of cheese. I knew better than to interrupt her while she was eating, so I paid attention to my own food.