“They’re laid out like something from a children’s storybook down to the dancing poses and the flowers in their hands.”

Lucy nodded. “It’s not just like, it is.”

“Is what?” I asked, looking at her. Her dark brunette hair was cut shorter than mine, and held back by a thick band so that nothing obscured her vision, as I still fought with my own hair. She looked cool and professional.

She used one plastic-gloved hand to hold out a plastic-wrapped page. She held it out to me, though I knew not to touch it even with the gloves. I was a civilian, and I had been very aware of that as I walked through all the police on the way to the center of all this activity. The police were never that fond of the private detective, no matter what you see on television, and I wasn’t even human. Of course, if I’d been human they wouldn’t have called me down to the murder scene in the first place. I was here because I was a trained detective and a faerie princess. One without the other wouldn’t have gotten me under the police tape.

I stared at the page. The wind tried to snatch it from her hand, and she used both hands to hold it steady for me. It was an illustration from a children’s book. It was dancing faeries with flowers in their hands. I stared at it for a second more, then looked down at the bodies on the ground. I forced myself to study their dead forms, then looked at the illustration.

“They’re identical,” I said.

“I believe so, though we’ll have to have some kind of flower expert tell us if the flowers match up bloom for bloom, but except for that our killer has duplicated the scene.”

I stared from one to the other again, those laughing happy faces in the picture and the very still, very dead ones on the ground. Their skin had begun to change color already, turning that bluish-purple cast of the dead.

“He, or she, had to dress them,” I pointed out. “No matter how many illustrations you see with these little blousy dresses and loincloth things, most demi-fey outside of faerie don’t dress like this. I’ve seen them in three-piece suits and formal evening wear.”