A blind green-bree, Edgan thought. Powerful and with a speaking name of Odawa. He didn’t need his database to tell him that this was something new. And if a green-bree was meeting and making plans with bogans, it meant real trouble.

Oh, this was big—too big to bargain with. He’d take this to Mother Crone and give it to her free. But first he needed to learn more.

“You’re certain they’re lovers?” Odawa asked.

“That or close friends, but who beds a friend, and what else is a woman good for except for bedding?”

That brought a chorus of snickers from the other bogans.

“Of course,” Odawa said in a tone of voice that made Edgan, at least, know the green-bree wasn’t of the same opinion. “And you know where to find her?”

“Oh, sure. She’s a musician—plays our music, she does, the little pluiker, but licks the ass of the corbae.”

“You’ve seen her do this?” Odawa asked, his voice dry.

“Nah, but you know she would if he told her to. Those damn blackbirds have everyone treating them like they’re the kings of Shite Hill.”

“I gave her a push down the stairs,” one of the other bogans said, “but I got the wrong one. Her sister or something. Still, she went down hard.”

The other bogans laughed.

“Why?” Odawa asked.

“ ‘Cause I pushed her.”

“No, why did you push her?”

“She were mouthing off about us.”

“Deserved it,” another bogan said. “It ain’t right, guttermouths like that, disrespecting us.”

They should come by the mall, Edgan thought, and see what was for sale on the shelves of the toy stores and gift shops. Enough pretty little fairies to turn your stomach—as though there were only flitters and nothing else in the Fairy realm. A quick tour of such stores would show them the real meaning of disrespect for every denizen of Fairy who wasn’t tiny and sweet.

“So she’s a musician,” Odawa said.

“And they’re not bad,” Big Dan told him—reluctantly, Edgan thought. “She and that band of hers. Saw her outside with Grey between their sets last night.”

“What were they doing?”

“Talking. But we weren’t stupid enough to get to close to him, so who knows what it was about?”

“When she’d be licking his ass,” one of the bogans put in.

They all laughed, except for the green-bree.

“We just had us a look so we’d have something to tell you,” Big Dan said. “Like you asked us to. Keeping our eyes open and all that shite.”

“I appreciate your making the extra effort.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like we care for any of them. The blackbirds and their like won’t even let us have a ramble through their lands.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re hunting their kin,” Odawa said. “How would you feel if they hunted your people?”