It didn't seem so long ago that London was fairly understandable. Smog. Filth. Rain. Poverty. Whores. Criminals. The lot of it.

Things were, no doubt, much better now. Magic was more sustainable than industry. Better for the respiratory system. The water wasn't full of shit and cholera. Poverty was still a thing, of course, but it was more manageable to be poor when you didn't cough blood. Criminals had, for now at least, cowered back into their lairs until they could decide how to adapt to this new reality. Whores, on the other hand, were little changed, though the competition was now much fiercer.

Yes. Things were clearly improving. London was much, much better.

She hated it.

It was illogical, of course. It was illogical to hate it, but worse, it was illogical. The change. One fine morning - or, to be precise, one gloomy, shitty morning - the gates to Fae just opened wide, and its inhabitants spewed forth and said, "Enough is enough, humans, we will take it from here" (except, of course, in much more flowery terms). They hadn't exactly taken over; just insisted on some advice that the authorities felt best to heed.

She could not understand this new world, and she liked understanding things.

Take that "dead body" for example. Once, she would look at it and deduce that the cause of death is a knife wound, the victim is a male of approximately so many years, and so on. Now, she saw what was basically a pile of ash in a vaguely humanoid shape.

"It's an Elemental, my dear Watson," said Inspector Lagrange next to her.

"I know that, and it really doesn't help at all."

"A fire elemental to be precise," he continued, oblivious to her frustration.

"Why am I here? I can't do an autopsy of this," she complained.

He shrugged. "Protocol. We'll eventually figure out a way to work around such issues. Till then, well, just pretend you know what you are doing."

***

She thought there was something off about the morgue before realising it was the smell, or rather its absence, given the state of the corpse. Well, that was something at least.

Her assistant had her permanent look of bewilderment on her freckled, bespectacled face, notepad in hand.

"I am not sure we need to write down a lot, Bloomingdale," Dr Watson said. "Subject is an uhm, elemental, of the fire sort. Age unknown, though time does not seem to affect their kind the same anyway. Sex: male, according to neighbours, but it is not really possible to ascertain that the subject is the same person as the one they knew. Cause of death, fuck me if I know." She remembered Bloomingdale was a little too thorough. "Scratch that last part. Write down 'uknown'. Or 'undetermined'."

"It's silver," her assistant said almost too quietly to be heard.

"What's that?"

"Cause of death must be silver. No other way to kill elementals - at least not easily. There have been several that have gone missing lately - but the remains are, uhm, easy to disperse, so it's hard to establish a case."

"And how do you know, missie?"

Bloomingdale shrugged. "I have made some friends among the fae."

No wonder. They probably thought she was one of them with that face. Not for the first time, Watson felt an urge to throw her assistant on the table and examine her insides with her tongue, but she held it together.

The girl seemed excited - or upset, it was hard to tell, the two states were very similar in her. "I think there is something afoot here, dr Watson. I think someone is hunting them down. We should look into it! You could... you know."

You could ask him. Ugh. She didn't want to. She was free of him. She didn't want to get drawn back into it. Worst of all, he had taken it all so much better. Of all people! He had shrugged off the complete fucking up of the natural order, saying some nonsense about needing to simply redefine what is impossible to get to the truth.

But...she liked Bloomingdale. She liked her, but she also plainly liked her. And as much as she didn't appreciate the Fae's meddling, if someone was killing them, it was not something she could ignore. Even if the investigation was no longer part of her job description.

"Fine," she said, her annoyance both enhanced and reduced by her young assistant's smile of satisfaction.

***

"The killer or killers extract something from the remains to make an elixir," Merlock said, one second after she explained the situation.

"No, no, no! You cannot have possibly deduced that from what I told you!"

"Don't be silly. Of course not. I already knew it. Here," he said, tossing her a vial filled with a fluorescent reddish liquid.

"What's this?" she asked, grabbing it in the air despite the careless throw.

"What they kill them for. Three parts fireheart from a fire elemental, one part heartstone from an earth elemental. I don't think they use air or water ones. Oh, and gin. Cheap gin."

She held it far from her body, as if it was dangerous. "What does it do? And where did you get it?"

He seemed mildly embarrassed. "I have my vices, as you well know. I helped my supplier with a problem and, grateful, he gave it to me as a bonus along with, you know, the other stuff," he said. She didn't allow herself to disapprove. They weren't working together anymore: if he wanted to do drugs, it was his own problem. "But it's not for me," he added. "It's just an aphrodisiac, of which I have little use. You can have it."

"They kill them to make an aphrodisiac?" It was shamefully comforting that the world was still a cesspit.

Merlock shrugged with the indifference he exhibited when a topic moved past his area of interest. "It's apparently very potent."

***

The vial sat on her desk. Watson and Bloomingdale were looking at it as if it was a living thing that could run away at any moment.

"You seem to be the expert in elementals, Nina," she told her assistant. "Could he be right? It's not like he tested it."

Bloomingdale blushed at the prospect of being the expert in the situation. "My faeriends say it's likely. Elementals are considered very erotic creatures. And it's not like we know how any of this works".

"Please never use the term 'faeriends' again in my presence."

"Noted, Doctor."

"It would be wrong to use it. Is this clear?"

"Absolutely wrong". She shifted her legs. "However...some of my fae...friends among the Fae told me that the essence of an elemental contains their memories. Even in this, uhm, diluted form, consuming it might give us a glimpse into their final moments and help us identify their killer?"

Watson raised an eyebrow. "Why do you assume we would be the ones consuming it?"

Bloomingdale's face got almost as red as her hair. "We can't give it to the inspector! What would he say? And we need two subjects to increase the reliability of the experiment results. It's just common sense."

Watson had barely heard the last bit, already undressing the girl with her eyes. She sighed dramatically. "Well, if it's for science, I guess it must be done."

The autopsy room was not a poor location for such an experiment. It was Saturday evening, so there was no chance of intrusion; it was on the second basement, so there was no need to monitor noise levels, and, if the elixir did not do what it was supposed to, there was a medicine cabinet.

"Do we know the dosage?"

Bloomingdale frowned. "It's only about 10 ml in total. We can't start low and increase the dose, or we run the risk of running out of it before observing any effect."

Watson nodded. "So we just split it in half and hope for the best."

The mixture's taste was imperceptible, given the quantity. They gulped it down and stood there, staring at each other, a little awkwardly.

"Now, Bloomingdale, full disclosure: I have always felt some attraction to you, so that could introduce some error to our results."

The girl nodded. "Noted, Doctor. Don't worry, I feel no attraction towards you whatsoever, so any lust I feel will be clearly the result of the concoction."

Watson was taken a little aback. "None whatsoever? I thought...I mean, you were very eager to try this out, so I assumed that you..."

She actually laughed, for a second, before seeing Watson's expression. "Sorry. Don't take me wrong, Doctor, you are a very attractive woman, but really, I am strictly heterosexual. This is why I was so eager to see if it works - this is a great opportunity to catch whoever's behind this, and to break new ground in science. I like cock, but if Lady Science was a real lady, I'd eat her pussy every night."

Watson raised an eyebrow. "That wasn't you talking, was it?"

Bloomingdale was flustered. "No. It must be working! About one minute needed to take effect." She wrote that last bit in her notebook, hand slightly trembling.

Watson could feel her loins lighting on fire. It was barely a metaphor - the temperature between her legs had literally risen suddenly. Still, her assistant's words held her back. "So, is that enough evidence for you or should we take it further?" Without realising she was grinding against the table as she said it.

The girl pouted, a thoughtful expression on her face. She was shorter and smaller. Watson thought she could easily grab her, throw her on the table and ride her face, and realised the elixir was dangerous. Had she taken a little more she might not have been able to control this lust.

"For science," said Bloomingdale, and sat on the table, her legs wrapping around her boss' waist as their tongues interlocked.

Watson's hands were all over her breasts, removing her shirt and slightly twitching one hardened nipple. The girl's hands had meanwhile gone under Watson's own skirt to grab her ass. She lay back on the table and pulled Watson down with her.

"Fuck me, Jane," she said simply.

She pulled down pants that were too soaked to be usable, and started kissing down from Bloomingdale's belly, past the red pubes, and finally, spreading the labia with one hand, slid her tongue into her cunt. Normally, she'd take her time, kissing her lover's thighs and slowly licking her path to the prize, but she was maddened with lust, and Nina was so ridiculously wet there was not much point to foreplay.

Her tongue was hungrily gulping down the juices she sucked, when the image flashed in her head.

She was in a house—specifically, she was in the crime scene. Except at some earlier time. She was fucking someone in the ass - some fairy girl. She had a cock; she was the elemental. The victim. Elementals looked entirely human on the outside, another infuriating, senseless fact she detested. And who knew? Bloomingdale was right, even if this specific memory didn't seem very relevant to the case.

"I had a glimpse into our victim's past," she said between moans.

"It's working! You must try harder."

This entire situation was the exact kind of absurd she disliked about this strange new order of things, but under the circumstances, she was most willing to follow it through. Her fingers went deeper as her tongue continued to work ceaselessly on Nina's excited clit. The elixir gave her stamina, but more than that, it expanded her senses, and her perception. She felt she could taste every single drop of the ginger girl's cunt - it was like time was dilated, and when Bloomindale arched her back and grabbed her hair as she writhed under her mouth, the seconds seemed to turn to minutes. It was magnificent. It was not worth killing for, but it was almost understandable.

There was a knock on the door - not the morgue's door, though. It was the victim's apartment. Seeing through his eyes, she moved to open.

"I saw that one too," said Bloomingdale.

As her partner's orgasm subsided, Watson started moving up, kissing her way to Nina's neck before half-standing and positioning her dripping pussy over the girl's mouth. She gladly noted there was genuine hunger in Nina's eyes as she stretched her neck to drink of her cunt.

Her preexisting lust for the girl, coupled with the effects of the elixir - she knew the guilt over using it would take over the lust eventually - made control impossible.

"I've wanted your slutty tongue between my legs since I first hired you, bitch".

"Mmmmknow".

"Don't talk, slut - fuck, I'm..."

The door opened. Oh fuck.

***

"Sounds like you got it all figured out. Why are you here?"

"Can't you deduce it?" she asked without hiding the sarcasm.

Merlock thought for half a second. "Your evidence is based on a vision you had while fucking your assistant. I, as a perfectly rational individual, see no reason to dispute it, but the court would. And you can't go to the police, given the identity of the suspect. So you want me to provide actual - acceptable - evidence of Inspector Lagrange's guilt."

That's what she wanted, but it was annoying how he did that. "Can you? It doesn't have to be real - just say you noticed a special speck of ash on his moustache, and everyone will believe you, because it's you". She knew he would never.

"Special speck of ash? Ludicrous. Have you learned nothing from me?" He made a dramatic gesture with the trombone he was holding. She had never actually seen him play.

"Ok, ok. Can you help?"

He sighed. "It's an elemental, my dear Watson. The courts of London will not accept your evidence. But the Fae will. Just go see their magistrates, or whatever they have." He shooed her away - actually shooed her away!

Fuck. Every time, it was something she could have - should have - thought on her own.