Unshapely Things — Mark Del Franco

As long as there are desperate people, there will be the Weird, and I will have a reason to get up in the morning. I may not work in the big power leagues these days, but I still pull my weight even if now I'm poor Connor Grey, crippled druid. At least I don't have to deal with the politics of the Guild anymore. And they do send disability checks.

In the alleys of the decrepit Boston neighborhood known as the Weird, fairy prostitutes are turning up dead. The crime scenes show signs of residual magic, but the Guild, which polices the fey, has more "important" crimes to investigate and dumps the cases on human law enforcement.

So the Boston police call in Connor Grey, a druid and former hotshot Guild investigator whose magical abilities were crippled after a run-in with a radical environmentalist elf.

There's no love lost between the Guild and the Boston P.D., and as Connor battles red tape and his own shortcomings, he realizes that the murders are not random, but part of an ancient magical ritual. And if Connor can't figure out the killer's MO, the culmination of the spell might just bring about a worldwide cataclysm...