In Truth and Claw (A Mick Oberon Job #4)

by Ari Marmell

  I turned off the main avenue. The carriage turned after me.

  Nuts.

  It still coulda been coincidence. Those tend to follow me around, especially with that hex always lurkin’ in the background no matter how thoroughly I’d warded myself against it.

  On the other hand—the more probable hand—they coulda been gunnin’ for me. No way they’d openly attack me this deep into Seelie turf, but an attack wasn’t the scariest possibility.

  They mighta been here to call in my marker with Queen Mob.

  At best, that meant Eudeagh wanted something big from me, something that I probably wouldn’t wanna do and that’d take me away from this mess with Áebinn and the vampires longer’n I could afford to be away.

  At worst? She wanted me to help her out on something to do with the case—or with Adalina. And no matter the consequences, I’d hafta do it, or make myself oath-breaker.

  Real, real nasty things happen to Fae who violate a sworn oath. Nasty enough that, if I hadda choose… I might just do anything, including handing the poor changeling girl over, to avoid it.

  Think less of me for that, if you want. You got no idea. You truly don’t.

  Fortunately, that still left me one option.

  I ran.

  I ran like I couldn’t remember ever running, churnin’ up a spray of snow behind me. I ducked down every narrow alley, anything I thought was tight enough that the carriage couldn’t follow. I made wild, random turns; jumped a few fences, clambered in a couple windows. I even burst through the back door of some poor brounie’s apartment, knockin’ over his dinner table, and then out through the front. His cu sidhe buddy chased me a few blocks, barkin’ his schnozzle off, before he decided it wasn’t worth the cold on his paws.

  I felt… I ain’t sure how to describe it. A cold drag on my soul, like a chill breeze tuggin’ at me instead of blowin’, and I shivered. Even just trying to avoid letting them call in the oath this way was dangerous, could just maybe draw the attention of the nightmarish things that would inevitably follow if I actually broke my word.

  But I kept on goin’, and it faded after a few.

  Maybe the Unseelie just hadn’t planned on me lamming off that way and I’d caught ’em by surprise, or maybe they didn’t know where to find the toadstool ring that marked the Path back to my office in the mortal world. (I hoped it was the latter. I made a point of tryin’ to keep that particular ring secret, but you never know.) Or hell, maybe they weren’t after me at all, it really had been random luck, and they were sittin’ back in the center of town marveling at the rattle-brained sidhe who’d just fled at the mere sight of ’em.

  Whatever the case, though, they didn’t have anybody waitin’ between me and the way home, which left me in the clear to get my keister outta Elphame and back to my office, my desk, a massive glass of warm milk, and a whole lotta unanswered questions.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  You got any friggin’ idea how many cemeteries there are in Chicago?

  Me neither. I ain’t counted. But I can tell ya it’s a whole bunch, and the vampires’ victims weren’t concentrated enough in one place to narrow it down much.

  Hell, it might not’ve even been a cemetery I was lookin’ for. Coulda been an old church, or a massacre site, or a dozen other delightful sorta places. If I hadda search each of ’em one by one, and hope I found or picked up on somethin’ at random, then the “deathly magic” Áebinn had sensed was gonna be me putting my wand to my head and offing myself to escape the tedium.

  Probably best to find another approach.

  I noodled over the idea of starting with Orsola. She still felt like my best suspect. But I didn’t know it was her, and after I wasted so much time hunting Goswythe earlier in the year, I wasn’t gonna let myself get fixated on another assumption. Plus, it wasn’t as if I’d had any success in finding her so far, anyway. No, helpful as it’d be if I knew who I was gunning for, I hadda keep my mind open.

  So, the next morning, after another round of salt and other protections—plus a big slug of cream to fortify myself—I gave Detective Keenan a ring on the blower.

  The call was brief and not helpful. Three more bloody murders, just in the two days it’d taken me to visit the Otherworld and then start my search. He’n the whole damn department were scrambling, tryin’ to keep a lid on everything, and he didn’t have a single lead to offer me. Told me I could give the scenes an up-and-down if I wanted, but it’d have to wait until the cops were done with ’em. He’d let me know.

  And once he did let me know, givin’ ’em the once-over proved a big fat waste of time. I learned exactly squat.

  All right, what next? Didn’t see a lotta choices in front of me, so—much to your surprise, I’m sure—I went out trawling for the usual gang of lunkheads. Again. No, none of ’em had given me much to go on earlier, but I knew more, now. I wasn’t just askin’ over Áebinn or some nebulous “dark powers.” Now we had vampires, weird magics, and these violent killings in the mix. Much better chance one of my contacts or informants had heard something.

  And it was still preferable to pickin’ random graveyards off a map.

  Problem was, Franky wasn’t at the first of his usual haunts. Or the second. Or the third.

  He hadn’t said anything about going dormy last we’d spoken. And yeah, he ain’t always the easiest mug to find, but this felt hinky. I started to worry a little.

  Then the bartender at one of Franky’s favorite dives, a place as dark and dingy and generally sleazy now as it’d been during the height of Prohibition—maybe even more so—told me he’d been in yesterday, lookin’ jittery. Hadn’t stayed long, just put down a single hard drink, asked if anyone’s been poking around after him, and left.

  Now I was worrying more’n a little.

  I knew most of Franky’s hidey-holes, and I checked ’em all as fast as the L and my own two hocks would carry me. Nothin’.

  People started to avoid me on the street, either ’cause of my expression or the dark emotions rolling around in my aura, heavy enough for you lot to feel even if you’d never recognize the sensation for what it was. I know I talk tough about Franky, and I’ve had to get rough with him a time or two, but he was one of my people. If something’d happened to him, someone would pay with a lot more’n a pound of flesh.

  So where would Four-Leaf Franky go if he was in really behind the eight ball? Well, usually to me, but that hadn’t happened. Where else, then?

  Ah. Or who else?

  Before long, I stood before a rickety door in a dirt-caked and piss-scented tenement, one of the poorest in the poor neighborhood of Canaryville. I rapped a knuckle on the wood, tryin’ to make sure I didn’t accidentally knock the damn thing in.

  It felt a lot more solid than it looked. Even more solid than it’d been the last time I was here.

  No answer, except a quick waft of what smelled like soap-suds. ’Sokay; I hadn’t expected one.

  “We gotta go through this every time, Lenai?” I asked through the closed door. “You know I can get in if I want. I just wanna talk. To both of you.”

  “Both of who, jackass?” The wood between us made her voice sound that much hoarser and scratchier than it already did. “It’s just me! You think I have a gentleman caller?” She punctuated the question with a wheezing cackle, to heighten the absurdity.

  “I get along with him okay, but I wouldn’t call him a gentleman.”

  A moment of silence, then, “Go away, Oberon!”

  “Open the door, or I will.”

  “Why can’t you just leave u— me alone, you cocksucker?”

  I don’t want you to think I was gettin’ any joy outta this. On the square, I felt like a bully. For all the profanity, I heard some real upset in her tone.

  “Because it ain’t about what I want, or what you want, Lenai. If I could afford to walk away and let you be, I would. Quicker we do this, quicker I’m outta your hair.”

  A few harsh whispers, which I pretended I didn’t hear,
then the scraping of furniture—guess that’s why the door felt solid—and finally the clicking of the lock.

  The tiny dame glaring up at me with murder in her peepers looked to be on the younger slope of middle age, which was a problem. Lenai normally appears to be older’n dirt and worn as shoe leather. She only starts gettin’ younger when she’s really stressed. Angry…

  Or frightened.

  “Get the fuck inside if you’re coming, ball-wrinkle!”

  I did just that, and the first thing that hit me was the scent. Not the general miasma of the building, not even the soapy washerwoman smell that usually accompanied her, but the garlic.

  Whole strings of it, draped around the apartment like bunting. I also spotted half a dozen crucifixes tacked to the wall, and one on the side of the door. An old broom leaned against the doorframe, and the end had been snapped off and sharpened.

  Hmm.

  I also smelled a faint trace of old, dried blood—not that I needed it. I could taste the pain radiating off the figure sprawled out on Lenai’s mattress.

  “Nice of you to take him in,” I said, not turning back to her as she relocked everything up behind me. “Didn’t you call him a ‘gold-sucking clover-cock’ last time he came up in conversation?”

  “I’m sure she did,” Franky said weakly from beneath the blankets. “She’s called me a lot worse. But she meant it in the nicest way.”

  “Fuck I did,” Lenai grumbled. “Meant every word, and whole lot more I never got around to.”

  I stepped a bit closer so I could examine his battered face, his swollen jaw, and the jagged lacerations across his cheeks, neck, and shoulders. “What happened, Franky?”

  “He tripped!” Lenai insisted before he could answer, stomping over to the bedside. Franky said nothing.

  “Tripped?” I stared, first at them, then at the garlic, the crosses, the sharpened broom. “So, you, what? Got careless and took a tumble down a flight of vampires?”

  Franky muttered something unintelligible. Lenai got another five or so years younger.

  “He doesn’t want to get involved, Oberon,” she said— pleaded, almost.

  “Take a good look at him, sister.”I tried to sound sympathetic, but I hadda keep pressing. “He’s already involved. And those wounds? That ain’t the face of someone they’re finished with.”

  “Fuck you, jackass!” But it was aimed down at her feet, not directly at me.

  Didn’t seem any reason to keep arguing if she wasn’t gonna fight anymore, so I turned my attention back to Franky. And his wounds. “Shouldn’t those be bandaged?”

  “They were when he got here,” Lenai said. “Filthy, too. We were just changing them.”

  Just? He’d been here a while; the rumpled sheets, and the blood stains that’d long dried in ’em, spoke to that. I raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, we might’ve been arguing for a spell. That might’ve slowed the process down.”

  Eyebrow stayed up.

  “He won’t hand over his goddamn chains!” she finally screeched.

  “I’m lost.”

  “My gold chains,” Franky said, reaching up with a fingertip as though to make sure they were still around his neck. “Daffy broad wants to melt them down to coat the bandages!”

  “She…” I was gonna get dizzy if I kept twistin’ around between the two of ’em this way. “Why would you do that?”

  For the first time, her mug came over uncertain insteada irritated. “I thought… Franky’s part leprechaun, right? Gold’s supposed to be good for them!”

  I take it back. I was gonna get dizzy regardless. “They’re sure fond of it,” I agreed. “Even take some comfort in touching it. But that’s it, Lenai. They don’t, I dunno, feed on it or have it running through their veins or whatever whacky notion you had. Where the hell’d you come up with that?”

  She grumbled at the floor again. Most of the words weren’t clear, and the ones I could make out all started with F.

  “Lenai? Dollface? Would you kindly go bring some clean bandages and some alcohol for poor ol’ Franky?”

  “I’m going, jackass, I’m going!” But she was starting to look older again, which was good. While she puttered around and collected what we needed, I turned once again back to Franky.

  “Spill,” I ordered, gently as you can give an order like that.

  “Not a lot to spill, Mick.” He winced, wriggled around tryin’ to find a position that didn’t aggravate one injury or another, then gave up. “I got word someone’d been asking around after me, so I was already nervous last night. He caught up with me couple hours before dawn.”

  “Vampire,” I said. It wasn’t a question, so he didn’t bother to answer. Then, “Wait. Askin’ for you, personally?”

  “Name and description both.”

  Son of a bitch. “So he knew all about you.”

  “Well, not all. I think he expected me to be human. It threw him when this—” he waved at the worst gash on his neck “—didn’t kill me. That hesitation’s the only reason I got away.” Maybe sayin’ it out loud made it real, because he started to tremble.

  “It’s okay, Franky. You’re safe.” I looked again at the various defenses Lenai had put up. “Probably more here’n anywhere else.”

  “Still, if I hadn’t been so close to her place, or if she hadn’t let me in…”

  “She’d always have let you in. Lenai’s got a good heart.”

  “The fuck I do, grass-cock!” drifted sweetly from the kitchen.

  “Somewhere,” I added a lot more quietly. “Probably in a jar.”

  Franky laughed, then winced again.

  At which point the lady of the house returned. She poured a good portion of rotgut leftover from early Prohibition down her guest’s gullet, which near made him choke, and another good portion over the wounds, which near made him scream, and finally got to work with the bandages.

  “Not so tight!” he wheezed as she wrapped one around his neck. “I still have to breathe!”

  “If it’ll keep you from yapping your damn fool head off, you’ll just have to learn to do without!”

  Unfortunately, I didn’t really have the time to wait until he was in better shape. “Can you describe the vampire, Franky?”

  “Uh, dead? I dunno, Mick, it was a damn vampire!”

  “Man? Woman?”

  “Still going with ‘dead.’ Who can tell?”

  “You ain’t helpin’ much, here.”

  “Gee, I’m real sorry. Next time, I’ll ask the undead for ID before they try to suck me dry like an orange.”

  Guess I couldn’t really blame him. It could be kinda hard to tell, and I’m sure he had other concerns. “How tall was it? Taller than me? Taller than you?”

  “I don’t… Wait. Shorter. Shorter than me, anyway. I remember it reached up when it backhanded me.” Again he gestured to a wound, this time the shiner and split skin around his left blinker. Lenai barked at him to stay still, only she took a lot more words to get the point across.

  “Good man. Not quite useless after all.”

  Shorter’n Franky meant we weren’t talkin’ about Varujan. The nosferatu who’d visited me’d been a pretty big boy. Markedly taller’n me, and Franky only had me beat by an inch and change. (Here in the mortal world, anyway.)

  Another vampire. Another vampire who’d deliberately tried to rub out a friend of mine.

  And suddenly I wondered if the L King’s death had been a coincidence. Two vampire attacks against people I knew? Not-entirely-human people I knew, to boot?

  That definitely sounded like the work of a certain witch. I wasn’t quite ready to scrawl Orsola Maldera’s name in my own blood as absolutely positively bein’ the mastermind behind this affair, but I’d definitely moved up from pencil to ink.

  “Just need one more thing from you, then.”

  Franky gave me directions to where he’d been jumped, and I made for the door. “Take care of him, Lenai.”

  “Fuck no. I’ve just been
cleaning these disgusting wounds and bandaging him and sheltering him to see the surprise on his shitty face when I let him die.”

  “Ain’t too late to come with me, Franky. The vampire might be easier.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  I walked out and headed for the stairs, the sound of furniture scraping and thumping back against the door in my wake.

  * * *

  The vampire’d gone after Franky in an alley behind one of the many elevated train stations, but I didn’t go straight there. Figured I’d have a chat with the attendant inside first, see if he’d seen anything helpful. Turned out he had, but not in the way I’d expected.

  “I only came on shift a couple hours ago,” he explained, after first tellin’ me to buzz off so he could deal with payin’ commuters, and also after I’d gotten into his noggin and juggled a few of his emotions and attitudes like bowling pins. “But you ain’t the first one here askin’ about a carrot-top with gold chains and cheap glad rags.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Night before last, had a real live Bureau of Investigation agent in here, gunnin’ for the same guy.”

  Well, well. What to make of that? I could drum up reasons why a vampire mighta been after Franky, but what on Earth— either of ’em—could Áebinn want with him? Hell, I still wasn’t thrilled that she knew about him, or my other contacts, at all.

  Had she been lookin’ for me? I had stepped Sideways for a while…

  Ah, nuts. One thing at a time. I’d ask her when I saw her. Right now, time to go spend what would doubtless be several wonderfully scented minutes examining an alleyway.

  Yep. Grimy bricks, trash-and-glass covered cement. A real pungent bouquet of wet newspaper, rotting food, flivver exhaust, oil from the nearby trains, spilled alcohol, and stale piss. And the charming company of bugs still willing to brave the chillier weather.

  I managed to find a bit of dried blood, and I forced myself to stick my schnozzle close enough to smell that it wasn’t entirely mortal. I mean, I’d figured it was Franky’s, but I’d hadda make sure, see?

  Now that I had, though, I wasn’t sure what to do with that knowledge. It wasn’t pointing me anywhere. I needed—