by M. D. Massey
I poked at my cheekbone again. It was going to need some ice, and soon. “‘Never hurt anyone,’ Kenny. And besides, I told you that was between him and Rocko. Mr. Paljor can take care of himself.”
“Yeah, yeah—he’s some sort of werecat. Heard you the first time.”
“A pantherathrope, to be exact. Trust me, he’s a lot more dangerous than he looks.” Mr. Paljor was a were, alright, of the snow leopard variety to be exact. He was also a political refugee, which was why he was trying to fly under the radar. I’d had to smooth things over between the Pack and the Red Caps after Kenny and Derp had pulled a number on Rocko’s crew.
“But he’s too nice to stand up for himself, so we did it for him.”
I laughed, because Kenny was a master of understatement. “You blew up a delivery van, Kenny… with two of Rocko’s boys in it.”
“It was just a little bomb,” he demurred. “Just enough to scare them, you know?”
“What it did is piss them off, and it made them think Mr. Paljor hired someone to take them out. If I hadn’t stepped in, the Pack would’ve been forced to intervene. And that might have ended the peace accord between the Pack and the fae. Next time, listen to me when I tell you not to get involved.”
Kenny dismissed me with a wave. “Aw, you’re no fun.”
“So I’ve been told. Now, do you want to tell me why you’re here?”
The kid stuck out his lower lip and huffed, blowing a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. Kenny had a Mallen streak on the back of his head that stuck out like a sore thumb, but he owned it like a boss. He’d taken to wearing his dark brown mop skate-punk style since I’d last seen him—long in the front and shaved on the sides and back.
“You see, McCool? This why you’re having girlfriend problems—you never listen. Shit, man, I’ve been trying to tell you that since I got here.”
“And?” I asked as I checked a non-existent watch on my wrist.
“It’s Derp, Colin. He’s gone missing, and I’m pretty sure the goblins took him.”
Five
“Damn it, Kenny! Why didn’t you say so in the first place? That’s kind of an important piece of information to leave out.”
He rolled his eyes in that practiced, nonchalant manner all teens possessed. “Um, because you’ve been busting my balls for the last five minutes, remember?”
“Yes, but…” I remembered I was talking to a fourteen-year-old and thought better of arguing with him. “Never mind, there’s no sense in wasting time. Hop in my car—you can explain it on the way.”
Kenny glanced around, confused. “What, did you finally get rid of that shit heap you call a hot rod?”
“Naw, I still have it,” I said as I opened the driver’s side door and snagged the keys from under the visor. “And it’s not a shit heap.”
Kenny’s eyes went wide as he realized my car had been there the whole time. “Whoa… that is cool! Invisibility spell?”
“Uh-uh. Just a compulsion that makes mundane people overlook it.”
“Normally, I’d make a smart-ass remark about polishing a turd, but the shit heap actually looks a little better with the new paint and rims.” He opened the driver’s side door, started to get in, then backed out gagging. “Ugh! I changed my mind. This thing is obviously a piece of shit and that stench proves it. What died in here?”
“A magical bird crapped all over the front seat. Just hop in the back, the smell’s not as bad there.”
The kid held his nose, feigning that the smell was much worse than it was. I drove while he filled me in, his mouth moving a hundred miles an hour while his arms and hands gesticulated wildly for emphasis.
“You see, it’s like this. Derp and I were monitoring the police channels and we kept hearing dispatch sending units to check out missing persons reports downtown. So, Derp and I decided to go check it out, and we agreed to meet each other at Sixth and Congress after school, which is near where most of the missing people had been seen last. I mean we were going to meet after he got out of school, but—”
“Whoa, slow down. You guys went to Sixth Street by yourselves?”
Kenny’s head bobbed up and down. “Yeah—I mean no. Well, Derp went, but I ended up not getting to go on account of my mom not having any money for the bus that day, ’cause she spent it on lottery tickets the night before—you know that’s how the state collects taxes on poor people, right? Anyway, I tried calling Derp to tell him that I wasn’t going to make it because my mom can’t resist being a sucker, but it just went to voicemail.”
I tapped a finger on the steering wheel, then stopped myself. Wouldn’t do to let Kenny see I was nervous. “When was this?”
“Last night. I stopped by Derp’s house on the way here, just to make sure he wasn’t at home sick or something, and there was a police car there and his mom was crying. I told them I hadn’t seen him, and I stole some money from Mrs. Martin’s purse—that’s Derp’s mom—and slipped out the back. Then, I took the bus downtown to look for Derp. All I found was there was this.”
Kenny pulled a red plastic card from his pocket and handed it to me from the back seat. It was a Capital Metro bus pass. I gave it a quick look and handed it back to him.
“How do you know this is his, Kenny?”
He flipped it over and shoved it in front of my face. “Because Derp is a dork, that’s how. Look.” The bus pass had a Charizard decal on the back. “Derp loves Pokémon, even though he won’t admit it. That’s his bus pass, I’m sure of it.”
“Alright, I believe you—and put your seat belt on. Cops may not be able to see this thing, but you can still get ejected through the windshield if we have an accident.”
“Sheesh, you sound like my mom. I bet you play the lottery too.”
“Never,” I lied. “Tell me about the missing persons cases.”
“Don’t you watch the news? Damn, but you live in a bubble. Alright, so these young, single men have been disappearing for the last few months. All of them were last seen downtown near Sixth Street and Congress Avenue, around expensive restaurants and bars where they serve Manhattans and Appletinis with little umbrellas and crap. You know—the Garage, Firehouse, The Roaring Fork, that sort of place.”
“How do you know what kinds of drinks they serve at those places?”
“Duh, bonehead—I looked it up.” I glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see Kenny typing with his thumbs on a make-believe phone. “We have this thing called Google now, maybe you’ve heard of it? Anyway, the strange thing is these guys were always alone. That’s weird, right? A guy goes to a fancy restaurant or bar and just sits there eating and drinking by himself?”
“Well, that depends on his social skills.”
“And you’d know, right? Man, you sure must’ve messed things up with your girlfriend. I mean, I kind of worshipped you after I saw her, ’cause she’s a high eight, maybe even a solid nine. But you had to go and ruin it. Geez, I can’t even look at you right now.”
“Um, what you just said was all kinds of wrong. C’mon, Kenny—rating women on a ten-scale? That’s for lame-ass wannabe pickup artists. If you want to impress women, you need to show them respect.”
“I dunno, man. Seems like nice guys always get the big chili.”
I laughed. “The what?”
“You know, the big chili.” I looked at him in the rearview again, and he made a circle with his thumb and forefinger and stuck his other index finger through it. “Up the ass, doofus.”
I shook my head. “You need to stop watching Internet porn.”
He gave me the strawberries. “I live in a trailer park with my single mom. How else am I going to learn about sex and stuff?”
“Kenny, that is not the way you want to learn about sex. Gah, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you. But trust me when I say that pornography depicts a distorted view of sexuality.”
“Oh, so you never watch it?”
I didn’t have an appropriate answer for that. “Hey, look,
we’re here.” I pulled over to the curb. “Take me to where you found Derp’s bus pass.”
Kenny was walking with a lot more skip in his step than I’d have expected of someone who thought his best friend had been abducted. It made me more than a little suspicious, because these boys were always up to something.
“Kid, you don’t seem too worried about Derp. Care to explain why that is?”
He screwed his lips to one side and shrugged. “What do you want me to say? We’re not the same scared, stupid kids who got nabbed by the goblins last year, Colin. While you’ve been putting off teaching us how to defend ourselves, we’ve been doing—stuff.”
“Kenny…”
His cheeks flushed and his eyes grew hard as he spoke. “Aw, c’mon, Colin. What did you expect us to do, just sit around and wait to get taken again? We seriously pissed those goblins off, and you and I both know they were going to come back for us eventually. But you decided to leave us hanging. Well, we did something about it.”
My temper was rising again, forcing me to push it down with an effort of will. I counted to ten before I spoke. “Like what, Kenny? Spill.”
He stopped on a dime and turned on me, arms crossed as he locked eyes with mine. “We started teaching ourselves magic, is all.” I opened my mouth to respond, but he cut me off. “See, I knew you’d get all bent out of shape. It wasn’t anything serious, just warding runes and charms. You know, stuff to scratch on our window frames and door sills, to keep them out.”
Last year, after the whole carnival fiasco, I’d made a deal with Maeve, asking her to tell the goblins to leave the boys alone. She’d assured me it would be done. Still, I should have thought about warding their homes, and maybe even crafting them some protective charms. Even though I’d told the boys not to mess with things in the world beneath until I said they were ready for it, I couldn’t blame them for wanting to protect themselves.
Bottom line? I didn’t have the right to chew Kenny out for doing what I should have done. I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a few deep breaths, waiting until the tension went out of my shoulders before I spoke.
“You guys were right to do what you did.”
“Yeah, well fuck y—huh?” Kenny arched an eyebrow and cocked his head. “Wait a minute, did I hear that correctly? Did Colin McCool just say I did something right?”
“Don’t let it go to your head, alright? Runes and wards are fine for protection when you’re at home, or when you have time to set up a barrier or protection spell. But putting runes and wards on your house isn’t going to save you when you’re out in the field. Plus, even minor magic can draw the attention of things you don’t want hanging around. Sometimes it’s better to pretend like you don’t know about the world beneath our own, so you can fly under the radar and avoid catching the eye of something that might be more than you can handle.”
The kid’s face was all smirk now. “Hah! Derp won’t believe it when I tell him you ate your words! Man, I can’t wait until I see him.”
“We’d better get busy finding him then.” The kid had led us behind a very trendy and expensive restaurant, the type of place you took a date when you really wanted to impress them. “Is this it, then?”
Kenny nodded. “Yeah, I found his card right over there.” He pointed at a pile of produce boxes that sat by the kitchen entrance of the restaurant. The scent of garlic and basil mingled with the odor of cat piss and human feces, making my nose itch and my skin crawl.
I looked around for a possible witness, but the closest I got was an unoccupied cardboard pallet behind a trash dumpster. The city had a huge homeless population, a result of non-existent vagrancy laws, plenty of resources for the homeless downtown, and a thriving illegal drug trade. It wasn’t uncommon to see junkies begging for change right outside a $200 a plate restaurant. Austin was nothing if not a dichotomy of class and privilege.
It was a given that I wanted to take in every detail of the alley, so I cast a cantrip to sharpen my already highly-tuned senses. I took a deep whiff of air, regretting it instantly. A faint breeze carried the pleasant bouquet of human feces, cat urine, rancid grease… and goblins.
A quick visual scan of the alley revealed there were no security cameras, making it the perfect place for an abduction—or a murder. I looked for clues in the magical spectrum and found none, not a single trace of magic. From what I could tell, nothing had been erased either. I did a more thorough pattern search of the alley, looking for scuff marks, blood, or anything else that might indicate a struggle had occurred here, but I found nothing.
The scene was way too clean. If goblins had abducted Derp in that alley, whoever had done it was either very stealthy or the kid had gone with them willingly.
“Find anything?” Kenny asked, looking over my shoulder as I squatted down by the trash dumpster.
“Not much—definitely no sign of struggle, which is puzzling. There are no cameras back here, and I don’t see any witnesses around, so it’s hard to say what happened.”
“What about the goblins? Any sign of them?”
I sucked air through my teeth as I looked around. “Goblins have been through here, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they took Derp. They’re habitual dumpster divers, so they could have simply been here to grab a meal.”
“Some mystical detective you are,” Kenny sulked.
“Hang on, there’s still one thing I haven’t tried.” I nodded toward a single concrete step that sat by the building’s back entrance, and pointed to a gap between the slab and the brick wall behind it. In the darkness beyond, a pair of feline eyes stared out at us. “I may not have a clue regarding what happened here—but I bet she does.”
“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” I cooed. “Here kitty.” My overtures were met with a hiss, as well as the faint mewling cries of kittens in the background. “Looks like mama cat’s not having it. Time for plan B.”
Kenny tapped his foot. “You know, I like animals as much as the next guy, but is now really the time to be rescuing stray kittens?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a twenty, handing it to Kenny. “Do me a favor. Go to that restaurant over there, find someone in the kitchen, and ask them if you can buy some of their meat scraps.”
“I could just sneak in and steal some food, you know.”
“Druids are not thieves, Kenny. Do as I ask. It’ll help us find Derp.”
The kid grumbled a bit, but he did as requested, returning in short order with a paper sack full of fat trimmings and chicken skin. I dumped the meal out in front of the mama cat’s den, then backed up and motioned for Kenny to do the same. Minutes later, she sauntered out of the hole—a lean, somewhat scruffy-looking Siamese mix with chocolate points, thick fur, and bright blue eyes. She sniffed at the food, then started wolfing it down.
“How’s this helping us find Derp?” Kenny whispered.
I held a finger to my lips, then knelt in seiza position, just like my old karate instructor used to make us do at the beginning and end of class. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing, extending my senses into the area around me. Besides the cat and her kittens, there were a couple of rats keeping their distance, as well as an anole hiding from the grackles and pigeons overhead.
I ignored the other animals, focusing in on the mama cat. In the weeks since I’d discovered the druid ability of communing with animals, I’d learned that some species were more susceptible than others. Some were willing to follow suggestions and allow an intrusion into their mind and memories, while others would resist it—feral cats being chief among creatures who did not want anyone poking around in their brains.
Once the cat had finished feasting, I knew she’d return to her den and feed her young. I waited, still and silent, while Kenny fidgeted nearby. Soon, I heard him tapping away at his phone screen, but I kept my awareness mostly focused on the mama cat. As I’d expected, a full belly and nursing kittens had put her right to sleep.
Ever so carefully, I began prying at the edges of her consc
iousness, easing around her defenses until I was able to slip in unnoticed. I chuckled as her feline dreams registered in my mind—mostly impressions of successful hunts, chasing off rivals who wanted her hunting territory and protecting her kittens. I went deeper, looking for recent memories of the night before.
I sifted through her mind, following along with her in reverse chronological order as she hunted, fed, and slept earlier in the day. The emotions that accompanied those memories were mostly pleasure, with a healthy dose of caution and a wee bit of self-congratulation—typical for a cat.
Going a little deeper, I caught a whiff of a memory that had disturbed the mama cat immensely. Something had happened outside her den late the night before, arousing her from her sleep and sending her protection and survival instincts into overdrive. I watched the memory unfold as she was awoken from her sleep not by a sound or scent, but by a feeling of wrongness.
A predator lurked nearby. Something dark and dangerous. Mama cat’s instincts told her to remain quiet and hidden, but her natural curiosity overwhelmed her sense of caution. Besides, she needed to know what type of threat she faced. If it could reach her kittens, she’d need to start moving them to another location. Sometimes survival required saving part of a litter, while leaving one or two behind in sacrifice. If that were necessary, it would pain her to do so, but she would do what she must to save the strongest of her kittens.
She crept, inch by inch, to the opening of her den. A thing, large and cloaked in shadow, was wrapping its prey in—what was that? String? No, silk. Spider silk, but not like the kind mama cat sometimes got stuck in her fur. These strands were thick—large enough to capture a man, perhaps.
And that’s exactly what the creature was doing. Click, click, click, skrikt, skrikt, skrikt, went the thing’s legs. Mama cat couldn’t see clearly as shadows strangely obscured the predator from sight. However, she could see four huge spider legs, spinning and wrapping the creature’s silk around a man-sized figure. Yes, that’s what it was—a man. The spider-creature had enjoyed a successful hunt this evening.
