Iron Night

by M. L. Brennan

  Suze leaned in over my shoulder for a look and gave a low whistle. “That drawing of the band is the same one that Jacoby has in his design book. Someone trimmed the image from this page to give to him.”

  “It was the only thing in the whole office,” Lilah explained. “I wouldn’t have found it at all, except I was pulling out the files so that I could keep them in exact order.”

  “Tomas must’ve been originally keeping a file on this here but moved it later.” I looked closer at the text. “Lilah, can you read what’s written here?”

  “Sorry, I took French in high school,” she said apologetically.

  I was surprised. “French? Not, you know . . . Gaelic?”

  She gave me a very put-out look. “Not exactly an option in Providence high schools,” Lilah said witheringly.

  Suze pulled out her phone and waggled it. “Good thing we’ve got technology. Here.” She’d brought in the files from Lulu’s office and handed them to me in return for the photocopy.

  While Suze started squinting at the page and tapping words into Google, Lilah pointed at the files. “What are those?”

  “Actually, we were hoping you could help.” I handed them to her. “These are files on each of the victims from Dr. Leamaro’s office.”

  Lilah frowned. “What?” She flipped open the first in the stack and scanned through it quickly, flicking through most of the pages until she found what she was looking for. She nodded as she read it, but looked extremely confused. “He was a recessive,” she told me, then checked each file in turn. “They were all recessives. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why not? That means he was a changeling, just one without ears, right?”

  Lilah corrected me. “No, a recessive is a human. The DNA that makes a changeling is completely dormant. Believe me, the Neighbors tried everything; there’s nothing that can turn that DNA on. They gave up more than twenty years ago.” Still frowning, she looked over at the illustration that Suze was examining and the drawing of the man hanging upside down. “Unless . . . Maybe this is something new, that they’re trying to make active changelings.”

  “We talked to Lulu’s witch. He said that that tattoo is for a blood sacrifice. That doesn’t sound like something that leads to long-term health.”

  Lilah grimaced. “No, that doesn’t sound good at all.”

  Suze snapped her fingers loudly at us, drawing our attention. “Hey, how does this help with the brainstorming?” She pointed to one of the few complete and legible words on the sheet, sliochdmhorachd, which I couldn’t even imagine how to start trying to pronounce. “Apparently this is Scottish Gaelic for ‘fertility.’” She gave me a wry look. “Sound like the elf theme song to anyone else?”

  I thought back to what Ambrose had told us about his fertility potions’ limitations. “Lilah, are the Ad-hene trying to breed something more than a three-quarter cross?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Sure, they’ve been trying for years. But it hasn’t happened. The three-quarters, like Allegra and my sister, Iris, are as close as they’ve been able to get, and even that took magic.”

  “If a potion couldn’t get them a cross between a full and a three-quarter, do you think that they’d be willing to try killing someone for it?”

  Lilah gave me a pensive look. “Themselves never need much of a reason to kill humans. The only reason they don’t do it more often is your mother set some pretty clear rules. If they thought it would get them the seven-eighths cross they wanted . . . yeah, they’d do that.”

  Suze broke in, impatient. “We can sit here and speculate on the why until the cows come home, but why not just concentrate on the who? Lulu is probably involved; that sheet proves that your boss is definitely involved. All we have to do is grab one of them. We get them to lead us to the rest of the group so that we can eliminate all of them, and not only do the murders stop, but we can even ask them definitively what the fuck they were up to.”

  I hesitated, but Suzume had a very good point there. “I guess.” I looked over at Lilah, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside me, a few coppery curls escaping from her braid. I stumbled a moment, knowing what I had to ask her to do but hating it at the same time. There wasn’t much of a choice, though, and I pushed ahead. “Listen, I know he’s your boss and part of the community, and probably related to you in a few ways as well, but—”

  She knew what I was asking and gave me the kindness of not having to spell it out. “I know, Fort. It’s okay,” she said, cutting me off. Her long skirt had pockets in it, and she pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. She’d known the moment she found the illustration in his desk drawer what I’d need from her. Her face was pale but resolute. “If he was doing this, then he has to be stopped. This is Tomas’s address. With Allegra in labor, they won’t be leaving the house today.”

  I opened the paper to check. There was the address, in a looping script that stopped just short of substituting hearts for o’s. “No hospital?”

  “Not with Allegra. She’ll want to drop her glamour to be more comfortable during the labor. Most of us were born at home because of that.”

  That gave another interesting explanation to the doctor’s absence from her office this morning. “That’s probably where Lulu is as well.” Lilah nodded.

  Suze put her phone away and tucked the photocopy in her back pocket. Standing up, she said grimly, “And since they know that the Scotts are looking into their business, there’s probably a certain skinwalker present as well. And how and why that skinwalker got involved in this circle jerk is something to add to the list of interrogation questions.”

  I winced at the reminder of the skinwalker. That definitely cut out any plan of going over to the house ourselves. “I’ll give the address to Prudence to track down this evening when she can go out again. She knows a lot more about skinwalkers than either of us do—she can just nab either Lulu or Tomas if they leave the house on their own.” Given Prudence’s tendency to create a body count, grab a target was a better direction than eliminate. That left hours today before Prudence would be able to leave her hotel comfortably, and I paused again, torn. “Do you think they could have anything planned for today? If all the people they’re killing are recessive changelings, then that’s a pretty substantial pool of potential victims.”

  “More specific, Fort,” Suze noted. “Recessive changelings with the blood-sacrifice tattoo. We could always see if Jacoby tattooed anyone since we talked with him, or if he didn’t give us all of the names in the first place.”

  “Or you could go one better,” Lilah said suddenly, looking excited. “You said that everyone who was tattooed was sent to the speed-dating that the store hosted. Well, why not just go there and see if anyone has the tattoos?”

  “There’s another speed-dating?” I asked.

  “Tonight!” She grabbed a stack of paper from on top of the desk, flipped through it, and withdrew a flier. “It’s been scheduled for weeks.”

  “Don’t you have to sign up for those things? In advance?” Suze asked.

  Lilah smiled smugly. “Not if you know the coordinator who checks off the list and collects tickets. And with Tomas busy with Allegra, I’m going to be the only one there tonight. Since you’re a guy and a girl, I don’t even have to worry about the gender ratio being off—I’ll just set up an extra table.”

  Suze looked over at me, her expression clearly demanding that I shoot down this plan. Apparently speed-dating was not her style. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that this had potential. “This could actually really work,” I said, picking up on Lilah’s excitement. “What time does it start?”

  “Six o’clock. You’ll love it—it’s at this really cute independent bookstore. Meet some new people, browse some books—this has everything!” Clearly Lilah had been giving people the hard sell for too long and just couldn’t stop herself from talkin
g it up.

  I looked at the flier. “That’s something else I’m not following here,” I noted. “What the hell is up with these speed-dating things? Why didn’t they just grab Gage when he got his tattoo in the first place? Or abduct him from the house?”

  “House snatch involves the possibility of nosy neighbors or roommates,” Suze said with a disturbing air of experience. “And given that they were faking deaths and disappearances, I can see why getting the victims to a controlled secondary location was done.”

  “Crap. I guess that explains the change,” said Lilah, her coppery eyebrows arched almost up to her hairline.

  “Change?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, the speed-dating is something that Tomas has done here and here for a few years, but they used to be held in the store to increase foot-traffic. Then right after New Year’s he started joining up with other businesses, and we were doing them a lot more often.”

  “More often?” I asked, worried at the implications. “How much more?”

  Following my train of thought, Lilah looked at the flier and blanched. “It used to be once, maybe twice a year. Now, well, we’re having two in as many weeks.”

  “Are there more coming up?”

  Her golden-brown eyes were grim. “Four more next month.”

  “I hope you get paid extra for that shit,” Suze put in.

  Lilah shook her head. “I’m salary.”

  “Bummer.” The women exchanged looks, for once perfectly in tune.

  Reality suddenly closed in again, and I realized that even if going to a bookstore and having to fight purchase temptation when my expenses this month were already dooming me to a steady diet of ramen wasn’t bad enough, I was scheduled to work through dinner shift tonight. “Oh, shit. I’m going to have to cut out early from work.” I paused, reviewing it. “Crap, it’s still a decent plan. Okay, I’ll just tell them I’ve got to head out early.” That was sure to go over like a lead balloon. No wonder most vigilante crime fighters were independently wealthy: the others were busy at work.

  “Is your boss not very flexible?” Lilah asked.

  “He kind of hates me very specifically,” I said glumly. And as of the night before seemed to hold me personally responsible for the failure of the bombe fruit flowers.

  Suze scoffed. “Don’t make it harder than it is, Fort. Just lie your ass off and say you have to go to a wake. It’s not like you bag out early all the time.”

  “I’m not going to lie about a wake,” I said, hurt. “I’ll just be honest and say it’s a one-time thing.”

  She shook her head. “When you’re whining about being unemployed again, remember who gave you the good advice about being deceptive that you ignored.” Suze checked her phone. “Speaking of which, if you want to arrive on time to the job you’re about to be fired from, maybe we should get going.” She glanced from me to Lilah, then got that sneaky look on her face that I had come to distrust. “I’ll just powder my nose and let you two say good-bye.” As she headed over to the bathroom, I looked at Lilah uncomfortably, wondering whether Suze was trying to set us up or embarrass us, or actually liked me and was trying some kind of reverse-psychology thing. Knowing Suze, it could be any of those or none of those.

  Lilah and I looked awkwardly at each other. Figuring out if a girl wanted to go out with me had never been my strong suit—though, in fairness, there also hadn’t been a huge line of interested parties. Maybe Suze was trying to let me know that Lilah was into me, and that she herself was really not. I’d been the recipient of variations of that maneuver on a few scarring occasions in adolescence.

  Clearing my throat, wishing that this entire situation could come with accompanying subtitles to explain undercurrents to me, I looked down at the file that Lilah still had open on her lap. This one was Gage’s, and I noticed that the name Nokke was typed in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Desperately grateful for a distraction, I pointed to it. “Hey, isn’t that your grandfather’s name, Lilah? Why is he listed in Gage’s file?”

  Looking equally relieved at having a neutral topic, she shrugged. “Oh, that’s just the spot where the Ad-hene paternity is listed. If Gage had been a changeling, they would’ve wanted to know.”

  “So Gage was actually your uncle. That’s kind of weird to think about.”

  Lilah gave an amused smile—apparently my reaction to the crazy family trees she dealt with every day was borderline cute. “Yeah. But so are a lot of people. The changeling who is our stock boy, Felix, is also my uncle.” She shrugged. “It kind of stops having much meaning to you. Your family is who was raised in the same house as you, not who happens to share a few extra strands of genome.”

  “Except for dating purposes.” I noted, teasingly reminding her of the prom-date fiasco.

  She laughed. “True. Then it starts mattering again.” Then she looked over at me, and her smile had an extra layer of nuance. “Speaking of dating, remember to try to look the part tonight.”

  Well, that seemed almost certainly flirtatious, and I did my best to reciprocate. “I will launder my finest T-shirt for the occasion,” I said grandly, and she gave a very ego-reinforcing laugh as a toilet flushed loudly nearby and Suze returned, giving us a very measuring expression.

  Back in the car, I confronted her about it. “Suze, are you trying to set me up with Lilah?” I asked straight out, studying her face carefully.

  She had on her best poker face. “She’s nice. Cute if you like redheads who hail from West Virginia levels of inbreeding.”

  I pushed. “So, you think I should go out with her?”

  With her keen instincts at driving me completely insane, Suze just gave a noncommittal shrug and smoothly changed the subject. “I think you should come up with better plans than undercover speed-dating. Bad cologne and desperation. You’re lucky I have flexible hours, Fort. When I blow off work, it’s for important shit. Like three-dollar martini night.”

  I let the topic change stand, returning us to more comfortable conversational waters. “I value your sacrifices, Suze. But if a guy shows up with those tattoos, we can keep him from becoming a blood sacrifice for crazy incest hounds. I’d call that a worthwhile evening.”

  “And while we’re covering that end, who’s going to be watching the tattoo parlor?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, surprised at how serious she’d suddenly become.

  “If someone gets the tat of death, they’re walking out of that shop. Someone needs to keep an eye on it, and I happen to know a person who is used to spending long hours watching front doors.”

  I knew who she was talking about, and felt my temper start boiling. “Are you nuts, Suze? Matt is chasing nice, safe, ivory-tower leads today. I’d rather not reinvolve him in the real shit.”

  “Your buddy isn’t stupid, Fort. Eventually he’s going to realize that there’s nothing there and then he’ll want back in. Instead of waiting for that to happen, why not give him a job now? Sitting in a coffee shop for hours at a time is pretty safe, and might actually be useful if he can spot a potential victim before we’re able to shut down the whole operation.” Suze’s voice was cool. When she wanted to, she could play logic like an upright bass, and I ground my teeth together and tried to ignore it, focusing on the other cars in our lane as if our commute was the only thing worthy of my attention. Maybe she’d let it go.

  “You know I’m right,” she said, clearly having no intention of letting it go.

  I hated it when she was right.

  • • •

  Suze and I had disagreements all the time, and about most subjects, but usually we let most conflicts die after a few sarcastic quips and a general agreement to disagree. This time it was different, and we sniped back and forth at each other for the entire drive back to my apartment and even up the stairs. I knew why she wasn’t letting the subject go: everything about the plan made sense, and my on
ly defense was that I wasn’t comfortable with it. Calling Matt and pulling him back toward the real investigation scared the crap out of me.

  Of course, once I’d admitted that that was my sole objection, I didn’t have many options left. So after we’d cautiously made our way up the stairs and into my apartment (the caution being twofold—firstly that we’d been arguing for twenty minutes and were trying to give each other some space, but secondly that a skinwalker knew my address and we were keeping an eye out for a potential, if unlikely, ambush), I stood in my bedroom and called Matt.

  It was a quick conversation, which, given how Judas-y I was feeling at the moment, was a relief. Just as Suze and I had known, there had been no activity or club link to be found at the colleges, and Matt welcomed the partial truths that I fed him and claimed were Lilah’s discoveries from questioning fellow cult members, and agreed to stake out the Iron Needle and keep an eye on any customers who fit the profile.

  I called my sister while I pulled on my work clothing, which was definitely overdue for a trip through the wash. I did my best with my handy bottle of Febreze while I filled Prudence in on everything we’d learned and passed along Tomas’s home address, emphasizing that everyone except Soli was on a capture-alive-and-with-minimal-damage basis. She was happy to get a clear starting point, and promised that when she headed out she’d go straight there.

  Once dressed, I also quickly packed up two duffel bags. The thought that Soli knew where I lived and had already climbed my fire escape once was enough to make my skin crawl, and I was planning on camping out at Suze’s until everything was finally wrapped up. Into one bag went the basics of living—three days’ worth of clothing, deodorant, and my Firefly DVDs—and into the other I packed the basics of staying alive: my Colt and the Ithaca 37, along with every round of ammo I’d accumulated.

  For once, Suze had respected my privacy and stayed in the main room while I changed and packed. I’d been relieved by the decision, feeling that both of us needed a chance to decompress. As I walked out of my bedroom, carrying both duffel bags (one noticeably heavier than the other), I saw her sitting with very unusual meekness at the table. In front of her was a freshly made sandwich, and when I walked over to her, she nudged the plate forward, toward me, in an unmistakable gesture.