Promises to Keep

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Pietr was there,” she said, heading off my next question. “So it wasn’t like I was alone.”

  She hadn’t known he’d be there when she went, though. I decided not to push it. Instead, I took the bits and pieces of the coffee maker out of her hands, and started assembling them on the counter. “So tell me what happened.”

  She told me, complete with shifty-eyed looks when she left something out, and expressive hand gestures I didn’t think she was even aware she was making. Normally she kept her body still and quiet when she spoke, as though afraid to attract attention, or like someone had told her it was impolite to fill the air outside your own personal space.

  “I’m still pissed that you went back out there without arranging for backup,” I said when she was done. “That was incredibly stupid.” Even when I was working alone, if I was going into a potentially hazardous situation, I called for help. Most of the time. Enough that I felt justified scolding her. “But you did good. I’m proud of you. And no, you’re not getting a raise. Like you pointed out, this was your gig, your time.”

  I fitted the last piece of the machine together and frowned at it. We’d need better coffee, to go with this thing.

  “And now we’re back on the clock with the McConnell case. You going to be able to stay awake?”

  I turned back just in time to see her pull a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper from the shopping bag. Question answered.

  “So, what’s on the agenda?”

  She was being far too cheerful. If someone else had come in and announced that they’d stayed up all night and cracked the case, I’d expect more than a little ego-puffing and outward satisfaction. But I was starting to figure my Shadow out, a bit. She had an ingrown sense of responsibility for shit that wasn’t her fault, and when it was her responsibility she went a little overboard. So yeah, she cracked the case, but she’d only saved the guy once, and he sounded like there was way more than walking off the ledge to be done. She was smart enough to know that, too.

  But if she was going to pretend she wasn’t thinking about that, I was willing to let it go. My promise had been to teach her, and help her find the people in her visions, that was all. Knowing that she was repressing the worry…well, indulging in the worry, wasn’t much better. To each their own emotional management techniques.

  “We need to follow up on the most viable leads, which would be the possible connection between our missing man, and the possible offspring. So it’s time to visit mom. Or mom’s people, anyway.”

  That got her attention. Ellen had spent the past ten years being told that the not-humans she thought she saw weren’t real, and she was still torn between fascination and unease around the fatae - at least, new breeds. She was used to me by now, and PB was so overt you almost forgot about him. Demon were like that.

  “How do you know what she is - or who she is? The report Mahiba gave us only had a name.”

  “Names are chock full of information, if you know what you’re looking for,” I told her, picking up my coat and waiting for her to do the same before escorting her out and locking the door. She added a quick cantrip to seal the lock - I never bothered before but it made her feel better, and was good practice.

  And a little extra protection never hurt anyone.

  “Names?” she prompted.

  “Right. It’s like human cultures, where different names are popular at different times, and in different countries. You won’t find many guys named Jesus in Scandinavia, for example, or women named Mary-Margaret in Jewish families, right?”

  “Not unless they married in. But yeah, okay. So what does “Kerrieon” tell you?”

  I paused outside the elevator, and sighed. “Lilin.”

  oOo

  Some of the breeds prefer to live alone, mingling more with outsiders than their own kin and kind. Others gathered in enclaves, usually somewhere like Central Park, or - in the case of some of our less social types - in the tunnels below the subways. The Lilin, not unexpectedly, went upscale. Their enclave was out in one of the better neighborhoods of Brooklyn, in a pre-war building that had clearly been updated to modern standards while still retaining the charm of the original. Say what you will about Lilin, and history certainly wasn’t quiet, they had style and taste.

  The rain had cleared, but it was still damp and miserable outside. We found a place to park the rental car a few blocks away, and walked down the street in silence. There had been discussions about how to approach this, but none of them had seemed guaranteed to win friends and influence confessions. We walked up the brownstone’s steps without a clue how we were going to proceed. Not that something like that had ever stopped me.

  “Well, hello.”

  The woman who opened the door was wearing jeans and a heavy sweater than hit her mid-hip. She was in her early fifties, at a rough visual, with blond hair cut short, and faint wrinkles around the eyes. Her voice didn’t ooze sensuality, and she wasn’t particularly va-voom, but every part of my body stood up and took notice. It wasn’t personal on either side, so we both pretended it wasn’t happening.

  “We need to speak with your elders,” I said, giving the courtesy of assuming that wasn’t her. She didn’t blink or show any sign of surprise, but stepped back into the hallway and let us come in.

  “May I take your coats?” she asked. “You’ll need to wait a bit, before they are able to see you.”

  We handed over our jackets, and let ourselves be escorted into the parlor on the first floor. It was a comfortable room, cozy in a way that made you expect to see a cat draped over one of the sofas, and a paperback book left on the end-table, half-read. There was in fact a cat, opening one sleepy eye to assess us and then going back to sleep, but the end-table held a series of cell phones and an e-reader, instead. The fatae had adapted quite easily to the technological age, thank you very much.

  Ellen sat down next to the cat, who deigned to uncurl and let itself be scratched behind the ears. It blinked at me, and I blinked back from my chair on the opposite side of the grouping. I like cats fine, but I could see the door from my position, and that was more important to me. We waited a few minutes, maybe ten, max, and then the door swung open again and two Lilin walked in.

  The woman at the door had been sexy. These two were seduction personified. I regretted letting Ellen come with me, even though I knew it was better that she encounter them first with me to look out for her. Despite whatever you’ve heard about succubi or incubi, Lilin don’t intentionally go out to seduce mortals. In fact, most of the time they don’t even crook a finger. They just happen to be deeply sexual beings, and human chemicals respond to that.

  So do most fatae, if we’re being honest, and faun genetics are predisposed to anything that sparks of a good time. I ignored my dick with the poise of years of practice, and offered my hand in greeting to the elders.

  “Thank you for your time, so unexpectedly,” I said. “My name is Daniel Hendrickson, this is my associate, Ellen.” She had refused to give or use her last name - given her family history, I could understand that - so I went traditional. “Ellen Ychna bat Genevieve.” I handed the woman my card, and she took it with grave, graceful formality.

  “I am Alineon Layil,” she said. “This is my brother Simeon. How may we aid you?” She gestured for us both to be seated again, and took chairs of their own. The cat climbed back into Ellen’s lap and went to sleep.

  “It is in the matter of Kerrieon Lavil,” I said. “And her infant.”

  “Infant?” That got Simeon’s attention; he sat up out of his previously indolent drape, and leaned forward, intent as a mouser spotting movement. “Kerrieon had no infant.”

  “Simi. Pause and let the faun speak.”

  “She is on record as having given birth nearly nine months ago. To a half-human child.” All right, we didn’t know that for certain - there were no medical records. But she’d named a human as father, so that was what we were going on.

  “Impossible,” Alice retorted.

 
Hardly impossible, with me here as witness. I didn’t say that, though. “Is the girl here to speak for herself?”

  “No.” The woman didn’t flinch from my question. “She has not lived here in several months.”

  “A year,” Simeon said. “If the laundry comes out, at least let it all come out. She left us a year ago.”

  “And went where?”

  “We don’t know. What happened to the infant, Mister Hendrickson?”

  “We were hoping that you could tell us that.”

  “No. As I said, we did not even know that she was pregnant. Had we -“

  “You seemed taken aback that she gave birth to a cross-breed.”

  That caused Simeon to let out a bark of laughter that wasn’t even remotely amused. “Taken aback, yes. But - no. I see where your thoughts go and no. Never. We would have taken the infant in, no matter its parentage”

  I believed them. Like I’d told Ellen, babies are rare enough. And it wasn’t as though Lilin hadn’t proven they were cross-fertile, millennia ago. Rare, but not impossible. They’d been reacting to the fact of their not-knowing, not the impossibility of the act, then.

  “Does she have friends here?” Ellen spoke up for the first time, one hand still petting the cat. “Sisters? Best-friends-forever kind of friends, that she would have confided in?”

  “Rachel, perhaps. A human girl she went to school with. But Kerrieon was not the sort to confide. She was…” Alice paused, and my bullshit detector gave a faint tremor. “She was not a girl prone to belonging, if you understand my meaning.”

  Ellen raised her eyebrows, and I almost laughed. Of all the Cosa members in this city, they were talking to two people who could absolutely understand that.

  “Do you think she’s all right?” Simeon said. “Both of them - the baby and Kerrieon ?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out, sir.”

  “If there’s anything we can do to help, please let us know. And if you find the infant…” He looked to Alineon for permission, first, and when she nodded faintly, went on “it will have a home here. If it’s needed.”

  The infant, not the mother. Interesting.

  oOo

  “Oh god.” Ellen barely held her reaction to the Lilin until the door closed behind them and they were back on the street. Danny laughed a little - at her, she thought. But fair enough.

  “Yeah,” he said. “They’re a bit much, aren’t they.”

  “Are they succubi? I mean, succubi and incubi?”

  “Ugly nicknames for a perfectly respectable breed,” he said. “Don’t use those terms in polite company. That was good thinking about the boon companion. Do you think they were lying?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Or, they think there might be someone, and they didn’t want us talking to her. Or him.”

  “To what purpose?”

  Danny did that, asked questions in the middle of a job, made her say what she was thinking, verbalize her thoughts no matter how dumb they sounded. Sergei laughed when she’d complained, said Danny was making her self-actualize, whatever that meant. But he was right: if there was a flaw in her logic, it was more obvious when she said it out loud.

  “Because they want to deal with it themselves. They live all together, you said, so they probably aren’t used to trusting outsiders… if someone screwed up and a member - and a baby - disappeared, they’re going to want to handle it internally.”

  “Reasonable.” They had reached the car, and Ellen scanned the windshield for a ticket. There was none, so she unlocked the door and got in, waiting while Danny got in on the passenger side. “And also reasonable to assume that they did not take the baby, since they didn’t know about it. Unless they’re playing a very deep game to throw us off their tracks but that’s unlikely. Most people just aren’t that complicated, and too many people in that house would have to know about it, and keep silent. Things like that, someone breaks, and usually sooner rather than later. We’re just not designed to keep secrets.”

  “So some unknown person took the baby,” Ellen said, and swore at a driver who tried to cut her off, edging her way into merging lanes toward the bridge. “Or it’s dead. Already long long dead.”

  “Maybe. If so, then why would our guy disappear, too? If the baby’s gone, and momma’s off the map…”

  “Because whoever deaded them, deaded him too?” Ellen had never been a delicate flower, despite Sergei’s occasional attempts to protect her from the grimmer aspects of life. “Fact: momma seems to have gone missing, no forwarding address. Fact: baby is missing. We have no idea if the baby is with momma or not but since she checked out beforehand without a diaper bag, probably not. When mommy and daddy and baby make all missing, they’re either together, or mostly - all dead. Right?”

  “You’ve been listening.” Listening, and reading. Danny handled mostly missing person cases, and a lot of them, she’d discovered, didn’t end with happily ever afters. “All right, let’s assume that there is a connection, because the coincidence required for them to not be is too large to start with.”

  They passed back into Manhattan, and she glanced at him, waiting for instructions on where to go, even as she was cutting off a cabbie who tried to cut her off. Danny winced, and she grinned. There wasn’t much she felt a hundred percent confident on, but the ability to drive in city traffic was one of them. If all else failed, she’d go to work as a cabbie.

  “First, we disprove what’s disprovable. Go visit Rashada in the morgue, see if anything came his way in the past eight months. I’ll man the phones, see if baby-girl Doe was dropped into any foster homes or orphanages.”

  “You think that might’ve happened? I mean, wouldn’t someone notice, or…”

  “Yeah, it’s doubtful. But sometimes human cluelessness trumps out. And the child might be entirely human, on the outside…” He sighed. “At least until she hits puberty. It would be better if we found her before then.”

  “If she’s alive.”

  “Yeah. If she’s alive.”

  Ellen focused on driving, then. She’d saved someone last night. Was it too much to hope that they could save this one, too? Maybe. She tried not to think about it, as though that might distract fate from one tiny baby.

  oOo

  Alfred was exhausted. His feet hurt, his eyes felt like they’d been washed in sand, and he could only imagine how frantic his wife must be, assuming that she hadn’t finally gotten fed up and tossed all of his things onto the front lawn.

  No. She wouldn’t do that. She’d put up with so much, she’d put up with this, but she’d be worried. He should call her, he should have taken the chance when he was in the police station to call her, but back then it had seemed like a bad idea. Now, twenty-four hours later, all he could think about was her sleeping alone in their bed, her hand stretched out to where he should be, and finding only a cold mattress.

  His companion settled him down on the sidewalk, and inclined its head toward the house on front of them.

  “What makes you think the baby’s here, more than any of the other places? How can you even know it’s anywhere near here? That this isn’t a wild goose chase?”

  “I know. Go. Talk to them.” Again, it was saying.

  Alfred had been given no choice in any of this. There had been a mysterious note on his desk one morning, reminding him of a one-time affair that he’d almost forgotten about, with a woman young enough to be his daughter, with the smoothest skin he’d ever touched, and eyes so pale brown they seemed nearly yellow.

  “Your child is lost.” the note had said, the handwriting spiky but readable. “You owe a life.” Nothing more: no name, no return address, nowhere to start even looking. So he’d done the only thing he could, he’d hired a professional, told him the little he knew, and waited.

  That hadn’t been good enough, apparently, and the next thing he knew he’d been knocked off his feet - literally - by this creature, who insisted that the child be found now.

  “I�
��m going to get arrested again,” he muttered, trying to smooth down his hair and checked to make sure his jeans weren’t any more stained that before. “And this time they’re not going to let me go with a warning.”

  “I sniff. You ask.”

  Alfred cast an uncertain look at his companion, not sure how well that beaked nose could smell anything, but since it could easily tear him apart if he pissed it off, he did what he’d been doing: obeying orders.

  A young woman answered the door, giving him a puzzled but friendly look. By now, he didn’t really believe the infant was here - especially since the woman looked barely old enough to have sex, much less be caring for a baby - and when she shook her head and said they had no infant, he thanked her for her time, and left.

  “They’re moving her,” his companion said. “One step ahead, all the time.” It clacked its beak in frustration, and drummed its talons on the side of a postal box, making a heavy, metallic thrumming echo.

  “Why is she so important?” Alfred asked, for what seems like the hundredth time. “If she’s with good parents, why not leave her there?” All the houses they’ve checked have been nice, with people who seem decent enough.” He had wanted to find her, out of responsibility - he wasn’t a total shit - but a pair of young parents, people who wanted her, that was better than anything he could give her. And why the hell was this creature so determined to find her? It wasn’t from any nasty impulse; the creature seemed legitimately worried.

  “The child needs to be found,” his companion said, likewise for the hundredth time. “They will not tell me. They will tell you.”

  No matter how long it took, hung unspoken in the air between them.

  8

  I was trying to get the new coffee maker, which I’d already dubbed Podzilla, running, when the office door creaked open cautiously, as though the person on the other side had been surprised by the door being unlocked, and wasn’t sure who was on the other side.