Undone Deeds

by Del Franco, Mark

  My father had killed people. He didn’t talk about it often, but he had been a Guild agent himself once upon a time. Pressure bore down on my chest. I had caused the death of another living thing. I had also murdered in my life. Those things could not be waved away as learning experiences, despite what I had learned. The best thing I could do—had been trying to do for years now—was make amends for it. Some people believed that there was no way to atone for the taking of a life. I didn’t know if that was true, but I also didn’t know it wasn’t. Until I did know either way, I was going to do the best I could to achieve forgiveness, if only from myself.

  “I hope I stopped him from doing worse than he did,” I said.

  “We all do,” he said.

  A crow wheeled against the sallow light of the city night sky. It landed on the weather vane of Faneuil, a giant gold-leafed grasshopper. The bird hunched forward and made a jerking motion with its beak. The thick glass made it impossible to tell if it had called to its fellows for the night, but no others joined it. Instead, the elf’s falcon swept up and knocked the crow from its perch. My father gestured with his glass. “Did you see that?”

  The falcon settled on the vane while the crow wheeled around it. Below, the elf raised his glove, but the falcon remained perched, indifferent to the call of its falconer. The crow dove, and the falcon leaped to meet it. They rose higher in the sky, diving and dodging until we couldn’t see them.

  A laugh from the other room drew my attention away.

  5

  On my way back to the Tangle later in the afternoon, Murdock’s reminder about the elf murder prompted me to stop at the Rowes Wharf Hotel. The place had seen better days. Once one of the city’s most luxurious hotels, in a few short months, it had become a battered shadow of its former glory. Eorla Elvendottir had taken over the building as the headquarters for her renegade court. Some people called her the Queen of the Unseelie Court because she opposed both High Queen Maeve and Donor Elfenkonig. I liked to call her friend.

  I picked my way through the mess in front of the building. Sandbags and sawhorses lined the sidewalk and blocked the street. Every floor had chunks of masonry missing. The fallen brick and cement was piled into hills around the front entrance.

  The day the Guildhouse fell, Donor had staged an attack against Eorla. He had wanted to make it seem like she was attacking the Guild, and he had been helping defend it. The ruse worked for the most part. The human government had sent in the National Guard. Together with the Consortium, they had pounded the hotel with elf-shot and mortar fire. Eorla held them off, but the building looked like it belonged in the Weird now instead of the financial district.

  Consortium agents across the street took occasional shots at the building. They were careful not to hit anyone but tried to provoke an armed response. Eorla’s people restrained themselves. They knew the Consortium was looking for a legitimate excuse to move on them in force. Guards surrounded me as soon as I neared the entrance. My presence tended to invite notice. As if on cue, three or four arrows landed in the masonry over my head, raining dust down on us. Our body shields kept most of it off, but I wasn’t going to pretend getting shot at wasn’t unnerving.

  The lobby of the hotel was a marked contrast to the street. The level of tension dropped as people went about their business regardless of the barricades out front. Despite filling her ranks with a local mix of other estranged Celtic and Teutonic fey, Eorla still ran her business with an elven efficiency.

  My escorts took me to the crowded ballroom where Eorla met with administrators and the public. She worked the volume of paperwork on her desk table like an orchestra, noting my entrance with a brief flick of her dark eyes. Her black hair coiled about the back of her head, accentuating her long neck and narrow face. She still wore mourning green for her husband, who had been murdered last year.

  To her right, Rand acknowledged me with a nod. He rarely left her side, acting as both bodyguard and confidante. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he slept in his red uniform. Despite his formal manner and unreadable elven face, he had let me see flashes of the person inside him. He seemed like a good guy.

  After a few moments, Eorla dismissed the other people in the room with a firm gesture to the guards. They ushered everyone out and closed the three of us behind the doors. Eorla stood, took my hands, and kissed my cheek. “You look well.”

  “I avoided getting shot on the way in,” I said.

  She gazed up at me. “Ah, you arrived through the front door, then. My apologies for the sniper fire. I do hope someone held the door for you.”

  I chuckled. “Several, in fact. You treat me too well.”

  “And how might I treat you today?” she asked.

  I pulled out a small snapshot of the dead elf. Murdock had sent it to me with a short note that the apartment had been devoid of any evidence. As expected, his identity didn’t match anything in the usual databases. In fact, the victim didn’t have any legal history at all, which reinforced my belief that he was a spy. “I’m helping Murdock with another murder. We think the victim might have been an undercover Consortium agent, and I was wondering if you might know him.”

  Eorla examined the photo. “He does have the look of one of Donor’s people, but I don’t recognize him.” She handed the photograph to Rand. “How did he die?”

  “Elf-shot execution-style in his apartment. No disturbances,” I said.

  Rand narrowed his gaze at the photograph, then arched an eyebrow. “His name was Alfen. He was one of Vize’s followers.”

  Bergin Vize had been a renegade Consortium agent. He had turned terrorist, causing hundreds of deaths, all in the name of returning the fey folk to Faerie. Publicly, the Elven King had repudiated him. Privately, he used Vize to further his own ends and the acquisition of power. Donor might have destroyed the Guildhouse with his own abilities, but Vize had set the whole thing in motion. In the end, Donor discarded him like a tool no longer needed. I watched Vize fall into the collapsing building, his body lost beneath the rubble of the Guildhouse. His followers remained, though, scattered throughout the city.

  “The Consortium had spies in Vize’s group?” I asked.

  “Alfen wasn’t a spy for the Consortium. He joined Vize after the Consortium discovered he was a double agent for the Guild,” Rand said.

  Eorla returned to her desk. “It sounds like this gentleman had issues with loyalty.”

  “He was a Guild agent?” I asked.

  Rand shook his head. “‘Agent’ is too strong a word. He was an informant for them.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. “And you know this how?”

  He hesitated before speaking, glancing at Eorla. “At one time, it was my duty to investigate the loyalty of Her Majesty’s officers. The Guild worked to undermine her support.”

  I snorted. Despite her philanthropic work, Eorla had always been a target of the Guild. Her royal bloodline and elevated diplomatic profile made her motives suspect to Maeve. It came as no surprise that the Guild had tried to place spies on her staff. Back in my early days in New York, my old partner Dylan and I had done our duty and turned our fair share of elven agents. Dylan had been particularly good at it. I learned a lot from him, which was why I had picked up on the dead elf’s circumstances.

  “Is it asking too much to know who his handler was?” I asked.

  Rand shrugged. “That I don’t know. I knew Alfren from the old days. He came to Boston because the Guild offered refuge and relocation. Once he left Germany, he wasn’t a priority.”

  Eorla had watched our exchange with quiet interest. “Rand, did you ever use this man for information about Bergin?”

  Eorla had raised Bergin Vize, and his descent into terrorism pained her. Vize had tried to leverage her personal feelings for him to gain protection, but she declined, which also pained her. She knew I had wanted Vize captured. While I wasn’t sorry he was dead, I had forgotten that she must be feeling differently.

  “Never. I kept tabs on a few of Vi
ze’s people, but I would have informed you immediately if it became necessary,” Rand said, fast and to the point. I liked his “if necessary” caveat, the age-old plausible-deniability defense all heads of state enjoyed. Basically, he was saying he didn’t but maybe he did. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter to me. I wanted to help Murdock out, nothing more.

  “I didn’t mean for the conversation to go in this direction,” I said.

  Eorla nodded slowly. “They have not recovered Bergin’s body yet. A part of me holds out hope that he escaped death. Even though I know he would continue on his chosen path, I still wish him alive.”

  “You don’t need to apologize for loving him,” I said. I startled myself by saying it. I hated Vize. I hoped he had died an excruciating death. Eorla, on the other hand, I cared about. While I didn’t share her feelings, I did understand them.

  Her eyes glistened, but she didn’t cry. I took it as a compliment that this woman—one of the most powerful in the world—felt comfortable showing her vulnerability in front of me. She took a deep breath and moved some papers on her desk. “Have you spoken with Bastian?”

  I grunted in amusement. “No. Chatting up the Consortium is not in my best interest at the moment.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “Bastian is not one to let his pups stray too far even when they’ve misbehaved. If Rand recognizes this man, Bastian will.”

  “I’d call him, but there’s the little matter of accusing me of killing Aldred Core,” I said.

  When Donor came to Boston, he disguised himself as his own ambassador. When he died in the Guildhouse collapse, the Consortium was left with several conundrums. It would have to admit not only that the Elven King deceived the Seelie Court and human government by posing as Aldred Core, but that he was dead. The deception would jeopardize every agreement the humans had made with the Teutonic fey. A dead Elven King was even more problematic. Donor had no children, so claimants to his throne would materialize. All of this happening at a delicate point in Celtic and Teutonic relations.

  “Yes, well, I have issues with that as well,” Eorla said.

  I gave her a sharp, confused look. Donor and Eorla had not gotten along. Donor’s father stole the crown from Eorla’s father. “Not that I don’t regret killing someone, but what have I done that you take issue with?”

  “Not you. Bastian. He’s running the Consortium after the mess that Donor created. He can’t do that for long without my support. You don’t need to go to him. I can bring him here,” she said.

  “You do know how to turn the screws,” I said.

  She grinned. “In this case, Bastian screwed himself.”

  I don’t know what was funnier, what she said or the look of shock on Rand’s face.

  6

  My first surprise the next morning was a frantic call from Murdock, surprise because “frantic” was never a word I associated with Leo. His youngest brother, Kevin, had not shown up at the fire station for his shift, and when Leo checked on him, he was in bed nonresponsive. Leo recognized that whatever was going on with his brother was fey-related, and given his family’s less-than-keen approval of the fey, he didn’t want to call Avalon Memorial unless he had to.

  The second surprise was that he had also called Briallen ab Gwyll. Briallen was one of the foremost fey healers in the world. She was my old mentor and now friend. She had helped both Leo and me on occasion. I took it as a personal compliment that he no longer had reservations about fey healers.

  The Murdock home on K Street reminded me of the house I grew up in. Like Leo, I was raised in South Boston. My druid heritage allowed us to look the same age, but I had an easy ten years on him and those years made a difference. When I was a teenager in Southie, it had been the tight-knit community it was still famous for, but back in the day, such closeness was necessary for survival. Boston hadn’t always been friendly to the fey, but Southie, with its deep Irish roots, had always included us. As the world grew smaller, divisions that had been tolerated or overlooked became barriers. As time went on, Southie became more insular, less welcoming of the fey, while the rest of Boston opened its arms.

  I lingered behind Briallen on the front walk as she rang the bell. I hadn’t been in the Murdock house since their father died. I wasn’t welcome. “Maybe I should wait in the car.”

  “Leonard said no one else is home but his sister,” she said.

  Faith Murdock opened the door. She wore her state police officer uniform. A few months ago, I would have bantered with her, asked if she was coming on or going off shift, whether she was dating. Now, circumstances prevented normal socializing. She glanced at me with professional detachment, a nice change of pace for one of the family, then nodded toward the stairs. “Second floor.”

  She stepped back to let us pass, a hand on her right hip, a convenient stance that projected a relaxed yet mildly intimidating manner. It meant her hand wasn’t too far from her gun. I nodded hello without smiling. I didn’t want to push any more buttons than my presence already did.

  Leo appeared at the door to one of the bedrooms as we reached the top of the stairs. “He won’t wake up.”

  Briallen entered, but I lingered in the hall. The back bedrooms at the end of the stairwell of Boston town houses were long and narrow, the smallest rooms in the house. The décor in Kevin’s room reflected someone whose youth was visible in the rearview mirror—a wrestling poster half-hidden by a woman I vaguely recognized as an actress, Red Sox paraphernalia like any good Boston boy, and a toy ladder truck displayed on a shelf.

  Kevin lay on his back on a bed pushed into the corner. His body shield was active, a thick sheath of gold-tinged bronze. The whiff of essence was in the air, the charged scent of ozone. The Murdock siblings were half-druid, but Kevin had inherited enough ability that he registered as a full druid. I had warned Leo that all his siblings would need training to control their abilities. If they didn’t want to use them, that was fine, but they had to learn how to prevent them from activating spontaneously. Abilities reacted to the user’s emotions as much as the will, and all the Murdocks could use a little anger management.

  “I tried shaking him, but all that did was move the shield a bit. I yelled at him, too, but he won’t wake up,” Leo said.

  Briallen leaned over Kevin, unable to touch him through the shield. She caressed the air over him, her face and hands glowing with faint essence as she examined him. “He’s fine, Leonard. No need to worry. He’s been playing with his abilities.”

  “What do you mean?” Leo asked.

  Briallen straightened. “He’s sleeping it off. Our bodies are stronger than humans; but we’re not invincible. He’s burned out and needs sleep to recharge himself. He’ll be fine when he wakes up.”

  I tried not to smile too much. “Druid teenagers do this all the time, Leo. They find out they can use essence, and they exhaust themselves playing around with it.”

  “I didn’t,” he said.

  I nodded toward Kevin. “You’re, what, almost fifteen years older than him? Kevin’s still a kid in druid terms. And do I have to remind you of someone who liked to run into walls for the hell of it when he discovered it didn’t hurt him?”

  Leo ducked his head, an embarrassed flush coming to his cheeks. “Okay, I get it. You’re sure he’s okay?”

  Briallen patted Leo on the shoulder. “Positive. What I don’t like is his using abilities without supervision. There’s a reason druids have formal training. This isn’t stuff to fool around with.”

  The relief on Murdock’s face slipped away at the sound of a door’s slamming downstairs. Loud voices carried up the stairwell. “Let’s continue this conversation later,” Murdock said.

  Gerry Murdock stomped onto the landing, anger suffusing his face. I didn’t have to guess who had called Gerry. Faith hovered behind him, a slightly guilt-stricken look about her. “Get the hell out of my house,” he shouted.

  Leo walked onto the landing. “Calm down, Gerry. They were just leaving.”

  �
��What the hell were you thinking?” Gerry pushed past him, then shoved me aside. I bumped back against the dresser, cologne bottles and coins rattling, but resisted pushing back.

  “Watch it,” I said.

  Gerry turned from Kevin and leaned in my face. “What did you say?”

  I stared down at him. “I said ‘watch it.’”

  Briallen stepped next to me. “I don’t believe we’ve met, Officer Murdock. My name is….”

  He glared at her. “I know who the hell you are. You’re not welcome here either. Get out.”

  Briallen showed no fear, not that I expected her to. People like Gerry—even given his possible druid abilities—were child’s play for her. “I was asked here.”

  “Not by me,” he said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Out.”

  “Gerry, knock it off. Kevin wasn’t waking up, so I called for help,” Leo said.

  “He’s fine. He just needs to sleep,” Gerry said.

  “How do you know that?” Briallen asked.

  He frowned at her. “None of your damned business. You people aren’t the only ones who know about this stuff.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  He thrust his arm out toward the hall. “Leave. Now.”

  “I asked them here, Gerry. I don’t need your permission to invite people to my home. I live here, too,” Leo said.

  “Maybe that needs to change,” Gerry said.

  Leo pushed back into the room. “You got something to say?”

  Faith grabbed Leo’s arm. “Both of you, stop it.” She pointed at me. “Take your friend outside, now.”

  “Mind your business, Faith,” Gerry said.

  She stuck her finger in his face. “Shut it. This family is my business. We are not doing this in front of strangers. It’s over.”

  Briallen took my hand and pulled me into the hall. She said nothing as she led the way down the stairs and out the door. Leo came out a moment later. “I’m sorry about that.”