Undone Deeds

by Del Franco, Mark

  “We’re trying to get clearance to check out the power-plant roof,” Murdock said.

  I glanced up at the wall. The building was high enough to kill a Danann. “He smells pretty drunk. He might’ve passed out when flying overhead and dropped. You might have an accidental death.”

  “Yeah, that happens to Guild agents all the time,” Murdock said.

  Nothing with the Guild was ever simple. “Honestly, I’d call the Guild, Leo. They’re going to take over anyway.”

  Murdock jerked his chin up toward something behind me. “Looks like someone decided to save us the minutes.”

  Up the block, two dark figures appeared in the sky, telltale silhouettes of Danann security agents. They circled once overhead before landing on the sidewalk. I was surprised to see Keeva macNeve. She strode over and examined the body with a neutral expression.

  “Hi, Keev. Nice of you to drop in,” I said.

  She ignored me as she went through the dead guy’s pockets, tossing inconsequential items on the sidewalk—matches, coins, and receipts. Looking at Murdock, she remained crouched, her forearms on her thighs, hands dangling between her knees. “Where is it?”

  Without argument, Murdock handed over the billfold.

  “You got here awfully fast,” I said.

  Keeva fanned out some business cards, then tucked them back in the billfold. “You’re not the only one with friends on the force, Grey. Mine happen to follow procedure and inform interested legal entities instead of their gym buddies.”

  “Connor hasn’t been to the gym in weeks,” Murdock said.

  Keeva stood. “You know the drill, Detective. Move along and thank your boys for me.”

  “I remember this guy, Keeva. He was a Consortium mole. We used him a couple of times for disinformation,” I said.

  She scanned the surrounding area. “Any other classified information you want to broadcast within earshot of uncleared staff?”

  “You get a lot of moles in the Guild?” Murdock asked.

  Keeva’s glance flashed with dismissiveness. “Why no, Detective. I’m shocked to hear it. How old did you say you were, by the way? I can’t tell if you’re wearing diapers under those pants.”

  Murdock narrowed his eyes at me. “Did she imply she’s looking at my ass?”

  “What’s with all the antagonism, Keeva? I mean, more than usual?” I asked.

  The corners of her mouth turned down as she stared at the victim. “We’ve lost a lot of people, Connor. This guy may have been low-level stupid, but he was helping with disaster recovery. Every person lost is more work for everyone.”

  “Well, maybe the Guild….” I began.

  Keeva held her hand up. “Connor, I don’t want to hear one of your anti-Guild rants. Not today. People who were my friends are dead. People you knew are dead, so give it a break.”

  I wasn’t going to go off on the Guild, but that Keeva thought that would be my first reaction under the circumstances was embarrassing. I guessed I had become a one-note ranter in her mind. “I was going to say maybe the Guild should beef up security. Donor Elfenkonig destroyed the Guildhouse, and now someone you need to manage the crisis is dead. That’s all I was going to say, to be careful.”

  She nodded, peering down the street. “Good advice, considering you were there, too, when the Guildhouse came down. Leave, Connor. Now, before I do something we both regret.”

  I took a deep breath. “How is Ryan?”

  I tried to warn macGoren that Vize was up to something. I tried to stop what happened. MacGoren didn’t listen. He was arrogant, ambitious, and an ass. He had survived the destruction of the Guildhouse. He had also been injured—seriously, I had been told—but no one would give me any details.

  Keeva fired up her hands with essence. “Alive, no thanks to you. Detective Murdock, explain to your friend that if he does not get out of here, I will incinerate him where he stands, and there is not a damned thing you and your badge can do about it.”

  The police and firefighters nearby were listening. More than a few had smiles on their faces. Murdock tugged at my sleeve. “Come on, Connor. This isn’t going anywhere.”

  I let him pull me away. I was more hurt than angry. Keeva and I had been partners. We might not have been the best of friends, but we got along, at least until she met macGoren. MacGoren’s injuries were his own damned fault, no matter what she had been told.

  I slumped in the passenger seat of Murdock’s car. “That sucked.”

  He started the engine and pulled away from the scene. “I think she was serious about incinerating you.”

  “Nah. That’s Keeva’s way of saying she cares,” I said.

  Murdock circled around the block and brought us back to Old Northern Avenue. “A lot of people seem to show their affection for you that way.”

  That was an understatement. After a career as a Guild investigator, I had more than my share of enemies. The funny part was, all those old enemies left me alone now. I wasn’t a player anymore, so I didn’t factor into their plans. Instead, I seem to be making a career of turning friends against me. Keeva and I had always been competitive, but things had changed since she met Ryan macGoren. I used to think she was being a social climber, that she couldn’t possibly see anything in him. I wasn’t so sure anymore. She seemed genuinely attached to him and genuinely upset that he had almost died.

  When people I considered friends started siding with people who wanted me dead, I had little hope things would get better.

  10

  After Murdock dropped me off, I returned to my room in the Tangle. I had a bed, a couple of armchairs, a bathroom, and a corner that pretended it was a kitchenette. What it lacked in amenities, it made up for in seclusion and security. I had been offered better accommodations from Ceridwen but turned them down. Accepting a nice, comfortable apartment in the Tangle would have been accepting that I lived in the Tangle. I wanted to pretend it was temporary, like my apartment in the Weird had been temporary, if three years and counting could be considered temporary.

  After the fall of the Guildhouse, Ceridwen rescued me and provided me with a safe haven. She didn’t have anything to lose by associating with me. For one thing, no one knew she was in the city. For another, she was Dead, murdered by Bergin Vize and barred from TirNaNog when I had destroyed the gate to the fey afterlife. I might have destroyed the whole realm, but no one knew for sure, like no one knew if Faerie still existed.

  After taking a quick shower, I joined Ceridwen for what had become a regular meeting for conversation. Her private rooms were as extravagant as one would expect of a fairy queen. Fine, sleek furniture filled the living room, lush draperies in orange florals hung from the windows, and hand-woven rugs in muted shades of green and blue covered the floors. Everything about them spoke of glamour and money except the view. We sat at a table beneath a brick arch, the top of the frame of a warehouse Palladian window. The Tangle spread below, ramshackle rooftops of water towers and chimneys, odd plumes of essence rising and falling in dark colors. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was fascinating to watch.

  Ceridwen didn’t wear her red leather Hunter getup in her private quarters, but more casual, feminine outfits. Today she wore a light, sleeveless blouse and orange shorts. She tucked her shoeless feet up on the seat as she studied the chessboard between us. If it weren’t for her diaphanous wings moving with a languid ripple in the air-conditioning, she could have been mistaken for a young woman passing the time on a hot day. She moved a pawn across the board.

  “Your move,” she said.

  We had taken to playing chess, a game we both loved but rarely played because no one would play us. We were pleasantly surprised to find we were evenly matched. I moved a bishop into position. “I’ve heard the police aren’t coming into the Tangle at all anymore.”

  Ceridwen’s eyes shifted back and forth as she surveyed the board. She took the bishop out with a knight. “Your move.”

  I pursed my lips. I didn’t think she’d expose the knight,
but I wasn’t going to let it slide. I moved my rook and took the knight off the board. “It’s funny, ’cause violent crime has actually gone down.”

  Without pausing, she moved her bishop to protect her king. “Your move,” she said

  The board was getting tight, but I saw a scenario that would gain me an advantage. I shifted a pawn one square. “Your move, Your Majesty.”

  She captured the pawn with one of her own. She had something going, but I couldn’t see it. I took out the pawn. “Your move.”

  She slid her queen along the side of the board, just shy of my men. Something was forming on the board, the lines of conflict crisscrossing.

  I saw the opening I wanted and slipped another pawn off the board. “Your move.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “I don’t need the police. Given enough latitude, people fall into acceptable behaviors. I need you to go to Ireland,” she said.

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “I trust you. I’m ready to move my people there, but I need someone on the ground for logistics,” she said.

  “My passport’s probably flagged. I doubt I’d set one foot on the plane,” I said.

  “Drive to Canada and fly from there. I’d prefer that. I don’t want anyone knowing you’re there except my contacts. They’ll get you what you need,” she said.

  “Whom have you recruited to your cause against Maeve?” I asked.

  “The Seelie Court is made up of many underKings and -Queens who do not love Maeve,” she said.

  “Enough to commit treason?” I asked.

  Ceridwen smiled. “Maeve has violated the most fundamental laws of our Court, Grey. She caused the death of an underQueen. It is not treason to hold her accountable for it.”

  “You’re going to war,” I said.

  “Maeve has moved her forces onto the Continent. Tara is empty. I cannot let the opportunity pass,” she said. She took a pawn out with a rook.

  I reached for another pawn, then withdrew when I realized I would lose my other bishop. “Ceridwen, I know she betrayed you, and, well, you ended up dying, but do you really want to start a war over your death? More people will die.”

  She chuckled. “Wars have been started over lesser things.”

  “This isn’t Faerie,” I said.

  “No, it’s not, but the same rules apply. The threat of war often accomplishes more than war. The Seelie Court never was about one person, but Maeve has made it so. While she wastes time and resources threatening the Teutonic Consortium, the rest of the Celtic fey suffer. It’s time for a change, either with Maeve or without her.”

  “She doesn’t sound like the type for compromise,” I said.

  I moved my remaining knight. Ceridwen glanced down at the board, then at me. “When faced with two courses that will lead to the same result, which would you choose, Connor? The one that causes bloodshed or the one that causes even more?”

  “I guess it depends on one’s principles,” I said.

  “I have you in checkmate in six moves. You lost this game two moves ago. Shall we continue?” she asked.

  I laughed as a knock sounded from the door. Ceridwen glamoured her face with a haze that masked her features as a servant answered the door. A young dwarf entered, cap in hand, his blunt face giving him the appearance of age. He bowed. “Forgive the intrusion. The Lord of the Dead asked to be informed if any scryers were about, ma’am.”

  Ceridwen had kept her identity a secret from even her followers. By wearing the glamour, they thought—or feared—that she was the mythical King of the Dead who rode out on a horse of fire bringing death to the unwary. I think she liked the outfit more than the mystery. “What say you?” Ceridwen asked.

  “A strange woman has entered the Tangle. She scrys as she walks but speaks not,” he said.

  “No one can scry any longer,” Ceridwen said.

  “Indeed. I tremble to err,” the dwarf said.

  I stood. “You know what? I’ll take this. If anyone can tell a true scryer, I can.”

  Ceridwen faced the chessboard, her expression invisible behind the glamour. “You didn’t finish the game.”

  “Save it. I have six moves to prove you wrong,” I said. Her laugh followed me out the door.

  11

  The dwarf led me through an abandoned floor of an old brownstone. All the walls had been blown out, the support structures replaced with essence barriers to hold up the roof. I didn’t like places like it in the Tangle. The barriers often needed to be recharged to keep a building from collapsing, and it was never clear who or why someone maintained the empty buildings. I always worried I was in a building that was about to come down on my head.

  The dwarf stopped at an open window and pointed. “She should be coming through any second. You can see her from here.”

  I looked down into the street, a jagged stretch of a pavement that connected two main avenues. In the middle of the lane, a feminine figure wore a sequined white jumpsuit with red boots. People grouped on the sidewalk, more curious about a large flat package than the strangely dressed figure. The package caught my eye, too—was probably what was catching everyone’s eye down there. It blazed with essence. The strange part under the circumstances was that the essence resonated like scrying. Even four flights up, it pulsed against my senses. I kept my body shield activated as a matter of course in the Tangle. Even though the stone suppressed the problems the dark mass gave me, the darkness still reacted to scrying. It pressed against the stone, a heated wave of pain, struggling to shut me down.

  “That’s a friend of mine. Pull him out of there,” I said.

  The dwarf snorted. “Are you sure that’s a friend?”

  “Bring him to the Hunter’s hall. I’ll meet you there,” I said.

  He looked me askance. “Is that wise?”

  “It’ll be fine. It’s shielded, so people will lose interest.” The hall was Ceridwen’s receiving room, where she appeared as the Hunter to her people.

  The dwarf crawled out onto the fire escape. I didn’t watch him descend but made my way back through the building. The next floor down had a missing wall into the next building, which had a crumbling sky bridge across the alley behind it. From there, I hit the roof and walked the length of the block, then down a stairwell into the basement and into a tunnel. Secret and convoluted paths riddled the Tangle, which made it possible for so much illegal activity to occur. I had been learning the routes, more for expediency than secrecy. People knew I was down here, but I didn’t have to make it easy for them to track my movements.

  I reached Ceridwen’s hall several minutes later. The room held a chair, which only Ceridwen sat in. Essence lanterns hung from the ceiling to throw dim light. Old-fashioned wooden torches soaked in kerosene lined the walls. They were lit for atmosphere when Ceridwen was rallying her troops or intimidating the hell out of someone.

  The entrance shimmered open—an opaque essence barrier that was stronger than any door would be. The dwarf leaned in and cocked his eyebrow at me, but I nodded for him to leave. Ceridwen’s people were protective of me, but I wasn’t worried.

  Shay strolled in with his crazy outfit and the package like he had come from shopping on Newbury Street. The two of us had a complicated and unexpected history. Through some residual arrogance from my Guild days, I had gotten his boyfriend killed during a murder investigation. Shay had almost died a couple of times since then because he had gotten sucked up in my wake.

  No matter how hard I tried to leave him alone, something conspired to bring us together, and not in a good way for Shay. He had saved my life, but committed murder to do it. He hid the stone bowl for me, and I had almost killed him in his own apartment. I knew his boyfriend, Robin, was hiding in the city, one of the many Dead, but kept the information from him. He didn’t deserve what I had done, and I didn’t deserve his friendship.

  He flipped his long hair over his shoulder. “That was faster than I thought it would be.”

  “Are you insane coming into the Tangle
dressed like that?” I asked.

  Shay held his hands out dramatically from the waist. “Exactly, Connor. Anyone who shows up in the Tangle looking like this is either too crazy to deal with or too powerful to screw over. I made more people nervous than the other way around.”

  “How did you know how to find me?” I asked.

  He leaned the package against the chair. Essence radiated off it—the paper was insufficient to block it. I didn’t look directly at it. It shifted and swirled and made my head hurt. “Process of elimination. Your apartment’s being watched. I didn’t think you’d abandon the bowl, so I figured you were still somewhere in the Weird. The end of Oh No is too close to the police and stuff, and you don’t strike me as the type to hide out in a burned-out building. The Tangle was the only thing left.”

  Shay was too smart for his own good sometimes. “What’s in the package?”

  Shay ripped the brown paper to reveal a painting canvas. “It’s your friend Meryl’s painting.”

  He flipped it around to show me the plain white surface, but plain only in the visible sense. “That doesn’t look like much of a painting to me, Shay.”

  He pursed his lips in appraisal. “Color blocking is a bit passé, although she did use some interesting fingerwork.”

  Essence swirled and danced across the surface. Multicolored shapes bent and twisted, dancing like clouds on the wind. They reacted as I approached, and the dark mass in my head threw little pain spikes down my neck. “It’s infused with Meryl’s essence.”

  Shay stepped back, still staring as if he could see what I was talking about. Shay was human, though, with no fey abilities. Sometimes he seemed to exhibit a fey sensitivity, but it appeared more intuition than talent. “I thought something was up. It won’t take paint. Every time I painted on it, the paint ran off onto the floor. Uno wouldn’t stay in the same room with it. It’s been taking up room in the studio, and I figured you would want it.”