Caledonia

by Amy Hoff

  She stood outside, her breath turning to mist in the morning greylight, the air cool and damp upon her cheek. She needed answers, but at the same time, she needed sleep. She was dead on her feet. She walked back to her hotel as Glasgow stirred in waking.

  Upon reaching her room, she collapsed onto her bed. She slept, and for the first time did not dream of Adam, but of creatures beyond human knowledge. It was a nightmare, but better than the alternative.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He turned around as the cell door opened.

  “Hello, Miss Leah,” he said. So it was Geoffrey she was speaking to. She wasn’t sure if this would make it easier, or more difficult, to do her job.

  “Do you understand what’s happened, Geoffrey?” she asked.

  “No, Miss Leah,” he said. “I woke up here in the cell. Did I drink too much last night?”

  Leah looked into blue eyes so honest and trusting that she began to lose faith in what she had seen the night before. She sighed and pulled up a chair in front of him, indicating that he should also sit down. Geoffrey sat. The earnest expression in his eyes was heartbreaking.

  “Geoffrey,” she said softly. “It’s you.”

  He held her gaze, uncomprehending. Leah tried again.

  “You’re Sebastian. You’re the serial killer,” she said.

  Geoffrey started, thunderstruck. His face drained of colour.

  “But…no,” he said. “I’m Geoffrey. Geoffrey Worthington, from Basingstoke.”

  “I know you think that,” said Leah. “I know it seems real, but Geoffrey…you’re Sebastian.”

  “But I have memories of my childhood!” he cried, railing against the truth of it. “The garden, my mum, the first girl I ever – I ever –”

  He paused, looking at Leah, and blushed crimson.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “Because I arrested you,” she said. “Because you have magic, and you nearly killed us all.”

  Geoffrey blanched at this, horrified.

  “I would never,” he whispered.

  “Maybe not,” said Leah, “but Sebastian would. You're dangerous.”

  There was fear in Geoffrey's eyes.

  “I wish it were different,” said Leah. “Believe me, I do. Maybe because –”

  “Maybe because I’m a fiction?” Geoffrey said, “Which one of us is real? Geoffrey or Sebastian? I feel real.”

  Leah clenched her teeth.

  “Sebastian,” she said. “I’m sorry, Geoffrey. You're a part of him, you...you just don't remember.”

  Geoffrey stared at her for a moment.

  “Magic?” he asked simply, and she nodded.

  He looked up at her, misery in those brilliant blue eyes.

  “Well,” he said. “Good job team! We caught him.”

  Leah couldn't look at him. Geoffrey was a genuinely good person, with a good heart. He was a man she could have trusted. She wondered what must have happened to Sebastian, if Geoffrey was a part of him, and what kind of desperation had turned him evil enough to splinter his personality.

  “Miss Leah, I am dreadfully sorry,” he said. “I think I will have to cancel our date.”

  Leah smiled despite herself, and nodded.

  “It's all right, Geoffrey,” said Leah, and she hoped it sounded more reassuring than it felt.

  It didn't seem like enough.

  “You know I have to –” she said.

  Geoffrey's expression lost its muted jocularity.

  “Yes, Miss Leah,” he said. “I understand that you have to do your job.”

  “I’ll talk to Chief Ben,” said Leah. “We might be able to –”

  Geoffrey put up a hand, gently interrupting her.

  “No, Miss Leah,” he said. “Because he might escape and you know I won’t. I was never a strong man. But I can do this.”

  Leah stared at him.

  “The responsibility falls to me, and I swore just like you to serve and protect,” said Geoffrey. “I know you’d do the same, in my place.”

  “All right. I have to go,” she said, standing to leave. “But…let me know if you need anything?” Geoffrey nodded.

  “Of course,” he said. “And…Miss Leah?”

  “Yes?”

  “Whatever you do,” he said quietly. “Don’t let me run. Promise me you won’t let me run.”

  Caught in his gaze, she nodded, and put a hand on the latch.

  “I promise,” she said.

  ***

  Later that day, Leah turned from her computer to see Dorian and Magnus enter the station together. Their eyes were now the soft seal-brown colour she had grown accustomed to. They seemed a trifle embarrassed, as though Leah having seen them in their previous state was tantamount to having seen them in a compromising position.

  “Welcome back,” she said.

  Magnus bowed, and went to the kitchen for tea. Dorian made to follow him.

  “Don't you leave, Dorian Grey,” she commanded, and Dorian stood still. “You abandoned me out there, and I only had help from a vampire to take down the first serial killer in Fae history. Do you want to explain yourself?”

  Dorian's dour expression was unchanged. She crossed her arms.

  “You asked me what your weapons were,” he said. “The curse of being magical is magic itself. The curse of being a story is that you are bound to how the story must be told. Every powerful creature has a weakness, and every creature that seems weak has untold power. We are slaves to the story, Leah Bishop, and as I have told you, the seal-folk are both blessed and cursed. There are times when we save you and there are times when you save us.”

  Leah shook her head. Dorian sat down beside her.

  “I understand you are angry with me, Leah,” he said. “You have every right to be. You are stronger and more useful than you think. You have weapons, and you are necessary to this force. You are the strongest human I know, and I am proud to have you as my partner.”

  Leah looked at him and smiled a bit.

  “We Fae are often trapped by our own power,” he said. “In the selkie cantrip, we are held in its thrall. Now that Sebastian has been caught, the cantrip has released us. If you hadn't been there, we would have torn him limb from limb. We are capable of destroying the world, Leah.”

  Leah started. Dorian held her gaze.

  “It has been long since I was a killer,” he said, “long since the selk walked in darkness, a ghost legion dripping with the cold of the sea, to become the horror of those people on the lonely roads, tarrying too late after pub close. It has been long since the selk raised their hand in anger against anyone. I thank you for defusing a situation I was helpless to control.”

  Leah was about to reply when Chief Ben approached.

  “They found another body,” he said.

  “What?” Leah said, “but...Sebastian's been arrested.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Much like the other one, it looks as if this was done a while ago. I am hoping this will be the last one we find. You'll have to go and see Milo.”

  ***

  Leah and Dorian walked through the Labyrinth to the morgue.

  The mist began to gather, obscuring her view.

  Oh, no. Not again.

  There was a door. Leah recognised it as the door to the Minotaur’s garage. She smiled a bit and decided she’d ask him for help again.

  She pushed the door open and nearly fell off of a cliff.

  She backed towards the door and stared around herself in disbelief. The ocean crashed loudly against the rocks in front of her.

  Leah was standing on the side of a cliff, in a manicured garden. There were fountains everywhere, little rivers and waterfalls set into the grounds. It was beautiful and desolate. There was no one else around. Mist rose from the sea and she saw, to her surprise, that there was a small pathway to a beach. There was also a feeling of intense loneliness to the place, as severe as a wound. She looked back towards the door and wondered if she should chance it just as she saw a stra
nge, dark shape rising beneath the water. A black tentacle crept out from the sea, the waves crashing over it as it felt along the sand, and then the cliffs.

  Searching. It is searching for something…

  “What the –” Leah began, and yelped when she felt a strong hand on her arm.

  She turned to see the Minotaur.

  “Best leave now,” he advised.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw that the tentacle had crept over the cliff and was edging along the lawn towards them.

  “Agreed,” said Leah, backing into the hallway of the Labyrinth and closing the door firmly.

  “You gotta be more careful,” said the Minotaur. “I won’t always be here. Your partner’ll be missing you. Go through that door. And remember – follow the directions next time.”

  Leah nodded, and went through the door the Minotaur indicated.

  “Leah!” Dorian said. “What happened? You keep getting lost down here. It’s very dangerous!”

  “Sorry,” said Leah. “I’m fine now.”

  She told him what had happened and what the Minotaur had said.

  “What the hell was that, in the ocean?” she asked.

  Dorian looked like he wasn’t going to answer.

  “Oh no,” she said. “None of this cryptic mysterious crap. You know I might end up down here without you and I need to understand the dangers I might be facing. Out with it.”

  He studied her for a moment and then relented.

  “It is a beast of the deep,” he said. “There are doors upon doors underneath Caledonia. There is no end to this station that we know of, as the builders are long gone. You can access it from anywhere in the city. It spreads out the entirety of Glasgow and beyond. How deep it goes, I cannot tell – no one can. You merely need to find the most incongruous-looking element of most Glasgow neighbourhoods, and run towards it. Frequently, it will be a passageway into some part of Caledonia, and as you are an officer, the doorways will recognise you. You can find yourself here in the Labyrinth, in relative safety, as long as you have your wits about you. Most of the things down here are friendly and might even be your fellow officers – we have many officers both above ground and below, in many places of the world.”

  Leah did not miss the implications of most of – but she let it slide.

  “And this beast of the deep, what purpose does it serve?” she asked.

  “Purpose?” asked Dorian, puzzled, “It just is. What purpose do you or I serve? We are. It is. The door serves as a passageway to another land.”

  “Another land? Like Greece or something?” she asked. “It looked Mediterranean.”

  “Not all doors lead to Earthly places,” said Dorian.

  Leah stared at him.

  “So…” she said. “That was…like…Faerie?”

  He considered this.

  “Something like it, yes,” he said. “I advise you to be careful about directions in the Labyrinth, and what doors you open, until you’ve spent more time in this world.”

  “Right,” said Leah, full of questions that may never have answers.

  Dorian shook his head, and they entered the morgue together.

  Milo was there, sitting beside the corpse of a lovely young woman. His long, golden-orange tail was soaking in a cast-iron clawfoot bathtub as he made notes while he examined the body. He looked up as they entered.

  “Hello,” he said. “Thanks for coming down.”

  “What time did she come in?” asked Dorian.

  “About an hour ago,” said Milo. “I'm going to start the autopsy in a half an hour, but I thought you might want to have a look first.”

  The ceasg sighed.

  “Not that I think the autopsy is going to tell us anything,” said Milo, looking at the dead woman. “Not any more than the others have told us, at any rate. I'm about to admit defeat, Dorian, and you know I hate that.”

  “You haven't been able to find any cause of death?” asked Leah.

  Milo indicated a chair beside the table and she sat down next to him.

  “Nothing,” he said, motioning to the body with the end of his pen. “There are no marks anywhere, same as all the others. She was not poisoned. There are only a few surefire ways to kill the Fae, but none of them are evident here. It is very puzzling. We know the killer now, but not how he killed.”

  Leah looked at the woman on the table and then turned to look at the lab, the creatures, the mysterious bubbling liquids, and the refrigerators that held evidence from countless cases.

  “You have a morgue, though?” she asked.

  Milo nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “Normally, we investigate faerie crimes against humans. The human bodies come to us first, and then are sent to the human police afterwards. It’s quite rare for us to investigate monster crimes against other monsters. These days, everyone seems to get along fairly well.”

  “The human police know about us?” asked Leah.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes,” he said. “They just don't know what we are, exactly. They think we are merely a specialist branch of Interpol. We rarely get visitors, and of course I can’t interact with the human police.”

  He grinned, and indicated his tail. Then he sighed.

  “I do miss Geoffrey. He was very good. I am disappointed that I didn't spot him sooner. I like to consider myself a kind of detective, too. I just investigate bodies. However, with these murders, there have been absolutely no clues. Each one of these Fae has been in near-perfect health.”

  “It's as if they just...gave up?” asked Leah, and Milo nodded.

  Leah looked down at the body of the woman. She had been very beautiful, with olive skin and curly hair, large dark eyes, and long lashes.

  Leah started. She noticed something glittering between the woman's fingers.

  “Milo,” she said. “What is that?”

  Milo looked closely, and gently pried the woman’s hand open. There was a small, teardrop-shaped glass pendant, filled with water, resting in the centre of her palm. Milo handed it to Leah.

  “I don’t recognise it,” he said.

  Dorian moved closer.

  “This is a selkie's tear pendant,” he said. “But...I haven't seen one in years. They are very old-fashioned. Sentimental. Almost foolish, really. The selkie keeps the tears of his lover next to his heart. Even I am not as old-fashioned as that.”

  “I can't imagine that ever being the case,” said Leah.

  Dorian smiled and took the pendant from her, studying it.

  “I don’t know why it would be here – with this body.” said Dorian, after a moment. “These tears do not belong to this woman. Believe me, I can tell.”

  He examined it closely.

  “I can tell you what I do know from this.” Dorian said. “The selkie that this pendant belonged to was Taken by a woman that a human man already loved. Seven tears into the sea. A woman disappointed in love. That is the formula. The human men are not always too pleased when they discover that the woman they love has found another man.”

  “I thought that the selk could only be with single women,” Leah said.

  “Disappointed in love doesn’t always mean single,” Dorian said.

  “What do we do n–” Leah began, and that was when the first wave hit.

  Adam walked towards her, smiling.

  Leah's heart ached as though it had been seared with a branding iron. The vision disappeared as quickly as it had come.

  “Are you all right?” Dorian asked, as she regained consciousness, gasping in horror.

  “No,” she managed, as another vision blindsided her.

  She was drowning.

  Adam was talking to a strange woman, in a café. That was the first time she saw them together. When she had confronted him about it, how easily he had lied.

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” he had said. “You’re always so overdramatic and suspicious. I can't help it if women are attracted to me. It's meaningless. Stop being jealous. It’s
unattractive.”

  Leah clawed her way back to consciousness, her stomach roiling.

  She opened the door to their flat, tossing her keys on the table. She rifled through the mail. Dimly, she became aware of sounds coming from the bedroom. There was knowledge there, before she had even been aware of it, a terrible sinking feeling. She knew better, but she couldn't help herself. She had to know.

  She saw them together. Everything she had never wanted to be true. Every time she had doubted herself. Every time she had feared this. Adam was a liar with a beautiful face. There was a reason Lucifer was called morning star, most beautiful. It is so very human to equate beauty with a good heart. The snake is smooth, the honest are jagged.

  Leah's eyes opened and she was in the morgue again, with Milo and Dorian. It was only a trough between waves, but she called out through the storm.

  “–It’s showing me Adam,” she managed to say, before she was lost beneath a sea of memory.

  Leah heard a new voice, narrating, among the hurricane of images and lost days that trapped her. She recognized the voice as Geoffrey's, but with the sharpened notes of Sebastian's cold silver tongue:

  You think your hearts are broken?

  She was dimly aware of Dorian collapsing to the floor.

  You think you have reason to fear, reason to weep, in the dark hours?

  Leah saw Milo looking down at them with disinterested curiosity.

  She had gone outside and sat down on the front step, in tears. She no longer cared who saw her.

  And then he came outside. He had put his arms around her shoulders, talked in a soothing voice. He tried to comfort her, tried to convince her she was overreacting. The other woman was still inside, in their bed, and he was trying to tell her that she was overreacting to him shattering their lives.

  How she had desired the comfort of his touch and had been repulsed by it.

  How she had doubted what she had seen with her own eyes, how she knew, now, that he was a liar and not to be trusted, but how she did not quite believe it either.

  She felt the desperation of loving him and the sick feeling of knowing she was wrong to do so. She was so foolish, and the other woman must have laughed at her...and still, how difficult it was to convince her mind that this man, her husband, her love, was a stranger to her now. That he was the enemy, and in many ways, had always been.