East Broadway was an obstacle course of pedestrians, delivery vans, double-parked cars, and piles and piles of snow. Tempers flared as someone had the audacity to stop her car to allow someone else time to find the least-slush-filled path cross the street. Deliverymen frowned as they climbed over salt- and sand-caked snow. I took my time, unimpressed with the frustrations. People didn’t seem bothered by a few decapitations up a few blocks. Not when something important was happening, like missing a yellow traffic light.
A sea of kitchen chairs lined the edges of K Street. I drove down the ice-slick lane until I reached the Murdock house. A thrill of victory and doubt ran through me as I pulled up. In front of the black-shuttered row house stood an empty space with no chair. The spaces in front and behind it were meticulously cleaned and chairless as well. I parallel-parked between the spaces and sat in the car, considering whether I was violating any neighborhood tradition. Three empty spaces in a row—with no chairs—in front of the police commissioner’s house could not be a coincidence. K Street apparently had its own subset of unwritten rules. I turned off the engine and lifted a box from the passenger seat.
Salt on the shoveled sidewalk crunched under my boots as I walked up the short steps and rang the bell. A large Christmas wreath with small white bows hung on the door. The cement urn to one side was filled with greens and decorated presents.
Kevin Murdock, an earnest kid in his twenties and the youngest of the family, opened the door. Unlike the rest of his police brothers, he had joined the fire department. He was dressed in his day uniform, his dark hair cut in a buzz. “Hey, Connor . . .” He paused when he saw the car. His blue eyes met mine. “Did you actually drive that trash heap here?”
I grinned. “I’ve had all my shots.”
He stepped back with the classic Murdock smirk. “Get inside before my dad yells about heating the neighborhood.”
I wiped my feet on the mat. Row houses were long, narrow buildings, the rooms stacked one behind the other. In the front parlor, a Christmas tree took up the small space near the windows. The house smelled of evergreen and roasted meat.
Kevin gestured at the box. “Can I take that for you?”
I shook my head. “It’s for Leo. Is he here?”
He pointed with his thumb at the ceiling. “He’s in his room.” He picked up a uniform overcoat. “I have to get back to work. Can you tell him to get his ass out of here and get to work like the rest of us?”
I looked up the stairs. “How’s he doing?”
Kevin’s smiled dropped. “He’s okay, I think. A little shook-up. You know him, he doesn’t say much, but I think he’s okay. He won’t tell me what happened.”
I smiled. “Then I’ll kick his ass out of here for you.”
Kevin winked. “Thanks.” He patted me hard on the shoulder. “Good to see you, Connor. Merry . . . um . . . holidays.”
I laughed. “You, too.”
Kevin was a good guy. As the baby of the family, the Murdocks doted on him. Leo was almost twenty years older, so they tended to have a more mentor/protégé relationship than simple brotherhood.
The rest of the Murdock men—Gerry, Bar, and Bernard—were local cops, and their sister Faith had gone the state police route. They all lived at home except Faith and Bernard, who had separate apartments not far away. The coming year looked interesting for them all, with the other Murdock sister, Grace, getting married, and Bernard deciding to run for city councilor. Politics and public service ran deep in the blood.
The commissioner’s wife was gone, and while the impression I had was that she was dead, there was an underlying silence about her absence that hinted at tragedy. Despite the sisters, the house didn’t have the feel of a woman’s presence. It was very much the commissioner’s.
Murdock’s bedroom was on the second floor. Shifting the box to one hand, I knocked on the slightly ajar door.
“I’ll be down in a bit, Kev. You don’t need to keep checking on me,” Murdock said.
I pushed the door open. “Not Kevin.”
From his desk chair, Murdock gave me a tired smile. “Sorry. Kevin’s been like an old-lady gnat all morning. Come on in.”
He swiveled in the chair. Other than some darkness under his eyes, he looked fine, to the point of wearing his usual work attire—neatly pressed dark pants and a white collared shirt—sans tie. Papers from an open file on the desk were stacked neatly in a row. More files in file boxes lined the wall. All copies of case files.
I placed the box on the foot of the bed and took a side chair. “What are you working on?”
He rotated the chair. “Not really working. Reviewing the nanny case.”
Several years ago, a young student from Europe summering in the United States was murdered. She was found in a dumpster, just her torso. The list of suspects was bizarre—a photographer, a panhandler, a rock musician, and a guy who walked his dog while dressed as Superman. The woman’s complete remains were never found. Neither was her murderer. That Murdock would decide to read that case was no surprise. Every cop in the city wanted to know what happened to the nanny. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d rather you read one of those romance novels you don’t want anybody to know you read.”
He smiled and jutted his chin at the box. “What’s that?”
I flipped open the top. “This, my friend, was in my building vestibule this morning addressed to me. It’s your coat, hat, and gun.”
Murdock was on his feet and at the box in an instant. He grabbed the gun and checked it, spun the chambers and sniffed it. Relief washed over him. “It hasn’t been fired.”
“Neither has your bug,” I said.
Murdock pulled the coat out and found the backup gun. Despite what I said, he checked it, too, then locked both guns in his nightstand. “That gives me one less hassle today. I was about to go to the station house and report them gone. What the hell is going on?”
“No one gives up a free gun in the Weird. Someone’s being helpful.”
He pursed his lips. “Do you think it was Zev’s people?”
I shook my head. “That was my initial thought, but it’s got Dead essence all over, several signatures.”
He sat back in his chair. “That doesn’t make sense. They’re the ones that grabbed me.”
“I don’t think they meant to grab you, Murdock,” I said. “Zev told me last night that only solitaries were swept up. The patrol officers who got snagged were returned almost immediately.”
He swiveled slowly in his seat, then met my eyes. “I talked to one of the guys who was there last night. He said they were ordered to stand down and get off the street.”
I frowned. “I can see pulling back if the crowd dispersed on its own, but getting off the street? Who the hell gave that order?”
Murdock glanced toward the door. “I’ll find out.”
He let the silence hang, his face troubled. Two people could have given the order: the senior officer on-site or the police commissioner. But with a couple of hundred angry solitaries out there, an officer on the street would not have made that call. Murdock removed a black shoe from the box. “They only found one shoe?”
“I guess. What’s up with the shoes?” I asked.
He gave me a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”
“You were all upset about your shoes missing last night.”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember that.”
I leaned forward. “What happened, Leo?”
He went to the window. “You drove my car here?”
I tossed him the keys. “The keys were in your coat, so I picked up the car on the way over. Don’t change the subject.”
He looked down in thought. “I don’t think the Dead are really people, Connor. I’ve been thinking all morning that these Dead we’re seeing are some sort of manifestation of our, I don’t know, hopes? Fears? I don’t think they’re real.”
“They felt pretty real when they tried to kill us in TirNaNog,” I said.
H
e shook his head. “You know I don’t understand all this essence stuff, but I’ve read enough about psychology to know it’s possible to see—and feel—stuff that’s not real. I’ve seen crowds panic for no reason except that one person did. Maybe between essence and the Taint and mass hysteria, these Dead folks aren’t really there.”
“Murdock, I saw you pulled into the air. You experienced it independently of me. How can we both hallucinate the same phenomenon that neither of us ever experienced before?”
He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know.”
“I’m no psychologist, but maybe you’re having some kind of denial reaction to what happened. Maybe you should talk to someone.”
He frowned. “I know what happened, Connor. I don’t need a shrink.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve seen you do when it comes to the fey, Leo, it’s keep an open mind. This isn’t like you.”
He rubbed his hands against his thighs. “Maybe one Murdock mind is closing and another one is opening.”
“I have no idea what that means,” I said.
“My father is sleeping with Moira Cashel,” he said.
I blinked several times. “Um . . . did hell just freeze over?” He shook his head. “Murdock, I do not believe your father is sleeping with a powerful druidess. He hates the fey.”
Murdock snorted. “Sex and hypocrisy go hand in hand, don’t they?”
I gnawed at my lower lip, thinking. “Still, your father? I can’t wrap my head around it.”
“He was evasive the other night. I got curious and followed him when he went out. I thought he was having dinner with her again. He went to a hotel in Burlington. She met him in the lobby, and they went upstairs. It didn’t look like he stayed for dinner when he came out.”
Burlington was a small town north of the city. Not the place anyone would look for the Boston police commissioner or the High Queen’s Herbalist. “What do you think it means?”
He shook his head. “I can’t even begin to guess.”
“Why are you bringing this up? You still haven’t said what happened to you last night, Leo.”
He looked out the window again. “Fine. I’ll tell you, but I want your word you won’t tell anyone else.”
“You don’t even have to ask,” I said.
He inhaled deeply and sighed. “A green light fell on me like a wave. Something grabbed me and dragged me into the air. I felt weightless, tumbling and falling, then rising again. All kinds of people and strange animals surrounded me, tossing me back and forth, laughing and screaming. I thought I was losing my mind. I started to pray. There was this loud shout, and someone threw me higher. Someone else caught me. She wrapped her arms around me and held me up. They say as you die, you see the people who went before you, welcoming you to heaven.”
Murdock paused, looking down at his hands. He frowned and gazed out the window. “She looked like my mother, Connor. The woman holding me looked like my mother.”
My mind went blank. “Wow. I don’t know what to say, Murdock. You never talk about your mother.”
He remained silent for so long, I thought he was going to change the subject again. “She was killed in a traffic accident after Kevin was born. My mother was Catholic, Connor. We had a funeral mass. We buried her. What happened last night leaves me with two choices: Either everything that’s been happening is fey essence manipulating our minds, or everything I believe about God and heaven and hell is a lie. I’m not going to lose my faith over this. The one thing I do know? The moment I started praying, the craziness stopped. I think God sent me a message to help me keep my faith.”
What do you say to someone who has a religious epiphany? It didn’t happen? A few months earlier, I met a drys, which druids consider the manifestation of the power of the oak. A demigoddess. I couldn’t say it didn’t affect me profoundly, that my secular agnosticism wasn’t rocked. But I still had my doubts. Reason told me the drys might be just another fey, an extremely rare and powerful one, but fey. Despite my rational mind, the faith I was raised in clouded the issue. I wanted to believe, dammit, but I still preferred to know.
I took a deep breath. “Murdock, I’m not going to disagree with you. That’s the whole point of religion, isn’t it? That we don’t know? I’ve been asking myself those kinds of things all my life. If you found your answer, that’s cool. I don’t think my worldview and your faith are an either/or proposition, but maybe you’re further along that path than me.”
A subtle change settled over Murdock, a release of tension in his body, like maybe he had been thinking I was going to argue with him or didn’t believe him. I didn’t blame him. For one thing, I’m not shy about my opinions. For another, he probably couldn’t help but feel defensive after telling me he thought God saved him from the crazy fey people.
His father was another matter. Leo and the commissioner might try to work out their differences on a lot of things, but the fey were something they would never agree on. Scott Murdock’s odd interest in Moira Cashel had to do with more than sex. The question was, which of them was playing the other.
Murdock pulled some folder across his desk. “Let’s review the file.”
23
Murdock and I spent the remainder of the day alternately discussing why the Dead attacked the solitaries in such a strange manner and why Murdock wouldn’t go to Avalon Memorial. Of the two topics, Murdock preferred the former and I the latter. Despite my acute sensing ability, I never had much ability in the healing arts. To my senses, Murdock seemed fine, but I worried. Our work partnership was getting to the point where Murdock’s human nature put him at risk when working with the fey, and our friendship was making that harder for me to watch. I felt responsible for his strange acquisition of a body shield. I was afraid of what more might happen to him if I couldn’t protect him better.
But Murdock was Murdock. I’d call him stubborn, but that would be disrespectable to what was really his resolve. He assessed situations and made decisions with firm resolution. As far as he was concerned, he was fine, he would be fine, and until something indicated otherwise, he would continue as he was. That didn’t stop my anxiety about him. So, when I went home while Murdock went to check in at the station house, I called Briallen ab Gwyll, my childhood mentor and one of the finest healers in the fey world. Without argument, she agreed to an impromptu dinner with friends to see if my fears about Murdock had any foundation.
A light snow fell as I walked up Park Street to Beacon Hill. Against the early-evening sky, white lights glowed along the architectural trim of the old brick statehouse, its gold dome shining under spotlights. Along the edges of Boston Common, multicolored lights filled the branches of old elm trees. The scene had a classic New England charm, except for the darkness on top of the small hill where the war monument used to be, replaced now by a smooth granite pillar, a muted bone white finger against the night sky.
The pillar had once stood in the center of a giant circle of stones in TirNaNog. On Samhain, the pillar ripped through from the Land of Dead, and it remained after the veil between worlds closed. In the chaos of that night, trees were destroyed, leaving the top of the hill bare. Since then, gargoyles had gathered around the pillar.
The city granted the Guild jurisdiction over the site to figure out if it was dangerous. No one was allowed near it, especially fey who were not authorized. Another restriction. The citizen group that maintained the landscaping was pretty ticked off, too.
Briallen lived on Louisburg Square behind the statehouse. The exclusive address had its share of business executives and politicians who called it home. These days, I imagined that they were less than pleased to have a powerful druidess living in their midst. Screw ’em. Briallen had lived there since before most of them had been born and, if anything, kept the place safe from both human and fey shenanigans.
The brownstone let me in. My old partner, Dylan macBain, was the only other person I knew whom Briallen had spelled free access through her door at any time, and he
was supposed to be dead. In a way, I had grown up in Briallen’s town house. Even though my family lived three miles away, I spent the majority of my teens on the third floor of her home. She was one part teacher, one part parent, and a big part friend. Even when my life fell apart, she stood by me. I knew she had put herself on the line more than once in my defense, especially lately.
“I’m in here,” she called out, as I crossed the threshold.
I left my jacket on the hallstand and went to the kitchen. The wave of warmth from the stove brought the smell of stew. Briallen came out of the pantry with a stack of dishes. “You’re early.”
She hugged me, then stared into my eyes as she placed her hands on either side of my head. A warm sensation radiated from her palms. After Gillen Yor, Briallen was the most experienced healer in the city, if not the world. Her essence moved inside me, an intimacy I allowed no one else outside a hospital room. I had an uncomfortable memory flash of the leanansidhe.
Briallen feathered her essence along the edges of the dark mass in my mind. I winced as it flexed when she came too near, but it didn’t react. Perhaps it knew I wasn’t threatened by her touching. Perhaps it wasn’t threatened, if it was that aware. Briallen withdrew and dropped her hands, rubbing my shoulders with a troubled smile.
“I thought you’d want to talk before the others got here,” I said.
She turned away. “It’s changed.”
“I know.”
She kept her back to me as she worked. “It’s bigger. I think it’s spreading.”
“It is.”
She didn’t speak as she broke some greens for a salad. I sat on a stool. She finished, wiped her hands with a towel, and held on to the edge of the counter. “Are you in pain?”
“Headaches. Sometimes it’s worse.”
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