“Dog? What dog?” Jason asked
“We don’t have a dog,” Syndra confirmed. “We have a cat around here somewhere, whose probably hiding because of all the strange people, but no dog.”
The elf looked genuinely puzzled. “We saw the dog when we came in. A large black dog at the edge of the woods.”
Allie stood up quickly “In the woods! I bet he was in the woods last night too.”
“What are you talking about, Al?” Syndra asked. Allie ignored her, heading towards the door that led from the back of the kitchen out to a small mud room and then the backyard. Alarmed the elves started to follow her but she stopped abruptly and turned, dodging past them and jogging down the hall. Syndra yelled after her, “Allie! What the fuck!”
Allie ran into the small sitting room off the right side of the main hallway which served as an unofficial library, her eyes scanning the shelves of books. Quickly she grabbed half dozen paperbacks off the nearest shelf, which she promptly dropped, unable to keep them all in her small hands. Casting her eyes around she noticed Liz’s canvas sowing bag sitting near one of the Victorian style chairs and she upended it, scattering yarn, knitting needles, and half-finished afghan onto the hardwood floor. She shoved the books into the bag with an unusual disregard for them.
“Allie, what is wrong?” Jess asked, his voice cautious.
“He roams the woods at night,” she said, distracted. “He might have seen who killed her. I mean maybe. Maybe not, but I can ask…”
The elves exchanged uneasy glances, “A witness to Aeyliss’s death?”
“Yes! Maybe…” she replied, shouldering the bag and walking quickly back down the hall. Jess caught up with her and seized her arm, forcing her to stop.
“Allie, what are you talking about?” he said seriously.
She took a deep, steadying breath, “There’s a kelpie who lives in the woods behind the house. He wanders sometimes at night in the form of a large dog–which is probably who you saw earlier–and he might have seen something. I didn’t even think of it before, but we–I–can ask him.”
“No” Jess said, shaking his head, “It’s far too dangerous. Kelpies are difficult to deal with at best and the risk is too great to you.”
It was her turn to shake her head,” He’s been my friend for over 20 years. He wouldn’t hurt me. You, possibly. My other roommates, probably. But not me.”
They stood staring each other down for several seconds as the elves waited for Jessilaen to make a decision. Finally, with obvious reluctance, he nodded and Allie took off towards the back door. All four of the elves followed in her wake, across the backyard and over the stone wall. As they entered the woods the elves fell back and fanned out, taking up defensive positions; Allie ignored them.
At the edge of the lake she reached out with her magic, hoping Ciaran would answer despite the elves. To her relief she saw the water ripple and moments later the kelpie emerged in his horse form. She opened the bag and carefully pulled out the books, trying to hold all of them without dropping them this time.
“Good morning Ciaran. I brought you some books.”
The dripping, dark horse regarded her and the elves who were staying back well within the tree line. He spoke without changing his form, something that had unnerved her as a child.
“Good morning Aliaine. The books are greatly appreciated. I will take care that they are returned in the same condition they arrived in,” and then, niceties observed. “You are keeping strange company these days.”
Allie set the books down on a nearby tree stump. “Strange company, strange days. I was hoping I could ask you about last night.”
The large horse head bobbed slightly in a nod, “I had heard you were injured Allie, I am pleased to see you are well enough now. Was the one who injured you the same one who killed the Elven Guard on the road?”
She could feel the tension behind her, “We don’t know, but I don’t think so. I was hoping that you might have seen something last night that might help them find whoever killed the Guard.”
He thought about this, and she knew he wasn’t trying to remember but deciding whether he would share whatever he’d seen. Finally he said, “I have no fondness for the Guard or desire to help them, but since you ask me, and it seems they are protecting your life, I will tell you. They may do what they will with the knowledge.”
Allie felt an immense relief. “That would be appreciated.”
“I was near the edge of the wood when a car drove on the road, and stopped, but its lights stayed on and its engine kept running. I only noticed it because cars either come or go, but don’t usually idle like that. I did not linger though, but was roaming through the woods and had reached the far end when I smelled the blood and iron in the air. I ran with all speed back towards the road, but when I arrived at the edge of the woods the strange car was leaving and the Guard-woman was dead.”
Allie was nodding when Jessilaen spoke. “And why would you rush to her aid?”
The kelpie turned and regarded the elf “Not to her aid, although perhaps my earlier arrival would have aided her, but to catch the one who killed her. There is no more delicious prey than a murderer, and this one had blood and death enough on his soul to make a feast for me. I had long ago promised Allie not to enter the yard of the house, and the road is the edge of my territory so I do not go past it, but the temptation of someone with fresh blood on his hands was great.”
Something occurred to Allie as Ciaran spoke, “He was alone then? The killer?”
“Yes. Only one.” Ciaran said, wushing air out in an equine sigh.
“That was very helpful Ciaran. We’ll leave you alone now to enjoy the books. And let me know which ones you like best and I’ll get more of that sort for you.”
The kelpie nodded, “Of course.”
He turned and disappeared back into the small lake and Allie shouldered the now empty bag and headed back to the house, her Elven escort in tow. As they reached the edge of the yard Brynneth finally broke the silence, “What was the point of that?”
“We learned that it was one person who killed her, and that he was waiting for her, in an idling car when she came out,” Allie said bleakly.
“And that is significant in some way?” one of the strange elves asked. Allie realized that she had no idea what his name was and felt a twinge of guilt.
“Well, for certain it tells us that it wasn’t someone she saw as a threat, since she had to know he was there,” Allie said thinking, and I strongly suspect that whoever it was knew when the Guard changed and was waiting for her specifically… Instead she said, “Now to find the book.”
*********************************
As they walked back across the lawn she saw Jason waiting in the back door, looking unhappy. When they were close enough he yelled, “Hey Allie, there’s two cops here. They want to talk to you.”
“Okay, I’m coming in now.” She called back, wondering why the police would want to talk to her. She hadn’t seen anything last night and if she had it would be for the Guard to handle, since an Elven murder victim was their jurisdiction, unless the perpetrator turned out to be human.
Sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee, were the two detectives from the joint task force. She was sure her face showed her surprise but Riordan gave his usual smile and stood up to greet her “Good morning, Ms. McCarthy. Your roommate let us in, I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, I don’t mind,” she said feeling inexplicably flustered, and then added, “Good morning detectives. Let me grab a cup and I’ll join you.”
She poured herself some coffee and sat at the table with the two town police. The Elven Guard had quietly melted into the background and Allie suspected that they wanted to remain unnoticed while listening. Walters sat and nursed his coffee, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else but there.
“How are you feeling?” Riordan asked “You look much better than I expected.”
“Brynneth is a gifted healer, and I am feelin
g much better. I think the bruises will be gone by tomorrow.”
Walters grunted slightly, “I always heard you should be careful accepting things from elves–but maybe you worked it out in trade?”
Riordan gave his partner a disbelieving look, but Allie wasn’t offended, “It’s never a good idea to be in debt to any being of Fairy, that’s true, and I’m in his debt now, but honestly I haven’t even had time to worry about it, between getting hurt and then Aeyliss being killed.”
Riordan cleared his throat uncomfortably, “Yes, it was a shock to hear about that last night. It’s not the sort of crime we expect to see in this neighborhood.”
She looked at the Detective and tried to choose her words carefully. “It seems a bit much for coincidence that she was killed while we were looking for a book she could have used to track the killer.”
Walters eyes narrowed. “There’s no reason to see any connection between her death and the other murders.”
Riordan looked less sure. “It’s too early to know how or if her murder fits in to anything, but that’s not really our bailiwick, that’s for the Elven Guard to figure out. We’re here to talk with you about what happened Friday.”
Allie looked down, “I don’t know what I can tell you about that.”
Riordan leaned forward, “Ms. McCarthy, I understand why you might be scared. I saw the crime scene photos and the surveillance video. But we need to consider the possibility that whoever attacked you is connected to the murders. You said you wanted to help us and the best way to do that is to be honest with us now and maybe that’ll give us a lead we can work with.”
Allie bit her lip feeling truly torn. She couldn’t tell the police why she was sure her attackers weren’t their killers without compromising the elves refusal to acknowledge the Dark Court, which she agreed with.
“I do want to help you, and I will, but there’s nothing I can tell you about this, except that I wasn’t raped.”
Walters gave her a long look and then seemed to decide to try a nicer approach.
“Listen, we know that this whole situation is tough for you. But from our point of view you need to understand we have to follow all the good leads. That’s how investigations work. Whoever attacked you could be connected to our murders, could be our killer. We can’t just ignore that.”
“The people who attacked me were looking for a book, and when I couldn’t help them they got violent about it.” Allie reluctantly added, hoping that would be enough to convince them there wasn’t any connection.
“You got beat up that bad over a book?” Riordan said skeptically.
“I think my attitude was more the problem, actually.” She said wryly.
Riordan suddenly looked thoughtful.
“The Guard said you’re looking for a book that might have info on the kind of ritual our killer’s using and these guys come in looking for a book, but you don’t see a connection?”
Allie swore to herself. “I don’t know.”
Both Detectives stared at her while she sipped her coffee, but when it was obvious she wasn’t going to say anything else they stood reluctantly. Riordan sounded tired, “Well I’m glad you’re feeling better. Thanks for the coffee and if you change your mind about pressing charges, give me a call.”
“Or if you think of anything else about the murders,” Walters added, eyeing the lurking Guard suspiciously “Keep us in the loop.”
***************************
Riordan drove back to the station in silence, lost in thought, and Walters knew, even if he wouldn’t admit it, that it bothered his overly politically correct partner to see the elves camping out in that house like that.
It should, Walters thought smugly, I’d bet money they’re shacking up with our ‘expert’ already, damn elves’ll screw anything, anyway. Wouldn’t put it past Lyons to be getting a piece of that either; rumor is she’s pretty freaky. And I don’t believe this rape story for a minute. I don’t know what game she’s playing at, but whatever happened was obviously part of something illegal she’s involved in which is why she’s trying to cover it up. Jim’s just a big soft touch for a beat-up girl crying Rape! It’s a damn shame whoever roughed her up didn’t kill her–that would have solved my problem. But if someone else is looking for the book, that could be a huge complication.
He turned to look out the side window so Riordan wouldn’t see him frowning. This world is too messed up, someone’s gotta fix it. That’s why it’s so important to get this work done he thought grimly. He hadn’t expected the guilt he’d felt after he’d killed the Fairy cop. It hadn’t felt right at all to kill any kind of cop, but he kept reminding himself that she was just an elf and it had to be done. When Lyons had called and told them about her stupid roommate remembering the old woman’s copy of the book, at first he’d been furious, but when she’d let slip the Guard schedule and when they changed shift, he’d seen a golden opportunity. And it had all worked perfectly, much easier than he’d feared. In fact it was almost disappointing how easy it had been to kill her.
Well, no more magical tracker means the magic can’t be tracked he thought satisfied. Then he thought of the early morning phone conversation he’d had Now I just have to trust and let the mixed blood bitch find the book for us, then take it…He didn’t like leaving anything in the bookshop owner’s hands and he had a feeling that everything was spiraling out of control, but he had been forced to agree that it was the best course of action.
He hated sitting around waiting for something to happen.
*****************************
“It’s not this, is it?” Jason asked, holding up a leather bound book. Allie glanced at it quickly and shook her head. He added it to the pile of books they’d already checked and moved on to the next. The three friends, with two Guards hovering nearby, had been sorting through books in the attic for over an hour. Both the Guards were strangers to Allie; Jess had returned to the Outpost to offer a preliminary report–not that there was anything to report–and Brynneth was downstairs watching for Aeyliss’s replacement who had been sent out to help cover the day shift.
Allie sat back on her heels for a moment, rolling her shoulders to work the knots out, and inhaling the musty but comforting smell of the old attic. The attic had always been one of her favorite places when she was a child, somewhere she came to hide when she was upset or to play on rainy days. The room stretched the length and breadth of the house and had long been used for storage of everything from holiday decorations to unused or unwanted items, including several old chairs and couches and countless boxes piled haphazardly around the space. Several years before her grandmother had died Allie and Liz had undertaken to line all the walls with short bookshelves which were filled with decade’s worth of books, mostly once-read and discarded paperback novels. Interspersed in with those however were an array of others, including rare and expensive antique books and more recent but equally hard to find ones. Allie was having a hard time looking for her grandmother’s grimoire because she kept getting sidetracked with other books that she knew she could sell in the store or that a customer had asked about at some point over the years. She had started a separate pile of books to smuggle out to the store as she went along and it was definitely slowing her down to divide her attention, but she couldn’t help it. Jason and Syndra were searching with more speed, but they didn’t know exactly what they were looking for so they had to keep stopping to double check with Allie when they came across something they weren’t sure about. The end result was that after an hour the group hadn’t gotten through even a tenth of the books on the shelves, and since their searches the night before hadn’t gotten much further either they still had more then 2/3’s of the books left to go through.
“Huh,” Syndra mused out loud, more to break the monotony than anything else, “Wonder why your grandmother bothered to keep this ratty old dictionary? It’s so outdated and messed up she might as well have thrown it away…”
Allie looked up just as Syndra wa
s about to toss the book onto one of the teetering already-checked piles, and she lunged across the space between them, yelling, “No!” so loudly that she startled both the Guards into fully drawing their swords.
“What the fuck Allie!” Syndra yelled back “What are you doing?”
“That’s it! That’s the book! Can’t you see it?” Allie felt elated as she picked up the grimoire for the first time in over 20 years. It was exactly as she remembered it: brown hand tooled leather smooth under her hands, cream colored parchment pages crisp despite its age, its weight somehow more solid than it should be for its size.
Syndra looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Allie, it’s just a battered old dictionary. Like super old. Pre-Sundering old.”
She turned to Jason, holding up the book, and he nodded “It’s an old dictionary. It looks like it’s taken a bath, kinda wrinkly and moldy. Kinda gross.” He wrinkled his nose.
Feeling a sudden foreboding she turned to the two elves, “What do you see.”
The woman on the left hesitated a moment, “I am not sure, but it doesn’t look like anything significant. An old worthless book as they say.”
Wordlessly she held the book up to the other elf, feeling it tingle in her hands indicating active magic. He studied it for a long time, the seconds dragging out painfully as she felt her heart racing, “I–am not sure either. I cannot see it clearly.”
Realization sunk in and Allie let slip a rare, “Oh fuck.”
***********************************
Allie was sitting down in the living room later waiting for the Guard Captain’s arrival. He was summoned by the Guard assigned to her, who had been unable to understand her less than coherent explanations about the book. In the hours since the book had been found Jason and Syndra had both left and Allie had holed up on the living room couch, cradling the grimoire but unable to bring herself to open it. She wasn’t sure why, exactly. Somehow she had thought that if she could find the book she’d be able to hand it over to the Elven Guard and her part in everything would be done–they could find what they needed from there without her. Like at her store, it should have been a simple matter of connecting the right person with the right book. But nothing was turning out to be that simple. Her last hope was Zarethyn; she knew that in order to achieve the rank of Captain in the Guard he had to be an adept mage and if even he couldn’t see the book for what it was, she would have to accept that her grandmother’s magic was too strong. It did occur to her to wonder if Liz could see the book, but her cousin had left earlier, while they were all up in the attic, and Allie didn’t know when she’d be back. And if she can see it, she might be in danger, Allie thought frowning.
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