Unfallen Dead cg-3

by Mark Del Franco

  I rolled my head toward her. “How can I face something if I don’t know what it is?”

  “You do know what it is. It’s what it always is for everyone. It’s you. You have to face yourself. The good and the bad, and, yes, the horrifying. We all have those things within us. You have to remember when to keep it in and when to let it out. Either way, you have to live with the consequences.” She spoke softly, staring into the fire, a memory shadowing her eyes.

  “How much have you had to live with?”

  She hesitated so long, I thought she was going to tell me to mind my own business. “There are things that I can never speak of, things I’ve needed to do and couldn’t explain, but I did them because they had to be done. Some I did out of love and some out of duty, and, yes, even anger and hatred. But I did them, and I live with it. That’s what you have to do, Connor. Live with it.”

  It was my turn to hold my hand out to her. “Will you ever allow me to pity myself?”

  She held out her glass. “Wah, wah, wah. Pour some more port.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Tawny port has the ability to appear sweet and innocent. I think it’s called a fortified wine because it has the tendency to make you think a brisk October evening is refreshing. Which was believable until I found myself more drunk than I thought and lost in my own neighborhood. I wasn’t really lost. I wasn’t paying attention after I crossed the bridge and missed my street. At least, that was what I tried to convince myself.

  I looped the long way around the block past the Nameless Deli. I steadfastly tried not to sway in front of it as I debated whether to get something to eat. The lights were too damned bright, and my hangover was kicking in before the alcohol had burned out of my system. I decided against food. After the huge meal at Briallen’s, I couldn’t possibly be hungry. I stubbed a toe rounding the corner onto Sleeper Street, hopping and swearing under my breath.

  Just when things in my life finally were marching in some semblance of a positive direction, something new had to kick up and throw me offtrack. Of all people the New York Guildhouse could have sent, they sent Dylan macBain. It’s as if someone wanted to rub my nose in how much I lost when I lost my abilities. I didn’t blame Dylan, of course, though I doubted he had any hesitation about coming to Boston. That didn’t make his success feel any better. After everything that happened before I left New York, he seemed to have handled it better than I did. I kicked a water bottle out of my way.

  I felt more than saw movement along the curb. This close to the harbor channel that separated the Weird from the financial district, rats strolled at night. They didn’t bother me, but I hated when they popped out of nowhere. The gutter was empty. Something flickered, a brief gleam on the edge of my vision. I opened my essence-sensing ability to see where the critter was. Hazy, indistinct essence floated beside me. Pain twinged in my head as the darkness in my mind squeezed. It does that sometimes around essence. It hurt, and I hated it.

  The shimmer leaned toward me. Two blades of light faded in and out above it. More lights appeared, dancing motes that gathered into the shape of a hand. A vague sense of unease shivered over my body, and I moved away. The hand receded into a nebulous lump that groped toward me. My body shields activated. I can turn them on and off at will, but these days they react on their own. They were one of the things that were damaged in my duel with Bergin Vize and weren’t much help anymore other than as warning signals. Whatever was in front of me, my body didn’t like it

  I put some more distance between me and the thing. It hovered as though it was considering its next move, then rolled toward me on the air. It worried me as much as it made me curious. I tamped down my sensing ability to reveal an empty street in my normal vision. Not a good sign. Ambient essence that moved with purpose was never a good sign.

  A sigh tickled my ears, whispering in from all sides, the sibilant pitch sending shivers down my spine. I shuffled backwards toward my apartment, weighing if I had a fight-or-flight situation. My building vestibule had a warding spell on the main door that could be sealed if I was in trouble. Before I had a chance to consider running for my life, the essence dissipated in a current of air, and the whispering cut off. The pain in my head eased when it was gone.

  Another flash of essence, this time radiant pink, pulled me up short. Joe Flit hung upside down above my head, his pink wings keeping him hovering in place. “Where have you been?”

  I ducked my head away. “I’ll throw up if you stay like that.”

  “Sorry.” He shrugged-disturbing upside down-dropped headfirst, and looped a couple of times in front of me.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Okay, not helping, Stinkwort.”

  Joe hated his real name, so I used it to give him a subtle hint that he was being annoying. When I opened my eyes, he was in his more normal position when we go for a walk, a few feet in the air to my side. Normal since Joe is a twelve-inch-tall fairy known as a flit, with bright pink wings he found embarrassing. He’s an old friend, which meant we drank together often, laughed at jokes no one else got, and were highly tolerant of each other’s less-desirable personality tics except when we weren’t.

  Joe raised his eyebrows. “Touchy, touchy. Not my fault you’re drunk.”

  “Not drunk.” The burr in my words didn’t help the denial much.

  He opened his mouth to reply, but frowned. He flew over my head and hung in the air, tilting his head from side to side. “I feel something unpleasant. Were you on a date?”

  I walked away. “Not funny.”

  He zipped in front of me. “What’s wrong?”

  The cracked sidewalk made it difficult to keep from stumbling. “Just remembering stuff I’d prefer to forget.”

  Joe rolled his eyes. “First you complain you can’t remember stuff, then you complain when you do. You’re never happy.”

  I gave my shoulders an exaggerated roll. “So leave if you don’t like it.”

  He didn’t. Making a point of not looking at me, he flew ahead, humming to himself. Joe put up with a lot from me. Quid pro quo, though. “Sorry, Joe. Dylan’s in Boston.”

  Joe cocked his head back. “Ah, that. No wonder you’re drunk.”

  “He said he’s over it.”

  Joe snorted. “Yeah, people always get over a knife in the heart. Stay away from him.”

  “Yeah, I intend to.”

  Joe stopped abruptly, then grunted with a sour look on his face. A second later, it hit me, too. Two things happened simultaneously: My sensing ability kicked in, and I threw up in the gutter.

  Joe wrinkled his nose at the odor. “Port? Ick.”

  I ignored him. I was always good at sensing essence, but lately my ability had gone into overdrive. On the one hand, it was great that one of my abilities was getting stronger. On the other, it was so strong, I barely saw past it sometimes. Fortunately, this time it came on an empty street between warehouses. Because essence is organic in nature, stone and brick buildings had little essence of their own. They picked it up passively and could even be intentionally infused with it. The buildings around me had the faint haze of white that all buildings in the Weird have. With so many fey living here, ambient essence was everywhere.

  Joe hovered in front of me, a concentrated blaze of pink and white. At his side, a faint sliver of blue flickered. He wore a sword at all times, invisible to normal vision. He used a glamour spell to hide it from sight. My ability was so sensitive now, I could see through his sword glamour.

  Above us, remnants of the Forest Hills control spell floated, a thin patch of sickly green essence with black mottling shot through it. Even though I had collapsed the main spell at the cemetery, fragments permeated essence everywhere, especially in the Weird, where it had been tested. Anyone with fey ability who touched the essence found their suppressed impulses provoked. The Weird was a cesspool of suppressed impulses, so the spell had ample opportunities to trigger bad behavior. As far as I knew, the only way to get rid of the stuff was a purging spell, and the only person
who had been able to do that was Meryl Dian.

  Joe shuddered. “That stuff makes me ill.”

  I wiped my hand across my mouth. “Me, too, apparently.”

  Joe laughed. “Remind me not to get drunk on port.”

  I forced my sensing ability off. The haze didn’t affect me the way it did everyone else. The dark mass in my head acted like a firewall. I didn’t need to see it, though. I could feel it.

  “Carmine wants to see you,” said Joe.

  Carmine. A solitary. Solitary fey fall in two categories: clans of like fey in very small numbers and true solitaries, one of a kind. In Carmine’s case, he’s one of the latter. In certain places, he’s known as a party planner. In less polite places, he’s known as a pimp. We had more than a passing acquaintance in my youth. “I haven’t seen Carmine in ages,” I said.

  “He said he needs to talk about a case,” said Joe.

  “He wants to hire me?”

  Joe screwed his face up in exasperation. “I don’t know. He wants to talk to you, not me. I’m thirsty again. Let’s go find him and grab a drink somewhere,” Joe suggested.

  We stopped in front of my apartment building. “I’ve probably drunk enough tonight, Joe.”

  He looked doubtful. “What’s that like?”

  I tried to smile. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  He pouted. “Killjoy.”

  He vanished in a spark of pink. I inserted the key into the front door of my building. Joe popped back in. “For the record, Connor, you did your best, and Dylan needs to get over it.”

  I belched. “Thanks.”

  He waved his hand in front of his nose. “And for the love of everything, stop drinking port.” He popped out again.

  Between bumping into the corrupted essence and getting sick, I wasn’t that drunk anymore. I made coffee and checked my email. Murdock had sent me a copy of his case report on the warehouse murder. The victim had a name: Josef Kaspar. He had a long list of petty crimes-loitering, shoplifting, breach of peace-typical of a homeless man of his age. I wasn’t in the mood to review the whole file. The end of a long night wasn’t the time to look at someone else’s failed life.

  My wooden desk chair squealed as I leaned back and gazed out the window. The lights of the financial district glittered across the channel. So many empty offices and yet so much light. Everywhere I’ve ever been, nobody turned off the lights in offices. It’s as though everyone wanted to give the impression they had only stepped out and would be right back. Only, sometimes, through no fault of their own, some don’t come back.

  All through dinner, I had listened to Dylan’s stories-the trials and tribulations of life in the Guild, the puzzle of a complex investigation, the satisfaction of closing a case. Over and over, waves of envy stirred within me. He had the life I used to have. He had the access and the power. The money.

  My eyes sought a small piece of worked stone on the bookshelf that ran around the top of the wall of my study. Dylan had made it years ago when he was interested in stone carving. A smooth sphere fit snugly inside a larger sphere cut with Celtic knotwork. The inner sphere moved freely, and the knotwork had affirmations engraved in ogham runes. The one most easily read said “Life is a series of trust moments.” After our worst case together, he gave it to me. At the time, I thought he was being overly sentimental, but it was one of the few things I kept when I lost almost everything else.

  He had seen how a life could be snuffed out in a moment. Even though we hadn’t spoken to each other in a decade, he knew what had happened to me. And yet, the ease with which he talked, how he took for granted what he did, gave no hint of anxiety that it could all disappear. No hint he could end up like me or, worse, a dead homeless guy like Josef Kaspar.

  Maybe that was why Dylan had shown up. Briallen always said the Wheel of the World works the way It will. Sometimes It’s clear, sometimes puzzling, but It’s always what It is. Maybe It was showing me that I didn’t have that life anymore, but I still have a life. I still do for a living what I did before. Only I do it differently, without assuming essence abilities will make things right. I had only to engage my mind to figure out how to work with the more mundane tools I had now. But if I could do that and still have enough money to buy the couture sweater Dylan had worn tonight, I’d feel a helluva lot better about it.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Fey Guildhouse loomed over Park Square like an eccentric fortress constructed of New England brownstone. The building occupied an entire city block and rose a full twenty-seven stories above the street, peaking in several towers that in turn sprouted their own little turrets. A series of balconies and ledges staggered up the sides, taking in views of Boston Common to the north, the harbor to the east and south, and the Charles River to the west. The higher up you went, the more important you were. At least that’s the theory I used to subscribe to. Now I’m convinced the opposite is true.

  Gargoyles crammed every ledge, nook, and cranny of the old place. They clustered in the front portico, clinging to the pillars and the spines of the ceiling vaulting. Essence attracted them, and the Guildhouse vibrated with it. They especially liked the roof, where they basked in the updraft of the building, and the main entrance, where they savored the living essence of people going in and out.

  I paused under the dragon head above the main entrance. It’s big, intentionally threatening-looking, and not really a gargoyle. Maybe in the old, pre-Convergence sense, when all carvings of fantastic people and animals were called gargoyles. But the dragon had no animated spirit, and that’s what counts as a gargoyle these days. After Convergence, some of them, for want of a better word, woke up. No one knew why any more than anyone knew why Convergence happened. The ’goyles talked to people sometimes, strange mental communications that seemed prophetic but frustratingly obscure.

  What made me stop, though, was not the gargoyles but the lack of them. Entire sections of the ceiling were bare. No one ever saw a gargoyle move, but they did move somehow. I had a hunch they were checking out the residual essence up at Forest Hills Cemetery. It had to be irresistible to them. More were almost certainly down in the Weird, tasting the strange drafts of twisted essence left over from the control spell.

  The Guildhouse’s stark entry hall felt chill from lack of sufficient heat. It was the reverse in the summer. It’s not that the Guild can’t afford to heat and cool the monstrosity. It’s that they don’t want people feeling too comfortable as they wait for help. And wait they did. More people than ever had problems only the Guild could solve, which meant more people left the Guild with their problems unsolved.

  The line for help and relief looped back and forth through a roped queue that was longer than I had ever seen. I hated to admit it, but I used to laugh at those people. Now I’m one of them. Since the duel with Vize, which left me with the dark blot in my head and a monthly disability check in my pocket, my Guildhouse pass privileges had been revoked. But today, I skipped the public queue and used the shorter one to the right reserved for people with temporary passes or appointments.

  I flashed my subpoena at the receptionist, a young elf with too much makeup who wore an ill-fitting rust-colored security uniform. The uniform was designed for the brownies who made up the majority of the street-level security guards. It looked good with their tawny skin and sandy blond hair. The elven receptionists, though, wore street clothes until security was tightened, at which point they were made to wear the uniforms. With her pale skin and dark hair, the elven receptionist didn’t look happy with her outfit.

  Whenever I got into the Guildhouse these days, I took the opportunity to roam where I could. Certain floors were warded against unauthorized staff, but enough of the building was open that I could have some fun. That usually meant visiting Meryl Dian, druidess and archivist extraordinaire. We had had something going on for a couple of months, though I can’t figure out quite what.

  When the elevator arrived, a brownie security guard surprised me by acting as an operator. I nodded to him. “Sub
basement three, please.”

  He held out his hand. “May I see your pass?” I turned it over.

  He returned it. “You’re cleared for the twenty-third floor only, Mr. macGrey.” As he faced the floor panel, I jabbed the SUBBASEMENT button, and we descended. He glared. “I’m sorry, sir, but you are not authorized anywhere but the twenty-third floor.”

  “I’m visiting a friend,” I said.

  The doors opened onto a long, vaulted corridor lined with bricks. The brownie held his hand against my chest while he pressed the 23 button. I placed my own hand on him the same way and pressed him against the wall. “I didn’t say you could touch me.”

  I stepped out of the elevator.

  “Sir!” the guard yelled. He threw a tangle of essence at me, a binding spell that settled on my shoulders like cold static. Brownies aren’t that powerful, so I found myself moving in slow motion instead of stopping. Annoyed, I started to turn back, but the elevator door closed and broke the spell. I shook off the static and walked down the corridor.

  Just before her office, I heard Meryl yell, “Muffin!”

  Her office was empty. I continued deeper into the underground maze that led to the Guildhouse storerooms. At an open door, I stuck my head in with a smile. “Would you like blueberry or corn?”

  Meryl threw a glare over her shoulder that relaxed into a grin. “Rat, actually. I need help.”

  Holding a malachite orb, she stood in a narrow aisle between wooden cupboards, many of which had gouges in them. Above her, a gold dagger hovered. I leaned against the door-jamb and crossed my arms. “Help. From a rat.”

  She closed one eye and looked up. “If I recall, Muffin helped you out of a tight spot once.”

  I smiled because it was true. “Do I want to ask what’s going on?”

  “C’mere. I’ll show you.”

  She held out the orb. When I took it, my feet rooted to the floor, and the dagger swung toward me. I cocked my head back, but the blade came no closer than a foot. “Nice piece. Breton?”