Dead to Rites (12 page)

You know you’re all insane, right? Scrambled noggins, the lot of you. Dead body’s a dead body. You got a million of ’em within spitting distance, and if someone dug one of
them
up and put it on display, you’d be screaming your guts out and callin’ the cops. Let someone else unearth it, though, from far enough away, and as long as it don’t stink anymore, it’s a friggin’ ornament.

Freaks.

But since I still didn’t know why certain people wanted this particular ornament, or what power it held…

I wasn’t about to stand around for an hour waitin’ to get in, of course. Made a beeline for the door, figuring I’d play the “PI on a case” card—and if that didn’t work, assuming the looming bad luck didn’t kick too hard, I could always head-whammy whoever was workin’ the door.

“Hello, Mick.”

Assuming, of course, I’d
reached
the door.

“Hey, Ramona.”

“You’re looking good.”

“You’re lookin’ better.” Least that got a smile outta her.

I wasn’t sure where she’d come from, not that it mattered much. She’d put herself between me’n the funhouse, loitering on the edge of the path—far enough to the side for passersby to, uh, pass by, but still clearly in my way. She wore a deep green number that set off her crimson hair and really, let’s say, emphasized what she wore it over. Even if she’d just been a normal broad, she’d have gotten more’n her share of appreciative looks.

Not that Ramona was a normal anything. And it was ’cause I already knew that, and was braced for it, that I wasn’t totally steamrollered by what came next.

Everything I’d ever felt for her, every sappy thought and dizzy moment, flooded back over me at once. The fiery passion of a first love; the old comfort of a romance longer’n any human lifetime; the need to possess and the urge to protect, the pounding heart and the rising… pulse. Trust. Affection. Yearning. Lust. The primal core of the ultimate connection between two souls and two bodies, distilled into a wave of emotion.

I dunno if Ramona was just better at it, or if it was because of our past connection, but nothin’ McCall had thrown at me could possibly compare. And I ain’t just puffing myself up when I say that there aren’t a lotta folks, human or Fae, who coulda stared into the face of it and not been swept away.

But I been here before, see? I knew what this was, knew what she could do. I knew how it felt, ’cause I
had
felt it—maybe not all at once like this, but heavy enough. And this was what I’d been bracin’ myself for since the minute I knew Ramona was mixed up in whatever was going on, to say nothin’ of how on guard I’d been since arriving here at the carnival.

So I let it wash over me, let myself feel it just around the edges so that I wasn’t pushing back against the
entire
weight of that tide. And then I walked right through it.

“Not this time, dollface. Not anymore.”

Maybe she coulda thrown more into it. I dunno; I got no notion of exactly how far she can push it. Then again, I still had my wand. If she wanted to escalate this, well, I could escalate right along with her.

Whether she chose not to or ran outta gas, though, she didn’t. She actually smiled, and it looked genuine enough; the emotion
tasted
genuine enough. The smile, and the touch of sorrow underlying it.

“Is that all we are now, Mick? Rivals?”

“You’re the one who tried to Mickey Finn me in the brain, Ramona.”

“Not everything you just felt was artificial, you know.”

I hadda smile back at that point.

“Been living with it for months, so yeah, I know. But if I can’t quite tell how
much
, ain’t sure I can trust it, whose fault is that?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Makes two of us.”

Felt weird having this chat in public, but nobody was hearin’ us too well over the noise of the carnival, or makin’ much sense out of any of it if they did.

After a few long seconds of silence, she said, “I wouldn’t have tried to make you do anything you wouldn’t have approved of.”

“Uh-huh. That’s why you just asked nicely first, before you tried to—”

“I know. I
said
I was sorry.”

“Yeah, you did.”

It’s funny, I don’t think most of you woulda even noticed the change. Wasn’t in her expression, wasn’t in her posture, wasn’t really in anything. But even before her tone changed, I knew the moment she went all business, clear as if she’d run up a flag that said so.

“What are you doing here, Mick?”

“Lookin’ for you, kitten.”

I hadn’t yet decided if I wanted to tell her straight out about her “sister” hiring me, holding Adalina over me, or if I wanted to deal with this ostensible mummy caper first, but either way I figured I could be square with her about that much.

Now she
did
tense, a real fight-or-flight hunch of the shoulders and raising of her mitts.

“I can’t let you stop me, Mick.”

“Uh…”

“Christ, why do you even
want
to stop me? What’s your stake in
any
of this?”

Now we
were
startin’ to draw some interested peepers. People are always so damn eager for a show, even if it’s two people they don’t know arguin’ about something they don’t understand.

Keepin’ my voice down as much as I could while staying sure she could hear me, I said, “Ramona, there’s power in there. I got no clue what kind, or how much, but it looks like it’s enough to make things tough for me all the way across town. You bet your keister I’m gonna be
real
careful who I let get their paws on somethin’ like that, and I still got no idea who you work for.”

“I told you, he’s a collector. That’s all.”

“To what end? With what goals? Sorry, babe. Ain’t good enough, not by a long shot.”

And with that, she smiled that sad smile again. Gotta admit, I didn’t expect that.

“Is it always gonna be this way with us? Hunting for the same thing but on opposite sides?”

“Well, this ain’t exactly like the Spear of Lugh thing, but… I dunno, Ramona. I hope not. Long as you’re playing fetch for whoever it is got you running errands, I don’t see it changing—but I hope not.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” Her sigh was the sound of that smile, weak as it was, sliding completely off her lips. “I’m sorry, Mick. I really am. I just… I want you to know I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t sure they couldn’t
truly
hurt you.”

Well, shit.
That
didn’t sound good. I lunged for her, not knowing what stunt she was about to pull, just knowing I’d better stop her before she did it. Problem was, not only was I not fast enough—I got plenty of swift, but not
that
much—but jumpin’ at her that way played right into her hands.

She retreated back onto the grass; for some reason I clearly remember the sound of it folding and crunching under her heels. Her step had a hitch in it, a sudden stagger—an act for the cheap seats. She pointed at me, screaming for help.

And I felt it again, a goddamn explosion of emotion: lust, desire, the need to possess, to protect. Oh, especially to protect.

I felt it, but only as it flowed by me, ’cause it wasn’t
aimed
at me.

Wasn’t the
entire
crowd crashed down on me like a flesh-and-bone avalanche. Didn’t include the younger kids, and a handful of adults who, for whatever reason, just didn’t respond to the sorta signals Ramona was broadcastin’, even with the extra magical
oomph
. They sure were the minority, though.

Parents dropped their children’s hands, lovers took their arms off each other’s shoulders, everyone forgot about everythin’ other’n beating every last bit of stuffing outta yours truly. Nearly all the men and not a few of the women came at me, jostling and shoving over who’d get their paws on me first.

Wasn’t anywhere to run; I was surrounded before I could make tracks. Nothin’ mystical I could do; I’d be pounded into hamburger before I could get into more’n a couple of minds or draw more’n a few shreds of fortune outta the air.

Damn, but this was gonna hurt.

First few weren’t too tough to handle. I caught the first punch on a forearm easy enough, grabbed and twisted, launching the guy into one of the others comin’ up behind me. The third went down when I swept his ankles; the fourth caught my knee in her stomach and then, as she was doubling over, got neatly shoved into an oncoming pack of three. If they’d kept comin’ at me that way—or if I’d been more willing to actually hurt ’em, break bones, dislocate joints, risk rupturing organs—I might even have come out ahead, despite being outnumbered dozens and dozens to one.

I
didn’t
wanna do ’em any real injury, though, and damn Ramona for knowing that. And yeah, I may be faster, stronger, and a hell of a lot better trained than these mooks, but I still gotta have room to
move
.

The rain of fists and feet wasn’t too awful, least at first. I felt every poke, was definitely gonna be sore, but none of ’em were doing me too much damage. The clubs, though—random branches people picked up off the ground or pulled off nearby trees, or brooms wielded by carnie staff—those were adding up. I actually felt blood vessels pop, the bruises spreading through skin. None of ’em had the strength to fully break bone, not
my
bones, anyway, but a few cracks and fractures crawled their way through an arm here, a leg there. I don’t remember droppin’ to my hands’n knees, but that’s where I ended up. Wasn’t even a flurry of individual blows, now, just a constant force of impacts, one blurring into the next.

Still
it wouldn’t have been
too
awful. I’d need a day or three, but nothing more’n—

“Mick!” I heard her over the constant barrage and the mindless screams of animal fury. “Mick, watch out!”

I actually laughed, which did me no good but got me a shoe in the teeth. She’d set this mob on me, and now she was tryin’ to warn me? And even if something’d gotten outta hand, gone further than she meant, what exactly was I supposed to do about it now?

And that’s when I learned, one, what Ramona was shoutin’ about; two, that my run of bad luck was still truckin’ right along nicely, thanks; and three, that some bastard in the crowd had come to a friggin’ carnival packin’ something a lot hotter’n a tree branch.

I only heard the first half of the first shot.

My head hurt.

Which, y’know, is maybe to be expected after some stupid hormone-addled gink’s put a slug through it. Any human woulda been deader’n driftwood at this point, so a migraine was gettin’ off easy. Didn’t much feel that way, though.

But it wasn’t just that. There was another pain, felt wrong, not part of the headache at all. Took me a good spell of half-awake pondering over it before I realized I was feelin’ a length of bandage wrapped tight enough around my noggin to slowly change its shape. And ’cause whoever’d giftwrapped me was mortal, and thus hadn’t seen the extra pointy shape of my ears, the bandage was pinching ’em something fierce.

What else? Strong smell of alcohol—rubbing, not drinking—and some nostril-stinging store-bought salves that weren’t half as effective as the herbs we’d used a few hundred years ago. Cleanser and mothballs, carpeting and some kinda fabric or bedding that somebody’d tried hard to keep neat and clean long past the point where anybody with money woulda replaced ’em. Nice warm blankets, swaddling me up to my chin—probably the source of that scent. The cushions under me were small, squarish; sofa, not bed.

Ticking clock. Faint musty tang of some old books. Oh, right, and the inexpensive perfume and deep worry radiating from the middle-aged woman sitting over me.

Huh. Come to think of it, her emotions had a familiar taste to ’em. I knew this dame, though with all the various other distractions, I couldn’t immediately suss out from where.

Guess it was time to take a look. I ain’t sure which of us was more surprised when my peepers popped open.

“Martha?”

Her gasp was almost a choke, and her eyes teared up as I watched.

“You’re awake! Oh, praise Jesus!”

Mrs. Martha Ross, a middle-aged black woman, sat beside the sofa dressed in what I’m pretty sure was literally her Sunday best. Sorta blue-green dress and hat, and a string of old, yellowing pearls around her neck. Although come to think, I’d never seen her wearing anything too much sloppier. Not a lotta money to her name, but she had her pride, Martha did.

She was also a client I’d worked for exactly once, a couple years back, and other’n a few random run-ins that hadn’t lasted more’n a minute or so each, I hadn’t dealt with her much since. So what the hell?

“What the h—What on earth’re you doin’ here, Martha?”

Her laugh was, for lack of a better word, boisterous.

“You don’t even know where ‘here’ is, Mr. Oberon.”

All right, that was fair. But…

Let’s get a good slant on the place. I was right about bein’ on a sofa; what I could see of it beneath the threadbare blankets was a neutral brownish shade. Bookcase behind me, couldn’t really see much of what was on it. (If I’d hadda guess, I’da said “books.” I’m sharp that way.) But on the desk across the room was an old, worn Bible, and the wall behind it boasted a simple wooden cross and a framed painting of what you skin color-obsessed bunnies today imagine Jesus looked like.

“I’m gonna go out on a limb,” I said to her, “and guess I’m in a back office in a church somewhere.”

“Can’t ever turn off the detective in you, can you?” she asked with a smile.

“Well,
somebody
sure tried to.” Then, when her whole face fell, “Sorry, Martha. Gallows humor.”

“You know you oughta be dead now, right?”

Yeah, I hear that a lot.
But I didn’t say it; figured I’d traumatized the poor woman enough with my first shot at bein’ funny.

Instead, I said, “Yeah, I sorta got that impression. Who do I thank for stitchin’ me up? You?”

No mistakin’ her intention as she looked over at the portrait on the wall.

“Him.”

“Um…”

“No other answer, Mr. Oberon. It’s a miracle. You
really
shoulda been dead.”