Hallow Point (11 page)

And mine.

Didn’t say it aloud, but I’ll bet you a dime she heard it anyway.

“Unless,” I added, leaning in, “there’s something you’re not telling me?”

Grangullie snarled when I moved, reaching for the cleaver at his belt, but Eudeagh stopped him with a wave. The redcap grumbled, but obeyed.

“Mr. Oberon, you wouldn’t
believe
how many things I’m not telling you. And you don’t need to know them. In this case, however, there’s not a great deal to keep from you. You’re quite right that we wouldn’t have looked twice at this spear a thousand years ago. And you may well be right that whatever enchantment it boasts could prove of precious little use in this…
modern
world.” The revulsion in her tone was thicker’n the storm outside.

Well, thicker’n it had been. Storm had passed a while ago, and I could hear the growl and toot of distant flivvers again. And, almost inaudible on top of everything else, hoofbeats. Not from the horses pulling us along, either, but to either side of us.

Looked as though we’d picked up an escort when Queen Mob climbed aboard.

“If that’s the case—” I began.

“Because none of us can allow any of our
rivals
to have it, can we? What if we’re wrong? What if the spear’s magic yet holds some use of which we’re unaware? No, better safe…”

“Than skewered,” I finished for her. I leaned back and thought, not bothering to blink or fidget since I didn’t need to hide what I am from anyone here.

Mostly I thought about how to take a clean sneak from this whole deal, but, like I said, I had squat in the way of loopholes.

Now, I’m nobody’s sap, see? She was feedin’ me more lies than a public defender. No way was this just a precaution; no way was everyone goin’ to all this trouble for just “some relic.” Either this spear was more’n she was sayin’, or something else was going down. Maybe both.

But knowin’ all that didn’t make my current position any less bent-over.

“Fine,” I said eventually. “I try to find this pigsticker for you and we’re square. Debt’s paid.”

“Ah, no.”

Gotta admit, I didn’t expect that. “No?”

“Your task isn’t to
try
to find the spear, it’s to
bring me
the spear. I don’t give a chewed marmot how hard you
try
. You fail? You still owe me.”

“
What?
”

I was outta my seat, standin’ straight as I could without cracking my melon on the ceiling.

“You’ll get my best effort, ‘boss,’ but you are
not
gonna hold me accountable for shit beyond my control. That’s totally friggin’ un—”

Grangullie was standing, too, bayonet pressed against my gut. The boggart was somehow looming
over
me, even though my head was pressed against the ceiling. Goddamn shapeshifters.

I even heard the hoofbeats get louder on the street outside, like whatever was escorting us had moved in close.
Real
close.

Eudeagh hadn’t budged, hadn’t flinched, just looked at me—well, whatever her equivalent of “look” is—and waited.

Well, wasn’t this a fine jam of a pickle of a mess?

In a Fae conclave, I mighta been able to make an argument that Eudeagh’s demands went too far, that her interpretation stretched the bounds of what I could be expected to owe. Or maybe not. We do a lotta grey areas, us Fae.

Problem was, I didn’t think she’n her boys would be inclined to just step aside for me to leave if I demanded an arbiter. In these confines, I didn’t think much of my chances in a dust-up, especially not knowing what was waiting for me outside.

But if I agreed… Well, that was it. I’d be bound by her interpretation, even if I didn’t think it was legit.

Which left me exactly fuck all for options.

“… Un… unimportant and not worth arguing,” I finished.

Pretty sure I’d had to have been three weeks pushing daisies to sound any
less
enthused, and I was so hot under the collar at the whole ugly mess of ’em that I’m amazed my head didn’t catch fire. Far as I was concerned, what I owed ’em now was a heap more’n just a debt.

A lot less pleasant, too.

I slump-slid back into my seat, letting Téimhneach find his own way clear before I ended up in his lap.

“Fine. I bring you the spear, and we’re clear.”

“That,” Eudeagh said, like I’d never popped my top, “is indeed what I’m offering.”

Heh. “Offering.” That’s rich.

Yeah, I was sulking. Probably shoulda kept my chin up, made like none of this bugged me at all. Honestly, though, it didn’t seem worth the effort. Somehow I wasn’t feeling as if I owed the Unseelie much in the way of good manners.

“Yeah. Swell, Whatever.”

“Oh,
good
!” The little twist actually clapped, smiling three times over. “I just knew we could come to some sort of agreement.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I won’t be staying to oversee personally, of course. The technology in this world is ghastly, gives me a frightful headache. I’ve no idea how you stand it.”

Now
I
smiled, even if there wasn’t a lotta good humor in it.

“I prefer the neighbors here.”

“Of course.” Pretty sure she caught the insult and decided to ignore it. “Mr. Téimhneach will remain here. You report to him, and should consider his words to be mine.”

“So I should ask him to say everything three times?”

She
kept
ignoring. Seemed pretty good at it.

“Should circumstances not permit you to speak with him,” she continued, “you’ll answer to Mr. Grangullie instead, who will also remain as Mr. Téimhneach’s lieutenant—” I couldn’t begin to tell you how, what with the whole no eyes thing, but I swear she suddenly focused on me, hard “—and enforcer.”

Translation: Step outta line, gum anything up, and my next assignment would be carrying the redcap’s bullets for him.

Judging by the smirk on Grangullie’s trap, he was looking forward to it.

“You see,” Téimhneach said, leaning in to put a “friendly” mitt on my shoulder, “why it would have been
such
a poor idea for us to get off on the wrong foot?”

The only
right
foot is the one I’m gonna put so far up your keister you’ll be gargling toenail for a week, you lousy…

“Yeah, I hear ya.”

Guess they were done, ’cause the carriage rattled to a halt.

“Last stop,” Queen Mob announced cheerfully.

Door creaked open by itself again, which is even
less
impressive when you’re waitin’ for it. This time, the dark beyond it was just a normal dark, a shabby side street somewhere in the Windy City, with old newspapers and broken boxes and a busted streetlamp.

Oh, and redcaps. A
pack
of redcaps. A few of ’em had brass Tommies, like their boss, though most of those lacked bayonets (and the one bayonet I
could
see was a steak knife). The rest had empty hands, but bulges in their badly fitting coats announcing
some
kinda gat or other. And all of ’em had cleavers, or similar hacking blades, dangling from their belts.

I stopped myself from looking to see how fresh the blood was soaking their hats. Wouldn’t do me any good to know.

Climbed outta the carriage, which gave me a better slant on the welcoming committee, and… Huh. Not just redcaps, either.

Looming behind ’em, near invisible in the dark, were at least a couple of
dullahan
—tall, dressed in horseman’s rags, and headless. They
also
cradled brass choppers, but these guns had special baskets built on ’em to hold the
dullahan
’s noggins.

They didn’t often miss, I’ll tell you.

I thought I heard something whooshing and swooping above, maybe a handful of
sluagh
, but no way I could see for sure without magic. And I didn’t think the whole mass of walking psychosis around me would appreciate it much if I made any sudden moves.

“You cats startin’ a social club?” I asked Téimhneach.

Damn boggart was
still
smiling, all affable and whatnot. I wanted to sock him one on the chin.

With a girder.

“We just wanted you to see, Mr. Oberon, what sorts of resources you… have at your disposal.”

“At my disposal.” Meaning ready and willing to dispose of me. “Right. Cute.”

Huh. Carriage was gone. Okay,
that
was noteworthy; I shoulda felt
something
when it left, even through the veil.

And it was while I was hunting around for the coach that I finally got wise to where I was. You’ll have to excuse it taking so long. I didn’t know the alley, couldn’t see real far beyond it, so it took until I got a good whiff of the neighborhood, a solid sense of its aura, and a peek at the stars.

45th or 47th, somewhere between Racine and Halsted, if I wasn’t turned around completely daffy by now.

“You mugs know that this ain’t where you picked me up, right?” I said. “Least you could do is save me the trip you interrupted, not make it longer.”

“But Mr. Oberon,” Téimhneach said, sounding more like he was
reminding
me than
telling
me, “you’re not heading to the same destination any longer.”

“What? Listen, bo, I already told you I got a prior engagement—”

“And
we
already told
you
, no. You don’t.”

Nuts.

“You’re here,” he continued, “because we know you have a great many contacts and informants in this area. We wanted to make it as convenient as possible for you to begin tracking them down. Which you will do tonight.
Now
, in fact.”

I was getting’
real
steamed—if that street light hadn’t already been broken, it probably woulda popped right about then. But there was still zip I could do about it.

“If you wanna tell us who you’re meeting,” Grangullie said, grinning, “we’d be happy to go give ’em your apologies.”

The other redcaps snickered.

Deal with the goddamn devil.

Knew what I was getting into.

Knew I was gonna regret it.

Did it anyway.

I hadn’t thought I had a choice, then, and I still don’t. I’d do the same again, if I had to.

But yeah. I regretted it.

* * *

First thought to zip across my noggin wasn’t about the case at all, not directly. It was to wonder if I oughta warn Pete’n the cops.

Remember what I said earlier? That I’d known the Unseelie hadn’t been in town ’cause I’d have heard about the bloodshed? Yeah. Now they
were
in town. Not just Unseelie in general—even the best of ’em are bad enough—but redcaps. They treat murder the way you treat a pack of cards or a baseball game. And when they ain’t mutilating and killing for fun, they’re killing and mutilating ’cause they blew their lid over some tiny insult. Get enough redcaps in town, and you know they’re on their best behavior if you can count the bodies without runnin’ outta fingers’n toes.

If I
was
gonna tell the law, though, I hadda figure a way to do it that they’d actually believe. While I chewed on that, I might as well get to the job at hand.

So where to start? For a while I just sorta roamed the underside of town, tryin’ to catch wind of my usual stoolies and gossips. Clubs’n speakeasies, hotels’n alleys, flophouses’n unlicensed fights. I was preoccupied, I admit, but not so much I couldn’t do my job.

And I found nobody.

Lenai hadn’t been spotted in days. Figured either something’d happened to her, or—more likely—she was just keeping her head down until this whole spear thing blew over. Pink Paddy
had
been to all his usual haunts lately, he just didn’t seem to be at any of ’em
now
. I coulda tracked him down eventually, but that woulda been a case all its own. Didn’t exactly have time for that.

Which meant, after I’d checked another few off the list, I was down to one.

I hadn’t laid eyes on Four-Leaf Franky since I’d pounded the stuffing out of him—in a friendly sorta way—behind a soup kitchen some months back. Hey, gimme a break! I hadn’t had time for the runaround he was trying to feed me.
Other
people didn’t have time for it.

Anyway, he’d tried real hard to lie to me. Made me think he wasn’t reliable as he used to be. And I didn’t guess he’d be in much of a mood to help me out, either, so I’d left him alone ever since. Figured that’d suit us both just fine.

No choice now, though. If he had a beef, he could take it up with the Unfit.

It was usually easier finding him than the others. Franky wasn’t stupid, it’s just he wasn’t in the
habit
of thinking, least not when any halfway decent amount of scratch or gold is involved. He’s always runnin’ something, pullin’ something, and always in hock up to his neck with someone.

Which means Franky ain’t the sort to lie low for more’n a few days at most. Find all the joints in his area where a cat can make a dishonest buck or ten without committing any “real” crimes—a definition that changes depending on what sorta measures he’s been reduced to—and you’re gonna catch up with him eventually.

I couldn’t really stand to wait for “eventually,” so I sucked up enough streamers and slivers of luck, from a hundred different places and people, until the Luchtaine & Goodfellow was about ready to pop, and dumped it all over myself. I swear my aura got so thick, I coulda gotten stuck in a narrow doorway.

It shoulda worked.

Between my new good fortune and what I knew of the gink’s habits, I shoulda run him down before dawn.

Nothin’.

All sortsa reasons that coulda been, but the result was still nothin’.

Well, fine. If I couldn’t rely on my usual sources, I’d just hafta try an
un
usual one.

The cat I had in mind now probably shoulda occurred to me earlier, really. Not a whole lot of the mystical and mysterious that moved through your Chicago he didn’t either have a piece of, or at least know about. He wasn’t even too far from where the Unfit had dropped me like a cheap fare. An odd bird, and unlike a lotta my stool pigeons, not the sorta Joe you could just threaten or smack an answer out of. Still, no good reason he shouldn’t be willing to steer me wise.