Hallow Point (36 page)

“So…
you.
” I turned my attention to the blonde.

Gina flinched, almost stumbled. Man, witches used to be made of sterner stuff’n this.

Then I thought of Orsola, and decided I preferred ’em yellow-bellied.

I leaned in
real
close, until I almost choked on the cloying scent of her emotions.

“You got a look tonight—
just
a look, mind—at what’s really out here. And, trust me, you ain’t ready for it. Whatever you told Bumpy, however you think you’ve warded him,
he
ain’t ready for it. None of you
ever
will be. You stick your schnozzola into our world again, it ain’t gonna be pretty. Mosta this lot ain’t as patient as me. At
best
, you’ll get yourselves dead. Mess with the wrong thing at the wrong time, you’ll get a lot of other people dead, or worse.

“So listen good, baby-witch. You’re gonna make Bumpy understand he needs to stick to his own underworld. Be
real
persuasive. Because if I decide it’s up to
me
to keep him outta this stuff, I’m gonna start by taking away his ability to detect it—and you’n me both know who
that
means. Savvy?”

Gina’s throat bulged as she swallowed, as if she was tryin’ to suck down a whole orange.

“Yes. Yes, I… I understand.”

“Good. Now get the hell outta here. You bother me.”

If they’d scampered off any quicker, in any more of a barely controlled panic, they’d hadda literally grow tails to tuck between their legs.

The breeze kicked up, washin’ away the scent of fear and confusion—and blood—with the perfume of Lake Michigan. And I was alone again with Ramona.

Yeah, Pete was there, too, awkwardly clamberin’ down the mausoleum wall. But for a minute or so, it was just me’n her in all ways that mattered. She was still standing on the roof of the Fuller family tomb, lookin’ slack-jawed and confused and dizzyingly beautiful.

“Sorry you gotta give your boss such bad news,” I called up to her.

She eased herself down, slow’n careful so she wouldn’t fall, until she was perched on the edge, legs dangling over. Then she just shook her head, again and again.

“If you like,” I continued, “I can help you explain it to him.”

With that, a small grin broke through her bewilderment.

“Nice try.”

“Hey, figured it couldn’t hurt. You wanna at least tell me if you’re human or not?”

It bugged me not knowin’, especially since it ain’t that easy to hide that kinda thing from me. I’d have thought damn near impossible, but… I’d been off about a lotta what’s possible, lately.

“What do you want me to be, Mick?”

She wasn’t serious, wasn’t tryin’ to make me think she was serious; just tiredly kidding around, takin’ her next turn in the game we’d been playing for days now.

She wasn’t serious.

I couldn’t afford to let myself believe she might be serious.

“A bed.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at her expression. I think she was actually shocked. I heard my cop buddy tryin’ to stifle a coughing fit somewhere back behind the low building.

“Did… you just say you wanted me in bed?” Her voice’d gone higher but quieter, but I couldn’t tell if it was outrage or—something else.

“Nah. I said I wanted you to
be
a bed. I’m friggin’ all-in, and I’m going home to catch at
least
eight hours of doss. G’nite, Ramona.”

“You’re… What? Wait! Wait a minute! Mick! You get back here!”

I waved and kept goin’, until her voice was lost behind me and the cemetery gates drew near up ahead.

Pete caught me up before I reached ’em.

“What’d she do to make you so steamed at her?”

What’d she do?
Ha!
You don’t have that kinda time, bo…

The short answers, the curt goodbye, though… I wasn’t
just
bein’ irritable with her. If I’d given her more of a chance to talk, hung around for a longer farewell, I still wasn’t sure I coulda left at all.

Apparently Pete figured out I had no want or plan to talk about this, ’cause he changed tack.

“You
are
gonna explain all this to me, right?”

“Bad guys work up big hoax to keep everyone busy while they kill a bunch of people.”

“Gee, thank you
so
much. Yeah, I got that. I was lookin’ for something a bit more specific.”

“You want more detail, it’s gonna have to wait. I’m headed home. I have
got
to get some bunk time.”

“Oh?” Pete reached past me, pushed open the gate so I wouldn’t have to touch the iron. It’s the little things I’m grateful for. “Why?” he continued, more’n a touch sarcastic. “You got a big day tomorrow after takin’ it easy all week?”

“Well,” I answered, stepping past him, “I still gotta recover the spear, see?”

With one foot still in the cemetery and one out, Pete—if you’ll excuse the expression—stopped dead in his tracks.

“What? But you just said—”

“I know what I said. I was there, and actually payin’ attention to most of it.”

“But… you… they… You
lied
to everyone!”

“Lower your voice some. You’re about to break windows. No, Pete. Every word I said back there was true. It just wasn’t the
whole
truth.”

I hadda smile, even laugh out loud, at his expression.

“It’s the reason I couldn’t get the pieces to fit nicely. Whether the spear was here or not, some things didn’t add up. But it
does
all fit if someone used the Unseelie hoax to cover the
real deal
. It’s a thing of beauty in its own way, pal. The Unfit got hoodwinked as bad as the rest of us. Damn dingus really
was
here, and the guys tellin’ everyone else it was here never even knew it.”

“But… But…”

I don’t think he was this taken aback even the day I told him he was gonna start turning hairy and quadrupedal every full moon.

“Who? How?”

The who, I hadn’t actually sussed out yet. Was the only part of this whole Rube Goldberg scheme I hadn’t figured.

It was gonna be
real
interesting to finally find out.

“
W
hat?
What?
”

Lydecker’s voice shot up high enough to shatter glass—or maybe concrete. If he’d looked like a dandelion before, now he was more a dandelion after a short, sharp storm. His hair was mussed, standing out in cowlicks here, plastered to his skin there, and his suit was rumpled as though he hadn’t just slept, but bathed in it.

“What do you mean ‘no’?” he squeaked.

Raighallan, apparently not-so-devoted upholder of the law for the Seelie Court, sneered at the curator from across a worktable covered in brushes, small chisels, old bones, and some pretty spiral-shaped fossils. The overhead lighting was weak, flickering, casting ’em both in some pretty sickly shades. If Raighallan’s contempt’d been any thicker, it probably woulda darkened the whole table in its shadow.

“What do you
suppose
I mean?” the
aes sidhe
demanded. “The word only really has the one definition.”

“But the police are investigating me!” Lydecker wailed. He’d picked up one of the smaller fossils and was rolling it between thumb and fingers. Figure his situation
hadda
be upsetting if Mr. Fastidious was willing to play with the gewgaws that way. “They’ve been looking into my accounts!”

“Since I warned you of that a few days ago, it’s a fact I’m well aware of. So?”

“So I need your help, damn it! Letting others learn of my complicity in this was never part of the deal!”

“Not my problem,” Raighallan informed him coldly. “Now, if you’d kindly—”

“I did
everything
! Everything you asked.”

“For which you were well paid, Lydecker. I owe you nothing. You, however, have still not completed your end.”

The desperation on the curator’s mug turned sly.

“You’re right, I haven’t. And I’ll be happy to do so, once you’ve helped me come up with a way—”

“Don’t. Even. Think about it.”

Raighallan leaned over the table, knuckles pressed hard on the surface. He showed no emotion, no change in his expression at all, and his voice was harder’n deader than the fossils beside his fists.

“Renege on your word to me now, stand between me and what is mine, and I will lay you out on this table and
peel
you. Inch by slow, meticulous inch, until you beg to be allowed to hand it over, beg to die. And if you’re truly fortunate, if my ire has cooled by then, I might just let you.”

“I…”

You wouldn’t figure Lydecker could get any more pallid, but he pulled it off with room to spare. He wasn’t too far from glowing in the dark.

“I’ll just go fetch it, I think.”

“Wise decision.”

The old man vanished into the winding maze of cluttered shelves, full of forgotten, half-finished or abandoned projects.

Raighallan fidgeted about as much as I did, of course, so for a while the place was more or less silent, ’cept for the occasional fumbling clatter from back in the darkness, or the irritating buzz of the cheap bulbs overhead.

When Lydecker reappeared he was staggering, sidling sideways between the shelves so he’n his burden would both fit. Clutched to his chest was a long, narrow box; taller’n me, if it’d been set upright, but less than a foot in its other dimensions. Carved from a dark hardwood, it was absolutely covered in symbols, runes, and hieroglyphs from a dozen different ancient languages. Celtic, Norse, Greek, Egyptian, Minoan, Sanskrit, something outta the proto-Sino-Tibetan grouping… And all of ’em icons of power, all of ’em directed at whatever lay inside.

Not that it was all that tough to guess what lay inside. With
that
sorta mojo, was no wonder most of us hadn’t managed to sense it.

I realized something
else
when I saw that box, too, but I’ll get to that. For the moment, I decided this was my cue.

You shoulda seen Raighallan’s mug.

He’d gone almost rapturous at the sight of the box, a religious fanatic receiving divine revelation—and from that straight to slack-jawed, chin-twitching, bug-eyed shock when I appeared across the room.

Lydecker just about passed out.

Hadn’t exactly been eggs in the coffee to keep hidden, not from a fellow
aes sidhe
. It’d taken everything I could manage, a deep pocket of natural shadow and layer after layer of hallucinatory darkness laid over me with nerve-wracking care and slowness, knowin’ that any tiny hiccup would’ve shrieked out to any nearby Fae like a siren. I’ve told you I don’t perspire, but doing that even once, let alone for three nights in a row, sure made me feel as though I was about to break out in a cold sweat.

Yeah. Three nights. I’d figured somebody’d show eventually, but I had no way of knowing
when
. (Or who, for that matter.)

I gotta say, though, even if it hadn’t been something this damn important, that look on Raighallan’s face woulda made the whole thing worthwhile.

“Oberon! What… How could… Why are…?”

“Whoa, slow down, Raiggy. One question at a time. I ain’t as quick as I used to be.”

I moved fully into the light, making real sure they both got a good slant on the wand I pointed at ’em. Figure with my flogger hanging open, they probably both saw the rapier at my waist, too, but I do wonder what they thought of the dingus in my other mitt, hanging at my side.

I saw Raighallan tense, saw his gaze flicker toward Lydecker—and the box.

“As you just said, bo: don’t even think about it,” I said.

His shoulders sagged. I think he wanted to be angry, but still couldn’t gather his wits enough to get there.

“How?” he asked me. “How could you
possibly
be here?”

“So, you see that hinged slab over there in the wall? That’s called a door…”

He snarled.

I snickered.

“I gotta hand it to you,” I said. “This whole thing was brilliant. Seriously. I’d almost be tempted to let you walk away with the spear, just outta respect for how you pulled this off.” Raighallan started to perk up a bit. “’Cept, well, I don’t want you to have it.”

Less perking.

I kept on jawing. “Sorry, though, it wasn’t quite brilliant
enough
. I didn’t know it was gonna be
you
, until you walked in here—I had a whole list of possibilities—but I’ve known it was a double-blind for a while now.”

“
How?
”

“First off, don’t even take another step.”

Lydecker, who I guess’d thought I was too wrapped up with his partner, froze in his tracks.

“In fact, why don’tcha move back a few paces? Yeah, good. Raiggy, your rumors and false auras mighta fooled almost anyone, but I don’t figure it too probable that you coulda snowed the Wild Hunt. They slide right on through concealment and deception easier’n Santa through a greased chimney.”

“That’s
it
?
That’s
what convinced you?” Raighallan sounded almost affronted.

And actually, he was right. Sealgaire bein’ here in the Windy City? That just helped me confirm what I knew. Same with the stories that’d come to Hruotlundt from across the pond: evidence, but not proof. No, it’d been Adalina Ottati—restless, confused Adalina, who’d somehow sensed the thing through all its concealing magics, who’d talked to me in a language she couldn’t know about a relic she’d no good cause to have ever heard of—who’d convinced me it was genuinely here. But I wasn’t gonna mention her to Raighallan, dig?

“Well, that’n Mr. Lydecker here gettin’ multiple payments. Ongoing ‘gift’ says ongoing
job
to me. If all he hadda do was stage the break-in, that woulda been a one-time thing, over and done. But if he was actually holdin’ the spear for you,
that
makes ongoing payout fit. And it’s a wise choice. Spear’s less obvious in human hands, partly masked by the other gewgaws in the museum, and nobody’s gonna look for it too close in the one place they ‘know’ it was stolen from.

“Didn’t come to me until late—it really was a sharp scheme—but that was it.”

Most of that wasn’t even a lie: I’d only tumbled to the significance of Adalina’s mutterings, and how they went against the whole rest of my theory, when I was settin’ up the meet at the cemetery.