This Case Is Gonna Kill Me (33 page)

“You can see how creamy it is. Very moisturizing, and it slides on so smoothly,” Destiny was saying as she shook the bottle of foundation.

“Destiny! You’ve got to come with me. Your mother’s been hurt!” I felt bad for the lie, but I had to get her moving with a minimum of conversation.

She stood, foundation bottle in one hand, sponge in the other, and gaped at me. “Mama?” she said faintly.

“Come on!” I grabbed her hand and felt the sponge squish makeup on my palm.

“She’s doing my face,” said the woman in the chair. I ignored her and began dragging Destiny toward a door.

“I can’t just leave. I need to tell someone—” Destiny argued. Her voice held the soft lilt of a Southern belle.

“No, no you don’t. Come on.”

“I’ll lose my job.”

“You can afford to,” I said.

I heard a male bellow from behind us, and the pounding of feet in heavy shoes hitting the linoleum. I ducked off to the left and into the women’s clothing section. Fortunately, the recent trend in department stores was to cram in massive numbers of racks tightly packed with clothes. It made a great obstacle course that women were trained to negotiate and that baffled men.

“What’s happening? Who are those men,” Destiny panted.

I glanced back at the flushed, angry faces of our pursuers frantically knocking aside racks and shoving people out of the way. Women were starting to scream. “Not friendly, and they’re the guys who hurt your mother,” I said, ducking through a rack of tacky formal gowns. Destiny was tottering after me. “Kick off your shoes,” I snapped as we rounded a checkout counter.

“They cost a hundred dollars.”

“Trust me. You’ll be able to replace them.”

Ahead of us was the exterior door, and please, God, John, waiting. I kicked into a full-out run. Destiny ran out of one shoe and ended up abandoning the other because of the discomfort. I could hear a pursuer closing fast. It was more instinct than any rational thought—I snatched the foundation bottle out of Destiny’s hand and flung it wildly at the man. I missed by a mile. It hit the floor well in front of him and shattered, sending foundation splattering everywhere.

The man stepped in it, his feet flew up in front of him, and he landed hard on his tailbone and lower back. I guess it
was
really creamy. We hit the door handle, and it flew open violently, clocking a woman in the face. She fell back with a scream, clutching her face.

“Sorry, sorry!” I yelled. I frantically scanned the parking lot. No John. Tears of fear and frustration clogged in my chest.

The Chevy turned the corner at the end of a line of cars. I jumped up and down, screamed at him, then started running for the car. I risked one look back. The men were trying to get past the infuriated woman I’d knocked down, but she was hitting them with her very large handbag and screaming at them.

Destiny yelped in pain as her feet hit the hot, rough asphalt. We reached the door. I released her and yanked open both the front and back doors. Destiny, eyes wide and rolling with terror, scuttled backward away from me.

“You’re cr-crazy,” she stuttered.

Thank God Chastity had regained her shit. She leaned out the door and yelled, “Destiny! Get in the damn car!”

The girl dove into the backseat and into her mother’s arms. I slammed the door behind her, scrambled into the front, and closed my door. John floored it, and the car jerked forward just as the glass blew out of the rear window. The two women screamed and I ducked down.

“Linnet, grab hold of me! Tell them to grab my shoulders! We have to get
out
of here!”

“What are you—”

A big black SUV was speeding to cut us off, and a man was running at us from between the cars waving a gun.

“I don’t have time to explain. Just fucking
do it!
”

I grabbed his thigh, Chastity and Destiny laid their hands on his shoulders, and the air seemed to wobble and flex. The mall vanished, and we were in a roundabout with an equestrian statue of an Álfar on a pedestal in the center. Carriages, drawn by glossy-coated horses like Arabians crossed with Irish hunters, and touring cars jostled for position all around us.

And the passengers weren’t people. They were Álfar, with their exotic multicolored hair and beautiful, sharp-boned faces. The clothing of the Álfar in the carriages and cars looked like a mash-up of art deco, Edwardian, and twenties style clothing. There were a lot of startled looks as we joined the parade on the roundabout.

“Oh, shit,” Charity moaned.

“What…” I began, and the word ended on a gasp because John was no longer dressed in slacks and a polo shirt.

He was decked out in a white linen suit with a white duster-like coat over the top. And we were no longer in a rented Chevy. We were seated in a twenties-style touring car with a long, long hood and the top folded down. I was wearing a pair of old-fashioned jodphurs, high boots, a scarf knotted at my neck, and an oxford shirt. A pistol was holstered on my hip.

“What did you do?” I asked. I barely recognized my voice because of the thin edge of hysteria held in check by rigid control.

“You’re in Elfland now, baby,” John said, and he sounded tense and exhausted. “They can’t follow us here.”

We left the roundabout on a road heading north. “Won’t they react to the human interlopers and throw us out?” Destiny asked a little nervously. I was glad to hear her voice. She seemed to be recovering her composure.

“First, you’re with me, and I’m clearly an Álfar, and they keep human pets around.” His voice sounded grim.

“I didn’t think you had anything to do with…” I made a vague gesture at our surroundings.

“I don’t.” Curt, short.

I subsided for a few moments, but I was burning with curiosity. “Then how did you learn to…” Another random arm wave.

“When I hit puberty, I started to switch between realities without meaning to. It would happen when I was asleep. It was causing fits, both for my folks and on this side. So my mother sent over a tutor. He worked with me for a few days and taught me control. This is the first time I’ve ever done it—deliberately.”

“I’d think it would be incredibly useful in your line of work.”

“Which is why I don’t do it. Too easy to start relying on it. Too easy to draw
her
attention.” He was looking even grimmer.

“Who’s her?”

“My bitch of a mother.”

“So why risk it now?” John just turned his head and looked at me. The frown faded, the harsh lines around his mouth softened, and he smiled without saying a word.

It was the expression in his eyes as they rested on my face that made my chest tight and made me want to laugh and cry and shout all at the same time. Was I in love? Yes, I’d fallen in love.

We drove on. Once John had the car purring along in fourth gear, he took my hand again. Occasionally I felt a flutter of wind lift my hair as if another car had passed us. The greens of the forest seemed greener, the air seemed to sparkle as if I were breathing champagne bubbles, and through the trees I caught an occasional glimpse of beautiful homes outlined in graceful columns or topped with delicate spires and towers. We didn’t talk. I was too rattled, and I could tell from the set of his jaw and the frown line between his brows that John was really concentrating.

“So are we just going to pop out in New York in a few minutes?”

John shook his head. “No, geography is geography. We still have to cross the same number of miles from Virginia to New York.”

“So, this isn’t a different world … or … or dimension or something?” Chastity asked.

“Nope, same world. Their rules.”

“How does that work?” I might have been raised by a vampire, but this was totally new to me, because people and even vampires were always warning you against the Álfar and their realm.

John shrugged. “Damned if I know. Sometime back in the early seventies a scientist crossed over all ready to figure it out based on quantum mechanics or some damn thing.”

“And?”

“And nothing. He went native, bought into all the Unseelie Court shit, and died in this reality.”

“So, why do you look like Jay Gatsby if you think all of this is shit?”

The grin he gave me was rueful. “Because this place lets you play out your deepest fantasies and make them real. Your secret sense of yourself is revealed.”

“So, my vision of myself is … is…” I gestured helplessly down at my body.

“Very Laura Croft. Or a female Indiana Jones.”

“Great,” I muttered.

“I’d rather have that sitting next to me then some woman who sees herself as Cinderella. That puts
way
to much pressure on a guy to make everything all Happily Ever After.”

I glanced into the backseat to see how Chastity and Destiny saw themselves. Chastity looked like the country club ladies who played golf or bridge with my mother. A sort of Talbot’s sport look with a red blazer, slacks, and a silk tank top.
This is what she thought her life would be if she had become Mrs. Henry Abercrombie,
I thought.

Destiny looked like she ought to be strutting the runway in Paris or Milan, with a short silver skirt, white thigh-high socks with silver embroidery on them, stacked-heel shoes, and a glittery, almost transparent lilac-colored blouse. Her hair was spiked into a wild do. They both looked stunned, but Destiny gave herself a shake and asked, “Okay now I want an explanation. Who are you people, and what is going on?”

“I’m Linnet Ellery. I’m a lawyer. This is John O’Shea, a private detective who works for our firm, and he is also an elf, which is how we got here.”

Keeping a grip on John, I used my free hand to open my satchel and tease out the will. I handed it back to Destiny, and she read through it.

“So, this is why you said those things about replacing the shoes and not worrying about losing my job,” Destiny said.

“Yes.”

“How much are we talking about?” Destiny asked.

“The company’s been valued at just over seven hundred million dollars,” I answered. Destiny made a small choking sound.

“Definitely worth killing you to hang onto it,” John said in his blunt way, and Destiny made a somewhat louder choking sound.

That roused Chastity out of her shock and fear. “I’m not risking my daughter’s life, or mine, for that matter, over money,” Chastity said. My respect for her climbed. I had a feeling Marlene Abercrombie would have handed her kids to Deegan to be killed and eaten if it meant she got the money.

I shook my head. “You have to see this through now. Deegan will never believe that you won’t come back looking for a payout. It’s the only way to be safe,” I said.

“Yeah, and Deegan’s losing his shit big-time. These kinds of public attacks are crazy,” John added. “At this point I think he’d just kill you for the hell of it. Impulse control is not a werewolf’s strong suit.”

We drove on. The mother and daughter were deep in a whispered conversation. I tried not to listen in, but occasionally phrases would reach me. “
… take that screenwriting course.” “Move away … meet someone.
”

*   *   *

Several hours later, a twenties-style touring car roared past us. Seated in the rumble seat behind the Álfar driver and passenger was a plump human man dressed like a butler. The female Álfar turned her head to look at me. She was dressed in a flowing peach-colored frock, and a twisted necklace of pearls and silver lay on her porcelain skin like windblown flowers. She wore a cloche hat and actually looked beautiful in that singularly unattractive headgear. Her expression poured disdain over me like an acid bath.

She leaned over and said something to the driver. He jerked the wheel, and he would have sideswiped our car if John’s reflexes had been a second slower.

“Shit!” he shouted.

The other car tried again to force us off the road. John floored it, and our car leaped ahead. The sudden acceleration sent Chastity and Destiny falling against the backseat, losing contact with John. The landscape began to waver and dissolve. Just before we dropped out of Fairy, I flipped the bird at the Álfar bitch. I had my hand slapped hard by John.

“Why—”

“Because on top of everything else, I really don’t want to fight a duel today,” he said.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

He shook his head. “There’s nothing an Álfar hottie likes better than males bleeding over her.”

“Why were they so pissed?” Chastity asked.

“Maybe because I’m in a car with three human women,” John said. “Maybe for no reason at all.”

“That’s just crazy,” Destiny said.

“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Everything in their world has to be much bigger, much more dramatic, and all about
me.
” He shrugged. “Basically the Álfar spend their lives in a psychological state of amplified hysteria.”

“But you’re not like that,” I said.

“No, because I had a no-nonsense father who wouldn’t put up with that kind of crap. I still have the tendency though, so I watch it every minute.”

We took hold of John again, and he pulled back out onto the main road. An hour later, we reached the outskirts of a gold and crystal city. In the distance a castle sent twisting spires toward the sky. There was more Álfar traffic now. Fortunately no one seemed inclined to start a fight with us. John rotated his neck, stretching out taut muscles.

“I’m having trouble holding my concentration for this many people. I wasn’t raised here, and I’m not very good at this, which is why you have to keep touching me. I need to drop out. Walk around, stretch my legs. Maybe get something to eat.”

I removed my hand, Chastity and Destiny leaned back with sighs of relief, and our world returned. The spires of the castle turned into the smoke stacks of a distant factory. Immediately around us the view was bleak, with warehouses, factories, and sad little narrow houses decked out in dull-colored siding. In my human reality the sky didn’t seem as blue, the leaves as green, or the setting sun as golden bright. Melancholy settled like a weight behind my eyes. I plucked irritably at the fabric of my jeans. It felt harsh and rough against my skin.

“And that’s why people get trapped in Fairy,” John said gently as he turned on the GPS unit and scrolled to the map function. “Go there too often, and you lose all ability to see beauty in the world unless you’re seeing it through their eyes.”