Unperfect Souls (7 page)

They bowed and moved down the length of the table.

“Bastian?” Eorla said. She held up a fist, palm toward him when he paused. With an abrupt opening of her hand, she muttered a short phrase in Old Elvish. Bright green motes of essence shot from her fingers and shattered two ceramic urns to either side of the fireplace. “In the future, Bastian, I suggest you think again before you tune listening wards to eavesdrop on my conversations.”

Frye did not meet her gaze but bowed. As he followed Brokke out of the room, Eorla called his name again. “That urn by the door, Bastian? Take it with you and strip the listening ward from it. I rather like that one and would prefer not to destroy it.”

Frye removed the urn in question from the bookcase by the door. He held it against his chest, bowed to Eorla, and backed out of the room. Eorla chuckled. “He tries my patience.”

I smiled. “Something tells me you try his a little bit.”

She smiled back. “I hope so.”

“Why are you telling me about Vize? You know I want him in prison,” I said.

She shifted in her seat. “Bastian and Brokke want me to meet with him, but I won’t. It irritates them that I spoke to you instead.”

“Where is Vize?” I asked.

Eorla arched an eyebrow. “I truly don’t know. Bergin isn’t why I asked to see you. I have been having dreams about Forest Hills. I want to know if you have, too.”

Forest Hills was one of those lovely catastrophes Bastian Frye referred to. A spell created to control essence got out of hand. Eorla and Nigel Martin tried to stop it, but it overwhelmed them. I did stop it, but I couldn’t remember how. “I don’t remember any of it.”

“You remember the staff that was used, don’t you? And the runes that were bound to it?” she asked.

I nodded. “That I remember. I saw it before I did whatever I did. The staff held the essence of the oak, and Teutonic runes were bound to it. I don’t know what they meant, though.”

She gestured to some paper on the table. “Can you show me the runes you remember?”

The spell had damaged essence and produced what everyone called the Taint. The Taint provoked highly aggressive behavior in anyone who touched it. I hesitated as I picked up a pen. I liked Eorla well enough, but we had been uneasy allies at best. I wasn’t sure piecing together a dangerously powerful control spell was in anyone’s best interest—and helping the Consortium do it could be trouble. Then again, I had never been more angry with High Queen Maeve, so if something I did caused her a problem, I wouldn’t be all that upset. I wrote on the paper and slid it to Eorla. “I remember these four the most. They were floating and revolving around the staff. I’m not sure of their order. I didn’t focus on them. ”

Eorla added more runes. “I remembered three and dreamed two more. We have some overlap.”

I studied the five new runes. “I don’t know many elven rune spells.”

“It intrigues me that a Celtic staff and Teutonic runes worked together,” she said.

I shrugged. “It’s just a means to an end, isn’t it? Essence is the same either way.”

She stared at the runes. “True. Something ancient teases at my memory—a spell I might have seen long ago.”

“Why the interest, Eorla?”

She folded the paper and held it on her lap. “A Guild initiative, actually. The Taint still plagues the city. We’re hoping to undo the damage.”

I sighed. “Good luck. The only person who seems to be unaffected is me, and that’s because of the dark spot in my head.” Our eyes met in the silence. “Unless you know someone else in a similar situation.”

She shook her head. “I haven’t spoke to Bergin since before the two of you fought. I have no idea if the Taint does or does not affect him.”

I leaned my elbows against the table. “If it’s a Guild initiative, why the secrecy?”

She steepled her fingers, the gems on her many gold and silver rings glittering in the firelight. “It’s not my secret, but yours. Don’t misinterpret Bastian. He speaks truly when he says many people are watching you, Connor. Maeve sent an underQueen to interrogate you after what happened at Forest Hills. Now my dear cousin, Donor, has sent Bastian. When you have the two most powerful fey in the world interested in you, it doesn’t go unnoticed by others. The less nervous people are about what you know or can do, the safer you will be.”

“What’s in it for you?”

She stared at me with an amused look, drawing the moment out. “I don’t know yet. But since we are the only two that know we remember some of the runes, I suggest we trust each other, shall we?”

I held my hand out. “You have my word.”

Without hesitation, she clasped my hand. “And you have mine. Thank you for coming.”

I bowed. “Eorla, it was a pleasure as always.”

Out in the hall, guards positioned themselves around me as an escort. They didn’t follow me more than a few feet out of the building, but I felt their eyes on my back the rest of the way down the block.

I didn’t doubt for one minute that Eorla would throw me to the wolves if it suited her purpose. We played an interesting hand together to our mutual benefit. I had held back one of the runes I remembered. I’m sure she had, too. Until we knew we could trust each other—really trust each other—that was how the game was played. I agreed with her assessment of my position. I was caught between High Queen Maeve and the Elven King. It amused me that it wasn’t until I lost my abilities that I came to the attention of the movers and shakers of the world. Once that happened, I needed all the allies I could get, and Eorla Kruge, Grand Duchess of the Elven Court, was not a bad one to have.

 

 

 

 

The answering machine was blinking its little red light when I returned from the consulate. The usual collection of pointless messages droned out. I used my cell phone for people I knew and wanted to talk to. The apartment phone handled the solicitors and the bills. I gave them the courtesy of listening before deleting and ignoring. The last message surprised me.

“Hi, Connor Grey. I don’t know if you remember me, but this is Shay. I need your advice on something. If you could stop by 184 A Street later this afternoon, I’d appreciate it. I think I might have a problem.”

Shay was hard to forget. When I met him, I thought he was female. I’d never met a guy who looked so much like a woman—and an attractive one at that. He flirted with me outrageously—and with Murdock and with anyone who came within ten feet of him.

I never learned his whole story, but he’d had a hard life. Like so many other kids, he thought he’d find a place to call home in the Weird. He did, too, but probably not the one he hoped for. Most people didn’t aspire to turning tricks for a male clientele who were into the transgender scene. As if his luck weren’t bad enough, he got himself tangled in a serial killer’s murder spree and lost his boyfriend. I didn’t think there was a chance I would be forgetting Shay anytime soon.

The address on A Street was near the old Gillette razor plant, a short stretch of warehouses that had been converted to working lofts where painters and jewelry artists tried to stand out by living on the edge of the scary neighborhood. Boston artists were a world of their own. New York was not so far off but was a different scene entirely, more competitive, more commercial. More New York. Boston was about the art and, yeah, the money, but Boston artists had an earnestness about them that you usually see only outside the expensive cities.

I huddled in the doorway of the building address Shay gave me to avoid the cold, stamping my feet to keep the blood flowing. A slender figure in a full- length white down coat appeared at the corner. A lock of jet-black hair escaped the round hood fringed with glossy fake fur and waved in the air. I didn’t need to sense Shay’s essence to know it was him. The wind pinked his face as he walked carefully down the sidewalk. When he saw me, his Cupid’s-bow lips curled into a smile, and he raised a mittened hand, more acknowledgment than wave. “Sorry. Work ran late.”

To my surprise, he pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. Surprise because last I knew, Shay lived in a squat up on Congress Street.

I followed him up steep, wide stairs. “You live here?”

He shifted lightly mascaraed eyes to me. “I have a studio.”

We trailed down a long, high-ceilinged hall with thick, wide-planked floors showing the wear of a century of work. New walls had been constructed to divide a once-open manufacturing space into a warren of small rooms. The odor of thinner, oil paint, and solvents permeated everything. Shay let us through a plain white door that had a yew wreath hung on it.

To the left, a wall ran thirty feet without interruption from the door to a set of windows. Paintings, prints, and other artwork covered every available inch. Nine feet to the right, a large freestanding sink stood next to a homemade wood counter with a two-burner hot plate on it and a small refrigerator of the type that students used in dorm rooms. Two tall bookcases formed a bed alcove in the middle of the narrow studio.

“I never knew you were an artist,” I said.

Shay removed his coat in a whirling motion and hung it among others on a rack by the door. He wore snug blue jeans and a thigh- length charcoal gray sweater. Twisting his lips, he made an exaggerated and amused pout. “You never knew me, period, Connor.”

I smiled. “Does anyone?”

Resting a delicate hand on his hip, he tilted his head. Eyes roved up and down, examining me as if I were merchandise. Maybe I was. I really did not know Shay. “You cut your hair. I like it short. Makes those lovely blues stand out more.”

Shay’s flirting irritated the hell out of Murdock, but I found his brashness utterly amusing. This slender boy, with his stunningly feminine face, had more balls than men twice his size. Shay spoke his mind when he chose to. “You’ve moved up in the world. Still working?”

He filled a small teakettle and put it on the hot plate. “Not how you mean. I work full-time at the Children’s Institute now. The pay’s not great, but I can afford to live here.”

When I first met Shay, he was working the streets. He never was arrested for prostitution, but anyone in the profession knew it was a matter of time. It was good to hear he had gotten out of the life before it was too late for him. Back then, he volunteered at the Institute, where he cared for Corcan macDuin, a mentally disabled elf who became inadvertently involved in a murder case. “How is Corky?” I asked.

Shay smiled. “Amazing. After what happened, his mental capacity improved. He’s reached the mentality of a teenager since midsummer. You should come by and see him. He talks about you.”

“He does?”

The kettle whistled. Shay poured two mugs. “You saved his life. He likes to tell the story of the hero with the shining sword.”

I was about to thank him when something ticked up in my sensing ability. At the far end of the studio, hidden from view by the bed alcove, an essence moved. It hadn’t been there when we’d come in. Before I said anything Shay looked toward that end of the studio. He was human but claimed to have some kind of fey sensitivity. He might. Or he might have timed the arrival of whoever was in the studio to make it look that way. For all his naïveté, manipulation was another of Shay’s skills.

“Who’s back there?” I asked.

He handed me a mug. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You saved my life, too, but I think it delayed the inevitable.”

He led me around the bed alcove to a cramped living room with a small couch and two overstuffed chairs. A large black dog—large in that way that made people stop and gape—sat on the couch and stared at us. Shaggy, glossy coat, massive head and jowls. The kind of dog that, even though an owner claims it is very sweet, you suspect might enjoy kittens for breakfast.

I sipped my tea. The dog wasn’t alive. Its essence resonated like the Dead from TirNaNog, but something was off about it. “That’s a Dead dog, Shay. Do you know what I mean?”

Shay held his mug with both hands. Resigned, he nodded. “I thought so. He started following me right after Samhain. He seemed to like me, so I brought him home. He wasn’t eating when I left food out, so I thought someone else must be feeding him. Then I found out the Dead were in the Weird, and I thought, what the hell, maybe there are Dead animals, too.”

“I saw some pretty strange ones on Samhain,” I said.

Shay frowned. “I have a feeling this isn’t a normal Dead dog, Connor.”

He put his mug down and pulled the drapes across the windows. Darkness blanketed the room except for a red glow. Every hair on my body stood on end, and I sloshed tea on the floor as I stepped back. The dog’s eyes burned like embers. “Holy shit, Shay!”

Shay swept the drapes open, and the red glow vanished. He crossed his arms and stared at the dog. “It’s a hellhound, isn’t it?”

Hellhound. Cu Sith. Cwn Annwn. The dog went by various names in various places. Sometimes it was white furred with red ears. Sometimes it was a big, freaking black dog with glowing eyes. Its purpose remained the same everywhere. If it came for you, it came from the land of the Dead, and it meant you were going to die. “I think so,” I said.

“I’m going to die,” he said.

The dog opened its mouth and panted. “I don’t know,” I said.

Shay didn’t take his eyes off the dog. “Liar.”

I don’t know which was creepier, the dog’s presence or Shay’s calmness. “Shay, nothing is what it was. The Dead are trapped here, so maybe the dog is, too. Maybe it reacted to the fact that you brought it home. Dogs respond to kindness, right? It’s still a dog.”

“His name is Uno,” he said.

“What?”

Shay gave me a wry smile. “I thought it was a joke at the time. He had only one head, so I named him Uno.”

“The three heads are from Greek myth, not Faerie,” I said.

Shay sat in an armchair. “That’s the joke, isn’t it? I came up with the name based on something that didn’t exist. Only, the joke’s on me. It’s a hellhound, and I’m going to die.”