Unquiet Dreams (27 page)

I clamped my jaw shut. I had no idea what she was about, if she chose to be where she was or not, but the situation made the hair on my neck stand up. The collar on her neck seemed to be constraining her body as well as her essence. I could feel an ache in my head. With all the drugs and essence flowing freely, the pressure in my head had decided to take the worst time to build.

“Where were you Sunday?” I asked.

He leaned back in his chair. “Why should I answer that?”

“Because we have evidence you were at a murder scene, and I’d like to know the tall tale you’re going to tell about not being there,” I said.

A wheezy rumble that I took to be chuckling came up from his chest. “You have nothing to threaten me with. The Guild would have sent someone. Thank you for amusing me, though. Now get out.”

A dwarf with a black hoodie stepped closer. I looked down at him and smiled. “Banjo, right? I told Moke you guys work for the highest bidder.”

“I work for myself. Get moving,” he said. He didn’t have to ask me twice. I wanted out of the room. There’s no direct connection between physical size and essence, but trolls throw off a lot. Between C-Note and all the other fey in the room, my head was splitting with pain. Amused eyes watched from several corners as we left, the patronizing looks of superiority. It works wonders on the less self-assured.

The door opened with a burst of music and closed carefully behind us, too indifferent to give us a good slam. Not that I would have welcomed it. The essence situation was no better out on the balcony and came with a pounding bass line just in case they missed any of my aching synapses.

“Did you get a good sniff?” Murdock asked.

I nodded and tapped my nose. “Yeah. He’s definitely the other troll I sensed in Kruge’s office. We’ve got our murderer.”

Murdock moved to the makeshift railing and looked down at the dancers. I joined him.

“It won’t help us in court. It’ll just be your word,” Murdock said.

“It’ll help with the Guild. We’ve got Crystal, the recording and essence confirmations from me, and Keeva’s medical examiner.” I ticked them off on my fingers. It was definitely enough evidence. “He just bought himself a murder conviction.”

“That doesn’t help our case,” Murdock said.

I didn’t respond. He was right. Taking down C-Note for Kruge’s murder would work with the evidence we had but bring no justice for Dennis Farnsworth. Lots of fey crimes weren’t considered crimes by human standards and vice versa. Murder overlapped, sure. But satisfaction in one court rarely meant satisfaction in another. But no human court would trust a fey ward stone as firm evidence or the word of a hooker’s daughter as credible. The only satisfaction Dennis’s mother would get was in the fey world, and that might not be enough for her. I still had to figure out macGoren’s involvement. Maybe it wasn’t just going to end up with C-Note.

We made our way downstairs and found Meryl dancing up a storm all by herself. She had attracted quite the crowd of onlookers, some of them basking in the glow of her natural essence, some of them turned on by a lone woman dancing with such confidence. Clouds of fog steamed onto the floor, laced with an herbal concoction I recognized as a euphoric. I glanced at Murdock, saw the glitter in his eye from the drug reaction. I followed his gaze to the vents above us. C-Note had come out of his office to check out the scene.

He leaned on his black staff as he watched the crowd. Only his eyes moved, faint points of light buried deep. A Danann fairy soared up and hovered in front of him. Her wings undulated with the rhythm of the music as her head fell back in an ecstatic roll of pleasure. Her body swayed to the right and back. Another Danann joined her, and a third. The three of them began to move in unison, arcing backward to dive toward the dancers, only to loop away just above their heads. I felt a shiver as I realized they were mimicking the rhythm of C-Note’s staff. He was playing with his compulsion drug. Then I realized, the dancers moved in a rhythmic shuffle, hands up and moving as if in a breeze. They wound in a coiling circle, lost in the music, yet nearly synchronized in their movements. Float apparently was fairly potent.

Flushed with exertion, Meryl appeared in front of us. “I see the Big Ugly is still on the loose. I’m thinking he didn’t confess and beg for mercy.”

I smiled down at her. “Something like that. You looked great out there.”

She nodded at the dance floor. “It was fun until the fog. There’s something in it I don’t recognize. I’ll take my own drugs, thank you.”

“Float. It’s what C-Note’s been dealing.”

Meryl cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “Do you feel the essence? It’s odd.”

“What’s odd?” asked Murdock.

“The essence,” I said. “Most drugs are what you would expect—some kind of chemical-based reaction. They have essence like everything else, but this stuff has more essence infused in it. It gives me a headache, actually.”

Meryl pursed her lips. “I have cramps again.”

Murdock shot me a look that was all about what-the-hell-did-she-just-say.

“Thanks for sharing,” I said.

I felt Meryl bring on her body shields. “Thought so. They’re gone. I had cramps just like this at the Bosnemeton.”

“Why are we having this conversation?” I said.

She poked me in the chest. “You just said Float gives you a headache, and you had one earlier at the Bosnemeton.”

I looked up at C-Note, but he was gone. The headache had spiked again in his office. Meryl grabbed my arm and pushed out her body shield. A momentary coolness spread over me as it interacted with my own essence and the heat in the club. The pain in my head instantly became its usual dull background buzz. She released me, and it spiked again. Too bad I didn’t have enough body shielding to pull that trick.

I could barely hear our conversation, so we moved into a hallway that led deeper into the building. I leaned in close to them. Probably one of the few places that doesn’t look suspicious is a loud club. “Kruge seemed to be arguing with C-Note about Float getting out of control. If Meryl’s right, it’s already spread beyond the Weird.”

“But what does it do?” Meryl said.

“Janey Likesmith says it has some sort of compulsion in it.”

Murdock startled us by laughing. “I was wondering why I wanted to dance so much.”

“At least you can dance, unlike some people,” Meryl said, eyeing me.

“Focus, please. We need to find out what’s in this stuff,” I said.

Meryl raised an eyebrow. “We?”

“You don’t want to help?”

She shook her head. “I told you, Grey, I’m not a field agent.”

I gave her a slow smile. “Are you afraid of Keeva?”

She smiled back. “Hardly. I just want to make sure I steal enough office supplies before getting booted out of the Guild for getting involved in another one of your harebrained ideas. Besides, this is no outfit to play Nancy Drew in.”

She had a point. The only women I knew who wore vinyl tube tops and miniskirts on secret missions were comic book superheroes. I can just imagine what Meryl would do to me if a supervillain looked up her skirt.

I shrugged. “Okay, I’ve got my cell phone in case I need the cavalry.”

“Don’t be too long. I’d kill for some Chinese food right now,” she said.

I gave her a coy smile. “A kiss for luck?”

She pecked Murdock on the cheek and smirked at me. “Good luck.”

Murdock looked surprised, then embarrassed, then cocky.

I annoyed her by chuckling. “Thanks. Let’s go.”

As we walked away, a sending hit me like a slap at the back of my head. Be careful. I glanced back, but Meryl had moved over to the bar.

“What’s the plan?” Murdock asked.

“Callin told Joe that a major shipment of Float was moving tonight. I’m guessing that fog on the dance floor was a quality check, and it’s still here.”

“So what if it is? We don’t know if it’s illegal yet.”

I had considered that. Lots of fey drugs were technically legal, only because human courts had no real way of determining what the heck they did unless they were sampled. And no court yet had upheld a ruling based on the idea that someone in the DA’s Office testified they got high.

“Because we need to know why it’s important enough to C-Note to murder one of the most prominent people in Boston.”

The sounds of the club receded as we took a dim side corridor grimed with the evidence of an old fire sooting the walls. The only essences I felt back here were the lingering trails of people consummating their desires, Murdock’s strange billow of more-than-human colored by Zev’s ward stone, and the thrumming of raw essence holding the stressed building up. We moved deeper into the darkness, the band whispering its bass line through the floor like a warning.

We picked our way through a collection of needles and condoms and discarded clothes to a boarded-over door marked as an exit. With a few yanks, we made enough space to slip through into a stairwell. Dead buildings have a stink of their own, an organic smell that’s a rank mélange of dampness, dirt, and unwashed bodies. We made our way up to the second floor and stopped on the landing.

Murdock leaned over the railing and looked up. “Big building. This is going to take a while.”

I tapped the side of my head. “Maybe not. I can feel this crap. It’s above us.”

What I didn’t say was that I could feel Float as pain, a constant pressure from the blockage in my head. I don’t know if it hurt because my abilities wanted to reach out to the essence or because they wanted to avoid it. We moved up two more flights, the pressure increasing. As we turned on the landing to the next floor, I stopped. “Here. The pain lessened when we came up here.”

We moved back to the fourth floor and pushed against an access door. It gave grudgingly from long disuse. An intersection of hallways faced us, shattered walls with gaping holes revealing empty rooms streaked with graffiti. A green triangle with a futhark rune for “F” figured prominently, the sigil of the TruKnights. When you find yourself on gang turf, it always feels like trespassing, no matter what badge you may have in your pocket. Turf is turf, and you know when you’re on someone else’s uninvited.

The floor vibrated from the dance floor directly below us. Eerie lights flickered through chinks in the flooring, lighting tendrils of smoke that trickled up from downstairs. Despite the pain, I opened my mind a crack, letting my sense feel the essences in the air. It hurt like hell, tight pinpoints stabbing at my temples. I was going to have a hell of a residual headache the next day.

“Back here,” I said. My voice felt louder than it was. I could feel Float essence increasing as we wound our way through a warren of rooms. It flared up suddenly, as if someone had opened a door. I stopped. Murdock had his gun out of his waistband even before I had chance to say anything. I nodded in front of us.

A wall hid our view, an open door to the left. I could feel the distinct signature of a living being, the raw essence that I used to identify people, but I couldn’t quite place what was in the next room. I sensed something else, a mix of energies and smells that spoke of an herbal lab, like an unventilated version of the one back at the Guildhouse. Something squeezed my brain like a claw, and shots of blackness dotted my vision. Not good. I had to pull back and tighten my range.

We edged toward the door, the silence broken by the steady thump of the club music mixed with the softer sounds of a working lab, things boiling and dripping, the steady hum of a gas flame. I peered into the room. We were on the short end of a long room, laboratory counters laid down the middle to the opposite side. Glass and copper tubing coiled from a series of glass vessels, a fantastical array of decanting apparatus strung across the space. I could feel a presence, rich and intoxicating, that pushed back against the ache in my head.

“Someone’s in here,” I whispered. I crouched and slunk into the room. The distillation gear pulsed with malevolence. Float. I could feel its essence battering at my mind.

On the far side of the room, a woman lay on a table. It took a long moment to realize she was bound and another to see that it was the woman C-Note had had leashed. Leather straps held her down, one across her head, torso, hips, and legs. Still naked, she looked even more tragic. An IV line ran from her arm to a bag hanging off the table, dark blood dripping with slow rhythm through the tube. She sensed my presence and shifted her eyes toward me, more aware now than when I had first seen her.

I stood and motioned Murdock in behind me. He moved in, gun out, and flanked me on the other side of the lab table. I crept down the room to the woman.

“Free me,” she said, not so much an order, but stated in a way that said she expected me to help. There was no question as far as I was concerned. I started undoing the strap across her torso.

“What are they doing to you?” I asked.

“Stop,” said Murdock.

Surprised, I looked over at him, then down at the woman. A wave of essence cascaded over me. It felt warm and pleasant, dulling the strange headache that Float gave me.

“Free me,” she said with a bit more force this time.

My hand went back to the strap. Murdock stepped forward, a look of concern on his face. “Connor, what the hell are you doing?”

Confused, I looked up at him. “What gives, Murdock? She’s in pain.”

He kept scanning the windows and door behind him. “I’m just wondering why something as strong as a troll would feel the need to restrain a small woman.”

He had a point. Of course, size meant little in the fey world. I’d seen Joe take down a Danann fairy in a swordfight. I dropped my hand.

“Why do you stop? What does this man say that makes you stop?” She sounded genuinely surprised and confused.

I felt it again, an essence surge surrounding me. Looking down, I realized I had put my hand on the strap again. I pulled it away. “Don’t you understand him?”

Her eyes went to Murdock. His head flinched a moment, but he remained where he was. “I do not know this language,” she said.

“What is she saying?” Murdock said.