Unshapely Things (23 page)

The sound of thunder rolled overhead. A dull white haze had settled in overnight, the clouds laced with sheet lightning that had been flickering since the earlier-morning hours. It looked like it would continue throughout the day. I quickened my pace through the empty streets in case it actually rained. By the time I reached Sleeper Street, it hadn't and probably wouldn't. I ended my run with a warm-down in front of my building. As I lingered on the sidewalk, a familiar old Chevy that screamed "undercover cop" pulled up.

"You're out early," Murdock said when he rolled down the window. The refreshing breeze of air-conditioning radiated out of the car. Though his shirt and tie were as neat as usual, the stress of dealing with the politics of the case showed in the tightness around his eyes. Being on an unsolved case could be a pressure-cooker in the station house. Watching it slip away without a conclusion can be even worse.

"Just working off some steam."

Murdock raised his eyebrows. "Anything you'd like to share?"

I nonchalantly stared up the street as I stretched my legs. "Depends. If I came into certain information that macDuin might find interesting, would you feel obligated as an officer of the law to pass it on?"

Murdock gave me an amused, measured look. "Well, naturally, I support open communications between law enforcement agencies, though I do admit that when things get busy, communications sometimes break down."

I studied him for a moment. Murdock was a relatively by-the-book kind of guy, but he was also a friend. I'd never had cause not to trust him. "So are things busy?"

He grinned. "Actually, they're extremely busy right now, and I don't see that changing for the foreseeable future."

"I found the stones." I filled him in on the details but left Meryl's name out of it. While she had shared information with me fairly easily, she wasn't a paid informant. Even Murdock could understand that. Everybody had a source they liked to keep quiet about. Being too free with people's names tended to dry up information pretty quickly. Besides, if I gave her name without her permission, Meryl would probably gut me.

Murdock didn't say anything for the longest time. "Why are you pursuing this?" he said at last.

"Because I have to."

"It's too hot to talk with the window open. Get in."

I opened the door, nudged a McDonald's bag to the floor, and sat down. The air-conditioning cooled off my damp T-shirt more quickly than the rest of me, and I shivered.

"Connor, no one is paying you to solve this case anymore. You need to be realistic."

"Hey, Officer, whatever happened to truth, justice, and the American way?"

Murdock rolled his eyes. "Capitalism is the American way. Cost-benefit analysis is the American way."

"That's pretty cynical coming from a diehard like you."

"You know as well as I do, Connor, that you have to care about the job to do the job. But if you make it personal, you burn yourself out in no time. You can't care too much, or you're dead."

"Maybe I can. For the last year, Murdock, I've worked with you on lots of cases, but they've been advisory. This is the first real case I've had to deal with since I got out of the hospital. It feels good. It feels important. It's about murdered people whom no one else cares about, people who needed the overworked police department and the indifferent Guild to do something about it. We both know that hope might be misplaced. Look, the Guild took the case, and it's barely in the news. You lost the case, and you're ready to move on. And, yes, it's about me. It's about the fact that I don't like it. I don't like that not enough can be done. I don't like that someone twisted enough to commit murder is smart enough to escape me. I don't like that shit happens. Not anymore."

Murdock nodded slowly. "Just don't let it control you."

I shrugged. "Besides, it's not like I have anything better to do."

He just looked at me from beneath his eyebrows. After that little speech, I wouldn't have believed the cavalier attitude either.

"So what do you think about the stones?" I asked.

Murdock sighed heavily and tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. "Someone at the Guild has a secret. The stones lead to the secret. Figure out the stones, and you figure out the secret."

"Well, we know the stones are being used in a ritual. I've been trying to track that down from day one."

Murdock shook his head. "That's not the secret. Take yourself out of the box. The stones were stolen long before these murders."

I sighed. "So I'll keep looking into the stones. Belgor had a customer looking for selenite last fall when the Guild got robbed. I don't think that's a coincidence." I let myself out of the car. "So what brings you down here?"

"Two things. One, I wanted to make sure you sent all your files in. And two, I'm back on another case that I've had on hold since this whole serial killer mess started."

"Yes, I sent the files. Anything I can help with on the new case?" It was the most polite way I could think of asking for work.

"Not right now. I've got a dead drug dealer. I doubt it'll go anywhere. Call me if I can help you though." I nodded and closed the door. As I watched him drive away, I realized our roles had reversed. His case had somehow become mine. At least I didn't have to pay him for help if I needed it.

Once upstairs, I reviewed the update Murdock had sent me before he lost the case. The fourth fairy victim was a young Danann named Galvin macTiarnach. In town for Midsummer. I actually knew his father from my early days at the Guildhouse in New York. Tiarnach Ruadan was an Old One, born of Faerie, and all around nice guy. When I knew him, he had no children. A mild depression settled over me as I looked at the scene photos. It must be a special hell to wait centuries to have a child only to lose him so senselessly. I hoped he would give some of that hell to macDuin.

The rest of the file gave a routine catalog of phone calls and informant contacts that had led nowhere, followed by Murdock's description of the day before. It's odd reading someone else's version of the same events. Murdock made it clear that he held strong suspicions about Shay. He was nicely dismissive of macDuin's charges against me, though.

At the bottom of the last page was a brief entry note. He had tracked down two of the women from our ska list. Both of their children were dead of natural causes. He had found the third woman as well, a fairy named Dealla Sidhe. Next to her name he had simply written an address right in South Boston with the notation 'No phone. Not home again.' Flipping back through previous reports, I realized he had stopped by her house several times. I made a note to ask Meryl if she would check the Guild records on her.

I toyed with the idea of calling Germany. They still hadn't returned my call. The Germans liked doing things their own way in their own time. They didn't take kindly to pressure, especially from someone asking a favor. If I called, I risked being perceived as a nuisance and they could very well not give me the information I needed for even longer out of spite. I decided to exercise caution for the moment, if only because it was a Saturday.

I spent the remainder of the day ensconced in my study, poring over stone rituals. Most druids fall into two groups: sticks or stones. Wood has some wonderful properties, but it has a tendency to react too much with the user for my particular taste. Because they retain some of their own innate essence, using wands becomes almost a partnership. You have to be very nature-oriented to use them to their best advantage.

I have to admit a certain affection for stone work. They do what you want them to, when you want them to, regardless of whether you are tired or it is raining. They always give out exactly what you put into them. And you can start them going and leave them to finish your work, something you can't do with wands.

Personally, when I was well, I tried not to rely on either. No ego about it—the stronger your ability, the less likely you are to use any type of auxiliary apparatus. The tough stuff you do with your hands or your voice or your mind. Actually, that's not quite true. The more power you have, the more likely you are to use wands and wards incidentally. That, in fact, is about ego. In some quarters, nothing demonstrates your ability more than how casually you used it. When I was cleaning the apartment the day before, I noticed the protection wards around the window had been recharged, and so had the ones on the roof. Keeva had probably done it while she sat talking to me without showing any effort whatsoever.

Stones are useful things for people without any ability. You can buy them and pay someone to charge them. Of course, depending on the quality of stone and the strength of the charger, the price can go up considerably. Plenty of the fey make a decent living servicing wards for humans. For someone with no other skills and a dislike of manual labor, it has quite an upside. No overhead, and all it takes to replenish one's essence is a good nap.

Most stone-charging has a purpose. You can set up alarms like I had done in my apartment. Wards can be used to keep someone awake or put them to sleep. They can even be the catalyst for killing someone, though that takes some doing and is extremely illegal. The wards placed on the wings of the murder victims simply immobilized the victims. That was their only point as far as I could tell.

Which is why I was having such a hard time figuring out the selenite stones. The point of charging them with essence escaped me. It didn't seem to do anything to the corpses. It just dissipated.

The stones weren't catalysts, at least not in any sense I could understand. The cause of death was not fey ability-related. Cutting out someone's heart takes only a knife, physical strength, and at least a little psychosis.

The missing hearts were another matter. As the seat of essence, they were powerful organs. Taking them was obviously about taking their power. The essence the hearts contained could be stabilized and held for periods of time, the same way Briallen had held the flit body in a kind of chrysalis to prevent it from disappearing. Just because I didn't know how to do it didn't mean it couldn't be done.

I sat up so sharply, my desk chair squealed in protest. Essence was the connection. The hearts and the stones both held it. The killer wasn't just leaving stones as tokens for the hearts. He was leaving a vessel of essence for the vessel of essence he took.

I tried to go through the idea step by step. It was an exchange, but it wasn't equal. He took more than he left. He needed more. But for what? So far, all the other ska births had turned up dead. Was he dying? Were the murders some kind of twisted revenge? Had he somehow discovered a way to make himself well? I shook my head in frustration. Only someone with access to secret knowledge and the will to use it would take someone's essence, like Briallen had taken mine to keep Stinkwort from dying. Only she wasn't about to hand the knowledge over to me on a silver platter. I had to find it some other way.

I paced into the living room. My mind felt numb from the circles it was running in. Outside, orange light smeared across the hazy sky as the sun set. Lightning flickered as it had all day, followed by a lethargic rumble of thunder. My stomach grumbled back. I hadn't eaten, and I needed food. I debated ordering something for delivery but didn't have enough cash for a tip. Murdock was still processing my fee, and my disability check wasn't due for another week. I slipped on an old pair of boots and left the apartment.

Down in the vestibule, mail was scattered on the floor. As I picked it up, a prickling ran along the back of my neck, and my defense shields triggered. Dropping the mail, I spun toward the door in a crouch. The slab of steel was propped open with a newspaper. Flattening my back against the wall, I pushed the door open with my foot. A wave of humid air rolled in, rank with the smell of the channel. The street was dark and empty. The lamppost was out again, a fairly common phenomenon. I could sense no one nearby, though the whispering remains of essence hung in the air above the sidewalk. Some of them felt vaguely menacing, and quite a few trailed into the building.

Behind and above me, I could hear a door open for a moment, releasing a dull roar of music and voices before it closed again. My shields let go as I began to relax. A party was just getting into swing, and some idiot had propped the door open. Shaking my head, I let the door close firmly behind me and walked up the street.

Reaching the corner of Sleeper and Summer, I turned left. Three doors up, the lights of the Nameless Deli washed out onto the street, an oasis of activity on an otherwise dead block. I paused at the door. Druids can sense the essence people leave behind like perfume. Someone who had been hanging around the front of the deli had also been in front of my apartment building. The person's essence was elfin in nature, but otherwise unremarkable. The coincidence made me pause, especially since I hadn't sensed it between the two places. Looking up and down the street, I saw no one. I pushed open the door.

Walking into the Nameless is always a bit of a shock. The harsh fluorescent lights flare so bright, they make one squint even on a sunny day. At three in the morning, they can be excruciating. Very few people know it is the side effect of a protection spell that makes people less inclined to be aggressive. It is a shoddy spell, but potent enough. For such a bad neighborhood, the Nameless is rarely robbed, and even then only by someone so hopped up on drugs that they end up being arrested right outside the door.

Dmitri leaned on the counter in the empty store, reading a car magazine. He was a dark-skinned Greek with honey-colored hair who'd probably been charming his way into beds since he was twelve. He'd been working for his grandparents since he was a kid and still filled in on the occasional weekend when he didn't have too heavy a class load at UMass/Boston. He glanced up at me with a brief smile, closed the magazine, and trailed along with me to the deli case. I ordered a sub with everything on it.

A bell rang as the door opened, and I tensed. Without turning, I sensed an elf come in behind me, the same one who had been in front of my building. In my peripheral vision, I saw him step up to the register and toss a pack of gum on the counter. Dmitri looked up, grabbed a towel, and wiped his hands. He went behind the register and rang up the sale.