Unshapely Things (9 page)

As I mentally arranged the rest of my day, I decided it was time to check in with Briallen and see if she could fit some of these pieces together. I could take the opportunity to ask her about fey essence in ritual, too. That thought drove me back into the study for more reading. If I was going to ask her for training help, the last thing I wanted was for her to catch me not knowing enough.

Sunday mornings are for coffee, the newspaper, and, apparently, waiting on the corner of Newbury and Dartmouth for half-a-damned-hour because Murdock was late. Some people know who's calling when their phone rings at midnight. I know it's Murdock when my phone rings at seven o'clock on Sunday morning. He knows he's the only person I won't kill for doing it because I'd have his father and brothers after me, not to mention the entire Boston P.D.

Even on a warm morning, Newbury Street was quiet.

The exclusive boutiques didn't open until ten o'clock or so. The couture fashion parade would start around noon, the cool and the neo-hip strutting their disposable-income purchases while jabbering into the latest in cell phone technology. Most of the people walking about were Back Bay residents retrieving their Boston Sunday Globes and cups of ready-made coffee. They wouldn't be caught dead here in their designer sweat suits in a few hours.

Across the way from me stood the old Prince School. It had gone derelict when the area population started focusing more on having BMWs than having kids and had been a favorite haunt for squatters until a developer decided to turn it into condominiums. Before the owners understood with whom they were dealing, the entire basement had been leased by fey folk, who dubbed it The Artifactory. It's said that the vendors inside provide almost everything fey legally available and, if you had the right connections, a few things that weren't. Human kids liked to hang out watching all manner of folk enter and leave, but they rarely bothered anyone. You only need an itching rash once to convince you staring is rude.

Murdock appeared from around the corner, strolling nonchalantly like he was on time. He gave me a pleasant smile. "Sorry I'm late. Mass went long."

Murdock at Catholic mass, the earliest one on Sunday. Not something I could easily visualize, but also not something he gave me reason to criticize. The Roman Catholic Church had remained in turmoil ever since its encyclical on the fey. The Pope found nothing inherently wrong with being fey, just as long as they didn't act fey. Oh, and became Catholic. Other than that, he had no problem. I figured as long as Murdock didn't act Catholic around me, I had no problem with him either. He obliged me most of the time.

The thing I liked about Murdock's interest in the fey was that he sincerely wanted to understand. He wasn't content just to be handed answers to questions on specific cases. He wanted to accumulate enough knowledge to bring his own thoughts to bear on a given situation. So, every Sunday morning unless one or both of us had a hangover, we would get together for a little tutorial. The Artifactory was one of our usual classrooms.

We crossed the street and entered the grand side door of the building. As we descended into the basement, the intense odor of smoldering lavender slammed into our noses. The staircase bottomed at one end of the building, which stretched out before us for what seemed an entire city block. People milled about the brightly lit main aisle, wandering in and out of the stalls that lined the way. To either side were two secondary aisles, not as well lit, where much of the hardcore business tended to take place away from prying eyes. An herbalist's booth sat right near the entrance, hence the smell.

We slowly made our way among the booths, browsing casually. The vendors along the main aisle tended to have a mix of quality and kitsch. It seemed that for every apothecary, there were two T-shirt hawkers for the occasional tourist that wandered in. Potions had been experiencing renewed interest, and a number of people were offering ways to attract a lover or repel an unwanted suitor. My favorite find was an elixir marketed as a way to cause your boss to forget why he had come into your office. Cloak-makers busied themselves with last-minute orders for the Midsummer festival events. Costumes for the upcoming parade hung from the rafters. Rank upon rank of gem and stone dealers competed loudly with each other to sell the same merchandise.

"So how'd the date go?" I asked.

Murdock shrugged. "It was drinks."

"And?"

He smirked. "And that's it. Maybe it'll go somewhere, maybe it won't."

And that was that. Murdock is, as the old phrase goes, a ladies' man. As in plural. He's got a look that most women find attractive, and he definitely uses it. He doesn't talk much about that aspect of his social life, but I know enough that most of his dates are barely that, and it suits him fine.

Near the center of the room, we found a wand dealer. I picked up a wand of milled pine from a box of several dozen duplicates. It was about a foot and half long, tapering from about a quarter-inch in diameter to a blunt end. Under the watchful eye of the vendor, I leaned over and withdrew another shorter wand from a tangled bundle at the next seller's table, an old piece of warped yew worn smooth along one end, small knots making irregular bumps along its length. I handed them both to Murdock.

"Okay, which one has any practical use?" I asked.

He weighed them in his hands. "Obviously, I'm supposed to say the nicer-looking one is better, but I think the real question is why isn't it better?"

I smiled. "Very good. The answer is because it's tooled, in this case by a machine. Even if it were done with a knife, it would still not be as effective. Either way, it's unnatural. The act of cutting destroys the natural pathways of the growth of the wood, interrupting the flow of energy. In and of themselves, wands are powerless. They have their own essence, of course, but they don't have any will to use what little they have. Most people use them as focal points for the concentration of energy, and they can even be used as conduits for that energy."

I took the older one from him. It felt quite nice to the hand, its sides worn to a buttery smoothness. I gave it a quick little flick, feeling how it responded to the motion of my hand. "Now this old boy has seen some use. The shape of it has been worn into it with handling. It has had time to adapt its flow to the change in configuration, which an abrupt shaving would never allow."

Murdock took it back and examined it more closely. He even accurately imitated the hand motion I had used. "But what about the nubs? Why doesn't breaking off side branches interrupt the flow?"

I crossed my arms and nodded appreciatively. "You're getting pretty good at this. The little side branches are natural interruptions to the flow of the main piece. It's important to strip them off by hand because, unless you're unbelievably strong, they'll come off in the path of least resistance. In effect, you interrupt the interruption, and the natural essence of the main piece resumes its course." He performed the same motion with the pine wand. "So is this useless?"

I shrugged. "It's not great. Someone who needs it might make do in a pinch. Personally, I just use my hands unless I'm doing something very delicate." I took the wand from him and tossed it back in the box with the rest. "I suppose if you bought two, they'd make pretty good chopsticks." The vendor heard me and favored me with an annoyed glare.

Murdock put the other wand back. I led him to a table of stones, a range of semiprecious, minerals, and just plain old rocks. "Now, stones are another matter entirely. Using tools is practically required, and you can shape stones any way you want. Most stones have very little essence, and it's spread uniformly throughout. That makes them excellent conductors, resonators, inductors, and condensers."

"Like electricity?" he said.

"Exactly. The only difference is that electricity behaves predictably. When stones have essence applied to them, there's a will behind it. The stones treat the essence predictably, but the effect depends on the intent of the user."

Murdock shuffled his fingers through a box of flat stone rings about the diameter of a walnut. I picked one up, glancing at the vendor, a small harried-looking dwarf busy with a group of elves. Not wanting to insult him, I discreetly turned away and peered through the stone at the crowd. "These are supposed to be self-bored stones. Their centers are worn away by tumbling in streams and rivers. They're rare enough that you won't find a box of them lying on a table. If they're real, you can use them to see through a glamour."

I tossed mine back. Murdock picked one up and looked through it. He scanned the crowd, smiling. "This is pretty neat," he said.

Startled, I plucked the stone out of his hand and looked. Sure enough, the hidden wings of several nearby fairies came into view. A tall, thin, cloaked figure at a table of swords resolved itself into a very ugly ogre of some kind. All along the aisle, I could see several more people who were using various levels of glamour. Laughing, I turned and waved at the vendor. "This one's real," I said, tossing him the stone.

He caught it with one hand, a dubious frown on his face. When he put it up to his eye, his jaw dropped. Giving me a wink, he slipped the stone into his pocket. "Take your pick of the first row of boxes," he said, waving at the useless small wards they contained.

"Not necessary," I said. I paused and turned to Murdock. "Follow me. I have an idea."

I led him between two booths to one of the side aisles. The crowd was thinner here, the prices higher, and the wares more refined. Searching among the stalls, I spotted what appeared to be a jeweler. Several gemstones of different quality set in chains and cords hung from a string across the front. The counter beneath had an assortment of rings, bracelets, anklets, and belts. I felt a buzz in the base of my skull just standing there. I flipped through the hanging chains and slipped one over my head.

Murdock's eyebrows shot up. "You look bigger. Like you've been working out as much as you claim."

"Very funny. These are glamour stones. I'm thinking we should try to bait the killer with an undercover officer wearing one of these to look like the victim profile."

Murdock tilted his head in consideration. "That stuff's always risky."

"We only have two days until Tuesday, Murdock. If the artist sketch doesn't turn up anything, we're in trouble."

Considering, he stared at the line of necklaces. "I'll have to pass it by Ruiz." Ruiz was Murdock's immediate supervisor. I'd met him a couple of times; nice enough guy for someone who was in charge of one of the worst police districts in the city.

I got the attention of the vendor, another dwarf, and asked him in Gaelic for a fairy glamour. Sometimes speaking the language helped ease the negotiations. He produced an array of stones from beneath the counter. After much searching, he found a couple that had the ability to produce the image of a tall blond fairy and named his price. I shuddered, knowing it was beyond Murdock's budget. The dwarf was in no mood to discuss credit. He didn't want to risk the stones losing their charge, then not being able to collect the debt. I stalked up and down the aisle looking for something more modest, but predictably, the stones were uniformly out of our range.

Frustrated, I stood in the aisle trying not to think of grabbing a stone and running. "Do you know any tall blonds on the force that might pass as a fairy? I'm thinking we just get an enhancer stone, something like the first one I tried on. It'll produce a fairy aura on a human and give him wings, but it won't be strong enough to change his physical looks completely."

He shrugged. "I'll ask around."

As a courtesy, I went back to the first vendor. He'd been extremely civil throughout our earlier failed bargaining and showed no sign of annoyance that we were now looking for cheap. I figured I should encourage that kind of behavior whenever possible. In a matter of moments we had a stone that would do the trick. He even put it in a protective case to keep the glamour from activating prematurely or its essence from dissipating. We left the building and walked toward Copley Square.

"Do you want to come for dinner?" Murdock asked as he unlocked his car door.

Sunday dinner at the Murdocks happened every week at two o'clock in the afternoon. The offer was tempting, but if I went, I'd be committed to several hours. "Can I take a rain check? I'm hoping to see Briallen tonight and need to get some reading done."

"Sure. Maybe it's just as well. It's Bar's turn to cook," he said, referring to his younger brother Barnard. He couldn't help the mischievous smile from creeping onto his face. Bar had a reputation for going heavy on every seasoning he could get his hands on. While all the Murdocks complained about it, no one disliked it enough to take an extra cooking duty for the army that tended to show up.

Shoving a pile of magazines to the floor, I dropped into the passenger seat. Murdock started the car and just pulled into traffic without looking. It must be nice to have a badge.

"So anyone can use this glamour stone? Even non-fey?" he asked.

"Sure. Someone fey needs to make it, but once it's charged, it's charged. It should work for anyone, even a human."

"I thought you needed essence to make it work." He cut across two lanes of moving traffic to make a right-hand turn.

"The essence is in the glamour, which then interacts with the essence of the user."

"So what happens if this enhancer one we just bought is worn by someone who already is a fairy?"

"It'll work like the first one I tried on. It'll just make him look more powerful."

"Is that why I was able to use the self-bored stone?"

"Right. They're just tools. They only don't work if applying essence is necessary to make them work. Like the wand. It won't do anything for a human no matter how much he waves it around because it retains no active essence in and of itself. There's no danger in wearing one."

"Good. Ruiz isn't too fond of the fey. He'll want to know there's no danger." I suppressed a sigh. A cop who didn't like the fey was becoming a cliché. Sure the fey caused trouble, but so did everyone on the wrong side of the law. I didn't think it helped race relations if law enforcement was part of the problem.