Unquiet Dreams Read online

  I scanned the strip of sky above us. The haze of essence covered the entire block we were on. “I’m curious about that myself. There’s a residual haze of essence up there. Let’s check it out.”

  I walked across the field, with Murdock a step behind me. We crossed the street to an abandoned warehouse. Grabbing the end of a fire-escape ladder, I gave it a hard tug. It clattered down to within a few feet of the pavement. I gave the metal rungs a good shake to make sure they’d stay attached. Even as I did it, I tried to understand my logic. Why would potentially pulling a fire escape down on top of me be somehow safer than having the fire escape collapse under me? Fortunately, it held.

  We jogged the six flights without speaking, our breaths streaking warm plumes into the cold air. Murdock and I work out often together. The fire escape was like doing the StairMaster, only colder. At the top, we used a vertical ladder to the roof. Actually, the remains of the roof. Most of it had fallen in, creating an open crater of space with a lovely view of the rubble-strewn top floor.

  The rising sun hit us full in the face, and I felt a surge of essence from Murdock. Even as I turned to look at him, it faded. As a human normal, Murdock’s essence should register on the low end of the scale. A few months earlier, he had helped me accidentally save the world and caught a nasty blast from an insane fairy. Or elf. It’s hard to describe. Anyway, since then his essence has been mucked up.

  Everyone’s essence is unique, like fingerprints, and the different species of fey resonate differently. Murdock’s essence fluctuates throughout the day from normal to damn strong. What makes that odd is that usually only the fey have strong essence. Elves and fairies. Trolls and dwarves. Druids and the like. Yet, Murdock always feels human. He says he doesn’t feel any different except for an occasional adrenaline surge. He’s on outpatient from Avalon Memorial Hospital now. I’m no healer, but I have a sneaky suspicion they’re as baffled as I am.

  Above us, a streak of white haze marked a trail of essence. That’s where the cold was coming from. Weather manipulation was probably as old as Faerie itself. Keeping crops growing, protecting livestock, and clearing or clouding the skies for a battle were keen motivation for developing the ability. Boosting existing conditions was simple; changing clear skies to rain was complex. The end result depends on the manipulator’s level of skill and ability.

  The after-effect of this particular manipulation was pedestrian in results but grand in execution. The ambient air temperature had been lowered below freezing, something that was fairly easy to do in early October near the open ocean because the air was already cold and changeable. The level of ability applied, however, was impressive. The haze was easily two or three blocks wide, nearly three-quarters of a mile long, and sufficiently long lasting to freeze water. That took Power of the serious kind.

  The northern edge of the haze, not far from where we stood near Old Northern Avenue, had begun to break up, indicating the effect was not being maintained. As it snaked southward, its density increased. At the far southern end, it appeared uniform. That told me that the spell had been initiated nearby and sent southward—first effects were the first to fade. Even as I watched, the spell eroded away from us.

  “I doubt this is related, Murdock,” I said. “It’s a pretty powerful spell and looks like it had a defined purpose. I think the kid just happened to die here. Whoever has the ability to make this level of cold happen probably has more creative ways to kill someone and hide the body.”

  “And the powerful don’t really care what happens down here beneath them,” said Murdock.

  I didn’t respond. I didn’t need to. That statement summarized an entire conversation for Murdock and me. He’s been on the police force a long time, long enough to get out of the Weird. I ended up living in it when I lost everything else, and it opened my eyes. No one cares about the Weird, at least no one official. Sure, around election time politicians will give a nice little speech about making the place better and cleaning out the riffraff. The only problem with that is most people outside the Weird consider everyone in it to be that riffraff. Murdock and I know better. Lots of good people live down here, people who fell through the cracks of everywhere else. And, yeah, some of them are a little shady. But most of them are only trying to get by. They don’t deserve to be ignored. A few nasties poke their heads up every once in a while. When they do, they find Murdock waiting to smack them down again. And if they’re fey, I get to help.

  “So, what do you know about gangs?” I asked.

  Murdock shrugged. “Just the majors. The Sapiens. The TruKnights. HiFlys. A couple of others. I know mostly snitches. I don’t keep close track of the rivalries unless it’s related to a case I’m on. I’ve got good ties with the gang unit, though. I’ll check to see if yellow and black is a known xeno.”

  Xeno was the current catchy moniker for humans, mostly teenagers and early twentysomethings, who don’t like the fey and form a nice little social club whose entertainment involves harassment and, all too often, violence against the fey. The phrase itself doesn’t make sense unless you knew it was evolved from “xenophobic gangs.” Don’t get me wrong—there are plenty of fey gangs, too, that technically meet the definition of xenophobic. But they are seen as the minority, and so their antagonists earned the xenophobic badge first.

  I looked down at the field, then the surrounding area. “Do you know whose turf it is? Nothing’s here but empty buildings.”

  I waited while Murdock flipped through his mental files. “Not sure. I don’t think anybody’s. It’s elves to the south. Human and fairies along Oh No. I think this is a noman’s-land.” Oh No was the local nickname for Old Northern Avenue. You hear the phrase used with everything from fear to laughter.

  “If a gangbanger dies in an empty field and no one is around to hear it, is he a gangsta?” I said. Murdock didn’t laugh. I wasn’t really trying to be funny.

  Murdock blew into his hands again. “I still don’t like this cold. You know I like to rule out anomalies at crime scenes only for good reason. You’re more likely to find out what it was for.”

  “Sure,” I said. I had contacts that Murdock couldn’t necessarily cultivate. For one thing, I was fey. While it doesn’t always produce cooperation and honesty among the fey, simple psychology still applies. Like groups are more willing to extend trust to one of their own. I also lived right in the Weird, and people can tell. Places generate their own essence imprints, and if you stay in them long enough, you pick it up, too. Murdock smells like South Boston, not the Weird. That’s not a criticism. It’s like recognizing someone’s accent. Whatever attributes you assign to that is your own prejudice.

  The sun rose higher, and the temperature went up a little. The erosion of the weather spell seemed to increase. Interesting. That meant sunlight was meant to dissipate it. Whatever it was for, was for last night only.

  “Looks like it’s going to be a nice day,” I said.

  Murdock’s two-way radio squawked, then emitted a string of gibberish that pretended to be a woman speaking. Murdock cocked his head and lowered the volume. How cops understood those things was beyond me.

  Murdock’s eyes flicked up to my face. “We’ve got another body.”

  2

  I moved several newspapers off Murdock’s passenger seat and got in his car. The man is fastidious about his personal appearance but has slob tendencies that manifest themselves in any vehicle he happens to drive. When the heat came on, I detected the faint whiff of chicken wings.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Down Harbor Street,” he said.

  “Harbor? You got pulled off a murder scene for a dead body in the Tangle?”

  He nodded. “Code came in possible high profile. We need to get in and assess before the Guild shows up.”

  If the Weird is the ass end of Boston neighborhoods, the Tangle is the ass end of the Weird. The place gets its name from the chaotic network of streets that twist around each other, a confusing interplay of real a
nd not-so-real lanes and buildings. To explain Boston’s oddly laid-out streets, an urban legend claims they’re paved over cow paths. In the Tangle, the cows apparently were drunk as hell.

  Even I admit that it’s a rough place. It’s no wonder the place makes the news. Drugs and the more esoteric types of body trades are the primary commercial ventures. Gangs rule the streets. Spellcasters openly offer their services for questionable enterprises. An inordinate number of people go missing, or at least were often last seen alive there.

  If the Guild tends to ignore the happenings in the Weird, it positively pretends the Tangle doesn’t even exist. While I’m no longer the Guild’s biggest fan, they do have a point. Lots of people wish the Tangle didn’t exist. But it does, so there’s no excuse to let what goes on there, go on. And, naturally, the Guild only gets involved if someone important gets caught up.

  We pulled onto Harbor Street, not technically the Tangle, but close enough. Murdock just parked in the middle of the street. Police privilege. He wasn’t the first. Two squad cars were already on scene, and an officer was frantically unraveling crime scene tape in a wide arc in front of a building thirty feet away. He looked pale, a little green around the gills even.

  We stepped out of the car into more cold. I looked up and saw the southern edge of the weather spell ripple and shift as the last of it evaporated in the morning sun. We walked toward the cordoned-off storefront, two large plate-glass windows with slogans like HELP US, HELP YOU and WE RISE ONLY TOGETHER. A multihued sign above the door said UNITY.

  The signs reminded me that not everyone was willing to abandon the Weird. Just like I had come to care about the people down here, others did, too. Along with the sinners, a few hardy saints marched down here, struggling to make a difference. Some of them try to persuade people off the paths they have chosen. Some just hand out bandages to get someone through the day. At best, they make tiny dents. At worst, they get themselves caught up in the shifting alliances. I figured that’s what we were probably walking into now, someone who had poked their nose in a little too deep.

  We ducked the tape, and the smell hit me immediately. “Damn, Murdock, I can sense a lot of blood from here. It’s an elf.”

  Two more officers stood just inside the door. One of them seemed to be concentrating on keeping his jaw clamped shut. The other one nodded at us. “Hope you haven’t had breakfast.”

  Not a good sign. The police see a lot, especially in rougher neighborhoods. They deal with most of it with gallows humor. When they openly acknowledge the severity of a murder scene, it is definitely not a good sign.

  “That bad?” asked Murdock.

  “Worse,” said the officer. He pointed inside. “Nine-one-one call came from a phone in the front room. Door was unlocked when we got here. No one here but the victim.”

  Murdock nodded. It is a time-honored tradition to remain anonymous in the Weird. Murdock gave me a quick look and stepped inside. I followed, already tamping down my senses to deaden the scent of blood.

  The front room spanned the width of the building and ran back about thirty feet. Several groupings of cast-off furniture filled the near section, behind those was a Ping-Pong table, and behind that were three old metal desks. The walls were painted a jarringly vibrant shade of yellow and covered with posters proclaiming the virtues of friendship, cooperation, and racial harmony. The cynic in me couldn’t help snorting. Not that it wasn’t all well-intentioned. But this close to the Tangle, it smacked of naïveté.

  Two archways stood on opposite sides of the back wall. “The left side,” I said to Murdock. The stench was unavoidable.

  Murdock went first. He stopped in the archway, blocking my view. “Sweet mother of God,” he whispered. He turned away from the door with his eyes closed. I was not going to like it. I stepped into the archway and froze.

  Half of my brain began objectively assessing what I was seeing. The other half was screaming. The room was long and narrow, no windows, with a closed door at the rear. A desk had been flipped forward to my right. Everything that had been on it had scattered to the floor. Four of the five chairs in the room were either upturned or broken. The fifth was embedded in the back wall. Every conceivable surface was sprayed with blood. Floors. Walls. Ceiling. At my feet lay a left hand with the lower half of a forearm attached. I could see a right arm under one of the chairs. I assumed a separate bloody mangle near the desk was the lower extremities. Gobbets of body organs appeared to be smeared everywhere. To the right and about eight feet up, a head peered out of a bloody crater in the wall. The face had been flattened. Other than my ability to sense its essence, the only remaining clue to race of the individual was a long, pointed ear that was sticking straight out in the wrong direction.

  I closed my eyes. I could hear Murdock breathing through his mouth. If I was going to help, I had to use my nose. The scent of blood overwhelmed, the elf essence coating everything. Two things jumped out at me, though. At least one troll had spent a lot of time in the room, and I could sense a second. I moved forward a little.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Murdock said. I nodded. Contaminating a crime scene like this would not be looked on tolerantly by anyone.

  I could sense fear. The feeling is more intuitive than technical. I’m not a dog. But sometimes strong emotion seems to color how essence feels to me, like salt or pepper on a steak. The odd thing was, I wasn’t sensing the fear from the elf, which suggested to me that whatever happened to him was unexpected. He literally hadn’t seen it coming. But fear permeated the place, a fear intense enough to announce the presence of at least one human normal. That’s the one thing you can always sense from a human.

  I turned away from the carnage. “We should get in that back room.”

  Murdock led the way back to the front door. “How long ago did this call go out on the wire?” he asked the same officer by the door.

  He looked at his watch. “Probably ten minutes or so.”

  Murdock looked at me. “We don’t have much time. Let’s go.” We broke into a jog out the door, ducked under the tape again, and made our way to a narrow back alley. For this part of the neighborhood, the alley was surprisingly clean. Probably some do-gooder project. The back door to the building was the self-closing type, but wasn’t quite closed. Murdock pulled out his gun.

  I don’t carry a gun. Never did. Once I didn’t need to with all the other abilities I had. Now I avoid them because the metal content messes up whatever little ability I do have. I flattened myself against the wall behind Murdock. He stretched forward and tugged quickly at the door handle, simultaneously pulling back into firing stance. The door swung open, briefly revealed a darkened room, then began to close. Murdock grabbed it before it could lock. He scuttled across the face of the door, pulling it open as he moved to the opposite side. No sounds came out. No gunfire, which was good, and no explosive shot of essence, which was even better. Neither of us was equipped to deal with that. I ducked my head into the opening and back.

  “Empty,” I mouthed to him.

  Gun forward, Murdock leaped into the room to the opposite side again. I could picture him inside, the two of us pressed against the wall between us. I waited a long two seconds, listening. “Clear,” he called out.

  I walked in to find Murdock holstering his gun. He kept the holster open.

  The back room was mainly storage, some stacked chairs and folding tables, boxes and filing cabinets, and some standard office equipment: a fax machine, a photocopier, and some kind of large-size printer. Faint levels of essence from all species permeated the space, in tribute to the apparent ethic of the place. Given that, the strong register of troll and human stood out. The troll was definitely the same one I had sensed in the office space. The human was strong enough to be identifiable, but with the mess in the other room, I couldn’t tell if the fear I had felt there was from the same person.

  “I’d say someone hid in here while the action in the other room went on. When everything went down, they ran out the bac
k door,” said Murdock.

  Made sense to me. It would explain why the inside door was closed and the back door was open. Someone was in too much of hurry to worry about securing the door.

  Murdock’s two-way squawked. It was only one word, so I understood it. “Company.”

  Murdock looked around. “Did you touch anything?”

  “Okay, second time you’ve done that. I’m not an amateur,” I said.

  “Sorry. Guild’s here. Let’s go.” He had the good sense to look chagrined. I let it pass, because at the least it showed why I liked working with him. Murdock paid attention to details. We backed out of the room and left the door exactly how we found it. As we walked back up the building, I paused. More troll essence. It led off to the right, into the Tangle. It didn’t surprise me. If I were a troll and needed to blend in with the scenery fast, that’s where I’d go.

  When we reached the front of the building, the activity level had increased dramatically in a short period of time. Two more police cars, an EMT van, the medical examiner’s car, a Boston morgue wagon and a Guild one, and a black town car now cluttered the street. The interesting action was occurring at the front door, where several people were arguing.

  As we arrived, the officer we had left at the door was blocking the entrance, preventing people from getting inside, including one very attractive and angry fairy. The officer looked relieved when he saw us. “Here he is now, ma’am. Lieutenant Detective Murdock is ranking officer. Sir, this is Community Liaison Officer macNeve.”

  “We’ve met,” said Murdock.

  Keeva macNeve spun on her heel to face us in full intimidation mode. She had her wings unveiled and shot a little essence into them to make the silvery gossamer flicker yellow and white. All five-foot-eight of her projected anger and authority. I love Keeva in a lather. She’s very good at it. She even somehow gets her mop of red hair to undulate. And to her credit, it works most of the time to get her what she wants.