Unquiet Dreams cg-2 Read online

  He pulled a long face. “I’ll put it back then. You could have been clearer.”

  “Where was it?”

  “On a roof four or five buildings over that way,” he said. As he pointed, he almost lost the shoe. I resisted the urge to grab it.

  “Please, put it back exactly where it was and in the same position. I’ll meet you there. Wait for me in front of the right building so I can find it.”

  “What if someone sees me?” he said.

  “That’s the least of my concerns right now, Joe. No one’s going to see you if you don’t want them to.” Most flits are shy to the point of reclusiveness. They’ve set themselves up for a vicious circle, though. They’re shy because their size often gives them unwanted attention, but because they’re rarely seen, they attract even more attention when they do appear. It wasn’t so bad in the Weird, since fey of different sizes were hardly unusual. Joe’s usually not so sensitive to it, but I could tell I upset him. He’ll get over it because he understands enough about my job to know he screwed up.

  He turned the shoe and flew off. Skipping the shortcut through the mud, I made my way around the field to the next street over. More empty buildings, though a few of these looked like they might be inhabited. Rough curtains hung in warehouse windows, and sometimes people even showed their faces through sooty glass. This end of the Avenue was not known for entertainment. It was close to the Tangle, which meant trouble, so only the truly desperate lived here or, ironically, the kind of people that the desperate feared.

  At the top of a building stoop, I found Joe standing defiantly in full view of the street. I knew he’d get over it.

  “Sorry,” he said as I walked up the steps.

  “Yeah, I know. I didn’t mean to yell. Can I get up to the roof from here?”

  He nodded. “It’s empty as far as I can tell. Smells bad, too, and not in a good way.”

  I pursed my lips, then decided not to ask for a clarification of that last part. We entered the building through a smashed-open door. Joe hovered over my right shoulder as we ascended the stairs. He was right. The place stank, bodily secretions being the main culprit. The sagging staircase rose dimly before me and would have had the same gray, dingy look should sunlight ever penetrate. Spray-painted graffiti was most evident the first two flights, in several languages and three alphabets, but dwindled as we went upward. The smell faded, too, but that was probably due more to open windows allowing wind through than any diminishment of the source.

  The stairs topped out at the roof through a small, doorless penthouse enclosure. The sun blinded me briefly after the dark interior of the building. I examined the roof surface before stepping out. In this part of town, rotting roofs come with the package. This one looked more solid than most. Others had been there before, demonstrated by three mismatched lawn chairs, a wooden telephone cable spool set on its side as a table, and enough empty bottles and cans to open a recycling center.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  Joe put on a mock-curious face. “What? You mean that strange orange Nike shoe sneaker over there by the washing machine that I’ve never seen before in my life?”

  I can’t stay angry at Joe for long. Annoyed yes, but it’s not in his nature to provoke me, and he always feels bad when he does. “That would be the one,” I said.

  I walked over to the incongruity that was a washing machine on a roof. Whenever I see something like that, I wonder about the motivation of the people who put it there, why it occurred to them to lug something so heavy to such an odd place. The Nike lay on its side near it. I could only sense Joe’s essence at the spot, so that was a good sign that no else had been there. It helped confirm my suspicion that the kid lost it in the air.

  “Well, at least your essence fades quickly. No one will find it if they look.” Flit essence can be elusive. Flits being so small, their essence fades almost instantly under most conditions.

  I scanned the nearby buildings. We were about a quarter mile away from the field where the kid had ended up. I couldn’t see any sight lines that might produce witnesses, just other roofs that no one would likely be on in the rain and cold of the previous night. Off to the south, someone floated up into view. Even at this distance, I could see a slight distortion in the air that indicated wings. The sun glinted off something metallic. The chrome helmet of a Guild security guard. He drifted back down.

  I brought my attention back to the running shoe. Having been out in the rain, it had no more essence on it than the kid’s other clothing. I squatted down to look more closely. A few dark spots flecked the visible side.

  “Joe, after you picked this up, did it touch the ground again or did anything drip on it?”

  Stinkwort pulled his head out of the washing machine. “No. I picked it up by the laces and put it back exactly how I found it.”

  I leaned as close as I could get my nose to the Nike without falling over. When you work for the Guild, no one blinks an eye at what a druid might do to sense essence. When you’re all alone on a roof with nothing to identify you as an investigator, you look like a guy with a shoe fetish. I hoped no one could see me. I waited for any essence to assert itself. After a long moment, just the slightest hint whispered up to me, so faint I was worried I might be imagining it. Elf essence. Only one thing would retain any indication of essence after that much rain. Blood.

  I looked back toward the Tangle, then turned to sight the line to the field. The shoe was almost on a straight line between Kruge’s storefront and the dead kid. Could be a coincidence. Or could be this wasn’t just a gang feud.

  “Did anyone see you, Joe?”

  His eyes narrowed at me. “Just some dwarves.”

  “Black hoodies? Yellow bandanas?”

  He nodded. “I don’t want to ask. Why?”

  I shrugged. “Just curious. There’s some elf blood on the shoe.”

  He gave me an exasperated look. “Just some elf blood, he says. Like one of the most famous elves in the city didn’t just get exploded up the street on the same night. Like, oh, did you happen to see a gang of marauding dwarves, he says. Nothing to worry about, Joe. Nope, nope, nothing at all.”

  “You’re letting your imagination run away with you, Joe,” I said. “I’m sure it’s just coincidental.”

  “Just because it’s a coincidence, doesn’t mean I can’t get killed because I touched some smelly Ikey.”

  “Calm down, Joe. And it’s a Nike. And it doesn’t smell. It’s brand-new.”

  “Except for the elf blood,” he said.

  I tried to give him a reasonable look. “It’s just a little. Hardly any. I can’t even tell if it’s Alvud Kruge’s.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I feel so reassured.”

  “Look, Joe, it’s a gang feud, pure and simple. He could have picked up the elf blood anywhere. He had an odd mix of essence on him, so there’s no telling where he got it. Murdock and I are running the gang angle, and once he gets some gang names to contact, this will be all over. No one even knows you were involved.”

  He looked at me unconvinced. “You forget the marauding dwarves.”

  “They weren’t marauding, and unless dwarves can suddenly fly, there’s no reason for them to connect you to a shoe on a roof they couldn’t even see.”

  He nodded. A sly look came over his face. “I bet you want to know about gangs.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  He smiled knowingly. “I know someone who can help you. Knows all the gangs from here to Southie. Want me to set up a meeting?”

  Joe is not a poker player. Every once in a while, he gets it in his head that I’m lonely. So he finds some poor soul that he thinks is just perfect for me. The problem is, most of the time “just perfect” to Joe means “odd person I met that no one else will go out with.” All evidence to the contrary, I tend to be a little more discriminating. “I don’t need a date, Joe.”

  “No! Honor spit! I really know someone who knows gangs and would be juiced to talk to you.”
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br />   “Okay, set it up, then. I’ll bring Murdock.”

  He hesitated for a moment, which made me think he might be fibbing about a date. “Okay. That’s okay. Just don’t say Murdock’s a cop. He might not be happy about that.”

  “Fine,” I said. I pulled out my cell phone and called Murdock. He was not going to like how I was about to complicate the case.

  Chapter 4

  In spite of being amused by Stinkwort’s paranoia, I was getting uncomfortable standing in front of the building waiting for Murdock. Clearly, word had spread about our presence on the street. An assortment of people found time to stroll by with no apparent errand in mind. A few peered at us curiously, as if a stranger hanging out in front of an abandoned building was surprising in this part of town. To a certain extent, it probably was. Around that part of the neighborhood, strangers didn’t like to attract too much attention unless they were trying to send a message. I hoped ours said keep away until the cops show up.

  Most people looked at us suspiciously, though. Joe’s marauding dwarves showed themselves down at the one corner. They numbered six now. One more, and they’d be a cliché.

  Murdock’s voice mail had picked up when I called, and he hadn’t called back yet. He usually called me back right away, but it had been almost twenty minutes. I didn’t want to leave a message about the running shoe at the station house without talking to him, though. It was his case, and he should be on-site when a unit came to pick up the evidence.

  Joe fidgeted about the stoop. “Do I have to stay? The windows across the street have eyes in them, and they’re not an even number.”

  “Yes, we have to see if Murdock wants to arrest you.”

  “What?” he shrieked. Several heads turned in an avid hope that some action was about to happen. We disappointed them.

  “Just kidding, Joe. We do need to tell him what happened. It’s up to him what he wants to report.”

  “Well, I wish he’d hurry up. I’m bored.”

  I just nodded. I was used to Joe’s definition of interesting. It had no logic to it, so I gave up trying to understand it years ago. I have seen him stare at a patch of grass for hours with an avidity I couldn’t fathom. And yet, here we were in one of the more sketchy parts of the Weird with a veritable parade of fey folk slinking by, and he was bored.

  I idly wondered if the Tangle were a taste of what Faerie was like, if the old country still existed. Few humans lived down this end of the neighborhood. Humans did live in Faerie, but none seemed to have come through the Convergence. The concentration of fey folk had to have been high in Faerie, by definition. With all that power, all that essence manipulation, it’s no surprise that legends portray the place as dangerous and precarious. Even in the short time we stood on the sidewalk, I could feel little spell pings tossed our way. I could no longer actively discern their exact nature, but having been in places like this before my accident, I could guess.

  Some people were probably checking to see if we were glamoured, most likely me. Flits don’t lend themselves to glamouring. They’re too small to pretend to be something else. Occasionally, they might glamour themselves as small animals or even plants, but it was much easier for them so use their own essence to fade from sight if they were trying to blend into their surroundings. Besides, they don’t really like using essence outside themselves, which is what a glamour is—essence concentrated in something like a necklace or a stone or a ring that operates almost independently of the user.

  Sometimes glamours are harmless, like enhancing one’s appearance. Everyone has something they wish they could change about themselves, and some people prefer glamours to a nip and tuck. Even that has its limits, though. More than a few people have gone home with a hot babe only to discover later they were with a woman in the geriatric league. Sometimes they are used for privacy, like when someone just wants to just go about their business without having to interact with people they know. Sometimes they’re meant to deceive, which I admit has come in handy with investigative work on occasion.

  Ultimately, glamours are lies. They go to the crux of relationships. If you can’t trust what you’re seeing, then maybe you can’t trust that person at all. And that’s why I kept getting pinged. When you live in a dangerous neighborhood, you want to know who is who and how much to be on guard around them.

  Beside me, Joe made a growling sound. A moment later, he threw a broadcast sending. We don’t have drugs!

  I chuckled. Half of the people who went by were using sendings to ask us for drugs. Certain sciences call it telepathy, but conceptually sendings are different. You impress auditory thoughts on essence and direct them where you want them to go. That’s a fey ability up and down. You get used to the little whispers in your mind, unless, of course, you’re annoyed because you’re bored.

  Joe flinched. “Ow! Did you feel that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Idiots,” he muttered.

  A short spasm in my head told me that someone had cast a spell nearby. Since my accident, some spells feel like a nail in my brain. I haven’t tracked the types that have the most effect to detect a pattern, but scrying definitely tops the list. Someone starts trying to predict the future, and it’s migraine hell. Whatever spell just went off wasn’t scrying, but the fact that Joe felt it as pain meant it was hard and crude in execution, the equivalent of someone blowing a whistle in your ear. It usually indicated someone who had little training or was in a big hurry.

  I looked at my watch. A half hour had gone by since I called Murdock. He tended not to call me only when he was either in a meeting or on radio silence. Then and during the occasional private recreational activity. It was a little early in the day as far as the latter, even for him, and he still called me if he were not too, let’s say, intimately distracted. It annoys the hell out of his dates.

  A waft of something acrid tickled my nose. “You smell that, Joe?”

  “That burning smell? I thought it was just part of the natural aroma of the street.”

  Others had picked up the scent. Heads turned, craning to look up at the buildings, consternation fixed on faces. I did it myself, but couldn’t see anything. The wind shifted, and the odor increased. A huge gust of wind came up, and a cloud of thick black smoke engulfed us from the doorway behind us. Tears burned in my eyes as I stumbled down the steps to the sidewalk. The wind shifted again, and I was able to see again. Joe popped into view directly in front of me. He must have winked out as soon as he sensed the smoke coming.

  I wiped my eyes and turned around. Smoke spewed from the upper stories of the building. Along the cornice, I could see flames. “Dammit! Joe, the shoe! Get the shoe!”

  He vanished, then reappeared immediately. “Okay, just to be clear this time, you want me to pick it up and bring it here, right?”

  “Yes. Go! Go!”

  I swore under my breath as he vanished again. It was the spell. Someone had been watching, someone who actually had a reason to watch us. Given the time delay, I’d go the minion route. Someone reported back to someone, and that someone ordered up a fire spell. I spun around to the street. In the gathering crowd, I could see the six dwarves that had lingered up the street. That didn’t mean there hadn’t been one I missed. Hell, they could have just used a cell phone.

  I stalked across the street toward them. It’s a measure of how my face must have looked, because the small crowd parted as I came up on the curb. I went up to the first dwarf, the same one whom I had spoken to earlier, and poked him on the shoulder. “Who’d you call? Moke?”

  At the mention of Moke, several onlookers moved farther back. A couple even turned heel and walked away. The dwarf looked down at his shoulder, then back at me. “Nobody.”

  I poked him again. “Was it Moke?”

  He grabbed my forearm with a hand like a vise grip, and my body shields activated. They’re not much good anymore, just enough to blunt the force of a blow, but I would still feel it. In my anger, I’d forgotten. You don’t poke a dwarf if you c
an’t follow through with a fight.

  “I said nobody.” He flung me away from him, and I sprawled into the street. As I got to my feet, he moved toward me. Before he reached me, a blur of pink light flashed between us, and he stopped.

  Joe hovered in front of the dwarf. In one hand, the charred remains of the Nike dangled. In the other, the sharp white flame of his sword pointed directly at the dwarf’s nose.

  “Got a problem, shorty?” Joe asked. He grinned, a tough, cold line across his face. Joe has a repertoire of grins. This one was for sending chills down the spine, and it works like you wouldn’t believe. The dwarf didn’t move and didn’t take his eyes off the blade. To the casual observer, it doesn’t look like much, just a few inches of narrow white light with flickers of blue flame surrounding it. But anyone who has ever faced a flit with a blade knows better. It’s sharp as a thought and burns with essence.

  “Let it go, Banjo. We’ve got company,” said one of the other dwarves.

  Banjo shifted his gaze to Joe’s face, then mine. He stepped back. A siren cut through the sounds the burning building was making. I felt more than saw a car pull up behind us quickly and stop.

  “We got better things to do,” Banjo said. He walked off, with his cadre of boys fast on his heels. Joe hovered after them a bit just to make sure they didn’t change their minds.

  “Everything okay here?”

  I turned to see Murdock leaning against his car. A collection of tough-looking elves and fairies wearing red and black leather posed on the other side of the car, an amusing visual effect he had no idea was going on. “Yeah, just a little arson and a smidge of street fighting.”

  Murdock smiled and nodded up the street at Joe. “He’s better than a Doberman.”

  I nodded, rubbing my shoulder. “Yeah, and more fun to drink with.”

  A deep horn blast announced the arrival of a fire truck. Murdock looked up at the burning building. “I’m going to guess that has something to do with the evidence you mentioned.”