Unperfect Souls Read online

  Of course, I couldn’t ignore the Guildmaster’s role in all of it. Eagan typically knew more than he let on and never made a move without a calculation. He wanted both Nigel and Moira to see me at the house and me to see them. Whether I wanted to be or not, he’d put me in play.

  My various mentors taught me many different things, but they all agreed that the first move in avoiding a trap was recognizing that a trap existed. The second was deciding whether to step out of the trap or turn it on whoever set it. But first I had to figure out whose trap it was and whether it was for me or someone else.

  4

  Snow crystals pelted against my face as I hustled down Old Northern Avenue. The street had started life as an industrial service road, and it still was. That made it wide and open to accommodate trailer trucks and other large vehicles. Which meant it was one big wind tunnel connecting Fort Point Channel with the Reserve Channel. Whichever way the wind blew, it blasted its way down the street.

  A bank of clouds had descended on the city as night fell. We hadn’t had a real snowstorm yet, but in New England storms weren’t as much a question of when as how much. The tiny ice particles whirling about weren’t real precipitation but a condensation of harbor and channel air that was still cold and annoying.

  The Avenue met Congress Street at a vague boundary between the commercial end of the street, where fey folk also lived, and the industrial end, where people worked. I had seen more than a few fistfights along these sidewalks, more so in recent days.

  Tainted essence floated through the Weird, the residue of a major spell that had gone wrong earlier this year at a place called Forest Hills. The Taint was the last thing the neighborhood needed, yet was the one thing it seemed to have in abundance. When fey folk came in contact with it, the damaged essence provoked their worst aggressions. In the Weird, that made bad things worse, especially with the stresses caused by the police crackdown.

  The Taint avoided me. Something about the dark mass in my head made it recoil. Like the cloud that curled around me near the end of Congress Street. In my sensing ability, the green essence with black splotches looked like a dirty wave. It didn’t touch me.

  The Weird comes alive at night. It’s when most of the neighborhood plies its trade, either legal or not. I’ve never been a morning person, so it suits me. After I got back from Eagan’s place, I put the word out that I was interested in the dead body at the headworks. That meetings often get set up in bars suits me fine as well, so when Meryl Dian came through with a connection, Murdock and I made plans to meet her at one of my regular haunts.

  Congress ended at a small side street with no name that leads to a soot-stained door with a “Y” painted in the middle of it. Yggy’s started out life as a tavern long before Convergence. Some claimed the place had a certain air of otherness even before the fey arrived. Whatever the truth of it, the bar had been in continuous operation for over a century and appealed to a rough-and-tumble crowd that occasionally wanted a drink without worrying about a knife in the gut. I nodded to the coat-check girls who guarded an empty cloakroom. People used the coat check to ogle the girls and not much else. If you crossed someone at Yggy’s, the last thing you had time for was picking up your coat as you ran out the door.

  By midnight, patrons filled the seats at the large square bar, and only cramped standing space remained. The crowd spilled onto the unused dance floor while a cluster of regulars worked the pool tables. The place smelled of old cigarette smoke and beer, wet clothing and a singed- fabric odor that was the essence-fire equivalent of gunshot residue.

  My essence-sensing ability made it easy to find a human signature at Yggy’s, but I didn’t see Murdock. Humans were welcome—everyone was—as long as they weren’t tourists, gawking tourists, or gawking tourists with cameras. The clientele consisted mostly of fey folk. That was one of the attractions of the bar—the one place in the Weird, if not the entire city, where the fey could gather on neutral territory.

  Behind the bar, Meryl Dian flipped glasses and poured shots. Apparently, in addition to her talents as archivist extraordinaire, formidable druidess, and scathing intellect, she knew how to sling booze. Even if she weren’t on center stage, it would have been hard to miss her in a black leather bustier and black jeans. Plus, she had let her hair grow to her shoulders. Red. This week. A bright red, a hue short of fire truck.

  A gust of cold wind rolled in as the door opened and closed, and I sensed Murdock before I saw him. His dark eyes swept the bar, assessing the layout and the patrons. “Meryl need to moonlight?” he asked.

  “You never know with Meryl,” I said.

  I didn’t know which was stranger. Finding Meryl bartending at Yggy’s or Murdock wearing a Red Sox hoodie and jeans. He downright looked like an average Southie guy. Last time I brought him to Yggy’s, he wore clothes that screamed police officer. Our friendship started out as a way for him to understand the people who lived where he worked. While the fey tended to accept people despite appearances, they also reacted accordingly. Cops were not their best friends down there. Murdock was starting to get it.

  A tall wood-ash fairy from one of the minor Irish clans paused in front of us with two glasses on a tray. She handed me a Guinness and a glass of seltzer with lime to Murdock. Meryl caught my eye as she rang up a sale and nodded toward the back of the room. Murdock and I threaded our way through the crowd and found an empty booth near the pool table. He took the corner because he liked to face the room whenever he was in a bar.

  I plucked the stir straw from his nonalcoholic drink and tossed it at him. “You’re not on duty.”

  He pulled the napkin from under his glass and wiped up a few spots of moisture on the table. “Technically, no. But it’s not a bad habit.”

  I sipped my beer. Perfect temperature, not too cold or warm. “I like my bad habits.”

  Murdock shook his head. “You do not. You rationalize them.”

  Meryl arrived with her own Guinness and dropped into the seat next to Murdock. “That was fun.”

  “Making a little extra money for the holidays?” Murdock asked.

  She grinned. “Just flexing some old muscles.” She dropped her eyes to his clothes. “I didn’t know Brooks Brothers sold jeans.”

  He feigned insulted disbelief. “Hey! They’re Levi’s!”

  She wiggled her shoulders. “Oooo, trendy! Was your Members Only jacket in the wash?”

  Murdock tilted his brow toward me. “Some help here would be nice.”

  I laughed. “Not me. I get in enough trouble with her.”

  Meryl nudged him with an elbow. “You should let me trick you out with some clothes, Murdock. Shake up your image a little.”

  He sipped his seltzer. “I have enough image problems at the moment.”

  “Your father again?” I asked. We had Police Commissioner Scott Murdock to thank for the aggressive curfews in the Weird. He pushed for them, and the mayor jumped.

  Murdock slipped the napkin back under his glass. “He wants me to transfer to Back Bay.”

  Meryl pursed her lips. “Not a lot of murder in Back Bay.”

  “Exactly. He wants me out of the Weird. It’s undermining his image,” Murdock said.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  I let it drop. Talking about his father was a touchy subject at the best of times. Murdock had caught the backlash of a spell a few months ago and somehow ended up with the fey ability to produce a body shield. It wasn’t something he’d shared with his father, as the commissioner hated the fey. The way things went between them, I guessed he wouldn’t tell him for a long, long time.

  “Is your friend coming?” I asked Meryl. Meryl knew more people in town than anyone. How she juggled her impressively busy social life with work was a mystery to me. After telling her earlier about the sending I had received at the headworks, she offered to connect me with a contact in the solitary community.

  She sipped her beer
. “Oh, he’s here. He’s being careful. Yggy’s makes for strange bedfellows, but people still speculate about who talks to whom in here.” She leaned out of the booth, then back. “He’s coming.”

  My essence-sensing ability did the looking. Essence sensing worked as a field around the body, so fey folk that have it literally can see behind themselves. Through the clutter of signatures, I recognized one moving toward the booth. A moment later, a solitary named Zev sat next to me. He was a friend—or maybe just an acquaintance—of Meryl’s, another in a series of mysterious connections she had the habit of making with unlikely people.

  Zev could never hide his place as a solitary in the fey world. His ochre skin had ripples and seams like tree bark, and black spiny growths dangled from his head like thick dreadlocks. White irises gave him an unnerving stare that I’m sure he used to great effect. Truth be told, he wasn’t the oddest solitary in the Weird, even with those eyes.

  He cracked a smile at Meryl, stained yellow teeth that almost matched his skin tone. “Hey, M, good to see you behind a bar again.”

  “Yeah, those were the days, huh? You remember Murdock and Grey?” she asked.

  He tilted a bottle of Bud to his lips. “Yeah. Last time I was in a bar with them, the place exploded.”

  “That was Meryl’s dancing,” Murdock said.

  “I seem to remember some hip-shaking from your direction,” I shot back.

  Zev shifted his eerie white eyes between us. “We here to joke or talk about what’s going on?”

  I leaned farther into the corner of the booth. “Okay. A corpse was found at the headworks. When I was there, someone threw me a sending that said he wasn’t the first victim. Since so many solitaries work there, we were hoping you might know someone willing to talk.”

  Zev shrugged. “I think an anonymous sending answers that question.”

  I glanced at Meryl. “So, why are we here?”

  Zev brought his attention to Murdock. “Why is he here? Cops aren’t doing anything down here these days except picking up Guild body bags.”

  Murdock didn’t hide the annoyance on his face. “You don’t know everything that’s going on. Police follow orders and do the job they’re told to do.”

  Zev twisted his lips. “I doubt you know everything either. What I know is that when the Guild isn’t pounding heads, someone else is cutting them off. I watched a solitary get stabbed to death by a Dead guy right in front of a cop, who did nothing.”

  “You know about other beheadings?” I asked.

  He took a deep swig of his beer. “Rumors, mostly. People have disappeared. So many people are in hiding, it’s hard to know who’s missing and who’s just scared. My friend Sekka is missing.”

  “The giantess chick from Bavaria?” Meryl asked. Zev nodded.

  “Could she have taken off?” Murdock asked.

  Zev shook his head. “Not Sekka. People looked to her for protection. She stood up to the Dead, and now she’s gone without a word.”

  He was about to say more but paused and cocked his head to the side. The sound in the room tapered off, the loud chatter of people at the bar fading away. A bubble of silence spread from the far side of the room. People watching the pool game looked up as others wandered away from the bar. In the gap left behind, a Dead elf dressed in an old-fashioned cloak and cap came into view. He watched the reaction around him with a faint smile that looked more nervous than amused.

  Meryl pursed her lips. “My guess is the elf farted.”

  Behind the pool table, a door swung inward. All eyes swept to the back of the room. If there was one thing unusual to see in Yggy’s, it was the door to the office open. Heydan’s tall, wide body filled the doorframe. He’s run Yggy’s for as long as anyone can remember. No one crossed Heydan. It was hard to say what kind of fey he was—tall enough for a Teutonic giant, but his essence resonated differently, something more organic or primal, like a forest or a lake.

  He waited until everyone focused their attention on him. When they did, he moved with a grace that belied his size. The halogen lights gleamed across his bald head, shadows throwing into relief the high- ridged bones that bulged under his skin from his temples and back around his ears. People said Heydan didn’t come out of his office because he could hear everything he needed to from inside. With a head like that, I believed it.

  He stopped opposite the Dead elf and rested his hands on the surface of the old wooden bar. His deep-set brown eyes examined the elf as if he were a piece of produce. No expression showed on his pale, stern face as he lifted a hand in a gesture that took in the room. “This is Yggy’s. All are welcome. No steel or stone, no staff or stench of essence. Words may start things here, but fists end them elsewhere. All are welcome who abide. Do you abide?”

  For all his status as Dead, the elf paled with fear. He laid a hand across his heart and bowed. “It would be my pleasure, good innkeeper.”

  “I am not an innkeeper. I watch and listen. Tell your brethren all are welcome who abide,” Heydan said. Without waiting for a response, he retraced his steps. He hesitated when he drew even with our booth and looked at me. An eyebrow twitched as he broke his gaze. He glanced down at Meryl, a brief smile breaking his firm face, and he caressed the top of her head as he passed. The office door closed behind him with an audible click. The room broke into a babble of sound.

  We all stared at Meryl. She pursed her lips. “I suggest no one else try that,” she said.

  Zev made a sharp noise in his strange lump of a nose. “Even the one who watches allows the Dead to roam.”

  “That’s what he does, Zev. He watches,” said Meryl.

  Curious, Murdock craned his head toward the office door. “What is he watching?”

  Meryl shrugged. “I have no idea, but he doesn’t let anyone interfere.”

  “The Dead are doing the beheadings,” Zev said, returning to what we’d been discussing before the Dead elf showed up. “They’ve been hanging at the old Helmet. They call it Hel now.”

  “The corpse we saw was a Dead guy. Why would they kill their own?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Death is a game to them. I don’t care what they do to each other. But now they’re going after solitaries, and the police and the Guild aren’t doing anything about it. No one misses solitaries.”

  “How many, Zev?” I asked.

  He leveled his white gaze at me. “How many do you need?”

  I frowned. “It makes a difference in how to approach an investigation, Zev. Get the chip off your shoulder.”

  “Four that I know of.”

  Meryl downed her beer. “The Dead are playing the same games they played in TirNaNog. Dying is an inconvenience if you just wake up again the next day. I think we’re seeing a power struggle.”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked.

  She twirled her glass. “The missing head. Someone’s playing for keeps. Without the head, the Dead can’t regenerate.”

  With a smug look, Zev hunched over his bottle. “We don’t have to hide from someone who can’t regenerate.”

  I had a feeling that what decapitation meant to the Dead wasn’t news to Zev. “Sounds to me like some solitaries have figured out a way to level the playing field for themselves,” I said.

  It didn’t bode well for anyone.

  5

  Meryl didn’t come home with me, which wasn’t always a given. Probably a good thing, considering that Eorla Kruge, the Teutonic representative on the Guildhouse board of directors, projected herself into my dreams that night. I knew it wasn’t an ordinary dream because the vision was wrapped in Eorla’s body signature. Damned surprising to have a beautiful elven woman appear asking me to come see her, especially when she’d neglected to wear clothing. I can’t say it wasn’t arousing.

  I stared at the meager collection of clothes in my closet. It seemed only courteous to dress up a little more than normal. Eorla’s status as elven royalty played only a small role in the decision. She knew I wasn’t thrilled about
monarchies and wouldn’t expect full court regalia from me anyway. Where some people—like my former Guild partner Keeva macNeve—reveled in the antiquated system, Eorla was more indifferent to it all. Still, she was a business-woman, so worn-out jeans with holes in them weren’t appropriate. A clean pair of black dress slacks and a black turtleneck would work.

  I left myself plenty of time to get to the Consortium consulate in Back Bay, so I could take the T instead of a cab. The Boston subway system wasn’t the fastest in the world, but it worked, and I didn’t have to tip anyone. Money was still not my best friend. At least, it neglected to show up when invited.

  Copley Square was bustling with shoppers. December brought a gift-giving holiday to the fey as well as humans. Which meant it was the time of year when people argued over whose holiday first included decorated evergreen trees or whose deity laid claim to an actual birthday and on and on and on. Me, I liked exchanging sweaters. Boston is too damned cold in the winter.

  Not far outside the square, a tall, slender statue of Donor Elfenkonig, the Elven King, guarded the Teutonic Consortium consulate on Commonwealth Avenue. The Teutonic fey may have respected their warrior-king, but they also feared him. Donor’s rule was driven by dominance over his competitors and opposition to High Queen Maeve at Tara. For years while I worked for the Guild, I spent time in counterintelligence against his operatives.

  A vapor of pale essence drifted off the statue and floated in the direction of the Guildhouse across town. I never noticed it before. It was so subtle I doubted many other fey could see it. It wouldn’t surprise anyone, though. Once upon a time, the statue had included a niding pole with a cursing spell. The horse skull at the top of the staff was long gone, but everyone assumed the curse still existed. Throwing bad vibes at each other was standard procedure for the Guild and the Consortium.