Unshapely Things Read online

  "Are you meeting someone?" I asked. We joined the early-evening crowd making its way into the neighborhood. At this point in the evening, they were people catching a show down at the old theater and some middle-aged folks who get a thrill at being near the edge. They'd all be gone by ten o'clock. That's when the people who really owned the place took over. Murdock looked around without meeting my gaze. "It's just a drink."

  "Anyone I know?"

  "No, she's nice," he said.

  "Very funny," I said. "Where are you meeting?"

  "The Ro'Ro'." The Rose Rose was what someone's Irish mother would call a nice place just off the Avenue on B Street. It had warm wooden booths around a main seating area that was filled with little tables cozy for four. Behind a beveled-glass partition was a long mahogany bar for more serious drinking. It was well lit, not too smoky, and had great entertainment, from bands to a cappella singers. It's what the Weird could be if someone cared more about it.

  "Oh, so it's serious," I teased.

  "It's just a drink. She's there with some friends," he said.

  We reached the intersection of Pittsburgh Street and stopped. Murdock was obviously not inviting me along. We hadn't quite gotten to the point in our friendship where we partied together. Admittedly, I had never asked Murdock to join me for a night on the town. The only places I went served beer, shots, and fistfights, not the kind of situation a detective likes to find himself in without police backup. I wasn't exactly looking for potential relationships at this point of my life either. I knew Murdock well enough to know he could be respecting the fact that I might be uncomfortable in a date atmosphere since I hadn't seen anyone in a while, or he could be tacitly making the point that I didn't invite him so he wasn't inviting me. Probably both. He was rather efficient. He was also nice enough not to tell me to buzz off. We stood awkwardly on the corner as though waiting for something to happen.

  "Well, I guess I'll catch up with you later," I finally said.

  "Call me if you think of anything. Have a good night." And he was off into the crosswalk.

  I made my way back up the Avenue until I came to the mask store. Murdock wasn't too far off when he brought up the Guild. It was a cutthroat environment. High levels of ability tended to come with high-maintenance personalities that did not necessarily enjoy working together. Competition for recognition and promotion was fierce. You played your cards close to the vest and only tipped the hand on a need-to-know basis. The payoff is money, stardom, and power. The risk is simply failure at all three. You could fall a lot faster and further than you could rise. I had been damned good at it.

  If the truth be known, I had been gunning for the top. The Top. Guildmaster of Boston. Throughout the last century, most of the Guildmasters have been fairies, reflecting the fact that the Seelie Court paid the bills. No elf had ever run the place and probably never would. For all the talk of truce, the old animosity between elves and fairy remained strong. A handful of druids and druidesses had had short tenures. Enough to make me think I could do it.

  But then, as they say, tragedy struck. My security clearance was revoked before I even left the hospital. The Guild has strict rules that allow only those with high-level ability to have high-level access. A year later I lost my Beacon Hill condo, but most of my so-called friends stopped calling long before then. The only people that stood by me were Stinkwort, Briallen, my family, and some casual acquaintances from outside the Guild.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized what Murdock said was true. I wasn't used to working with somebody, never mind as the junior partner. I might have more knowledge about fey folk, but he brought sanctioned authority to the table. Without him, I was just a loose cannon neither the Guild nor the Boston P.D. wanted. And without either of them, I was just a washed-up druid with no prospects.

  Turning away from the store, I could see the Flitterbug on the opposite side of the street. Above its dark red metal door hung a dim sign with three sets of wings that flickered more from dying neon than artistic effect. Most people walked right past it, on their way to more brightly lit bars of marginally higher repute. I crossed the street against traffic to a hail of car horns.

  As I pulled on the door, I sensed a warding, vague and subtle, that was quickly washed away by the essences that escaped from within. Many fey places used them, mostly as protection charms, to keep away bad influences. Of course, bad influence is a matter of perspective. They could be keyed to just about anything, from police badges to specific people, depending on need and ability of the warder. For the Flitterbug, I sensed it was more likely the boys in blue.

  A sense of staleness overwhelmed my senses as I stepped inside, and the door closed behind me. Stale beer. Stale smoke. Stale sweat. Residual essences of all manner of people lingered in the air. The entire room ran about fifty feet back. The place was dark, halogen lights purposefully providing little illumination beyond their fixed spots, and red and blue lasers crisscrossed the ceiling. A sound system played house music very loudly to an empty dance floor right near the front. A row of cramped cocktail tables fit along one wall, which consisted of one long banquette of indeterminate color. The opposite wall was taken up by the bar itself.

  It was early yet, just a couple of elves at a table talking. The Flitterbug was one of those places that saw most of its action when the majority of the population was home sleeping.

  I went to the bar, where a dwarf stood wiping down the pitted wooden surface. He was about three and half feet tall and wore Levi's with an old black T-shirt. His gnarled features had a sooty cast, as though he had just toiled up out of a coal mine without washing. Some kind of gel plastered dark hair to his head, the side part razor-sharp in the dim light.

  "I'll have a Guinness," I said. His eyes flickered up at me a moment, then he walked down the elevated planking behind the bar to the taps. He returned with the smallest beer I'd seen in a long time. He went back to his wiping.

  "You work here this week?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "Yeah."

  I pulled the police sketch out and slid it near him. "Recognize him?"

  He looked over my shoulder to check out the elves. "You didn't pay for your beer," he said without pausing his fruitless cleaning. I placed a ten on the bar next to the sketch. The bill disappeared into his pocket in one smooth motion. "He looks like every other old geezer that hobbles in here."

  "He has an odd voice. Maybe kind of screechy or raspy?" I said.

  The dwarf shrugged again. "I need more than that." I placed another ten on the bar. "Yeah, I think I remember someone like that."

  "Remember which day?"

  He finally gave up with the rag and gave me a long, considered look. A sly smile came over his face. "You act like Guild, but you don't look it. I'm thinking you want me to say 'Tuesday.' How about another beer, friend?"

  I hadn't touched the first. I didn't think I would, which is saying something considering some of the places I've passed the evening. I put another ten down. Murdock was going to kill me when I turned in the expense report. The bill disappeared. "He was in here last Tuesday. I saw him talking to a street kid named Shay, then the dopey kid that got killed."

  "Shay? Guy that looks like a girl?" I said.

  The bartender nodded. "And a little bitch, too. Some friends of mine worked with him for a while, but he was holding out on them."

  I pursed my lips in thought a moment. "Ever seen them together before?"

  He shrugged and began wiping down the bar again. "Naw. Just that night. Seen the guy before though. He was in here a lot last fall. Always sat in the corner. Didn't drink. Just looked. Then he disappeared. We get all kinds in here, but he just felt creepy. I may not be in your league, but I can sense a fairy from a druid from a toad. I don't know what the hell this guy was, but he wasn't normal."

  "Thanks," I said. Without another word, he went to the far end of the bar and continued wiping.

  I was intrigued that Shay hadn't mentioned he had talked with the presu
med suspect. I wondered whether he had something to hide and, if he did, why he would come forward with information that might reveal it. Murdock had cautioned me not to underestimate him. When he said that, he had meant it as a compliment to the kid. Now I didn't think he'd be so sure that was a good thing.

  Back on the sidewalk, I hunched my shoulders against the spring chill. It had reached the point in the evening when the neighborhood paused, taking a deep breath as the yuppie crowd left for safer entertainment, while the people who truly called the place home crawled out into the night. As I moved along the street, the faces that passed were a little more grim or desperate or secretive. The voices of groups seemed louder, as though the sound of laughter itself could ward off danger. Traffic slowed as cars cruised for a quick connection for drugs or a warm body.

  As if on cue, a shout went up across the street. People hustled themselves away from a boarded-up storefront like rats abandoning ship. I could see a small cluster of men, boys actually, arms flailing about in a classic brawl. I was halfway across the street before I remembered things like this were no longer my first line of business. Plus I was alone.

  One of the boys became airborne and landed on a parked car. I heard a string of curses in German, and the object of their pounding came into view. A dwarf swung his fists like anvils, and another two guys went flying. The remaining hoods circled around him just out of reach. Xenos out for a little bashing. Seeing it was four on one, I decided, outnumbered or not, I had to dive in. Just as I stepped up on the curb, my ride to the rescue was cut short. Three more dwarves came running toward the scene, shouting for all they were worth. The remaining gang members rethought their stupidity and ran off.

  "I could've handled them," the dwarf said to his newfound comrades.

  "Yeah, well, you shouldn't've had to," said one of them. They walked away grumbling.

  Back in my apartment, I dropped onto the futon and watched TV until I could almost recite the news myself. Seelie Court and the Teutonic Consortium were in their final round of talks at the Fey Summit in Ireland. Several key issues remained to be resolved, notably the autonomy of elfin and dwarvish colonies in eastern Germany and the structure of a proposed Fey Court having authority over both parties. The Celtic and Teutonic fey had been fighting forever, it seemed. Territorial wars that began centuries ago had mutated into ideological political differences. The Convergence at the turn of the last century complicated the issues significantly, with the Teutonic Consortium demanding more funds allocated to research affecting a return to Faerie and the Seelie Court pressuring the Consortium to confront the issues of living in this new reality. The only issue on which both parties agreed was that neither could pursue their primary agendas without the other. The Fey Summit was only the most recent attempt to avoid all-out war.

  A small reference to the murders came in the context of the mayor's decision to put a greater police presence on the streets. But even then, the murders were mentioned almost as an aside, the report instead focusing on traffic control during the festival. If the killer was looking for notoriety, he picked the wrong victims. I finally just turned the set off and went to bed for a restless sleep, disturbed by dreams bordering on nightmares.

  Chapter 4

  First thing Saturday, I took a run along the waterfront. Between the gym and the running, I'd gotten myself in the best physical shape I'd ever been in. I took a complicated path along crumbling sea walls, wooden planks thrown across gaps between piers, cracked-pavement parking lots, and rusting rail tracks. The area's history can be read in the remnants of old buildings and twisted alleys marking the neighborhood's evolution from a fishing ground to a working port to a train yard to a warehouse district to, finally, the Weird.

  The neighborhood's current residents left their imprint everywhere. Spirit jars crowded along building gutters; random graffiti resolved itself into ogham if you knew how to read it; boards and stones inscribed with old runes lay obscured by weeds; and spent candle stubs littered the docks like confetti. Sometimes the various charms, tokens, and wards gave off such a resonance that I could feel a static discharge lifting the hairs on my arms and legs.

  It was one of those early-June mornings that tease you with the promise of summer, the sunlight warm on your face, the sky a rich blue. The wind off the harbor usually knocks the temperature down to a steady chill, but that day it barely registered. My route took me down into South Boston, which those raised there proudly called Southie. It's an old Irish neighborhood, born of the famine in the old country that brought a deluge of immigrants. No surprise the fey folk gravitated to Boston after them. I ran past men washing their cars and kids playing in the streets while middle-aged women chatted in front of the grocery store. All the things that transpire in a nice neighborhood in a perfect world.

  I hit the end of the causeway boulevard out to Fort Independence. The old Revolutionary War fortification sits at the end of a spit with a strategic view of the city. Proper residents call it Castle Island, in deference to the fact that it was once actually an island before all the landfill projects connected it to the rest of the neighborhood. To the uninitiated, the old fort looks like a castle, with its granite sides and five batteries. On summer weekends after Memorial Day, costumed tour guides provide a little local color about the interior portions. Gauging the crowd trooping out for the views, I decided to skip the fort and loop back through Southie to my apartment.

  I slid into my chair before the computer. During my run, I had considered whether I might be approaching the ritual aspect of the murder from the wrong direction. The correct solution to a problem is often the simplest one: If a ritual popped up in a murder scene, then there had to be a tidy proscribed ritual written down somewhere to explain it. A fine premise, provided, of course, you had a way of researching every conceivable ritual. That was where the trail became a bramble. Everything is simply not written down.

  But a ritual is merely a means to an end. With the right amount of ability, the correct elements at hand, and the will to use them both, any number of people can perform the same ritual, but for very different ends. I had gotten so focused on the "how" of the Tuesday Killer, I had lost track of the "why."

  After my accident, I threw myself into figuring out what was wrong with me. Like everyone who has ever had a serious physical ailment, I started reading and researching until I was more of an expert than the experts. And I came to the same conclusion they had: diagnosis unknown. The biggest problem was that I had a physical ailment that wasn't particularly physical. The darkness in my mind had no mass, no real physical manifestation other than an unexplainable blackness that showed up in every conceivable diagnostic available. Whatever it was, it short-circuited my attempts to activate my abilities on any appreciable level. If I pushed it, my mind felt like it was shattering into shards of glass. Push it far enough, and I blacked out. That fact led me to the assumption that the mass was some kind of energy intimately linked to the essence of being fey.

  One shelf of my study was crammed with books dedicated solely to the question of essence. In every age people have examined the issue of what made the fey fey. That interest had accelerated in the last century as more and more humans had the opportunity to join the investigation. At the risk of sounding elitist, the modern druids tended to have some of the best philosophical writings on the subject. We have a long history of researching the world around us.

  I pulled down a slim volume called The Essence of Essence. Briallen had given it to me long ago because it was a particular favorite of hers. The unknown author, who I suspected was actually Briallen, took a spiritual approach, heavy on the connectivity of all things. The crux of the discussion poses that everything, organic and inorganic, has an intangible form of energy we have come to call essence, from the most powerful fairy queen to the lowliest pebble. Inorganic matter tends to hold essence uniformly throughout. What prompted me to open the book, though, was its claim that living beings, by virtue of their organic nature, have their essence
centered in one place. The heart.

  Because of the nature of the murders, I had speculated to Murdock that the ritual might involve the giving or taking of power. Most fey know intuitively that the heart holds the essence of their being. The mind might activate our abilities, but the power is drawn from one of the most protected organs in the body. We can feel it whenever we cast the yew rod, breathe over a scrying pool, or summon a friend.

  But I had sensed no ritual residue at either the second or third murder scenes. Murdock hadn't called me in until the second murder, but given how things had been playing out, I doubted there was anything at the first scene I would have picked up. The key, as far as I was concerned, was that the hearts were taken. On the basest level, serial killers like to keep souvenirs of their deeds. It gives them a sense of accomplishment and power. Factor in the essence issue and the fact that the removed hearts would retain their power for quite a while, and Power in a more real sense came into play.

  My chair protested with a loud squeal as I sat bolt upright. There was no residual ritual magic at the scenes. Maybe the killings weren't the ritual. I had been sitting around trying to understand the reason why the garden was weeded when the herbs were in the pot. The murders could have merely been a means of acquiring hearts for something else. I spun my chair back to the books lining the far wall, ready to dive into researching this new line of thought, when I heard the very loud sound of someone clearing his throat in the next room. As I jumped up, my body warding came up so suddenly the back of my head screamed in protest. I stepped into the living room.

  Stinkwort sat on the edge of the kitchen counter with a half-eaten Oreo in his hand. "Got any milk?" he asked around a mouthful of cookie.

  Anger and relief swept over me as I murmured the short incantation that dissipated the body ward. It was one of a very few spells I could still work. "Can't you knock?" I said.