Unshapely Things Read online

  The edge of the sun pierced the horizon. As if on cue, a small breeze rippled the boat's sail, and it started to move. I thought I could just make out the small figure of someone jumping back and forth to manipulate the boom. The sail caught, brilliantly white in the rising sun, and the boat began to cut sharply across the water.

  Getting out of bed, I pushed the futon aside and stood naked before the window. As the sun rose, I chanted an invocation of greeting, my arms upraised, my head thrown back. The morning light washed over me, my chant drawing its energy into me, renewing me. It was a minor feat, a most basic exercise. The equivalent of giving my essence a shower. It didn't hurt. In fact, it felt good. Very good. Briallen was right; if regaining what I knew meant starting from scratch, then that was what I had to do. Otherwise, I was just a boat waiting for a breeze.

  After I took a shower, I called Avalon Memorial and left a message for Gillen Yor, my healer. I had no sooner replaced the phone on its cradle than it rang. It was Gillen.

  I glanced at the clock. "Gillen, you're up early. I was just calling to make an appointment."

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "Nothing. I thought I'd come for another evaluation."

  "I was concerned something happened. How's noon?"

  "Only if you're not skipping lunch."

  "I'm the healer, Connor. You just show up for a change." The line went dead. As I replaced the receiver, I couldn't blame Gillen for his brusqueness. I had bailed out of more than one appointment.

  I spent the morning planning a course of study. My pride wouldn't let me seek a teacher, but for the steps I was going to take I didn't need one yet. I would start at the most rudimentary lessons and build from there, studying incantations, exercising my memory and doing small invocation spells to strengthen my core essence.

  A true druid never abandons the search for new knowledge. And the true druid can only continue by passing on the knowledge gained. I was qualified to teach, but I had let the world of the Guild seduce me into stepping away. It is possible to stay on the path and be in the Guild, but the choice to take the financial benefits for their own sake had proved too tempting for me.

  Ability is inborn, but only intense study brings out its potential. It takes endurance. Most people don't have the stamina or enough ability to walk the true path. They abandon their skills or leave the life of study for more worldly concerns, content to gauge the weather for the local village or give vague warning of coming events. They are no longer considered part of the circle, true druids of the path. If the truth of my condition were to be known, I had to discover the truth of myself first. I had to step back onto the path.

  At five minutes before noon, I dutifully sat in Gillen Yor's waiting room. As chief healer at Avalon Memorial, Gillen enjoyed a large office suite on the top floor of the ten-story building overlooking the Charles River and Cambridge. Several other people sat in various levels of anxiety around the room, most of them alone except a woman with a small boy who had a bent horn growing out of the side of his forehead. Looked to me like someone had been messing in his parents' potions cabinet. The phone on the abandoned receptionist's desk rang constantly while glow bees hovered around the empty chair.

  At precisely noon, Gillen Yor stalked into the waiting room from the outside corridor. He was a small, bony man, about five-foot-three, shiny bald on top, with a long, white beard. Penetrating dark brown eyes peered out from incredibly long eyebrows. Beneath his standard white lab coat, he wore navy blue pantaloons and brown suede boots that came up to his knees.

  "Grey," he barked without even looking around the room, and disappeared into his office.

  I got up and followed. He was already behind his desk as I entered, and when I sat down, he flicked his hand at the door. It slammed shut. He folded his hands on the clean desktop and leaned forward. "What's the matter?"

  I tried to relax. "I had dinner with Briallen last night, and she convinced me to try again."

  His eyes narrowed. "She's been treating you."

  "No! She checks me out every time I see her, but she doesn't actually treat me."

  "Good. It's bad enough you don't do what I tell you without someone else mucking about in that thick head of yours."

  The thing I loved about Gillen Yor was that you could never decide whether to laugh or to be angry at him. He was one of the most irascible people I'd ever met, and the best healer in the Northeast, if not the States. The story goes that when he decided to come to America decades ago, the Seelie Court demanded he remain in Ireland or on the Isle of Man. Gillen politely informed the queen that he was not one of her subjects. When she insisted, he left anyway, then sent her his business card with a note to call first for an appointment.

  He placed the palm of his hand on my forehead and muttered under his breath. A surge of heat pulsed through my head. A moment later, he removed his hand and took his seat. Talking to himself, he turned to his computer and began typing. From an angle, I could tell he had pulled up my records. His phone rang. He ignored it. He read the screen, scrolling down several times before turning back to me.

  "According to my notes, it hasn't changed," he said. His phone rang again. He glared at it but didn't pick up.

  "Briallen thinks I should be retraining myself to see if going through the process will help me regain my skills," I said.

  The phone rang again. He grabbed it and yelled into the receiver. "I'm at lunch." He slammed it down and looked back at me. "That's not a bad idea. We haven't really explored the extent of the blockage." The phone rang again. Gillen jumped up and stalked to the door, flinging it open. A cloud of glow bees swirled around him. I tried not to laugh as he batted them away. He moved out of view for a moment, yelling someone's name. He stuck his head back in. "I'll be right back. I have to go fire someone. Don't leave."

  I leaned across the desk to look at my file. Most of the entries were similar, noting the lack of progress. I slouched and looked around the room. My gaze fell back to the computer. I glanced at the door, then went around the desk.

  I pulled up the main menu and opened the clinical directory. I typed "ska" in the search window and immediately got a dictionary definition, not much different than Briallen's. There were referent links to incest, stillbirth, and cross-species progeny. The incest referent was just another definition linking back to the other two. I hit the jackpot with cross-species progeny. As part of a differential diagnosis link, the text recommended that a healer request the presence of a flit when dealing with patients who exhibit unusual congenital manifestations that could not be accounted for physically. Flits apparently have a unique sensitivity to cross-species progeny and might be able to identify a disruption in a patient's essence.

  I glanced anxiously at the door. Exiting the main menu, my patient record popped back up. I backed out of it to Gillen's main page access. Moving quickly, I jumped into various access links until I found case research. With mild misgivings, I punched in "cross-species" and got fourteen hits. Typing rapidly, I scanned abstracts of each file as fast as I could, dumped the information, and put my record back on the screen. I managed to get into my seat just as Gillen returned.

  Restless with annoyance, he sat behind his desk. "We'll have to schedule a real appointment, Connor. I thought I could fit you in today, but I can't. In the meantime, write up your plans and email them to me. I expect progress reports."

  "That's fine. I understand this was short notice." I rose and walked to the door. Noting the still-empty receptionist desk, I said, "I'll call at a better time to schedule."

  His eyes narrowed again, and he cocked his head toward his PC. "One thing you might practice is not leaving your damned essence all over the place. It's probably not a good thing in your line of work."

  Trying not to look guilty, I nodded. "I'll try."

  As I started to leave again, he called my name. "Just for the record, if the presence of your essence on my side of the desk is not a result of your condition, I'll make your current problems
seem like a mere distraction. Understood?"

  Now too guilty to hide it, I looked away. "Yes, Gillen. I'll see you soon."

  Outside the emergency exit, I scanned the street for Murdochs car. I had called him for a ride, and he was late. Boston's a small enough city to get around easily without a car, not that I could afford one, and most people walk. Even at a brisk pace though, Avalon Memorial is a good half hour from my place. I was not above scrounging a ride when I could. Just as I was about to give up on him and head to the subway, Murdock pulled into the fire lane. I removed a pizza box from the passenger seat and tossed it in the back.

  "Something wrong?" Murdock asked as he pulled onto Storrow Drive.

  "Nothing. Just a checkup. Don't talk. I'm trying to remember something," I said. While I could appreciate Murdock's concern for my health, I didn't want to forget what was in my head. As a child, I had received standard training once my druidic abilities presented themselves. By far the bulk of my education was oral, in keeping with tradition. As a result, I have excellent memorization skills. To the average person, they might even be considered extraordinary, but to the average druid, they were commonplace. Whether it was a true ability, or a convenient side effect of ability, I didn't know. Whichever, they're extremely helpful.

  He took us up on the elevated highway and coasted off again for the Summer Street exit. In moments, we were parked in front of my building. As I unlocked the building door, I noticed someone had scratched their initials in ogham letters and a numeric year date into the paint by the lock. I guess I should be grateful. Kids usually just broke the lock. Or the window. The art students constantly lost their keys and thought that was a solution.

  Murdock followed me upstairs. I let us in, waved vaguely at the refrigerator, and went into my study. Sitting at my computer, I entered the information from the abstracts. Murdock came up behind me sipping a glass of water. Once I had everything entered, I sat back and stared at the screen. If I told Murdock the whole truth, he'd chastise me and use the information anyway. I filled him in on my evening with Briallen and just told him that I got the information from a hospital source.

  "So what did you find?" he asked.

  I scrolled through my notes. "Two dwarf/human crosses, five human/fairy, two human/elf, and five fairy/elf."

  "Looks like we can toss the dwarf crosses," he said, reading over my shoulder. I nodded. The dwarf/human crosses had resulted in children more dwarf than human. I hadn't sensed any dwarf essence on the victims, either, so they didn't fit the profile.

  "Most of these kids didn't live past puberty," I said. I counted silently. "That leaves two human/fairy crosses, one human/elf, and three elf/fairy."

  "Why just the mother's names? Were the fathers not listed?"

  I shook my head. "Unless property or royalty are involved, the fey rarely maintain formal marriages. Women tend to raise girls alone and foster out boys."

  All the children seemed to suffer some kind of physical deformity in addition to diminished mental capacity. Not an unusual attribute, I noted with irony, in someone who butchers people. Particularly, violent tendencies didn't seem indicated in the material I had, but that didn't mean they didn't exist. The rest of the information was sketchy at best, the details of each child laid out in case files I hadn't had time to explore.

  "Okay, let's run 'em down," he said. He read over my shoulder. "I'll take Dealle Sidhe and Teri Esposito since they're both in the Boston area. I can call New York for Ann Cody."

  I printed out a copy for him. "I know someone in England, so it shouldn't take me too long to track down Cheryl Atworth. Germany might take a little longer—Gerda and Britt Alfheim sound pretty common. How are we doing with our decoy?"

  Murdock frowned and shrugged. "This is Boston, Connor, not Nordic country. Most of the force is Irish, Italian, and Hispanic."

  "You can't find one skinny blond cop? We only have twenty-four hours. Got a Plan B?"

  "I know you hate when I ask this, but is there anything you can do?"

  I tapped my fingers on the edge of my desk, suppressing my impatience. Murdock had every right to ask the question, and my usual annoyance with it came back to my conversation with Briallen. My annoyance wasn't about his expectation of easy answers. It was my inability to deliver them. "I'm trying, Murdock."

  "Have you called the Guild about the missing stones?" he asked.

  "Damn, I completely forgot," I said, grabbing the phone. I dialed the main number and asked for Meryl Dian, an old acquaintance in the Guild archives. Naturally, I was put on hold, the strains of plaintive flute music to soothe me while I waited.

  "Grey! Haven't heard that name in quite a while," Meryl said, when she picked up. I've been on leave."

  "Hmph. Fired's what I heard," she said. Startled, I didn't say anything for a moment. "I'm guessing you need a favor. What is it this time? The complete history of the ritual use of toadstools by tomorrow morning? No wait, you already asked for that. If you lost it, like you usually do, I kept a copy. Or maybe you'd like me to stay late and find the name of the last druid priestess of Ulster and those of her pets? I can rush it, of course."

  I could feel blood rushing to my face. The curious look Murdock was giving me told me I probably looked as uncomfortable as I felt. "Meryl, I seem to have caught you at a bad time ..."

  "There's never a good time down here, Grey. It's the same old unreasonableness without any gratitude. What do you need?"

  "Really, Meryl, if you'd prefer not to ..."

  She cut me off. "Connor, spare me the reverse psychology. I've been around that particular block plenty of times, and while you may think it's worked in the past, you're wrong. If I didn't want to do something, flattery and concern from obnoxious imps isn't going to change my mind. Now, spit it out."

  "I'm looking for some selenite stones that were recently checked in by the Boston P.D. They've gone missing. They're connected to the fairy murders in the Weird," I said as quickly as possible.

  "When were they checked in?" I opened my database and gave her the dates. I could hear her shuffling paper on her desk. She sighed heavily. "Okay, my computer's down right now so I can't check the log. Call me in a few days."

  "Just so you know, the stones are confidential and being kept from the press."

  "Oh, gee, there goes the announcement I was going to make on the public address system," she said.

  I forced myself to chuckle. "You're the best, Meryl."

  "I know," she said, and disconnected the line. I set the phone down slowly and looked at Murdock. "Was I that much of a prick when I was at the Guild?"

  "I didn't know you then." I frowned. "If it's any consolation, I think you're a prick now." I glowered at him, and he smirked. "Well, not a very big prick."

  I gave up and laughed. "Okay, so I've spread a little bad karma around. I'm working on it, I'm working on it."

  "I've gotta go." I followed him to the door and let him out. Murdock never says good-bye. When I first met him, the abruptness with which he left bothered me, but I've gotten used to it. It's his way, like mine is to want closure on everything.

  I went back into the study, trying to remember how I had offended Meryl Dian. I rarely saw her when I was at the Guild. My office was on the tenth floor, while she maintained one of the archival wings in the subbasement. Most of our contact had been by phone, invariably about research for cases I was working on. She was brilliant, if a bit dark and creepy sometimes, but cute in an as-a-button kind of way. She could recount the politics of tenth-century Britain and digress into the decomposition of bodies on the battlefield without taking a breath. How she knew what body parts crows preferred baffled me.

  I remembered the druid priestess question from another murder case I had worked on. That one was actually a human serial killer on Cape Cod who was keeping people as pets before offing them in the bathtub. The toadstool history didn't register with me at all. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I probably hadn't been very considerate of Mer
yl. In the heat of an investigation, I tended to treat everyone as subordinate staff, and, obviously, I had rubbed her the wrong way on more than one occasion. Which was precisely why I could never take Keeva up on her offer. I wouldn't mind working with Meryl. In fact, I think I'd like it. It's the jerks like me I didn't want to have to deal with.

  In less than a week, I had been reminded of my own arrogance, insensitivity, and complacency. Since my accident, I definitely wasn't the person I was at the Guild. It doesn't take too long on the outside looking in to wake you up to a few facts about life, if not yourself. Not that I was suddenly one with the goodness of humanity. I was all too aware of its underbelly to fool myself into thinking it didn't exist. But I definitely didn't see myself arbitrarily dismissing people out of hand anymore. Even if I hadn't been feeling that way, Briallen had opened my eyes to it quite clearly the night before.

  I turned back to my database to review the files again. Despite the tugging allure of self-pity, I could always worry about what people thought of me later. I had less than a day to stop an accident of birth from butchering people.

  Chapter 7

  I awoke without moving my body, my eyes fluttering open to stare at the ceiling. Lying in dim gray-white light, I slowly became aware of a subtle desire, like a mild withdrawal. In just a few short days of performing the morning invocation ritual, my body was already becoming synchronized with the dawn. It knew it wanted the pleasant sensation of light washing over it, sparking it awake with renewed energy. When I had first learned the ritual as a young boy, my body's essence took weeks to become attuned to the diurnal rhythm of the sun. Now, it was like resetting an alarm clock.

  I rolled out of bed and stood before the window with my head bowed and arms crossed over my chest. As the disc of the sun pierced the horizon, its warm glow touched my forehead. Inhaling deeply, I raised my arms. I had forgotten how soothing the ritual felt, chanting the ancient Gaelic paean, waking my body with the stretching postures. I could not remember why I stopped doing it. I couldn't believe I had gotten to a point in my life where doing something so simple had become so inconsequential to me. As the sun climbed to sit momentarily on the edge of the horizon, I ended the chant in the final stance, head thrown back, arms down and out, with the light centered on my chest, the seat of my essence.