Red Iron Nights

28

I nearly had it. I started to get a eureka grin. My unconscious was hinting that it might pay off if I was a good boy. But then somebody went to hammering on the door. The front door is the curse of my life. Could I brick it up? Slide in and out the back way? It some pest found himself facing nothing but rough brick, would he persist in trying to inflict himself on me?

I lost whatever was about to surface. I glanced at Block. He looked like he was having trouble figuring out how to spell his own name. No help there. I trudged to the door, glanced through the peephole. I saw Morley and Dean staring back. I was tempted to leave them there. But Morley was the kind of guy who would chew his way through a door if he thought you were letting him cool his heels. Anyway, he didn't deserve to be left out in the rain. And I didn't see how I could let him in without admitting Dean too, so I opened up and let the whole crowd stamp in with their ingrate comments about how long it ought to take to unlock a door.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I could sell my place for a lot more than I paid for the wreck it was when I bought it. I could move on somewhere where no one knew me. I could get me a real job, put in my ten or twelve hours a day, and suffer no hassles the rest of the time. Whoever bought my place could enjoy what I left behind. I could make the sale more attractive by offering the house's contents at no extra cost. Caveat emptor. So long, Dean. Good-bye, Dead Man.

"You got me over here, you'd better catch my attention fast," Morley told me. Not even a query about my health. But what are friends for, if not to make us feel little and unloved? "I've got a date—"

"Indeed." I tried my Dead Man impression. "You will recall a certain corpse in a certain coach house on a certain Hill, not so long ago? Relating to a certain series of distinctly unpleasant murders?"

"As in the waste of high-grade dalliance talent?"

"Probably for someone far less deserving than you or I, but yes. The one we came across during our evening constitutional one night." Why were we doing this? I'd started it and I didn't know—except that Dean was there to witness whatever we said. But why should I care what Dean thought? The guy liked cats. There's something fundamentally wrong with a guy who likes cats. Why should his opinion concern me?

"What about it?"

"This about it. The gentleman who got his deserts that night, despite having found his way into a city crematorium, hasn't given up his hobby."

"Say what?" Morley couldn't stay with the game.

"There's been another murder. Just like the others. Right on schedule. We don't know who she was yet, but we will soon." I gave a jerk of the head toward the Dead Man's room. "Official company. The Dead Man tells us there's a curse involved. Sorcery."

"No! Really?"

"You don't have to take that tone. Dean! You have work to do. You want to hang out here twenty-six hours a day, you damned well better... "

He might be in his seventies, but he didn't let the years slow him a bit. He stuck his tongue out like he was six. Then he headed for the kitchen fast as a glacier, smoke boiling around his heels. As he fled I told Morley about my plan to sell the place, as is, to anybody who had a few marks to invest. He didn't jump at the opportunity. Dean wasn't impressed with the threat. I had to spend more time on the streets, had to learn how to be nasty again.

Dean beat the seven-year locusts to the kitchen. I celebrated the new age by nudging Morley into my office, explaining the situation here. Being Morley, part elf and familiar with things sorcerous and eldritch, he cut straight to the heart of it, immediately finding the thing that had been nagging me since the Dead Man had told me he'd given me enough to go on.

"The man you skragged was naked when you brought the Watch captain. The men buried in the old days would have gone into the ground wearing whatever they had on when they were executed. Which would have been what they were wearing when they were caught. The clothes must be the key. Or something the old boy had on him. An amulet. Jewelry. Something that whoever got into the coach house took when he stripped the corpse."

"Cut it." By that point I'd gotten the point, if you follow me. It wasn't the man that was cursed, it was something that went with the man. Like maybe some knives.

I shuddered. I shivered. I went cold all over. This was grim.

I would have to do some legwork. One hell of a lot of legwork. I would have to dig out records that went back to imperial times to see what the villains had in common. What piece of apparel, decoration, or whatnot, that might carry a curse compelling a man to waste ladies who ought to be conserved for fates sometimes known as worse than death.

Is it really worse, girls?