Undone Deeds

11

The dwarf led me through an abandoned floor of an old brownstone. All the walls had been blown out, the support structures replaced with essence barriers to hold up the roof. I didn’t like places like it in the Tangle. The barriers often needed to be recharged to keep a building from collapsing, and it was never clear who or why someone maintained the empty buildings. I always worried I was in a building that was about to come down on my head.

The dwarf stopped at an open window and pointed. “She should be coming through any second. You can see her from here.”

I looked down into the street, a jagged stretch of a pavement that connected two main avenues. In the middle of the lane, a feminine figure wore a sequined white jumpsuit with red boots. People grouped on the sidewalk, more curious about a large flat package than the strangely dressed figure. The package caught my eye, too—was probably what was catching everyone’s eye down there. It blazed with essence. The strange part under the circumstances was that the essence resonated like scrying. Even four flights up, it pulsed against my senses. I kept my body shield activated as a matter of course in the Tangle. Even though the stone suppressed the problems the dark mass gave me, the darkness still reacted to scrying. It pressed against the stone, a heated wave of pain, struggling to shut me down.

“That’s a friend of mine. Pull him out of there,” I said.

The dwarf snorted. “Are you sure that’s a friend?”

“Bring him to the Hunter’s hall. I’ll meet you there,” I said.

He looked me askance. “Is that wise?”

“It’ll be fine. It’s shielded, so people will lose interest.” The hall was Ceridwen’s receiving room, where she appeared as the Hunter to her people.

The dwarf crawled out onto the fire escape. I didn’t watch him descend but made my way back through the building. The next floor down had a missing wall into the next building, which had a crumbling sky bridge across the alley behind it. From there, I hit the roof and walked the length of the block, then down a stairwell into the basement and into a tunnel. Secret and convoluted paths riddled the Tangle, which made it possible for so much illegal activity to occur. I had been learning the routes, more for expediency than secrecy. People knew I was down here, but I didn’t have to make it easy for them to track my movements.

I reached Ceridwen’s hall several minutes later. The room held a chair, which only Ceridwen sat in. Essence lanterns hung from the ceiling to throw dim light. Old-fashioned wooden torches soaked in kerosene lined the walls. They were lit for atmosphere when Ceridwen was rallying her troops or intimidating the hell out of someone.

The entrance shimmered open—an opaque essence barrier that was stronger than any door would be. The dwarf leaned in and cocked his eyebrow at me, but I nodded for him to leave. Ceridwen’s people were protective of me, but I wasn’t worried.

Shay strolled in with his crazy outfit and the package like he had come from shopping on Newbury Street. The two of us had a complicated and unexpected history. Through some residual arrogance from my Guild days, I had gotten his boyfriend killed during a murder investigation. Shay had almost died a couple of times since then because he had gotten sucked up in my wake.

No matter how hard I tried to leave him alone, something conspired to bring us together, and not in a good way for Shay. He had saved my life, but committed murder to do it. He hid the stone bowl for me, and I had almost killed him in his own apartment. I knew his boyfriend, Robin, was hiding in the city, one of the many Dead, but kept the information from him. He didn’t deserve what I had done, and I didn’t deserve his friendship.

He flipped his long hair over his shoulder. “That was faster than I thought it would be.”

“Are you insane coming into the Tangle dressed like that?” I asked.

Shay held his hands out dramatically from the waist. “Exactly, Connor. Anyone who shows up in the Tangle looking like this is either too crazy to deal with or too powerful to screw over. I made more people nervous than the other way around.”

“How did you know how to find me?” I asked.

He leaned the package against the chair. Essence radiated off it—the paper was insufficient to block it. I didn’t look directly at it. It shifted and swirled and made my head hurt. “Process of elimination. Your apartment’s being watched. I didn’t think you’d abandon the bowl, so I figured you were still somewhere in the Weird. The end of Oh No is too close to the police and stuff, and you don’t strike me as the type to hide out in a burned-out building. The Tangle was the only thing left.”

Shay was too smart for his own good sometimes. “What’s in the package?”

Shay ripped the brown paper to reveal a painting canvas. “It’s your friend Meryl’s painting.”

He flipped it around to show me the plain white surface, but plain only in the visible sense. “That doesn’t look like much of a painting to me, Shay.”

He pursed his lips in appraisal. “Color blocking is a bit passé, although she did use some interesting fingerwork.”

Essence swirled and danced across the surface. Multicolored shapes bent and twisted, dancing like clouds on the wind. They reacted as I approached, and the dark mass in my head threw little pain spikes down my neck. “It’s infused with Meryl’s essence.”

Shay stepped back, still staring as if he could see what I was talking about. Shay was human, though, with no fey abilities. Sometimes he seemed to exhibit a fey sensitivity, but it appeared more intuition than talent. “I thought something was up. It won’t take paint. Every time I painted on it, the paint ran off onto the floor. Uno wouldn’t stay in the same room with it. It’s been taking up room in the studio, and I figured you would want it.”

Uno was a dog, of sorts, a big black dog whose eyes glowed red in the dark. He was the Cu Sith, the hunter of souls, demon dog of TirNaNog. After he died, Robin sent the dog to protect Shay, but Uno spent an uncomfortable amount of time watching me. In history and legends, the Cu Sith was a harbinger of death. For Shay and me, he was an overgrown puppy that drooled a lot and occasionally protected us from getting killed. At least the drool vanished on its own by the next day.

“I need to get Meryl to take a look at this. I keep hearing no one can scry, but I’m getting a scrying buzz off it,” I said.

Shay turned his attention to me with the same appraising eye he had trained on the painting. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks.”

“Seriously. Are you all right? Your eyes look funny.”

“It happened at the Guildhouse,” I said. My irises were crystallized like stained glass. With the faith stone emanating its energies in my head, I had the look of an Old One out of Faerie. It made me feel ancient.

Shay licked his lips and turned away. “I knew some people who died. Not a lot.”

“One’s enough, isn’t it?” I asked.

He played with the sequins on his sleeve. Shay wasn’t one to dwell on sadness or misery. “Well, you could use some sun anyway.”

I walked him to the door. “Will do. You keeping out of trouble?”

He slipped a strand of hair around his ear and smiled. “Actually, yes. My life is quite boring at the moment. I could use a little excitement,” he said.

The essence barrier faded open to reveal a bustling alley camp outside. “Well, please don’t find it here. I’m trying to keep a low profile.”

He paused at the door. “If you keep leaving important stuff at my apartment”—he leaned in and tapped his finger on my lips for the next words—“people will talk.”

I tweaked him on the nose. Shay had flirted with me since the moment we met. It flattered and amused me, but it was all good-natured. “Get going. Don’t stop until you’re well into the Weird. I don’t want to hear that you caused a riot.”

He laughed and walked into the alley. Uno faded into view, his dark form slipping in behind Shay. People pulled away, uncertain. Not everyone could see Uno, but they could feel him. It wasn’t a good feeling. Shay and I didn’t have the same reaction to him as everyone else. It always made me worry. About the both of us.