Unfallen Dead

CHAPTER 24

From our parking spot on Charles Street, Murdock and I had a good view of the Ardman townhouse. At least four Danann security agents monitored the area, two along the roofline across the street from the townhouse and two more nearby posing as shopkeepers. The Flat had enough fey living in it that Powell wasn’t likely to notice anything unusual. As a concession to me and Murdock, Keeva agreed to use wireless headsets instead of sendings. As security agents cycled through a check-in every fifteen minutes, I heard at least one voice I didn’t recognize. If I knew Keeva, she had more agents squirreled away along the street than she had told me about.

Murdock sipped his coffee. “She hasn’t shown in two days.”

“She’ll show. Ardman is on her hit list,” I said.

“Maybe Ardman signaled her it’s a trap,” he said.

I rocked my head against the headrest. “I doubt it. She’s too scared Powell will crush the soul stone.”

“So why doesn’t Powell just do it?”

I crooked my neck toward him. “You know, that’s an interesting question. She got the money and museum stuff, too. What’s the delay?”

“The whole soul-stone thing bothers me,” he said.

“Let it go, Murdock. Just because tradition says it’s the soul doesn’t mean it is. It’s just a powerful spell,” I said.

He sipped his coffee again. “Said the man who didn’t believe in a drys until he met one.”

He had a point. Meeting an actual incarnation of essence gave me pause on the whole faith issue. “I said it was possible the drys was a demigoddess. She could just as easily have been a powerful species of fey I’d never met before.”

“Meryl believes in them.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “When did you talk to Meryl?”

He kept his eyes on the townhouse. “I ran into her on Oh No the night you had dinner with Dylan. She was shopping for something I couldn’t pronounce.”

The night I had dinner with Dylan. The same night Belgor was attacked. Meryl was in the Weird. I pushed the thought away. I was not going to go there. “And you talked about the drys,” I said.

“Just briefly. She was asking about my body shield. She said she had a dream about me. Said I was riding a flying horse on fire.”

Meryl has a geasa on her about her dreaming. It’s an obligation — deeper than a command, really — to do a certain thing or suffer dire consequences. Meryl’s geasa is that if she has a dream and knows someone in it, she has a duty to tell that person. “Stay away from carousels. Her dreams come true,” I said.

He took another sip of coffee. “Will do.”

Something rustled within the pile of discarded fast-food bags in the backseat. I knew the cause because I sensed the essence. Murdock didn’t react, which I thought was kind of curious. People hear something mucking around in their car, they tend to react a little. Then again, Murdock’s car is such a sty, he’s probably used to all kinds of critters roaming around in it. The rustling sound came again.

“There’s no food back there, Joe,” Murdock said nonchalantly.

“Who says I’m looking for food?” Joe’s muffled voice came from beneath several layers of paper.

I chuckled. “How’d you know?” I said to Murdock.

Murdock kept his eyes on the street, but amusement played on his lips. “The first time I thought it was a rat. I whomped him with the billy club.”

Joe crawled out of the paper wreckage. “And I gave him a nice zap back.”

Murdock shifted his coffee to the side away from Joe. “It didn’t hurt.”

“Did, too,” said Joe.

Murdock sipped his coffee. “Did not.”

“Liar.”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I hearing this?” I asked. Murdock laughed silently. Since we’d first met, I had been teaching him about the fey and how to react to them like a fey person would. Flits were a hurdle because he had a hard time not acting surprised when they teleported. Not flinching at Joe’s arrival was a definite improvement. Engaging in Joe’s penchant for squabbling wasn’t. It was bad enough I did it.

Joe poked a finger in his ear, then scratched his head vigorously. “Still hearing singing?” I asked.

“At least a week now,” Joe said.

Murdock kept his eyes on the street. “What singing?”

Joe made a face at me that implied Murdock was clueless. “Dead folks. It’s Samhain, Murdock. You hear things.”

I whipped my head around. “What did you say?”

Joe started to say something, then snapped his mouth closed. His eyes opened wide and broke open a huge grin. “I hear dead people!”

“Oh. That clears things up,” said Murdock.

Joe wobbled in the air and poked him in the shoulder. “Yes! Yes! Yes! The veil’s thinning! I haven’t heard the voices since home.”

I twisted in my seat. “Wait, wait, wait. Back up, Joe. Dead people? Is that what you meant by singing the other night? You hear dead people?”

Joe fluttered back. “Of course. It’s just the haunts trying to make me regret what I did to them, soften me up for when they come calling on Samhain and try and scare me to death. That never works.”

I slumped back in my seat in relief, too stunned to say anything. I wasn’t going mad. I wasn’t hearing voices that weren’t there. I was hearing voices that were there. I wasn’t going mad, if not going mad meant I was perfectly willing to believe that instead of having brain damage, I was being haunted by dead people. Not mad at all. “Can they attack you?”

He stopped looping. “Nah. Maybe on Samhain itself. The really angry ones can make you think they’re doing it before that, though. I hate those kind. Stupid mind tricks. This is great. I haven’t heard anyone in Anwwn since I was in Faerie.”

“What’s Anwwn?” Murdock asked.

“It’s an hour after eleven,” Joe and I said simultaneously. Joe screamed a laugh and slapped me on the shoulder. It was a favorite bad pun when I was a kid. Apparently, it still worked for Joe.

“Anwwn is what the Welsh folk called TirNaNog,” I said.

Joe fluttered to the dashboard and faced the street. “The Wheel of the World turns, and the realms align. I hope I can get through. It’ll be great to see some old friends,” he said.

“Can you sit somewhere else, Joe? We’re trying to be inconspicuous here,” said Murdock. Joe stuck his tongue out and hopped down to the console between the seats.

“Fairies can come and go to…” Murdock paused. “… to the afterlife anytime they want?” The thought that the Celts didn’t have a separate heaven and hell wasn’t sitting well with Murdock.

Joe puffed his chest out. “No, just flits. We can get in anywhere.”

“The traditional stories don’t quite say that,” I said.

He shrugged. “Well, of course they don’t. They’re about the kings and queens, aren’t they? They always do what they want. That’s why they’re kings and queens, bringing people in and out with their branch charms and such. But the flits can come and go ’cause we’re flits.”

He jumped up and down. I hadn’t seen him so excited in a long time. “This is the greatest! I have to go check the Ways and see if it’s true.”

He vanished. Murdock didn’t react. He was getting better at it.

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am right now,” I said.

“Yeah, he’s a bit much when he’s drunk,” said Murdock.

“No, I mean I’m not crazy. I thought I was hallucinating and going crazy. All this time, I’ve just been hearing people I killed,” I said.

Murdock slowly turned his head and stared at me. “Uh-huh,” he said.

“No, well, what I mean is… Wait a sec, there goes the secretary again,” I said.

I was watching Ardman’s secretary, Sophie Wells, but my mind was reeling with the idea of the dead haunting me. After so many days of anxiety, the things that had been happening to me had a rational explanation. Rational, of course, being a relative thing in my life.

Wells stepped off the threshold of the Ardman house, her movement snapping me back to attention. I’d told her twice to stop that because it made her look suspicious and might tip Powell. At least she had varied the time of her coffee run. She adjusted her scarf against the cold. The scarf was the all-clear signal that Powell had set up with Ardman, and she had worn it every day at the same time. Wells passed the car without looking at us this time, another thing I had had to explain to her. She wasn’t stupid, just inexperienced.

Less than a minute later, she quick-stepped across the street from the opposite direction. I knew I didn’t see her pass us and loop around. She turned the corner onto Pinckney, and her coat fluttered open to reveal her white blouse. No scarf. Suspicious, I did a flash sensing on her and grabbed the door handle. “It’s her.”

Murdock didn’t waste time debating and followed. Wells had entered the Ardman townhouse by the time we reached the front door. I tapped on my earpiece. “Keeva, Wells is the target. She’s glamoured.”

Keeva’s voice spoke calmly in my ear. “We’ve got Ardman in her office.”

I nodded to Murdock. “The office off the parlor. You first, then me.”

Murdock pulled his gun and opened the door. He led with his gun, and we strode through the foyer. Both pocket doors were open to the back office. Wells stood in the arch. Lady Ardman rose from her desk as Wells turned toward us with a confused look.

“Police. Hands out,” Murdock said.

“What…” said Wells. She raised her hands in front of her.

Murdock rushed her and pointed the gun to the side of her head. “I said hands out, not up.”

Panicked, Wells froze. “I don’t understand, Officer.”

Murdock pressed the gun against her temple. “Hands out or I put a bullet through your head. You know what that feels like, don’t you, Powell?”

The fear slipped from Wells’s face and became anger. “Lady Ardman, please! What’s going on?”

Ardman smiled. “Let’s all drop the masquerade, shall we?”

She slid her hands behind her neck and removed her necklace. Her face rippled, the colors blurring and shifting, and a glamour fell away. Impressed, I nodded as Keeva dropped the necklace on the desk. “Rhonwen ap Hwyl, a.k.a. Rhonda Powell, you are under arrest.”

Wells moved nothing but her eyes, looking first at Keeva, then Murdock, then me. With a shrug, she stretched her hands out to the side as essence rippled over her. There have been moments in my life when I’ve seen things I couldn’t believe, times when my eyes denied the reality in front of them. None of those times prepared me for the woman who stood in front of us. She shrank a few inches in height, her blond hair darkening to a pumpkin orange. I was wrong. I had been wrong. I was wrong, and I couldn’t believe I was wrong.

“I can explain everything,” Meryl said.

Keeva didn’t miss a beat. “We can talk about that at the Guildhouse.”

With a stricken look, Murdock relaxed his stance.

I struggled to find my voice. “Meryl, I don’t understand.”

A sad smile softened her face. “You will, honey.”

Essence surged around her. Murdock’s body shield flashed behind Meryl, filling the room with an angry red glow. In a blur of motion, he coldcocked her with his fist. She crumpled to the floor as Keeva deflected a ball of white essence that shot across the desk. It arced over her head and shattered a window.

Security agents rushed in, their hands primed with white light. Keeva came around the desk and stood over Meryl’s body. “You’re a little rough on the ladies, Detective,” she said.

Speechless, I sank to my knees and checked for a pulse. Relieved, I found it strong and regular. I pulled her against my chest. Even though she seemed fine physically, her essence wavered in my vision in an odd cycle of white and blue. Something was wrong.

Looking deeper, Meryl’s essence shone with a green haze but with an unnatural geometric shape burning blue in the middle of it, as if she had two different body signatures. I opened her coat. Something heavy shifted in the fabric. I slipped my hand into the inside pocket and found a brick of granite shot through with yellow crystal. Exactly like the ward stones Meryl used at the Guildhouse to amplify essence.

Without the ward stone, the woman in my arms blurred and changed shape. Her hair lightened to an ashen blond, and her features relaxed into the blunt face of someone I didn’t know. Repulsed, I pushed her away.

“Rhonda Powell. You were right, Connor,” said Keeva.

I looked up at Murdock. “How the hell did you know?”

He shrugged. “She called you honey. Meryl never calls you honey.”

I shot to my feet. “Are you kidding me?”

He backed away as he holstered his gun. “I’d be lying if I said I knew it wasn’t her, Connor. You were looking at her face. I keep my eyes on hands until they’re in cuffs. Hers turned white. I’ve seen that enough around you guys to know what comes next. I hit her when I saw that essence shot about to release. I’d do it again even if I was sure it was Meryl.”

Two responses warred within me. I wanted to thank him. I did. With Keeva’s physical condition weakened, he’d probably saved her life. Without her, Murdock would have his body shield, but I would have had no protection. But hearing the truth of the matter, that at the right moment, he put his personal feelings aside and hurt someone he thought a friend, struck a very deep chord. It was exactly what I feared I would do to Dylan. No matter how justified, it didn’t make me feel any better.

Keeva saved me from speaking. “Impressive reflexes, Murdock. I guess I owe you my thanks.”

He inclined his head to her. “You’re welcome.”

Keeva gestured to the Danann agents. “Make sure she’s properly secured. If she tries to escape, you are authorized to use any means necessary to take her down.” The agents wove a binding spell around Powell’s inert body, strands of fierce light winding about her body like rope. With practiced ease, they chanted a levitation spell to carry her out of the room.

“You could have told us you were here,” I said.

Keeva gathered up her necklace glamour. “I don’t believe in using civilians as bait.”

Murdock and I exchanged glances. It was a dig at us. We had used a young human as bait not too long ago. It hadn’t ended well.

“She should be in police custody,” said Murdock.

Keeva sighed. “You’re never happy, Murdock. You complain about the Guild not taking cases, and now you’re complaining that we are.”

“You’re not taking the murder cases. You’re taking a blackmail case,” he said.

Keeva walked to the front door. “Have your father call me. I’m sure the commissioner and I can work something out.”

Murdock’s strange essence surged again, a crimson flickering that enveloped him like a shroud. “Let it go, Murdock. She’s baiting you.”

He nodded without speaking, and his essence settled. “I want to be there for the interrogation.”

I hefted the ward stone Powell had used to create the Meryl glamour. “I think we’re all going to enjoy this one.”