Unquiet Dreams

Chapter 16

I could hear the soft sound of a slack tide on the shore, and below that, the incessant pounding of my head. My body felt like deadweight. With an effort, I dragged my eyelids open and closed them immediately against the light. I tried again more slowly. My eyes burned and itched as I stared at a whitewashed, pitted cement wall. I wasn’t outside. The air smelled of dry stone and bacon. Someone rustled papers nearby. Closing my eyes, I rolled onto my back. I heard the sound of newspaper being folded and dropped. I didn’t move as I sensed a dwarf move toward me.

“I know you’re awake. You snore on your back, you know. I’ve been rolling you over for hours.” The voice sounded muffled. I opened my eyes. Banjo stood over me—well, barely—his thick arms crossed over his chest. He wore his characteristic black hoodie with the yellow bandana.

“You do wash those clothes, don’t you?” I asked.

He snorted. “I smell better than you do.” He turned and stepped out a door on the other side of the room. I sniffed. He had a point.

I curled up into a sitting position, every muscle in my body protesting with ache. The saliva in my mouth felt thick and pasty. Something shifted in my throat, and I coughed. Something grainy came up. I spat out what looked like sand.

Wrapped in a tangled sheet, I was sitting on a wide couch. My clothes, obviously laundered, hung neatly over the back of a chair next to me. My torso was covered with streaks of black and gray grit. I brought my hand to my chin and mouth, rubbed a dry film I found there. I had apparently been puking up dust.

The large square room had no windows, a brightly lit space laid out for entertainment. Against the far wall, a large-screen TV played one of those mood DVDs of a long stretch of southern beach, all soft white sand and glittering ocean. Two leather recliners faced the TV, one huge, the other normal size. A pool table took up space on the other end of the room. A very expensive stereo system was racked on the wall next to the door. The oversize chairs made it clear enough what lived there, and my ability sensed an essence that confirmed the who. How the hell I fell to my death and landed in Moke’s living room was probably an interesting tale.

Banjo returned with a tray and placed it on the coffee table. A water pitcher, two glasses—one with water, one with something foul—a bowl of what smelled like chicken soup and a chocolate bar. “Drink the water first,” he said. I didn’t need an invitation. I felt desiccated.

Banjo walked over to the normal-size recliner, picked up a newspaper from the floor, sat down, and leaned back. After a moment, he pulled out a pair of reading glasses. I drank the water, watching him ignore me as he read the paper. I could see the date, so unless he was behind on the news, I had fallen to my death the night before. I refilled the glass, drank it down, and refilled it. The room-temperature water tasted like the best damned thing I ever had.

I felt Moke before I saw him. He came into the room wearing the largest pair of jeans I had ever seen, a tailored button-down shirt, and an expensive cardigan sweater. His hair was washed and combed. He was still troll-ugly.

“I’m either hallucinating or in some bizarre version of hell,” I said.

Moke smiled, his yellow teeth somehow not as offensive when he was cleaned up. “Naw, it’s just our cave.”

“If this is a cave, it’s the nicest one you’ve ever had, Moke,” Banjo said without looking up.

A deep laugh chortled up from Moke. “Heh, he gets to complaining about anything. He hates to stay under the bridge. Too cold, too cold, he says.”

He stood over me, the smile still on his lips. Sitting naked except for the sheet, my head pounding like a drum set, I felt a little vulnerable. I stared up at him and sipped more water. He reached his massive hands out and cupped my head completely. I didn’t move. I felt a short pulse of essence, an odd shifting in my head, followed by a loud pop. A trickle of sand poured out of my ears, and the sounds in the room became clearer.

Moke brushed his hands together and sat down. “How ya feel?”

“Like I fell four stories on my head.”

He nodded. “You’re fine. I worked the stone. Banjo, he gave the timing of it, he did. A good job that.” The dwarf looked at me over the tops of his glass, smiled, and went back to reading.

“I thought C-Note was melting the stone to kill me,” I said.

“Nah. He wanted the wood maid. Don’t know why. Skinny little thing, not much meat.” He gestured to the foul-smelling glass. “Drink that now. Ya need to drink.”

I picked it up. “What is it?”

Moke rumbled a laugh. “A little this, a little that. Clean the good earth from yer gut.”

“And how did the earth get into me?”

“Like I says, I worked the stone. Made ya a nice slurry to slow ya down, keep ya from crackin’ yer head. Then I wrapped ya in earth and pulled ya down below. Spelled earth gets in all nooks and crannies. Ya gonna die if ya don’t drink that.”

“Maybe I should go to Avalon Memorial.”

Moke shrugged and laughed again. “Ya could. They never get the sulfur right. Burn ya gut, they will. Burn for years.”

I looked at the yellow-tinged liquid. If Moke were going to kill me, he would have by now. I took a deep breath and downed it. It felt hot going down, but not burning. I drank more water.

“Why did you save me?”

Moke grinned wider. “Banjo sees many times, many days to come. The ones ya die, not so good for me.”

I looked over at the dwarf. Now I understood the sharp pains I had at Carnage. “He was scrying.”

Moke smiled. “Banjo best far-seer scryer ya ever meet, I says. He picked time. I grabbed ya.”

My chest tightened. He said building collapse. “How many died?”

Moke shrugged, a great shifting of the hunch on his back. “No one died that I know. Lots hurt, though. Yer gun cop friend screamed his head off that the building was on fire. Banjo started a fight, too, and everyone run like crazy. Stupid TruKnights. It was kinda funny to watch, though.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. You take your chances in the Tangle, but the building would still be standing if I hadn’t gone in. I looked at Banjo. “Thank you. Sorry I thought you were a traitor.”

He didn’t look up. “Cops aren’t the only ones who work undercover, you know.”

I pulled the sheet up around me and slid back against the wall surveying the room. Moke watched me. He cocked his head at the TV. “Pretty, no? The night is beauty, but light is, too. I like TV. Better life here.”

I smiled. I bet he liked game shows. “You were right, Moke. C-Note’s trouble.”

Moke nodded. “C-Note thinks yer dead now. He’s not very good troll. Didn’t even know I was there.”

“I need to get out of here,” I said.

Moke stood. “Give it an hour. The bathroom’s right out that door. Ya can take a bath if you wanna. Banjo don’t like smells, so’s he keeps sweet stuff in there.” He turned to Banjo. “I’m gonna go up and sleep, ’kay?”

“Do not bring any cats back.” Banjo looked at him sternly.

Moke laughed again. “I said ya could cook them next time.”

He went to the door. “Moke?” He turned. “I’m sorry about Croda.”

A wistful expression came over his face, his long, twisted nose almost quivering. “I knowed Croda a long time. She was a fine-looking woman, that one. Ya know, us trolls and ogres and giants are all the same. People of the Berg. We’s not like those crazy elveses and flittery kinds. The bones of the earth are all one. Croda was a strong woman.” He sighed and pounded his chest with a nod. “I still feel her strength. Her heart’s gone, but she died brave.” He strode away.

“Wipe your feet when you come back,” Banjo yelled. He settled back against the recliner and focused on his newspaper again, a pen poised in his hand. “What’s a seven-letter word for ‘mask’?”

The potion took that moment to demonstrate its effect. I ran for the bathroom. After a half hour, I could see why Moke recommended waiting. I finally showered, the water sluicing trails of grime off me and onto the glass tile floor. Reaching up to turn the shower faucet off made me smile at the strangeness of standing in an oversize shower room. When I dressed, I went back into the living room to find Banjo asleep in front of the TV.

I shook him. “Sorry, got to go.”

He frowned and shifted himself out of the recliner. He led me past the bathroom where a long hall ran on for several dozen feet with a series of closed doors. I could smell Moke more strongly. Banjo didn’t go any farther than the second door, which led to a stark utility tunnel.

“So, what likely potential future did you see me in?” I asked to the back and top of his head.

He didn’t turn. “I get paid good money for answers like that.”

“But it’s good, right?”

He didn’t answer right away. We turned a corner and began ascending a flight of stone stairs. Every so often another hallway would branch off, or the stairs would split in different directions. “I wasn’t looking for your future. Moke asked me to do a little looky at C-Note. All I know is, with you dead, business didn’t look good for us. With you not dead, it looked fifty-fifty.”

Moke dealt drugs. He made money on other people’s needs, sure, but that didn’t always mean the same thing as trading on addictions. Whatever his dietary habits or his line of work, I wasn’t going to complain that keeping me alive kept him in business. I was willing to cut him some slack. This time, at least.

The great oxymoron of scrying is its unpredictability. Dwarves were good at it, though druids would debate that. Seeing into the future had complications and ramifications. You never see exactly what will happen, but what could happen, based on certain circumstances. The most you could do with a particular vision was to make a choice to try to set it in motion. But the moment you made that choice, new permutations arose that did not necessarily lead where you’d hoped. For that reason, it was nearly impossible for the scryer to see his or her own future. “What did you see?”

He shrugged over his shoulder. “It wasn’t about you. I only figured out you were the wild card at Carnage by what was going on around you. There was something odd about you in the visions. They slipped around you like they didn’t know you were there. Never saw anything like that.”

That gave me a cold feeling. Several months earlier, Briallen had done a scry and failed to see anything. A disaster almost occurred. Whatever was dancing around in my head liked to keep its secrets when it came to me and the future.

Banjo stopped on a wide landing and pointed up another long flight of stairs, dimly lit. “This is as far as I’m going. I have to start dinner; otherwise, he’s going to eat something that’s bad for him. Up there, through the door, and you’re out. It closes behind you. Make sure you’re on the other side when it does, ’cause I’m only priming it for one opening, and if I have to come let you out again, I ain’t gonna be happy.”

I nodded. Angry dwarves are almost as bad as angry trolls. “Thanks. I don’t plan on hanging around.”

He tapped his forehead and bowed. “Nice working with you.”

I went up, and he went down. At the top of the flight, I came to a standard wooden door that opened into a small vestibule. I could feel a warding spell snap into place as soon as the door closed behind me. I opened another door opposite the first and found myself standing under a flight of brownstone stairs, daylight streaming in from the sides. I stepped out from under the steps onto the sidewalk in front of a boarded-up building.

A prickling sensation swept over me. I held up my hand to see fine swirls of earth-toned particles radiating essence. I rubbed the back of my hand, feeling a resistance layered over the skin. I allowed my sensing abilities to open to check it out. I didn’t have much experience with stonework, but I recognized silica and calcium embedded into my hands. I pushed my body essence at it, and the layer moved. I pushed harder, and a fine layer of dust rippled up on my hands. Moke’s spell had wrapped me in stone at Carnage, and I could see how it worked now by attracting stone particles to bond with my own essence.

I recognized Fargo Street, just south of the Tangle. It wasn’t a long walk from my apartment. As I started up the street, Joe appeared so close to my face with his sword drawn that I jumped. His fierce look quickly turned to relief. “Where the hell were you?” he asked.

“I went underground. Literally.”

He narrowed his eyes and hovered in close. “Are you okay? You’ve got troll essence all over you.”

I nodded. “It’s a long story.”

He looked up and down the street like he expected a horde of Visigoths to charge at him. Seeing none, he sheathed the sword.

Where are you? Burst into my mind so sharply I stumbled. “Tell Meryl I’m fine, Joe. Is she okay?”

He paused a moment. “She says you owe her a new pair of Doc Martens.”

I smiled. Whether she realized it or not, I could tell she was concerned enough to be upset. “Tell her I said ‘deal.’ Where did you go last night, Joe?”

Joe looped and dipped around me as I walked. “I couldn’t get in. They had awesome security on that place. Tell me what happened.”

He circled around me as I gave him the rundown, peering at passersby with suspicion. His head whipped around to face me as I got to the end of the story. “You took a shower in a troll’s bathroom?”

“Uh, Joe, did you miss what I said? I met a drys, almost died, and found out C-Note is going to attack the Guild.”

He nodded. “No, I heard that. How bad did it smell?”

“What?”

“The bathroom.”

I decided not to argue. “Actually, it didn’t. It was very clean.”

He nodded in puzzled consideration. “Really. I wouldn’t’ve thought. Were there dead things?”

We turned onto D Street and made for Summer. “Not obvious, though I did smell something not very fresh as I was leaving.”

Murdock cruised up on the left and stopped. I cocked an eyebrow at Joe. “Just how many people did you do a sending to?”

He smiled. “Just two. We thought you were dead, you know. Meryl saw you fall before the whole building went down. That woman should go into demolition. You should have seen her tear into the place looking for you.”

I had a recollection of someone screaming when I fell. “She did?”

He nodded. “I had to force her to leave. I couldn’t see you at all. I thought you were dead, but she didn’t.”

I opened the car door and tossed a paperback novel and some newspapers off the passenger seat and sat down next to Murdock. Joe fluttered into the backseat and began rummaging through the mess. “Hi,” I said.

Murdock pulled away from the curb. “So you’re not dead,” he said.

“You either.”

He smirked. “I run fast.”

I smirked back. “I fall slow. What happened to you?”

“I ran to get Meryl, but we couldn’t get back up because the whole back of the building was in flames. Then it started falling apart.”

“Your essence got pretty strong in there,” I said.

He turned onto Summer Street. “I don’t feel any different.”

“Murdock, think about the other night at Yggy’s. Didn’t you notice how fast you were moving? Hell, you laid out an elf with one punch.”

He pursed his lips. “I guess I did. I still don’t feel any different.”

He might not feel anything, but I did. I had met very few fey whose essence oscillated in strength like Murdock’s did. It cycled from slightly elevated human normal to wildly strong to, like now, somewhere in the middle. “What’s the midach say?”

“Nothing. Meryl insisted I get checked out this morning. I was at AvMem when Joe called me. Where are we going?”

I considered a moment. “The Guildhouse. I need to talk to Keeva.”

Murdock goosed the accelerator. “What happened after I took off?”

“He met a drys, almost died, and learned C-Note’s evil plans,” Joe’s voice came from somewhere under a pile of papers.

“Oh, be quiet,” I said.

He snickered. “I told you I was paying attention.”

I gave Murdock a few more details than Joe had. A curious look came over his face. “Explain the drys.”

“It’s like I said last night. They’re legends. The belief is that real entities are obligated to keep the flows of essence balanced. A drys is a keeper of the wood and is the source of Power that druids tap. When a druid asks for a blessing, he’s asking the drys.”

“A goddess,” he concluded.

I stole a look at him, but couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Murdock’s Roman Catholicism is one of the wonderful contradictions about our friendship. He is a believer who wants to understand the crazy pagans. “Not quite. More an extension of a goddess. The Goddess, if that’s where your belief lies.”

“Is that what you believe?”

I paused, not expecting the question. What did I believe? If he had asked me the day before, I would have talked a lot about energy and reason. I knew what I was supposed to believe as a druid, but my rational mind always resisted. Essence was just there. I could tap it like an energy source. Whether I believed it was the extension of some higher power seemed beside the point. And yet, standing in the Bosnemeton, in a grove of oak with my brothers, I did feel Something. Feeling the purity of essence that Hala generated when I had held her, I felt Something. I knew what I was supposed to believe, even wanted to believe it, but I still hovered on the edge of that precipice, suspicious of taking that leap of faith. Maybe that was the missing key to my problem. Maybe allowing the old beliefs to become real in my mind was the step I needed to take to heal the darkness in my head.

“Let’s just say I hope all of this has a reason,” I said finally.

He nodded. “Hope is the beginning of faith.”

I laughed. “I thought I was the one who just had a near-death experience.”

Murdock shrugged. “Trust me. When you have a building collapsing on your ass, you find time for faith.” He leaned over and pulled a manila folder out of the glove compartment. “I had a busy day.”

I flipped the file open to a sheaf of notes with a photocopy of a store receipt for orange Nike running shoes. “You traced the Nikes?”

He nodded. “They were brand-new. I’d never seen them before, so I figured it might be easy to track them down. Newbury Street, of all places.”

I shook my head. A poor kid from the wrong side of Southie ends up dead while wearing shoes from the most expensive stretch of pavement in Boston.

“They were bought with a credit card, so I ran the number,” he said.

I turned the page and froze. I looked at Murdock. “Is this a joke?”

He had a sly smile on his face. “You wanted a connection to Kruge. We just got another one.”

I held the credit card report, staring at it, still wondering if it were a joke. “Why would Keeva buy Dennis Farnsworth running shoes?”

Murdock pulled his chin in and looked at me from under his brow. “Well, don’t get your hopes up yet. We’ve had this kind of thing blow up in our faces before. No one at the store remembers who bought the shoes. I have someone running the surveillance tape. It could be a big fat coincidence.”

I knew Keeva well enough to know something was up. “Orange shoes are a coincidence? You know Keeva. She wouldn’t be caught dead with someone wearing orange running shoes.”

“It might explain why nothing’s happening with her investigation, though,” he said.

I slouched in my seat. I was at a loss. Other than Guild work, I could not think of a single reason Keeva would be involved with Kruge. Eagan and Gerin put me onto macGoren, not her. But they clearly had their curiosities about her; otherwise, they would have asked her some direct questions about her new beau. As much as Keeva and I had our differences, I had a hard time picturing her in a murder plot.

We made our way through downtown streets and turned toward Park Square. The Guildhouse sat like a fort under siege. Pedestrian traffic threaded through a narrow barricaded path, while concrete Jersey barriers restricted traffic in front to a single lane. Security agents flew overhead, running their random patterns, while brownie foot security patrolled the perimeter of the building.

Murdock pulled over to let me out. Joe flew nonchalantly around me, pretending he wasn’t pulling bodyguard duty.

“You need to get the force on high alert,” I said.

He nodded. “It’s already done. You don’t have to go in there, Connor.”

“Yes, I do.”

“We know C-Note did the Farnsworth murder. I sent Keeva the report this morning. You’re done. Let the Guild handle the rest. If they convict, maybe the city court will hear the case, too.”

“The Guild is tangled in its own politics. They’re focused on the wrong thing, and I can’t sit back and watch it fall apart.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “Because shit happens no matter what. That doesn’t mean I have to let it. I’m not giving up no matter what Nigel Martin thinks.”

Murdock leaned back in his seat and smiled. “They made a mistake when they kicked you out.”

He eased the car back into traffic and drove off. I joined the crowd of people on the sidewalk, trying not to push anyone as I made my way toward the front of the Guildhouse. Joe remembered his innate shyness and hung on to the collar of my jacket. He hadn’t latched on to me like that since I was kid, only back then he was making sure I didn’t run off into traffic.

“Move along!” one of the brownie patrols ordered as I stepped around the barricade. I flashed him my Guild badge, looking worn from wear. He examined it suspiciously before stepping back and letting me through.

I felt a tug at my neck. “Ow!” said Joe.

He hovered a few feet behind me. His eyes twitched in all directions, his hands spread with a slight glow. “What’s wrong, Joe?”

“Security barrier. It’s not letting me in. They’re doing something new.”

I opened myself to the barrier, felt its invisible presence. It had the feel of the Grove about it, but different, a modification I hadn’t seen before. Gerin’s work layered over the usual Guildhouse barrier. I could feel the difference, the way it would let certain people through and not others. Flits had a higher ratio of essence to their mass than other species. Given everyone’s fear that they would spy, they were usually the first species to be guarded against.

“Let him in,” I said to the patrol.

The brownie seemed about to object, so I held up my badge again to remind him who he was talking to. I cringed inwardly. In less than a week with a piece of laminated paper in my hand, I had managed to get very comfortable pulling rank. I felt a tingle as the brownie opened a small space for Joe. He flew in and clutched my collar again, looking back at the brownie with a tough face.

When I pushed through the main doors, the central lobby appeared startlingly empty to me. The usual receptionists were gone, replaced by yet more brownie security. I had no problem inside getting through the checkpoint and took an elevator up. The Community Liaison floor hummed with activity. Up and down the halls, people either rushed in and out of offices or clustered in small groups. Dressed in their most formal attire, diplomatic envoys from both Seelie Court and the Teutonic Consortium kept pointedly apart, whispering among themselves while casting wary glances at each other. I turned the corner toward Keeva’s office, only to be stopped by two security guards.

One held up his hand. “Appointments only, sir.”

“I need to see Keeva macNeve,” I said.

“Director macNeve is busy, sir. Please make an appointment with the desk,” one of them said. The other let some essence trickle obviously into his hands until they glowed. He didn’t move, just stood in my path as a warning.

I held up my board meeting pass without speaking.

“I’m sorry, Director Grey. We have orders from the Guildmaster.”

“I don’t have time for this. I have important information she needs to hear now.”

I didn’t push forward. I had worked with these guys enough to know that would end with me knocked on my ass. Glow bees zipped back and forth above our heads. I didn’t have any on me.

The guard held a hand palm up and gestured back the way I had come. “Please, sir.”

Joe flew up to the guard and poked his finger at the face-shield. “Let us through or I will peel that helmet off your head and shove it up…”

“Joe!” I said.

He looked at me. I pointedly tilted my head toward the glow bees, and his gaze followed. He looked back down to my face, somehow managing to make all his features look like flat lines of annoyance. “I am not a gl—”

I cut him off before the security guards could hear him. “Tell her you’ve breached the Guildhouse security, and if she doesn’t see me immediately, you will have every flit you know swarming the place in five minutes.”

He crossed his arms. “You better pick up the tab next time.”

That was a recipe for poverty. I smiled my best I’m-lying-through-my-teeth smile. “Promise.”

He blinked out. The guards didn’t flinch. Moments dragged by. I glanced behind me at the various courtiers. Most of them seemed happy for the distraction from whatever political games they were plotting. The first security guard cocked his head and stepped aside. “Director macNeve will see you now.”

I strode past him, just as Keeva sent me my own sending. This better be good. She practically threw it at me, it hit so hard. A swarm of glow bees hovered outside Keeva’s door, Joe in the midst of them. “She’s cranky,” he said.

I entered the office. Keeva was already dressed for the funeral in a green wool coat that matched her pants. She wore a black blouse intricately embroidered with apple blossoms. “You look lovely,” I said.

She pointed at Joe. “Lives are at stake, Connor. I want to know how he breached security, and I want to know now.”

I twisted my head to see Joe. “Did you tell her that?”

Joe shook his head in exasperation and threw his hands in the air. “I’m just a glow bee. I say what I’m told.”

I faced Keeva. “He didn’t breach. I signed him in.”

She lifted a cup of tea and leaned back, sipping. “You have two minutes. Make them good.”

“A troll named C-Note is behind these attacks. He wants to take down the Guild. Good enough?”

Keeva arched an eyebrow. “You’ve been busy. What proof do you have?”

“A witness in protective custody and a ward stone recording. Murdock heard the threat to the Guild. C-Note controls the gangs with a compulsion drug called Float. It’s spreading beyond the Weird. I know it’s infected the druid Grove. It’s made from the essence of a drys.”

Her jaw dropped, and she laughed. “A drys? You expect me to believe that?”

“Murdock saw her.”

She pulled her lower lip in. “Connor, no one’s seen a drys in decades. Murdock is not credible on fey and, frankly, with your conspiracy theory habits, neither are you. The Guild is convinced the Consortium is behind this.”

“The Guild or Nigel?”

“Both.” She looked down at her desk, shifted her eyes to the computer monitor and back to me. I could practically feel her running scenarios in her head, trying to figure what she needed to do to get the job done while figuring out how to present herself in the best light. I’ve seen it before. It’s how she works. “We have security at the funeral. Gerin’s shielding Forest Hills Cemetery for the ceremony. Nigel’s coordinating with Manus and the diplomatic envoys. I’m not worried about the funeral. I’m worried about the Weird. I’m trying to seal it down so no one can move in or out without my knowing about it.”

“I did.”

She glared at me. “Connor, bring me your proof, and maybe then I will contradict Gerin Cuthbern and Nigel Martin. Until then, I run things my way.”

I decided it was time to shake Keeva’s cage a little. “You haven’t made any progress in your Kruge investigation.”

She looked honestly startled. Looks aren’t everything. “What the hell are you talking about? I’ve been looking for Croda. You know trolls are difficult to trace.”

“Dennis had distinctive new running shoes on. Easy to trace. Your credit card bought a pair.”

She leaned over her desk toward me. “What are you talking about?”

I stared her down. “Ryan macGoren has known where Croda is from the night of the murder. You bought Dennis’s running shoes. I don’t think it’s me and Murdock with the credibility problem.”

She jumped to her feet and pointed at the door. “Out.”

I’d definitely struck a nerve, but it was time to go. I stood, but before I left, I gave her a last warning. “If the Guild is using Kruge’s murder to provoke a confrontation with the Consortium, I’ll expose you.”

She was angry enough now that a little fey light glowed in her eyes. She pointed at the door. “I said ‘out.’”

I moved to the hallway. “Keeva, if you don’t increase security, you won’t have to worry about finding a troll. One’s going to find you.”