Unshapely Things

CHAPTER 8

I woke near dawn, the sun beckoning me to acknowledge it. Feeling exhausted from the night before, I briefly toyed with ignoring the impulse to get up. The urge to urinate reared its head and decided for me. I stumbled to the bathroom and managed to finish and get in front of the window just as the sun crested the horizon. I felt better, but not refreshed. I fell back into bed and let myself drift into sleep again.

No sooner had I closed my eyes than I dreamed of floating spread-eagled on a plain of water, staring up at the night sky, the sound of screaming all around me. The water lapped at my ears, a cold moist texture that threatened to cover my face. An explosion split the air, and stars fell, brilliant red and orange, burning me as they pierced my skin, ripping open the flesh to expose my beating heart. I woke drenched in sweat.

It was well after noon by the time I stepped from the shower. As I settled at the desk with a cup of coffee, I realized my own suggestibility. The computer monitor displayed a scene photo of a naked spread-eagled fairy with a hole in his chest, his body tossed among the cartons, candle stubs, and rotting debris of a trash heap. It must have been weighing on my mind as I drifted into sleep. I closed the image file.

The light on the answering machine blinked at me from the corner of my desk, and I hit the REPLAY button. A long static hiss filled the room, followed by the sound of something being knocked over, a muttered curse, and finally Rory Dean's voice boomed out. "Connor! I'm calling you at the most ungodly hour I could manage, and you're still not there. Well, I'll keep it short and sweet since you're not around to annoy. I rang up the Atworth woman, found her rather easily, actually, and had to assure her everything was all right, which I hope is true. Anyway, she's just the most pleasant woman, a bit deaf actually, and most solicitous. Anyway, she informed me that her boy's been gone these past ten years, apparently some medical complication. I don't know if that's good or bad for you, but it must put him out terribly. Anyway, you were so bloody cryptic. Call a body sometime and let me know what's what and who you're drinking under the table these days."

The machine beeped and logged the call at three-thirty in the morning. I hadn't checked. Not that it mattered now. I updated the files anyway. Murdock would want them complete for the record. He had found Teri Esposito north of Boston, but her daughter was dead. Same went for the New York lead. I still hadn't heard from Germany. I was already discounting Britt Alfheim's kid Welfrey since she was female. That left Gethin, the son of Gerda Alfheim, and Corcan, the male child of Dealle Sidhe.

Thinking of Murdock made me pick up the phone and call. I managed to connect with the department secretary, but, naturally, she wouldn't tell me what was going on other than that he was not available. I didn't envy him the paperwork bullshit he was probably shoveling, nor the endless jerk-around meetings that always accompanied a media spin. I kept the television on in the background waiting for the press conference as I obsessively reviewed the files. The Fey Summit was still going on, the fairies and elves still arguing after all these years on how to behave with each other. Maeve didn't like being photographed, so reporters were left standing outside the mist wall that surrounded Tara — which made for a surreal backdrop. Not everyone was happy about a treaty between elves and fairies. Violent protests had broken out in London and Berlin.

The press conference came late in the afternoon, timed for live broadcast at the top of the first evening news hour. Commissioner Murdock stood at the podium, calm and self-assured, as though he had been involved with the case from the beginning. Murdock himself stood behind his father, reflexively scanning the crowd as though he expected a surprise criminal to show up for the circus. He never took a break. Off to the side of the cluster of police stood Lorcan macDuin. He didn't speak or move. No mention was made of his involvement in the capture of the accused. They even had the poor taste to parade the still-dazed-looking prisoner out to a wagon to be taken to the city lockup. It was enough to make me feel the world was safe for democracy, only I knew better. I turned the set off. At least now I knew where Murdock was.

I threw a baseball cap on my head and went out the door. The day did not want to cooperate with my mood. A brilliant azure sky, free of humidity, arced overhead. The surface of the harbor swelled placidly, so smoothly that it tricked the eye into thinking the water was a clean blue and not just a reflection of the sky.

District headquarters wasn't too long a cab ride. The mobile news trucks were still parked illegally when I reached the station house. While they finished packing up, I lingered on the sidewalk, debating whether to go look for Murdock. He resolved the issue by pushing out the door past the newspaper reporters who hadn't left yet. He spotted me immediately and jerked his head in the direction of his car. As he opened the door on the driver's side, he plucked a flyer out from under his windshield.

"How are you holding up?" I asked as I slid into the passenger seat.

"Fine." He looked at the flyer, then tossed it on the seat. We pulled onto the street and made our way back into the Weird.

"We're going to lose him," he said, making the turn onto Pittsburgh. He shook his head in annoyance. "My dad's going to spring him to the Guild. We got all the public relations out of it with the press conference, so he wants to dump it."

"Why?"

Murdock rolled his head and looked at me from under his brow. "You know the answer to that."

Unfortunately, I did. The police didn't want him. Or rather, the district attorney probably didn't want him. Most people were afraid of the fey, felt they had too much power, in both influential and real terms. A trial at the taxpayer's expense would go down sideways with a lot of folks. Add the profession of the victims, and even more sympathy vanished. Letting the Guild take him was a win-win solution: The state avoided prosecuting a human for crimes against a disliked minority, and the Guild got to look like it was taking care of its own mess.

He pulled up to Shay and Robin's building. "You're fired, by the way."

I laughed. "I figured that was coming."

He got out of the car. "I didn't have a chance to pick up my equipment this morning. You want to come in?"

"I'm not up for the show right now."

He peeled back the door and disappeared inside.

I picked up the flyer. An ogham glyph was centered on the page with some numbers across the bottom. Ogham writing is essentially a long vertical line with various hash marks to represent sounds. Letters can be ascribed by the relation of the hash marks to the central line, either to the left or right and horizontally or angled across. The flyer had a straight line across the central axis, followed by five lines to the left, two lines angled across, and three lines to the right, which roughly worked out to A, Q, G, F. Old Gaelic could be pretty hard on the ears and tongue, but this did not spell any word I knew.

Across the bottom were the numbers 12432. The glyph rang a small bell, like I'd seen it on a band advertisement recently on a wall somewhere. I let it fall back on the seat.

Murdock returned to the car with a scowl. "They're not here."

"You did say you would be here in the morning."

He shot me an annoyed look. "I was busy. Where do you want me to drop you?"

I looked at my watch. "Just take me home. I'm in the mood to wallow in annoyance."

We drove in silence, both of us scanning the sidewalks of the neighborhood. Sometimes you can gauge the night by seeing who was out and about. Too many known troublemakers, and something stupid is bound to happen. A mix of regular folk and the bad guys, a normal night of nervous scuffles proceeds. Absolutely no one around, and you just know all hell's going to break loose somewhere. Tonight seemed a mix, just a regular weeknight in the Weird. We pulled up in front of my building.

"Look, Connor," Murdock said, "don't go taking all this personally. To be in the game, you have to play the game. We did good work. We just didn't know we weren't supposed to this time."

"That's a load of bull coming from you."

He gave me a lopsided smile. "It's all part of the game. We're still playing it. The rules have just been changed. Now we have to figure out why."

I let myself out of the car. "I'm still going upstairs to wallow." He shook his head at me and put the car in gear. "I'm getting some sleep."

I watched the car disappear around the corner. Murdock didn't fool me. He was angrier than he was letting on. I recognized the signs: the nonchalance about losing the case, the rationalizations of you-win-some-you-lose-some. I pitied the next person to get in his face. All that pent-up frustration letting loose is not a pretty sight. He was lucky he had a badge, or he'd've been up on assault charges long ago.

As I turned the key in the outside lock, I froze. The ogham glyph on the flyer in Murdock's car wasn't familiar because I'd seen a band advertisement. It was familiar because it had been staring me right in the face the last two days, gouged into the paint on my building's door. I touched the scratch, hoping for an echo of essence. I recognized the vague residue of some of my neighbors, but nothing distinctly around the glyph. It had been too long.

I let myself in, took me steps two at a time, and was running a CD-ROM dictionary before I'd even sat down. Nothing came up, so I tried a couple of online resources with no results either. I knew it wasn't a word, but just needed to confirm it. I had an ogham font for word processing, so I made a copy for the miscellaneous file and a note to show it to Murdock. It had to mean something. And who had left it was an interesting question.

A loud pounding on the door came from the living room. Out of paranoid habit, I checked through the peephole, but no one was visible. The pounding came again, startling me back. I frowned when I realized the sound was emanating from near the floor. I opened the door. Stinkwort stood in the hall, a smug look on his face.

"You put dents in the door!" I said, as he strutted in.

"You're never satisfied." He sighed and flitted up to the kitchen counter. He opened a cabinet, rummaged around, and came out with a box of raisins. I dropped into the armchair. "Have you come to cheer me up?"

He made himself comfortable on the edge of the counter and started eating a raisin almost as big as his head. "Why do you need cheering up?"

"Weren't you listening last night? They took someone into custody."

Stinkwort paused in midbite. "I'm lost. Why is that a bad thing?"

"Because they've got the wrong guy."

He plunged into another raisin. "Are you sure?"

"He's human, for one thing."

Stinkwort dropped the raisin. "What! Who in their right mind thinks a human could take down three Dananns?"

"Lorcan macDuin."

Stinkwort laughed. "Now you're blowin' my wings."

I shook my head. "He brought the guy in. Says he caught him in the act."

Stinkwort shrugged. "Let them take it, Connor. You're always saying they don't do enough."

"But I'm not sure they're doing the right thing this time either. How are your contacts there?"

He laughed and flitted into the living room. "None at all. Flits take care of their own. Let's go drinking. We haven't been on a tear together in a long time."

I watched him hover around the window a few moments. There are worse things to do in a bad mood than drink with a friend who's mostly pink to begin with. I could tell Stinkwort was in too good a mood to let me spoil it. I became aware that he was humming to himself.

"You slept with someone!" I said.

He laughed and did a midair somersault. "I told you I would."

"Tansy?"

He spiraled down behind the couch, laughing all the way, and reappeared from underneath with a huge grin on his face. "It's amazing how impressed these rustic types can be when you show them your sword."

"I've seen your sword. It's not that impressive," I said.

He tapped a finger on his chin. "Hmmm, let me see. When was the last time anyone wanted to see yours?"

"All right, all right, if I go out for drinks, can we drop the bad double entendres?"

"Do I get to tell you all the salacious details?" he asked, racing for the door.

"Only after we're drunk." Which I had already decided meant yes. There was no stopping Stinkwort when he was boasting anyway. If the truth be known, he did get to tell more stories than I did, even if you counted my early twenties. Flits are nonchalant about sex, from the doing to the telling. It wouldn't surprise me if Tansy were somewhere oh-ing and ah-ing with a bunch of her friends.

We trailed into one crowded bar after another. News of the capture had spread. More than a few fairies who had kept a low profile were out and about celebrating their return to walking the streets. The unofficial weeklong party for Midsummer had begun a day early. Stinkwort was in high spirits, and his mood began to rub off on me.

We stumbled out of a nameless bar onto Stillings Street. Stinkwort flew ahead of me in a not particularly straight line. "Wait a minute, Joe, what if Lorcan's involved?" I said in a moment of alcoholic inspiration.

"You're drunk. Lorcan's too much of a coward." He pinged against the edge of a stop sign and almost hit the pavement before recovering his balance.

"I don't know… I've heard some stuff about his time during the War. He sided with the elves. He can't be too happy about the Fey Summit."

"All those stories are about who he knew. There's no blood under his nails."

"Yeah, but first he's not interested in the case. Now he is and obviously wants to bury it. He's only gotten on the good side of the Guild in the last couple of decades. Maybe he's still a bad guy."

"And maybe he's just a jerk. You told me once he liked to screw up your cases."

"Gimme a sec." I faced a warehouse wall and relieved myself in violation of city ordinance and my usual modesty.

Stinkwort waited a few yards off as I finished my business. I paused as I approached him. He hovered about ten feet in the air, the edges of his wings vibrating so fast they hummed. Cocking his head to the left and right, he had a tight, strained look on his face as though he were trying hard to hear something.

"Joe?"

His breath came in short gasps as he revolved slowly in the air intently scanning the street. He went very pale, and his eyes began to bulge.

I had never seen him like this before. "Stinkwort, talk to me!"

He gave me a wild look as a nimbus of ghostly light surrounded him. His hair unfurled in a static halo. Opening his mouth impossibly wide, he screamed, an earsplitting thunderous wail. I clamped my hands over my ears to block the sound as a spasm of grief overwhelmed me. The sound welled up higher in different pitches, and I realized that other flits nearby were screaming.

As the guttural cry ended, Stinkwort's sword materialized in his hand as he withdrew it from its glamoured scabbard. It glowed like a sliver of white fire encased in icy blue flame. He pointed it up the street, flew forward a few feet, and vanished. Instant silence surrounded me as I staggered against the wall. All around me, people wandered into the street, muttering in confusion.

Taking a deep breath to recover myself, I began to run in the direction he had pointed. Adrenaline began to eat up the alcohol in my system as I ran. I just kept going, not knowing what to do, just wanting to move. Cars streamed down the street past me, their horns blowing as people scrambled out of the way. The Avenue was a block and a half away, jammed with people running in every direction and forcing traffic to a standstill.

Stinkwort reappeared right in front of me. He still held the sword, and I could see dark smudges on it. "The alley!" he yelled, and vanished again.

I swerved to the left and pelted down a dark narrow confine between two buildings. Someone ran by me, hitting me in the shoulder. I felt a strange sensation sweep past, a sense of wrongness, like a discharge of negative energy. And I could smell blood. As I came to the end of the buildings, the stench was overpowering. I rounded the corner and skidded to a halt.

A human boy lay flung on his back with his legs twisted under him and his head to the side. Stinkwort sat crouched on the ground beyond him, cradling something and crooning quietly. I looked down at the boy. There was no question he was dead. The front of his green tunic was flayed open, dark and wet with blood. His torso had been savaged, as though the killer had slashed and stabbed in a maniacal frenzy. Blood splattered for yards in several directions. There was none of the methodical gutting I had come to expect. Light glittered off a small necklace twisted in his hair, and I fought down the urge to be sick with the realization. I moved the long blond hair away from his face, and I inhaled sharply.

"Fuck," I said as I backed away. It was Robin.

I circled around him to stand over Stinkwort. I realized now that he held a small flit in his arms. A chill ran over me as I recognized the fading yellow-white of her wings. As Stinkwort gently rocked her, the light of Tansy's essence flickered and faded to gray. He held her a moment in silence, stroking her fine pale hair. Then, he placed her delicately on the ground and picked up his sword. His eyes gleamed with red light. "I have his spoor," he shouted, and vanished. I spun around and looked up the alley. I had it, too. My awareness was so heightened by the excitement, I could almost see the essence that twisted away from the scene. I could smell it on my own shoulder where the murderer had jostled me as he passed. Stinkwort flashed into sight at the street and was gone again. I ran after him.

The trail led out of the alley and up toward the Avenue. Of course. More people had ventured into the street, their voices loud with the excitement of the flit scream. As I drew near the corner, I could feel the killer's essence begin to mingle with others. I pushed through a crowd of bystanders who were following the debate over a fender-bender. On the far side of the Avenue, the scent became stronger again. I ducked down yet another alley and paused. The scent had vanished. Indecisively, I looked back to the busy street behind me.

Taking a deep breath, I concentrated my own essence into my head, toward the only true ability I had left. A pulse of pain instantly burned in my forehead as I felt the scent of the killer's essence whisper in my face. It hadn't vanished. The murderer had put on a burst of speed as only the fey can and had moved so fast, he'd barely left any trace.

I allowed my essence to flow back and ran down the alley. At the end, I came out to crumbling warehouse docks. The foul-smelling essence reasserted itself as the killer slowed down again. Moving that fast used a lot of energy, and he'd already expended a lot in killing Tansy, if not Robin. He was conserving what he had left. I followed him, keeping an eye out for visual contact. The ache in my head had been reduced to a dull throb, but it was starting to build again. The sooner I stopped pushing what little ability I had, the better off I'd be.

I moved in and out of shipping containers and around loading equipment. The scent would thin, pool up in hidden spots, then thin out again in the open. It didn't feel like he was hiding from me, though, or even knew I was behind him somewhere. It felt like he was hunting. Twice I caught a good whiff of Stinkwort, but I was still catching up. It must be nice to have wings and the ability to teleport.

A breeze began blowing in from the harbor, ruffling the lazily swelling surface of the water. I moved faster as the trail started to dissipate. It bent back into another alley and led to the closed door of an old warehouse. As I reached up my hand to open it, a fuzziness descended on my face as though I had stepped into a spiderweb. I felt the prickling sensation of my defense shields activating on their own. The fuzziness diminished a bit, but still hovered around me. I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

I felt an overwhelming desire to lie down. A ward vibrated somewhere nearby, and I didn't have the ability to counteract it. Against the screaming protest of my brain, I filtered more of my essence into my shields. It didn't stop the ward spell, but it prevented me from surrendering to its command to sleep. If I didn't find it quickly, I was going to pass out from the pain anyway.

I stood in what appeared to be a large office. To the right, light from the waning moon filtered through dirt-smeared windows to reveal rows of desks facing each other. With each step I took, I felt the ward spell grow stronger. As I came around the first desk, I found a dark-haired fairy crumpled on the floor, wings dully flickering in the dark. I leaned down and touched his shoulder, and he rolled languidly onto his back. He was still alive.

Cautiously, I continued forward, the killer's essence all around me. At the third desk down, I sensed Stinkwort. The two essences scattered about the middle of me room. Several of me desks were askew, the contents of their surfaces swept to the floor. Stinkwort had fought with him.

I could sense a third essence now, another fairy. Just past the disturbed desks, I no longer sensed Stinkwort, just the killer and the new fairy. Even as I smelled fairy blood, I could feel the lethargy of the ward-spell taking its toll. Ever slower, I moved farther into the room. At the end of the desks, in an open space by a photocopy machine, I found the victim.

He was young, blond, and well dressed except for the torn front of his shirt revealing his gaping chest cavity. Like the others, he lay on his back, his wings pinned to the floor with two cheap ward stones. I could feel the spell already weakening on one of the stones. I slumped to the floor, staring at the dark hole in the boy's chest and desperately wanting to sleep.

The two wards were working together. The more stones involved in a warding, the greater their effect and the more efficient their energy use. The downside was that they were easier to disrupt than single stones. If I touched one of them directly, though, I risked an energy feedback that would not only knock me out but probably cause physical damage as well.

I looked around groggily for something to knock one of them out of the way. Picking up a stapler, I decided against it. With all the base metals in it, it would just act as a conductor. I moved some papers around on the floor next to me and found a wooden ruler. Thanking whatever gods might be listening, I crawled closer to the body. Straining against my protesting head, I shot some of my essence into the ruler as I batted it at a ward, hoping that the momentary burst would block the feedback. I shouted as something convulsed in my head.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to breathe past the pain. Without needing to look, I knew the spell was broken. I no longer felt the compulsion to sleep though I had the desire to for a different reason. My arm tingled a bit where some of the ward energy had filtered through the ruler, but I could still move my fingers.

I opened my eyes and stared at the corpse. My nerves were so jagged, I could feel the faint whisper of old human essences all around me now. What really intrigued was the pulse of elf essence coming off the victim. I leaned forward to peer into his chest, but it was too dark to see inside. Fighting a wave of nausea I reached my hand into the wet, slippery cavity and touched something hard. I jerked my hand back at the sensation of wrongness. Whatever it was, it felt like an elf had powered it. Touching it hadn't seemed to do anything other than startle me, so I reached back in. I could feel a sandy grittiness in the boy's chest, then the stone that had become the killer's calling card. This time it had some kind of charge on it. I grimaced at the squelching sound my hand made as I withdrew.

My hand glistened in the moonlight as I held the stone up. It appeared gray and no more remarkable than the others. The essence radiating from it made no sense. It would seem most like elf, then shift to a subtle fairy, then back again. As I tried to place the feeling, I thought of Shay. It was like looking at Shay, the pretty-beautiful boy, and trying to decide quickly if he were male or female.

The surviving fairy groaned again, and I went to him. Feebly, he curled away from me in fear.

"It's okay," I said, but he wasn't reassured. I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. As the operator took the address and asked me to stay on the line, a flutter in the stone caught my attention. The energy was dissipating. I glanced down at the kid, who was cowering half under the desk. He looked no worse for wear. He probably wouldn't appreciate my telling him that the vagaries of fate that gave him dark hair had saved his life tonight.

I made a decision and disconnected the call. I had already contaminated the crime scene by removing the stone, and whatever charge was on it was fading. I hoped Murdock wouldn't be too mad at me when he found out. Like they say: In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Help's on the way," I said to the kid. "Stay here. Don't touch anything." I went into the alley and ran the block or so back to the Avenue. With all the weaving in and out of the warehouses, I had ended up all the way at the far end of the Weird. To my right, traffic was a barrage of light and sound and backing up toward me. Cars coming in from my left were turning onto the Eastern Service Road to avoid the mess. I cursed my lack of ability to do a sending.

A cab turned the corner slowly as the driver tried to see what all the commotion was about. I jumped in the back before he could pull away. Only in the Weird can a man with obvious blood on his hands get a taxi. I gave him Briallen's address. He immediately made an illegal turn and drove quickly along the edge of Southie. I held the stone gingerly between my index finger and thumb with just enough tension to keep from dropping it. The essence on it was definitely fading. We pulled up onto Louisburg Square in an impressive ten minutes. I was surprised to find Briallen's house alive with light, the front door wide open, and Briallen herself standing on the threshold. I paid the driver and hurried up the walk.

"How did you know?" I asked.

"I didn't, really," she said, closing the door behind us. "It was odd. Not like a sending, but more like an impression of your need. What's happened? What is that?" She gestured at the stone.

"Let's go up to the study," I said. Without waiting for an answer, I rushed up the stairs. Briallen was right behind me with a grace and speed I always found surprising. Not for the first time did I wonder about her age. I entered the study and placed the stone on a clear space on the center table. "Hurry! What is the essence on this?" I said.

Briallen peered down at it for a second, then picked it up. She dropped it and recoiled. "It's saturated in fairy blood!"

"Sorry, I should have warned you."

"Blood of a murder," she murmured, picking up the stone again. Slowly, she rolled it in her palm, staring at it, her lips compressed into a discomforted line. "It's elfin, but twisted somehow. There's a sense of fairy about it, but that feels almost like an afterthought."

"That's what I thought, too. But what does it mean?"

She placed the stone back on the table with a look of relief. "It just feels wrong. What's stranger still is that the stone has been purposefully and intensely infused with it, almost like making a ward. It's almost gone now."

"I'm guessing the other stones were all like this, but I didn't see them until after the essence had dissipated," I said.

"Is this the same type of stone?"

I nodded. "One's white, one's black, and one's gray like this. I'm sure they are all the same crystal, selenite, but they disappeared before tests could be run."

She smiled and arched an eyebrow. "Oh, it's selenite, all right. It's also pre-Convergence."

Impressed, I looked back at the stone. When the fey found themselves bodily transported here after Convergence, pieces of the physical realm of Faerie came with them, sometimes just a house or even less. Those places were very few and are closely guarded. Organic and inorganic material from them is highly sought after because the fey's abilities work best through them. Something pre-Convergence, something actually from the true Faerie, is extremely rare.

"This must be worth a fortune," I said.

Briallen lifted her chin to speak but gasped instead. "Connor, you're bleeding."

Even as she said it, I felt the trickle of blood coming out of my nose. She handed me a tissue, then pressed her hand against my head. "What the hell happened tonight?"

"I think I pushed myself to the limit."

"Go sit in the study. Now."

I took another tissue and did as I was told. Now that my adrenaline rush was over, I felt tired down to my bones, not to mention the pounding headache that threatened to split my forehead open. The usual fire glowed on the hearth, comfortable even though summer heat sweltered outside the windows. I fell exhausted into an armchair.

Briallen came in and wordlessly handed me a cup. I drank it without question, an earthy concoction with the smoothness of honey that permeated my chest with a soothing warmth. Closing her eyes, Briallen held her hands just over my face. They became pale, glowing phosphores-cently. I felt the soft force of her essence begin to emanate from her fingers. It molded itself to the contours of my face. I closed my own eyes as the feeling intensified, a sweetly painful sensation that vibrated through my head down to my groin. After a few moments, the feeling vanished, like a warm compress had been taken away.

I opened my eyes. Briallen stood over me, her arms crossed, a pale white light flickering behind her eyes. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"I was trying to stop a murder."

"And almost got yourself killed. You don't even have a weapon on you, do you?"

"I have a knife," I said weakly. The pain in my head was receding to a dull thudding at the base of my skull.

She snorted and took a seat. "Fat lot of good that would have done you. What exactly happened tonight?"

I gave her the rundown, starting with Keeva at the Flitterbug so she could understand how the whole disaster happened. "I just don't get what I missed. We were obviously in a seven-day cycle. Why tonight instead of last night?"

Briallen leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. "I've been scouring books for days. Now that…" She jumped up and let out a strangled cry of anger. "What a fool! What an idiot! It's a lunar cycle, Connor."

"Are you sure?"

She frowned at me. "I'm dead sure. The calendar is just a feeble tracking mechanism for the moon, not the other way around. The first murder occurred during the new moon, three weeks ago yesterday, the second followed a week later on the quarter moon, the third a week after that on the full, and now tonight, eight days later on the last quarter."

My mind raced as I tried to reconcile the dates in my head. "Are you sure?"

"Why do you keep saying that?" she snapped. "Trust me, boy. I'm a woman and a druidess. I think I know the cycles of the moon. It never occurred to me that I was doing invocations in the garden every night a murder's occurred. I'm out there so much, I never made the connection."

We both started at the sound of something falling out in the hall. In the tense moment that followed, a loud moan broke the silence. Briallen was out of the room and halfway down the stairs before I even reached the landing. Down in the vestibule, a flit lay on the floor groaning. I'd recognize the pink wings anywhere.

"Stinkwort!" I leaped down the stairs after Briallen.

As she crouched on the floor next to him, he pulled himself into a sitting position. He held his left arm close to his waist. "Call me Joe, dammit." His voice was weak. His eyes flickered to Briallen. "Sorry, m'lady."

"Don't mention it, Joe," Briallen muttered as she reached out her hand. Amazingly, he sidled onto her palm, something he'd normally considered beneath his dignity. Without dropping his arm, he rolled it slightly away from his body to display a wound. A deep gash ran the length of his forearm to the base of his palm. Thick blood welled up, and he clenched the arm against himself again.

"This night is cursed," Briallen muttered again.

Cradling Stinkwort in her palms, she rose, and I trailed after her up the stairs into the study. She placed him carefully on the table and began searching in boxes beneath it.

"He got another one," said Stinkwort through clenched teeth. "I followed him to a warehouse but got there too late. Chased the bastard all the way to Charlestown before he turned to fight. I almost had him, too. He used some kind of incantation I've never encountered before. It slowed me down, and he stuck me. The damned freak stuck me."

Briallen poured something foul-smelling onto a cloth and held it close to Stinkwort's arm. "This will sting." It always stings, I thought. She pulled his arm and swiftly draped the cloth over the wound before it could ooze again. He yelped, but she held on. Light welled up from her hands, a white nimbus that fluttered like a candle in the fog. A pink aura sprang up around Stinkwort. It twined within the white light, pulling it into his arm in an incandescent swirl. He growled in pain.

Briallen clutched my arm with her free hand. "Sorry, Connor, I need some of that back."

I could feel a tug in my chest, and my mind went fuzzy. It seemed a long moment later that she released me. I swayed on my feet, shaking the dizziness from my head. Stinkwort had his eyes squeezed shut as the brightness of Briallen's essence sheathed his entire arm. All at once, the light went out as though a switch had been thrown. Stinkwort sat breathing heavily, his arm draped across his lap. A thick ugly crevasse of scar tissue ran the length of where the wound had been.

My joints felt like they were held together with string. I stumbled out of the room, back to the parlor, and collapsed in a chair. Briallen came in a few moments later and sat down, too. She was very pale as she stared into the fire.

"Is he all right?" I asked.

She stirred up from her reverie. "He'll live now. He almost died. He lost a lot of blood, and his essence was severely weakened trying to compensate. That's why I had to tap you."

The soberness with which she said it took me off guard. "Well, that's one less person on my conscience tonight."

"You didn't kill anyone, Connor."

"Didn't I? I turned an arrogant little boy and a simple country flit into bait with a glamour stone I gave them."

"Stop being so self-centered. This is not about you. Shit happens."

"I don't see how you can be so indifferent," I said, trying to quell my anger.

"I'm not. I'm just not taking it personally. There's wisdom in knowing the difference between your sensibilities being challenged and your heart being threatened. I'm just telling you not to lose perspective."

I slouched farther into my chair. "How do you manage to make me want to apologize when you piss me off?"

She smiled. "By being right all the time. How are you feeling? Are you up for a short walk?"

"I'm exhausted, but I'll go if you want me to."

She stood. "The invitation is equal parts honor and obligation."

She took my hand and let me pull myself up. I felt lightheaded for a moment, but it passed quickly. She led me out of the house into the street.

"Where are we going?"

"To pay our respects."

We walked up the street in the cool predawn air. Very little noise disturbed this end of town at that time of night. The sky began lightening in the east as we came out on Beacon Street. We crossed over to the Common through an old iron gate and proceeded down a brick lane. At the bottom, a small empty concrete pond basin shone a dull cream color in the light of the streetlamps. Small stones and broken glass crunched under our feet as we crossed that to a hill on the other side. Briallen took my hand, and we climbed the shoulder of the hill. At the top, a circle of trees enclosed an empty grassy space, and we stopped at the verge.

The sound of singing broke the early-morning silence. Its low cadence rose and fell in a mournful chant that grew subtly louder. A group of six or seven flits came out of the underbrush nearby, their wings dimmed of light as they walked. I realized one of them was Stinkwort. They wore simple red caps on their heads and held sprigs of myrtle leaves in one hand. With the ouier hand, they carried a bier of grass and twigs, on which the dark form of Tansy lay facing the sky. Her face was gracefully calm in repose, her wings already curving around her body like a brittle gray shroud.

The procession moved solemnly to the very top of the hill and lowered Tansy to the ground. The flits slowly circled the body, dropping the leaves around her until she was wreathed in myrtle. One by one they winked out until only Stinkwort remained. He produced a small tea rose from the sleeve of his tunic and reverently placed it on Tansy's chest. Then he, too, disappeared.

Without speaking, Briallen touched my arm, and we descended the hill. Neither of us spoke the entire way back. I couldn't help feeling responsible for the scene I had witnessed no matter what Briallen said. We reached the front door of the house when Stinkwort suddenly appeared in front of us.

"Thank you for attending," he said, with a small bow.

Briallen returned the bow. "The honor was ours."

"I'm sorry, Joe. I know what she meant to you," I said.

He shrugged listlessly. "I honor her life and her spirit and mourn a passing that was not meant to be, nothing more. The People don't die often, and they certainly don't die of senseless murder. A line has been crossed."

I had never seen Stinkwort so solemn and formal. He was unlike the capricious joker I'd come to know over the years, and it made me uncomfortable. I shifted my feet in place, almost embarrassed to form my question at the moment. "Did you get a good look at him?" I asked quietly.

His face remained unexpressive as he spoke. "He fits the description you have. He's also very strong."

"Come back inside, Joe. You need to rest," said Briallen.

A surge of energy seemed to ran through him, his eyes glinting with a fey white light. His wings beat in agitation as he hovered back from us and drew his sword. He held the weapon at the ready, his face set with determination. "No, m'lady. There'll be no resting. This ska bastard is mine."

He vanished.