Hallow Point

  (Well, not quite true, since those bastards don’t bite me like they do you. Not here in the “real” world, anyway. Totally different story in Elphame, but what’s not?)

  Cast iron, that rail.

  It wasn’t the iron that surprised me, though. It was that I’d been dippy enough to touch it. I mean, I take the train everywhere I can’t hoof it. Ain’t as though this is the first municipal guardrail I’ve seen.

  You getting fed up with me barbering on about how thrown I was, how bushed and how beat, wah, wah, poor Mick, yet? Yeah, me too. Wanted to throw one more example at you, though, since it’s important for what comes next.

  By which I mean, it makes me look a little less like a complete dip.

  So I’m sidling away from the rail like it bit me, clutching one hand with the other, spitting enough profanity to make a priest spontaneously combust. Of the tiny trickle of pedestrians actually still pounding pavement at this hour, one of ’em turns out to be a member of an almost extinct species: Good Samaritan, tryin’ to wipe drops off his glasses without knocking his hat from his gourd, while shuffling over to see what’s up with me. Somehow, I didn’t think I wanted him eyeballing my nice new iron rash.

  “No problem, pal. Jammed my finger last week, keep forgettin’ not to grab stuff with it. Thanks, though,” I said.

  He gave me a queer look but moved on.

  I was gonna have to remember to give Pete a serious sock in the kisser for tonight. I was gonna have to get a better lock for my door. I was…

  Being followed.

  I just knew it, instantly. Hair on the back of my neck, phantom daggers in my spine, recollections of shapes at the edge of my vision, even tasted the flavor of lurking in the wet pollution perfume this city calls “air.” Wasn’t any sorta human tang, either. Old, real old, and always, always craving…

  Except… Nah. I was just being goofy again. Stairwell was empty but for me and a couple humming light fixtures, drunk fireflies flickering against a grimy ceiling. Rumble of the train up ahead, echoing patter of the rain. Not even a sign of the Samaritan anymore.

  The hinky feeling was gone quick as it crashed down on me, and there sure as hell wasn’t anybody around to’ve sparked it. Not just tired now, but paranoid. Jumping at squat and shadows. Muttering at myself—and nothing nice, either—I climbed the rest of the stairs, growled my way past the few folks standing around on the platform, and slipped between the brown sliding doors. Clunk, hiss, screech, shudder, and the train was chug-a-lugging its way cross town.

  Me, I planted my keister on a random seat and leaned my head back against the wall. I’d gotten real accustomed to the steady clack-clack, thud-thud of the L by now, enough so that it almost distracted me from the damn itch of being inside the whole technological contraption.

  Clack-clack. Thud-thud.

  The car was empty, ’cept for one gink down at the far end trying to pretend he wasn’t completely out on the roof, and having exactly zero success with it. He was swaying faster’n the train was, and even one of you mugs coulda smelled the hooch wafting off him.

  Couple stations passed. More screeching. More swaying. Boozehound got off at the third, looking unsure if this was his stop or not. Nobody else got on, not in this carriage, anyway.

  Thud-thud. Clack-clack. My noggin rocking back and forth against the wall, almost a massage, lulling me to…

  Wait one goddamn freakin’ minute!

  I bolted upright, a single step taking me to the middle of the car, already grabbing for the L&G. And all I could think, beyond gunning for a threat I knew hadda be near, was When did I turn into such a fucking twit?

  No way, no way do I just suddenly decide I’m imagining some danger. No way do I get a premonition as strong as the one I had in the stairwell and then just shrug it off. Uh-uh. That ain’t me at all, and if you’re wondering why I’m just now wising up when you knew something was off from the minute I talked about it, well, that’s why I kept hitting the whole “exhausted unto stupid” thing.

  I’ve monkeyed with enough minds to recognize when it’s been done to me. Even if sometimes, such as tonight, it’s a bit of a belated recognition.

  Right. Door.

  I was hot enough—with whoever’d been shadowing me and with myself—that I forgot the mortal façade as I made for the next car. I didn’t sway with the train anymore, instead adjusting faster, more minutely, than any human. Not a fraction of an inch of wobble in the L&G, now aimed and ready. I wasn’t blinking anymore. Faintly, not so anyone else woulda noticed at first, the flickering of the lights started to change. Brighter than they shoulda been, almost daylight; then black as pitch, as if they were projecting dark. Slowing until each flicker matched the smack of my heels against the trundling floor. One of the bulbs, the newest and brightest, burst in a shower of sparks and slivers.

  Makes me sound all tough and unshakable, don’t it? Yeah, I’ll come back to that in a minute.

  The anger drained outta me just as quickly, though, fading into a sorta resigned futility even as I reached for the door handle. Three stations, with a fourth coming up long before I could cover the length of the train. Even if my tail had boarded the L at all, he (or she, or it, or any combination) could well be long gone. Even if not, well, I couldn’t be sure I’d tumble to him (or her, etc.) no matter how careful I looked.

  Grumbling some profanities that woulda got me burned at the stake in other times, I thumped back down onto one of the wood benches. The lights’d gone back to their normal stuttering, and I was even blinking again, like a good little human.

  Still had my wand in hand, though. If I felt even a tingle of magic, someone was getting a mug full of disaster.

  All that cursing up a storm, though? Squeezing the L&G until it creaked, lookin’ for an excuse to shove some mojo down someone’s throat? I was tryin’ to stay angry, or at least focused.

  Because my other option was scared, see? I ain’t the toughest thing to ever come outta Elphame, but I got my fair share of power. Wasn’t a whole lot out there could muck around in my mind too easy, and even less could do it without me at least suspecting something was hinky.

  So who or what the hell had my trip to the Field gotten all riled up?

  I didn’t even question that this was related to the museum case. Coincidence follows us aes sidhe like a begging mutt, but not that much.

  So who was keeping tabs on me? Herne? Nah, not his style. I don’t figure I’d have noticed if he was shadowing me, and if I did? His method of handling it wouldn’t be rooting around in my senses. Far as I knew Herne, his notion of subtle was a small blade through the pump ’stead of a big one.

  Well, he did say there were others mixed up in… Whatever there was to be mixed up in.

  And I still didn’t give a hoot. Let ’em follow. Let ’em all see that I wasn’t getting involved. Out of the game. Washing my hands of it, like Pontius Pilate after cleaning the cat box.

  I was determined. Absolutely set in stone. I’d learn all about it after, maybe in one of the Otherworld Chicago’s news rags. But I was. Not. Involved.

  Once in Pilsen, it was a couple minutes’ walk along wet sidewalks, past dingy brick facades made ghosts by street lights and the gleam of occasional passing flivvers, for me to get from the station to Mr. Soucek’s building, where I hang my hat. And rapier. I could tell ya that I didn’t spend the whole hike nervously tryin’ to look over both shoulders at once, but we’d both know it for bullshit.

  Turned out, though, it wasn’t behind me I hadda worry about.

  ’Bout half a dozen guys and gals, who you woulda thought were human but I knew better, loitered on the doorstep, blending in like Al Capone at a girls’ finishing school. They all wore really pricy but totally off-the-rack glad rags—even the women sported suits—and every one of ’em turned to stare me down as I got near.

  “You guys practice that?” I asked, then pointed at the fellow on the left. “Jack over here was half a step off-tempo.”

  I didn’t
slow. They didn’t clear the way. This romp was edging up on interesting, and I had had a belly full of interesting already.

  “Whatever it is, I ain’t part of it,” I said. “Seriously. Go chase your plot or enemy or dingus or whatever somewhere else.”

  They still didn’t budge. At the top step, I actually bumped into the one jackass directly in my way.

  “You can be a door,” I said softly, “or a welcome mat. I’ll give you to ten to decide which. Eight… Nine…”

  Hands went under coats, theirs and mine both. If we were human, everyone woulda tensed right then; we just got really, really still…

  “You really don’t want this to get unpleasant, Oberon,” said a voice from below.

  “It’s already unpleasant, bo.” I turned to look behind me, edging to one side so I didn’t completely lose track of Door-Mat in the process.

  Cat standing below on the sidewalk was aes sidhe, same as me. I could see it in the expression, the ears, the same wiry build—though his hair was more autumn-leaf brown than sand—but most important, I felt it in the sheer energy gathered around him.

  I didn’t know him personally—odd, if he lived in Chicago (yours or ours), but not unheard of. He was younger’n me, though, which was good to know.

  Course, he also had buddies.

  “Then you don’t want it to get any more so.” He held up a brass amulet in one paw, letting me get a good eyeful as it shifted from a Celtic cross with Gaelic inscription to what looked for all the world like a copper’s badge.

  “My name is Raighallan—Officer Raighallan—and I am here with legal writ and authority of Their Honors Sien Bheara and Laurelline of the Seelie Court and municipal government of Chicago.”

  In other words, an Otherworld detective—or a soldier of the Court playing detective, anyway. Fucking swell.

  “Take you long to memorize that?” I asked.

  “And you,” he said, ignoring my quip, “would be the exile currently going by the ludicrous moniker of Mick Oberon.”

  I kept my fingers from clenching into fists, but it took so much effort they creaked.

  “I wasn’t exiled. I left. And seeing as how you already called me by name, I ain’t exactly bowled over that you know me. Whaddaya want, Raighallan? And also, sorry, can’t help you.”

  “Where is it?” he demanded. “How much do you know?”

  “I’m getting right tired of answering that question. I dunno. I dunno where it is, or even what it is. I don’t care where it is or what it is! I’m not involved in any of this!”

  “I don’t enjoy being lied to, Oberon,” Raighallan said, tone dropping toward dangerous. “My boss enjoys it even less.”

  Boss? None of the others reacted much to that, so I hadda assume he meant someone else, someone not here. Great.

  “Think you probably should get used to it, in your line of work,” I replied. “But I ain’t blowing any smoke here.”

  He scoffed. I gotta say, the aes sidhe scoff real well. We’ve had a lotta time to get disdainful.

  “So it was just a coincidence that you were at the museum?”

  “No, genius, I was asked to look at it as a case. Some of us actually have to work to call ourselves detectives. I went, I did a solid up-and-down, I got the piss konked outta me by Herne the goddamn Hunter, and decided I wanted no piece of this action.”

  Yep, saw it. Just a flicker in his aura before he could hide it. He hadn’t known Herne had gotten himself involved.

  “Now,” I continued before he could open his yap again, “can I go flop already? Or do I gotta get in two dust-ups tonight? ’Cause honestly, those are the only real options I’m offering. I’m done talking about having bupkis to talk about.”

  I think he mighta actually considered having his enforcers try to pound some additional knowledge outta me, but either he believed that I didn’t know from nothing, or he figured there were other ways to find out. Instead, he slipped his badge back into his coat, tipped his hat—his ears hadda make the thing as uncomfortable for him as mine do for me—and turned away. Moment more, the others followed.

  Hmm…

  “By the way, Raighallan?” I called after him.

  He looked back over his shoulder.

  “Your people on the train were careless. I’d talk at ’em if I were you.”

  And there it was again, that flicker I only saw ’cause I’d spent years learning how to spot these things. He had no idea what I was jawing about.

  So. Third faction.

  “Just remember this is Court business, Oberon. You’re making it harder on everyone—yourself most of all—if you stick your nose in. Keep out of it.”

  “I’m trying to keep out of it, if you saps would stop hauling me back into…”

  Ah, screw it. They were making tracks, which is what I wanted.

  I fumbled with the key, staggered inside, and don’t even remember the stairs or the hall. I just remember slamming my door, jabbing the lock with the L&G so it couldn’t open until I replaced the luck I’d ripped from it, and tumbling face-down on the mattress again.

  Took me an awful long time to drift off, though. See, no matter how uninvolved I was, I couldn’t help but wonder…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  She slunk into my office like a snake in a fox-fur-and-human stole, dress of forest green rustling and sliding as if it couldn’t wait to be shed, and I really can’t go on yapping this way, but I always did wanna start a sentence like that.

  Anyway, lemme back up a few. Again.

  For all my big talk about bunking a few days away, my body had other notions, and I’d woken up just an hour or so past noon. Thought about trying to pass back out, but I already had a couple cylinders up and running, and I knew it. Still kinda worn, still hurting from Herne’s broderick, but not near as bad as last night. Guess snoozing had done me all the good it was gonna, for now.

  So, after another ten minutes of cursing the bed, my body, and the world in general still didn’t accomplish anything, I rolled my carcass up off the mattress. First, flick of the wand to patch up the damage to the door lock so I could, y’know, leave if I wanted. Next, quick trip to the not-so-icy icebox and then the not-so-hot hot plate for a slug of not-so-cold milk to get the other half of my motor running—hadda make a note to nudge Ron Maddox, regional manager of the Milkman’s Local as they were missing deliveries a lot these days—and tried to suss out what to do with the day.

  Long as it didn’t involve spears or museums.

  Go back to digging for Miles Caro, maybe? That was the only paying job I had just then, yeah, but… Wasn’t as though the dead end I’d run up against yesterday had got any less dead. I really had nobody else to grill about him. Even my Mob guy’d come up empty—though, to be fair, he had a lotta stuff on his plate more family than Family right now.

  Plus, I was startin’ to wonder if I’d let myself get too wrapped up in digging for the gink. I shoulda maybe been payin’ more attention to the Fae side of things, shoulda chased down some of those rumors I mentioned. Obviously, there were more of us in your half of Chicago than usual, and if something big was goin’ down, it shouldn’ta caught me so badly by surprise. So yeah, maybe I’d already put more’n enough into the Caro case.

  (I probably oughta take the time to put you wise, here. I’m talking about the Caro case ’cause it was on my mind, was what I’d been lookin’ into when this whole shebang started. Other’n a quick bit of coincidence, though—which I’ll get to later—it ain’t tied up in everything else that happened. The whole racket wound up complicated enough; don’t go trying to squeeze Caro into your mental map, too.)

  Truthfully, though, I was a little unhappy at the idea of going out and sticking my beezer into too much of anything right now. If I bumped into Herne again, or whoever else, I didn’t much expect them to buy it when I told ’em I was looking for something other’n their missing dingus. Since I didn’t know enough to know how scared to be, I’d decided to play it safe and go for “a lot.”
/>
  Which, since my place looked a lot like the aftermath of a hobo slumber party, left straightening up as my only good option.

  Flogger on the coat rack, where gravity oughta tug some of the wrinkles out—the ones that were left I deemed the fittest of their species and worthy of survival. Shirt and slacks in a pile inside the compartment the Murphy bed folded into, followed by the bed itself—a few tongues of bed sheet stuck out from around the frame, as usual, but it’d do.

  Quick splash-clean in the attached bathroom—can I just tell you, again, how swell it is not to sweat?—quicker climb into an outfit more or less identical to the last one, and I got to tidying.

  Started with the nook where a big honkin’ refrigerator woulda lived, if I’d owned a big honkin’ refrigerator. Instead, it was empty with just a few thick spots of mildew growing in the corners. It was part of the process I used to make the whole niche into a special doorway when I needed it to be, but I didn’t want it spreading, becoming too ugly, so step one was to clean around the edges. After that…

  Well, you remember my place well enough, yeah? Cheap desk with a homicidal typewriter (I told you, you don’t get to hear that story), cheaper chairs for me’n the guests, couple chests of drawers and filing cabinets. Not the same desk and chairs anymore—I’d been forced to replace those after my dust-up with Goswythe the phouka—but close enough for jazz. I’d even managed to scrub the bloodstains outta the rug since then. Amazing what shampoo, elbow grease, and a smattering of magic can do for the décor.

  So, wiping and scrubbing and dusting, and I got all of about ten minutes’ work behind me when I found myself lingering over the drawer.

  The drawer. My collection of curios, bits and gewgaws I’d collected over the years in lieu of actual lettuce for a lotta my cases.

  Old books. Old tools. Fragment of a mortar shell from the Great War. The secret last will and testament—and confession—of Ambrose Bierce. Old silverware with patterns of tarnish that almost formed legible runes. Of course, the switch to the old electric chair at Cook County, which I’d gotten from Assistant State’s Attorney Dan Baskin earlier that year. And a couple dozen other nothings.