Hot Lead, Cold Iron

  “He’s just a salesman, honey,” Bianca assured him—in English again.

  “You,” he said, pointing two fingers at me. “Get the fuck out. I don’t ever wanna see you back around here, you get me?”

  “I understand completely, sir. My apologies if I—”

  “Get!”

  I got. I had what I needed, anyway.

  And more, actually. Interesting the name “Scola” should come up again. Still might be nothing, but it gave me something to think about—and distract myself with—during the Elevated ride to downtown, and the long, long walks that followed.

  * * *

  You wanna hear about the next two nights? Endless hours strolling the sidewalks and shops and elevated platforms of downtown Chicago, bathed in the glow of flickering streetlamps or the light spilling from nightclubs and late-night vendors? Serenaded by an orchestra of flivvers and trains, jazz and lounge music and gasping, chattering tourists? Pushing through crowds of the Loop’s nightlife as they poured from theaters and restaurants and speakeasies in a cloud of cigarette smoke and booze-breath? All the while with one hand in my coat, poking the L&G around like a friggin’ divining rod?

  No? Good, ’cause I damn well ain’t interested in going into it. Suffice to say, those nights couldn’t have been anymore wasted time if I’d sat around playing Solitaire in the dark.

  But finally, early on the third night—or, well, late on the third evening—I got lucky.

  Some of you are wondering what I needed Ottati hair for; some have already doped it out. It’s back to magic, with all its symbolism and interconnections. If you got something connected to your mark—hair, clothes, whatever—you got a lot more power over that mark. It ain’t so easy with “once-removed sympathy,” like using Bianca’s hair to find her daughter, but it helps.

  I wasn’t at all shocked that Orsola hadn’t managed to find Celia. No way she’d had any chance while the kid was in Elphame, but even once she was back, one of the things Fae magic’s best at is hiding—and making sure they kept hidden woulda been Goswythe’s first priority.

  But me, I wasn’t using magic to try to locate the girl, not exactly. Heck, I’d barely even know how; I’m not a warlock. What I can do, as you’ve already seen a time or two, is fiddle with luck. I knew the area Celia was working, and while the chances of me just randomly bumping into her were tiny, it was possible. A touch of my magic—especially focused through her relative’s hair—made it a lot more possible. What coulda taken months, if it happened at all, happened instead on the third evening. As I said, I got lucky. I made myself lucky.

  Didn’t make the previous two nights any more fun, though.

  I found her across the street and just down the block from the palatial façade of the Oriental Theatre, precisely close enough for the patrons to notice her as they stepped from the whirl of Arabian filigree and plush carpets and gilded statuary. Nothing about her stood out except for how average she was, and if that doesn’t make any sense to you, well, you’ll just have to trust me. Her hair was a mousy brown, pretty much black in the poor lighting of the streetlamps, and standing out sharply beneath a faded burgundy cloche hat. Her blouse and skirt were nice but just a little worn, the hem a couple inches low, the colors ever so barely drab. Clean but out of style, exactly the kinda glad rags you’d expect to see on someone too poor to afford to look like she thought she oughta look. A family fallen on hard times, or maybe a small-town girl come to the big city in search of work.

  Perfect choice for plucking at the heartstrings of anyone flush enough to visit the theater, without looking shabby enough to make ’em uncomfortable. I felt the urge to applaud.

  She was chiseling some older couple in dark overcoats, hands gesturing expansively—no doubt describing her poor humble hometown, or the younger siblings she had to feed—and, not incidentally, swiping the geezer’s watch while she was at it. Her movements were smooth, graceful; too graceful, if you knew what to look for. I dunno precisely what sob story she told ’em, but it wasn’t just compassion made him dig into his wallet, or the old dame into her purse. Even from too far away to hear what they were saying, I felt an excess of emotion, pity and sympathy mostly, splashing out all around her. Best I can do is liken it to a clumsy waiter carrying a tray of soup: yeah, the bowl got to where it was going, but a lotta customers got wet and greasy on the way.

  She’d been taught, and by someone good—but she was only human.

  The saps moved on, a few bucks and a pocket watch poorer, and she started gunning for her next mark. I moved in just a few steps, to make sure I didn’t lose her in the throng.

  And she made me.

  I dunno what it was, exactly. I know I didn’t get careless, didn’t do anything that shoulda tipped her. Maybe, having grown up in Elphame and learned a little of our magic, she just sensed me coming, same way I can often tell if someone else is Fae no matter how they look.

  Whatever it was, she spun into a crouch, staring straight at me like a panicked fawn. And she did what any panicked fawn would do.

  I broke into a mad run after her, cursing with every exhalation. She was smaller’n me, with plenty of crowd to vanish into; knew this part of town as well as I did; and frankly, soon as the bystanders started to notice a frightened teenage girl running from a tall guy in a cheap suit and overcoat, there wasn’t much doubt whose side they’d take.

  Time to cheat.

  I pulled my wand and sorta whipped it forward and back, lasso-like, and literally yanked a shred of luck away from her—out from under her, really, as though it were a carpet.

  One of her shoes snagged on a length of knotted twine, discarded from a local newspaper stand, and she took a header to the sidewalk with a high-pitched squeal. I winced in sympathy as she scraped her palms and knees across the concrete; that’d sting for a few.

  I was pounding up beside her before she could gather her wits enough to even think of getting up or calling out. “Sweetie, are you okay? What happened!” I dropped into a crouch beside her and whispered, “I ain’t gonna hurt you—well, other than a couple skinned knees, apparently—but if you make a fuss, there will be cops involved. I don’t think you or Goswythe want that just now, see?”

  She glared at me; it was kinda cute, especially since she was trying not to tremble. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

  Yep, she’d definitely learned some of our tricks. I felt her words nudging at the corners of my mind, chiggers trying to bore into my emotions and make me feel sorry for her, or scared, or otherwise inclined to obey.

  It was kinda like being punched by a toddler. Even ignoring that none of you could ever be as proficient at our magics as we are, she’d been doing this for, what, maybe ten years at most? Me, I’d been practicing for…

  Well, you’d call me a liar.

  “Stop that,” I said, using a lot more’n just words, and she recoiled as though I’d hit her. I repeated my police threat and ordered her to come with me, both with enough willpower behind ’em to out-stubborn a lazy mule. She nodded, dazed, and let me help her climb to her feet. “It’s okay, everyone,” I told the few onlookers who’d started to loiter. “She’s all right. Just a little too much, uh, excitement.” I briefly lifted a nonexistent bottle to my lips, earning me a couple chuckles, some nods, and a disapproving cluck or two. But they all bought it.

  This time of the evening on a weeknight, even in the center of Chicago’s nightlife, it wasn’t too hard finding us seats on the L that were, if not isolated, at least private enough if we kept our voices down. She started shaking off her stupor right about the time the doors closed and the train lurched forward. Her face tried to twist into a half-dozen expressions at once, apparently unable to quite decide on the proper outfit.

  “You’re safe,” I said. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you.”

  That indecision resolved itself into a look of sheer, contemptuous disbelief. “Right. You kidnapped me to tell me I won a prize. How stupid do I look to you, buster?”

  “First
, keep your voice down, unless you’ve decided you wanna involve the cops after all.”

  “Maybe I—”

  “Second, this ain’t a kidnapping. I’m solving a kidnapping. This is an un-kidnapping.”

  That got me a couple of blinks.

  “I’m a private detective,” I said. “I was hired to find you. My name’s Mick Oberon.”

  She snorted. “Next you’ll tell me you’re related to the real King Oberon.”

  “Yep. Third cousin on my mother’s side.”

  I could tell pretty clearly that she couldn’t even begin to decide if I was joking or not.

  “I’m working for your mother, doll,” I continued. “She’s been worried sick since she discovered you were—”

  “Fuck you!” Yeah, she kept her voice down, but she made up in venom what she lacked in volume. My skin almost shriveled at the touch of her words. “My parents don’t give a damn about me! They never did.”

  Oh, boy. “I dunno what Goswythe’s been telling you, Celia, but your family—”

  “Goswythe is my family!” Her shoulders were actually shaking, though I wouldn’t have laid odds on whether she wanted to bolt or slug me one.

  “Yeah, I know how most Fae treat the humans they steal. Yelling at you, punishing you for the smallest failure or infraction, pummeling your mind and emotions with his own… That’s family to you? It don’t sound like it.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She swiveled her face away, gazing down the length of the car, and then snapped back. “And what about you? Oh, I know your kind. Poor little aes sidhe. Princes of Mud pretending they’re Kings of the Earth. Running around the Courts, playing your games and trying desperately to convince everyone you’re still the Tuatha Dé Danann, instead of pathetic little shadows of what you used to be!”

  And for just a moment, I gotta admit I lost it. Maybe it’s ’cause she had gotten into my head and touched my emotions a bit, I dunno. But everything I’d learned to wear in the past decades, everything that was “Mick,” rather’n who I’d been before, slipped away. I leaned in, and I have no idea what she saw, but she shrank back into the seat hard enough to bruise.

  “Oh, blind, foolish, little girl… You have no idea what we used to be…”

  The lights in the car flickered and went dead, only slowly recovering to maybe half their prior strength. In the dim glow, I saw the people seated further down begin to shiver, clutching their arms and their coats against an inner chill that didn’t come from the air at all. A few started to glance around, seeking the source of a sudden threat, a terrible fear in their souls of which their waking minds remained blissfully unaware. A purse fell open, spilling its rattling contents across the floor, and a button popped off a brand-new shirt, as chance and misfortune swirled and mixed unguided throughout the train.

  It was the squeal of the brakes as we rounded a bend that snapped me out of it. Even if I probably couldn’t affect the train directly, the amount of harm I could do with my emotions running unchecked and unrestrained… I took a deep breath, straightened in my seat, pulled every memory and every thought of Mick Oberon around me in a snug blanket. The lights returned to normal, the folks around stopped shivering, and I was me again.

  Or maybe it’s more honest to say I stopped being me again. Sometimes I wonder.

  For a good while, Celia kept quiet, barely even blinking as she watched me for any sudden moves, and I can’t say I blamed her. Finally, maybe ’cause the silence was worse, or maybe just to prove to me she wasn’t scared, she asked, in a soft voice, “Why ‘Oberon?’”

  I blinked at her. Eloquently. “Huh?”

  “‘Mick Oberon’ isn’t exactly a proper faerie name, is it? So why ‘Oberon?’”

  I forced a vaguely sallow grin. “I had some, uh, disagreements with the folks back home. When I left, I walked away from everything. Using my cousin’s name is a reminder of who I was.”

  It also gets most of ’em nice and steamed every time I use it, and I was angry enough back when I picked it to consider that a plus, but I didn’t feel inclined to share that tidbit just now. Heck, it’s a good thing she didn’t ask me where “Mick” came from; that story’s even less high-minded.

  “Well, but… You’re not serious about being related to him, right? I mean, the aes sidhe are Irish and King Oberon is from, what, English mythology, or French, or something.”

  I think my smile became a little more genuine. “Goswythe didn’t stint on your learning, anyway.” Then, before she could launch into another tirade about her “family,” I said, “Henry II inherited both the English throne and several territories in France. You were born American, but your paternal grandparents were Sicilian.”

  “Huh?” She parroted back at me. “Buddy, you wanna spend much time in this world, you better learn how people answer questions.”

  I snickered a little, but she was right; I was still a little preoccupied. “What I mean is, it’s all just borders. Yeah, an aes sidhe ain’t a leprechaun ain’t a glaistig… But we’re all of us all over the place. The aes sidhe? We were the tylwyth teg in Wales, the Norse ljósálfar, the elves of England—hell, even some of the Olympians. Glaistigs are also fauns, and satyrs. The differences meant a lot more to you folk, and your legends, than they did to the Fae. To most of us, other’n allegiance to a given king or queen or Court, it didn’t matter any more than it matters to humans whether some mug lives in Chicago or New York.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “How’s it you know so much about human culture and so little about ours when you grew up in Elphame?”

  She gave me that shrug that, throughout all the history of two worlds, only adolescents have mastered. “Goswythe taught me what I needed to know.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She repeated the shrug, maybe in case I’d somehow missed it the first time. Then, in an even smaller voice, “So what are you gonna do with me?”

  “That’s—actually a good question,” which was probably not the answer she’d wanted. But I was still hashing it out myself.

  See, I’d planned just to shadow her for a while, find out where she and Goswythe were holed up, and figure it out from there. It was a good plan, right until it got nicely gummed up when she’d tumbled to me. So now?

  I couldn’t just dump her at the Ottati house. Leaving aside the question of how Bianca and Orsola would explain it to Fino, I doubted Celia’d just stay put long enough for them to work it all out. And whoever’d arranged for her to vanish sixteen years ago might not take too kindly to her popping back up, either.

  No, that wasn’t safe for anyone. So first, I needed to get her back to my office, and then…

  Then I had no friggin’ idea.

  So we both sat on bouncing and clacking seats, staring either at each other or out the windows into the black Chicago night, and wondered.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Whoa! You work in this dump?”

  I slowly moved my hand off the light switch and did my level best to murder Celia with the weight of my derisive stare. She wasn’t looking, apparently too lost in scornful teenaged horror, so at best I managed a grazing flesh wound.

  “Welcome to my office,” I said flatly. “Bathroom’s through there. I’ll see if I can find you clean sheets for the bed.”

  “Bed?” She swiveled toward the slatted doors that closed off the Murphy’s niche. Don’t ask me how, but even looking at the back of her head—hair and hat, mostly—I still saw her blinkers widen. “You live in this dump?”

  “I see Goswythe hasn’t gotten to the lessons on manners yet.”

  “Hey! I can be plenty polite, buster. You just don’t have anything I want!”

  The prosecution rests, Your Honor. “Why don’t you go clean up?” I suggested. “You’ll wanna get the dirt off those scrapes. ’Fraid I don’t have any iodine or anything, but a good scrub should—”

  “I have cut myself before, you know,” she huffed. She continued to hover in the middle of
the room, just long enough to show me that she wasn’t going just ’cause I’d suggested it, and then she dropped her hat on my chair, wandered into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.

  I took the opportunity to putter around the room, straightening up a little, digging up clean linens, prepping us a couple of drinks. It was a good fifteen, maybe twenty minutes before she came back out.

  “Find everything okay?”

  She glared.

  “Except the window, of course. I’m sure you noticed there ain’t one in there.”

  She still glared.

  “Wouldn’t have mattered.” I pointed vaguely toward the ceiling. “Not even you could squeeze through those, anyway.”

  She glared harder. Then she sighed loudly and flopped into my chair.

  “Have a drink,” I offered, motioning toward the glass on the desk.

  “Really? You got anything stronger’n milk?”

  “Sure. I got cream.” Then, “You keep making that face, it’s gonna stick.”

  So she made one that was even worse, and drank. I raised my glass in a half-toast, and followed suit.

  “What, exactly,” I asked carefully, “did Goswythe tell you about your folks?”

  She slammed the glass down almost hard enough to break it; I winced as a few drops of milk splattered over the rim and across the typewriter. “More than enough!”

  “Yeah? Lemme guess. That they were awful, selfish people who abandoned their innocent baby somewhere to die? Or that they gave you up for adoption to a couple who were even worse, who starved and beat you, made you live in filth? And that one of the kind and bighearted faeries heard your cries, and whisked you away to a better place?”

  “Stop it!” Her irises were starting to shimmer wetly in the dull electric light.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? See, those are the usual stories, doll. And that’s exactly what they are: stories.”

  “They’re not! It’s what happened!” She stared down at the table, took another few gulps. “It’s what happened,” she repeated, more softly.

  “It’s not, Celia. You were taken from your crib a few days after you were born. They left a changeling in your place, a Fae child. Your momma didn’t even know the girl she raised wasn’t you until a few months ago.”