What Fate Portends

by Clara Coulson

  Stripping off yesterday’s dirty clothes, I dropped them in a pile in the corner and retrieved a fresh towel and washcloth from under the sink. As I was straightening up, the lantern light glinted off the helix-shaped scars running horizontally across my back and arms, reflecting with a flash in the mirror above the sink. I should’ve looked away, because the sight of the scars always put me in a bad mood, but today, I couldn’t stop myself from tracing them with my eyes. They made a complete circle, continued all the way around my chest, bisecting my ribcage with curved white marks that stood out on my skin.

  Iron scars.

  Echoes of pain and blurry memories flashed across the forefront of my mind, taunting voices at their edges, urging me to hurt and die. They triggered a visceral fury that began to build inside my chest like steam about to shriek, and…

  My reflection in the mirror faded as crackling frost coated the pane.

  Shit. I pulled myself away from the anger and kicked it back to the dark corner of my soul where it belonged. The frost immediately dissipated, the abrupt burst of cold leached away by the rising warmth of the tub water.

  I touched my chest and realized I’d left my necklace of glamour charms sitting on the side table in the living room after I finished rebuilding the three I broke yesterday. The charms were still effective at a distance, but they were easier for my wily magic to subvert when they weren’t physically touching me. Particularly in instances of emotional upheaval.

  I took a quick trip back to the living room and put the necklace on. Last thing I needed was some hapless human getting a glimpse of my true self if I got pissed off. They’d run and tell the whole damn city what I was, and then I’d really be ostracized. I may not have had too many friends these days, but the ones I did have were good company. It’d suck to lose them like I’d lost so many others. Very few people were as understanding as O’Shea.

  Charms fully functional again, I finally sank into the hot water and lay back to enjoy a good soak before my busy day got started.

  An hour later, I was strolling down Hayburn Street, a crowded neighborhood of duplexes with low-priced room rentals popularly used as transition housing for new arrivals. Squalor permeated the area, from the alleys overflowing with black bags to the thick layers of foul-smelling grime on the sidewalks and front stoops, to the boarded windows, many with broken panes. Feral cats roamed the street, eating food scraps from torn trash bags and lounging on any dry space they could find. One of them, an orange tabby, followed me for two blocks, until it found another passerby to bother.

  Children with bright, frightened eyes left out on the stoops to amuse themselves watched me in curiosity as I turned right into a tiny courtyard between two buildings with brick façades that had started to crumble years ago. The faux-gothic fence that separated the courtyard from the sidewalk was made of wrought iron, but the gate was open, so I didn’t have to touch it. (I wore gloves in case I had to handle iron, but it still stung a bit through the fabric.) I strolled on in, following the brick path around a nonfunctional stone fountain and avoiding large puddles from yesterday’s storm. At the very back of the courtyard, abutting a tall brick wall, was Mo’s one-stop supply shop.

  Though “shop” was a generous term. It was just three tables with a blue tarp pitched over them, where Mo sold basic supplies for inflated prices to people who’d just arrived in Kinsale with nothing but the clothes on their backs. You could get the same stuff cheaper at my store, and Mo often did. He came in once a month and made a large purchase; he would then resell my wares on Hayburn with huge markups. The processing center for refugees was only a quarter mile up the street, so many of them passed this way as they went on the hunt for housing and other necessities.

  I would’ve been appalled at such a lack of integrity once upon a time, and probably thrown the book at a crook like Mo. But I didn’t feel much in the way of outrage for people getting fleeced by greedy opportunists. If someone came begging to me, I’d throw them a bone for old times’ sake, because I was nice like that. But if someone like Mo dangled the bone over their head instead? Eh. I didn’t have enough sympathy left in my well to really care. The purge had almost drained it dry.

  Mo was at the end of one table, counting out chits and sorting them into bags in his lockbox, when I walked over. He glanced up at me—and did a double take. “Whoa! Whelan. Not the guy I was expecting.”

  “I assume you were expecting your drug dealer?”

  Mo was a short bald guy with a thick neck, and when he blushed, his entire head turned bright red. He looked like a tomato as he answered, “You know I kicked that habit months back.”

  “Yes, but how many habits have you started since then?” I flicked my eyes toward a couple of malnourished people in virtual sacks picking through boxes of clothes one table down. “You planning to jumpstart their habits today?”

  He rubbed a five-chit piece between his thumb and forefinger, a nervous habit. “Not them in particular.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Look, Whelan, what do you want?” He raised both arms to gesture to the area behind the tables, where he had most of his inventory loaded into plastic bins. “I already bought a shit ton of stuff from you this month, and I know you’re not hurting for cash because a couple of my buddies saw you come in from the stretches yesterday, which means you just got paid for a big job. So why are you hassling me?” He squinted. “You didn’t rejoin the cops, did you?”

  “Hell no.” I picked up a box of brightly colored plastic straws from a wicker basket next to the lockbox and shook it. Half empty. He’d been selling them piecemeal. What a weasel. “Actually, I was planning to pay you—for some choice information.”

  “Huh?” He cocked a bushy eyebrow. It was weird how he had such thick eyebrows but no hair on his head. “What kind of information?”

  “I have it on good authority that you occasionally help out with staffing at certain exclusive auctions run by certain unlawful people that sell certain expensive and unique items, due to your previous occupation as a private security expert.” I sat the straws back in the basket, leaned forward, and lowered my voice. “I’ll pay you five hundred chits if you tell me where the next auction is taking place.”

  Mo balked. “No way, man. If you cause trouble at an auction, and one of the big bosses finds out it was me who—”

  I raised a finger to silence him. “You think I’d give you up to any mobster in this town? You think I’d give anyone up? You think I’d give anything up? Mo, I’d march backward into hell flipping two birds and cursing in French before I’d give an inch to one of those bitches, much less a mile. I might not be a cop anymore, but I’ll be damned if I do anything but spit in the face of a crime lord.”

  Mo shrank in on himself, cowed. “I know you wouldn’t give me away intentionally. I didn’t mean to imply that. But you’ve got to know these people employ certain types of security personnel—the magical types—who can do all sorts of spells. Like retracing your steps. Or pulling information from your mind without permission.”

  “A thousand.”

  “What?”

  “A thousand chits.” I pulled out one of the blue bars Tom had given me yesterday and placed it on the table in front of the lockbox. “For nothing but a time and a place.”

  “Holy…” He picked up the bar and ogled it with reverence. “Where’d you even get this?”

  I blinked at him. Twice.

  “Okay, big secret. Got it.” He ran his thumb across the bar and bit down on his lip. “Throw in five hundred more, and I’ll whisper the info in your ear, exactly once. But if this blows back on me, I’m breaking into your house, stealing all your shit, and moving to Memphis before I get strung up in a public park.”

  “Deal.” I tucked my fingers behind my ear. “Let’s have it.”

  He brought his mouth close to my ear and mumbled the address of a warehouse, plus a start time of eleven o’clock—tonight. I’d have to come up with a plan of “attack” this afternoon then. Un
less I wanted to wait the better part of a week for the next auction to come around. Which would involve me bribing Mo yet again in what was becoming a tedious cycle of monetary exchanges between us.

  As I dug around in my pockets for my chit bag to hand over the promised five hundred, I said, “You going to be there?”

  He pulled away from me and held out his hand for the extra chits. “Nah. I got a gig with Joe Shark down on Pulley tonight. He pays better than those auction people, which is ironic considering he doesn’t make half of what they do.”

  Joe Shark was a small-time mob guy who had some very niche lines of business. He owned a couple restaurants and bars that washed his dirty money and acted as fronts for backroom gambling rings. He was fairly harmless, as far as organized crime bosses went.

  I counted out the chits from my bag and dropped them onto Mo’s open palm. “Well, you have fun. And don’t get yourself shot. Or set on fire, again.”

  His blush returned with a vengeance. “Low blow, man. That wasn’t my fault.”

  I chuckled. “It’s always your fault, Mo. You—”

  “Freeze! Police,” a stern voice called out from the sidewalk.

  Men and women dressed in navy blue flooded the courtyard, all of them armed to the teeth with handguns, shock batons, and magic-suppressing handcuffs. There were ten of them in total, each wearing a slightly different expression of anxiety, and they SWAT-shuffled around both sides of the fountain, guns at the ready, to make sure the people at the back of the courtyard couldn’t flee through the gate.

  All the refugees checking out Mo’s wares immediately dropped into huddled balls at the sight of the cops. Several of them whimpered in ways that told me they’d been the victims of military and police brutality during the purge. Mo, on the other hand, stood like a statue, mouth stuck open in shock. He’d never been raided before.

  As for me? I just stared at the cops with one eyebrow arched, unimpressed.

  What a sloppy entrance. Even a regular human could’ve escaped nine different ways.

  The cops surrounded Mo’s tables in a tight half-circle, and I made a three-quarter turn to face the guy who’d stepped a few inches closer than everyone else, assuming he was the leader. The guy was about thirty, and I didn’t recognize him from my years on the force. Which meant he was either fresh off the recently rebuilt academy line, or a “transfer,” having been a cop in some other city before the collapse. My money was on the latter, based on his age and the way he held himself. He had that rock-rigid posture short men in charge always used to make themselves seem more imposing.

  “Hands up where I can see them,” he barked at Mo and me.

  Mo raised his hands above his head.

  I stuck my hands in my pockets, dropping off my chit bag in its usual place, and replied, “Why?”

  That threw the cop for a loop. “What do you mean ‘why’? I…You’re supposed to…” He shook himself out of his confusion and painted the angry face back on. “Enough BS. Put your hands up.”

  “Am I under arrest?” I drawled. “What am I being charged with?”

  He growled at me. Like a tiny dog. “You’re not under arrest. We’re searching the premises for contraband material, and everyone here is required to keep their hands where I can see them until we’re finished. Else we’ll bring you in for obstructing an investigation. How’s that sound, pal?”

  “Where’s the warrant?” I pointed at Mo. “You’re supposed to show him your warrant before you search the place. Legally.”

  Short Stack apparently had a short fuse, because he muttered a series of nasty insults under his breath then reached for his cuffs. “Okay, wise guy. You think you know a lot about police procedure? I’ll show—”

  “He knows everything about police procedure,” said a chillingly familiar female voice.

  My stomach tied itself into eight different knots.

  An eleventh cop walked around the fountain and halted next to Short Stack. She looked older than she had last time I’d seen her, crow’s feet and frown lines etched into her freckled face, the consequences of seven hard years. But she still had the same warm brown eyes, the same cute dimples, and the same shock of curly red hair that had made her the butt of many jokes back in the day.

  Saoirse Daly. My former partner. My former senior partner. The woman my foolhardy younger self had been assigned to when I’d made detective, because Saoirse was known for ironing out wrinkles in rookies. She was strict but fair, kind but hard, no nonsense and extremely intelligent.

  And our last conversation had ended with me screaming in her face.

  Leave me the fuck alone, you stupid human bitch, is how I phrased it.

  Saoirse took a step toward me, lips quirked at one end with a distant fondness. “Been a while, Vince.”

  “Yes,” I answered with the flattest tone I could muster, but somehow, I think the shame still came across. “It has.”

  “Vince?” Short Stack scrunched his nose. “You know this guy, Lieutenant?”

  “Lieutenant?” I tilted my head to the side. “You been climbing the ladder, eh?”

  “Well, it has been the better part of a decade.” She turned her palms outward. “Can’t expect a girl to stay in one place forever, can you?”

  “No, I don’t suppose you can.” I ground my heel into the brick beneath my feet. “But—”

  “Hold up,” interrupted Short Stack. “‘Vince’ as in Vincent Whelan? The half-faerie guy who used to be a cop?”

  All the other cops went deathly still. I panned my head around to check them out. Some I knew. Some I didn’t. The former wouldn’t meet my eye, because they remembered what happened seven years ago. The latter stared at me in terror, because they didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the fae. Funny thing was not a single one, not even Saoirse, understood how much they were really risking by accosting me. They knew I had a fae parent, but they didn’t know what kind of fae. And that was the important part. That was the big secret I had to keep.

  Or else.

  “You caught me, slick,” I said to Short Stack before turning back to Saoirse. “Who’s this hothead?”

  Saoirse stifled a smile. “Nolan Kennedy. Our newest detective.”

  “And you let him lead raids?” I snorted. “You never let me lead a raid when I was a rookie.”

  Saoirse didn’t answer. She set her jaw in that skewed way she did when she was annoyed by something. Which was the only clue I needed. Kennedy had ridden the nepotism train into the precinct, probably on the coattails of a wealthy or otherwise influential relative. There wasn’t much in the way of taxes and government funding yet, so the police were paid via private interests, plus a meager dispensation from our dear faerie “leaders” just to keep the force running at a barebones level in case the donations petered out.

  Kennedy had been part of a package deal. Extra funds for his placement in a good job on the force. Probably to keep him off the streets and give him something productive to do so he wouldn’t blow all his steam off in the wrong places and embarrass his family. That was probably how he’d gotten all his pre-collapse jobs as well. He’s every bit the dumbass he appears to be too, I bet.

  “They’re giving you Kinsale’s problem children now?” I asked Saoirse. “Seems a tad unfair, considering the state of things. You don’t need any more trouble than you already have.”

  “Excuse me?” Kennedy snapped. “You don’t get to talk about me like that.”

  I gave him the coldest look I could without dropping my glamours. “Why not?”

  He staggered back a step. Then he funneled his fear into more rage and barked, “No more fucking games. I don’t care who you are. We’re searching this so-called business, and you’re either going to submit to a search as well, or we’re going to take you to the precinct for questioning regarding reported illicit activity at this establishment.”

  “Reported?” That pinged my suspicion meter. I shifted my attention to Saoirse. “Why’d you decide to raid Mo’s now?”


  “Hey,” Kennedy said, inching forward, hand tightening on his gun, “I was talking to you.”

  Saoirse ignored him and answered, “We received a package of evidence suggesting this place was part of a drug ring we’ve been targeting.”

  Mo, who’d been standing beside me like an ice sculpture this whole time, whispered so only I could hear him, “No delivery yet today. I’m clear.”

  “Who sent you this package?” I asked.

  Saoirse drew her lips into a thin line. “It was anonymous.”

  “I bet—”

  Kennedy lunged for me, cuffs in one hand, the other outstretched like a claw, aiming for my arm. I dodged to the left, maneuvered around him in a tight arc, swept my foot into both his ankles, grabbed him by the arm, and yanked him sideways without even using any nonhuman strength. Kennedy’s knees hit the rim of the fountain basin, and he tumbled face first into a foot of tepid water filled with green slime and dead bugs. He struggled for a few seconds to find purchase against the slippery base, then tore his head out of the water, spitting and gasping.

  “You bastard!” he said between wet coughs. “You’re under arrest for assaulting a police officer.”

  “No, I’m not.” I shifted toward Saoirse, who was cringing in a way that implied she was calculating how much ass-kissing she was going to have to do to get Kennedy’s family to calm down after they found out a group of ten cops had allowed a half-fae to humiliate him in public. I sorta-kinda felt guilty about putting her in that position. But at the same time, the Kinsale PD, at an organizational level, could go hang themselves and strangle to death. Their PR problems weren’t my problems. Not anymore. Not ever again.

  I cleared my throat to get Saoirse’s attention. “I want to see this evidence package.”

  Saoirse started. “But Vince, it’s at the precinct.”

  “Then I’ll go there.” I gestured to Kennedy, who was still trying to extract himself from the muck. “Aren’t you supposed to bring me in for questioning anyway, since I failed to comply with the terms of your search warrant?”