The Best of Talebones

by edited by Patrick Swenson

  “He might just kill you outright.”

  “I could hide with my family, in Faerie. They’re an old and powerful clan. But I can’t draw them into this now. I can’t risk them knowing what I’ve been doing.”

  “What kind of evidence did you have in mind?”

  “After the last show, backstage at the club becomes a kind of — well — VIP lounge for gentlemen guests to meet the performers.”

  I smiled. “I understand.” That’s where the ‘luring’ went on.

  She looked away. “His contacts come in as if they were just other customers, and he meets them there. Some of them are human. I thought if you could follow them — find out who they are and where they come from — it would be what I need to be free of him.”

  Maybe nothing more than a tail job. I nodded.

  “I can supply you with Faerie gold, for expenses.” She reached back into her miraculous little purse, drew out a small black bag, and handed it over.

  It was enough to cover my expenses, especially if I felt like buying two or three city blocks. If I bought them that night, in Twilight, of course. Tomorrow, this side of the river, that gold would be a handful of the dust you get when you crumble dry leaves.

  But it was real enough now. She was real — what I could see of her was real — and her offer of a quid pro quo had my blood humming, though it left that something in the back of my skull cold and suspicious. And she might lead me to Keats. I smiled, put her money in my pocket, and said I’d see her that evening in Faerie.

  When she was gone, I looked over the scrap of paper, puzzling over what Keats had been trying to say. Some kind of warning? How had O’Barron gotten hold of it?

  I took Keats’s last message to me, delivered after he disappeared, out of the top desk drawer:

  I met a lady in the mead,

  Full beautiful, a faery’s child;

  Her hair was long, her foot was light,

  And her eyes were wild.

  It was scrawled on letterhead. At the top was printed “Club Tir na Nog. For Discriminating Males of Every Realm.”

  What lady had he met? I wondered. Had he met mine?

  Even if her story was as full of moonshine as a drunken night in Faerie, I planned on keeping my date with Miss O’Shea. But on my terms.

  Faerie — aka Elfland — contains castles, forests, fields, and mountains, but humans rarely get that far in. When they do, they come back changed, if they come back at all. I’ve never seen the Kingdom past Twilight. I work urban Faerie, a whole different ring of toadstools.

  Johnny Keats spent a lot of time across the river. I didn’t know how much when he was working for me, though I knew the place attracted him. I found out later, when I started to check on his disappearance.

  Johnny did a lot of my legwork and was my all-round man Friday. I especially used him for tailing people. No one could shadow like Keats. He seemed to be able to disappear behind the subject, to blend in with the crowd, or if there was no crowd, with the emptiness. He called it “negative capability, the ability to be what you aren’t.” But he wouldn’t say any more about it, and I never did get the hang of it.

  He was a good kid, smart, cool-headed, thoughtful. He kept things to himself—maybe a little too much. He had class, which can come in handy in our racket, and the soul of a poet, which can come in handy working Faerie. So I made him a partner, though he’d been looking a little sallow and seedy for a few weeks. Hell, that happens; a little too much of this or that, some late hours. I thought it would pass, whatever it was.

  I’d just had the door repainted from Murdoch Investigations to Murdoch and Keats, Private Investigators, when he crossed over to Faerie one day and, except for that last message, disappeared. I’d been looking for him, off and on, ever since.

  You don’t just let your partner vanish.

  I found out that on his jaunts into Elfland he’d gone from cowslip wine to moondust, and finally to lines of fairy dust. The fairies themselves produce it, like bees do honey. I never wanted to know the particulars.

  Once he was gone, I realized that there was some kind of ache behind his quiet surface that I’d never bothered to question. I figured there was some dame mixed up in it. Sharp, eh? The Great Detective. You didn’t even know your own partner. If you had, maybe you could’ve helped him.

  I had to try to help him now. But to do that, I had to find him.

  Someone must’ve been keeping tabs on Miss O’Shea. When I turned down the alley toward the parking lot, a goblin stepped in front of me. He was five feet tall, with gray skin, ropy muscles, bat ears, and a nose like an ape’s.

  I don’t like goblins. Their skin is like a dead man’s, their features don’t match, their hands, feet, toes, and fingers are bizarrely different sizes. They sweat cold, like stone does, and smell like wet leather.

  “What do you want?” I said as two other goblins came out of nearby doorways to join him.

  “Leave the woman alone,” he growled.

  “Forget your partner,” one of the others hissed. “He’s gone.”

  I looked expectantly at the third, the smallest. “What’s the matter with you?” I said. “Cat got your tongue?”

  He turned a shade of purple under the gray, and his mouth opened in a hissing shriek. Inside it wriggled a red stump.

  “He recognized Catsnatcher!” growled the first one. “Get him!”

  Before you could say, “By the pricking of my thumbs” Catsnatcher — who I didn’t know from Puck — threw himself around my neck. I brought both fists up from beneath, into his midriff, and sent him sailing backward, gasping. The other two grabbed me on either side. I went with the pull of the first, who was bigger, and that brought the other down on top of both of us.

  They still held my arms, so I used my elbows and knees as best I could, but so did they, and Catsnatcher came back and punched me in the side of the head. I saw red stars, but I made the big one groan with a knee to the gut.

  Then they let go and scrambled up. I managed to sit up and get out my sap — lead wrapped in leather, the leather studded with silver — and my gun. I looked to see what had gotten them off me.

  A shadowy figure came down the alley. I sapped the big goblin on the side of the knee, and he fell with a cry. The other two helped him up, and they scurried away.

  I stood and pointed the gun toward the dark figure. “Okay, pal, maybe I owe you thanks, but move up slow till I can see you.”

  He stopped. I heard a whisper. “Beauty . . . is a witch . . .”

  “Willy, is that you? What are you doing here? I might have plugged you,” I said as I stowed away the sap and the gat. It was Willy “Shakes” Speare (given the nickname because of his monstrous attacks of the DTs), a washed up old alky of a PI. He’d given me pointers when I was starting out, a long time ago, but then something had happened to him — no one knew what — and he’d fallen in love with the bottle.

  He stepped forward into a patch of moonlight. “Paid me,” he muttered. “‘Murdoch,’ they said. I —” It was hard to read Willy through the lowered, shifting eyes, the scraggle of white beard, but I thought I saw a new sadness in him, and shame.

  “Willy, you fingered me for them?”

  He gave a loose nod.

  “Why?”

  He started shaking his head, no, no, no, then leaned against the wall, face turned away from me, crying. He held up a bottle of moonshine. Clear, potent moonshine.

  “Did they at least give you some cash?” He nodded. “True, or Faerie?”

  “True,” he muttered.

  I sighed. “Well, forget it. No real harm done.” I bent to brush off my pants legs. “Did they tell you anything, Willy? Like who paid them?”

  “Said to tell you — leave it alone. Leave her alone.” He turned toward me, his face grave.

  “I can’t leave her alone. I think she can lead me to Keats.”

  “You can’t help Keats,” he said.

  It was the clearest thing I’d heard from him
in years. “Do you know something about him? Willy — it’s important.”

  “Deep forests, always in shadow, even at noon,” he said quietly, as if repeating an old story. “Then the lone country, where you never see another, no matter how close you come.”

  “That’s deep Fairie, isn’t it? Is that where Keats went? Is he looking for something?”

  With sudden clarity lighting his face, Willy laughed. “No,” he said. “He’s looking for nothing.”

  I got no percentage from that. “Where could he be going?”

  “The White Sea,” he said softly.

  I’d heard of it — the last boundary of Faerie. No one’s ever come back from there, they say, but someone must have, or how do they know it’s white? But no one says what’s beyond it, so I guess no one has crossed it and returned.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Willy shook his head. “I saw them once,” he muttered. “The stuff of dreams,” he whispered, to himself, now, his eyes distant with some vision only he could see and glazed with unshed tears. “I slept; perchance I dreamt. Thought I’d get away. Never, never, never, never, never . . .” He laughed to himself. “What fools,” he whispered darkly, “what fools!”

  “Willy? What are you talking about?”

  He focused on me. “I’m an idiot.” He chuckled without humor. “A lot of sound, but it doesn’t signify. Lord, I need a drink!” He chuckled again. “Suit the action to the word!” He tipped back his bottle, sloshing moonshine down his chin.

  “You have someplace to flop?” I asked. “You have the money they gave you, or’d you drink it all?”

  “I’ve got it,” he said, standing straight now, but wobbling. “I’m rich, rich and strange.” He laughed to himself again. Then, still bleary, he turned and shambled away.

  What had Keats gotten himself mixed up in? He was young, romantic. If he had run across Miss O’Shea, I could see him falling for her, hard. Was O’Barron after him, “the jealous brute?” Is that why he’d gone into hiding?

  Whoever’d sent those goblins had made a mistake. I was more determined than ever to see Maeve O’Shea on her home ground.

  If I’d taken Miss O’Shea’s way into Twilight, across the high bridge, they’d have searched me. Iron and silver were forbidden in Faerie. But I had my own way into Twilight, through a break in two old sewer tunnels that met under the river. The Faerie side was guarded by a Troll named Cobblestone, who looked like a pile of rocks, though he wasn’t quite that bright. He could be bought for two black hens. I could have saved money and trouble if he’d’ve let me bring just the heads, but he insisted on biting them off himself.

  Cobblestone’s tunnel was the only way I could get in with my knife, my sap, and my gat (pregnant with six little silver gittens).

  The Club Tir na Nog was the typical riverside dive catering to humans “across the river” (what we also said about someone who’d lost his mind). It was decorated with tired gossamer, gilt, and withered dock leaves, and the drinks had names like “Banshee Brew” and “Dwarf’s Hammer,” as well as “the ever-popular Egg na Nog.”

  It was crowded; I sat at a table with three other mortals. While we were waiting for the floorshow, we were treated to a table dance by a female pixie, accompanied, in the background, by a fevered skirl of horns and pipes and a low thump of drums.

  To fully appreciate her took imagination, as she was hardly bigger than an image in a magazine. But she was perfectly formed, gorgeous, if you looked closely (and we all did). She wore only spun gossamer, cobwebs, and two strategically placed acorn caps, which seemed to be held up by magic, suction, or sheer willpower.

  She mostly looked away, as these dancers do, only now and again boldly glancing at one or the other of us, daring us to mock her size. One man and then another would reach into his pouch and pick up a sequin, the smallest Faerie coin, on his fingertip, and flick it to the table. She would nod, and every now and then another gauzy veil would float away.

  When she ran out of gossamer she popped off the acorn caps, one after the other, no hands, just by flexing the right muscles. Then she snatched up someone’s swizzle stick and made it a partner in her dance.

  When she was done, one of the Club Brownies brought her a cloak the size of a hanky. She wrapped herself in it, pearly with translucent perspiration, reclaiming her modesty as if it were a crown she’d set down for just a moment.

  I went off to the Men’s and Other Males’ room through a swirl of smoke and chatter. When I got back, the floorshow had started. The human-sized fairies on stage didn’t do anything the table fairy hadn’t, but it was nice not to have to squint.

  Then the star turn came, Miss Maeve O’Shea, in a violet gown that plunged in a way that made me hold my breath. Maybe the cold voice in my brain had stopped me from falling for her before; but it couldn’t now, here in Faerie, as she leaned to one side, her eyes closed, and sang about lovers from two different worlds meeting under a fateful moon.

  *

  After the show I went backstage. The first thing I saw was one of the men from my table, a pale young citizen in a rumpled suit, with a day-old beard and a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth. He sat on a step with the table pixie on his knee, bent over, talking to her earnestly. They both looked at me for a moment, and I looked away. If a guy had a use for a twelve-inch tall fairy, he wouldn’t be proud of it, whether it was a case of odd tastes or odd anatomy.

  They weren’t alone. A lot of the dancers were standing around in the easy deshabille of backstage at a strip joint, though this wasn’t a normal backstage; this was business. Most of them were chatting with mortal patrons. Goblin stagehands and an ogre bouncer looked on, grinning, or spoke with unoccupied showgirls. There was a lot of female skin in a lot of hues — pale green, scarlet, bone white. A number of dancers stood on the steps of a spiral stairway, speaking to — well, I suppose it’s right to call them johns — and leaning over the railings to call down to others. I hadn’t seen so many heavenly orbs dangling over me since I’d visited the planetarium when I was a boy.

  A pale golden fairy, wings beating rapidly, lighted on the back of my hand. She was naked as lust and no bigger than a large butterfly. She lay back languorously, stretching her arms and legs full out, as if she’d just gotten out of bed, and in a soft, piping voice said, “Private show, mister?”

  I told my bloodstream “Whoa, boy” and said to her, “Not right now, precious. I’m looking for someone.”

  She gave a little moue, rose up and, with a wiggle of her bottom, took off for greener pastures. I thought less harshly of my pale, rumpled friend with the table pixie.

  I was still casting around for Miss O’Shea, or a sign of her dressing room. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a goblin sidle up with a sort of limping step. I thought I’d ask him, but he spoke first. “Looking for something special, buddy? You ever had a succubus? They don’t call them that for —”

  And then we locked eyes and recognized one another. The big goblin from the alley. “Elfslayer!” he screeched. That’s what they call fanatic humans who think all Faerie is demonic. From time to time one makes his way across the river; they live in dread of them.

  The place went crazy. Pixies in rainbow colors shot through the air, looking for a way out. Elfin women of every size screamed, clutched what clothes they had, as if the elfslayer could attack them with his eyes, and ran in random directions. The mortal visitors, afraid of any trouble, bleated and began to stampede toward the doors.

  I clipped my goblin friend in the jaw as a thank you, then headed for the nearest exit. “He’s back there!” I yelled, pointing behind me. Smart in a way — it diverted attention from me — but now there was a flood of bodies, human and elfin, plowing along with me toward the same door.

  As I fought my way past the spiral stair, a nubile jade-green elf was pitched off, screaming, by the press of those trying to get down. I caught her in both arms around the waist, her décolletage slapping my face. I set her down, thanked her, and pr
essed on.

  Ahead of me, in the melee, I glimpsed Maeve O’Shea, in a cloak, hurrying toward the door. The crowd seemed to part for her. “Miss O’Shea! Wait! It’s Murdoch!” She kept going and didn’t look back.

  Far behind me I heard a roar. I turned to see a tall figure, brick red, with black horns, coming after me through the mob.

  I fought my way to the door, half-fell out in a torrent of bodies. I saw Miss O’Shea nearing the mouth of the alley, where a row of hansom cabs waited. I struggled to my feet and ran after her, opened the door of the next cab.

  I heard a goblin voice behind me yell, “There, by the cab! He’s the elfslayer!” The crowd was braver out here; a number of them ran toward me. Behind them I saw a red, horned head come through the exit. I pulled out my .38 and fired a shot into the air to slow them up.

  This case had some kind of curse on it from the start. The bullet must have hit something, I thought; it ricocheted with force enough to drive the slug into a goblin’s forehead.

  The soulless screech as they die, no matter how quickly death comes. I recognized Catsnatcher by the stump of his tongue. He fell backward, his keening wail dying with him.

  Shaking, I got into the cab, pulled the door closed, and told the driver to follow Miss O’Shea’s cab. In case he had a problem, I showed him the gun. We went.

  Ten minutes later, hers pulled up before an old, ornate townhouse on a street that ran along the Fée. The street was shrouded in river mist; if it had been any worse, we’d have lost her. I stopped my cab a block back, paid the driver from Miss O’Shea’s gold, and ran silently up to where she stood at the door.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, starting, dropping her key. A moment later she had flung herself into my arms. “It’s you! Praise the Powers! I was so afraid you wouldn’t be able to find me.”

  “I followed you from the club. Why did you run from me?”