Hot Lead, Cold Iron

by Ari Marmell

  “You got a couple bobby pins?” I asked. She grunted something, went to the dressing-table, and came back with a handful. She offered, I took ’em—and then I stood, staring hard at the lock.

  “What are—?”

  I raised one finger, and the question died. It was replaced by more angry grumbling, but that was easier to ignore.

  This woulda gone a lot quicker with my wand, but then, that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? Still, after a couple minutes, I’d unwoven enough threads of luck from the mechanism—and wrapped ’em around myself—to make up for the shabby, makeshift tools. That done, I knelt in front of the lock, and it was no time at all before I heard the tumblers click beneath the bobby pins.

  It was almost funny, seeing the L&G just lying there on the bottom of the cabinet, in front of a hanging array of revolvers, semi-autos, shotguns, and a couple rifles. I couldn’t help but notice a few large gaps and empty pegs, and figured Fino was packing a lot more’n that little .25.

  I also took just a minute to raid the closet, swapping out my beat-up and shot-up overcoat for one of Fino’s; no sense in attracting any extra attention, right? “Just for the record,” I told Bianca as I shrugged into the black wool, “you guys are paying my tailor’s bill. And for the repairs to my office.”

  And that vital pronouncement made, I was bounding down the stairs two or three at a time, and out into the blustery Chicago evening.

  * * *

  I didn’t have to wonder long how Adalina had managed to shake everyone so quickly. I couldn’t tell you if she was moving faster’n any human, or climbing and squeezing into places she shouldn’t have been able to go, or if she was just cloaking herself in some manner of illusion or invisibility—woulda helped if I’d known what she was becoming—but whatever the case, she was definitely using magic to do it. Not well, and probably instinctively, not on purpose, but it was there all the same. I could feel it all around me, taste it in the air, sort of a “spiritual honeysuckle”-scented trail. At her age, in her emotional state, she’d have been sprinkling magic like a walking aspergillum no matter what she was doing. I held the L&G at the ready, just in case I lost the scent—fat chance of that!—and started running.

  And running. And running. Damn, Adalina’d been moving, hadn’t she? At my best, catching her wouldn’t exactly be duck soup. Now? I was glomming bits of luck from the world around me just to keep myself going.

  I blew past a few folks taking a late evening stroll, or just coming home from a long day’s work, or taking the dog for a much-needed walk. I got my share of glares and occasional shouted complaints, especially the time or two I shoved guys outta my way, or actually jumped over a dog and leash; and maybe ’cause my sprint and the brisk breeze were throwing my borrowed coat out behind me in a makeshift cape, which was probably slapping anyone I passed too close. But the girl’s trail wouldn’t last forever, and I wasn’t about to slow down.

  Along sidewalks, across nicely landscaped yards, and even over a fence or two, until, maybe five or six blocks from the Ottati house…

  The trail wavered. It didn’t fade or weaken exactly, more that it… felt different. Tasted different.

  Adalina’s uncontrolled magics were spiced, faintly as you please, with somebody else’s. Strong but controlled, expertly wielded; if it hadn’t been for how it interfered with the more obvious spoor, I’d never have picked it up.

  So who—and what—the hell else was skulking around out here?

  It was dark enough by then that, even with the streetlamps glowing around me, I had to concentrate to make sure I didn’t miss anything important. Couple of flivvers along the street (I was on 70th by then), mostly parked. People wandering around behind mostly closed curtains, cleaning up after dinner or settling down to a pipe and Amos ’n’ Andy. Up the block, across Wabash, a dapple-grey horse was hauling a creaking milk wagon. Off to my left, a mangy possum was loitering in someone’s hedges, ogling their garbage. And—

  Hang on a minute…

  Horse-drawn milk wagon? Sure, not at all outta place in this sorta neighborhood, ’cept that it was a little late for deliveries. By about ten to twelve hours.

  And I was having a sinking feeling in my gut—really sinking, low enough to drill for oil—as to who’d be both throwing around their own magics and using that kinda wagon. Again, I broke into a mad dash; they were a few hundred yards away, and moving at a steady clip, but I shoulda been able to catch ’em up without too much—

  If I was a boggart rather’n aes sidhe, I think the sudden whooop-whooop that split the night behind me woulda been enough to make my literally leap outta my skin through my mouth. As it was, I think it shaved a century or two off my life.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. Around such a nice residential neighborhood—one that everyone knows is home to more’n its share of gangsters and wiseguys—of course the coppers have a couple prowl cars on a regular beat. Some weird bird tearing through people’s yards the way I’d been was bound to catch attention. The flashing lamp cast me and the whole world around me in a washed-out, bloody aura, as the black-and-white pulled to a stop beside me.

  “Okay, buddy.” The bull who slid outta the car looked like… well, like a copper’s supposed to. Tall, broad-shouldered fella in a blue uniform. Coulda been Pete’s brother except, y’know, he wasn’t. “Let’s see some ID, and then you can tell me where you’re off to in such a hurry.”

  “Officer, look.” I pointed—carefully—away down the street. “I’m a PI. I’m following—”

  “Yeah, you’re a PI. Following a milk wagon? I wasn’t born yesterday, pal. Where’s that ID?”

  I tried to be reasonable, I promise I did! “It don’t seem odd to you that that jalopy’s out on the streets at this hour?”

  “ID. Now!”

  I sighed once, and then very carefully and precisely socked him one in the jaw. The copper reeled back, arms flailing, rebounding from the side of the flivver with a dull thunk, and then sorta wound his way to the ground, a charmed snake in reverse.

  All I could do was hope, between the darkness, the gleam of the red lights, and my usual effect on human minds, that he’d never recognize me if we bumped into each other down the line.

  Course, if anyone’d seen that, or if he was supposed to report in any time soon, I could expect a whole fleet more black-and-whites in a matter of minutes. Even worse, the siren had apparently spooked whoever (or whatever) was driving the wagon, ’cause he’d whipped the horse into a pretty lively trot. They weren’t gonna win any derbies, but with that kinda head start, the chances of me catching up with ’em were… pretty…

  Slowly, stiffly, like I was being physically forced into moving, I found my head twisting around despite my best efforts so I could stare, with loathing and a growing horror, at the officer’s car.

  Aw, no. Oh, damn it, no…

  Well, since my other option was letting Adalina get away—or, rather, whoever’d shown up and started throwing magic around get away with Adalina… Yeah.

  Taking a deep breath and holding it, tensing my shoulders and bracing as if against a physical blow, I moved around the fender and scooted behind the wheel.

  And then, cursing myself in three different languages, I scooted back out, ran back to the snoozing copper, dug in his pockets until I found his keys, and went back to the wheel.

  Just sitting there was making me feel sick. My hair was standing up, my skin itching as though I was being bitten by mosquitoes made of poison ivy. I had to hold my wand in my mouth and clamp my hands hard on the wheel to keep ’em from trembling, until I’d forced myself to calm, to work through the growing agony.

  It only got worse when I stuck the key in the ignition and stomped down on the starter switch. My stomach turned over along with the engine; I felt queasy, and the entire road started twisting and writhing beyond the windshield. I was panting, every muscle in my body screaming in agony as they tensed and pulled against each other. The fumes wafting in through the vents bur
ned my nose, my throat, my eyes, my soul.

  Plus, uh, I didn’t know how to drive. I mean seriously, when the hell would I have learned? And why? Okay, yeah, I’d seen other guys do it, but I hadn’t exactly been paying close attention, being too busy at the time trying not to scream or bite through my tongue like a salami.

  Well, when skill ain’t enough…

  It was hard, real hard; one of the toughest things I’ve ever tried to do. Everything about the car around me pressed against my mind, screaming in my skull, biting at my skin. Bury yourself in an anthill, stick firecrackers in your ears, and then try listing all forty-eight state capitals alphabetically, and you oughta have some idea what I’m talking about.

  And in the end, I only partway succeeded; I’m just grateful it was a big enough part.

  I stomped down on the accelerator and the clutch, yanked on the shifter, and the car lurched forward in a drunken stumble. The motor whined, high and loud (I think, in retrospect, I started out a couple gears over), and the whole flivver shook, but we were moving, and before long we were moving fast. The emergency lamps still flashing, lighting up the streets around me in crimson lightning, I careened across Wabash—only thinking later to be grateful that whatever late traffic there was saw me coming, so I didn’t plow into anyone—and roared down the street. I about flew past the milk wagon, startling the timorous horse into a sideways prance, and…

  Well, and the extra dollop of luck that’d brought me this far gave out. I slammed on the brakes and the clutch with piss-poor timing, the engine coughed very much like an old lunger, keeled over with a metallic rattle, and the prowl car rolled at something close to twenty-five miles an hour into a parked Studebaker.

  Maybe, I remember thinking, as I peeled my cheek off the cracked windshield and dully watched the blood running along the glass in nifty patterns, I won’t tell Pete about this part when I’m recounting this whole mess.

  It’s probably sad that, after the last couple days, the pain of smashing my face into the windshield barely even registered. It did, however, take me half a minute or so to shake off the daze enough to throw open the door and stumble out into the street. It wasn’t time I could afford to waste; someone woulda called in the accident by now.

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about the wagon taking the run-out while I was waiting for my brain to get up off its back. The horse was still rearing and pawing at the air, panicked to hell and gone by the crash only a couple dozen feet away. The driver was fighting with the reins, and losing bad.

  He gave up trying as I approached, threw ’em down into the seat beside him—after locking in the brake, so the horse couldn’t run off with the wagon while he was otherwise occupied—and hopped down off the seat. He was shrouded in a chintzy illusion, one that probably woulda fooled most of you folk into thinking he was one of you, but to me it was about as effective as trying to hide behind a soap bubble. I recognized him instantly as a redcap in a bad suit; and even though they all look the same to me, I was convinced he was the same one who’d driven me to meet with Queen Mob.

  He’d picked up an attractive trio of scratches across his cheek since then, though. They looked fresh, too, and I was pretty sure they’d match Adalina’s fingernails.

  “Breeze off, elf!” he growled, his obscenely wide mouth twisting down in a saw-toothed grimace. “This ain’t your business.” He opened his coat, showing off a serrated dagger and a .38 Special—a real one, too, not one of our eldritch knock-offs. I wondered who he’d taken it from, and if they’d ended up in his stomach for their troubles.

  I didn’t actually aim the L&G at him, but I kinda tensed that arm to make sure he got a solid peek at it. “Be happy to. Soon as you let the girl go.”

  “What girl?”

  “Don’t play the dunce with me, bo!”

  “Who’s playing?”

  Well, there was no arguing with that, was there?

  We eye-wrestled for a minute or two, until he decided that, no, I wasn’t gonna be intimidated into leaving and, no, I didn’t buy the bunk he was shoveling. He reached out to tap on the back door to the wagon, and another redcap—who I also woulda sworn was my driver back in Elphame, so I guess that shows what I know—crawled out to stand beside the first.

  “The hell you think you’re doing, Oberon?” the second one rumbled at me. “We got a deal, you and us.”

  “A very specific deal,” I said. “One that don’t include anything about not beating the tar outta you when you ask for it.”

  They both grinned, their faces transforming into gaping caverns of gooey flesh, their teeth into yellow-brown stalactites and stalagmites, and advanced on me in unison. I retreated a couple steps, then a couple more, flicked my wand out to the side…

  And right as the redcaps were passing, the horse’s tethers just so happened to snap under the strain of the critter’s constant thrashing. Already going bananas from the crash, the horse got a good whiff of the two unnatural things that’d been hunkering in the wagon—guess the illusion couldn’t mask their stink this close—and decided it really didn’t want ’em anywhere nearby.

  Smaller and a lot more frightened, it didn’t kick as hard as Goswythe had, but it was still more’n enough to make the closer of the two redcaps go away.

  His buddy couldn’t help but turn and stare at the bushes into which the “kickee” had flown, and then at the horse that was galloping away down the road as fast as his hooves would carry him—all of which gave me more’n enough of an opening. I stepped in, thrust one foot out behind his, and planted both hands on his chest. He toppled to his back with a loud grunt, but though he glared fire at me, he was smart enough to stay down.

  Maybe it was ’cause he was staring up at the business end of both my wand and his own gun, which I’d swiped from inside his jacket as I shoved him.

  “The boss ain’t gonna be happy with you,” he growled.

  “She can join the club. There’s a waiting list, but I’m sure I can get her bumped to the top. Why’d you take the girl?”

  The redcap shrugged. “What, you have plans for her? You’re trying to find the human girl, ain’tcha? Whaddaya need the changeling for?”

  “What do I…?” I shook my head hard enough to dislodge something. Okay, Mick. They’re Unfit; what’d you expect from ’em? Get back on track. “What do you?”

  “She’s Seelie,” he said, as though that explained everything.

  And actually, it did. “She is, ain’t she? And she’s young, and confused, and don’t know the first thing about Elphame. You could tell her, teach her, any damn thing you wanted. Mold her into your very own homegrown spy, just ‘moved to Chicago’ from some other Court.”

  “Brilliant, yeah?”

  “It is. It also ain’t happening.”

  Again with the shrugging. “Whaddaya care, Oberon? You ain’t part of the Court no more.”

  “No, I’m not. Now let her go.”

  “We have a deal. You owe us. You swore an oath.”

  “Yeah, I did. I gotta help you out on one, uh, ‘project.’ You calling that in now? Is this important enough to Eudeagh to spend that particular boon?”

  It’s a damn good thing for me that I don’t sweat, ’cause if I did I’d have been oozing bullets right about then. I dunno what the hell I’d have done if he’d said yes. Maybe cried.

  But he didn’t. He pondered on it a minute, ugly brow furrowing, and then he said, “You’re bluffing. You won’t risk what might happen if you get in our way, not with that pact hanging over you.”

  At which point I pivoted toward the other redcap—the one who’d been kicked into the shrubbery, the one who was trying to creep up on me while his buddy kept me talking—and put two .38 slugs into his chest. I knew it wouldn’t kill him, any more’n it would me, but he’d be down for a good long while.

  We both watched him drop like a sack of gumballs, and returned our attentions to each other. “The girl’s in the wagon,” the redcap admitted, as though that were some bi
g secret I hadn’t already figured. “You take her back, you got all hell to pay. Boss Eudeagh ain’t gonna take this lightly, I promise.”

  My guts were a ball of mating snakes—some enemies, even I really don’t need—but all I did was nod. “She’s welcome to complain. Have her give me a ring; my number’s listed.”

  I waved the wand at the guy I’d plugged, just to make sure his own piece would never fire again, and then climbed up into the back of the wagon. Adalina cowered in the far corner, her peepers looking kinda glazed over—maybe from whatever spell the redcaps had hit her with, maybe just from trying to take in everything the evening had dumped on her.

  I’m not sure if she recognized me, or even cared who I was, but when I offered her my hand to help her out, she took it. I had to guide her, practically carry her, but we were gone into the surrounding streets before any more police arrived to investigate the crashed prowl car or their missing bull.

  * * *

  We sat, dangling and twisting on a pair of wood-seated swings in a neighborhood playground, listening to the breeze flow around us, the chains creaking overhead, and sirens whistle in the distance. Place was empty now; hadn’t been when we showed, though. Couple of local kids who’d decided—after a quick spate of pointing and whispering—that they didn’t wanna be anywhere near Adalina. Poor kid hadn’t even looked up since then. She kept her attention fastened on the grass and sand beneath our feet, and I had only the occasional grunt or nod to suggest she was hearing a single word I was saying.

  Yeah, I was wasting time. Yeah, I had no idea what Orsola was doing with Celia, or where, or how long I had to stop it, whatever it was. But I’ll tell you square, I didn’t think Adalina was anywhere near ready to face her mom again, not yet. And I needed her to pull herself together, not just for her own sake, but because she could help her “sister.”