by Ari Marmell
I’d fallen for her, hard. Been tied up in a pretty little bow. It felt right. Sometimes I couldn’t even question it, anymore’n I questioned the ground under my plates, or the existence of my left arm.
It felt right.
But I was finally starting, just starting, to think maybe it wasn’t.
We were comin’ up on Mr. Soucek’s building, and I still hadn’t decided whether to come out and say anything about all of this—or even if I could—when she made the choice for me.
“I’m going home for a time.” She said it real quiet, so that with the workday-morning traffic around us, I’d have just barely been able to make it out if my ears were human.
I turned, leaned one shoulder against a street light.
“What’re you talking about, sweetheart?”
“What am I…? Good God, Mick, did you actually see any of last night? I’ve had more guns pointed at me with you than if I’d just stuck around to deal with Jeremy’s, ah, associates! You were supposed to keep me safe!”
“Simmer down. Nobody’s fittin’ you for a pine overcoat yet.”
“And Rosen? God, I don’t… I will never, ever get that out of my mind! The sight, the… the smell…”
She choked up, and you know something? I wasn’t entirely sure I was buying it anymore, not after she’d managed to give that room a thorough look-see despite the gore. Yeah, maybe she was just real good at putting her feelings aside and doing what’s gotta be done—some people are—but it was one too many “maybes.”
“You firing me?”
“I… No. Well, not yet, anyway. I need some time to think, and… Frankly, after all this, I don’t think I’m likely to be in any more danger on my own, or with friends, than I’ve been with you. I’ll call on you tomorrow one way or the other, let you know what I’ve decided.”
“Uh-huh. And if I don’t hear from you?”
She smiled, first time in a while, and damn it if it still didn’t make me come over giddy.
“Then,” she said, “I expect you to remember that I haven’t fired you, and to come looking for me to make sure I’m okay.”
“Right. Got it. I don’t think this is a keen idea, Ramona. But if it’s what you need…”
“It is. Thank you, Mick.”
Ramona turned one way, back toward the nearest train station, and I went the other, heading home.
For a minute. Until she’d turned the first corner. And finally, when I couldn’t see her anymore, when so much about her felt hinky, it came to me. What it was I’d seen in those last minutes at Bumpy’s place. What’d been bothering at me ever since, like ants in my brain.
It was the stool. The one she’d picked up as a makeshift club. A stool from the stage, where the band had been playing. Plenty of bottles and bar stools where she’d been crouched that she coulda snatched up in a second. Yet she’d gone back, farther into the mess and chaos, because for some reason she’d wanted this stool for her weapon.
This stool, which—unlike the fancier, shinier numbers by the bar, with their stainless steel—had legs of iron.
She knew.
I spun and went after her like a lion on a three-legged gazelle.
If I’d been sure she was just a normal one of you dolts, I’d have counted on skill alone. But I wasn’t much sure of anything, anymore, and I wasn’t gonna chance it.
In my wake, as I ran—then walked—after her, people were havin’ a bad morning. Some tripped, stumbled, getting dirt on, or putting tears in, their work rags. Briefcases, purses, and newspapers slipped from what shoulda been secure grips, and I heard a woman shriek as another pedestrian’s dog slipped its leash and stuck its cold, wet nose somewhere she never really wanted a cold, wet anything.
Almost as though something was just sucking the good luck from ’em as it passed.
I didn’t take too much from anyone. Nobody got hurt, beyond maybe a skinned knee. But I didn’t have time or patience to do it any more slowly or gently than that.
And I’ll tell you what, it’s a good thing I did. Ramona never looked to be watching for shadows, but she sure acted as though she was. Extra trips around the block, switching lines at the gates and counters, even boarding the “wrong” train and hoppin’ back off at the last minute.
But I always found a spot, behind a barrier or in a crowd, where I could watch. Always managed to duck behind one of the other commuters if she looked too hard my way. Lucky I had so much… uh, luck.
I knew straight off she wasn’t heading home. Right general direction, but wrong line, especially when she switched trains somewhere around Englewood.
When we approached the Loop, I suspected. When she disembarked on West Washington, I knew. Y’see, I think I mentioned a while back that a few of Chicago’s politicos—an alderman here, a secretary there—know something about what really goes on in their city. Not a lot, mind. Usually they’re no better informed than, say, Bumpy seemed to be. But some do know that much, and a real tiny handful know more.
And the Loop is—among other things—the Windy City’s government and financial center.
Still, even knowing that, even having sussed out the sorta Joe she was likely calling on, I was startled when, after some extended weaving through the downtown crowds, she finally ended her hike at a towering, inflated ego of a structure. Granite and a bit of marble and all the usual rocks. All squared corners and classical-style pillars that weren’t actually all that different from the ones I’d seen at the museum a few lifetimes-slash-nights ago.
Yep. She’d stopped in at LaSalle and Randolph. That’s City Hall, to you.
Which narrowed down the list of who she could be seeing to about a bazillion. Between the city of Chicago in one half of the building, and Cook County in the other, there were hundreds of offices, thousands of officials and employees, to pick from. And that was assuming she was actually meeting someone in the building; City Hall’s got exits that open up into a whole collection of other government office buildings. And, of course, the place was busy enough that she could be meeting with someone else just passing through, and nobody’d bat an eyelid.
I thought real hard about following her in, but even my luck’ll only cover so much. Odds of me finding her in that mess were about zip, and the odds of me staying unnoticed if I did stumble across her were even lower. No, better to call it done here, work at diggin’ up more details later on.
For now, I had a pretty solid notion of who, or at least the kind of “who,” she was having a sit-down with. You’d think I’d be used to being lied to by now, and maybe I am from most people, but she wasn’t “most people” to me. It hurt. A lot. Intestines-removed-with-an-ice-cream-scoop kinda hurt.
So be it. I was gonna get my answers, goddamn it. And not just from Ramona, either. No, she could wait. I had errands to run before I got back around to my so-called “client”—starting with a line of investigation I couldn’t avoid any longer, and that I’d rather chew off my own kneecaps than follow.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I got wrapped up enough following my train of thought that I could ignore the rocking and thumping of the more literal train around me. You wouldn’t think I could get lost in my own head, given how often I been visiting the place lately. Guess I still ain’t accustomed to it.
Look, you were gonna say it if I didn’t.
So, what did we have? Ramona—and we both know it’d be a helluva fib if I pretended it didn’t hurt just to think her name—was workin’ for someone else. Someone who was probably a pretty big cheese in Chicago. Politico, fat cat, or both. Money’n power really ain’t much different in your world, not that you need me to tell you that. I couldn’t be totally sure; as I said, the City Hall meet coulda been one of convenience or anonymity. But I figured that was the less likely option—and also the option that didn’t give me any kinda lead to go on—so I went with the more obvious notion.
Plus, I just couldn’t see Ramona working for a nobody. Assuming, then, that her boss was a highbinder of som
e sort, what’d that get me?
Well, for one, it meant he fit the profile of the poor schlubs who’d kicked off in those “accidents” that kept poppin’ up like toadstools everywhere I looked. That wasn’t proof of anything, but it was an interesting bit of circumstance I wasn’t willing to write off.
Second, it made him one of the Windy City elite who had dealings with—or at least knew about—us Fae and the Otherworld. I mean, Ramona obviously had some knowledge of us; I hadda assume the boss did, too. So, that narrowed down the suspect field a whole bunch, but it also made the guy more dangerous than your average mortal, rich’n powerful or otherwise.
Could be all kindsa repercussions to that, but those weren’t what I was digging into right now. See, realizing that “my client’s” boss fit both those categories had reinforced an idea I already had bouncin’ around my noodle like a rubber kitten. Namely, the reason the cops had found bupkis connecting the different accident victims to each other just might be because the connection lay in a whole different world.
That was why I’d been so desperately hoping Pete’d come up with something, see? If he didn’t, it’d mean—for my sake, for his, for a lotta other people’s—I was goin’ to have to start hunting elsewhere.
Yeah, that elsewhere. I hate that elsewhere.
But needs must, and all that. I leaned my head back against the whisper-soft woven cobweb seat, and tried to ignore the grunting and stench that occasionally seeped up from the goblin and brounie oarsmen in the galley below, enough for the rocking of the train to relax me a bit.
Oh, yeah. I didn’t actually mention where I was, did I?
Brass car on bronze wheels on brass tracks carried me’n a few others—a couple aes sidhe, a small group of leprechauns and coblynau commuting in to work, a greasy-looking gancanagh chortling over his latest feminine conquest, but mostly human servants with their vapid, fruit-and-wine-drugged smiles—to, and through, Elphame’s reflection of Chicago. Here, I was home. Here, I belonged; I could rest; I no longer felt the constant screech of technology in my head, or the itch of nearby iron on my skin.
It still didn’t make me any less anxious to dust out, back to your half of reality.
It wasn’t all that far a walk to the city proper from where my little rabbit hole opened up into Elphame, but I really didn’t wanna spend any longer here than I had to. Also, it ain’t real pleasant bein’ outside for too long in winter, which’d come earlier to our world this year than yours.
So I’d taken the train, instead of walking, and I’d spent most of the ride, while I was ponderin’ this whole mess, staring out the window. (It’s funny. So much of our more modern buildings—the ones that try to mimic yours—is made of glass. We like glass. But the windows on the train? Not glass. Wind, captured and packed into solid slabs. Nobody ever accused us of bein’ either efficient or consistent.)
Anyway, yeah, starin’ out the window, watching the world go by. The thickly falling snow hid a lot, but since the light here is ambient—no sun in this part of Elphame, just a general daytime glow—it didn’t cast any shadows, so it wasn’t as obscuring as it woulda been in your world. I couldn’t see any of the pixies from here, but I knew the floral bunch had gone into hibernation for the winter, transforming into their icy and somberly cruel seasonal alter egos. Fields which were usually covered in grasses’n flowers of every color of the rainbow were now a thousand different shades of brown, where they weren’t coated in gleaming white drifts.
And yeah, there are a thousand shades of brown. Nothin’ blends, here. Every color, no matter how subtly different from any other hue, stands out in sharp contrast. It’s beautiful when it’s beautiful, and it’s real ugly when it’s ugly.
I hoped it’d leave off snowing by the time I hadda disembark.
Then the fields’d given way to the outer neighborhoods and “slums” of our Chicago, apartments and warehouses built either of or in trees—and by in I mean in, not just among the branches. Factories, too. We don’t need an industrial area, since we got no real industry, but you folks have ’em, so we gotta have ’em.
Fuckin’ Fae.
And no, I haven’t forgotten that includes me.
Bad neighborhoods gave way to better, downtown to up, and I couldn’t help but notice the streets were largely empty. We ain’t exactly packed in here to begin with, and a lot of Fae felt the same way I do about the snow, but still, this was deader’n usual.
Hinky.
Skyscrapers and rich business fronts, now, edifices of stone or glass—supported by trees, magic, or both—rising from the lower floors in the thick earthen mounds that gave the aes sidhe our name. Roads paved with bricks from the lost, torn-down, fallen, and discarded places of your world, some of the smoothest footing you’ll find in Elphame, and still almost no foot traffic. A scrambling servant here, a rubber-tired coach creeping furtively behind a team of nervous horses there, and that was it.
Hinky. Again. As if I didn’t have enough cause to be jittery.
The train’s horn blew twice—no steam whistle, but a small fragment of storm run through a Pan flute—and the whole thing shuddered to a stop. The passengers weren’t supposed to be able to hear anything from below, but I could make out just enough to tell that the rowers were exhausted and not happy about havin’ to start up again anytime soon.
It’s a rough gig, keepin’ the brass highway moving.
No real train station, here, just a ticket booth manned by a leprechaun on a tall stool, and a comfortable cottage where important Fae passengers can wait for the next arrival. Less important Fae, and human servants? They wait out in the weather. Comfort’s a privilege, not a right, right?
Ugh.
And no, it hadn’t stopped snowing. Damn it. I stuck my hands in my pockets, hunched my shoulders, and waded into the flurries.
The snow here? It’s all white. No shades of grey or cream, no pickin’ up dirt or pollution in the air, or even on the ground. Not just white; WHITE.
It’s also more’n a little pungent, and it tastes even worse. Legend goes that every tear of grief shed by a human in one world becomes a snowflake in the other. I dunno if that’s literally true or not, but I do know that the snow here is tinged with salt and somehow oppressive.
Also, unlike our rain, which you can just wipe off once you get indoors, ’cause it doesn’t soak into clothing, the snow sticks.
No, it doesn’t make any sense by the laws of your world. So what? I’m still bewildered by basic chemistry and time zones.
The few pedestrians I passed shot me some dirty looks, full of mistrust and buried fear. A couple even crossed the street to avoid me. I ain’t a popular guy round here, but I don’t normally provoke that kinda response, and there was no way every single one of ’em coulda known who I was. So I hadda figure they were reacting that way to everyone.
And now I’d had that thought, I could feel it in the air, see it in the buildings I passed. Businesses closed, or so empty they might as well be. Pedestrians’ steps were short’n shuffling, trying to move quick while stayin’ as inconspicuous and seemingly harmless as possible. Windows were shut, and I saw rifles and bows and brass Tommies behind more’n a couple panes of glass.
Even without all that, though, I’d have felt it sooner than later. The tension in the air was thick enough to taste, and us bein’ Fae, I promise you I ain’t speakin’ metaphorically. It was everywhere, cloying, sickly-sweet and acrid all at once. Like sweaty molasses.
I hadn’t felt an Otherworld burgh this uneasy in a black dog’s age. Don’t think I ever felt it in Chicago before. Guess maybe it mighta been this way over in Unseelie territory when Capone finally got pinched, but there’d been celebrations over on this side of the tracks.
So I’m told. I wasn’t here.
Point is, our Chicago wasn’t a city under siege, but… maybe adjacent to siege. Lotta people were expecting one.
Which fit, really. Enough of us were searching for Ahreadbhar over on the other side, enough stori
es and rumors and whispers floatin’ around about it, it hadda be common knowledge by now. Everyone here musta known the Spear of Lugh was in play.
And yeah, that meant open war between the Courts could be lurkin’ around the corner. If the Unseelie got hold of the thing? Might just have enough power for ’em to make a play for the whole city. Seelie win the race? Wasn’t too far outta the realm of possibility the Unfit’d try to strike first, bring down their enemy before the Seelie could gather their forces.
Either way, it was gonna be trouble with a capital Q—not just bad, but bewildering.
Even more motivation for me to find a way outta all this that didn’t involve just handing the damn thing over to the neighborhood monsters. I might not be fond of this place, but that don’t mean I wanna see it torn apart.
Most of the time.
All right, and that was about enough wool-gathering to get me to my destination only moderately miserable with snow. Anyone could tell it was an old building; it was mostly stone, not glass, but polished marble, not the cheap granite of poorer streets. A small grove of trees—oak, ash, and hawthorn, because why the hell would they be anything else?—formed a winding walkway to the front door, and not a one of ’em had lost a single leaf to the changing seasons, or sported even the tiniest patch of snow.
Wonder how expensive it was to renew that enchantment every year?
Place was… whaddaya wanna call it? An archive? A library? A depository? A Domesday Book writ large? Let’s just say it was our Chicago’s Hall of Records, since that’s as close a definition as any.
Also because we called it the Hall of Records. Score another one for Fae originality.
So, okay, if the rash of dead humans were connected through the Fae, as I suspected now, odds favored the Seelie over the Un-. Not that Eudeagh and her ilk never worked with humans—far from it—but the sorta high-class Joes who’d been chilled off were more Seelie style.