Traveler

by Melanie Jackson

“Yes.” He turned and grinned at her. “I lost my blue balls. It was such a relief. Good trick though.”

  Io felt herself color. She cursed her fair skin that raised notice of her embarrassment like red banners in a pale sky.

  “Serves you right for being a pig.”

  “I quite agree. I’ll try not to let my porcine tendencies overwhelm me again.”

  “That isn’t a very good apology,” Io commented.

  “It isn’t one at all, just a statement of intent. So, take a guess at what spell I drew tonight,” he urged her, grinning.

  “I haven’t a clue.” She was attracted to, but didn’t trust, his new playfulness.

  Jack stopped outside a brown wood door with a half window of frosted glass and took a lock pick from his pocket.

  “Not a magic key, obviously,” she added.

  “Nope. Something even better,” he answered, turning the knob and swinging the old door open. The hinges creaked and made Io wince.

  “So…what?”

  “A truth spell. You have to answer truthfully anything I ask you.” Jack stepped inside. “Won’t that be fun?”

  Io thought about her already unguarded responses and groaned. She should have guessed that something like that was in the air.

  “Fun for whom?” she grumbled.

  “Hey, it’s all about me, babe.”

  “Hmph! I don’t have to tell you the truth, you know,” she warned. “I can just tell you to go to Hell.”

  “Yeah—but only if you mean it.”

  “Well damn. I don’t actually believe in Hell.”

  Jack’s voice was amused. “Works for me. I can’t wait to start the interrogation.”

  But in spite of Jack’s teasing, he was very businesslike while they searched the room, and he confined himself to impersonal questions and remarks related to their explorations.

  The lab was an eerie place, even with dawn light spilling through the louvered blinds. Lab coats, stained with green oil, were suspended like headless corpses in a neat line by the door.

  There were a number of plastic tubes hanging down from the ceiling, looking a bit like some giant jellyfish tentacles. Io made herself touch one. The shutoff valve was cranked tight, even though the tube was obviously empty and showed no sign of use.

  On the back wall were a number of plastic containers that looked like cooking oil but were labeled 110 % DISTILLED NEUTRAL GRAPE SPIRITS. Outwardly, the place appeared to be a perfume factory, not a biological warfare lab. This only made Io more nervous.

  She gave wide berth to a device Jack was tinkering with. It looked for all the world like a giant espresso machine, except it had way too much tubing snaking into the wall. Io was okay with most tech, but some devices made her uneasy and this was one of them.

  “You don’t like this thing?” Jack asked, noticing her reaction.

  “No.”

  He waited for her to explain, but she couldn’t. Some machines would work for her; others wouldn’t.

  Uncertain of where to start her search for clues, Io concentrated on looking through the shelves and drawers for perfume samples to steal.

  She found a number of empty toothpaste tubes, which she tried not to consider. She had never wondered about what goblins brushed their teeth with, and wasn’t about to start. It couldn’t be anything nice; that was for sure.

  Io found some jars of Nuit Crème with the trademark gargoyle on the lid.

  “Do you think this stuff is supposed to make goblins uglier?” She uncapped the lid. The green cream was luminescent, the shade of bread mold.

  “Ugliness, like beauty,” Jack answered, “is in the eye of the beholder. Of course, they also say that while beauty is only skin deep, ugly is to the bone—so I wouldn’t put any on, if I were you. Just in case. You wouldn’t want an ugly femur.”

  He abandoned his empty machine and helped her ransack desk drawers. They found a number of little green vials, some filled, some not, but there was no sign of standard-sized perfume flacons.

  Io commented on it. “Could there be another lab underground? Or a storeroom you missed?”

  “Possibly. I had to be a little discreet while ghosting around during working hours. It could also be that supplies just haven’t arrived yet. They certainly seem set up for bottling here.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “Well, this haul will do as a starter. It’s time to leave. Whose lab shall it be? Yours or mine?” Jack asked, holding a vial up to the window. It didn’t have a skull and crossbones on it, but that didn’t mean anything. Goblins didn’t believe in truth in labeling any more than they believed in public safety or the sanctity of life.

  “It had better be yours. Though she told me to be alert to them, Xanthe doesn’t believe the importance of the drugs in the ventilation system, and she isn’t real interested in Neveling’s perfume endeavors.” Io bit her lip and cursed inwardly for forgetting about the truth spell. She couldn’t lie to Jack, but that didn’t mean that she had to answer him and spill her guts. Silence was an option she needed to use.

  “Suits me. But you hold on to this for now,” Jack said, handing her his vial and then pulling open the file cabinet. “There is one last thing I want to do. Keep an eye out, especially on the street, on the manhole covers. We’ve been in here too long. Some goblin is going to come by eventually.”

  Io turned toward the window and cracked open the louvers. “No guards yet. All I see are a pair of addicts.”

  “Watch them. We don’t want them deciding to break into the building and setting off the alarm. What kind are they?”

  “The worst. They’ve sold everything but their souls for ‘the bitterness without name,’ ” Io murmured, looking out the window at the pathetic scene unfolding below. Two addicts were kneeling in the street, scooping up bits of dry goblin-fruit pulp left from the previous night’s street faire and stuffing it in their mouths with filthy hands. When the larger pieces were gone, they leaned down and licked the pavement. Io added to herself, “Except it has a name and we all know it: goblin fruit. Why haven’t the police outlawed it?”

  Jack answered. “The police don’t make the laws. The politicians do. And you know why they don’t outlaw it,” he said impatiently.

  “Money.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s so wrong though,” Io whispered. “Look at them. This should never happen.”

  “They are truly imp-ridden,” Jack agreed, glancing outside. Then, turning back to the file cabinet he added, “Stay back from the glass. You don’t want to be seen.”

  The bigger addict—a girl with matted hair as white as moonlight and a face that was skeletally thin—ran out of crushed fruit leavings. Seeing the smears on the other girl’s dress, she fell on her. Mewling, she squeezed the smaller addict’s juice-stained garment. She seemed to be trying to wring fluid from the fabric and didn’t care if she got a bit of the girl inside.

  The smaller addict laughed in a drugged voice—until she felt her assailant’s teeth on her belly. Then, howling, she shoved the other girl away. Rolling to her feet she stood panting for a moment, and then distracted by the juice stains on her hand, she stuck her fingers in her mouth and started suckling. Her eyes went blank.

  The first girl huddled on the ground shaking, and then gave in to cries of despair as the other ran away. She didn’t seem to notice that she was drooling as she cried.

  Io made a small noise.

  “What is it?” Jack asked, moving swiftly to the window.

  “Jack,” Io whispered, moved to compassion for the wretched creature below that was barely still human. “I know it’s stupid, but couldn’t you…?”

  “No. Don’t even think it.”

  “Please. I…I can’t stand her keening. I just can’t,” she said honestly. “And she’ll attract attention if we don’t shut her up.”

  Jack considered this point. “It’s only temporary, and you know it,” he said. “She’s going to die soon if she doesn’t get some goblin fruit. She’
ll probably die even if she does get it. She’s too far gone.”

  “But we can help her now.”

  Jack looked at Io, his face unreadable. She felt naive for suggesting that they stop their own task to help an addict who would certainly turn them in for a piece of blood-fruit. But she truly could not bear looking at the poor, mad creature. There but for the grace of the goddess might have gone her mother.

  “We can’t help her,” Jack said more kindly, speaking to Io as if she were a child. “The addiction is rarely reversible. And you know that there are other dangers in dealing with a weak mind.”

  Io knew this better than anyone, having grown up with it, but she couldn’t let it go.

  They could get caught out in the street. The girl could turn them in. And Jack was a death fey. If the girl was wretched enough, given the choice, she might decide to give herself over to permanent oblivion and die in his arms. Hadn’t Io been tempted herself? And she wasn’t a junkie in withdrawal. Could she do that to Jack—make him responsible for someone’s death? It wasn’t fair—wasn’t right.

  Yet none of that mattered very much in the face of such complete suffering.

  “Please do what you can.” For the first time, Io touched Jack voluntarily. She added obliquely, “If you have to…Well, it would be a kindness. And it wouldn’t be your fault. It would be mine.”

  Jack exhaled and a small current passed from his skin to hers as he roused his magic. Io dropped her hand and stepped away before anything substantial could leak over onto her.

  “We are done here anyway. There’s nothing else to look at,” she pointed out. “Either we have the goods, or we’ll have to go into the Labyrinth to find them.”

  “I’ll have to go into the Labyrinth,” he corrected, watching her retreat from him. His expression was annoyed. Apparently he didn’t like having his magic treated like a case of cooties. But that was just too bad for him! Io only had so much strength.

  “Just remember that nothing comes for free,” he warned her. “I work for wages, not charity. This girl is going to cost you.”

  Io answered sharply, trying to ignore the way her stomach rolled over at the implied sensual threat. “Don’t be such a bastard. You know this is the right thing to do.”

  Probably he was just teasing her. They were sort of partners now, weren’t they? He couldn’t wish to harm her.

  Of course, it was a little early in the relationship to be guessing about what he might consider harmful.

  “Nevertheless, there is a price. I doubt it’ll be high enough, though, since I’m not the total bastard you think me. I knew that I was going to regret getting involved with you,” he added, sotto voce, pulling on his invisibility and opening the door. Then, louder, “The coast is clear. You coming, softheart? May as well see what you’ll be paying for.”

  “I’m coming.”

  Io slipped out of the lab and closed the door behind her. The sample vials of perfume and cream she had taken clinked softly in her pockets as she walked. She had removed one of everything they’d found. Not being able to smell with her breather in place, short of rubbing each item on her skin she had no way of knowing which samples might contain the magic-charged elixir that had been aerosolized into the ventilation system of The Madhouse.

  She stopped at the top of the staircase and peered after Jack. The stairwell was tight, twisted, and very dark.

  “This has to violate fire code,” she muttered, starting after him.

  “Write your congressman.” The floating voice was growing faint, so Io hurried after it.

  Chapter Six

  Jack knew a whole lot more about Io Cyphre than he had the day before, and it had changed his view of her. A few brief words with his contacts on the force and, mere hours after meeting her, he had received and read her entire file.

  There wasn’t much about the fey herself in the papers—she lived a very low-profile sort of life—but there was rather a lot in the archive on the girl’s mother. Everything was very circumspect, since Tigre Cyphre had worked for the State Department, but the French police’s attitude about her killing had been summed up by the penciled-in comment: Ne sei s’esteit lutin ou non.

  We cannot say if he was a goblin…

  Jack shook his head. Leave it to the French to deny all knowledge that Drakkar was a goblin.

  But even with the official obfuscation, reading between the lines it was easy enough to see that Tigre Cyphre had been in love with—or at least enchanted by—the French goblin warlord. And she’d been willing to do anything to please him, including using her political contacts to further his business interests.

  Unfortunately, European gangland wars had been especially messy that year because of turf battles over the fruit farms in Grasse, and there had been a lot of collateral damage when Drakkar’s empire went down. Tigre Cyphre; the H.U.G. agent Zayn’s twin brother, Syrin; and several other H.U.G. activists had been among the roadkill left by Harkel-Barend’s thugs.

  Harkel himself had died two weeks after taking out Drakkar. The files said it was an accident—a freak explosion caused by a faulty water-heater had boiled him in his bath—but the suggestion lurking between the lines of Io’s file was that it was a retaliation slaying, by either Drakkar’s goblins or H.U.G..

  The slaying was a nasty bit of work, Jack admitted, but not beyond H.U.G., who were growing increasingly more militant and creative in their fight against goblins. And the story explained Io’s involvement in an organization not usually tolerant of magical beings because of their official stance on the supernatural.

  The circumstances surrounding her mother’s life and death also explained Io’s revulsion for drugs and her fear of Jack’s magic: It had probably been some combination of deadly goblin fruit and magical coercion that enslaved Tigre.

  What remained unknown was whether Io herself had had any hand in the dirty business of offing Harkel. She had been in France at the time, arranging to have her mother’s body transported back to the States, so it was possible.

  Jack paused at the factory’s side door and waited for Io to catch up.

  Should he ask her about this? If she answered tonight, it would be the truth.

  He was still wondering about how to phrase his question when Io arrived. He looked down into her concerned face, added to it her compassion for the unknown addict in the street, and decided he didn’t need to upset the applecart by asking.

  Io Cyphre was brave and resourceful—and reckless—but she didn’t have a natural killer’s instincts. It was perhaps regrettable, given their present circumstances, but it made her more likable as a person.

  Also, fortunately, he had enough killer instinct for both of them.

  They stepped outside, Jack being careful to go first in case there were any magic trip lines waiting to snare them. Even with the sun up it was cold. Soot blew along the deserted street, making everything at ground level appear shadowed and adding to the perceived chill of the autumn morning. The whorls of grime also had the disconcerting effect of making the imagination see things at the periphery of one’s vision. Shade became something warped and sly. It could turn your own shadow into a sinister stalker, and sometimes nervous people ended up with gooseflesh of the brain. Jack had learned to ignore the optical weirdness of Goblin Town, but he could see that Io was bothered. He didn’t say anything. The little fey seemed touchy about admitting to nerves.

  At street level, Neveling’s factory looked like an old-style movie theater. This was partly due to the idiot gargoyles etched in the glass of the front doors, and the marquees advertising cosmetics. The rest was the geometry of the architecture. It was as close to a grand public building as the goblins had yet built.

  Jack looked quickly up and down the street. There were some parked cars—mostly Hondas and Toyotas. Goblins didn’t buy American because they had trouble reaching the pedals of most models. There was talk among the young and ambitious goblins of reopening the old GM plant and producing custom autos. However, ambition did
n’t have them out that morning. Other than the dirty wind and the swaying junkie, nothing else moved.

  “Time to go,” Jack thought he heard Io whisper.

  “Yeah.”

  He walked boldly toward the ravaged girl, who stopped wailing long enough to ask in a slurred voice, “Do you have any?”

  “Yes, I have something for you,” he answered, kneeling down. He took her chin in a hard grip and looked into her mindless eyes. “Who called you to the feast, girl?”

  “Odyr and Binns,” she answered. Her mouth slackened even as she spoke the names of her seducers.

  Standing in the cold gray shadow of the old church, Io felt rather like the morning after the night before. Only she hadn’t had anything to drink, so the hangover dawn seemed unfair.

  She watched Jack go to the addict and take the demented creature’s chin in his hand. Immediately the girl stilled, her face drooping.

  Curious, Io ventured closer. She stopped before actually touching either Jack or his patient. She didn’t need to get any closer; she could feel them both, even over the magic pulsing along just below the pavement. Jack gave off an aroma of earth and enchantment that somehow managed to evade her nose filter. It upset her breathing and hurried her pulse. Her attempt to steady her heart was for naught.

  She stiffened at the names of Odyr and Binns. They were known to H.U.G. as pushers of goblin fruit. Neither was on the most-wanted list since they didn’t recruit outside of Goblin Town, but they weren’t on anyone’s step-on-the-brakes-if-they-got-in-front-of-your-car list either.

  Jack murmured something to the junkie Io couldn’t hear, and the last little bit of consciousness slipped away from her. He eased the girl’s body onto the ground and she lay there like dropped laundry.

  “Is she…?”

  “No.” Jack stood. “But she will be before sundown. At least she isn’t in pain.”

  Anger licked at Io. “We should just burn this whole place down. It would be a public service. We could have a giant weenie roast. We could toast marshmallows in Neveling Lutin’s building. That alone would be a cause for celebration.”