“So correct me if I’m wrong: Plumbing is a human invention tae wash away all yer shite, and then ye have tae wash the plumbing?”
[That’s a decent summary, yes.]
The hobgoblin’s face fell. “Bollocks. That’s not what I thought it was at all.”
To cheer him up I introduced him to Netflix. [You won’t be so bored if you have some entertainment to watch.]
I left him scrolling through shows while I cleaned myself up and gingerly prodded my ribs, wincing at the remembered impact of that troll’s fist. It was still genuinely a bit tender, but at least I wouldn’t be immobile for a month.
I half-expected something to happen while I was in the shower— the first of many pranks to come from a hobgoblin eager to push boundaries. But he let me clean up in peace, no towels mysteriously missing, no ink on the combs, nothing.
Shaving with a brush and soap was a self-care ritual I rather enjoyed, regardless of how old-fashioned it might make me seem. But since there was a hobgoblin in the flat, I eschewed the straight razor this time and used a safety razor instead. Once finished, I splashed on some stinging aftershave and some skin conditioner and shaped my mustache. I reemerged from the back of the flat, dressed sharply, to find a hobgoblin sprawled on my couch with a chicken drumstick hanging from his mouth as he stared wide-eyed at the television screen. He was watching The Fellowship of the Ring.
“Hey . . . MacBharrais.” He flopped a hand toward Frodo and the gang hiding out from the dark riders. “Where did this happen? Which one of the Fae planes? Was it Mag Mell? Because I’ve never seen a wraith like that.”
[None of the Fae planes. Middle Earth does not actually exist.] Unless, of course, it did. I couldn’t be certain.
“But . . .” He pointed at the screen as evidence I was clearly wrong.
[That’s fiction.]
“Ye mean ye cannae get there from here?”
[That’s right. Let me give you a key before I go.]
Buck paused the show, which I thought a remarkable feat. I could never make the remote work when I wanted it to. “Go? Go where?”
[I have to do some research.]
“Fine, but can ye no just use the Internet?” Buck asked.
[What do you know about that?]
“I’ve . . . heard of it.”
[I can use it for lots of things, sure. But there are people who can find what you need faster than an old man pecking around a search engine.]
“Yeah? Who?”
[Librarians.]
“Ohhh, aye. I’ve heard o’ them too. They always know where the secret room is with the treasure in it. They like tae go plumbing in there, if ye know what I mean.”
[I don’t know what stories you’ve been hearing in Tír na nÓg, but that’s not what a librarian does. And neither do plumbers.]
He waved a hand dismissively. “Whatevers, MacBharrais.”
I didn’t have the time to give him a thorough demonstration and a safety warning about cleaning products, so I didn’t remind him about them or ask him to tidy up the place. Instead, I said, [Don’t drink the bleach—or anything under the sink, for that matter. Beers are in the fridge, which I see you have already found. Speaking of which, don’t forget to pop out and get Nadia’s beer.]
“I won’t forget. Quit nagging.”
After fetching him a duplicate key and making sure there was a rubber grip on the handle end to protect him from any small iron content it contained, I departed for my Thursday ritual.
I can’t tell you how empty you feel after your love has walked the world with you and then gone home to sleep forever. It’s not the emptiness of youth, of never having loved; that’s different. That’s the sort of thing where you know you’re missing something but you’re not sure what it is, when you listen to love songs and think it must be fine but you don’t fully know what they’re on about.
Naw, it’s more like suddenly losing a tooth and you feel the absence keenly, a hole in your body that used to be filled, except it’s much bigger than that. It’s an empty room, an empty chair, a pillow next to yours that doesn’t bear the soft round impression of the dear head who dreamt so many dreams by your side. It is an emptiness like no other, because even if it is filled with some other thing later on, it’s a final subtraction that no addition will mend.
To distract from the yawning nothingness, you keep busy. Gardening. Walking the dog, or just walking and petting other people’s dogs. Reading, smoking, and drinking. Doing your job. Finding a friend or three to have tea with or a morning gab over breakfast, where you can all agree that the world is shite—present company excluded—and if someone could only find a way to apply enough suction, maybe Parliament would finally get its heid pulled out of its arse and do something sensible for once.
These aren’t solutions to the emptiness. They are merely harnesses, safety lines tethering you to the cliff face as your bollocks dangle over the abyss. Absolutely vital to survival, but never a replacement for the great lost love of your life.
I lost my wife to an auto accident when we were fifty. I’ve been dangling ever since.
Part of my routine was to visit the Mitchell Library on Thursdays. I walked up from my flat to the Queen Street train station and took it to Charing Cross, breathed out a small sigh of contentment when I emerged from underground and saw the green dome, and made my way across to the entrance. And on the fourth floor, which contained their collection on the occult and which I was steadily working through, I greeted a fine soul who’s been dangling like me.
[Good morning, Mrs. MacRae,] I typed, though it was just barely so, the clock edging toward noon. I’ve never spoken a word aloud in her presence. To her, I am mute due to a medical condition.
“Good morning, Mr. MacBharrais.”
She smiled at me and I removed my hat, bowing my head. She’d lost her husband to cancer seven years ago in Oban. She couldn’t bear to continue living there, because the memories were too thick, the weight of them compounding her grief, so she relocated to Glasgow. Together we walked the world alone, and on Thursdays we each checked on the other.
Her first name, displayed on a badge on her black wool wrap coat, was Millie. But I’d never presume to call her that. Maybe some bonny day when the curse is lifted, I’ll say it out loud. That would be very fine, but until then we would be formal. She tended to carry herself soberly, with faultless posture that communicated that she was on duty and there to help, by gods. She had a pair of reading glasses perched precariously low on her nose but not the clacky beaded tethers some folks wore to make sure their spectacles wouldn’t fall to the floor. I imagined this hinted at the soul of a daredevil. Her dark hair, pulled back gently and pinned to sweep behind her ears and fall to her shoulders, was going grey at the temples, and her brown eyes were large and warm.
Placing my derby hat on the counter, I typed, [I wonder if you might help me with something unusual today.]
“Oh?” She smiled to let me know she was teasing. “Coming from a man who likes tae read about witches and cults and the like, that could be a bit frightening.”
[It is a frightful subject, unfortunately. I’ve been made aware of the problem of human trafficking recently—the modern sort—and wonder if the library might have something about it in the stacks somewhere.]
“I’m sure we must have something.” Her fingers danced across the keyboard in front of her terminal, and I noticed her colorful scarf. She had a different one every time I saw her but always the same black attire otherwise.
[Are those forget-me-nots on your scarf? Very nice.]
“They are, thanks.” She hit return on her keyboard and scanned the results that came up, then grabbed a pen and started to write some information down on a sticky note for me. When she finished, she peeled it off and handed it to me. “There ye are. Different floor, but once ye get tae that section, you’ll find plenty on the subject.”
I replaced my hat on top of my head and tipped it at her, mouthing a silent thank-you.
[And you as well. I appreciate your help.]
I wished I could think of some way to extend the conversation, but it would seem oddly cavalier of me to begin with human trafficking and then switch to a fluffier topic, like clouds or poodles or anything else, really.
Turning on my heel, I withdrew to the elevators and followed the directions on Mrs. MacRae’s note to a different floor and a stack that had seen very little custom. There I found a whole shelf dedicated to books on human trafficking, many of them quite recent, as the issue became stark only in recent years and academics realized there were careers to be had here as well as a scourge to be identified, classified, and explained.
There were some rather weighty tomes that would probably take a long time to wade through, but some of them were ineligible to be checked out and must remain on-site for research purposes. I’d have to peruse them later. But one title, a slimmer volume called In Our Backyard: Human Trafficking in America and What We Can Do to Stop It, by Nita Belles, looked like it would give me a good overview, and it was available for checkout, perhaps owing to the fact that it was not about Scotland. I was certain that the principles of trafficking explained therein would apply to Scotland as well, so I pulled it out, a whisper of paper hinting at secrets to be revealed later. I resolved to get through it and thank Mrs. Mac-Rae next week for the help.
CHAPTER 9
The Right Hat Makes All the Difference
It was surprising to step out of the Mitchell Library to find two detectives about to step in. They pulled up when they saw me and exchanged a glance.
“Oh, that’s a happy coincidence,” the man on the left said. Which meant they were looking for me and it wasn’t a coincidence at all.
I gingerly wedged my book underneath one arm, kept my hat cradled in the crook of the other, and stole a glance at the position of the sun in the sky before I typed on my phone. [Detective Inspector Macleod. Good afternoon.]
I’d dealt with him before. D.I. Macleod was a thin and prematurely wrinkled man of middling years, his face deeply lined by years of cynicism and tobacco smoke and not averse to a pint on the job, I’d learned. He approached life with a wry grumble, vaguely disappointed by everyone but willing and perhaps even hoping to be surprised in a pleasant way. I thought he was a good man who appreciated my help when I was able to give it, on the few occasions when my job revealed some activity that the human police could get involved in. He favored tweed suits and cashmere scarves to keep off the chill, and he also had a derby hat similar to mine.
He was with the detective inspector I’d met at Gordie’s flat, the one who’d let her hair go grey. Macleod introduced her as D.I. Munro, and I merely responded with a tight nod and a blank expression, waiting for them to initiate anything further.
“Yer office manager said ye’d be here,” Macleod said. “We need a word.”
[Certainly,] I typed, and shifted off to one side so that we wouldn’t be blocking access to the library door.
“Why are ye using that?” D.I. Munro asked. “Yesterday ye spoke.”
[I beg your pardon? Have we met before?]
“Yesterday, yes.”
[I don’t recall that, sorry.]
She blinked. “Do ye recall that Gordon Graham died yesterday?”
[Yes, I heard. Very sad.]
“He was an employee of yours, right?”
[Yes.]
“When did ye last see him yesterday?”
[I didn’t see him at all.]
“But I saw ye there in his flat.”
[I’m certain I wasn’t.]
I hated lying, specifically this kind—the gaslighting sort. But I couldn’t tell the truth and avoid being placed in jail, could I? I had to break the law sometimes to do my job properly—it kept inter-planar wars from happening and casualties from accidents down to a minimum—but it condemned me to being a lying bastard with the mortal authorities. In this case, I was hoping the sigils I’d used on my “official ID” would get me out of trouble here. My respect for D.I. Munro, already considerable, increased markedly. She must have an extraordinary brain to remember me after I’d inflicted Porous Mind on her twice in the same hour.
“But someone who looks just like ye and introduced himself as MacBharrais came in to the flat. Said they were gonnay take all the inks. Then I’m no sure exactly what happened—a strange little person came out of nowhere and attacked us and we wound up leaving the scene. But when we returned, Gordon’s flat had been robbed.”
I looked at Detective Inspector Macleod with widened eyes, wondering if this sounded as bizarre to him as it did to me. He said nothing, so I blinked at him a couple of times and typed, [I can’t be sure what happened either, since I wasn’t there.]
D.I. Munro scowled. “I’m sure I saw an actual man, a short man, in a blue paisley waistcoat. He came out of that room ye went into, kicked the body, punched me in the nose, and took off.”
I just chuckled and let them grow embarrassed at how ridiculous it sounded. D.I. Macleod began to apologize for wasting my time, but Munro held up a hand to stop him.
“Hold on, I want an answer first. If it wasn’t you in his flat, Mr. MacBharrais, where were ye yesterday afternoon?”
[In my shop, working on the offset press. It broke down and needed repair. You can confirm with my manager, Nadia, if you like. She’ll show you the security footage. Let me give you my card.]
Macleod waved me off. “No need, we already know where yer office is. We were just there.”
I nodded and typed, [Apologies for the confusion. I have one of those unfortunate faces that get recognized everywhere. I am a dreadfully typical Scottish man.]
“Were ye close with Gordon?” Munro persisted, deciding to ask about relationships since she couldn’t place me at the scene until confirming my alibi.
[Not especially.]
“But he’d worked for ye for a couple of years?”
I nodded.
“A good worker, then?”
I took the trouble to type out [Yes,] wondering where this was going.
“Any enemies?”
That question seemed like the sort one asked in a murder investigation, so I pasted on a look of concern. [I don’t understand,] I replied. [Was his death not accidental?]
“So far as we know right now, yes,” D.I. Munro said. “Just being thorough.”
[If he had enemies, I was not aware of them.]
D.I. Munro nodded. “Ye don’t have any plans to leave town anytime soon, do ye, Mr. MacBharrais?”
I shook my head.
“Good. We may have more questions for ye later. We’ll be in touch.” She plucked a card from her breast pocket and handed it to me. “If ye think of anything in the meantime, please don’t hesitate tae call or text.”
Her card bore the name Tessa Munro, and I nodded and flashed a tight-lipped grin.
“Take it easy, Al. Good tae see ye,” D.I. Macleod said, and they were off. I waited and watched them go before moving, then purposefully turned in a different direction from them. I walked for a couple of blocks before returning my black derby hat to my head, the one with the black sigils on it that disabled any cameras pointed in my direction, for they were Sigils of Swallowed Light.
The Sigil of Swallowed Light became necessary as the world edged ever closer to constant public surveillance. Cameras everywhere were fantastic for deterring and solving crimes but not so great for keeping the secrets of extraplanar visitors. So Brighid invented the sigil in the seventies, and agents have worn black hats emblazoned with them ever since.
The sigil specifically makes camera lenses black out while the sigil is in the picture. To the observer looking through the lens or at a developed photo or at security footage, it appears to be a glitch, or as if someone had switched off the power—or, in the case of a still photo, poor exposure. It is an aegis of privacy in the era of Big Brother.
I am a normal human with on
ly twenty or thirty years left if I beat the odds, but if I have anything close to a modern-day superpower, it is this: I cannot be surveilled in the surveillance state unless I allow it. The police therefore have no footage of me from yesterday walking into Gordie’s building or out of it, nor of Nadia arriving and then departing with a bag of stolen inks and pens.
Without such evidence—and in the face of the timestamped video footage Nadia would show them of me supposedly fixing a broken press during that time—they’d have no way to prove I was there. They would have to get me to admit I had been in the building, and I wasn’t about to do that.
Not that I expected them to pursue this much longer; Gordie’s death had been an accident, after all, and the Sigil of Porous Mind had affected everyone in the place, making their recollections of what exactly had been in the building a bit fuzzy. They might nibble on the bone of the mystery a bit more, or let it gnaw at them before they went to sleep for a couple of nights, but another case would come their way and they’d forget about me soon enough.
That, or D.I. Munro would outthink me. She clearly had a mind to be feared.
CHAPTER 10
Sometimes, Ghost Dogs Are Not Enough
I was making my way to Tartan Greenhouses to check in with Saxon Codpiece when Coriander glided up next to me. He appeared to walk, that is, but his feet didn’t quite touch the ground. He came across as the smoothest walker of all time. His knees must feel amazing, never having to take the impact shock of millions of steps over the years, and I admit that envied him for that.
“Good afternoon, Agent MacBharrais.”
I gave him a nod and then a raised eyebrow as if to say, What news?
“After investigating at your request, it turns out that there have, in fact, been some suspicious disappearances of rather dangerous creatures from the nine planes. A more than usually bloodthirsty leprechaun among them.”
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