by M. D. Massey
Of course, that didn’t keep the lower fae from despising me for what I’d done. For one, the fae hated it when mortals pulled one over on them. That made me persona non grata on principle alone. Plus, they resented having to pay for spells that had been child’s play to cast before I’d shut the gates down. Yet to them, the level of enmity they felt toward me only merited casting minor curses and the like. For example, making my milk spoil faster, or affecting my luck so I couldn’t find a decent parking space—small annoyances that my wards easily intercepted.
But the higher-order fae? If this crowd had been made up of higher fae, I’d have already sprouted a knife in my back.
A world-weary female fae in rollers, a ratty terrycloth robe, and house shoes gave me a look that was equal parts languor and contempt as I ducked through the gap in the fence. She might have been pretty with a little makeup or the right glamour, but without any magic to hide her age she looked like a thirty-something with way too many miles on the odometer.
She took a drag on a long, thin cigarette as she regarded me with a sneer. “Why don’t you go back to your own kind, druid? Ain’t nobody got any use for you around here.”
I adjusted the strap on my Craneskin Bag, ignoring her as I moved past. She spat at my feet and made a few arcane gestures, muttering under her breath. The weak curse slid off my wards like water off a duck’s back, and not for the first time I considered adding a reflection spell to my wards. But that’d just be pouring salt in an open wound. I dismissed the thought as I continued to push my way through the crowd.
None present wanted anything to do with me, so the crowd instantly parted to allow me access to the object of their fury. Voices died down as more and more fae recognized my face. As I took in the scene, their angry shouts turned to muttered curses and thinly veiled threats of violence. At least now their anger was directed at me, instead of the bloody, cowering form at the center of the crowd.
Small victories, and all that.
Elmo crouched just a few feet in front of me, cowering over a prone form that I could just barely make out around his bulk. Deep horizontal gashes ran across his back, with dried blood clearly visible where his t-shirt had been sliced open. He’d also been stoned, and an assortment of bloody bricks, rocks, bottles, and chunks of asphalt littered the ground nearby.
I walked around so I could get a better look. Elmo’s face was swollen and purple on one side, his lip had been split wide open, and he had more defensive cuts on his forearms and the back of his hands. Like the wounds across his shoulders, these weren’t as fresh as the cuts and scrapes he’d sustained from the projectiles the crowd had thrown at him.
Fools. One glance at his injuries should have told anyone with half a lick of sense that he wasn’t the killer.
“Elmo,” I whispered. The ogre started at the sound of my voice. I reached out a hand, gently touching him on the shoulder. He flinched away with a whining growl. “Hey, it’s okay, big guy. I’m going to get you out of here, alright?”
Elmo looked up at me, tilting his head and furrowing his brow all at once. I caught a spark of recognition in those baby brown eyes, and he seemed to calm down a bit. I handed him a candy bar from my bottomless, enchanted Craneskin Bag, then stood up to address the crowd.
“He’s not your killer. Go home.”
For a second no one spoke, then a male fae piped up from the back. “Damned ogre killed Jeretta!” the man shouted. “He’s gotta’ pay!”
A chorus of shouts and muttered agreements followed the man’s outburst, which I ignored. I glanced down, and for the first time I recognized the lifeless form beneath the ogre. Pink-tipped, dirty-blonde hair framing a too-thin face, and hazel eyes fixed in a permanent stare. Jeretta was a mute seer who’d been a witness in the abduction of Sal’s child months before.
Damn it. Why’d it have to be a kid?
I closed my eyes and shook my head, then opened them and leveled my gaze at the crowd. “Have some sense. The only wounds I see on Elmo are defensive wounds on his back and forearms. He’s covered in blood, sure—but most of it’s his. And none of it is on his hands or under his nails, which is where it would be if he’d had anything to do with this poor girl’s death. If anything, Elmo was trying to protect her from her killer, but I suspect he arrived too late to do her much good.”
“The druid lies!” some harridan shouted. “He’s in on it!”
I rubbed my face as I sucked air through my teeth. “Really? You think that I came down here, directed the ogre to kill the girl, covered my tracks, drove away, and then turned right back around so I could get caught?”
“You’ve killed fae before!” a nameless male voice shouted.
I sighed. “Go home, people. The killer isn’t here”—that I knew of—“and you’re trampling any evidence that might reveal who did this. The best thing you can all do is to head back to your homes, so I can figure out who killed poor Jeretta.”
“You heard him—go home!” Rocko and two of his crew forced their way through the crowd, using two-by-fours and baseball bats for leverage. “I said, go home!” the dwarf bellowed as he and his boys took up positions between the crowd and Elmo, Jeretta, and me.
With no small amount of grumbling, the crowd dispersed. Once they’d all gone, Rocko turned and squatted next to us. He brushed some hair from Jeretta’s pale face, scratching his nose with a heavy sigh.
“Damn it, druid—she was just a girl, a damned silly kid who never hurt nobody or nuthin’. And now I gotta tell her parents their daughter is dead. Fuck!”
Elmo shied away from Rocko’s angry outburst, although the ogre continued to shield Jeretta’s body with his own. I laid a hand on the ogre’s shoulder. “Elmo—Elmo! It’s okay, you don’t have to protect her anymore. Rocko and his boys can take it from here.”
The ogre looked at me, then down at the girl. A single tear rolled down his cheek, falling to land on Jeretta’s blood-stained shirt. I took him by the hand and led him off to the side, where I left him with more candy bars.
“Any idea who did this?” Rocko asked, and I shook my head. He pointed a thumb in Elmo’s direction. “He won’t last an hour, after my boys and I leave. You got someplace safe for him to go?”
I sniffed and nodded. “Yeah. I’ll get him out of here, just as soon as I finish examining the murder scene for evidence.” My eyes searched the trampled ground in vain. “Although I doubt there’s much left after your tenants tromped all over the place.”
“Can you blame them? This makes seven bodies since summer started. Nobody knows who the fuck is doing it, and Maeve and her people… never mind.” Rocko knuckled his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut. “Just please tell me you’ll catch this fucker, druid.”
I glanced down at Jeretta’s mangled torso. While her face was untouched, her body was a jigsaw of physical insults. She’d been stabbed dozens of times and from multiple angles, as if once hadn’t been enough for the killer—or killers. Her wounds were gruesome, forcing me to swallow a bit of coffee and bile before looking away.
What was going through my mind was, How in the hell did I let myself get dragged into this? But what came out of my mouth was, “Sure, Rocko. I’ll do my best.”
Three
After Rocko and his men chased the crowd away, they wrapped Jeretta’s body in blankets, showing quite a bit more care than I would have expected from a bunch of bloodthirsty fear dearg. They carried the body off on a makeshift litter they’d hobbled together from discarded lumber and a dirty, paint-stained tarp. The shifty red cap claimed that his “business” required him to be elsewhere, but I suspected the real reason for Rocko’s speedy retreat was simply that he didn’t want to clash too hard with his customers.
I’d just gotten Elmo settled in with some candy and a fidget-spinner when three mangy-looking individuals came walking out of the weeds opposite the trailer park fence. They carried an assortment of two-by-fours and roofing hatchets, and something told me they weren’t there to replace the shingles. As
they came into view, each of them spread out to flank me, indicating they’d attack in a pincher formation if things got ugly.
I hung my head and sighed before taking stock of my aggressors. The leader wore a dirty wife beater over a dusty pair of gray Dickies, and faded leather work boots that looked a few decades old. He was of average height, but based on the breadth of his shoulders and the swell of his arms, he was no stranger to hard labor. His face was pasty-white and pockmarked, with blemishes here and there that spoke of unclean living and a general lack of physical hygiene. A greasy combover topped off the ensemble nicely.
About ten feet to my right stood a larger and younger version of the leader, wearing grease-stained blue coveralls tucked into unlaced combat boots. Of course, his coveralls were unzipped to his navel, revealing hairy man-boobs and a gut that would have indicated pregnancy in someone of the opposite sex.
On my other side stood a smaller version of both. He was dressed similarly in a wife beater, dirty jeans, and a scuffed pair of leather work shoes, just with more hair and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his nose. The guy reminded me of a skinny John Denver. That is, if the singer had stopped performing in Muppets specials and started cooking and smoking meth in his early twenties.
A quick glance at each of them in the magical spectrum clued me in on what I was dealing with. They were hobgoblins, minor fae who’d once inhabited rural homes, doing odd jobs and household chores at night in exchange for saucers of milk and crusts of bread left by the owners each morning. They were nasty creatures, easily offended and prone to spitefulness. Many a farmer and housemaid had experienced soured milk, broken looms, and blighted crops at the hands of their kind.
Naturally, I assumed this confrontation was unlikely to have a peaceful resolution.
“Fellas,” I said as I looked at each of them in turn. My eyes settled back on the leader, but I kept track of the others in my peripheral vision. “You guys lost, or just here to sell Girl Scout cookies? If it’s the latter, I’ll take two boxes of Thin Mints and a box of Do-si-dos.”
“’Ark at he, dad,” the larger of the two goons said. “Thinks he’s funny, this’un does.”
The leader spat and shook his head. “Ya know why we’re here, druid. Just let us have the ogre, and no one gets hurt.”
The two of them spoke with what I thought might have been a West Country English accent, although there was a bit of Texas twang mixed in as well. I couldn’t decide if their accents were annoying or charming, but based on the fact they were here to do Elmo harm, I settled on annoying.
“Oh, you know, I can’t do that. I have a doubles match later at the country club, and I need a partner.” I jerked a thumb at the ogre over my shoulder. “You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but Elmo has a wicked top spin serve.”
“The hard way it is, then,” the leader replied. “Make it hurt, boys.”
The smaller one cackled as they both closed in on me. “Lucky for us, that’s our specialty.”
I’d been expecting this, so I already had my hand inside my Craneskin Bag when they made their move. “I really don’t have time for this shit, so let me make myself clear,” I said as I drew two-and-a-half feet of flaming steel from my bag. “The ogre stays.”
The two younger hobgoblins shied away from the flaming sword, but their father seemed unimpressed. “It’s just druid tricks, just some flaming pitch on a blade. He can’t fight all three of us at once. We jump him on the count of three, boys.”
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”
The older hobgoblin began his countdown. “One…”
The two boys’ eyes darted back and forth between their dad and my sword. The bigger one gulped audibly as he tightened his grip on his two-by-four. “You sure that’s a good idea, Dad? Sword looks real enough to me.”
Their father scowled. “Ain’t no real flaming swords been seen in centuries! Reach down and grab a pair, boys, so we can kill this ogre and be done with it.” He spun his hatchet in tight circles. “Two…”
I held the sword loosely out at my side, keeping my eyes on the dad while I made sure the others were visible peripherally. “I’m telling you guys, this is a really bad idea. Last warning.”
“He’s bluffing!” the smallest of them screeched. “Right, Dad?”
“S’right, so be ready.” Their father took a deep breath, ready to give his sons the final command to attack. Nobody ever said hobgoblins were smart.
“Three,” I said, raising the sword as I spun it in a broad, blinding arc. With a single smooth cut, I sheared each of their weapons off neatly, just above their hands. The heads of their hatchets and lengths of lumber clattered to the ground. I spun the sword in a flourish, ending with the tip resting in the dirt, where it sizzled and spat as the flames melted tiny pebbles and burned off organic matter.
“Sword looks real enough to me,” I said as I looked the leader in the eye. “Now, are we through here?”
He dropped the smoldering stump of a hatchet handle from his hand, and backed away from me. “Aye, we’re done. My apologies, druid.”
“Apology accepted. Now, shoo.”
They ran, and I watched to make sure they were gone before I put the sword back in my Bag.
After I’d sent the hobgoblins on their way, I spent a few minutes going over the scene, trying to glean even the smallest bit of information that might point to the real killer. My primary witness, who’d most certainly seen the killer or killers, was unfortunately either unable or unwilling to communicate verbally. Elmo sat quietly off to the side while I completed my search, completely withdrawn.
The crime scene had been utterly destroyed by the crowd of angry fae, but I knew that whoever had killed Jeretta had approached the scene on foot. There were no roads leading back here, so unless they’d flown in they must have left some trace of their passing. I widened my search pattern, looking for footprints, bent stalks of grass, or the telltale scent of magic that might have been used to cover such evidence.
I worked in concentric circles, ranging farther and farther from where Jeretta’s body had been found. Ultimately, it wasn’t any physical evidence that alerted me to someone’s passing, but the lack of said evidence. I missed it on my first pass, but the second time around I sensed an absence that faintly tickled my Spidey-senses.
I closed my eyes, extending my awareness the way Finnegas had been teaching me to do recently. I knelt and touched the earth, feeling the natural thrum and rhythm of the land through my fingertips. Slowing my breathing, I allowed the background noises to take center stage in my mind, where I separated them into their individual components. Then I focused on the warm, muggy morning air, taking time to identify each scent that drifted on the lazy breeze. Finally, I opened my eyes, expanding my focus to take in the entire scene all at once, including the sights on the periphery of my vision.
After repeating the process over and over again, I’d come full circle back to the area that had initially piqued my interest.
Every other vector approaching the crime scene appeared completely normal. For three-hundred-fifty-nine degrees around, I detected the passing of various small animals and insects, as well as the effects of the wind and precipitation on the earth and vegetation. But along this line, it was like someone had wiped it clean of every single odor and trail.
Magic, for sure… tricky, tricky magic.
There was an empty wrongness to the area, not unlike what might be left by necromancy. But instead of pure death, it was as if nature had merely been erased. I tried to place the sensation, and the closest I could recall was when I’d visited a friend at their office job at some random tech company, in a high-rise office building off the Mopac Expressway.
Everything inside that building had just felt dead, because it was. Modern, synthetic, man-made things had that feel about them. People normally didn’t notice it because they were used to it. But to someone who’d spent significant time in nature, it was akin to
the total absence of sound. I could practically feel the lack of life sucking the energy out of everyone in that building. That day, I’d swore I’d never work in a place like that, no matter what.
The question was, what kind of magic would cause an absence of nature’s rhythms and energy? And in an empty field no less, where nature practically reigned free? It was puzzling, to say the least.
I followed the trail of nothingness, which led me on a beeline to the nearest road, a little two-lane strip of asphalt running from nowhere to nowhere. There was no trace of anyone’s passing there, either—not a single tire track, footprint, discarded cigarette butt, nothing. Any evidence had been erased and replaced by that eerie absence of life and sense of emptiness.
I heard a rustling behind me and spun, drawing my Glock in a smooth motion from the small of my back. Elmo stood there with his lower lip stuck out, eyes red from crying and a trail of snot running down his lip. He took a shuddering breath, the kind you make when you’re just on the edge of losing it, but you’re trying to hold it together.
“Sorry, Elmo—I didn’t mean to be so jumpy. I suppose it’s just as well that you followed me. It’s long past time I got you out of here.”
His only response was to grunt and point back to the trash dump.
I holstered my pistol and approached him slowly with my hand extended, like a cowboy approaching a nervous foal. “I bet you want to get some of your things, eh? Maybe a toy, or something to keep you company?” I gently took the ogre’s hand, and he responded in kind.
The trash dump was nothing to look at, just a small open area in the middle of a field of weeds full of rubbish and junk. It looked as though the locals had been dumping their unwanted shit here for decades, as the place was littered with ancient washing machines, busted bathroom sinks, tattered mattresses, bald car tires, and the like. The ogre lifted the tail end of a rusted-out truck with no rims, using it like a trap door to gain entrance to his lair. I sat and waited patiently for him to return.