by Lily Silver
He’d stopped at the man’s apartment to talk to him after his night with Gisele. He needed to talk to someone, and since Lord Dillon thought Gisele was spoiled goods, he would rather talk to Arthur about the situation. He intended to set up an evening of entertainment for himself and Artie; Absinthe and dinner, and then some rounds to the clubs to see the dancers and find a good game of cards.
When Arthur hadn’t answered the door, Dan convinced the landlord on the first floor to open the door for him, with a couple of francs to aid that decision. He found Arthur flat on his back in his bed, arms out, as if he’d been murdered. Only he wasn’t dead, he appeared to have been heavily drugged.
“I’ll be back,” he told the landlord. “I’m getting the doctor.”
The man’s face soured. “You’d better have money to pay a physician, M’sieur, as this one doesn’t have the funds. He’s past due on his rent. I gave him the rest of the month to come up with the funds or he’s out.”
“How kind of you,” Dan commented, and hurried down the narrow stairs to the street. “Leave the door open, please. I’ll be back in a few moments.” He hoped that was true. It wasn’t more than a ten minute walk to their lodgings, but he wasn’t sure if Doc Riley was at home. The brothers seemed to disappear regularly to find their own distractions.
He trudged down the narrow street in a hurry, feeling a little winded by the time he arrived at their building on the Rue Lepic. The stairs were the next to be conquered, all in a quest to get word to a doctor. Jesus, what he wouldn’t give for a cell phone about now.
Once he made it up the four flights, Dan pounded on the door of the apartment across from the one he shared with Tara and Adrian. “Riley, Mick, open up. I need help.”
No answer. He swore, and turned to his own lodgings, peered in, and noted that it, too, was empty. Dan turned, and was just about to jaunt back down the stairs and down the street to Arthur’s again when Riley called down from the stoop above.
“Is Tara unwell?” The russet head gazed down at him with concern.
“No, it’s my friend. He’s sick, he seems to be drugged, it’s like he’s in some friggin’ trance. Can you come help me?”
The young man moved down the stairway easily. Dan envied the man his youthful joints and lungs that didn’t trouble themselves over the exertion of a flight of stairs. Oh, to be twenty eight again.
“I will just retrieve my coat and my bag.” Doc Riley disappeared into his room and emerged a moment later.
When they arrived at Arthur’s studio Doc Riley bent over the man, lifted an eyelid, and then sniffed Arthur’s breath. He seemed perturbed. Dan wanted to question the young man on his findings, but having worked on patients as a surgical nurse and an EMT in the his own time, Dan knew how annoying it was to have family playing the fifty questions routine when you were trying to ascertain the patient’s condition.
Dan glanced about the studio, noting the food decaying on the table near the window, the leaky roof with a pail to capture the drips, and the lack of cheer or warmth to the Spartan surroundings. Art never said he was in straightened funds, but then, being English, he likely wouldn’t. The way Art went through money at cabarets and their gaming haunts, ordering drinks all around and being a jolly English fellow, one would think he was well set up.
He moved to the table, and noted the letter lying open on it. The missive was from Arthur’s father, the Earl. It basically was a grow up or starve letter, saying dear old dad would no longer fund his youngest son’s degenerate lifestyle of painting harlots and drinking himself to death, that all funds were cut off from this date on. This date being three week ago. It was the old come home to the family, or starve in Paris trying to find yourself spiel. Dan knew little about his companion’s family, aside from the distaste he heard in Art’s voice whenever he mentioned his rich father.
Arthur hadn’t become desperate, had he? He wouldn’t try to do himself in with laudanum, an opium derivative that seemed as easy to buy around here as aspirin was in the future? Dan hadn’t seen Art for a couple of days. Their last night out, Arthur had been jovial and full of enthusiasm regarding his search for the Green Fairy, the actual fairy mind you, not the euphemism for the drink named in her honor. He claimed to have found a new lead in his passionate search.
Emerald eyes glanced up at Dan with alarm. “You say this man is your friend?”
“Yes, I’ve been out about town with him many times.” Dan lifted his hands in a casual gesture. He felt a little defensive by Riley’s tone, and he didn’t know why. The doctor seemed angry. “We’ve enjoyed a glass of spirits now and again at the cafes, is all. Arthur is a generous soul. He’s a quick wit, a writer and a talented artist. He actually sells most of his artwork to the tourists in the park. He could be a great man someday.”
The doctor gave a curt nod. “Look about, see if you can find any bottles he drank from recently. I need a sample to confirm my suspicions.” Riley loosened Arthur’s shirt collar and was listening to his chest with a stethoscope. “We should move him. Can you carry him to our flat? He’ll be safer with us.”
“What do you mean, safer,” Dan demanded, concern creeping about his heart.
“He has the same symptoms I’ve noted in other victims. Let’s hope he isn’t too far gone.”
“What do you mean by victims?”
“This man has been slowly and deliberately poisoned.”
Mick gestured to the man behind the counter of the dress shop, urging Tara to step forward and state her need. “Go on, lass. I’ve told you how it’s done a dozen times, and didn’t we have a good lunch from my example?”
She cleared her throat and swallowed her misgivings. This sounded so simple, to just walk into a shop and state the obvious, that she needed new dresses. She saw Mick do it, at the cafe, the chocolate shop, and then at the bakery. Still, she couldn’t believe it was possible to acquire items from those about her just by asking for them.
They were in a section of Paris past the Champs Elysees, where shops catered to the tourists flooding the city from across the sea. The hotel nearby was owned by an American businessman, and it was well known as the hang out of Americans and English speaking people visiting the city for the exposition. It was a pleasant place to be, with book shops, cafes, newsstands all catering to the English speaking tourists.
“Mademoiselle, may I help you?” The store clerk smiled at her. He was a thin, balding man with a full, bushy moustache and a neat goatee.
“Yes, I need some new dresses.” Tara stammered, “Please?”
He looked at her, and then at Mick, and smiled.“Allow me to get my wife. Tilly, come help this lovely young woman, if you please.”
Her heart sank. Tara felt more confident that she could handle a man, but a woman, a grumpy middle-aged woman at that, was a challenge she could do without. She looked to Mick, hoping for help when the woman came out and harrumphed at her when she learned Tara had no coin and sent her on her way empty-handed. Mick’s glamoury would charm the woman.
Mick shook his head. “You are capable. Smile, look them in the eyes and speak sweetly.”
A short woman with silver white hair and a pair of round spectacles came out from behind the store window where she had been adjusting the flowing skirts on a dress stand. “May I assist you, miss?”
Tara cleared her throat. She felt like Oliver in the Dickens story, asking if she could please have some more porridge. “Yes, I need new dresses.”
“Yes, yes. Of course you do, my dear. Come right this way.” Tilly, the proprietor’s assistant, ushered her into the back where there were private dressing stalls.
By the time Tara emerged from the dress shop some time later, her brother had four dress boxes stacked in his arms and she was carrying another containing a green and white striped gown she’d been unable to resist adding to her bounty.
“I can’t believe this.”
“Believe these boxes are heavy,” Mick murmured from behind the wall of cardboard rectangl
es he had balanced in his arms. “You have asked for much. ‘Tis an unspoken rule that we take only what we need at the moment, never more.”
“Obviously, you’ve never gone clothes shopping with a woman before,” Tara teased. “I could use some new shoes and stockings, too, but I’ll do that another time, without you.”
“Thank you for that.” Mick’s droll comment was not lost on her. “It will be good practice, but mind you never neglect to bless those who aid us with peace, prosperity and good fortune. “
“Oh, I didn’t do that, should we go back?” She turned to him with worry.
“I took care of it. Their business should double by the end of the week, increasing their fortunes.”
“And paying for what we just received from their hand?” Tara finished for him.
“Aye, that is the Fey way, we bless those who aid us with good fortune.”
“So, how are we going to get all this home?” Tara sighed, and looked around them for a hired hack. “I don’t have any coin for a hansom cab, do you?”
“How are we going to get home?’, says she.” Mick muttered in a high, falsetto voice before continuing in his own tone, “have you learned nothing at all then from our day together?”
After they arrived at the top of the apartment building and made it past George, Mick carried Tara’s boxes down to her rooms, and left her to admire her new bounty.
She opened the boxes while humming the tune to that old song from Madonna about being in a material world. She was excited to have procured her own wardrobe without needing to turn to Adrian for help. It was the fairy way, Mick kept reminding her when she voiced her concern about taking things from another. It wasn’t taking from them, he explained, it was considered polite to ask for what was needed and then to bless those who gave the item willingly.
The old legends she heard from Adrian’s servants at his home in Ireland finally made sense. The country Irish believed in offering a gift to the fairies. They regularly left out items of food or milk for them, the most common time to do so being at Midsummer Eve. They believed in giving the Fey folk a portion of their bounty to obtain a blessing of prosperity for their future.
She unwrapped the three-piece dress with alternating stripes of emerald green satin and white faille. It had a fitted striped jacket and a lace blouse with cap sleeves to be worn beneath the jacket or with the skirt alone to serve as an evening gown. It was her favorite. She held it up to herself, and then hung it in the small closet. Tara was just about to unpack the next gown when the men arrived home.
The noise in the hallway, of voices raised in concern, brought her out of her pleasant cocoon as she heard Riley directing Dan to carry someone into his apartment.
“Who is this?” She poked her head out of her room and watched them as they shuffled about the hall. Dan was carrying a thin man into Mick and Riley’s room. A man whose skin appeared to be almost ash gray, and whose eyes were wide open, glassy and possessed a faraway look in them. He had a dreamy smile on his face, as if he were lost in a beautiful vision.
Tara followed the men into her brother’s lodgings across the hall. “Can I help? Are you sure he’s not been smoking opium. That is a possibility in this time, opium dens abound.”
“No, it’s not opium,” Riley assured her. ” He moved his jacket off the bed and lifted the covers so that Dan’s friend could be settled there. “Tara, if you have water warming, bring us a cup and some charcoal ash on a plate. We need to counter the poison in his system before it’s too late.”
She went to do as Riley asked. So much for a good day sliding into a pleasant evening. Tara wanted to take Adrian out to an upscale restaurant to cheer him with a steak dinner. She hoped to be able to just ‘ask’ for dinner at the restaurant as she had the dresses, and show him they would be fine without his blasted money.
And where was Adrian, for heaven’s sake? It was past six in the evening, and he hadn’t come home as yet. They were all at loose ends, everyone going off to their own diversions and it seemed none of them knew much about what the others were doing. With Mick and Riley, it was only to be expected, she supposed, but she’d become accustomed to close living in the town house of Dublin, and knowing where Dan and Adrian were off to at any given time.
“Here you go,” Tara carried the tray into the smaller one room apartment. There was only one bed. This was the first time she’d entered her brother’s abode, and she wondered where they slept, as apparently they didn’t both sleep in that small bed in the corner.
Tara handed Dan a cup of tea she’d made hastily from the warmed water in an attempt to soothe him. He was quite shaken. He took it, and nibbled his lower lip as he watched Riley mix the charcoal bits into the water. It was an ugly, lumpy gray mud by the time he was finished. He removed a funnel from his bag, and glanced up at them, his eyes clearly asking for help.
Dan moved to set aside his tea. Tara stilled his hand. “Let me.”
The procedure was messy. Tara held the metal funnel between the man’s teeth, and kept his head steady, while Riley forced him to swallow the disgusting potion. The man was lucid enough to follow Riley’s instruction, but choked and coughed after he swallowed the tonic.
Footsteps on the stairs, a hesitant step told her Adrian was coming up from the street.
Riley gestured for her to remove the funnel for now, and set the potion aside. “We’ll keep feeding him this every few minutes. If one of you could go upstairs, Mick is with George, he needs to know about this.”
“Can you save him?” Dan asked in a roughened voice.
“If this doesn’t work, we’ll try a transfusion.”
“What! A blood transfusion could kill him,” Dan set down his mug of tea quickly and came to stand over Riley. “There isn’t the technology yet to test antibodies in the blood, it’s several decades away—”
Dan towered over Riley, and his imposing form would be enough to put anyone into a panic. Riley stood his ground. He glared up at the older, larger man, unmoving despite the potential threat emanating from Dan.
“Be still.” Riley waved his hand in front of Dan’s eyes.
The big man stood like a statue, still glaring down at the air where Riley had previously stood in front of him. Riley hastened away and was fussing with something in his case. He lifted a bottle from it containing a bright green liquid. Immediately, Tara knew what it was. He turned to her. “Can you bring me another basin, and a pitcher of water?”
“What about him?” She poked her thumb at the frozen giant between them.
“He’ll be fine, sister. He needs to calm down. He’s being irrational.”
“What if Dan is right?” Tara persisted. “A blood transfusion could kill him.”
Riley made a face. “Honestly, you’ve spent too much time among mortals. You do not ken our ways.” He placed the bottle on the table and pulled more items that looked to be a primitive chemistry set from his bag. “I would give the patient a small oral dose of my own blood, mixed with milk to dilute it. That would speed his healing, and help restore him, if he’s not too far gone into death. It is a method we use sparingly, as it gives the recipient a strong connection to their Fey host. However, as he is your human protector’s friend, and has aided us in finding suitable lodgings here, thereby doing the Fey a kindness indirectly, I shall endeavor to save the man by any means possible. The water and a basin, please?”
Tara glanced at Dan again before moving to do as her brother asked. Dan looked like a statue in the wax museum, lifelike, yet immobile. “I’m terribly fond of this man, Riley. He’s the closest thing to a father I’ve ever known. Don’t hurt him.”
“The basin, quickly,” Riley’s hand fluttered out with insistence. He was intently pouring a small amount of the liquid into a round glass jar with metal tongs for handles.
A minute later, Tara was in her bedroom gathering the water pitcher and basin on the washstand for Riley. Adrian arrived, stepped into the bedroom and started asking questions regarding the scene
across the hall. Tara filled her husband in as best she could.
“What’s this?” His tone was brittle as he stared down at the boxes on the bed. “Did you find a new admirer, Lady Dillon?”
“I went shopping, is all.”
“Who is paying for these?” His hand swept over the bed as his eyes pierced Tara’s with accusation. “It looks to be a grand bill that’s coming due, Tara, one that would set me back several hundred pounds if not a full thousand. We can’t afford this.”
“Mick and I went out to gather supplies. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be right back.” She carried the pitcher and basin across the hall to her brother. Dan still stood at the side of the bed, glaring down at the floor as if he meant to slap it with his meaty paw in the next instant. She gave Riley a sharp look. “When will you let him go?”
“In a few moments. Thank you. Could you go upstairs to get Mick? He’s with George,” Riley directed. “He needs to know of this.”
“Tara,” Adrian called from the doorway, pulling her back to their debate, “A word, please?”
Chapter Seventeen
Tara wanted to tell her brother to march up the stairs himself and get Mick himself.
If not for the reality of a man’s life hanging in the balance, she might have done just that. Instead, she left Adrian at the door to their apartment and hurried up the steps to the hermit’s lair.
The door was open. It seemed to be a regular occurrence, at least during the day.
As she stepped inside, the sight that met her eyes nearly brought a fit of giggles. Mick was standing in the room, stark naked, with his wings unfurled. He held a spear in his hand, as if about to rise up and do battle with an imagined enemy. He was posing for George. The artist was busily applying paints to the canvas, nearly ignoring Mick’s nude form except for brief gazes before returning his eyes to his painting.
“Mick, you’re needed downstairs.”