by H A Titus
My dad looked up from his newspaper. I smiled and waved to him, then stepped across the hall to the living room and answered the phone.
"Roe was attacked last night," Eliaster said sharply.
My face and hands went cold. "Is she hurt?" I asked in a low voice.
"No, just shaken up."
"Okay, well, I'll come anyway."
"Sounds good."
Mom called from the kitchen, "Are you eating with us?"
"Sorry, gotta go," I said, grabbing my shoes from the rack beside the front door.
"You work with computers, not people!" One of the twins—Matt, I thought, but it was getting hard to tell them apart just by voice—yelled back. "Is it really that much of an emergency?"
I rolled my eyes and ignored him. As I headed out the front door, my mom's voice called me back. I looked up, and just like I was five again and starting my first day of kindergarten, she was standing at the door holding out my jacket, a wrinkle of worry between her eyes.
I sighed and went back for it.
As I took it, she stepped forward and hugged me. "You know we're proud of you, Josh? Even though we've had some rough years, we're very proud."
Those words cut deep. I leaned back from the hug and studied her face more carefully. There was a shadow behind her eyes. Was she really that worried about me? It felt weird. I'd seen a lot of emotions I'd caused on my parents' faces—frustration and surrender being the primary two—but never worry. I pulled my jacket on and kissed the top of her head. "Thanks, Mom."
She nodded.
My mind spun as I pulled out of the driveway.
# # #
Eliaster met me at the edge of the Market, and together we made our way around the open area to the neighborhood where Roe lived. The first sight of Roe's house sent a cold shock through me. Every window in the place had been busted out. The street in front of it twinkled with glass shards. The door hung open, the upper hinge ripped off the wall. Claw marks scored the doorframe, and something had busted through the porch railing, reducing it to splinters.
"Holy crap," I muttered, stopping at the edge of the mossy yard. From here, I could see the front hallway of the house. Claw marks scored the plaster along the stairs. A shiver crawled down my spine.
Eliaster swore quietly and stepped up to the porch, staring at the interior of the house. He walked inside and pivoted to look at the doorframe, running his fingers along the wood. "The silver's still there." His jaw clenched.
"I don't understand," I said.
"Roe keeps the door and window frames lined with silver. It's not as powerful as iron, but it keeps most nasties out."
"It didn't deter the sluagh in May."
"No, but it weakened it. If it hadn't been weakened, I wouldn't have been able to smack it with that poker and get it to stop chasing us."
I frowned, fighting back a shiver at the remembrance of the sluagh and its gaping, beak-like mouth. "So, what do you think did this?"
Eliaster ran his fingers along some of the slash marks on the wall. His touch dislodged some of the plaster bits, and they pattered to the floor. "Based on how the silver didn't seem to slow it down, and these marks … fear dearg. Redcaps."
I searched my mental files. What I remembered wasn't pretty. Redcaps stood about shoulder-height to me. Scrawny and hairy, with faces that were a nightmare's blend of human and rodent, they sported long jagged talons on their hands. They killed for sport and often wore hats dyed with the blood of their victims as trophies. Some of the legends said that the hats had to be kept soaked with blood, but I wasn't sure if that was true or just the usual Gaelic hyperbole.
"Iron claws," I muttered.
"Yeah," Eliaster said, straightening.
Of course we were dealing with some of the only sidhé not affected by iron. I sighed and looked around. "Lukas?"
The door at the end of the hallway creaked open, and Lukas looked out from the kitchen, a broom in one hand, dustpan in the other. "You two finally decided to show up, huh?"
I rolled my eyes. "Good morning to you too."
"So you're thinkin' redcaps too," Lukas said, leaning on the broom handle.
"Makes sense. They got past a monster deterrent, and when they didn't find a victim, they destroyed the place. I guess the question would be why."
"Or one of your Unseelie buddies decided to get back at Roe for helping you out," Lukas said. "Broke in. Tore it up."
Eliaster tapped the gouges in the wall. "This is a claw pattern. You'd have to be awfully precise with a really sharp blade to mimic this."
"Or another clawed beastie."
"The faoladh? Come on, Lukas, you should know better than that. Besides, silver is worse than iron to them."
I left them to their bickering and walked over to the library door, easing it open. It was even more trashed than the hallway. The couches and chairs had been ripped to shreds. Papers and stuffing scattered across the carpet. Half-burned books choked the fireplace, and other books had been tossed around the room, their covers torn, pages hanging from the binding. Roe's desk had been smashed and torn nearly to splinters. One of the bookshelves lay facedown on the floor, the back smashed in.
I swallowed and stepped into the room. Glass crunched under my feet. Carefully, I began gathering books and papers into stacks, finding places on the remaining bookshelves. Roe would have to go through it all and sort it again, but I could at least salvage some of it.
I heard Lukas's and Eliaster's voices moving as they walked through the rest of the house, surveying the damage.
What if Roe had been here when the intruders had come? Would we have found her body, slashed open on the floor? The very thought made me feel sick to my stomach.
After a while, the door creaked open. Eliaster stepped into the library and whistled softly. He edged around debris to the couch and cleared a spot for himself to sit.
"Find anything?" I asked, not looking up at him.
"Nothing. I called Marc's mom and sisters. They're all still okay."
"That's good to hear." I picked up another armful of papers, carefully aligning it with a stack on a shelf. A small porcelain owl figurine had somehow escaped the carnage, and I picked it up next, cradling the cool statuette in my hands.
Eliaster heaved a sigh. "Dad and Roe both think we should chase the lead the Airgeads gave us."
I nodded.
"But I don't want to leave Springfield right now."
"Why not?"
Eliaster's mouth twisted. "That's right, I hadn't told you yet." He pulled a bundled cloth from his pocket and set it on the ruined coffee table. "One of my informants, Blaise … I found him dead yesterday. Hanging from the rafters of his apartment. And I found these wedged into his eyes."
I flipped open the bundle. Two small, dark-colored coins clinked together. They were covered in small hash marks. "Iron?"
He nodded. "No fae would desecrate a sidhé body like that. Leaving it to hang, and shoving iron coins in its eyes."
"So you think Blaise was killed by a …" I hesitated. "A human?"
"It doesn't make any sense, but it's either that, or Llew has gotten really, really sadistic." Eliaster snorted and muttered, "Wouldn't be too much of a stretch."
"And you think the two attacks are related?"
Eliaster shrugged.
I stared at the coins. I knew that, no matter who had killed Blaise and attacked Roe, it probably felt personal to Eliaster. Blaise was his informant. Roe was practically family. Both were people he probably considered family.
But we finally had a lead to the pathstones, to the Lucht Leanuna. I reached out and closed my hand around the coins. My stomach turned, but I knew what I needed to do. I'd promised Marc.
"I'm going," I told him.
Eliaster looked up, eyes wide in surprise. "What?"
"I'm going to follow the Airgeads' lead," I said. "If you feel that you need to stay here, that's fine, but I don't want this chance to slip out of our hands." Eliaster stayed quiet, so
I pressed my advantage. "What if this is a distraction by Llew, meant to keep you here while the Lucht find other pathstones?"
"What if it's not?" Eliaster countered, jaw clenching.
"If it's not …" I shrugged. "Your dad believes you this time, right?"
He nodded.
"So let him handle it for a few days. Or stay here."
The look on his face suggested I'd cut him with a knife. Eliaster shoved his hand through his hair, then stood up. I felt bad for pushing it, but we needed this lead.
Eliaster walked back and forth for a minute, rubbing his neck with both hands. Then he finally said, "You're right."
Some of the tension eased from my shoulders. "I'm not trying to force your hand—"
"I know, but I'm not going to let you go by yourself. You wouldn't know where to start. You don't enough about how the Underworld works yet."
"Probably not, but I feel vaguely offended. Thanks a lot," I quipped, trying to lighten the mood.
His smile was there and gone in a flash. "Well. Let's go find a relic runner then, shall we?"
CHAPTER 7
JOSH
By the time we pulled into a motel parking lot nearly three hours later, the bats kicking around in my stomach still hadn't subsided. I bounced between thinking that this was the stupidest thing I'd ever done in my life, to thinking that I would be helping, making a difference. I knew the way I felt was an overreaction. I kept telling myself it was an overreaction.
Still didn't change anything.
The motel wasn't a rent-by-the-hour crapfest, but it wasn't much higher on the food chain either. I glanced around the parking lot, at the streetlights sputtering along the cracked sidewalk in front and the grimy white paint on the sideboards of the motel.
Eliaster came out of the office and tossed me a key. "Room twelve." He nodded to the line of rooms across the parking lot.
Our room was at the back corner of the lot, furthest away from the road. An untrimmed green hedge scraped against the sideboards, and through the branches, I saw that the next lot over was deserted. I fitted my key into the lock and opened the door. The old, stale smell of cigarette smoke and beer floated out of the room as I pushed the door inward.
"Lovely." I reached to the side and flicked on the lights. The décor screamed generic motel—a few faded prints of prairies on the wall, some weirdly textured wallpaper, and threadbare carpet. "Did you have to pick the cruddiest place you could find in all of Kansas City?"
Eliaster pushed past me, carrying his backpack and a duffel bag. "Better than some I've stayed at."
"What, Dad doesn't spring for five-star resorts?" I threw my bag on the bed closest to the door and sprawled out beside it. My stomach chose that moment to growl.
"My da hasn't exactly approved of these outings in the past, so I try not to make him mad by wasting money on the nicest place available."
I squinted and turned my head to the side. "If I squint right, the stain on the ceiling looks like Chris Pratt's face."
"Should I turn on ‘Hooked On A Feeling'?"
I sat up. "Seriously, you know The Guardians of the Galaxy, but not The Lord of the Rings? It's a classic, dude."
"Yeah, but my life is a fantasy novel. Why would I want to read it or watch the movie or whatever, when all I have to do is look out my window?" Eliaster unzipped his bag and pulled out a sheathed knife. He drew the blade and flicked the edge with his thumb.
From the ghosting around the knife, I knew it was another one of Opti's weapons. The glamour imbued in the knife would make human eyes slide right past it, unless they were specifically looking for a weapon.
"Where are your swords?" I asked.
"I could ask you the same question," he said.
I glared at him. Answering that would only open a lot more than I was willing to discuss with him at the moment.
After a few moments, Eliaster dropped the knife back into the backpack. "In my other bag in the back of the car. You can borrow one of them tonight if you want."
"What's on the agenda for tonight?" I asked, ignoring the offer of the weapon.
"Bar-hopping." Eliaster pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped the screen, and showed it to me. He'd dropped three pins in a map app, showing the addresses of bars we could easily walk to. "I had Angel get in touch with some people he knows up here. These three bars are known fae hang-outs, mostly the unsavory types."
"So we can find the criminal side of his life, not just the rich, respectable side that the Airgeads told us about," I said.
"Bingo."
# # #
Four hours later, it was one in the morning and I was dragging along, hoping the next bar served decent coffee along with beer and liquor. Eliaster kicked a rock off the sidewalk in front of me, muttering under his breath in Gaelic, whether in frustration or just thinking out loud, I couldn't tell.
The first two bars had been a bust, as far as I could tell. We'd gone in, talking loudly, like we were already halfway to trashed, about Shaughnessy owing money to our bosses and any other crap we could think of. No one had even flinched, as far as I could tell.
I rubbed the bracelet in my jacket pocket. The nausea from my fight-or-flight reaction to the fae was worse tonight, and I wondered if it was because I was in a new place, dealing with new fae, or if the bracelet had something to do with it. Once we were back home, I was going to have to test out some theories. Walk around the Market for a bit without the bracelet and see if I reacted the way I was reacting here.
We turned a corner, and I spotted the green neon sign a few storefronts away. Our third and final stop.
Eliaster let me catch up to him, then threw his arm around my shoulders. "Ready for this?"
I nodded. "Yeah, just—"
"We're being followed." The words were so quiet, I almost missed them.
Oh, wonderful. I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder. "How long? By who?"
"Goblins. Three of them, one of them cat-sidhé. They've been trailing after us since the first bar."
"Why didn't you tell me?" I hissed.
"I'm telling you now."
I buried my frustration and took a deep breath. "Okay, so—distraction? I got it. I'll swing around in the next alley."
"I don't—"
Dang it, couldn't he just let me do this already? "They won't follow you. I'm the lesser threat—they'll follow me." I didn't give him time to reply. I shrugged his arm off my shoulder and stepped away, giving him a shove for good measure. I raised my voice. "I'm tired and I'm sick of not getting anywhere. I'm heading back to the hotel."
Eliaster's lips twitched in amusement before he snapped back, "We have a job to do."
"Screw the job. Screw you. I'll talk to you tomorrow morning." I turned and stomped away, striding past the bar. My heart hammered, and my hands shook, so I stuffed them deep into my pockets. Despite myself, I snickered. Maybe I didn't intend to abandon this job, but it had kinda been nice to get out a bit of my frustration by yelling at Eliaster.
Behind me, the door chimed as Eliaster went into the bar. I swung into the alley and slowed my steps, listening. If I focused, I could hear tiny scratching noises, like claws, on the pavement behind me.
I spun around. The three goblins were creeping behind me, spreading in a half circle, knife blades glinting in the street lights. They blocked the mouth of the alley.
"Uh … hi, guys." I stepped further away from them, not bothering to hide the nervousness in my voice. I eased one hand to my side, reaching for my gun holster.
Too slow. The three darted forward. I spun, putting my back to the wall, but that was all I had time for, they moved that quickly. They closed into a semi-circle around me. My mouth went dry. Even though they were only chest-high, they were strong and quick. I did not want to deal with these guys on my own.
The cat-sidhé, distinguishable by its patchy fur, stepped in front of the others, angling its blade at my chest. "What's your business with Shaughnessy?" it snarled.
"Oh, so someone did finally notice we were asking about him. Finally. I was beginning to wonder if everyone in this city was just that unobservant." Any time, Eliaster. I moved my hand from my gun to my knife.
"Enough," the cat-sidhé snarled. "Answer the question, or—"
"Hey, hey, you can't have all the fun." Eliaster stepped into the alley, twirling his knife in his hand.
The cat-sidhé snarled and hissed something in Gaelic at the other two. They backed off, stalking toward Eliaster.
Well, this was gonna be fun.
I glanced back at the cat-sidhé. It stood with the knife still angled at me, but its head was slightly turned so it could see Eliaster and the two goblins out of the corner of its eye.
I took the chance and darted forward, grabbing the goblin's knife hand. It hissed and twisted, whipping me around and into the wall of the alley. My head smacked into the brick, pain bursting across the back of my skull. I grabbed its arm with both hands as it pressed the knife toward me. Over our struggle, I could hear shuffling and grunts as Eliaster and the two goblins got into their own scuffle.
"What do you want with Shaughnessy?"
I shoved its arm to the side, then drove my elbow straight into its temple. The cat-sidhé staggered, then straightened, baring its teeth at me. Something zipped into its chest, and the cat-sidhé crumpled like a wet piece of cardboard. I staggered a bit, still feeling dazed, and touched the back of my head. No bleeding, but I could already feel a welt rising under my hair. I looked down at the cat-sidhé, at the knife sticking out of its chest. Eliaster's knife.
He was unarmed.
Eliaster yelped, and I looked up in time to see him stagger back, wiping blood from his mouth. The goblin who had hit him shook out its fist, and the two moved in, hemming him in against the alley wall like they'd done to me.
"Josh! A little help here!"
As I started forward, a flashback punched me in the throat. I toppled, grabbed at the wall in a desperate attempt to maintain balance. I could hear the sharp thwack of fist meeting flesh. Scyrril's deep, gravely voice. Marc's higher-pitched, almost-panicky replies. I could smell rotting banana peel. The hair on my neck prickled. My hand throbbed, aching so much that I curled my fingers into a fist.