Promises to Keep

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “My mother was pretty amazing,” I admitted, not looking at her. From what little I’d been told, and the little I’d figure out on my own, Ellen’s folks hadn’t been amazing. Not for her, anyway. This case was going to open up some holes underfoot, no matter what we did.

  “And…your dad?”

  “Never met him.” The burn that should have caused had died out a long time ago; I didn’t even twitch any more. “My mom was in town for Fleet Week. He was a good-looking bartender. She shipped out without knowing she was pregnant, and…” And then came me, and the rest of her career behind a desk.

  “Did she know he was…”

  That made me laugh, and it felt surprisingly good. “There’s no way you can’t know. Horns, hooves, tail… and, apparently, endless stamina.” She hadn’t told me that part, I’d learned that one on my own. “Yeah, she knew. I think she thought you couldn’t cross-breed.”

  Ellen shook her head, looked compassionate and disapproving the way only a woman can. “There should be PSAs.”

  “Absolutely. There should.”

  And that was about as far as we were going to go into interpersonal traumas as they related to this case. I finished my coffee, and pulled out my own notebook. Across the table, Ellen was still sketching out her own thoughts. Her notebook was a lot neater than mine, with colored tags and clearly lettered lists from previous jobs. My handwriting was still a disgrace. Of course, I got to enter most of it into the computer at the end of the day: she still had to read hers a week later.

  “The missing guy’s last few weeks visible were normal? Nothing unusual, nothing downright weird?” I knew already, but I was learning that bouncing questions off Ellen sometimes got me, not new answers but new questions.

  “By various parameters of weird, no. He was retired, did a lot of puttering around, the way retired people do. Spent a lot of time at the hardware store, which I guess is normal for a guy planning on cleaning out his own gutters and doing some repair work? I don’t think-“

  She stopped talking, her normally sleepy-lidded eyes going wide, looking at something miles past my shoulder. Her lips opened slightly, as though she were going to say something and then forgot, and her dark skin went ashy underneath.

  I’d never wanted to be a Talent. In fact, I’d occasionally given thanks that I wasn’t. But maybe, if I were, if I could feel the current moving the way they did, I’d feel less helpless when Shadow had a vision.

  I picked up my jacket, ready to shove it under her if she started to slump, and waved off the waitress who was coming over with more coffee, but otherwise, all I could do was wait.

  Ellen had come to me in the first place not because she wanted to be a PI, but because she saw dead people. People who were going to die, really, but by the time someone found them…. She wanted to improve the odds. Get to them before they died. And I needed to keep people from coming to bad ends. It had seemed like a good match.

  The problem was, the visions came when they did, and weren’t much concerned with anything else Ellen might be doing.

  As quick as it hit, it seemed to leave. Color came back to her skin first, like her heart had paused pumping blood and was only now picking up again. It took another minute before that glassy thousand-yard stare started to fade. Then she blinked, exhaled, and came back to now.

  I had already flipped to a new page in my notebook. She’d only had one vision since the first one that brought us together, at least that she’d told me about, but you followed the same rule of interviewing any eyewitness - you wanted to get them talking before they had time to think about what they had seen, putting their own spin on the facts.

  She focused on me, and started talking. “Two men. One black, one…white? Maybe. Similar, but different. Younger than you, but not by much. They’re scared. So scared, and something’s coming for them, something casting a shadow, a huge shadow from above.”

  I wrote down everything she said, exactly, even as my own brain was putting a spin on it. Two men, different races, somewhere in their early thirties. Probably. I aged more like a faun than a human, so to outside eyes I passed for late thirties, even with the silver showing up in my hair. Human - Ellen knew to identify if they were fatae or not, unless they were so human-shaped they had no distinguishing characteristics, and there weren’t many of those - as we’d just been talking about, even I couldn’t pass, if you were looking close. And a large shadow, from overhead…

  That could be anything, I warned myself, focusing again on what she was saying.

  “They’re not dead yet. Their skin is warm, they’re breathing.”

  One of the things we’d been working on was teaching her to separate herself from the vision, to pick out details without losing the overall sense. But all the dry runs and tray-tests in the world won’t tell you how it will work in practice. So far, so good.

  “And there’s this sound… dry. Dry and fast. Like…” She squinted her eyes shut, trying to recapture it, and I flipped the notebook closed. Nothing she said after this would have the clarity of her first words.

  “Like cicadas,” she said. “Like a thousand cicadas.”

  It was the wrong season for cicadas to flock. But I knew what else made that noise.

  “All right. Let’s go check that out.”

  Ellen gave me another Look. “We’re on a case.”

  “And you had a vision. The missing take second place to those in imminent risk of death.”

  The missing might also be in danger of imminent death. She didn’t point that out. We had an understanding. Or rather, I had an understanding, and she understood that she didn’t have a say in the matter.

  “You need to go after-“

  “It’s one thing to run down separate leads. Another entirely to split up cases. You’re not ready yet to do this on your own.”

  I’d nicknamed her Shadow for a number of reasons, part of which was because that’s what she was supposed to be doing. Shadowing me, learning. Not haring off with her heart askew and her brain still vision-fogged.

  “Alfred McConnell can wait,” I told her, and hoped to hell that was true.

  4

  Cart Hollow was one of those suburban New Jersey towns that you only knew about if you lived there, or knew someone who lived there. Bedroom communities, nothing more than houses and schools, no reason to go there if you didn’t already live there. Most of the residents worked in the city, commuting on a daily basis and bringing their considerable paychecks home to spend. People were nice, polite, but they weren’t accustomed to strangers walking up to their door and ringing the bell, especially mid-morning on a weekday.

  The man waiting at the door had thick black hair that was running heavily to silver, the face underneath handsome enough but starting to show signs of wear. If he’d been wearing a suit and tie, he could have passed for a lawyer, or maybe a banker, the kind that dealt with individual clients, managing money rather than making deposits. But he had on paint-splattered jeans, sneakers, and a red Rutgers sweatshirt, instead.

  “Please,” he said. “Let me see her.”

  “Her who?” The owner of the house shook her head, holding her body between the doorframe and the door, just in case he tried to rush her, to get inside. “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Please. All I want to do is see her. To make sure that she’s all right.”

  The door closed in his face, not roughly but firmly, and he stepped back off the stoop. The house was a nice one, a narrow, four-story rowhouse, still zoned for single use. The steps and front yard were small but well-maintained, the paint was fresh, and the man who had answered the door looked like a college professor type, no obvious tats or scars, or any indication that he was holding anyone against their will.

  Not that a baby could have much will, and facades were deceptive. He knew that for a fact.

  “I just want to see her,” he said to the house. “I wouldn’t take her away from you, not if you love her.” He was too old to raise
a child now, even if Christine were willing - and she probably would, he’d lucked out and married a woman with enough heart to deal with him. He just wanted to see her, to know…

  He turned to his companion. “Are you sure that she’s here?”

  It nodded. It was sure. That was why it had brought him here.

  “All right. Then we’ll keep trying.”

  He owed it to the child’s mother, if nothing else. He’d failed her before, hadn’t known about the child, hadn’t been there when the child was born. He had to make sure the child was safe.

  Stepping back onto the sidewalk, so the residents couldn’t complain that he was on their property, Alfred started to walk away, his companion at his side. The fatae hadn’t left him alone more than thirty seconds, including bathroom breaks, since swooping him off the roof, as though it were afraid the human would run.

  Where would he go, if he ran? Even assuming a sixty-something human could outrun a winged fatae - unlikely - where would he run to? Back home, where the creature had found him in the first place? This creature was, for whatever reason, also interested in his daughter - and the word was still so impossible, so unexpected, it made his heart clench when he thought it.

  No. He had gotten nowhere eight months ago, hiring a detective, had gotten nowhere playing the usual bureaucratic phone tag. If this fatae who had not given him a name, had not told him anything other than it too had an interest in finding this child, that it could help…

  Then he would do whatever it asked. Even if it did seem, so far, to involve harassing the alleged adoptive parents until they could prove that the girl wasn’t there.

  “Sir?”

  He looked up, and up. Two of New Jersey’s Finest were in front of him. They didn’t look happy.

  His companion was gone, of course. Alfred hadn’t heard it leave, any more than he’d had warning when it swooped down on him, feathers glinting in the sun.

  “Is there a problem?” The moment he said the words, he knew they were the wrong ones. “Can I help you?” would have been better, innocent citizen with nothing to fear. Asking about a problem implied that there was one.

  “You don’t live around here?”

  “I…no.” He lived well north of here, in another state entirely. And he didn’t have a car to get into, to leave, couldn’t point to the mass transit he’d used to get out here, had no excuse for being here that wouldn’t land him in trouble. Sixty-plus years of being a law-abiding citizen, and he had no way out of this one.

  “Do you have some identification on you, sir?”

  “I…” he made a motion for his back pocket, but knew it was useless. He’d been working on the roof, who brought their wallet with them when they were doing home repair chores? In his old workboots, weekender jeans, and sweatshirt, he could have been anyone, from a comfortably-retired banker doing chores to a homeless person.

  One of the cops looked up and down the street, obviously looking for something. The other one took a step back, indicating their patrol car. “If you’ll come with us, sir?”

  He went with them.

  They were very polite, asking him again what he was doing there. He shook his head, and couldn’t tell them. How did he get there? He shook his head again. He waived his phone call - what would he do, call Christine and tell her…what? No. Better to wait. He would say nothing about feathered companions, or stolen changeling babies. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Eventually, they would decide he was harmless, if a little crazy, and let him go.

  Eventually - after they gave him a half-stale turkey sandwich and a decent cup of coffee - that was what happened.

  “You want a ride to the station?” Officer Breidbart asked him.

  “No, I’m good,” Alfred said. “I think I’ll walk.”

  He knew Breidbart was watching him. They had pointed out where the train station was, only a few blocks away. They had given him a schedule, and a twenty dollar bill to get him home - or somewhere that wasn’t their town. He couldn’t fault them in any regard.

  He also knew that there was no point in going back to the house, even if he could find it. If the child had been there, she was gone now. It had been the pattern at the last three houses they had gone too, as well. His companion - captor? guide? - could scent the child somehow, although it had a beak rather than a nose, but it could not gain entrance to the house. It needed Alfred for that.

  So he kept walking, and waited for his companion to find him again.

  oOo

  Ellen tried to stare her boss down. It was doomed to failure - she couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes long enough to win a contest like that - but she gave it the best shot she could.

  “You’re getting better.”

  “Fuck you.”

  That she could say that, mutter it really, still surprised her. She wouldn’t dare say that to Genevieve, or Sergei, or anyone else. Well, she might say it to PB, the demon who was her mentor’s best friend, but PB took that sort of thing as his due.

  Danny pulled out his cell phone and told it to call someone nicknamed Bookpusher. Ellen didn’t exactly slide across the bench to get away from the phone, but she might have shifted a little backward. Instinct: the more current she used, the more a menace she was to electronics, and cell phones were among the most sensitive.

  “’Pusher, hi. How much do I owe you, right now? Yeah? Okay, add to the pile.” He pulled the sheet of paper toward him and fact-checked himself, then said “St. Luke’s, between six and twelve months ago. All female infants born there, no matter what happened to them after. Yeah, preemies, stillborns, Apgar 10s and everything in-between. Can you do that for me?” He paused. “Woman, if I had a name, I could do this myself.”

  Bookpusher had something to say to that, apparently. Danny leaned his head against the back of the booth, the phone held to his ear, and tried to look like he was paying attention.

  “All right, okay. Yes, you’re brilliant, you’re wonderful, and we’re now up at the fly-you-to-Rome for that dinner stage of IOUs, I get it. Just compile the names and who they went home with, if they went home. Yeah, if they didn’t go anywhere I need to know that, too.”

  Ellen thought that maybe Alfred McConnell would have known if his daughter died at birth. But then again, he hadn’t hired Danny, or gone to Mahiba to ask. So maybe he didn’t even know where she’d been born, to check. It must be awfully easy to lose track of a baby, if you didn’t even know where it had been born.

  “You’re, as always, the light in my research darkness. Talk to you soon.”

  He hung up the phone, turned it off, and put it back in his pocket, muffling the jangling chiming noise it made as it shut down. His hand came out again with something else in his fingers.

  “Tell you what. We’ll flip a coin. Heads, we keep on with the case. Tails, we hunt down your vision. Deal?”

  That was insane. But Ellen just shrugged, having used up her store of protest already.

  He flipped it elegantly into the air, catching it flat on the back of his wrist. Heads. Danny tilted his wrist, and the harsh overhead light caught the metal, making it glitter.

  “So, right. Vision it is.”

  5

  The subway took us into Brooklyn, letting us off a few blocks from our destination, and we walked the rest of the way to the cemetery in silence. I avoided the main entrance, skirting to the side. The arch overhead was massive, easily three times as high as a tall adult, and wide enough across for two cars to pass, one going in the other heading out, without risk of scratching. It was marble, what looked like one single piece, and deeply carved with images that had been worn down over the past two hundred years to where they were only lovely shadows.

  “The main entrance is worse,” I told her. “I mean, glorious, but worse. And too many people. It’s better to slip in quietly.”

  “This is the back door?” Ellen looked up at the archway as we walked under it, and shook her head. “Once you’re dead, you don’t much care, so why-“

  �
�It’s not for the dead. Cemeteries are for the living.” There was no other reason the grass on either side of us was trimmed as lovingly as a golf course, or the huge trees ringing each section were so gorgeously placed, creating a dappled oasis of shadows and cool even on the warmest summer days.

  “It feels like it should be a college campus, or park, or something.”

  “It used to be. Well, sort of like a park. Back when, people came here every weekend for picnics.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Yeah well, not to my preference either, but green spaces are green spaces, and hey, why not come to visit grandma while you were at it?”

  We’d been walking along one of the side paths as we talked, skirting around a funeral in progress down at the bottom of the hill. I had a destination in mind, but was taking the indirect route. It was polite, when dealing with certain sects of the Cosa Nostradamus, to make like you’d stumbled on them by accident, rather than taking the straightaway.

  We heard them first. Or, I heard them, and from the way my Shadow stumbled on perfectly smooth grass, I was guessing she did, too.

  “That’s…”

  “What you heard?”

  “Yeah.”

  I could see her gather up her courage, and stick it into place. Ellen doubted herself, but I knew better. Guts of steel and nerves of whipcord, even if she didn’t know it yet. Like any rookie, she had to learn.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Fatae.”

  “I figured that out already,” she said, her voice terse. I shouldn’t screw with her, not when it came to her visions. Most Talent I know, they’re happy to be what they are. Ellen, burdened with the extra “gift” of being a storm-seer, wasn’t there yet. She would be, eventually. There was too much that was glorious in magic for her to resist it, even I knew that. But not yet.

  We crested the hill, and had a choice of paths, when the one we were on branched. The left-hand choice went back down the hill at a slant. The right-hand choice turned into a series of steps, and led not into the valley, but to a rocky alcove set in the hill, complete with benches carved out of the rock. It was pretty, but not where we were going.