Mad Maudlin

by Mercedes Lackey

  Even as he warned Eric, he knew it wouldn't do any good. He could tell Eric that the trail led to the gates of Hell itself, and Eric would still follow it. He glanced at Kayla.

  She gave him a glare laden with defiance. "Don't look at me, Too-Tall. Somebody's got to keep him out of trouble, and Banyon doesn't have the sense God gave a goldfish."

  Hosea sighed, accepting what he couldn't change. "Come in and warm up. The first thing you'd better do is check the other shelters in the city and see if you pick up his trail near any of them. Ah've got a list of them."

  Over coffee, he told Eric what little he'd learned. It wasn't much to go on, but it was all they had. Eric promised to get him a picture of Magnus as soon as possible—but Hosea knew that, rightly or wrongly, Eric would drag his heels there, not wanting to involve any more people in the search for his brother than absolutely needful. If they didn't find him soon, it would have to be done, though. The boy couldn't survive alone on the streets, especially with hard winter coming on.

  Predictably, Eric recoiled from the suggestion that they check with the young rentboys who plied their trade under the West Side Highway.

  "They might know him," Hosea said gently.

  "Face facts," Kayla said bluntly. "If he isn't doing that, everybody he knows is trying to get him to, believe it. If he's a holdout, he's a legend. He'll be easy to find."

  "Hard to get them to tell you the truth, though," Hosea said.

  "They'll tell me the truth," Eric said grimly.

  Show them a face like that, and they'll run like rabbits, Hosea thought, but didn't say so.

  "Well, we'd better go," Eric said. "Looks like we've got a lot of ground to cover." He slipped Hosea a folded bill. "Thanks for the help. Go pay for our coffee, would you?"

  Hosea smiled. "Find him soon."

  * * *

  After Eric and Kayla left, Hosea stayed. He could have gone busking in the subways—there wasn't much point to aboveground busking at this time of year; your audience wasn't much inclined to linger in the cold—but he didn't have any place he really had to be until this afternoon, when he was scheduled to play at an assisted living facility uptown. He enjoyed that—his audiences remembered and asked for many of the old songs, the ones his grandparents had taught him.

  But some instinct encouraged him to linger where he was.

  There was a steady stream of people coming through—except when they'd locked up for the night, the Jacob Riis was never really quiet—some seeking help to fill out the endless forms required by the city's Social Services, some seeking information about various programs, some looking for food, a bed for the coming night, something to steal, news of a friend. The staff dealt with them all as gently as possible.

  "Excuse me."

  Hosea turned around. The young woman who had spoken regarded him warily, glancing over her shoulder to make sure the way to the door was clear. That gesture alone was enough to tell him she was one of the street population, and not one of the staff. She was young, though it was hard to tell her age, bundled up as she was in layers of clothing against the cold.

  "Can I help you?" he said.

  He saw her hesitate, on the verge of leaving, and wished with all his heart that Eric were still here—Eric could charm the birds down out of the trees with nothing more than a smile, but he was only a half-trained Bard, unable to use his Gift without his instrument in his hands, and Jeanette was locked in her case in Serafina's office. He had no Talent to use to convince her that all he wanted to do was help.

  "Nobody's going to trouble you," Hosea said very gently. "That isn't our way."

  She smiled, just a little. Blue eyes, blonde hair—he could see a wisp of it curling against her cheek, below the edge of the knit cap pulled low over her skull, but her face was innocent of makeup, and now that he could study her, Hosea revised his estimate downward by several years, into the mid-teens. But not one of the young prostitutes who frequently came to the shelter—she didn't have that brittle hardness to her—though her wariness bespoke a goodly length of time on the street.

  She took a hesitant step toward him.

  "I was wondering . . . this is the place where you can take a shower?" Her voice was soft, with the faint flavor of the mountains in it, its timbre clear and unslurred by drugs.

  "It's only a few days a month," Hosea said apologetically. "From three to seven, first come, first served. Men and women come on different days. The doors open at three, and usually only the first thirty or forty people get showers. We post the schedule outside, but Serafina has some flyers printed up. Would you like me to get you one?"

  The girl hesitated again, wary as a wild thing. "And nobody will bother you? Or . . . steal your things?"

  "You'll get a bag for your things, with your name on it. We won't let anybody take them, or bother you."

  Trust was an important component of the work they did here. If the homeless population didn't trust them, Serafina had told him when he'd first started working at Jacob Riis, they'd rather die on the street than come in out of the cold. Unless someone's belongings were actively dangerous to the welfare of the other residents, they were left strictly alone and even protected, no matter how much they resembled garbage to the shelter employees.

  "Would you like some coffee? It isn't good, but it's hot."

  He saw a look of longing cross the girl's face. "I shouldn't. . . ." she said wistfully.

  "Why don't you just take a seat—anywhere you like. Ah'll get you that coffee, and a copy of the shower schedule."

  He waited until he was sure she was going to sit, and then went back into the kitchen, where he filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee, then grabbed a handful of sugar packets and one of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches left over from lunch. It was a little stale by now, but he knew she wouldn't mind. He wrapped it in a napkin and came back, setting the items in front of her, then went off to Serafina's cubbyhole.

  He picked up the schedule he'd promised, along with another one listing the addresses of several soup kitchens and free food programs in this part of town—though he was pretty sure she knew about all of them by now—hesitated, and added a handful of pamphlets: the Runaway Help Line, Project Reunion, and a few others. He picked up Jeanette and went back to the table.

  * * *

  Ace kept a wary eye on the door as she tore the tops off half-a-dozen packets of sugar and stirred them into her coffee. And food, too. She bit into the sandwich hungrily and wolfed it down in a few bites.

  It wasn't that she'd had to go hungry, or not very—not with Jaycie's money to draw on—but meals hadn't been what you could call regular by any stretch of the imagination, and she was getting awfully tired of junk food. It had taken her just about two days to work her courage up to the point of coming in here, but there just wasn't any other way she could think of to keep clean, with the cold weather coming on. One more sponge bath, and she was going to catch pneumonia.

  And the man sounded nice. She knew you couldn't count on that. Some people were awfully good at lying. And some people could do you a terrible bad turn with the very best intentions. But he sounded nice. She missed that.

  He came back and sat down opposite her—carrying a banjo case in his other hand, for a mystery—pushing several sheets of paper across the table. The top one was the shower schedule, and under that was a list of places that gave away food. And under that . . .

  Ace started to get to her feet.

  "Ah haven't called anybody. And Ah haven't told anybody," the man said quietly. "Ah'd jest like you to think about it."

  "Going 'home'?" Ace said bitterly, sitting down again slowly.

  "Or jest tellin' somebody about it, if that's all you care to do," the stranger said. "My name's Hosea Songmaker, by the way."

  "I'm never going home, Mr. Songmaker. And I'm never telling anyone who I am or where I came from. If I told you—if I told anyone—they'd send me back. Anyone'd send me back. Why not? I come from such a good home. A good God-fearing Christ
ian home."

  * * *

  There was a world of anger and bitterness in her voice—and more, an aching need to trust someone, a cry for help that she was too afraid to voice. With Jeanette leaning against his knee he could see it clearly now: she had the shine about her, a faint aura that made her seem just a little more there than someone who didn't possess it.

  "Even the Devil can quote Scripture," Hosea said mildly, "and Ah dare to swear that not every man who says he's a Christian does right by the Book. There are ways to get off the street that don't mean you have to go back to a bad family." Once again he mourned the stroke of bad timing—if only she'd come while Eric was here! Eric would have seen what she was at once, gotten her to trust him . . .

  "Not this family," the girl said with weary certainty. "They'd never let me go." She shook her head, looking older than her years, and got to her feet. "Thanks for the coffee."

  "Wait," Hosea said. "Won't you . . . at least give me a name to call you by?" he said, willing every ounce of harmless friendliness toward her that he possessed. "So Ah'll know who's askin' after me . . . if you ever come askin' after me."

  She took a step backward toward the door, and he watched her turning the question over in her mind for traps.

  "Is that a banjo in that case?" she asked.

  "Sure is. Would you like to hear me play it?"

  "No," she said quickly. "I hate music. But . . . I guess . . . you can call me Ace."

  She turned and walked quickly out the door.

  * * *

  That evening, after his other duties were discharged, Hosea discussed the matter with Jeanette.

  "What do you think, sweetheart?"

  :DON'T call me that!: the banjo snarled waspishly, between the silvery cascades of notes. There was a brooding silence. :There seems to be an epidemic of upper-class white kids going slumming these days. Miss Ace-who-hates-music—and I'm sure there's a story there—probably comes from lovely people who were eating her alive. And she probably thinks that the street is better than one more minute of that. And she's wrong. The street is either worse, or exactly as bad, as what she's got at home—whatever it is.:

  "Welladay," Hosea sighed. Jeanette would know if anyone did. Before she'd gone to work for Threshold, she'd cooked meth for a biker gang. She knew the uncertainty of the outlaw life, as well as all the degrees of self-degradation it took a nice girl from a suburban family to reach it. The rocker creaked beneath him. "At least it's different."

  :Oh, yes,: the banjo snarled. Hosea smiled, recognizing all the signs of Jeanette in a temper. :Strangers can never hurt you quite as much as your own family can, no matter what they do to you. And of course you saw the power coming off her. No wonder she ran away!:

  It was true that young Talents often did not have the happiest of childhoods, particularly if the Gift did not run in their family or—as was often the case—had skipped a generation or more, leaving them the proverbial cygnet in a nest of ducklings.

  "I suppose I ought to tell Eric about her," Hosea said reluctantly.

  :As if he doesn't have enough to do right now. By all means. Instead of looking for one apprentice wizard in New York—that he has no idea of how to find—he can look for two. Then he'll have a breeding pair, at least. Who knows what might happen then? And—: Jeanette broke off, as if she'd just thought of something she didn't like.

  "And?" Hosea prompted.

  :If someone—or something—is collecting Talents—and remember, I was—they'll be together.:

  "Now there's a happy thought," Hosea said unhappily.

  There was a scratching at the window, and Hosea stopped playing, laying Jeanette gently in her case.

  Greystone eased open the window and poked his large craggy head inside. "Mrs. Peel, we're needed," he said, giving Hosea a broad conspiratorial wink.

  "Wouldn't a phone call have been a mite more sensible?" Hosea said, getting to his feet.

  "Ah, laddybuck, have ye no sense o' the fitness o' things?" Greystone said reproachfully.

  * * *

  Less than an hour later, Hosea was in the sort of neighborhood that he had specifically promised Serafina he would not visit. He soothed his conscience by telling himself that he wasn't in Manhattan—he was just across the river, in Brooklyn—and he wasn't looking for Magnus.

  He was on Guardian business.

  The tenement apartment had been a rat-infested firetrap for a century and more. The wood beneath his feet was spongy, like something out of H. P. Lovecraft, and Paul had warned him not to touch the walls, not if he didn't want to bring roaches and worse home with him.

  His three counterparts had preceded him, and were gathered in a room that had held a body earlier this evening. Now the body and the police were gone, and the room was empty. The floor was covered with blood and broken glass, as if a hundred mirrors had shattered here at once, though looking around the room, Hosea could see no sign that there had ever been a mirror here.

  Puzzled, he regarded the others.

  "I thought we should all see this," Paul said, gesturing with his sword-cane to encompass the entire room. Paul Kern was a tall elegant black man who carried himself with the grace of a dancer. His voice held a faint trace of a British/Islands accent, and he was wearing his favorite tweed jacket, as if he might at any moment be called away to a country houseparty.

  "How many does this make?" Toni asked. She was a Latina with skin the color of buckwheat honey; in daily life the superintendent of Guardian House and single mother of two young sons, an older woman who wore a harried lifestyle and a score of varied responsibilities like an invisible cloak. She was dressed as usual in jeans and a sweatshirt under a down parka, and her blue-black hair was pulled back in a long wavy tail.

  "Seven, I think," José Ramirez said. "If our tally is correct." He shrugged, his strong, square, bronzed features settling into a mask of disappointment. "All the same—or close enough."

  "Seven?" Hosea said in shock. "But Ah only know of one—and that secondhand, to boot."

  The other three turned and looked at him, making him feel very much like the new kid in school. Paul leaned on his cane.

  "Maybe you'd better tell us about it, young Songmaker. The three of us just got around to comparing notes on our own cases a few days ago, only to find this broken-mirror motif—and the murders—running through all of them. There doesn't seem to be any other connection—José's dealing with a gang of demon worshippers, and Toni's involved with a—well, I suppose you'd call it a child-abuse case, although there isn't a child involved. I was chasing ghosts."

  "Well . . ." Hosea said dubiously, "Ah'm not sure there's a connection, but the fella Ah know of that got murdered, everybody said he was killed by Bloody Mary."

  If he'd hoped to stump Paul, he was disappointed; Paul Kern was an expert in the occult in all its guises, from urban folklore to the dustiest grimoire. "Children's folklore. The first cases anyone's collected seem to date from the 1950s, though of course they probably go back farther. Supposedly, if you say her name three times by candlelight while looking into a mirror, she'll come out of the mirror and attack you. Nobody's quite sure where it started."

  "It's gotten a little more elaborate than that around here," Hosea said, and gave the other three a condensed version of the Bloody Mary portion of the Secret Stories.

  "Ghost? Demon? Mythago?" Paul shrugged. "It doesn't seem to fit, somehow. Bloody Mary—both your version and the original—only appears to children. And besides, none of the victims seem to have had any connection with the occult—even José's 'demon worshippers' are strictly amateur night."

  "But dangerous none the less," José put in softly. "And I will soon put an end to them."

  Paul nodded. "Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a trained professional is a bungling amateur. But the victims . . . none of them seem to have any connection with each other, so far as Toni's P.D. contacts have been able to determine. All of them were fairly marginal members of society, engaged in rather
nefarious—but strictly small-time—activities. All men, all ranging in age from their early twenties to their late thirties. All found lying dead on a bed of shattered mirror glass, covered with cuts on their exposed skin."

  "But the cuts weren't what killed them," Toni said grimly. "They all died of heart attacks—in other words, they were scared to death."

  Hosea looked around the squalid room. It was hard to believe anyone lived here—or had.

  The four of them exchanged wordless glances—Hosea, stubborn, the other three with the dawning realization that maybe they were making a mistake in dismissing Hosea's Secret Stories out of hand. Paul sighed, looking frustrated. "Well, Hosea, perhaps we had better take a closer look at the evidence, and the information you have. It looks like your Secret Stories are the first real lead we've got, though it's hard to say how we can follow it up. None of the murder sites were any kind of paranormal locus at all . . . and every spell every one of us has tried here hasn't been able to raise a thing."

  "Not even the ghost of the victim," José added, "and that is very odd. This man died this very night, and by violence. His ghost should linger."

  "Would you try, Hosea?" Toni said. "I see you've got Jeanette with you. She's a ghost herself. Maybe she'll see something we've missed."

  "Worth a try," Hosea said. He unslung the banjo from the soft canvas gig bag in which he'd brought her, and slung the strap over his shoulder. He spent a moment tuning her, then launched into the strains of "Unquiet Grave." It seemed appropriate, somehow.

  At times like this—when he was actively working magic through Jeanette—it seemed as if he could see the world through her eyes. It was a world without color, one almost without shape. He could see the other three Guardians, but more as symbols of themselves than in their real forms.

  Toni was a quick brightness, sharp and glistening and hard. José was a steady anchor, one that could not be swept away by any tempest. Paul was an infinity of doors, with something behind every one.

  He reached beyond them.

  There were ghosts here—death was no stranger to these streets—but none, he knew, was the one he sought. Some were faint memories, held by walls and stones, as insensible as a recording. Others—though nothing near—were true spirits that would wander confused for a few days or hours before passing on to the place they belonged. He felt Jeanette yearn toward them, sadly, but she had been bound by her own will and the Guardians' magic into his banjo, and she could not pass on until her work here was complete. Gently, he drew her back, as his fingers wove the song to a close.