Unperfect Souls

by Mark Del Franco

  “I think so,” I said.

  “We can test it,” she said.

  “How?”

  She shrugged. “Let’s kill a Dead guy and see what happens.”

  I considered the idea. “Is it better to use a sword or an axe to behead someone?”

  “Sword. A nice big one.”

  I tapped the edge of the table without looking at her. Meryl had access to all kinds of artifacts at the Guildhouse, including weapons.

  “Can I borrow one?”

  She stole another fry. “Sure.”

  I nodded in deep thought. “Okay, after dessert, then. I want to behead someone tonight if you don’t mind bringing me a sword.”

  “Okay.”

  I sprinkled salt on my burger, tossed the tomato aside, and closed the bun. I took a big bite and stared at Meryl. She stared back. She ate a chicken finger. I put a solemn look on my face and chewed mechanically.

  “You’re serious,” she said. I nodded.

  “Wow,” she said.

  I smirked. “Gotcha.”

  Her jaw dropped, then she laughed. “You did, you jerk.”

  I hooted and clapped. “It’s about damned time, I did.”

  Embarrassed, she shrugged. “Yeah, well, too bad you don’t have witnesses.”

  I shook my head laughing. “I think your theory is right. In fact, I think we can test it. We already have a beheaded body and its head.”

  “You found the head of the sewer guy?” she asked.

  “Yeah. We found a leanansidhe who was having it for lunch.”

  She frowned and rolled her eyes. “I am so not falling for that.”

  I grinned. This dinner was going to be deeply satisfying.

  11

  Meryl took off on one of her none-of-your-business evenings. I had a hard time understanding if our seesaw relationship was a game or a reality. Either way, it was very Meryl. She liked keeping me off-balance and, considering my history with relationships, that maybe wasn’t a bad thing. It made me pay attention, kept me curious and, dammit, interested. And she knew it. The one message Meryl gave me loud and clear was that she had a life without me, and giving that up was solely on her terms. I was cool with it because she allowed me my time alone, too.

  Meryl’s absence was for the best anyway since later on Murdock and I were hitting the morgue now that we had both the head and the body of the Dead guy. Until it was time to leave, I scoured my library for whatever I could find on hellhounds, but I didn’t make much headway with Shay’s dog problem. Despite plenty of references in my personal library, twentieth-century texts added nothing new about them because the hounds hadn’t been seen since Convergence. A hellhound was what it was. You saw it; you died. I was convinced, though, that with it trapped outside of TirNaNog, its harbinger-of-doom status had to be compromised. With no Land of the Dead for anyone to go to anymore, what was the doom?

  Lost in thought as I watched a plane take off across a dark sky, I jumped when the apartment buzzer went off. Murdock was picking me up so we could go down to the morgue and try the experiment with the decapitated Dead guy. I hit the intercom. “Hey, you’re early.”

  “Are you really so poor you live in the Weird?”

  Moira. My first impulse was to not respond. “Who gave you my address?”

  “I’ve lived at court for years, Connor. I know how to get an address when I want one.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk. You left so abruptly the other day, and I don’t understand why,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” I said.

  “Maybe I have something to talk about,” she said.

  When it came right down to it, Moira Cashel was trouble, one way or another. Either she was Amy Sullivan and her interest in me was sincere and she had no idea of how I had become entangled with High Queen Maeve despite her current connection to Maeve, or she wasn’t Amy and it was all a ruse for Maeve to lay some kind of trap for me. Despite what Tibbet said, I didn’t want Moira wrecking my memories.

  “Are you there?” she asked into my silence.

  I had to know. Whatever Maeve’s strategy was, I was intrigued that I was still enough a part of it for her to dig into my past. “Okay, I’ll meet you.”

  “I’m downstairs. Can I make it to the front door without being mugged?”

  I snorted. Of course she was downstairs. “I’ve got a meeting. You can have until my ride shows up,” I said. I buzzed her in and went out to the hall. She came up the stairs directly to the top floor without having asked where my apartment was. It didn’t surprise me, but if she thought she was hiding that she knew about my current life, she was awfully sloppy. Wrapped in a full- length fur coat, she stepped onto the landing.

  “Wearing animal fur is frowned on in the States,” I said.

  She paused at my door, a deep frown on her face. “I’m beginning to wonder if this bitter, angry person is the same happy young man I used to know.”

  I rolled my eyes and gestured into the living room. Which was basically the room we were already in. My apartment wasn’t big enough to get lost in, not when the kitchen and the living room were essentially the same place. Even more cozy since it was where I slept, too. “So, what is it you want to talk about?”

  She looked troubled as she unbuttoned her coat and sat in an armchair. “I almost don’t know. Believe it or not, Connor, after we met, you changed my life. At the time, I thought it was for the worse, but after all the emotion and drama died down, things were not as bad as I feared. I thought it would be interesting to get reacquainted, see the man you’ve become.”

  I crossed my arms. “I don’t believe you’re Amy Sullivan.”

  She cocked her head, a willing smile on her face. “What can I do to prove it to you?”

  “Explain why you’re here.”

  “I told you. I came to see if I could help with Manus.”

  “No, I mean what else does Maeve want you to do here?”

  Her eyebrows drew together. “Nothing but heal Manus ap Eagan. I was ordered to find a cure or confirm there was none.”

  “Why?”

  She looked startled. “Because he’s dying.”

  “Why would Maeve care? Eagan threatens her. Her pet macGoren is waiting to make the Guildmaster’s office his own.”

  Moira stared at me with troubled confusion on her face. Her expressions did remind me of Amy, even without the glamour. “You seem to misunderstand some of the politics of court, Connor. Eagan’s dying does not help macGoren’s bid for the Guildmaster position. Anyone the High Queen installed against Eagan’s wishes would be fought by the other underKings and -Queens. She can’t afford to lose their support. She needs Eagan alive and answerable to her, or he needs to resign his position with an appointed successor. All Maeve wants is clarity on the situation.”

  I leaned against the kitchen counter. “Interesting analysis for a Chief Herbalist.”

  Spots of color rose on her cheeks, and she compressed her lips. “Connor, I live and work at Tara. If you think that means I spend my time pressing flowers into books, you are naïve.”

  “Where did Amy and I meet?” I asked.

  She answered quickly. “Flanagan’s market.”

  “Where was I living?”

  “With Briallen ab Gwyll. You were staying with your parents that weekend. Your mother sent you to the store.”

  “Who spoke first?”

  “You did. You asked me whether I liked the crackers you were holding. You were a terribly obvious flirt.”

  “What happened next?”

  Moira looked down at her hand. “You kissed my hand. It was very sweet. Then you asked if I would like to have a cup of tea with you sometime. I said yes, thinking that would end the flirtation, but you asked to go right then. So we did.”

  “Was it raining or snowing?”

  “Neither. It was supposed to rain. I left my umbrella in the shop.”

  She knew all the right answers—even the umbre
lla, which I had forgotten about. I went back later to find it for her, but it wasn’t there. “You could have gotten those answers from the real Amy Sullivan.”

  She nodded. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. But if I weren’t Amy Sullivan, would I know what it felt like to meet this brilliant young man at the beginning of his career who was so excited and nervous to start training with Nigel Martin? Would I know how lonely I felt and how that young man made me want adventure again? Would I have turned my life upside down because of him and left Boston in shame?”

  That gave me pause. Amy stopped coming to see me, then disappeared. “What do you mean ‘shame’?”

  Moira looked away from me and gazed out the window. “My husband found out.”

  I moved to the open door of my apartment. “Amy Sullivan wasn’t married.”

  She stood. “I was, Connor. You didn’t know everything about me. You didn’t even know where I lived. I lied to my husband about many things, and he threw me out. It was a blessing, though. I wasn’t made for married life. I went back to Ireland and the Druidic College and never looked back.”

  “Until now,” I said. The vestibule door downstairs slammed shut, and I heard someone walking up the stairs.

  She shook her head. “Not even now. Maeve knows nothing about my past as Amy. She sent me here to do a job. I have no intention of letting my husband or anyone else know Amy Sullivan has returned. I thought the Wheel of the World had given me a fortunate turn when you walked into Eagan’s house. You were a secret in my old life, and I thought we could be friends again because no one here would ever connect Moira Cashel and Connor Grey. I guess I was wrong.”

  “You’re damned right. If it will help, tell Maeve I believed you, but I wasn’t interested.”

  The footsteps on the stairs were louder as Moira moved toward me. She shifted into the Amy Sullivan glamour and caressed my face with a gloved hand. “Do you believe me, Connor?”

  I didn’t answer for a moment. She looked like Amy—even smelled like her. It would have been nice to think it was her. But Moira Cashel was a member of Maeve’s court, and Amy was a part of my life that had nothing to do with all the twists and turns that life had taken. And I didn’t want her to be in it now. “It was over twenty years ago, Moira. It doesn’t matter anymore. Leave it alone. Leave me alone.”

  She searched my face, a hint of moisture in her eyes. “The Wheel of the World turns differently for all of us, Connor. I don’t know where It’s taken you, but you aren’t the person I remember.”

  “Neither are you,” I said.

  As the footsteps came closer, Murdock’s body signature registered in my sense. By the quick tilt of her head, Moira sensed him, too. Moira dropped the Amy glamour before he reached the last flight. He saw the open apartment door and paused on the final steps. His face looked intrigued when he saw Moira. “I can come back,” he said.

  “Moira Cashel, this is Detective Lieutenant Leonard Murdock,” I said.

  Moira stepped into the outside hall and gripped the stair rail.

  Murdock nodded. “Ma’am.”

  Moira moved to the head of the stairs as Murdock reached the top step. Our conversation had upset her. She paled as Murdock passed. “How do you do?” she said in almost a whisper.

  With his back to her, Murdock frowned at me. “Fine, thanks.”

  “Thanks for stopping by, Moira. It was interesting,” I said.

  Her eyes shifted back to me. Without another word, she descended the stairs. Murdock watched over the railing.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said. I went into the apartment and grabbed my coat. I checked that I had my cell and wallet, then pulled the apartment door closed. Murdock continued looking down the stairs as I locked up. I didn’t hear any more footsteps. “What are you looking at?” I asked.

  He had a pensive look on his face. “Nothing. Everything okay?”

  Murdock preceded me down the stairs two steps ahead. “I think a certain homicide detective was worried about me.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” he said.

  I laughed. “Oh, you got out of your nice warm car and walked up five flights for the hell of it? Sure, you did.”

  He smirked over his shoulder. “I saw the town car downstairs with diplomatic plates. It wouldn’t be the first time you ran into trouble with the Guild.”

  “And it won’t be the last time,” I said.

  “Who was the woman?”

  “I’m not really sure. She’s trying to cure whatever’s killing Manus ap Eagan and is claiming to be someone I knew when I was starting out.”

  Murdock pulled open the vestibule door to reveal the first few flakes of another snowstorm. In the dark, his car actually looked good for a change. No town car was in sight.

  “Do you believe her?”

  I shrugged. “Nope. Mostly, I think she’s a spy from the Seelie Court.”

  I sat on a nest of napkins on the passenger seat while Murdock jogged to the driver’s side. He pulled out onto the street. “She had dinner with my father the other night,” he said.

  “Really? Curiouser and curiouser.”

  He nodded. “My father asked me to pick him up at a restaurant. They came out together.”

  “How the hell do they know each other?” I asked.

  Murdock shrugged. “He said she was Guild business.”

  I pursed my lips. Eagan said she was a spy. Despite her claims otherwise, Moira Cashel was up to something more than ministering to a sick Danann. “I know it isn’t like me to worry about your father, but I would tell him to be careful around her.”

  He smirked. “Will do, concerned citizen.”

  “Interesting coincidence,” I said.

  “Small world,” he said.

  “Yeah, with small people in it.”

  12

  The Office of the City Medical Examiner was a long name for a sad place. At night, it was even sadder, a brick building perpetually clothed in gray twilight on a desolate stretch of road. It was open twenty-fours a day, seven days a week. Death made its own appointments, and the city morgue waited like a patient suitor for a date.

  In the cool basement, steam rose from Murdock’s coffee. He leaned against a counter, not looking like he’d been up all night. The accident that boosted his essence had boosted his energy levels, too. Not that he needed it. Murdock’s stamina was legendary. As a police officer, he had spent more than enough time on dull surveillance, which came in handy for him since he’d been watching Janey Likesmith and me work through the night. Occasionally, we needed an extra pair of hands, but for the most part he watched.

  The OCME handled all the deaths in the city and transferred major fey cases to the Guild only at the Guild’s request. As the lone fey staff member at OCME, Janey worked the rest. All of them. She had to pick and choose which ones to give more attention to than others. Who the decedent was or who they knew or how much money they had in life didn’t matter to her. Producing the best examination results did.

  Janey was a dark elf, a member of the Dokkheim clan. The dark elves acknowledged the Elven King, but most of them went their own way in the post-Convergence world. They had never been strong enough to challenge the Teutonic court, but they were skilled enough to have influence over it.

  We met on a case together not too long ago. She impressed me with her skills and even temper. The politics of Convergence held no interest for her. Like a child of immigrants, her parents’ stories of the old country—in her case, Elven Faerie—were stories, nothing more. She understood where she came from, but she also understood that Boston was where she was. She had no desire to re-create the past or find a way back to it. She focused her energy on the here and now, trying to help the fey and humans live together.

  We worked on opposite sides of an examining table. Janey’s deep brown hands moved with careful skill as she realigned her side of the glass case. On each side of the table, narrow strips of quartz supported glass panels around the decapitated body from the sewer. T
he body itself lay on one long pane.

  We had spent most of the night tuning the stones—turning them into wards—so that they could receive an infusion of essence. The process was one part skill and one part luck. Getting one stone to work in conjunction with another was easy. Getting several to do it depended on understanding the natural contours and densities of the stones so that essence would flow like a smooth current through all of them. It was like aligning a series of magnets of various strengths so that they would all stand up but not reject each other’s shifting polarities.

  “I think if you tighten the brace on your side, we’re done,” I said.

  She twisted the wing nuts in front of her. The glass plates shifted into place along the side of the table. Janey flicked a strand of her nutmeg-colored hair around the delicate point of her ear. “Perfect.”

  “We can put the head in now,” I said.

  Murdock stepped aside as Janey opened a cooling locker. She didn’t pull out the drawer but reached in and lifted the head out. It had seen better days. Bloated skin indicated time spent in the water, and missing pieces of flesh evidenced the natural process of sloughing and banging around in sewer pipes. Without a trace of revulsion, Janey carried it to the table and placed it gently inside the box. “How close to the body should it be?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think it matters that much.”

  She shifted it closer to the neck stump and stepped back, peeling off her gloves. “Okay, now the lid.”

  Murdock put his coffee down. He grabbed one end of the second large glass pane we had, and I took the other. We lifted, and Janey guided it over the table as we lowered it onto the standing walls.

  Essentially, we had created a huge glass ward box around the body. Where metal bent essence and sent it in unanticipated directions, glass absorbed and dissipated it into the ambient air. I loved the irony that something so fragile could defeat something so powerful. Janey smiled in satisfaction. “This is amazing. I will have to call Ms. Dian later and thank her.”