“He’s certainly charming,” Svein observed. “Online and in person.”
“I just can’t figure out why he hasn’t confronted me directly. Blackmailed me. Why say, ‘tell me something and I won’t go after Avery’ when he could instead say, ‘tell me you’re a tooth faerie and I won’t expose your sparkly ass’?”
“Because the D.C. Digger hasn’t dug up the full story. I’m sure when he’s got it, he will.”
“You know,” I said, “Avery caused me to rethink my previously cynical view of politicians. But I haven’t met a journalist yet that I liked.”
“Ditto.”
Something quickly occurred to me, and I couldn’t believe I didn’t remember it sooner. “I couldn’t glamour him.”
“Who?” Svein asked.
“Mahoney,” I said. “That night at the fundraiser. I glamoured everyone at the party. But it didn’t affect him at all.”
“Interesting,” Svein said, and he did sound like he thought it was.
I sighed. I wished the tub was filled with warm water, but it seemed too much effort to lean over and turn on the water. I propped one elbow on the tub rim and dropped my forehead into my hand. “Listen,” I said. “I have something that I think is actually something.”
“I’m listening.”
“You know that school shooting not too long ago?”
“Right.”
“There’s a kid who was just in the paper for arson and a bunch of other stuff. Trey Sawyer. Can you find out if those two kids went to the same dentist when they were of tooth-losing age?”
“You’re kidding,” Svein said, but I didn’t need to say I wasn’t. “That would mean Clayton’s been at this a while.”
“And that the kids are getting more and more messed up as they grow up. This is more than losing innocence early and missing out on a nicer childhood. You should have seen Trey. He got kicked out of the gym the other day for acting violent.”
“That would mean whatever’s in that toothpaste is having long-term effects.”
“Or…” I thought about Trey’s cold, dark fae eyes. I refused to say that out loud because I hoped I wasn’t right.
“Or what?” Svein asked.
“Nothing. But could you find out?”
“Yes, but that would be quite the coincidence,” Svein said. “Every kid in this city can’t be going to this dentist.”
“I could be wrong.”
“Probably, but I’ll look into it,” he said, sounding unconvinced. Again, I hoped his skepticism was justified.
“So,” I said. “What was Mahoney’s address again?”
“I didn’t give it to you.”
“Really? I’m sure you did,” I said. I stretched both legs out in front of me.
“No. Why would I?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“I’ll give it to you,” he offered, “if you’ll agree to one very short flying lesson.”
“No.”
“Well, then…”
“Well, then, nothing,” I said. “Look. I have a job to do and I don’t need your permission or your trust to do it. I could find Mahoney myself but let’s not waste time. Just fork over the address.”
He sighed. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
I decided to not bring up the events of my day so far. I would tell him. Later.
When I disconnected, I had the information I needed.
My wings retracted, so I lay back against the puffy bath spa pillow and thought about what I had to do next.
I leaned over one more time, dropping the Fae Phone and picking up my regular cell phone again. This technology was out of control. Couldn’t anything be normal anymore?
“Hi,” I said when my mother answered. “I think I might have met a blast from your past. Do you know anything about a man named Riley Clayton?”
Her intake of breath, then silence, was all the confirmation I needed.
I arranged to meet her in the morning at a bistro near the museum, then hung up. I’d invite Svein and Frederica to sit in on that summit as well. I felt like the answers were out of reach. Together, maybe we could clear some of the dust. I chucked the phone on the floor and lay back again.
But I needed something now. After what had just happened with Clayton, I was afraid that if I just gave up and went to bed tonight, I would wake up with a changed mind, ready to get out of this whole thing. For that to not happen, I needed to end this day in control, with some kind of victory.
I turned on the water jets and waited both for the tub to fill up and for the pain reliever to work.
I’d just gotten beaten up by a big bully. So I was about to do what any attacked kid in a playground would do to save face—find someone smaller than me, and become his bully.
Greg Mahoney, I thought, hand over your lunch money.
Or I’ll knock your teeth out.
>=<
Lingering among the trees lining the huge parking lot and monitoring the brick apartment complex, I thought about how very little time it had taken for me to transform from a law-abiding citizen to a person with an undocumented record of assault and battery, breaking and entering, petty larceny, loitering and stalking.
Should I have waited until the next workday? Yes. Because then I could get in there knowing for sure Mahoney wasn’t home. But I was dead set on tonight. I knew what I was up against on one side with Clayton. I needed to know, right now, what I was up against on the other side. Besides, every day that Greg Mahoney was left alone at his computer was a day he drew another bull’s eye on a politician’s back.
As twilight darkened, I thought, I’ve got Avery’s back.
Well, the only way to tell if Mahoney was in his hideaway was to lure him out. I pulled out my cell, and scrolled on the screen to find the last number that called me. I would tell him to meet me somewhere with a promise I would talk. Of course, when he got there and realized I’d stood him up he’d be pissed, but it wasn’t as if he wasn’t already after me. If he really had anything scandalous on me or Avery, I was quite sure he’d have published it by now. He was slick, but shock journalists like him didn’t tend to sit on a story they could verify, however tenuous the source.
I was mentally rehearsing my invitation when the front door to the right apartment tower opened and Mahoney stepped out. He paused, looking into the distance, and I pulled in tighter behind the tree. My gut ached and I cursed the pharmaceutical company for their inferior over-the-counter pain reliever, but I kept my eyes tracking Mahoney. He was wearing a long-sleeved gray T-shirt, jeans with ripped shreds at the knees, and thick-soled black shoes. From this distance, he looked almost cool. It was probably just his nemesis status that made him so, because the first time I saw him he just looked like a dweeb.
He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, puffed a few times, shoved his hands in his pockets, and took off down the street.
Well, I was due a little luck, and here it was. I waited until he rounded the corner before I jogged to the door. It was open, and I slipped into the vestibule with three long rows of mailboxes. I already knew his apartment number, and thankfully it was on the first floor because cardiovascular step exercise was not high on my list of things I wanted to do right now. After a quick glance around to make sure I was alone, I intended and walked through the main door.
I turned right and traversed the carpeted hallway, passing a few doors. I smelled simmering tomato sauce and I heard a woman yelling at someone who clearly had no inclination to yell back. Maybe she was on the phone.
When I reached apartment A-16, I nearly stepped through the door when I stopped myself short. Presumptuous, was I not? Mahoney could have a roommate, or more than one. Or a woman masochistic enough to be his girlfriend. Either way, someone could be in there, waiting for him to return.
I closed my eyes, and watched for gray shadows pulsing, indicating breathing life.
Nothing. Blank.
I hesitated again, but I summoned up the courage of my ancestor warrior f
earlessly entering the home of her enemy. I opened my eyes.
I stepped through the closed door.
And a bomb hurled itself onto me.
A furry, spotted beagle bomb.
Barking, barking, barking.
Learn a new thing every day, I thought. Seemed the shadow trick was only to detect humans. I intended, and blinked into formlessness. He kept barking, jumping around me, wiggling his tail, stepping on my toes. I wasn’t fooling him. He saw me, he wanted to play with me. Animals must have fallen into the category of those who could see me—the innocent.
So I bent down and stroked his head. He stopped barking, and instead panted happily. I crouched and rubbed both his sides vigorously and he fell on me in ecstasy, licking my hand. I reached for the tag on his collar and turned it over to find Mahoney’s phone number and the dog’s name. “Canine.”
As in dog. Or, I supposed, as in canine teeth. Maybe I’d find a hamster named Molar.
Having become Canine’s best friend in less than fifteen seconds, I took a look around. The living room was nothing special. Standard beige apartment rug. Affordable couch. Cheap, self-assembled coffee table.
Keeping up my blinking, and with Canine trotting after me, I moved past a bathroom—very male, with shaving cream and a bath mat and little else—and entered Mahoney’s bedroom.
D.C. Digger Central.
The computer was humming with several different windows open: news sites, blog sites, weather. A Word document was minimized on the screen—probably his current Digger draft. Two televisions sat side by side on an arm’s-reach shelf, one turned to CNN and the other to the baseball game (Nationals up by four). An iPod cooked in its charger on the desk. A pack of matches sat in a glass ashtray. An oscillating fan blew dusty air around my head. Books and newspapers were open and scattered all over every surface of the tiny room.
Mahoney had created his own Situation Room. He was a current events junkie. He was plugged in.
I instantly realized two things about him. One, with all his equipment on, he wasn’t planning on being gone long.
And two, he knew full well about tooth faeries. Fae.
Over his bed, on the wall, were sketches. Dozens of sketches, in charcoals and colored pencils, of faeries.
Or, I noticed, inching closer, one fae. Drawn over and over and over.
Lithe and toned, she wore a halter top—a red one, I realized from the color pictures. Her jeans were skintight and encircled with an embroidered belt. Her feathered black hair fell around her neck, and her eyes were wide and blue. A stack of gold bangle bracelets ran halfway to one elbow.
Her wings were blown out behind her, large and—if my personal experience was what I went by—realistic. He’d drawn them delicately, with fine lines.
Each picture caught her from a different angle: head on, from the back—wings blooming out the skin left bare by the halter top—and from each side. But from every angle, she was looking at me—in distress. And in every angle, her hand was outstretched, holding a small, white tooth.
She wasn’t the product of an idle mind, or a fantastical one. She didn’t have comical, golden round breastplates, and she didn’t have the creepy eyes of manga heroines. This fae wasn’t an exploration of the imagination.
She was a memory, rendered over and over again.
A few of the pictures were fresh and crisp, but most of the paper was yellowing and curled. I didn’t know who she was, and I knew I was looking at trouble, but I couldn’t help my relief that this fae’s face was most definitely not mine.
I scanned rows and rows of bookshelves, finding classic literature, political history books, a big book of notorious newspaper headlines—and many, many books about faeries: faerie tales, faerie folklore, faerie art.
Turning back to his computer, I noticed it had fallen into screensaver mode: a strange geometric swirl of primary colors. I wanted to look through his files, but I’d never put much faith in the validity of the TV and movie spies who sat down at the enemy’s personal computer, tapped a few keys, discovered the blueprint to destroy the world, downloaded it and ran off. I’d never be able to pull it off; it had taken me at least ten minutes to figure out how to play online sudoku a month ago. Besides, I didn’t want to touch a thing in this apartment. I didn’t put it past Mahoney to have a cereal prize spy kit lying around with fingerprint-dusting materials.
It wasn’t necessary, anyway. I had some answers.
I bent and rubbed Canine’s head again. “Thanks for the tour,” I whispered. “I gotta go.”
And I would have, the same way I came in, if I didn’t hear Mahoney’s key in the lock.
The front door creaked open and Canine sped off to greet his human, barking with crazed joy.
I stood, frozen, as Mahoney chuckled. “Honey, I’m home,” he said to his pet. “You always act like you thought I left forever. It was just a smoke. Okay, maybe more like three.”
His heavy shoes approached and my heart throbbed in my pained body. He detoured into his bathroom, leaving me a moment to remember what I was, and that I could get out of here.
Breathe. Breathe and accept. Relax.
Now, blink.
I intended, and edged toward the bedroom door. I didn’t need to hold my breath when Mahoney entered the room, almost touching where I should have been, but I did anyway.
He clunked in and fell into his desk chair, kicking his shoes off and away from him. He glanced at the game and jiggled his computer mouse.
Canine tore into the room and stopped in front of me. He wagged his tail, awaiting a pat, and not getting one, he offered one short bark. Then another, and another, and he jumped around me, trying desperately to command the attention of his new friend. He looked back over his doggie shoulder once at Mahoney—don’t you see her? he seemed to say—then yapped at me some more.
Mahoney looked at me.
My blood stopped running for a few painful seconds before I realized he was actually looking through me. I chanced lifting a hand to be certain I was blinking but my movement made Mahoney start. I was a trick of the light.
I backed against the wall and the window behind me. I didn’t know if I could go through brick. Or glass. But I didn’t know that I couldn’t.
Canine continued to bark, and Mahoney stilled him with a hand on his collar. “Are you here?” Mahoney asked the air I was in. “Are you?”
He couldn’t be crazy, because I was there, but I wasn’t who he thought I was. Was I?
“I’m still looking for you,” he said.
A shiver ran through my transparent being.
“It’s not just me anymore,” he added. “I found someone else. She’s looking too. I’m not the only one anymore.” He stood, his chair scraping the hardwood floor. “Let me see you again. It’s okay, it really is.”
Mahoney’s gentle, respectful, almost reverent tone disconcerted me, and I was suddenly afraid my mixed emotions would erase my cloak, give me away.
“Please,” he said.
I stepped back, and fell out onto a small patch of grass under his bedroom window. I stayed blinking as I pressed myself to the brick building, edged toward the parking lot, then ran.
>=<
Nodding at the Root desk operators in the monitoring room, I weaved in and out of desk space until I found Reese staring at her screen.
“Gemma!” she said, standing and giving me an enthusiastic hug. Her arms barely made it around me. I felt, as always with her and Frederica, like the Un-incredible Hulk. I tried not to gasp as she pressed against my banged-up midsection. “I haven’t talked to you since the night you were on assignment,” she said.
“I owe you dinner for that,” I told her. “More like dinner every night for a month. You saved my life.”
“You would have figured it out,” she said modestly.
“Uh, no,” I said. “But thanks for your blind, unwavering faith.”
“You can count on me.”
“Svein around?”
“He c
ame in with his duffel bag, so try gym one or two. Down past the Butterfly Room. I’ll show you.”
“It’s okay, I’ll find it,” I said. She might have insisted on the walk, but she turned and touched the screen I hadn’t realized was behind her and suddenly called out, “I’ve got one!”
The supervisor headed over, and I squeezed Reese’s shoulder before going in search of Svein, leaving the squeal of the newly found spider signal.
I peered into gym one, where a couple of men and one woman were working weight machines. And indeed, in gym two I found Svein, wearing sweatpants and not much else. The room was Spartan—mostly rubber-mat flooring. I slipped in and sat on the floor next to the door and watched him as he moved in intricate patterns around the room, punching and kicking the air. He was sweating, but his movements weren’t accompanied by the determined grunts of Smiley’s guys. His fists cut the air—powerful, but relaxed and graceful. He lunged and blocked, and his bare feet never slipped. I imagined his mind must have been calm white because his muscles instinctively knew where to go without hesitation, and I was mesmerized by the beauty of the human body in fight.
Or maybe by his particular bare-chested human body in fight, a trickle of perspiration running down the center to his navel. His arms were carved by his art, and his stomach was tight. He could take a hit, and doubtless he could throw one, but only in the purest form of sport. Not in a bar fight, or a street fight, or a fae fight.
My own stomach throbbed and I realized I should have been taking some more painkillers right about now.
Svein saw me as he moved around the room, but I stretched out my legs and relaxed, willing to wait, respecting his work.
When he was done, he walked over to me. I had to really try not to stare below his neck. I’d seen a lot of athletic men in prime shape who were shirtless. But with Svein, there was a magnetic pull that I had to brace my feet on the floor to resist.
If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t let on. “I’m impressed,” I told him, echoing his criticism of me at Smiley’s. “Though not as impressed as your bravado had led me to believe I’d be.”
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