Unfallen Dead

by Mark Del Franco

  I hopped off the stone. “What the hell, Dylan? Is that why you asked me here? Make me feel all guilty about the past and get me to spill my guts about Forest Hills?”

  “No. You’re misinterpreting my intention,” he said.

  “Really? The Guild didn’t figure Connor Grey’s old pal would persuade him to help Maeve find a weapon she can use against the Elven King?”

  He rocked forward and grabbed the edge of the seat. “Back off, Connor. I’m trying to manage a mess you helped create.”

  I threw my hands out. “I didn’t create any mess. I didn’t make that control spell. Meryl and I told you guys everything. She almost died, and I can’t remember a damned thing.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not good enough. You have to remember something. I’m not supposed to tell you all this, you know. Ceridwen would blow a fit if she knew the secrecy I’m breaching here. She’s been speculating that you are involved. Your feelings about the Seelie Court are hardly a secret. There are bigger issues here than you and me.”

  I wanted to hit him. “That’s what Ceridwen said to me. You’re not helping your case.”

  He set his jaw. “We need to know what you and Meryl know.”

  An angry surge of adrenaline reached out to my abilities. The black mass in my mind was having none of it. Daggers of pain blocked the connection before it could form. “Go to hell, Dylan.”

  I stalked away. In my anger, I didn’t pay attention to where I was walking. I stepped through the circle of mushrooms and entered the fairy ring. Red pain flashed across my eyes as the darkness in my mind convulsed. The essence of the ring resonated with a strange sensation of otherness, something slick and clinging as it touched my skin. My vision blurred, and the ground shifted beneath my feet. Everything went dark, and I had the impression of huge towering stones. In a flash, the familiar Victorian buildings around the Common reasserted themselves as I stumbled out of the ring. People lingering nearby stared at me like I was some kind of ghost.

  Dylan stood to my left, far from the stone block I had left him sitting on. Panicked, he rushed to my side. “Are you all right?”

  I shook my head to clear it. “I saw . . .” I stopped. I wasn’t sure what it was.

  He held my arm. “What happened? You froze and then fell forward.”

  I pushed him away. “Nothing. Get away from me.”

  He reached for me again. “Con, let’s go somewhere and talk . . .”

  I didn’t answer. I made my way down the hill toward the Downtown Crossing retail district. Dylan called my name a few times but didn’t follow me. I mingled in among shoppers, envious of their obliviousness. No one paid me any attention. People went about their business, catching a store still open or rushing home late from work. They didn’t look like they knew or cared about fairy rings or Faerie queens or strange essence portals. Good for them. They didn’t know how lucky they were.

  I was tired. Tired of the unknown. Tired of the suspicions. Tired of getting sucked into Guild politics. I didn’t care about the fairy ring or Maeve or Donor Elfenkonig. I just wanted my life back. But every day it seemed the more I tried to heal myself, the more things changed for the worse. My mind was damaged. My abilities gone, my memory screwed. The constant pain in my head. I didn’t know if my memories were buried or just not there at all. And now I was hearing strange whispering voices and seeing people no one else saw. It was starting to scare me. After everything that had happened, maybe I was losing it. The worst part was trying to figure out if I would know I was losing it or if I would become too demented to know the difference.

  Dylan was right about one thing. I might not like the Teutonic Consortium, but that didn’t mean I was willing to hand Maeve the means to stomp all over Europe through mysterious fairy portals, even if I could. As far as I was concerned, the Seelie Court was only slightly less dangerous. Playing mind games with me by using my friends was a strange way to treat someone Maeve wanted for an ally. She had never done anything to make me think she cared about me, or even that she knew I existed. Why should I care about her? If that was how they all wanted to play, they deserved whatever Bergin Vize and Donor Elfenkonig threw at them, and it wasn’t my problem. I had my own hell to deal with.

  18

  Someone was singing in my apartment. I stood to the side as I opened the door, in case it wasn’t who I thought it was. You can never be too sure of anything in my line of work. My building had security wards everywhere. Still, it had taken a year for me not to freak out when I heard noise when there should be no noise. I had keyed the wards to allow certain people past them without setting them off. It’s a short list.

  Joe sat on the counter. He was on my list because otherwise he would keep setting the wards off whenever he had an urge to eat whatever I had handy in the cabinets. With his cheeks engorged, he waved half an Oreo at me. “Milk.”

  I took a shot glass out of the cabinet, poured the milk, and placed it next to him. He put the cookie down and gulped from the glass. And belched. “I can’t believe you still haven’t bought a nice flit-size glass for me.”

  I crossed my arms. “I can’t believe you steal my food.”

  He feigned innocence. “Steal? It’s still here. Sort of.”

  Popping the remains of the Oreo in his mouth, he swigged some milk and made a face. “You don’t happen to have a bit of the whiskey to go with this?”

  I pulled a pint of Jameson’s from the cabinet. He held the shot glass up as I topped it off. “This is disgusting,” I said.

  He sipped and sighed. “Ah, but it reminds me of my childhood. Any mother will tell you, whiskey is the best way to wean a wee one off milk.”

  “Flit mothers work it a bit differently.” I resisted the urge to use a patronizing tone. Who was I to criticize what makes sense for a flit mother?

  He toasted me and finished the glass. “Ah. You are a most excellent host.”

  I leaned against the back of the armchair facing the kitchen counter. “Joe, let me ask you something. You’ve killed people, right?”

  He fluttered up from the counter. “Only the ones I’ve wanted dead.”

  “How many?”

  He swayed in the air, humming. I think someone had had a little Jameson’s before he got to my place. “I’m not sure. Enough to make the complaints annoying.”

  Having a conversation with Joe was an art form. I was used to his out-of-the-blue comments, but this was a new one. I’ve known him all my life, but he sometimes forgot that I haven’t known him all his life. He makes strange references and non sequiturs that assume I know what the hell he’s talking about. “Complaints?”

  He screwed up his face. “ ’Course. I’m not mind-deaf like some people.”

  Not the direction I wanted the conversation to go, but with an opening like that, I had to ask. “Who complains, Joe?”

  With a loop in the air, he flew to the window and did a handstand on the sill. I wasn’t impressed. He cheated by using his wings to hold steady. “The ones I’ve killed with their singing all the time. Can you see the queen naked from here?”

  I joined him at the window. “No, she pulls the blinds. What singing people did you kill?”

  He huffed and looked at me with concern. “Are you daft? Why would I kill singing people? You’re acting strange. Are you okay?”

  Said the drunk flit.

  “I’m fine, Joe. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately,” I said.

  He swooped back to the kitchen for another cookie. “You think too much. Think, think, think, all the time, thinking.”

  He flew back to the window. Actually, he flew into the window, banged his head, and fell on his back. “You have a crack in your ceiling,” he said.

  “You made it when you flew into it last month.”

  “Is that a crack?” he asked.

  “Drink, drink, drink, all the time, drinking,” I said.

  He rolled with laughter. Laughing myself, I went to the kitchen counter to get a beer. When I turned back to the
living room, I froze. Joe lay on the floor chuckling. Above him, the view outside the window was filled with Guild security agents in flight, sweeping across the harbor. “What the hell?” I said.

  Joe sat up, his laughter fading when he saw the agents. Without a word, he vanished. I grabbed my coat and ran down to the street. Sirens wailed as I hit the sidewalk. At the corner of Old Northern, at least a dozen police cars swept by. The officer at the security barricade near the bridge pointed at me. “Inside! That’s an order!” he shouted.

  I didn’t argue. It wasn’t worth the delay, and he had the badge. When you’re on your own turf, you don’t need to use the main streets. I backtracked around my building to the dockside, across the rotting loading dock to the next street, and cut through an empty warehouse. Two blocks farther, and I was back on Old Northern. Several more blocks down, flashing police lights joined flares of essence-fire.

  Joe popped in next to me. “It’s a fight. Dylan’s tearing it up with some gang, and Keeva’s got tin-heads with her.”

  Sudden winds buffeted me from every side as I ran toward the commotion. Empty police cars clogged the street. The officers were not in the fight. They stationed themselves in secure positions on the side streets and alleys to keep pedestrians away. The dark mass in my head vibrated, like it was trying to decide whether to stab me in the brain. My essence-sensing ability kicked in on its own. A cloud of Taint filled the sky, tendrils of it dangling into a cluster of people in the street, mostly dwarves and elves, facing outward in a circle. The dwarves were shielding the elves, who were taking shots at the airborne Guild agents.

  Calmly facing them, Dylan was wrapped in a dense body shield, white bolts of essence leaping from his hands. He moved forward, his fire intercepting his attacker’s shots, the two streams of essence sparking and dissipating as they tangled. What he missed warped around his shield.

  The mass of Taint moved like a balloon made from mist, shuddering and bouncing in the wind as it floated above the fight, the tendrils hanging down fluttering and swaying, leaping from one person to the next. The elves and dwarves were trapped, but not going down without a fight. The Taint would goad them to fight as long as it remained stabilized. Keeva held her agents above the fray to avoid losing control of them to the Taint. She had learned her lessen at Forest Hills. Dylan could hold his own, but the Taint made it all a stalemate.

  “Joe, can you get in there and avoid the Taint?” I asked.

  He hovered higher, his eyes shifting as he scanned the street. “I think so. Want me to go kill them all?”

  I whipped my head around. “What?”

  He snickered. “I know they’re not singing, but I’ll kill them if you want. I still don’t know why you hate singing people.”

  I shook my head. “No, Joe. No killing unless you have to. I need you to do two sendings. Tell Keeva to circle around behind Dylan and do some weathering to blow the Taint off. Tell Dylan to be ready to hit the fighters. Tell them both to do it the moment you distract them.”

  “Me? What am I supposed to do?”

  “Give those guys an essence flash in the face and jump out as fast as possible,” I said.

  “Ohhhh. Tricksy,” he said. The tickle of a sending brushed against my senses as Joe leaned forward, then frowned. “Ha! Keeva called me a little pest, which is really quite rude, isn’t it?”

  “She’s called you worse.” Regardless of what she thought, Keeva complied. She circled down and landed next to Dylan. The air around her vibrated with particles of blue and white as she prepared her spell-casting. I gave her time to build up a charge.

  “Now, Joe! Get in and get out!”

  He vanished. A fraction of a second later, he appeared in a tangle of Tainted essence strands in front of the fighters, and a fraction after that, released a bright burst of pink essence that spotted my vision. The frontline fighters swung their faces away, disoriented by the flare. Keeva released her spell. A blast of cold air rushed down the street, and the Taint collapsed into itself, then shredded off. A tightly focused bolt of essence shot from Dylan’s hand and knocked the line of fighters off their feet. The elves and dwarves scattered in confusion as Guild agents moved in. I lost sense of what was happening as everyone rushed forward.

  Police shouted at me as I ran through the scattered cars. In the aftermath, Guild agents and police officers chased down the fighters who had run off while the rest were immobilized in spellbindings. I joined Keeva and Dylan standing over several inert bodies that agents were binding in cocoons of white essence.

  “You’ve still got your fight coordination down. Good work,” Dylan said when he saw me. Nice words, but he didn’t look at me.

  Keeva scowled, but the tension between me and Dylan seemed to lighten her mood. “Yeah, thanks,” she said.

  Dylan watched Keeva escort her agents to a nearby van as they carried several elves away. “Your friend Carmine was attacked. The primary attacker got away. These were her support team.”

  “You were protecting Carmine?”

  Dylan kept a professional detachment. Still didn’t look at me. “Not really. Some people were taking an odd interest in him. When you showed up to talk to him at the Fish Pier, Ceridwen was convinced you were part of some conspiracy, so she increased surveillance on him. Lucky for him.”

  “Is he okay?” I asked.

  Dylan nodded. “Pretty banged up, but he probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer if we weren’t there. I can’t figure what it’s about.”

  “Carmine told me some Teutonic guys were looking for a Red Man. What was the attacker wearing?”

  By his expression, Dylan thought the question was weird. “Mismatched clothes. She looked like a homeless woman. Why?”

  “That sounds like the druidess who visited Carmine a few days ago. She said she was looking for one of the victims in the murder case I’m working on with Murdock, but Carmine said he saw her with these guys and was worried about himself.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I just did. How was I supposed to know you were tracking these guys?” I hesitated, uncertain whether to continue. I hadn’t told anyone but Meryl about my dreams. Given what Carmine told me—and what he looked like—I decided to put my personal feelings aside and act like a professional. “I dreamed of a red figure fighting a black figure. It looks like someone took out the Red Man.”

  Dylan gave me a considering look. “But who is the man in black?”

  I was wearing my jeans and leather jacket, both black. “I helped stop the fight. Maybe it’s me.”

  Forgetting we were angry with each other, Dylan laughed. “Danu’s blood, Con. Now you’re a Dreamer? Is there no end to this supposed loss of abilities you have?”

  I didn’t respond. If I knew the answer to that question, well, I’d know the answer to that question. He watched the rest of the street fighters being led to a police van. “Our cases have crossed. I guess this means we’re working together,” he said.

  Dylan’s offer to go to New York was sincere. I knew it was. If I could make being at the Guild again work, going to New York could be the way to make that happen. Maybe this was a sign I was wrong, that maybe everything that had happened to me in Boston didn’t need to be resolved in Boston. Maybe I needed to put everything that had happened at the Boston Guild behind me and stop being so angry. Move on instead of eking out a bare existence. Maybe I needed to trust Dylan’s motives, too. Playing out the case together, seeing how we worked together, might answer some of those questions for me.

  We made a good team. We always had. As long as I knew I could trust him. After our argument at the fairy ring, I didn’t know what to think, but not trusting him didn’t sit well.

  “Yeah, I guess we need to work together,” I said.

  Dylan stretched his arm out. “Damn, you don’t happen to know a good reweaver in town, do you?”

  His coat sleeve had caught some essence flashback. A slash of blackened material marred the rich mar
oon fabric. As we stood there, me in my black jacket and Dylan in his deep red coat, the imagery in my dream floated through my mind again. A cold feeling crept into my gut that had nothing to do with the wind off the harbor.

  19

  Like all hospitals, Avalon Memorial had an odor that told you immediately where you were. In addition to physical ailments, it specialized in fey-related illness and issues. As you walked the corridors, the usual antiseptic odors mingled with mists and vapors that were uniquely fey. It smelled like an herbalist shop set up in an operating room. Dylan had left a message that Keeva had been admitted. He thought I would want to know. That was it. No mention of why. No mention of our argument.

  Two voices drifted up the hallway before I reached the room at the end of the fifth floor. Over the years, I had gotten more than familiar with both voices in their raised, annoyed versions.

  “Dammit, Gillen, enough’s enough,” I heard Keeva say.

  “Shut up and stick your wings out,” he replied. My eyes met those of a nurse at the station desk, and she gave me a little conspiratorial smile. Gillen Yor was High Healer of Avalon Memorial. Irrascible was his middle name, sometimes his first. Usually a workforce despised his type, but Gillen was refreshingly equal-opportunity impatient and rarely arbitrary. It meant a lot to a nurse when he tore a new one into a famous fey regardless of who was around.

  The door to Keeva’s room was open. She faced the hallway, arms crossed tightly across her chest. Her wings were, in fact, flexed out as far as they could go. Through the gossamer membranes, Gillen’s silhouette moved as he sent short pulses of yellow essence into her wings. Keeva glared. “You have to leave now, Gillen. I have Guild business.”

  Gillen didn’t even bother looking up. “Sit down, Grey, and if I hear one word out of you, I’ll give you a headache.”

  I shot a sympathetic shrug at Keeva and sat in the chair by the bed. It would be an exaggeration to call Gillen my personal healer. Since my accident, he had taken my case more for the challenge than out of empathy. Patients did not pick Gillen; he picked them. I kept quiet as he finished examining her, barking questions at Keeva while she barked answers back.