An Interrupted Cry

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Then again, nobody actually spoke for all the fatae. That was seventy percent of our problem.

  “I have no idea.”

  Ellen’s eyes, which were starting to slide closed under the combination of safety and hot cocoa, opened wide at that, and I got the full extent of wide brown stare. “What?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. Yeah, most of the breeds are sociable enough that we get to know them, but not all are, and it’s not like the Cosa has a census bureau sending people knocking on doors inquiring as to how many arms they have and what they prefer to catch for dinner. And some things… like being hidden.”

  “Especially if they eat other things,” Pietr said. “Upright, walking-and-talking things.”

  “More or less, yeah.” There was more of that going on than humans wanted to think about, but generally it was kept to… well, it was kept out of human sight, mostly. “Secondary evidence, but enough to get a warrant on, if you know the judge.”

  “Such as?”

  “Breath.” I didn’t have to elaborate: Venec at least knew what I was talking about, from the expression on his face. “Also, they’re not exactly living somewhere with a lot of hydroponics, unless they’re eating moss.”

  “Herbivores don’t have teeth like that.” Ellen had gone face-to-face with them, so she was as close to an expert as we had right now. My nose, her eyes, and a lot of don’t-know. Wonderful.

  “They also don’t go assaulting people in apartment buildings,” Nifty said. “That was what got you tangled up in all this, right? Sounds like these fatae decided to use the darkness to go grocery shopping.”

  “That had been my thought,” I admitted. “What I saw, maybe it was hunting party. Taking advantage of the blackout. Lot of people go missing during blackouts, and we don’t always find them. Maybe we know why, now.”

  “Maybe.” But Venec didn’t sound convinced, and honestly, neither was I. “What drew your attention there, Hendrickson? You’re good, but you’re not good enough to know something’s wrong a building away, not without her visions to tell you.”

  Cold, but accurate. “Light, in the window. I would never have noticed anything happening if it weren’t for that, and I only even saw it because of the blackout.”

  “What color was it?”

  Good question. “Orange. Not red, definitely orange. Weird, murky, not even really light.”

  “Deep sea creatures use weird lights, because they see on different spectrums than we do,” Ellen said. “And there was that weird glowing moss down there…”

  “You should probably write your cable bill off as a business deduction, you keep learning smart things from the Discovery Channel.”

  “NOVA, actually. And deductions only matter if you make actual money, boss.”

  “Now is… a pretty damn good time to ask for a raise, actually.” I wasn’t going to say I couldn’t have found my way out, eventually, but the point was I didn’t have to. “Only, I don’t think they needed light to see.” They hadn’t acted blind, when I was tied up. Although they had been pretty handsy….

  Deep sea vision whatsis made as much sense as anything, and figuring out the science of this was the PUPs job, not mine. I was more concerned with-

  “But why was Ellen’s vision tied into it?” And there was Pietr with the question I’d been wondering. “She usually sees people in imminent danger of death, but Danny here was closer to risk than they were. And he was the one who rescued them, before you even got there. No offense meant.”

  I didn’t have to look at Ellen to know she was rolling her eyes at that. Quiet sass was a specialty she was honing at Wren Valere’s knee.

  “Maybe it wasn’t them you were seeing, exactly.” Bonnie glanced up at Venec, who nodded, looking even more deadpan than usual. “Maybe it was a warning of what’s to come.”

  “That’s not how my visions work,” she objected.

  “It’s not how they’ve worked,” Venec said. “That doesn’t mean they won’t always work that way. Skillsets aren’t finite things; you learn, you grow, you expand.”

  “Oh, great.” And in that instant, my Shadow was a teenager again. Grinning would have been inappropriate, so I bit it back, and reached over to pat her knee consolingly.

  “It would make sense, though.” Pietr again, his voice thoughtful, his eyes looking somewhere not in this room. “The timing…. Maybe the vision was triggered by what Hendrickson saw, and so she picked up on their next victims.”

  “Then why didn’t she see the guy in the office they took first? Or me?”

  Pietr shrugged. “We can run tests, if you’d like. Knock you over the head at random moments, see if she—”

  “No.” Ellen and I both nixed that at the same time. But something was starting to ache in my gut, matching the ache I’d had in the back of my head for nearly a day now. “But that’s still the fucking mystery, isn’t it? Not what they are, not what they intended to do with us, but why they were suddenly in the middle of Downtown, risking exposure by going into freaking office buildings. Do they need, what, a particular blood type? People who use a certain body wash? And did their usual source of food disappear, or—”

  “They’re new here.” Ellen had been on the heels of my thought, finishing it for me. “They’ve only just come into the city, maybe just settled those tunnels. That’s why Danny hadn’t heard anything, why Alice only knew rumors—”

  “Wait, you went to talk to Alice?” I swung around to stare at Ellen. “Are you insane?”

  “Who’s Alice?”

  I waved Venec down, and continued to stare at Ellen. “Seriously? What the fuck were you —”

  “Trying to find you! And Alice… liked me. I think. And she likes you, or what she knows of you.”

  That… was less reassuring that it should have been.

  “Anyway, she helped me, okay? I wouldn’t have found the tunnel without what she said.”

  “Who is Alice?”

  “Nobody humans should treat with, Venec. Let it go, trust me.” He either would or he wouldn’t, and if she spun him into a neat cocoon and sucked him down for lunch, it wouldn’t be my fault.

  “You think they’re recent immigrants?” Bonnie exchanged a look with Venec, and he groaned, pressing the heel of his hand against his eyes, “All right, yeah,” he said, agreeing to whatever she’d suggested to him. “You’re on better terms with the Council these days, you get to ask them. I’ll round up the lonejacks. Hendrickson….”

  “Not It,” I said. “I’m a PI, not a diplomat. And only half fatae, in case you forgot.”

  You ever get stared at by four pair of eyes, all of ‘em knowing you’re going to give in sooner rather than later? It’s the most depressing experience ever.

  oOo

  Danny wasn’t happy. Ellen supposed she could understand that: he’d already been at the tail end of a long day when the blackout started, and since then he’d been conked over the head, tied up, maybe discovered a new breed, been threatened with being eaten, rescued himself and two teenagers, and then, when it seemed reasonable he’d be able to fall into bed for a week, sent out to snoop among the fatae community to find out what anyone else knew about the mole-people fatae who’d almost eaten him.

  She’d be unhappy too. In fact, she decided, she was unhappy. Not that it did either of them any good.

  The sun was up, but the buildings around the PUPI headquarters in upper Manhattan were still mostly dark. The street lamps were dimmed, but the traffic lights were working, so that was one good thing, anyway. Yay emergency services. She shoved her hands deeper into the pocket of her borrowed-again jacket, and looked at her boss.

  “So. Who’re we going to talk to? Not Alice, I’m guessing.”

  “Jesus. No. And when I find out who told you to go see her I swear I’m going to take their teeth for a trophy. You just… don’t do that again, okay?”

  “Why? I mean, she’s odd, but…”

  “You ever read Lord of the Rings?”

 
“Of course.”

  “Alice is what Shelob has nightmares about.”

  Ellen opened her mouth to say something, and realized that she had absolutely nothing whatsoever to actually say. No, Alice hadn’t seemed particularly terrifying to her, but Ellen knew enough about the world now to know that that could be as much her own ignorance as Alice’s lack of menace. If Danny said steer clear, she would.

  “She spoke fondly of you,” she finally said, needing to get at least that much of a last word in. Danny’s only response was a giant shudder.

  “What are the four sources of gossip?”

  “Cops, the homeless, club kids, and politicians.” There were four kinds of gossip, too, according to Danny: political, religious, financial, and sexual. She didn’t think sex or finances were going to help them out here—she hoped not, anyway. Religious? No, political.

  “We’re going to see Linder.”

  “We’re going to see Linder.”

  Linder wasn’t happy to see them. This wasn’t anything new. The fatae glared at them, the leather jacket over their sloped shoulders crackled and worn with age, fingerless black gloves pulled over gnarled fingers just as crackled and worn. But the eyes in that narrow face were bright and sharp, and the mind behind them was even more so.

  “Well, well, if it’s not Dum and Dee. How’re ya doing, Dee?”

  “I’ve had better days,” Ellen admitted. “Blackouts, man. They suck.”

  Linder cackled at that. “You Talent, you rely too much on magic tricks to stay warm and toasty. Weaker than Nulls, when the weather gets dry.”

  “But stronger than Nulls after a good hard storm,” she said in return, and let just a hint of current rise through her skin, prickling her pores open with energy. Linder wasn’t one of the breeds who could see current, but all fatae knew when it was being used around them.

  “Show off.” But it was said with amusement, and Ellen let the current subside, her point made.

  “And you, Dum. Been a while since you came sniffing around my humble abode. So clearly you want something from little old me….”

  Linder’s abode was humble the way New York City was humble; which was to say, not at all. They were standing in a glass-walled living room in a massive apartment on Columbus Circle that probably cost more in rent for a month than she made in a year. Linder dressed like a bum because it amused Linder to do so.

  “As much as I’d love to play the game, I’m working on no sleep for the past two… maybe three days, and my temper’s a bit sharp right now,” Danny said. “Ellen’s actually here to keep me from snapping your neck if you say something I don’t like.”

  Linder’s expression didn’t change, but they did run a hand through thick white hair, revealing a sharply-pointed window’s peak and eyes that glinted red deep within the pale blue pupils, before gesturing to the overstuffed leather sofas at the center of the room. “Well now I’m intrigued. Sit, and tell me more.”

  Ellen settled into the corner of the sofa and tried to look as though she was ready and able to stop Danny if he became homicidal.

  “You know where I’ve spent the night, Linder?”

  “Hopefully somewhere scandalous, and you’re going to tell me about it.”

  “Tied up, underground.”

  “Danny. We’ve all told you to make nice with the gnomes already—”

  “It wasn’t gnomes.” Ellen was watching Linder carefully, and saw the slightest hint of a clench in the jaw and a twitch over those blue-red eyes. “But you knew that already, didn’t you.”

  “I will be the first to admit that I know most of what makes this fair city tick, Daniel, but even I don’t always know what’s making you tick. I—”

  “Don’t waste my time or test my patience, Linder. You knew. How many others knew?”

  “Knew what? Danny, honestly, I—”

  “That there’s a new breed in town, taking over the undertunnels. A flesh-eating breed.”

  That stopped Linder dead, something Ellen wasn’t sure was possible.

  “Who else knew, Linder?”

  Linder sighed, stretching long legs out and digging at something caught in their teeth with one dark claw, the other hand cupped politely to hide the activity. “You just want me to confirm what you already know? That’s a waste of favors, Danny.”

  “I’m not here to exchange favors. This isn’t one of those deals. You’re going to tell me what we need to know.”

  “This one of your vision deals, Dee?” Linder looked at her then. “Are we on the clock to save some poor hapless human soul?”

  “I’ve saved fatae too,” she said, irritated.

  “Truth, truth. Neither of you are speciesist… well, it would be hypocritical of you, wouldn’t it, Danny? All right. Yes, I knew about our newest residents. About… two weeks, maybe. Maybe a bit more.”

  “And you knew they were flesh-eaters.”

  “Who among us isn’t? I mean, of the interesting sorts, anyway.”

  “People-eaters.”

  “Ah, that. Well.” Linder inspected his claw, then sheathed it. Ellen was never going to be jaded enough not to find the smooth motion of claw disappearing into an ordinary-looking finger not-fascinating, but she’d learned enough to not stare overtly. Not that Linder would have minded, but it would have lost them points. And points were everything, dealing with Linder. “You understand, it’s nothing personal. It’s just human problems are human problems, yes? That’s what we’ve been told, all these years.”

  “Don’t bring up that bullshit with me,” Danny said, sharp as broken glass. “Not that ‘us against the humans and their magic’ crap, because it was old and pointless a hundred years ago and even more now, on both sides. And yes I’m taking this personally—I was the one trussed up in slime-holds like a roast waiting for the oven.”

  “Ah, you’re half fatae, so they weren’t going to eat you. Probably.” Linder shrugged, waving his hand as though to dismiss the issue. “I mean, sharks take a bite out of things sometimes and decide halfway through it tastes nasty. Might be like that. But not all the way eaten.”

  “Comforting.” Danny’s voice was cold and dry, now, and Ellen felt herself start to tense, as though preparing to throw herself between them—or possibly, throw herself on a grenade, real or conversational. “And you were just going to let it happen. Sit there and not say anything. Yeah, I’m not getting over that any time soon. And neither will the Council, I suspect.”

  “It’s not like we had a heads-up, Hendrickson.” For the first time, Linder let some real emotion slip through: annoyance, and a hint of uncertainty. “These things slipped in, first thing we know is when rumors start someone’s taken up residence in the downbelows and the gnomes are giving them scare-eyed roundabouts.”

  “And that didn’t tell you there was something wrong?”

  “Yeah, something wrong we should stay away from. We didn’t know for sure they were going to eat humans. Not for sure.”

  “But you did know.”

  “Maybe. Yeah. There were rumors.”

  “And you didn’t warn anyone. Because hey, just humans, right?” Danny’s voice carried more disgust than should be possible, slick and dripping with it.

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It’s exactly like that. And guess what? Venec and Torres know.”

  It wasn’t a lie. Bonnie and Venec did know. They knew the mole people—shklya, Linder had called them—were here, and that they preferred a people-heavy menu. They didn’t know that the fatae had also known, and been willing to stay quiet so long as they also stayed uneaten. Mainly because Ellen hadn’t been certain she could convey all of that in a ping.

  “Lonejacks might be able to overlook that little no-tell of yours,” Danny went on. “They’re firm believers in taking care of oneself first, after all. But the Council?” He made a regretful tsking noise with his tongue. “The Council won’t look well on that. And you know they haven’t forgotten that they put themselves on the line during t
hat trouble with the Silence, not so many years back.”

  Ellen hadn’t been in the city then, hadn’t even known about Talent, much less that she was one. But she’d heard the stories. Wren Valere had been elbows deep in that, protecting the city—human and fatae. But Wren, for all that she was respected, wasn’t exactly feared. Nobody wanted to get the Council riled, though. They had power, money, and influence on their side.

  Danny had slid the knife in. Now it was her turn to twist it.

  “The real issue isn’t even the Council,” she said, trying to look as though this had just occurred to her. “All they can do is make your life hell. But how long do you think an entire community of flesh-eating monsters will be able to feed, even in a city as populated as New York, before people start to notice? An increase in missing persons, maybe a few piles of bones appearing, even one sighting of—what did you call them, shklya?—making it into the newspaper, and you’ll think terrorism fears were a walk in the park.

  “I know my species: we’re dumb, panicky, dangerous animals. They’re not going to stop to differentiate between any of you: it’ll be kill before you’re killed and eaten.”

  “You think we don’t know that?” Linder asked, even as Danny looked at her with an expression that asked if she’d really just quoted Men In Black at a Time Like This. “That’s what we’re afraid of—a mob of angry, crazy humans, who, I might add, outnumber us, what, twenty to one? And most of us… we’re not exactly fighters.”

  “So you thought staying quiet was your best protection. Well, it wasn’t.” Danny’s voice had gone cold and dry again, and Linder was still looking nervous.

  “All right. What are you going to do?”

  Danny shook his head, reaching down to dust off the toe of his perfectly clean boots ostentatiously. “I’m not going to do anything. You are. You’re going to go to the Council and you’re going to tell them everything you know, and you’re going to work with them to deal with this.”

  “I’m not—”

  Whatever Linder saw in Danny’s eyes, it was enough to silence any further words. Ellen didn’t realize until then that she’d been holding her breath.