She led me to a small lab with two tables, one empty, the other strewn with instruments, and walls lined with drawers. Without hesitation, she opened a particular drawer and pulled out several large envelopes and plastic bags. I recognized the Farnsworth boy’s clothing in one of the larger ones. She laid them out on the table with care, immediately marking the tracking sheets to indicate the date and time she removed the items and put my name down as well. She lifted an envelope, removed a glass box about four inches square, and placed it on the table.
“You made a ward box?” I said.
She nodded. “As a precaution. I found these stamps in the lining of Dennis Farnsworth’s hoodie.”
Disappointment crawled across my mind. I’d seen stamps like this before. Kids licked them to get high. Farnsworth had drugs on him. The kid was running drugs while wearing Moke’s gang colors.
I leaned closer. Five square stamps wrapped in individual plastic sleeves sat in the box. Each one was pale yellow with the ogham rune for oak on it. Janey opened the box, and I immediately felt the essence wafting off the stamps. With a small tweezers she removed one and placed it on a tray.
“You can feel the essence, can’t you?” she said.
I shrugged. “Lots of drugs in the Weird have essence.”
She nodded and used a second tweezers to remove the stamp from the sleeve. “Come closer, but don’t touch it. I think dermal contact might cause absorption.”
I stood closer to her and saw immediately what she meant. I could feel a rhythmic pulse of essence, and I felt attuned to it. “Oak,” I said.
She smiled. “I thought you’d recognize it. My people are a woodland clan. We’re both people of the Oak.”
I didn’t see the need to argue. All fey have affinities for working with certain types of essence. Druids primarily fall in the earth category, adept at working with plant life, particularly trees and particularly oak. It’s why we like to use staffs and wands. Elves can chant essence out of most anything, but I didn’t know that much about their affinities. That they even had them didn’t surprise me.
“So, we have an essence-based drug derived from oak. I’m still not seeing anything odd.”
“I worked with it for a while before I noticed. Feel it again,” she said.
I concentrated on the stamp, felt the flow, could almost taste it on my tongue. A moment later, my brain felt like someone was squeezing it, and my shields slammed on so fast that I jerked back with grunt. The feeling stopped abruptly, and I opened my eyes. Janey had slipped the stamp back in the sleeve and put it back in the box.
She had concern on her face, confused, but real. “Are you okay?”
“Now I know why you put the ward field on it. It felt like something was trying to stab me in the head.” I did a mental check on myself, but didn’t notice any lingering effects.
She leaned against the table with crossed arms. “How odd. That’s not what happened to me. There were six of these. I used one for testing and didn’t think much about the essence coming off it until I realized I was just staring out the window.” She gestured up at the small, grilled window. Not much to see but the fender of a car.
“Then someone came in and asked me to pick up coffee for the office, and I went. It wasn’t until I was in line at Starbucks that I got annoyed. I usually get annoyed immediately when I get asked to be a gofer.”
I pursed my lips. “So, there’s a suggestive in it.”
She nodded. “That’s a pretty impressive feat to pull off in such a small item. I think more testing should be done, but we don’t have the equipment here.”
I looked around Janey’s processing room. The OCME hardly had the trappings for a fey researcher. Hell, it hardly met the minimum requirements for a forensics lab. And yet here was a dark elf, an apparently intelligent individual, working for them. “Why are you here?”
She smiled. “You mean ‘why am I not at the Guild?’ Everyone asks eventually. The Guild did ask me to join. So did the Consortium. They get enough people to do what I do. At the OCME, I get to do whatever I want because human normals don’t know how to sort through fey material. In a nutshell, I’m here because it helps a lot more than there.”
“Sounds noble,” I said. Lots of people turned down employment with the Guild, most of them for political or career reasons.
She shrugged and laughed. “Not really. My parents are what some people derisively call assimilationists. They think we’re stuck here and are okay with it.”
“And like parent, like daughter?”
Again, she shrugged. “I’m here-born, Mr. Grey. This is the only world I know. Faerie may be where my roots are, but it might as well be Antarctica as far as I’m concerned. It sounds very alien and beautiful, but not someplace I have the urge to live.”
“Why didn’t you call the Guild for help?”
She gave me a knowing look. “Because if the Guild cared, this boy wouldn’t be here in the first place. This is a human murder case, Mr. Grey. At best, it would land in the research labs, not the crime unit.”
“Could you do the tests with the right equipment?”
She shrugged. “Sure, but it’s not likely on our budget.”
I smiled. “Got a piece of paper?”
When Janey brought her hand out of the pocket of her smock, she held a spiral pad with a pen stuck in it. I like someone always ready to take notes. I wrote down Meryl’s name and number and handed the pad back.
“Meryl’s a friend. If she can, she’ll get you to the right equipment.”
Janey’s ears flexed back in surprise. “Oh, I wasn’t asking for that. I just thought you should know about it…”
“It’s fine,” I interrupted. “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t think it would help the case. And trust me, if Meryl has a problem with this, she’ll let the both of us know.”
She put the envelopes back in their respective drawers and led the way to the hall. We mounted the steps to the lobby.
“Thanks for calling me, Janey. I mean that. It’s looking more and more like the kid was a drug runner, and things caught up with him.”
She reached out a hand, and we shook. “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Grey. I’ll call Ms. Dian as soon as I get downstairs. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“My friends call me Connor.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She smiled and returned through the lobby to the flight of stairs down.
As I stepped out into the chill of the afternoon, I pulled my collar up around my neck. Farnsworth was running drugs. Murdock’s theory was looking more likely than mine at this point. The kid was dead either way. I just wish once in a while I would find myself investigating an accidental death.
As I approached the corner, I found a pleasant surprise. A Lincoln Town Car sat idling at the curb. A brownie leaned against the front fender, a long, tawny sheepskin coat muffling her body, set off by red boots, red gloves, and a red chauffeur cap. She huddled herself against the cold and bounced on her heels when she saw me.
I felt a wave of pleasure. “Tibs!”
“I thought you’d never come out of there!” she called.
She waited until I was almost upon her, then took two steps and wrapped me in a hug, pressing a warm kiss on my lips. Her eyes glittered with affection as she stepped back. Tibbet was an old, sweet friend, a brownie by nature, but all woman. We met years ago at the Guild when I first joined. I was just coming into my own, and Tibs and I moved in the same party circles for a while. To call our affair romantic would be an exaggeration, but it was definitely mutual and fun. The fey have fewer hang-ups about sex than human normals. We don’t stress about falling into bed unless a reason intrudes. Whenever Tibs and I weren’t seeing other people, we were quite comfortable spending time together. We had a mutually satisfying thing for a while that ended as casually and friendly as it began.
She ruffled my hair. “Still handsome, I see.”
I tugged her nut-brown ponytail. “Still gorgeous,
I see.”
She nodded at the car. “Hop in. The Old Man wants to see you.”
I slid into the passenger seat of the stifling hot car.
“I will never get used to the winters here,” Tibbet said as she settled into the driver’s seat.
“It’s hardly winter, Tibs.”
She chuckled. “I lived in the Land of Summer, remember? I don’t even like cold rain.” She pulled into traffic and headed west.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“The Old Man told me. He said it’s a sad place I wouldn’t like, and he was right. I could feel it standing outside.”
“It is, but it’s also a helpful place, sometimes a hopeful one,” I said. And it is. No one wants to end up in the OCME. But, if someone does, at least they try to figure out what happened to you. They don’t always do it right, and they don’t always get it right. But they always try. It’s one of those places that you wonder how people can choose to work there. Then you meet them and understand.
“How’s he doing?” I said.
Tibbet didn’t answer for a long moment. Guildmaster Manus ap Eagan has been ill for almost a year. Fairies getting sick is rare, Danann fairies even rarer. It does happen, though.
“Not good,” she said. “He gets weaker all the time. He hardly ever leaves the house.” Her voice almost cracked. Tibbet has been with the Guildmaster since before Convergence. She’s not quite a secretary, not quite a messenger or driver. Aide-de-camp comes to mind. Like all brownies, she’s fiercely loyal to her chosen task, and after so much time, there’s an understandable emotional connection. I placed my hand on the back of her neck and gave it a slight squeeze.
She smiled. “What about you?”
“The same,” I said. “I’ve been exercising, but my abilities are still dead.” I never like to talk about my condition. You can only tell people “no change” so many times. Doing ritual sun salutations at dawn has strengthened my essence, but at best it’s made what little I can do work better. I haven’t regained any more abilities.
Tibbet guided the car through the chaos of Kenmore Square, a confusing knot of five major roads pretending to be a traffic exchange. Boston streets are infamous for confusing the unwary visitor. Signage is poor, the squares are anything but, and the layout philosophy seems to be “try not to kill anybody.” Tibbet’s a pro, though, and we made it through with minimal terror or terrorizing. She took Brookline Avenue out of the city.
It is the nature of large cities to consume the smaller towns around them, usually for economic advantage. Boston acquired several towns, but not Brookline, which didn’t see any advantage to joining a city of lower-class immigrants. To this day, it remains a place of privilege, one of the richest in the country, where anyone with enough money can find a place, even the fey. Manus ap Eagan had lived there for over half a century.
Tibbet took me into the exclusive Chestnut Hill neighborhood, location of some of the most expensive homes in the States. The landscaping is perfect, the acreage per house substantial, and not a stickball game to be seen. It’s another world entirely from where I grew up in the rough and tumble South Boston. It’s the kind of place where you keep expecting people to whisper for fear of disturbing deep, moneyed thoughts.
The Eagan estate began with a wrought-iron gate that opened without any prompting as we approached. Tibbet didn’t use a remote. Likely, the whole place was warded to allow certain people to come and go and most people to not. The driveway wound in a stately curve lined with cedars that stood guarded reserve over the passing car. When the view opened up, you could see what some might call a house, while most everyone else would call it a heaping estate manor.
Tibbet pulled up to the enormous front doors, and we got out. Above the doors, a stained-glass panel depicted a man in a resplendent chair leaning back with his feet on the lap of a beautiful woman. As Tibbet held the door for me, I nodded upward. “Did you pose for that?”
She grinned. “Not likely.”
The entry hall to the Guildmaster’s house rose a full two stories and could hold a small army. Every year Eagan holds a kick-ass Winter Solstice party in the space. If you count the bathroom, it’s the second room in the house I’ve been in. At the east wall, in the curve of a freestanding staircase, stood a rearing Asian elephant, the stuffed relic of a more unenlightened time.
In the middle of the west wall a massive fireplace stood. Above the mantel hung a larger-than-life portrait of High Queen Maeve of Tara, her deep black eyes staring out of a pale face, a cold majestic beauty. Maeve had posed for John Singer Sargent on her one and only visit to Boston almost a century ago. He had captured her perfectly. She looked like someone had just told her she couldn’t have Europe for dessert.
At the back end of the hall, French doors gave onto a rolling lawn of brown grass. At the bottom of the lawn, topiary boxwoods had been torn ragged by the wind. The skeletal frame of a greenhouse sat in the white afternoon light.
“He’s out back. He says the moisture makes him feel better,” Tibbet said. She led me to the French doors and held one open for me.
“You’re not coming?”
She shook her head. “I’ll give you a ride back.”
I walked down a brick path to the greenhouse. Its entrance worked like an air lock. Stepping through the inside door, humid air swept over me. Dense foliage smelled of decay, and I could hear low voices. Thick leaves dripped with water. I removed my jacket. I followed a sodden path through overgrown plants wilting with the heat. Long, spindly fronds left wet streaks on my arms. At the base of my skull, I felt a buzz like sleeping bees; the greenhouse had protection wards on it.
In the center of the greenhouse was a clearing. A maroon Persian rug had been rolled out. Ancient wing chairs sat with their backs to me and faced a graying wicker chair. The Guildmaster leaned out from one of the chairs and looked in my direction, then struggled up on his feet. “Here he is,” he said.
“You should sit,” said whoever was sitting in the opposite wing chair. I couldn’t sense who or what he was with all the wards in the place.
The Guildmaster answered him with a dismissive wave of his hand. He stood tall, with the stiff posture of someone in pain. His hawk nose stood out sharply between dark eyes nestled in sockets hollow from too much weight loss too fast. Gray-streaked dark hair hung lankly to his shoulders. The disturbing part, though, was the limp flutter of his wings, dim and lifeless against the backdrop all the fecund plant life. “Hello, Connor, I’m glad you could make it.”
As if I would have refused the invitation. “It’s good to see you again, sir.”
He waved an open palm toward the wicker chair. “Sit, please.”
As I made my way around the armchairs, I found myself face-to-face with High Druid Gerin Cuthbern. I did an excellent job of not rocking back on my heels. As a former Guild agent, I routinely worked with the upper echelons of society. Cuthbern, on the other hand, was upper echelon to the upper echelons. As High Druid of the Bosnemeton, he led all the druids and druidesses of the Grove for New England. His word was law. We did nothing without his say-so.
As soon as I realized it was him, I stopped, crossed my hands across my chest, and bowed slightly at the waist. “High Druid, it is an honor.”
The old man nodded his shaggy mane of white hair. He had that solemn look important people get when they deign to notice the peasants. Gnarled hands loosely held an oak staff against his chest. Truth to tell, while I respect Gerin, I thought he was a bit of a prig. He was an Old One, to be sure, but one that sometimes didn’t get that the old ways were gone.
“I remember you from your training, Connor. Such a shame what’s become of you,” he said.
It was hard not taking offense. I had heard Gerin make such blunt statements to others in open meetings of the Grove. Tact wasn’t his strong point. Power was. I draped my jacket over the chair and sat. The wicker had the soft give of too much dampness. Eagan settled himself back into his armchair.
�
��One more Guild director and we’d have a quorum,” Eagan said.
Gerin frowned “Not funny, Manus.”
Eagan rolled his eyes and leaned toward me. “He’s been like this all afternoon. He can’t understand how a sick old fairy can tire of talking politics.”
“And yet, he’s well enough to meet with underlings. No offense, Connor,” said Gerin.
“None taken, sir” I said. My ass.
Manus wagged a finger at me exaggeratedly. “Gerin’s here as a Guild director, Connor. No ‘sir-ring’ to the High Druid allowed.” The smile of a man used to having his way. I decided the best response was to smile myself.
A sudden cough racked Eagan. He took several moments to get under control. Gerin instinctively placed his hand on his back, but didn’t do anything else as far as I could tell. Eagan wiped his hand across his forehead.
“A drink,” he said, gasping.
Gerin sighed and pointed to a sago palm. “He hides whiskey in there from his brownie.”
I got up and stepped to the large frond plant. Rummaging in the stalks, I found a flask, which I handed to Eagan. Gerin had the stern lecturing look I hated as a kid. Dananns had a wicked propensity for alcoholism. I didn’t know whether Eagan had a problem or not, but Gerin’s reference to Tibs as “his brownie” made me want to break out the booze just to annoy him.
Eagan chuckled through a swig. “It’s medicinal.”
Gerin just shook his head.
Eagan directed his gaze at me. “I need to ask you a favor. Ryan macGoren had some dealing with Alvud Kruge. I want to know what it was.”
Ryan macGoren, the golden boy of the Danann fairy social set. Handsome, powerful, rich, and a Guild director on top of it all. The whole package for the right woman. A couple of years ago, I probably would have been hanging out with him. Now, his type annoyed me. Did not see this coming. “Why don’t you just ask him?” I asked.
Eagan leaned toward me for emphasis. “Because I need him as an ally right now, and the question coming from me might be considered insulting under the circumstances.”
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