CHAPTER SIX
Backwards up the mossy glen Turned and trooped the goblin men
The sudden blare of the television brought Tango snapping out of a deep sleep, her eyes wide and her silver knife already in hand. Stunned by the abrupt awakening, she watched the perky hostess on the screen of the small set atop Riley’s dresser for almost a minute before the time imprinted itself on her brain. Eight o’clock. Riley used his television for an alarm clock. Tango groaned. Her eyelids drooped back down. She’d seen a remote control around somewhere as she'd tumbled into bed late last night. She groped for it amidst the litter of Riley’s dirty clothes.
“...all coming up in the next half-hour,” chattered the television hostess brightly. “But now here’s Oliver with this morning’s news.”
The shot changed to a casually dressed man with a bank of cluttered desks behind him and a serious, deeply concerned look on his face. “Thanks, Jennifer. There’s been...”
The man disappeared into silent oblivion as Tango found the remote and clicked it at the television. She let her knife vanish and collapsed back down onto the mattress. Riley got up at eight o’clock. She couldn’t believe it. Tango closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep. She, at least, was still willing to sleep until noon. Usually that was a function of the hours she kept working at Pan’s. Kithain tended to be a little more energetic than the average human, but even they needed and enjoyed sleep. Today, especially, Tango had sleep to catch up on. The stress of Riley’s disappearance, of the visit to Duke Michael’s court, of Epp’s geasa, of her own abortive attempts to reach the airport... of the entire wearying and maddeningly frustrating previous day, had left her utterly drained.
There was no hurry for her to get up. There would be precious little she could do until the sun went down and Miranda could bring her Riley’s bags from the airport. She might as well sleep. Tango pulled a sheet over her head and buried her face in a pillow. She was glad that she had met Miranda last night. It had been a fortunate meeting. What she had told the vampire was true — it made an enormous difference for her just to be able to talk to someone, anyone, who could understand what was happening, someone who understood what hid in the world’s darkness. It didn’t hurt to have Miranda as an ally, either. She didn’t think any of the Kithain of Toronto would be particularly sympathetic toward her or Riley, even if she were inclined to seek out their company. She had considered going to Ruby, the old gatekeeper, but that would have brought her back to Duke Michael’s doorstep. And that was the last place she wanted to go, right now.
Tango turned her head and screwed her eyes tightly shut, trying to find unconsciousness again. So what was she going to do until Miranda came? The usual tourist attractions came to mind, but they hardly seemed appropriate. Tango couldn’t bear the thought of wandering mindlessly through some museum exhibit or art gallery. She disliked shopping. Maybe she could find a gym and lose a few hours working out. The idea of slamming weights around was satisfyingly physical. Swimming, a run around the city. She almost wished Miranda hadn’t ordered her out of Hopeful last night. She missed the release of her nightly shift at Pan’s.
She peered out from the sheets at the clock on Riley’s bedside table. Eight-oh-eight. Tango closed her eyes again and waited as long as she could, then looked at the clock again. Eight-thirteen. She groaned and pushed herself up. She wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep. Her mind was awake and demanding that her body follow its example.
A long, hot shower helped. Riley’s bathroom was as disorganized as the rest of his apartment. The bathtub was cluttered with a profusion of half-used shampoos, conditioners and specialty soaps, each discarded as Riley’s attention was caught by something new7. Tango washed with a rough mud soap and lathered her hair with a shampoo that smelled of coconuts, then wrapped herself in one of Riley’s robes and walked barefoot into the living room. The VCR under the big television in the living room read eight-thirty. Tango turned on the TV. The same hostess as before came on, passing the spotlight to the same anchorman for another round of news. Tango went into the kitchen to look for coffee.
“Murder our top story this morning,” said the anchorman, “as Toronto’s gay community deals with another violent death.” Tango paused, coffee canister in hand. “Our cameras were at the scene on Gloucester Street shortly after the police arrived.”
Tango ducked back out into the living room in time to see flashing lights against a dawn-lit sky. Ambulances and police cars were parked in front of a big old Victorian brick house that looked as though it had been converted into apartments. People dressed in shorts and T-shirts, sweatpants, housecoats and all kinds of other clothing stood and watched as ambulance attendants brought a black bodybag on a stretcher out through the front door. “Dead is twenty-six-year-old Todd Hyde, a bartender at a popular Church Street bar. Police aren’t saying much, but there is widespread speculation that the killing is related to the beating death yesterday of John Elliott. Unconfirmed sources say that Hyde was beaten, and that there are other similarities in the circumstances of the two deaths. A news conference has been scheduled for eleven o’clock. We’ll have more for you on our noon report.”
The picture changed to scenes of destruction in some foreign city, but Tango was no longer listening. She sat down on the couch, still holding the coffee canister, and stared at the screen. Todd was dead. Tango slid down onto her knees and scrambled over to the television. She flipped through the channels rapidly, hoping to catch another segment about the murder on some other newscast. There was nothing. All of the local stations had led with the story^ while the American stations had no mention of it at all. The national news service covered it briefly, showing footage picked up from the first station but not speculating on the facts behind the death. Tango watched again as Todd’s plastic-shrouded corpse was brought out and placed in a waiting ambulance.
And she was ashamed that her first thought wasn’t about the blond-haired man who had tried to help her. It was about Miranda.
The vampire had lied to her. She had said that she and her pack weren’t involved with the first murder at Hopeful, but here was a second murder on a night the vampires had been there! Miranda had...
No. Tango ground her teeth. She was jumping to conclusions. Just because vampires preyed on humans didn’t mean that vampires were involved every time a human died violently. The news said Todd had been beaten to death. As Miranda had pointed out, it was very unlikely that a vampire would beat someone to death. Tango took a deep breath. There was bound to be blood loss in any murder committed by a vampire. If that was true, it would come out later, at the news conference or in an autopsy. In the meantime, she would trust Miranda. She had no choice anyway. She needed the vampire to bring her Riley’s bags.
Riley.
Tango sat back. Both the murdered men and Riley were connected with Hopeful. Could whoever had kidnapped Riley be responsible for the murders as well? She rocked back and forth. If they were... she remembered her notice, torn down from Hopeful’s message board. If they were, her inquiries had led them to Todd. But why? The mysterious kidnappers had to know where she was, had to know that someone, at least, was staying in Riley’s apartment. Why hadn’t they come for her instead?
She tried to persuade herself that it was a coincidence, like the vampires being at Hopeful. There was no need to invoke mysterious figures and the dark forces of the world. Human hatred could be enough to lead someone to murder. The murders could just be gay-bashing, someone lashing out at homosexuals. Just gay-bashing. Tango felt disgusted at herself for thinking it, but she almost hoped that that was all it was.
She reached out and turned off the television. She considered the canister of coffee sitting on the couch. Coffee would taste good right now, but she really didn’t need the jittery high of caffeine. She needed something to do. Working out wasn’t a possibility anymore. She didn’t want to just put in time waiting. She needed to feel like she was doing something,
* * *
Something ended up being the task she had believed impossible last night: sifting through Riley’s belongings for some clue about what was going on. The task still seemed impossible, but now Tango was desperate. She at least had to make the attempt. There was the slim chance that the kidnappers had missed something in the chaos of the apartment.
Of course, they had known what to look for. She didn’t.
Tango started her search with the cabinet where the yellow file had been hidden. For the most part, the old sideboard contained nothing more than unsorted papers and a few large pieces of dusty dinnerware relegated to the top shelf. The papers were largely articles and comic strips cut out of newspapers. Occasionally there was an entire newspaper. The clippings were often surprisingly old. One reported the first launch of the American space shuttle. Others focused on the fashion trends of the early eighties, or on advances in computer technology. One stack the thickness of a telephone book covered four seasons of the Winter Olympics. Tango wanted to scream in frustration. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to what Riley had kept. She tried invoking a kenning and looking over each piece of paper closely. Riley might have used Glamour to disguise something of true importance. But he hadn’t. Each newspaper clipping was exactly what it appeared to be. Tango swept her gaze around the apartment, searching for anything else that might radiate the Glamour of enchantment. There was nothing.
With a sigh, she pushed the papers back into the cabinet and slowly began to sift through the rest of the apartment’s contents. Somewhere along the way, her search turned into a half-hearted attempt at cleaning and organizing. Epp, Tango reflected bitterly, would have been proud of her. She couldn’t help tidying up. She had to try and make some sense of Riley’s belongings. Books went into one pile, loose papers into another, discarded clothes into a third. Dishes went into the kitchen to join an already precarious pile in and beside the sink. Odds and ends — a paperweight, a little brass bowl, a blown-glass sculpture she had once given Riley — stayed where they were. As soon as Tango had an open space cleared, she began to fill it up again with objects and papers that struck her as suspicious. Or at least potentially suspicious. There was no way of being sure. The pile became awkwardly large very quickly.
It felt strange to be going through Riley’s things. Some of what she found astounded her, or surprised her, or simply embarrassed her. She had done this sort of thing before, of course, but that had been when close friends had died. And there had always been other people with her to share in the searching and in the mourning.
For all she knew, Riley could be dead already.
She refused to let herself think that. Tango looked at the big, old-fashioned dictionary in her hands, then over at the clock on the VCR. Eleven-thirty. She had been at this for over two hours. The police would have held their news conference on Todd’s murder. She put the dictionary down on top of a stack of old magazines. This was pointless. She wasn’t going to find anything. With a sigh, she sat down on the couch. The air in the apartment had become hot and sticky, a reflection of the weather outside. Either the air conditioning wasn’t working, or the building was too old to have it. Her shifting and sorting had created a haze of dust in the still air. Dust clung to her sweaty skin as well, and settled in her hair. Another shower would be good, she decided. Another shower, and then she could watch the noon news report. In fact, if it wasn’t for the news, she might have been tempted to spend the rest of the day under the relaxing comfort of falling water. She could almost empty her mind of all thoughts, forgetting about Riley and about Todd. Almost, but not quite.
When she came out of the bathroom, Epp was waiting for her.
Tango stared at the gray-haired Kithain seated patiently on the couch. It took her a moment longer to register that the apartment was absolutely, spotlessly clean. Two big bags and a blue recycling box full of papers waited beside the door. Old human fairy stories told about the ability of boggans to accomplish fantastic tasks — particularly household chores — incredibly quickly when no one was watching them. The stories weren’t exaggerating. Tango growled and advanced on Epp, already letting Glamour fill her and change her into her nocker seeming. “What the hell did I tell you last night?” she hissed. “And how did you get in here?” “I have my ways,” the boggan replied calmly. Tango suspected that Epp’s ways involved a set of duplicate keys. She seized the front of Epp’s dress and hauled her to her feet. Tango’s knife appeared in her other hand. She wouldn’t actually harm the other Kithain, but Epp didn’t have to know that.
“Get out.”
Epp eyed the knife with a calm that just barely disguised a deep, deep terror. “I’m afraid I can’t. I have orders from the duke. His Jester must take a direct hand in planning the Highsummer Party.”
“Really?” asked Tango with angry skepticism. “Why?” She twisted the knife so that light flashed menacingly from its edge. Epp shuddered.
“You’re the only one authorized to use the charge card,” she said, a little reluctantly. Epp pointed at her purse and her ever-present notebook, still sitting on the couch. “In there. It looks like a gold card.”
Tango didn’t release her. “A credit card? A Kithain credit card?”
“Humans don’t let us just take things. We still have to pretend to pay for what we need, and large amounts of cash suddenly turning into leaves in a store’s register is very conspicuous.” Epp looked bitter. “Up until now, the duke had authorized me to use it as well. I even had my own card. But since Riley’s card is missing with him, Duke Michael has had it canceled, and told me to give mine to you.” She glared at Tango. “I don’t like this either. Put me down and we’ll get going.”
“The only place I want to see you going is out the door.” Tango dropped Epp, then reached for the boggan’s purse. It was fat and black, very matronly, but as neat as Tango would have expected any of Epp’s possessions to be. The account card was in her wallet, a shining piece of plastic that looked more like real gold than any actual gold card Tango had ever seen. She could feel the Glamour in it and looked at it again, this time using a kenning. The card was still just a card, except that instead of a magnetic strip, there was a fat, pulsing leech clinging to the back. “Lovely.” She shoved the purse at Epp, but kept the card. “Do without it,” she said nastily.
“What?”
“I’m not in the mood to go shopping. You must have money of your own. Use it. I’m not doing you any favors.”
Epp drew a hissing breath. “Come with me,” she threatened, “or I’ll tell the duke you were going to leave Toronto.”
“Do it!” Tango snapped back sharply. “Then, when the duke has punished me, we’ll see if the next Jester is willing to let you push them around so easily. Or,” she added, “maybe I could start organizing the party myself.”
“You wouldn’t!” Epp gasped.
Tango felt like she was in high school, arguing over who was going to plan the senior prom. But it was her only leverage against Epp, and she was going to run it into the ground even if it meant she actually had to wear a prom dress. She gave Epp a steady stare and said, “I would.”
There wasn’t a trace of bluff in her voice, and Epp knew it. The boggan became very quiet. Tango sat down on the couch. It was time for the noon-hour news. She looked for the remote control. It wasn’t where she had left it; Epp had put it on top of the television. Tango walked over, picked it up and turned on the television, then went back to the couch.
“Tango...” Epp began.
Tango cut her off in a voice that would tolerate no contradiction. “After the news.” Let the older Kithain stew.
The news came on with a flourish of dramatic music. The noon anchor wore the same expression of concern that the morning anchor had, the same somber expression that news anchors everywhere wore. “Good afternoon. Police held a news conference this morning, giving out details about last night’s murder of bartender Todd Hyde.”
The camera cut to a scene of a heavyset man wearing a jacke
t and tie. The harsh lights of conflicting television cameras gave him an odd, depthless look, wiping away the shadows that might have given him character. He was clearly reading from a prepared statement. “The deceased was found at 6:30 A.M. by a building superintendent responding to complaints from a resident on the lower floor about water seeping through the bathroom ceiling. Upon entering the deceased’s apartment, he discovered the body and the police were summoned.” The spokesman looked up for a moment, perhaps trying to give the illusion of spontaneity to his words, but the flat tone of his voice spoiled the attempt. “The seepage of water was caused by an overflowing bathtub, but the body was found in the bedroom. Preliminary examination suggests that the deceased was beaten to death. His body was then straightened, his arms crossed over his chest, and pennies placed on his eyelids. An autopsy is currently underway.” His eyes went back to his script. “The investigation is being conducted by the homicide squad. Todd Hyde was last seen leaving work at Hopeful, a Church Street bar, at one-thirty last night. If you have any information, please call...”
Someone out of the shot called out, “So this is related to the Elliott murder? Do you have any leads?” The police spokesman looked startled, as if he hadn’t expected any questions.
“We can’t comment on that at this time.”
Tango clenched her jaw. She had been hoping for something more. The same footage she had seen at eight-thirty was played again as the anchor recapped the death in terms slightly more graphic and speculative, then added, “Reaction in Metro’s gay community has been swift.”
A new scene. Tango recognized the interior of Hopeful and the little shrine commemorating John Elliott. Now Todd’s picture had joined his customer’s. A man was speaking, his appearance as different from the police spokesman’s as possible: his head was shaved, he had multiple earrings, and he wore a T-shirt printed with a vivid pink triangle. “The police are doing nothing! Bashing is on the rise and the police aren’t taking it seriously. John’s and Todd’s deaths are hate crimes. Some lunatic is out there preying on homosexuals, murdering us, and what are the police doing? What are the straights doing? They’re shaking their heads and saying ‘Oh, it was probably their own fault.’ Well, we’re not going to let Toronto ignore this.”
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