Hallow Point (7 page)

Cat standing below on the sidewalk was
aes sidhe
, same as me. I could see it in the expression, the ears, the same wiry build—though his hair was more autumn-leaf brown than sand—but most important, I felt it in the sheer energy gathered around him.

I didn’t know him personally—odd, if he lived in Chicago (yours or ours), but not unheard of. He was younger’n me, though, which was good to know.

Course, he also had buddies.

“Then you don’t want it to get any more so.” He held up a brass amulet in one paw, letting me get a good eyeful as it shifted from a Celtic cross with Gaelic inscription to what looked for all the world like a copper’s badge.

“My name is Raighallan—Officer Raighallan—and I am here with legal writ and authority of Their Honors Sien Bheara and Laurelline of the Seelie Court and municipal government of Chicago.”

In other words, an Otherworld detective—or a soldier of the Court playing detective, anyway. Fucking swell.

“Take you long to memorize that?” I asked.

“And you,” he said, ignoring my quip, “would be the exile currently going by the ludicrous moniker of Mick Oberon.”

I kept my fingers from clenching into fists, but it took so much effort they creaked.

“I wasn’t exiled. I left. And seeing as how you already called me by name, I ain’t exactly bowled over that you know me. Whaddaya want, Raighallan? And also, sorry, can’t help you.”

“Where is it?” he demanded. “How much do you know?”

“I’m getting right tired of answering that question. I dunno. I dunno where it is, or even
what
it is. I don’t
care
where it is or what it is! I’m not involved in any of this!”

“I don’t enjoy being lied to, Oberon,” Raighallan said, tone dropping toward dangerous. “My boss enjoys it even less.”

Boss?
None of the others reacted much to that, so I hadda assume he meant someone else, someone not here. Great.

“Think you probably should get used to it, in your line of work,” I replied. “But I ain’t blowing any smoke here.”

He scoffed. I gotta say, the
aes sidhe
scoff real well. We’ve had a lotta time to get disdainful.

“So it was just a coincidence that you were at the museum?”

“No, genius, I was asked to look at it as a case. Some of us actually have to work to call ourselves detectives. I went, I did a solid up-and-down, I got the piss konked outta me by Herne the goddamn Hunter, and decided I wanted no piece of this action.”

Yep, saw it. Just a flicker in his aura before he could hide it. He hadn’t known Herne had gotten himself involved.

“Now,” I continued before he could open his yap again, “can I go flop already? Or do I gotta get in two dust-ups tonight? ’Cause honestly, those are the only real options I’m offering. I’m done talking about having bupkis to talk about.”

I think he mighta actually considered having his enforcers try to pound some additional knowledge outta me, but either he believed that I didn’t know from nothing, or he figured there were other ways to find out. Instead, he slipped his badge back into his coat, tipped his hat—his ears hadda make the thing as uncomfortable for him as mine do for me—and turned away. Moment more, the others followed.

Hmm…

“By the way, Raighallan?” I called after him.

He looked back over his shoulder.

“Your people on the train were careless. I’d talk at ’em if I were you.”

And there it was again, that flicker I only saw ’cause I’d spent years learning how to spot these things. He had no idea what I was jawing about.

So. Third faction.

“Just remember this is Court business, Oberon. You’re making it harder on everyone—yourself most of all—if you stick your nose in. Keep out of it.”

“I’m
trying
to keep out of it, if you saps would stop hauling me back
into
…”

Ah, screw it. They were making tracks, which is what I wanted.

I fumbled with the key, staggered inside, and don’t even remember the stairs or the hall. I just remember slamming my door, jabbing the lock with the L&G so it
couldn’t
open until I replaced the luck I’d ripped from it, and tumbling face-down on the mattress again.

Took me an awful long time to drift off, though. See, no matter how uninvolved I was, I couldn’t help but wonder…

S
he slunk into my office like a snake in a fox-fur-and-human stole, dress of forest green rustling and sliding as if it couldn’t wait to be shed, and I really can’t go on yapping this way, but I always
did
wanna start a sentence like that.

Anyway, lemme back up a few. Again.

For all my big talk about bunking a few days away, my body had other notions, and I’d woken up just an hour or so past noon. Thought about trying to pass back out, but I already had a couple cylinders up and running, and I knew it. Still kinda worn, still hurting from Herne’s broderick, but not near as bad as last night. Guess snoozing had done me all the good it was gonna, for now.

So, after another ten minutes of cursing the bed, my body, and the world in general still didn’t accomplish anything, I rolled my carcass up off the mattress. First, flick of the wand to patch up the damage to the door lock so I could, y’know, leave if I wanted. Next, quick trip to the not-so-icy icebox and then the not-so-hot hot plate for a slug of not-so-cold milk to get the other half of my motor running—hadda make a note to nudge Ron Maddox, regional manager of the Milkman’s Local as they were missing deliveries a lot these days—and tried to suss out what to do with the day.

Long as it didn’t involve spears or museums.

Go back to digging for Miles Caro, maybe? That was the only paying job I had just then, yeah, but… Wasn’t as though the dead end I’d run up against yesterday had got any less dead. I really had nobody else to grill about him. Even my Mob guy’d come up empty—though, to be fair, he had a lotta stuff on his plate more family than Family right now.

Plus, I was startin’ to wonder if I’d let myself get
too
wrapped up in digging for the gink. I shoulda maybe been payin’ more attention to the Fae side of things, shoulda chased down some of those rumors I mentioned. Obviously, there
were
more of us in your half of Chicago than usual, and if something big was goin’ down, it shouldn’ta caught me so badly by surprise. So yeah, maybe I’d already put more’n enough into the Caro case.

(I probably oughta take the time to put you wise, here. I’m talking about the Caro case ’cause it was on my mind, was what I’d been lookin’ into when this whole shebang started. Other’n a quick bit of coincidence, though—which I’ll get to later—it ain’t tied up in everything else that happened. The whole racket wound up complicated enough; don’t go trying to squeeze Caro into your mental map, too.)

Truthfully, though, I was a little unhappy at the idea of going out and sticking my beezer into too much of
anything
right now. If I bumped into Herne again, or whoever else, I didn’t much expect them to buy it when I told ’em I was looking for something other’n their missing dingus. Since I didn’t know enough to know how scared to be, I’d decided to play it safe and go for “a lot.”

Which, since my place looked a lot like the aftermath of a hobo slumber party, left straightening up as my only good option.

Flogger on the coat rack, where gravity oughta tug
some
of the wrinkles out—the ones that were left I deemed the fittest of their species and worthy of survival. Shirt and slacks in a pile inside the compartment the Murphy bed folded into, followed by the bed itself—a few tongues of bed sheet stuck out from around the frame, as usual, but it’d do.

Quick splash-clean in the attached bathroom—can I just tell you, again, how swell it is not to sweat?—quicker climb into an outfit more or less identical to the last one, and I got to tidying.

Started with the nook where a big honkin’ refrigerator woulda lived, if I’d owned a big honkin’ refrigerator. Instead, it was empty with just a few thick spots of mildew growing in the corners. It was part of the process I used to make the whole niche into a special doorway when I needed it to be, but I didn’t want it spreading, becoming too ugly, so step one was to clean around the edges. After that…

Well, you remember my place well enough, yeah? Cheap desk with a homicidal typewriter (I told you, you don’t get to hear
that
story), cheaper chairs for me’n the guests, couple chests of drawers and filing cabinets. Not the
same
desk and chairs anymore—I’d been forced to replace those after my dust-up with Goswythe the
phouka
—but close enough for jazz. I’d even managed to scrub the bloodstains outta the rug since then. Amazing what shampoo, elbow grease, and a smattering of magic can do for the décor.

So, wiping and scrubbing and dusting, and I got all of about ten minutes’ work behind me when I found myself lingering over the drawer.

The
drawer. My collection of curios, bits and gewgaws I’d collected over the years in lieu of actual lettuce for a lotta my cases.

Old books. Old tools. Fragment of a mortar shell from the Great War. The secret last will and testament—and confession—of Ambrose Bierce. Old silverware with patterns of tarnish that
almost
formed legible runes. Of course, the switch to the old electric chair at Cook County, which I’d gotten from Assistant State’s Attorney Dan Baskin earlier that year. And a couple dozen other nothings.

The whims of the Fae, I tell ya.

Most useless, all but worthless, to the untrained observer. But like I said before, symbols. Language of magic. Most of these I’d never done a thing with, probably never would. A few of ’em? Saved my life or solved cases.

You never know.

It all put me in mind of the museum again. Yeah, I admit it, I was curious. You blame me? Whatever was up, it was weird and it was big. I wanted to know. And I
really
enjoyed the notion of throwing the Seelie Court’s “warning” back in their faces and giving them a notated list of where they could stick it.

I didn’t wanna know
enough
, didn’t wanna show them up
enough
, though. Probably just as well I—

And that’s when the door opened and she slunk into my office like… Well, we been through that.

Just a tiny waft of perfume gusted ahead of her, attention-getting without making you wanna hawk something up. She wore a breezy cloche that matched the green dress so well it hadda be custom, and with that as a contrast, I couldn’t at first tell whether her hair or lips were redder. Not that it was the easiest thing in the world to keep my attention on either, not between her deep, almost violet peepers and… other things.

Yeah, I’m dwelling. I know it, I ain’t that dumb. But this was a hinky experience for me, dig? She was gorgeous, sure, but I’d seen gorgeous before. Even gone a bit dizzy for a mortal woman before, especially during the old days when I was more like your legends make us out to be, and figured mortals were mostly toys. I ain’t proud of that, but I won’t make excuses.

Point is, attraction’s one thing, but I’d never been quite bowled over this way, not by a human, anyway. Not that I coulda told you that at the time. I wasn’t thinkin’ clear enough to realize I wasn’t thinkin’ clear.

Think I forgot to keep up the whole blinking act, but if she glommed to anything weird, she kept it to herself.

“Mr. Oberon?” she asked. Yep, throaty, intense, exactly how she
shoulda
sounded, looking like that.

And hey, she got my name right! That made two in a row, pretty sure I was halfway to tying the record with that.

Not
my first thought at the time, though, savvy?

Play it cool, Mick. Just another visitor, maybe a client, no matter how juicy a tomato she might be.

“That’s me,” I said just a bit too quickly. “C’mon seat. Have an in.”

She blinked once, almost languidly.

“Pardon?”

Well done, jackass. Good going. Cool as summer and smooth as gravel.

I made myself grin, flashed some chompers at her.

“Sorry. Caught me in the middle of reminiscing.” The drawer trundled along its runners and clanged shut as I shoved at it. “How can I help you, Mrs.…?”

“Miss. Webb. Ramona Webb.”

Miss.
Good.

…Mind on business, Micko.

“Please have a seat, Miss Webb.”

She did just that, making the chintzy chair look
real
good all of a sudden. Leaning back, she crossed her knees, rested her purse—
also
a pitch-perfect match for the outfit—in her lap, and gave the office a good once-over. She didn’t look
unimpressed
, anyway, which was about the best I could hope for with this flop.

“I’ve never had cause to visit a private investigator before,” she admitted, turning her attention to me as I settled opposite her. “Do you all work out of such… intriguing conditions?”

“Nah. I’m classy. Most PIs just live in a cheap mess.”

That put a small smile on her button, which was more’n enough to tell me I wanted to see a bigger one. But sittin’ at the desk had also helped me gather what was left of my wits, get out ahead of the stupid.

“What is it you need, Miss Webb?”

“Ah. Well, I…” She fidgeted with the purse, not quite as calm and collected as she was making out. She finally snapped it open, pulled out a pack of Old Golds and a book of matches. She had the snipe in her lips and a match in her fingers before I could manage a word edgewise.

“Ah, I really prefer people not smoke in here.” I said it reluctantly, but I said it. Smell lingers for
weeks
, to my schnozz.

“Oh.” She paused, peering around once more. “Yes, I can imagine you would.”

Then I
did
get a big smile—teasing, apologetic, and mocking all at once, and if you can suss out how she did that, you go right on ahead and put me wise, ’cause I got no idea—right before she struck the match and lit her cigarette anyway.

I couldn’t help but laugh, which woulda ruined any further attempt to get her to snuff the thing even if I’d planned on making one. Anyone else woulda gotten an earful—maybe even a snoutful—over it. Not her.