Mark Del Franco - Undone Deeds

“I want those documents,” I said.

“Of course. But why did I keep them from you? And why don’t I care if you see them now?”

I walked away from her again. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, Meryl, but I don’t like it.”

She came up behind me and touched my shoulder. I shrugged her off. “Don’t touch me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“How long has this been going on?”

She narrowed her eyes as she gazed out the window. “I found the first document my first day back in the Guildhouse. The one you found on my desk.”

“I wasn’t even looking for them then,” I said.

Meryl frowned. “It was the first thing on my mind when I went back. I checked on the leanansidhe , then went and pulled the doc.”

That seemed strange. “You checked on the leanansidhe ?”

She looked baffled, as if trying to make sense of her memories. “I remember thinking I needed to secure the room in case anyone found it.”

“You knew she was there?”

“Yes—I mean, no. Before I returned to the archives, I did not know she was there. I’m sure I didn’t.”

“You said you found her when you were securing the archives,” I said.

Meryl sat on the bed, her face contorted with concentration. She was using her druidic recall, reviewing her memories with a precise clarity. “I did. I”—her eyebrows arched—“lied. I lied about it. I started to tell you but changed the details. The same thing happened when you were in my office. I started to tell you, but I didn’t.”

“You’re not making any sense” I said.

She stood. “Don’t you see the pattern? It’s all about you.”

“And?”

“There’s only one person who could have done this to me, Connor. Nigel must have known I might beat him at his own game. He made me his fail-safe. He put a compulsion in my mind,” she said.

Angry, tired, I leaned against the sill. “Convenient it was Nigel. Shall we ask him?”

“This wasn’t my doing, Connor,” she said.

“Where are the documents?”

“They’re all in my office,” she said.

“Go get them,” I said.

She hesitated, then started dressing. “I didn’t want this to happen.”

“It has,” I said.

She opened the door, her face stained with tears. “I stood over you for ten minutes fighting the urge to stab you in the head. I didn’t do it. If I meant to kill you…. if I didn’t love you, Connor…. you would be dead.”

I had nothing to say to that, so I gave her my back. The door closed, and I listened to her footsteps fade off down the hall. I stared across the rooftops, across the city at night, watching the essence play in swirls through the air.

I was alone.

Meryl sent the documents by courier first thing in the morning. Inside a sealed box, several dozen parchments were tied with a ribbon. She had attached a note: “Believe me.” I didn’t. Not when I got out of bed after having not slept much. Not after the box arrived. Not even after struggling through translations that weren’t telling me much. But as the day wore on, I calmed down and thought more about it.

Gods knew that I understood uncontrollable compulsions. I had seen myself do and say things I didn’t mean, didn’t want to do, and still did them. I also knew Nigel Martin. Nigel always had a backup plan. He knew it was risky doing what he did in front of Briallen. He knew it had a chance of failing—or worse, that he would get caught. He would have had a backup plan. Burying a compulsion in Meryl’s mind would qualify. Why that included an impulse to kill me was the part I couldn’t understand.

I spent the day reading through the documents, trying to decipher the arcane language with little success. I was fluent in modern fey languages, but Early Elvish and Saxon were tough without a dictionary—or a Saxon elf.

I had been trapped inside all day, venturing out only for food. My involvement with Gerry’s death had triggered an elevated military presence around the Rowes Wharf Hotel. Apparently, because I had left with Rand, people assumed I was at the hotel. When I showed up at a vendor stall for some lunch, I got anxious looks and sent more than a few people running. Some of that was fear, of course, but I knew well enough that some of that was informants.

The sending from Melusine couldn’t have come at a better time. She had updated information she wanted to share about the dead merrow. The police weren’t interested, and Eorla wouldn’t respond. I had less chance of getting the police to investigate anything at the moment, but at least I could pass information to Murdock. He might not be on the cases anymore, but he liked closure.

As night fell, I made my way unseen down to the waterfront. With all the law-enforcement focus on the Rowes Wharf Hotel and the Tangle, Melusine and I agreed to meet behind the Fish Pier. The sex trade down there held little interest for anybody under the present circumstances, which meant we could talk unobserved. I slipped through the police checkpoints around the Tangle easily enough—skirted the falling pilings on the harbor and cut across the destroyed buildings behind the World Trade Center through one of the many neighborhood exits. Just like Ceridwen’s people couldn’t cover them all to protect me when Gerry attacked, the police didn’t have a hope of containing anyone in the Tangle determined to leave it.

I gave the darkened cars along the back of the pier a wide berth. Business was going on in those cars, the oldest business in the world. They didn’t need to think I was checking them out. The police had long ago given up rousting people from the place at night. Fey folk knew how to cover their tracks, didn’t fall prey to sting operations, and cleaned up after themselves. As long as the local street workers didn’t cause problems for the daytime fishing operations, the two businesses coexisted.

No one would bother Melusine and me—either the police or the locals—in the middle of the night. The tide rode high as I walked along the concrete head of the pier. In the near distance, the mist wall shimmered in the harbor, a cloud of soft light that shifted in shades of blue and gray. Helicopters circled above it, their searchlights scanning for a glimpse of what lay beneath. All sea traffic had been routed out of the inner harbor until someone could figure out whether the mist itself was dangerous or what it hid.

No one had taken credit for the mist, but given that similar oddities had appeared off the coast of Germany, everyone knew it was some kind of defensive measure by Maeve. Another two were in New York and Washington, but the Seelie Court had not responded to inquiries. Maeve liked to operate in secret, and keeping people off-balance—even her theoretical allies—was normal for her.

Down here, Melusine sent.

A ramp led off the pier to a floating dock in much better condition than the one Murdock and I had had to deal with the other night. Two large fishing boats were tied up, their rise and fall in the slack tide barely perceptible. I checked over my shoulder. The floating docks were considered off-limits. Crossing the owner of a working boat happened once. They were not people to anger. I hopped over the thin chain barring the way. I liked it better down by the boats. I wasn’t visible from the pier, and unless either of the boats had guards, Melusine and I would have privacy.

“Melusine?”

End of the dock, she sent.

“What’s with the sendings?” I asked.

From what I understand, something about the configuration of my vocal cords in the water only allows the sounds of my native language, she sent.

I stopped short. If Melusine was in the water, she wasn’t in human form. I had never seen her in her natural state. “I’m not a big fan of boats.”