Mark Del Franco - Uncertain Allies

We curled on the futon in the living room, Meryl’s head tucked under my chin, my arms wrapped around her. “I missed this.”

“It feels like yesterday to me,” she said.

“Yeah, that was sweet,” I said.

She poked me with an elbow. “You have no idea how odd this feels, like time travel or something. Who’s president?”

“It wasn’t that long,” I said.

She giggled and shifted in my arms. “You know, people wish they can go to bed and wake up three months later and all their problems will be gone. I did, but now there are new problems to contend with.”

“Don’t think about it yet. No one knows you’re awake except me and Briallen,” I said.

“And whoever she’s told by now,” she said.

I ran my hand along her thigh. “You told Eorla.”

“You said she was upset about what happened. A sending was common courtesy,” she said.

I tickled her. “Yeah, you’re sooo courteous.”

She struggled against me, and I stopped. “Yeah, well, the bitch owes me. I lose three months, and she gets to be Queen of the Unseelie Court.”

I laughed. “That’s a little exaggeration.”

Meryl rolled and looked up at me. “Grey? The solitaries and the Dead have rallied to her cause. She took leadership against Maeve and Donor. That’s how the Unseelie Court forms. It’s a gestalt fey court with attitude.”

I traced my finger along her chin. “You’re right. I assumed you had to be a solitary to lead the Court.”

“Nope. Just angry,” she said.

“That must be why Maeve’s so freaked out. Donor says she’s moving her troops into defensive postures,” I said.

“Donor says? Since when do you talk to the Elven King?”

I leaned over and kissed her. “Since he came to Boston to threaten me and Eorla. He’s much fatter in person.”

Meryl propped herself up on an elbow. “The Elven King is here. In Boston.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s bad,” she said.

“Well, yeah,” I said.

“No, it’s bad because the Elven King was in my dream,” she said.

Meryl had a geasa on her for her Dreaming. If someone was in her Dreams, she was compelled to tell them. “Damn. Are you going to tell him?”

She settled down on her side. “Hell, no. I have to tell people what I Dream if I meet them. I don’t have to seek them out unless I want to.”

“What did you Dream?” I asked.

She didn’t answer for the longest time. “I don’t remember.”

Druids never forget unless, like me, something was wrong with them. “What do you mean?”

“I can see the Dream, but only the shape of it. The details are vague. That’s never happened before,” she said. She didn’t speak for so long, I thought she had fallen asleep. “I’m probably burned-out out from knocking Nigel into the trance.”

I debated whether to argue. Meryl liked to choose her discussions, and forcing her to talk about something didn’t work. I let it go. I had her back. That was all that mattered. “I wish I had been there.”

“I took care of it, Grey. Stop with the he-man thing,” she said.

I chuckled. “Oh, that’s not it. I wish I could have seen the look on his face when you beat him at his own mind game, then slammed the door on his ass. That bastard lied to me. He said it was safe. I don’t care what Briallen says. I’m glad you did what you did.”

She leaned over and kissed me. Gods, I missed her kiss. For months I had pressed my lips against hers with no response. I pulled her closer. She nestled down against my chest. “I never trusted him, you know.”

“I warned you,” I said.

“Yeah, but you were angry and bitter about him. I didn’t trust him because Nigel never does anything without an ulterior motive. I liked talking to him, and I learned a helluva lot from him, but I always knew someday he would disappoint me in some despicable manner short of murder. I underestimated him,” she said.

“You’re a lot smarter than me.”

She patted my chest and sighed. “I know.”

I poked her, and she laughed. “Why did I miss you?”

“ ’Cause you were bored,” she said.

“I wish.”

Her breathing became slow and even. My eyes slipped closed in the dark. For the first time in a long time, I was happy—allowed myself to feel happy. Despite everything, the one thing I feared was not having Meryl with me. I don’t know when that feeling happened and didn’t know where it would lead, but I liked it as much as it scared me.

“By the way, Grey, I love the plywood curtains,” Meryl said.

I kissed the top of her head. “That’s why I missed you.”

A phone ringing in the middle of the night was never a good sign. I groped for my cell as Meryl groaned beside me. The caller ID showed Murdock’s number. Meryl mumbled a hello and pulled the covers over her head. Between the months lying helpless in bed and the huge expenditure of essence at Briallen’s, she was exhausted. Even powerful druids didn’t have the body strength of a Danann fairy. We needed sleep to replenish essence, to say nothing about improving our dispositions.

“We have another body,” Murdock said, when I opened the phone.

“Where?”

“The Tangle. You need to see this one.”

I dressed in the dark as he gave me directions. He offered to send a squad car to pick me up, but the Tangle was only about a mile off. It was faster to run—maybe walk—than wait for a car to make the lights to my place and back. He didn’t say more because he wanted me to have my own first impression. I kissed Meryl’s head before I left. She answered with a snore. After months of no reaction, she made me smile.

I jogged down Old Northern Avenue, dogging through late-night crowds on the sidewalk. The party crowds thinned out as I reached the burned-out section of the avenue. No more buildings meant no more business. Boston’s World Trade Center and its boat terminal had escaped the fire, but it was locked down for the night. Not far past it was where we had found the first body.

This part of the neighborhood was pretty damaged, but as I neared the Tangle, the rougher crowd that sought its entertainments began to appear. The local gangs had fragmented after last summer, but they existed in small groups. Elf and dwarf thugs eyed each other on opposing corners, flexing their muscles over turf. The groups were smaller, but it was only a matter of time before they started growing and taking over city blocks. Hard-core partiers dressed in leather and vinyl hustled their way along the sidewalk, searching for new clubs and drugs. Solitary fey lurked in doorways, their strange appearances adding an air of menace as they muttered their sales pitches for exotic spells and potions. No matter how beaten down the Weird was, it always managed to rise again in the same desperate ways.

I paused on the sidewalk and faced the incandescent glow of the Tangle. The directions Murdock had given me led a few blocks in. I had to take a deep breath to prepare myself for the next part. I tapped my body essence and activated what was left of my body shield. Hardened essence covered my head and parts of my chest and arms, nothing like Murdock’s full protection. My body shield had been damaged in my fight with Bergin Vize. When I met him, I discovered Vize didn’t have a shield at all but depended on a blue-skinned nixie named Gretan, one of the small river fey, to protect him.

My shield served as an early-warning system these days. It activated on its own, reacting to heightened essence like a cat bristling with fear. Hardened essence could protect me from the collateral pain caused by scrying, but without someone else’s shield, I had to rely on my pathetic remnants until I found Murdock. The Tangle was a nest of scrying. Walking into it was going to hurt.