Mark Del Franco - Unperfect Souls

Meryl’s lips twitched into a smile, and she nodded in acquiescence. “Been there, baby.”

“Hey! I think I’ve helped both of you a few times.” They turned their heads and stared at me, that stare that women have like the calm before a storm. “What?”

Meryl leaned over and placed her hand on mine. “Grey? When you make a mess and someone else starts to clean it up and you show up at the eleventh hour to help? You’re not really solving someone else’s problem.”

Murdock hooted. Like an owl, hooted. I glowered at him. “I’m taking that as betrayal of the unwritten male code of brotherhood.”

He held his hands up. “Hey, there’s an escape clause that says I can get out of the way when a guy pisses off two women at the same time.”

I tossed my napkin on the table and crossed my arms. “I hate everybody.”

Briallen grinned as she stood and placed both hands on Murdock’s shoulders. Meryl narrowed her eyes, then looked at me suspiciously.

“Leonard, why don’t you take poor, misunderstood Connor upstairs, and he can make us all drinks?” Briallen asked.

“My pleasure,” he said.

We left them in the kitchen and went up to the second-floor parlor. Briallen used the room as a study. When I was a kid, I used to find her sitting by the blue fire that always burned in the fireplace, reading books in languages I didn’t know or standing at the window thinking. Next to the window, a small table held glasses and liquor bottles, mostly ports and liqueurs. I flipped some glasses up and sorted through the bottles while Murdock dropped in a chair.

“I’m beat,” he said.

I found the always reliable Jameson’s and poured a glass. “How’d things go at the station house?”

He shrugged. “It was fine. No one knew I had lost my gun, so I didn’t have to deal with that. I told Ruiz I had a headache in the morning, but it was better.”

Ruiz was captain of Area B, which covered the Weird. I didn’t envy the man having the police commissioner’s son on his team, more than one of them, actually. “You lied? That’s not like you.”

Another shrug. “No one knew what really happened. It would have been a lot of red tape if I gave a full report. It’s over. No harm, no foul.”

“I told Keeva you went missing,” I said.

“Yeah, the old man told me she called. I told him you and I got separated in the storm is all,” he said.

I turned back to the table to cover my frown. Murdock was by-the-book. Pragmatic, but he bent rules more than he broke them. “What do you want to drink?” I asked.

“Do you think Briallen has any Guinness?”

“I was thinking maybe we should run down Jark later, see if he has anything new to say,” I said.

“And?”

Surprised again, I looked at him. “I thought you didn’t like to drink if you were going to be working?”

He smiled. “It’s one beer, Connor. That dinner deserves a nice finish.”

Briallen was a good cook. “I’ll see what she has.”

I slowly descended the stairs, trying to decide if I should be worried about his behavior. Murdock was calm, steady. Honest. The irony that I was worried he was acting more like me wasn’t lost on me. Voices from the kitchen caught my ear. I paused on the last step.

“I said maybe you’re spending too much time with him, not to avoid him,” Briallen said.

“I know what I’m doing,” Meryl said.

“I’m concerned,” Briallen said.

“And I’m not. It’s different this time.”

“Do you remember something?” Briallen asked.

“Do you?” Meryl responded.

A long pause followed. The longer it lasted, the more likely one of them would sense me, so I entered the kitchen. “Remember what?”

Meryl shifted on her stool. “What?”

“I thought I heard Briallen ask you if you remembered something,” I said.

She waved her hand and picked up her wineglass. “Oh, it’s nothing. Briallen and I refuse to tell each other how much we remember of Faerie.”

I covered my curiosity by opening the fridge. “I thought you didn’t remember any of it.”

The fey—the Old Ones—who lived in Faerie before Convergence over a hundred years ago remembered a world far different than the modern one. People like Maeve and Donor wanted to get back to it at all costs. The here-born like me, born after Convergence and never knew the place, were sometimes ambivalent about it. I wasn’t, though. I didn’t care at all.

Meryl chuckled. “Nice try, Grey.”

I faced her with two Guinnesses. “Can’t blame me for trying.”

Meryl won’t tell me if she’s an Old One or not. When the fey came through to this reality, their memories were damaged. Some didn’t remember who they were. Others didn’t remember anyone else. No one remembered what caused Convergence. If Meryl was an Old One, I was having sex with a centenarian. When I thought about it, I waffled between whether that was cool or creepy.

“And Briallen keeps trying, too,” Meryl said. “Until she tells me what she knows, I ain’t tellin’ what I know— if I know.”

Briallen leaned back against the sink and shook her head. “I know more than she wants to believe.”

Meryl smirked. “Back at ya, Bree. For instance, what’s the little game you’re playing with Murdock?”

Briallen looked at me. “I told you that you shouldn’t have invited her.”

I shrugged. “He would have been suspicious otherwise.”

Meryl waved her hands above her head. “Okay, I’m still here and still want to know what’s going on. You weren’t very subtle about it, Briallen. That last bit with the hands on his shoulders lit him up like a candle.”

“He won’t go to AvMem or New England Medical, so I asked Briallen to check him out,” I said.

Meryl arched an eyebrow. “And?”

Briallen smiled. “He’s in perfect health. Extraordinary health for a human.”

I put my arm around Meryl. “I’ll be your best friend if you keep this to yourself.”

She slipped out from under my arm. “Oh, happy me. Just so you know, Grey, I have my own gynecologist, so don’t go doing me any favors.”

She walked out, shaking her head.

Briallen pursed her lips. “Are you going to tell him?”

“Not tonight. Eventually.”

“And what about you? When was the last time you went to see Gillen?”

“He can’t do anything, Briallen. If he had any new ideas, he would have called. He hasn’t,” I said.

She stared at her foot as she scuffed at the floor. “Within the Wheel are many paths, but only you can find the one you need.”

I wanted to tell her about the leanansidhe , but she wouldn’t approve. Whatever the dark mass was in my head, it was beyond Briallen’s knowledge and skill. She’d be concerned if I told her about using the leanansidhe to figure it out. Actually, she’d be afraid. I certainly was. But the normal path wasn’t helping me, and where I needed to go was not a place Briallen would approve. “And if I don’t find my path, it will find me. That’s how you taught me the Wheel works.”

She caressed my cheek. “It’s nice to know you listened occasionally.”

I kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t worry so much. Things work out eventually. Let’s get upstairs before Meryl convinces Murdock to plant whoopee cushions for us.”

After-dinner drinks wound into the early-morning hours. For a brief time—too brief—the events of the world outside Briallen’s second-floor parlor faded behind the softly falling snow. The four of us sat before the blue-flamed fire, laughing and at ease with each other as we talked into the night. Beer and wine and liqueurs flowed, loosening tongues and relaxing muscles. To be trite, it was nice. Nice in the way nostalgia colored our memories or the way a day felt hung in suspension when all the chores and errands were done and there was nothing left to do but curl up and do nothing of consequence. It had been a long time since I’d had the feeling, had it and appreciated it.