Mark Del Franco - Unperfect Souls

“What does she have to do with my father?”

I told him. All of it. About what she said and what his father said. About Amy Sullivan. I didn’t tell him things she said that I didn’t share with the police about the commissioner taking bribes. Let her make a public accusation. By the time I finished, Murdock had his hands clamped firmly over his face.

“She’s a liar, Leo. Remember that,” I finished. He shook his head, and I realized he was crying. I didn’t know what to think anymore, but at that moment, I refused to believe Moira Cashel was telling the truth—about anything. “It’s not true, Leo.”

He wiped his face with his hands and let out a deep sigh as he stared out the window. “This is my fault. If I hadn’t called you in on the case, you would have never gone to Eagan.”

“No. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I didn’t go to Eagan, he called me. He knew Sekka was hiding Vize, and Vize wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me. It’s my fault, Leo. If I had done my job right three years ago, Vize would not be on the loose today.”

“Vize didn’t make my father pull a gun,” he said.

“Cashel was planning something anyway, Leo. She wasn’t going to stop until your father was disgraced. This is some Guild trick.”

He shook his head. “No, no. It’s my fault. I argued with my father about his meeting with Jark. He admitted he was letting it happen, Connor. He liked seeing the fey tear each other apart. That’s when I confronted him about her. And then I told him about me, Connor. I threw it in his face that his son had a fey ability. I told him about my body shield. I primed his anger at the fey, and the last words I spoke to my father were angry. It’s my fault.”

“Dammit, Leo. Don’t let her do this. Don’t let whatever Maeve and the Guild are planning do this to you. That’s what they want.”

He covered his eyes as the tears flowed again. “I can’t fix this.”

I grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled us together. He broke down when I did, sobbing into my chest as I rocked him. Joe crept from the backseat and draped himself on Leo’s shoulder. “Let me take you home, Leo. You need to rest.”

He shook his head against me. “I can’t go back there tonight. I can’t face them. I can’t be who they need right now.”

“They’re your family, Leo. They love you.”

He kept shaking his head. “I can’t do it tonight.”

Joe picked up his head. I know a place.

Only in the Weird will a bar let you sit quietly in the corner wearing a bloodstained jacket and drink yourself blind. Of course, Joe would know such a place. It had no name or windows or, for that matter, respectability. A neighborhood guy by the name of Carmine ran a number of places like it—hidden, quiet, and invitation-only. The music was killer blues, the smoke was thick, and the dancers came in all shapes, sizes, sexes, and species. A vaguely sweet scent filled the air, an aromatic happy drug that skirted close enough to legal that the law let it slide. It helped patrons focus on their beer and their dates and numbed the ache of whatever drove them to such places.

When we first walked in, I thought it was a bad idea. The next day would be tough on Murdock, between the press and the funeral arrangements and being the rock of the family. Joe deduced the situation better than I did. He said Murdock needed the breathing room and would crash before he became too drunk. He was right. Once the liquor started flowing, the waves of emotions sapped his strength, and he was done in a little over an hour.

As dawn neared, a small sober part of my brain convinced me to put Murdock in a cab home. Joe went along for the ride, convincing the driver to skip the fare in exchange for some flit karma. I watched the broken taillights of the cab coast away and stumbled through the mounds of snow. If Murdock was half-asleep by then, I wasn’t. Mental images continued flashing through my mind: the commissioner’s gun going off, Moira Cashel’s bitter face, Eagan slumped on the floor. The commissioner dead. Scott Murdock was dead. The idea staggered me so much, and yet it paled next to whatever Leo was feeling.

“And for what?” I said. My own voice startled me as the close-in buildings amplified it. I wasn’t prone to talking to myself, but everything that had happened pissed me off.

I’d lied to Murdock. I needed to tonight, needed to help him believe for a few more hours that his father was a good man. I never liked the commissioner because he always—always from the beginning—had treated me like crap. And I never knew why until now. I lied to Murdock because the truth was so appalling I didn’t want to admit to it.

I believed Moira Cashel.

It wasn’t her uncanny Amy Sullivan glamour or the pitch-perfect voice or even the small, trivial facts she knew about how I had met her. A skilled fey with the right information mimicked things like that all the time. I didn’t put it past the Guild to play with my mind that way for some gain.

But tonight had changed my thinking. The look on the commissioner’s face as he pulled the gun convinced me. No one pulled a gun over such stupid and obvious lies, at least not someone like Scott Murdock. But he did because he believed her, and he believed her because she wasn’t lying. She had betrayed him as Amy Sullivan and had suckered him as Moira Cashel.

Scott Murdock was taking bribes. It was the only explanation for how the Guild was getting away with what was happening in the Weird. He had cut some deal with Ryan macGoren for some mutual benefit.

He was dirty.

I had slept with his wife.

“Danu’s motherfreakin’ blood,” I said.

Uno appeared in the road.

“What the hell do you want?” The dog cocked its head as I walked around it. He reappeared in front of me.

“Leave me alone, dammit.” I went around him again, then walked backwards. “You’re a lousy harbinger of doom, you know that? I got shot in the face , and you didn’t even bother to show up .”

He loped around me and stopped again, dodging as I tried to pass. “Go away, dammit. Go bother Shay.”

I shoved him with my leg. He stumbled sideways with a snarl that rose into a bark, then he vanished. I circled in place, waiting for him to come back. A cold wind swept down the street, but he was gone. “Good,” I muttered.

The dark mass in my head shifted, and I pressed the heel of my hand against my temple. I laughed. I practically kicked a hound from Hel, it ran away, and the worst I had to show for it was a headache. I pulled my jacket tighter, the flimsy silk doing little to warm me.

My memory skipped to Eagan’s bedroom and the faint dark haze in his essence. It was and wasn’t like mine. I couldn’t see mine in a visual sense, but I could feel it and had seen MRIs of it. It was a dense thing, a black concentration of shadow at the base of my skull, pressing right on the old brainstem. From what I saw of Eagan’s condition, the darkness was more a dull haze.

I turned the next corner, and the damned dog was back. Uno shied before I took another step, then faded away.

The dark mass blocked my abilities, but Eagan didn’t have that problem. Clearly. Gillen Yor thought the haze was responsible for his weakness. My dark mass devoured essence, but Eagan’s seemed to just drain it away.

I stopped. I had seen that before. I had seen the darkness drain off essence like it was feeding on it. The leanansidhe did it on demand. She might not know what it truly was, but she wasn’t dying from it, and it wasn’t blocking her abilities. She knew how to use it.

Uno appeared, sat in the middle of the sidewalk, and barked once. I frowned. “If you’re only good for stopping muggings, go back to bed, you stupid mutt. It’s ten degrees, and the only things out here are me and you.”