Mark Del Franco - Unquiet Dreams

I stalked across the street toward them. It’s a measure of how my face must have looked, because the small crowd parted as I came up on the curb. I went up to the first dwarf, the same one whom I had spoken to earlier, and poked him on the shoulder. “Who’d you call? Moke?”

At the mention of Moke, several onlookers moved farther back. A couple even turned heel and walked away. The dwarf looked down at his shoulder, then back at me. “Nobody.”

I poked him again. “Was it Moke?”

He grabbed my forearm with a hand like a vise grip, and my body shields activated. They’re not much good anymore, just enough to blunt the force of a blow, but I would still feel it. In my anger, I’d forgotten. You don’t poke a dwarf if you can’t follow through with a fight.

“I said nobody.” He flung me away from him, and I sprawled into the street. As I got to my feet, he moved toward me. Before he reached me, a blur of pink light flashed between us, and he stopped.

Joe hovered in front of the dwarf. In one hand, the charred remains of the Nike dangled. In the other, the sharp white flame of his sword pointed directly at the dwarf’s nose.

“Got a problem, shorty?” Joe asked. He grinned, a tough, cold line across his face. Joe has a repertoire of grins. This one was for sending chills down the spine, and it works like you wouldn’t believe. The dwarf didn’t move and didn’t take his eyes off the blade. To the casual observer, it doesn’t look like much, just a few inches of narrow white light with flickers of blue flame surrounding it. But anyone who has ever faced a flit with a blade knows better. It’s sharp as a thought and burns with essence.

“Let it go, Banjo. We’ve got company,” said one of the other dwarves.

Banjo shifted his gaze to Joe’s face, then mine. He stepped back. A siren cut through the sounds the burning building was making. I felt more than saw a car pull up behind us quickly and stop.

“We got better things to do,” Banjo said. He walked off, with his cadre of boys fast on his heels. Joe hovered after them a bit just to make sure they didn’t change their minds.

“Everything okay here?”

I turned to see Murdock leaning against his car. A collection of tough-looking elves and fairies wearing red and black leather posed on the other side of the car, an amusing visual effect he had no idea was going on. “Yeah, just a little arson and a smidge of street fighting.”

Murdock smiled and nodded up the street at Joe. “He’s better than a Doberman.”

I nodded, rubbing my shoulder. “Yeah, and more fun to drink with.”

A deep horn blast announced the arrival of a fire truck. Murdock looked up at the burning building. “I’m going to guess that has something to do with the evidence you mentioned.”

“Yeah. Did.”

Joe took that moment to return. He smiled—much more pleasantly—and handed me a smoldering lump of rubber and canvas. “I’m not bored anymore.”

I took the shoe by its laces and held it out to Murdock. “This is the kid’s. It had some elf blood on it, but it’s gone now obviously.”

Murdock leaned in his car window to retrieve an evidence bag. Murdock held the bag open, and I dropped in the shoe. He zipped the bag closed and held it up, waiting for the smoldering to die off for lack of air.

“Elf blood,” he said. He looked at me with a knowing smirk. “Why do I not like the implications of that?”

“Because you know I think it was Kruge’s, even though I couldn’t definitively sense it, and now I can’t prove it. And because you don’t like coincidences any more than I do, we’re going to have to figure out how the cases are connected without missing other evidence in case they’re not.”

He pursed his lips, nodding. “Yep.”

That’s why I like working with Murdock. No bickering without a good reason. Oh, sure, we disagree, sometimes a lot. We debate, though, not argue, and usually end up at a place we’re both comfortable with. Just like he knew where my thinking was heading, I knew he wasn’t going to discourage me until he thought the trail was dead cold.

“This is the first time I touched it,” Joe blurted.

Murdock looked at Joe, then me. “Oh?”

I shook my head in amused exasperation. “He sat in it.” I told Murdock what happened. No surprise, he shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter now. The bigger question is when you were spotted.”

Two cop cars appeared on either end of the block. Another fire truck pulled up, followed by an ambulance van. “Um, Murdock, shouldn’t you be doing something?”

He craned his neck over the roof of his car. “Yeah. Get in. If we don’t leave now, they’ll box us in.”

“Leave? Don’t you have to police something?”

He walked around his car and got in. “Homicide, Connor. Is there anyone in the building?”

I looked at Joe. “Nope,” said Joe.

“Then get in before my clothes start smelling like smoke.”

“I’m going to watch the fire,” said Joe.

“Suit yourself. Let me know about your gang contact,” I said. I don’t think he heard me, though. He was already drifting higher up for a better view. I tossed some juice bottles off the passenger seat and got in. Murdock backed all the way up the street to the corner and bounced the car around. He coasted over to Summer Street and made his way back toward downtown.

“What took you so long?” I asked.

“Doctor’s appointment. New healer.”

“What did he say?”

“He says what they all say. He can’t find anything wrong with me except my essence is suped-up. I told him I’m fine, it’s only the fey who seem to think I’m not.”

I nodded. “It’s not that there’s anything wrong with you, Murdock. Remember that kid, Shay? How I kept telling you he had an oddly strong essence for a human? He still felt like a human normal to me. You feel like a fey human, if there’s such a thing. You feel like what I bet a human from Faerie would feel like. It’s never been seen post-Convergence, and they don’t understand it.”

As he stopped for a red light, he gave me a sideways glance and smiled. “Sounds familiar.”

“Touché,” I said. At Avalon Memorial, they didn’t understand my condition either. “Who’s the doctor?”

He accelerated with the light change. “I don’t think he’s a doctor, actually. He said he was a medic. Do the fey have army medics?”

I laughed. “That’s his title. Midach. He must be old school. You should ask Gillen Yor his name. He’ll know.”

“Why so interested?”

“Beyond the obvious that I hope you’re okay, if he can figure out what’s going on with you, maybe he can figure out what’s going on with me. We sort of have opposite problems. The source might be the same.”

“I knew this would end up being about you,” he said.

I felt anger rise. “I said I hoped you’re okay, didn’t I? Don’t you think I feel enough guilt about it?”

As usual, Murdock put me right in my place. He laughed. “I’m joking, ya fool. I knew it would irritate you. It’s not your fault I have some freaky essence now, just like if you got shot on another case, it wouldn’t be my fault. Unless, of course, I shot you. By accident, I mean. Let it go, Connor. I’m fine.”

“Jerk,” I said. I slouched deeper in my seat. He was right, of course. But I had put a lot of people in danger on that case, especially him. I had involved him—a human normal—in a situation where ability was being manipulated on an enormous scale. It could have killed him. It almost did. I’m still not sure if it was ego or error. Either way, I didn’t like doubting myself. I’m not used to it. I didn’t say anything more. I know what it feels like to have something wrong that no one knows how to fix.