Mark Del Franco - Unquiet Dreams

Again, she shrugged. “I’m here-born, Mr. Grey. This is the only world I know. Faerie may be where my roots are, but it might as well be Antarctica as far as I’m concerned. It sounds very alien and beautiful, but not someplace I have the urge to live.”

“Why didn’t you call the Guild for help?”

She gave me a knowing look. “Because if the Guild cared, this boy wouldn’t be here in the first place. This is a human murder case, Mr. Grey. At best, it would land in the research labs, not the crime unit.”

“Could you do the tests with the right equipment?”

She shrugged. “Sure, but it’s not likely on our budget.”

I smiled. “Got a piece of paper?”

When Janey brought her hand out of the pocket of her smock, she held a spiral pad with a pen stuck in it. I like someone always ready to take notes. I wrote down Meryl’s name and number and handed the pad back.

“Meryl’s a friend. If she can, she’ll get you to the right equipment.”

Janey’s ears flexed back in surprise. “Oh, I wasn’t asking for that. I just thought you should know about it…”

“It’s fine,” I interrupted. “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t think it would help the case. And trust me, if Meryl has a problem with this, she’ll let the both of us know.”

She put the envelopes back in their respective drawers and led the way to the hall. We mounted the steps to the lobby.

“Thanks for calling me, Janey. I mean that. It’s looking more and more like the kid was a drug runner, and things caught up with him.”

She reached out a hand, and we shook. “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Grey. I’ll call Ms. Dian as soon as I get downstairs. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

“My friends call me Connor.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She smiled and returned through the lobby to the flight of stairs down.

As I stepped out into the chill of the afternoon, I pulled my collar up around my neck. Farnsworth was running drugs. Murdock’s theory was looking more likely than mine at this point. The kid was dead either way. I just wish once in a while I would find myself investigating an accidental death.

As I approached the corner, I found a pleasant surprise. A Lincoln Town Car sat idling at the curb. A brownie leaned against the front fender, a long, tawny sheepskin coat muffling her body, set off by red boots, red gloves, and a red chauffeur cap. She huddled herself against the cold and bounced on her heels when she saw me.

I felt a wave of pleasure. “Tibs!”

“I thought you’d never come out of there!” she called.

She waited until I was almost upon her, then took two steps and wrapped me in a hug, pressing a warm kiss on my lips. Her eyes glittered with affection as she stepped back. Tibbet was an old, sweet friend, a brownie by nature, but all woman. We met years ago at the Guild when I first joined. I was just coming into my own, and Tibs and I moved in the same party circles for a while. To call our affair romantic would be an exaggeration, but it was definitely mutual and fun. The fey have fewer hang-ups about sex than human normals. We don’t stress about falling into bed unless a reason intrudes. Whenever Tibs and I weren’t seeing other people, we were quite comfortable spending time together. We had a mutually satisfying thing for a while that ended as casually and friendly as it began.

She ruffled my hair. “Still handsome, I see.”

I tugged her nut-brown ponytail. “Still gorgeous, I see.”

She nodded at the car. “Hop in. The Old Man wants to see you.”

I slid into the passenger seat of the stifling hot car.

“I will never get used to the winters here,” Tibbet said as she settled into the driver’s seat.

“It’s hardly winter, Tibs.”

She chuckled. “I lived in the Land of Summer, remember? I don’t even like cold rain.” She pulled into traffic and headed west.

“How’d you know I was here?”

“The Old Man told me. He said it’s a sad place I wouldn’t like, and he was right. I could feel it standing outside.”

“It is, but it’s also a helpful place, sometimes a hopeful one,” I said. And it is. No one wants to end up in the OCME. But, if someone does, at least they try to figure out what happened to you. They don’t always do it right, and they don’t always get it right. But they always try. It’s one of those places that you wonder how people can choose to work there. Then you meet them and understand.

“How’s he doing?” I said.

Tibbet didn’t answer for a long moment. Guildmaster Manus ap Eagan has been ill for almost a year. Fairies getting sick is rare, Danann fairies even rarer. It does happen, though.

“Not good,” she said. “He gets weaker all the time. He hardly ever leaves the house.” Her voice almost cracked. Tibbet has been with the Guildmaster since before Convergence. She’s not quite a secretary, not quite a messenger or driver. Aide-de-camp comes to mind. Like all brownies, she’s fiercely loyal to her chosen task, and after so much time, there’s an understandable emotional connection. I placed my hand on the back of her neck and gave it a slight squeeze.

She smiled. “What about you?”

“The same,” I said. “I’ve been exercising, but my abilities are still dead.” I never like to talk about my condition. You can only tell people “no change” so many times. Doing ritual sun salutations at dawn has strengthened my essence, but at best it’s made what little I can do work better. I haven’t regained any more abilities.

Tibbet guided the car through the chaos of Kenmore Square, a confusing knot of five major roads pretending to be a traffic exchange. Boston streets are infamous for confusing the unwary visitor. Signage is poor, the squares are anything but, and the layout philosophy seems to be “try not to kill anybody.” Tibbet’s a pro, though, and we made it through with minimal terror or terrorizing. She took Brookline Avenue out of the city.

It is the nature of large cities to consume the smaller towns around them, usually for economic advantage. Boston acquired several towns, but not Brookline, which didn’t see any advantage to joining a city of lower-class immigrants. To this day, it remains a place of privilege, one of the richest in the country, where anyone with enough money can find a place, even the fey. Manus ap Eagan had lived there for over half a century.

Tibbet took me into the exclusive Chestnut Hill neighborhood, location of some of the most expensive homes in the States. The landscaping is perfect, the acreage per house substantial, and not a stickball game to be seen. It’s another world entirely from where I grew up in the rough and tumble South Boston. It’s the kind of place where you keep expecting people to whisper for fear of disturbing deep, moneyed thoughts.

The Eagan estate began with a wrought-iron gate that opened without any prompting as we approached. Tibbet didn’t use a remote. Likely, the whole place was warded to allow certain people to come and go and most people to not. The driveway wound in a stately curve lined with cedars that stood guarded reserve over the passing car. When the view opened up, you could see what some might call a house, while most everyone else would call it a heaping estate manor.

Tibbet pulled up to the enormous front doors, and we got out. Above the doors, a stained-glass panel depicted a man in a resplendent chair leaning back with his feet on the lap of a beautiful woman. As Tibbet held the door for me, I nodded upward. “Did you pose for that?”

She grinned. “Not likely.”

The entry hall to the Guildmaster’s house rose a full two stories and could hold a small army. Every year Eagan holds a kick-ass Winter Solstice party in the space. If you count the bathroom, it’s the second room in the house I’ve been in. At the east wall, in the curve of a freestanding staircase, stood a rearing Asian elephant, the stuffed relic of a more unenlightened time.