Mark Del Franco - Unquiet Dreams

We made our way downstairs and found Meryl dancing up a storm all by herself. She had attracted quite the crowd of onlookers, some of them basking in the glow of her natural essence, some of them turned on by a lone woman dancing with such confidence. Clouds of fog steamed onto the floor, laced with an herbal concoction I recognized as a euphoric. I glanced at Murdock, saw the glitter in his eye from the drug reaction. I followed his gaze to the vents above us. C-Note had come out of his office to check out the scene.

He leaned on his black staff as he watched the crowd. Only his eyes moved, faint points of light buried deep. A Danann fairy soared up and hovered in front of him. Her wings undulated with the rhythm of the music as her head fell back in an ecstatic roll of pleasure. Her body swayed to the right and back. Another Danann joined her, and a third. The three of them began to move in unison, arcing backward to dive toward the dancers, only to loop away just above their heads. I felt a shiver as I realized they were mimicking the rhythm of C-Note’s staff. He was playing with his compulsion drug. Then I realized, the dancers moved in a rhythmic shuffle, hands up and moving as if in a breeze. They wound in a coiling circle, lost in the music, yet nearly synchronized in their movements. Float apparently was fairly potent.

Flushed with exertion, Meryl appeared in front of us. “I see the Big Ugly is still on the loose. I’m thinking he didn’t confess and beg for mercy.”

I smiled down at her. “Something like that. You looked great out there.”

She nodded at the dance floor. “It was fun until the fog. There’s something in it I don’t recognize. I’ll take my own drugs, thank you.”

“Float. It’s what C-Note’s been dealing.”

Meryl cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “Do you feel the essence? It’s odd.”

“What’s odd?” asked Murdock.

“The essence,” I said. “Most drugs are what you would expect—some kind of chemical-based reaction. They have essence like everything else, but this stuff has more essence infused in it. It gives me a headache, actually.”

Meryl pursed her lips. “I have cramps again.”

Murdock shot me a look that was all about what-the-hell-did-she-just-say.

“Thanks for sharing,” I said.

I felt Meryl bring on her body shields. “Thought so. They’re gone. I had cramps just like this at the Bosnemeton.”

“Why are we having this conversation?” I said.

She poked me in the chest. “You just said Float gives you a headache, and you had one earlier at the Bosnemeton.”

I looked up at C-Note, but he was gone. The headache had spiked again in his office. Meryl grabbed my arm and pushed out her body shield. A momentary coolness spread over me as it interacted with my own essence and the heat in the club. The pain in my head instantly became its usual dull background buzz. She released me, and it spiked again. Too bad I didn’t have enough body shielding to pull that trick.

I could barely hear our conversation, so we moved into a hallway that led deeper into the building. I leaned in close to them. Probably one of the few places that doesn’t look suspicious is a loud club. “Kruge seemed to be arguing with C-Note about Float getting out of control. If Meryl’s right, it’s already spread beyond the Weird.”

“But what does it do?” Meryl said.

“Janey Likesmith says it has some sort of compulsion in it.”

Murdock startled us by laughing. “I was wondering why I wanted to dance so much.”

“At least you can dance, unlike some people,” Meryl said, eyeing me.

“Focus, please. We need to find out what’s in this stuff,” I said.

Meryl raised an eyebrow. “We?”

“You don’t want to help?”

She shook her head. “I told you, Grey, I’m not a field agent.”

I gave her a slow smile. “Are you afraid of Keeva?”

She smiled back. “Hardly. I just want to make sure I steal enough office supplies before getting booted out of the Guild for getting involved in another one of your harebrained ideas. Besides, this is no outfit to play Nancy Drew in.”

She had a point. The only women I knew who wore vinyl tube tops and miniskirts on secret missions were comic book superheroes. I can just imagine what Meryl would do to me if a supervillain looked up her skirt.

I shrugged. “Okay, I’ve got my cell phone in case I need the cavalry.”

“Don’t be too long. I’d kill for some Chinese food right now,” she said.

I gave her a coy smile. “A kiss for luck?”

She pecked Murdock on the cheek and smirked at me. “Good luck.”

Murdock looked surprised, then embarrassed, then cocky.

I annoyed her by chuckling. “Thanks. Let’s go.”

As we walked away, a sending hit me like a slap at the back of my head. Be careful . I glanced back, but Meryl had moved over to the bar.

“What’s the plan?” Murdock asked.

“Callin told Joe that a major shipment of Float was moving tonight. I’m guessing that fog on the dance floor was a quality check, and it’s still here.”

“So what if it is? We don’t know if it’s illegal yet.”

I had considered that. Lots of fey drugs were technically legal, only because human courts had no real way of determining what the heck they did unless they were sampled. And no court yet had upheld a ruling based on the idea that someone in the DA’s Office testified they got high.

“Because we need to know why it’s important enough to C-Note to murder one of the most prominent people in Boston.”

The sounds of the club receded as we took a dim side corridor grimed with the evidence of an old fire sooting the walls. The only essences I felt back here were the lingering trails of people consummating their desires, Murdock’s strange billow of more-than-human colored by Zev’s ward stone, and the thrumming of raw essence holding the stressed building up. We moved deeper into the darkness, the band whispering its bass line through the floor like a warning.

We picked our way through a collection of needles and condoms and discarded clothes to a boarded-over door marked as an exit. With a few yanks, we made enough space to slip through into a stairwell. Dead buildings have a stink of their own, an organic smell that’s a rank mélange of dampness, dirt, and unwashed bodies. We made our way up to the second floor and stopped on the landing.

Murdock leaned over the railing and looked up. “Big building. This is going to take a while.”

I tapped the side of my head. “Maybe not. I can feel this crap. It’s above us.”

What I didn’t say was that I could feel Float as pain, a constant pressure from the blockage in my head. I don’t know if it hurt because my abilities wanted to reach out to the essence or because they wanted to avoid it. We moved up two more flights, the pressure increasing. As we turned on the landing to the next floor, I stopped. “Here. The pain lessened when we came up here.”

We moved back to the fourth floor and pushed against an access door. It gave grudgingly from long disuse. An intersection of hallways faced us, shattered walls with gaping holes revealing empty rooms streaked with graffiti. A green triangle with a futhark rune for “F” figured prominently, the sigil of the TruKnights. When you find yourself on gang turf, it always feels like trespassing, no matter what badge you may have in your pocket. Turf is turf, and you know when you’re on someone else’s uninvited.

The floor vibrated from the dance floor directly below us. Eerie lights flickered through chinks in the flooring, lighting tendrils of smoke that trickled up from downstairs. Despite the pain, I opened my mind a crack, letting my sense feel the essences in the air. It hurt like hell, tight pinpoints stabbing at my temples. I was going to have a hell of a residual headache the next day.