Mark Del Franco - Unquiet Dreams

Meryl glanced back and forth from the road to my hand. “Does it hurt?”

I shook my head. “No. It uses my body as an anchor, pulling stuff to me like a body shield. Can’t even feel it unless I focus on it. Now watch this.” I mentally visualized the essence coursing over my body, sensed the difference between my own essence and the ambient troll essence, felt for the bonded stone, and pushed. It separated from my skin and slid off my hand like fine dust.

“You’re getting my car dirty,” Meryl said.

I wiped my hand on my pants. “Sorry.”

She pulled up in front of Avalon Memorial. Guild security guards hovered in the air, with more brownie security on the street. They must have recognized Meryl because they let her park without a word.

“I shouldn’t be long,” I said.

“Don’t be. I only have one CD in the car,” she said.

I found macGoren lying on his side in his room surrounding by ward stone amplifiers. Two bowls of infusions sat at the end of the bed. My nose twitched on the betony and a hint of basil. MacGoren’s left wing fluttered with a rippled texture and a few jagged holes. Danann wings didn’t have the physical property of skin. They didn’t have true nerves for that matter, so pain registered very differently. Regardless, the damage looked painful. The ward stones generated a field that amplified macGoren’s own essence as well as the simply pure air essence that Danann fairies had a natural affinity to. The herbals soothed the spirit with a protective spell working against infection.

MacGoren overall looked hardly worse for wear. He languished on the bed in his blue silk pajamas reading a magazine. When he saw me, he tossed aside the magazine and stretched onto his stomach. “Ah, good. Company. Gillen Yor says I can’t have my cell phone because it will disrupt the wards. I think he’s just saying that to irritate me.”

“You look like you’re recovering well,” I said.

He smirked with amusement. “I’m just here because I’ll heal faster. I assume this isn’t a social call.”

“And why’s that?”

He grinned. “No flowers. No candy.”

“Why were you fighting a troll in the Tangle the night of Kruge’s murder?”

He gave me a long measured look. “You found the helmet.”

I nodded. “I found the helmet.”

MacGoren shrugged. “You know I wanted a piece of land Kruge owned. He didn’t want to sell. I thought I’d get on his good side by helping with the drug problem down there. A nightclub was the epicenter. It burned down last night as a matter of fact.”

“Yeah, I heard about it,” I said dryly.

MacGoren nodded. “This drug Float was the problem. I analyzed it and found druid essence. I brought it to Kruge.”

“For which he was extremely grateful,” I said.

MacGoren shrugged again. “Actually, he didn’t believe me. But he was worried if that were true, then Gerin Cuthbern would try to cover it up to protect the Grove. Then he was afraid if he told Manus ap Eagan, Eagan would think he was maneuvering against Cuthbern and use it against him politically. So, he asked me to help, figuring since both the Guildmaster and I are Danann, Manus naturally wouldn’t think anything suspicious of my motives.”

It was my turn to smirk. “Naturally.”

MacGoren ignored the dig. “Anyway, Kruge came up with the idea of recording the drug analysis and sending a sample to Manus via courier. I was supposed to meet the courier on Summer Street and take the evidence to the Guildhouse.”

A piece of the puzzle fell into place. Fairies, in general, were good weather workers. Some Dananns specialized in it. “He was supposed to meet you up on Summer Street. You pulled the weather trick to drive away any witnesses and give Dennis Farnsworth safe passage through three gang territories.”

MacGoren nodded. “Correct. When the courier didn’t show up, and Kruge didn’t answer my sendings, I went looking. I found Kruge. I don’t know how the troll found out, but that wasn’t part of the plan that I knew.”

I could see what Keeva found attractive about him. She liked a good schemer. MacGoren paused, and the superior tone finally left his voice. “Then I saw something incredible, Grey. I saw a troll, in broad daylight, flying. Scared the living hell out of me. He had the courier, so I went after him.”

“That was brave.”

The idea clearly surprised him. “Yes, I guess you could look at it that way. I didn’t find the ward stone at Kruge’s, so I figured the kid had it. I took the troll by surprise. I lost the helmet in the tussle but managed to get the kid. The troll chased me almost to Summer Street. I felt a compulsion to drop the boy. It was like I had no choice.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?”

He shrugged again. “With Kruge dead, I didn’t have the evidence. If that troll could kill Alvud Kruge, he could kill me. I thought if I kept quiet, he would leave me alone. I didn’t see any percentage in coming forward. Didn’t seem to help in the end, though.”

I shook my head. “People died, and you didn’t see a percentage in coming forward?”

MacGoren frowned with a condescending look. “Please, Grey. Don’t be naïve. If it wasn’t this, it would have been something else.”

“Naïve? You helped start a gang war. Maybe worse now.”

He sighed as if bored. “It’s all the same, Grey. They’re all gangs. Xeno and elf thugs. The fey and humans. Seelie Court and the Consortium. They look for any excuse to play their games. I didn’t cause anything they wouldn’t have found a way to cause themselves.”

“And you make a buck in the process,” I said.

He nodded. “I always look for the percentage.”

I didn’t say anything. Despite what macGoren thought, I wasn’t naïve. I knew there were people like him, people who single-mindedly pursue a goal and damn the consequences. I knew them. I knew myself. In another life, I was well on the way down that road. I don’t know if I would have gone as far as macGoren. The fact that I didn’t know, couldn’t emphatically deny it, gave me a sour feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Keeva’s been looking for the troll that died. Why didn’t you tell her where she was?”

“Because I would have had a lot of things to explain that I wasn’t interested in explaining. Keeva’s good at what she does. She’ll find the troll.”

“I know she will,” I said.

“So, am I being charged with something?” he asked.

“I’ll have to think about it. I know you’re only talking because you know I’ll have a hard time finding something to stick. For now, I’ll keep thinking about it.”

A shrewd look came over him. “Hold it over my head, eh? A Guild director for less than a week, and already you’re playing games.”

I didn’t show how much he hit the target with that. “You could say that, macGoren. Remember one thing, though: I don’t play by anyone else’s rules.”

I strode out of the room before he had a chance to respond. As I walked out of the hospital, I felt a dull depression settle over me. Everything that had happened in the past few days could have been avoided if macGoren had just opened his mouth. But he hadn’t. Why bother when the only people hurt were the outcast and the shunned? Why bother when it would just make more headlines supporting his development project? Turf, land, territory. The hood. Whatever you called, Eorla Kruge was right. It was all about who had what piece of it and how they used it. It was always about control and power and greed.

I opened the passenger door to Meryl’s Mini and let out a roar of rock music. She lowered the volume as I dropped into the seat.

I could tell by the look on her face that Meryl knew I wasn’t happy. “Everything all right?”