Mark Del Franco - Unquiet Dreams

Joe is not a poker player. Every once in a while, he gets it in his head that I’m lonely. So he finds some poor soul that he thinks is just perfect for me. The problem is, most of the time “just perfect” to Joe means “odd person I met that no one else will go out with.” All evidence to the contrary, I tend to be a little more discriminating. “I don’t need a date, Joe.”

“No! Honor spit! I really know someone who knows gangs and would be juiced to talk to you.”

“Okay, set it up, then. I’ll bring Murdock.”

He hesitated for a moment, which made me think he might be fibbing about a date. “Okay. That’s okay. Just don’t say Murdock’s a cop. He might not be happy about that.”

“Fine,” I said. I pulled out my cell phone and called Murdock. He was not going to like how I was about to complicate the case.

In spite of being amused by Stinkwort’s paranoia, I was getting uncomfortable standing in front of the building waiting for Murdock. Clearly, word had spread about our presence on the street. An assortment of people found time to stroll by with no apparent errand in mind. A few peered at us curiously, as if a stranger hanging out in front of an abandoned building was surprising in this part of town. To a certain extent, it probably was. Around that part of the neighborhood, strangers didn’t like to attract too much attention unless they were trying to send a message. I hoped ours said keep away until the cops show up.

Most people looked at us suspiciously, though. Joe’s marauding dwarves showed themselves down at the one corner. They numbered six now. One more, and they’d be a cliché.

Murdock’s voice mail had picked up when I called, and he hadn’t called back yet. He usually called me back right away, but it had been almost twenty minutes. I didn’t want to leave a message about the running shoe at the station house without talking to him, though. It was his case, and he should be on-site when a unit came to pick up the evidence.

Joe fidgeted about the stoop. “Do I have to stay? The windows across the street have eyes in them, and they’re not an even number.”

“Yes, we have to see if Murdock wants to arrest you.”

“What?” he shrieked. Several heads turned in an avid hope that some action was about to happen. We disappointed them.

“Just kidding, Joe. We do need to tell him what happened. It’s up to him what he wants to report.”

“Well, I wish he’d hurry up. I’m bored.”

I just nodded. I was used to Joe’s definition of interesting. It had no logic to it, so I gave up trying to understand it years ago. I have seen him stare at a patch of grass for hours with an avidity I couldn’t fathom. And yet, here we were in one of the more sketchy parts of the Weird with a veritable parade of fey folk slinking by, and he was bored.

I idly wondered if the Tangle were a taste of what Faerie was like, if the old country still existed. Few humans lived down this end of the neighborhood. Humans did live in Faerie, but none seemed to have come through the Convergence. The concentration of fey folk had to have been high in Faerie, by definition. With all that power, all that essence manipulation, it’s no surprise that legends portray the place as dangerous and precarious. Even in the short time we stood on the sidewalk, I could feel little spell pings tossed our way. I could no longer actively discern their exact nature, but having been in places like this before my accident, I could guess.

Some people were probably checking to see if we were glamoured, most likely me. Flits don’t lend themselves to glamouring. They’re too small to pretend to be something else. Occasionally, they might glamour themselves as small animals or even plants, but it was much easier for them so use their own essence to fade from sight if they were trying to blend into their surroundings. Besides, they don’t really like using essence outside themselves, which is what a glamour is—essence concentrated in something like a necklace or a stone or a ring that operates almost independently of the user.

Sometimes glamours are harmless, like enhancing one’s appearance. Everyone has something they wish they could change about themselves, and some people prefer glamours to a nip and tuck. Even that has its limits, though. More than a few people have gone home with a hot babe only to discover later they were with a woman in the geriatric league. Sometimes they are used for privacy, like when someone just wants to just go about their business without having to interact with people they know. Sometimes they’re meant to deceive, which I admit has come in handy with investigative work on occasion.

Ultimately, glamours are lies. They go to the crux of relationships. If you can’t trust what you’re seeing, then maybe you can’t trust that person at all. And that’s why I kept getting pinged. When you live in a dangerous neighborhood, you want to know who is who and how much to be on guard around them.

Beside me, Joe made a growling sound. A moment later, he threw a broadcast sending. We don’t have drugs!

I chuckled. Half of the people who went by were using sendings to ask us for drugs. Certain sciences call it telepathy, but conceptually sendings are different. You impress auditory thoughts on essence and direct them where you want them to go. That’s a fey ability up and down. You get used to the little whispers in your mind, unless, of course, you’re annoyed because you’re bored.

Joe flinched. “Ow! Did you feel that?”

“Yeah.”

“Idiots,” he muttered.

A short spasm in my head told me that someone had cast a spell nearby. Since my accident, some spells feel like a nail in my brain. I haven’t tracked the types that have the most effect to detect a pattern, but scrying definitely tops the list. Someone starts trying to predict the future, and it’s migraine hell. Whatever spell just went off wasn’t scrying, but the fact that Joe felt it as pain meant it was hard and crude in execution, the equivalent of someone blowing a whistle in your ear. It usually indicated someone who had little training or was in a big hurry.

I looked at my watch. A half hour had gone by since I called Murdock. He tended not to call me only when he was either in a meeting or on radio silence. Then and during the occasional private recreational activity. It was a little early in the day as far as the latter, even for him, and he still called me if he were not too, let’s say, intimately distracted. It annoys the hell out of his dates.

A waft of something acrid tickled my nose. “You smell that, Joe?”

“That burning smell? I thought it was just part of the natural aroma of the street.”

Others had picked up the scent. Heads turned, craning to look up at the buildings, consternation fixed on faces. I did it myself, but couldn’t see anything. The wind shifted, and the odor increased. A huge gust of wind came up, and a cloud of thick black smoke engulfed us from the doorway behind us. Tears burned in my eyes as I stumbled down the steps to the sidewalk. The wind shifted again, and I was able to see again. Joe popped into view directly in front of me. He must have winked out as soon as he sensed the smoke coming.

I wiped my eyes and turned around. Smoke spewed from the upper stories of the building. Along the cornice, I could see flames. “Dammit! Joe, the shoe! Get the shoe!”

He vanished, then reappeared immediately. “Okay, just to be clear this time, you want me to pick it up and bring it here, right?”

“Yes. Go! Go!”

I swore under my breath as he vanished again. It was the spell. Someone had been watching, someone who actually had a reason to watch us. Given the time delay, I’d go the minion route. Someone reported back to someone, and that someone ordered up a fire spell. I spun around to the street. In the gathering crowd, I could see the six dwarves that had lingered up the street. That didn’t mean there hadn’t been one I missed. Hell, they could have just used a cell phone.