Mark Del Franco: Unquiet Dreams

Many culprits contributed their time, energy, and ideas to make this book the best it can be. Front and center are Anne Sowards, my editor, whose enthusiasm and insight know no bounds; my kickin’ agent, Rachel Vater, who knows her stuff and gives excellent feedback and support; Cameron Dufty, Ace editorial assistant, who keeps the wheels turning; Sara and Bob Schwager, copyeditors extraordinaire, who have to deal with strange new words and the hyphens that love them (or not); and, of course, all the folks at Ace Books.

Publishing my first novel has given me the pleasure of meeting many new people, notably Melissa Marr and Jeaniene Frost, sage advisors and wicked friends, and the friends and colleagues from the LiveJournal online community of Fangs_Fur_Fey. It’s been inspiring seeing their works and getting to know them as well as all the readers who took the time to come to a signing, drop a note, write a review, and pass the word. Many, many thanks to all of you.

Big thanks to my sisters and parents, who are secretly publicity machines in their spare time.

Special thanks to Kelley Horton for her emergency photography and friendship with that guy who used to work down the hall.

And lastly but not leastly, thanks to Francine Woodbury, who had the pleasure of telling me when the manuscript went Horribly, Horribly Wrong, prompting me to revise it in record time. This book literally would not exist if not for her astute, yet evil, eye.

And whispering in their ears

Give them unquiet dreams

— W. B. Yeats

No good phone calls come at seven o’clock in the morning. Strike that. No good phone calls from Detective Leonard Murdock come at seven o’clock in the morning. Actually, strike that, too. No good phone calls from Detective Leonard Murdock come at seven o’clock in the morning unless you count the fact that it means I might have a paying job. Of course, it also means someone is dead, too, but that’s where the “no good” part comes in.

That’s how I make my living now. Waiting for the phone to ring. Hoping a crime has been committed. Ideally, one that Murdock needs a little fey expertise on. Some people make the mistake of thinking I used to be a high-powered druid working the crime unit for the Fey Guild. The only “used-to-be” part of that is working for the Guild. I’m still Connor Grey, druid. Just because I’ve lost most of my abilities doesn’t mean I am not what I am. To be fey, to be a member of a species that can manipulate what is superstitiously called magic, is not just a job description. It’s a state of being.

And my current state of being was in the backseat of a cab wishing I had a cup of coffee. Murdock had given me an address in the deep end of the Weird. The Weird is not the nicest neighborhood in Boston. It’s certainly not the safest. But it’s where the fey live when they have nowhere else to go. There’s a comfort in that, a community of sorts, that outsiders don’t understand. Especially when so many people end up dead here.

The cab pulled off Old Northern Avenue onto a narrow lane that ran between two burnt-out warehouses. A block away, the lane ended at a desolate field with a small group of people wandering about, which, given the early hour, could only be my destination. I paid the driver, got out, and shivered. It was cold—too cold for early October and much colder than when I got in the cab just a few blocks away. I looked up at the sky and sensed more than saw a faint white haze in the air that was by no means natural.

The early morning sun cast a surreal light, bleaching colors like a faded photograph. At the curb, a police car with its blue lights flashing enhanced the effect with a silvery sheen. Across the field from where I stood, the officers’ uniforms looked almost black and the medical examiner’s coat a stark white. I recognized Murdock immediately by his long trench coat even though it appeared pale beige instead of its normal camel color. The field looked ashen.

I stepped across the remains of a sidewalk and walked toward them. It had rained like hell the night before, and while the field should have been muddy, it was now an uneven surface of frozen ruts. I made my way to the center of activity, a body in dark clothing lying on the ground.

Murdock didn’t see me until I was standing next to him. “Bit nippy,” I said.

He didn’t startle, but smiled slightly as he cupped his hands over his mouth and blew into them. “That’s part of why I called you.”

I nodded. As a human, Murdock has no fey abilities, but he’s worked the Weird long enough to know when something is, well, weird. He’s good at what he does, and part of what makes him good is that he knows when to ask for help. It’s a lesson I’m still learning.

I bunched my own cold hands into the pockets of my leather jacket. It didn’t occur to me when I left the apartment that I’d need gloves in early October. “What do you have?”

He gestured at the obvious body. “Tell me why I called you.”

I stepped away from him, then between another officer and the medical examiner. On first glance at the body, my chest tightened. “Dammit, Murdock, you could have warned me it was a kid.”

“Late teens, we’re guessing. Haven’t checked for ID yet,” he said.

The cop standing next to me nodded without saying anything. When you’re with law enforcement, you see a lot of things you’d rather not. Dead kids are the worst. The younger they are, the worse it is. Even if this guy—this boy—turned out to be eighteen or nineteen, he still had a helluva lot of life to miss out on. And his parents, if he had them, were still going to be heartbroken. Telling the parents is the second-worst thing about it.

I put that aside for now and took in the scene. Lying faceup was a white male with dark brown hair, obviously young, with a pained grimace locked on his face. His head angled up too sharply to one side, which probably meant a broken neck. His arms and legs splayed out haphazardly. One foot had an orange Nike sneaker, the other just a plain white sock. He wore two hooded black sweatshirts, generic-looking jeans, and a bright yellow bandana on his head. The bandana was wrapped so that knotted ends stuck out from his temples. At a guess, I’d go with gangbanger. So far, unremarkable.

I swept my eyes up and down the body again. His clothes were frozen. That meant he was out in the rain long enough to get soaked before the air got cold enough to freeze him. And the mud around him. He was embedded in it, sunk a good two or three inches into the ground.

I scanned the periphery of the body and gazed outward in concentric circles as I turned. “He ended up here before the mud froze, but there’re no footprints and no indication he was dragged. No sign of a struggle.”

“Bingo,” said Murdock. “Tossed or dropped?”

Now I saw why Murdock had called me. The kid was too far from the edge of the field to have landed in this spot on his own. Either someone with tremendous strength had tossed him in or someone who could fly had dropped him. A fairy dropping him was an obvious possibility. I estimated the shortest distance to the street at fifty feet, well within the range of strength for a troll or even a dwarf. It could have also been an Unseelie, one of the shunned fey that don’t fit easily into any species category. We didn’t see a lot of those in Boston, but it was too early to rule out them out.