Mark Del Franco - Unshapely Things

He vanished.

Hot anger lanced through me. "Call him back, Briallen. Call him back now."

For a moment, as she stared off into the lightening sky, I thought she was calling him. Then she calmly took my arm and firmly escorted me inside. "Let it go, Connor. There's been enough high emotion for one night."

I pulled away from her. "He pulled a sword on your threshold!"

She looked directly at me. The fine lines around her eyes were etched deeper than usual. "Connor, I'm in no mood to quibble about old guest rules. He's hurt. He's angry. And above all, he's appalled at a strike against a fellow flit. It will do no good to embarrass him right now."

"Embarrass? He knows the insult he's given. He violated your hospitality by pulling a weapon on your threshold."

She pursed her lips. "First, he wasn't on my threshold, he was in front of it; secondly, he did not accept my invitation to enter before he did it; and besides, I was not inside the house when it happened, so technically there was no hospitality to violate. Let. It. Go."

"You're stretching to let him off."

She shook her head and walked past me. "Connor, I didn't exhaust myself saving him and healing you tonight so you could annoy me to death. You need sleep more than he does, I think. I've more important things to deal with than a violation of etiquette rules."

I folded my arms triumphantly. "Ha! You just said a violation!"

I felt like an idiot as soon as I said it. Briallen compounded the feeling by chuckling exasperatedly at me. "Come out back before the dawn is gone."

I sheepishly followed her through the kitchen and into the backyard. Even in the dim light of predawn, Briallen's garden was an amazing place. Not far from the kitchen door stood a gnarled oak tree that had embedded itself into the brick wall that separated her yard from the garden next door. A small gravel path wound around the tree and meandered through clusters of flowers and plants that all seemed to be shades of gray in the dimness. On the far side of the garden was a small crescent of grass surrounding a shallow pond that bordered the back of the property.

Briallen led me to the grass and took up a position to one side of the fountain, gesturing for me to take my place on the omer side. "I don't get the direct sunrise here, but enough light makes it through for the invocation to be worthwhile." She raised her arms in the starting position, and I did the same. I could feel the sun coming, its nourishing light sweeping toward us. The start of the invocation was almost upon us when Briallen said, "Don't worry, I don't drop trou' for sun rituals." I smothered a laugh as we began chanting.

When we were finished, the garden had come alive with color. Purple foxgloves jutted up among lavenders and heathers. The stone bedding borders overflowed with clover and cowslip. White climbing roses draped the northern wall in a curtain. It smelled exquisite. I felt better — physically and emotionally. My body still ached, but the high-pitched bell in my head was almost gone. Not to mention my anger. I would have a word with Stinkwort when I found him, even if Briallen wouldn't. But I probably wouldn't slap him silly.

Returning to the kitchen, Briallen filled a kettle and placed it on the stove. She leaned against me counter. "You should sleep."

"I know. I'm exhausted."

We did not speak as the kettle groaned with heat expansion. In moments, it whistled. Briallen poured the water into mugs and handed me one. Tentatively, I sipped the hot liquid. It tasted minty and earthy, with just a touch of what actually might have been some kind of tea. Briallen preferred decocting her own blends to dipping a bag. I felt a sudden sense of euphoria that settled quickly into a nice warm feeling. I wondered how the FDA would feel about some of the things she served guests.

"Do you have something like a plastic sandwich bag?" I asked.

"Something like that," she said sarcastically as she opened a drawer and pulled out a box. "Here. I use these strange plastic things when all my burlap wraps are in the wash."

"Very funny. I just need one. It's for the stone."

I set down the mug and went back up to Briallen's workroom. Even though I thought it a little irrelevant at that point, I used the bag like a glove to gather the stone without touching it and pulled the bag closed around it. The strange essence had dissipated, leaving a faint echo behind. A few grains of debris settled in the bottom of the bag, and I remembered the odd grittiness in the victim's chest. I held the bag up to the morning light. It looked like sand. The first victim had had debris in his chest wall if I remembered correctly. I hadn't seen it directly but was sure none of it was sand.

I joined Briallen back in the kitchen.

"Do you want to sleep here?" She lifted the kettle from the stove and refilled it.

"I should just go home."

As I reached for my cell phone to call a cab, it rang. I stared dumbly at it for a moment. No one in their right mind called me at dawn. It was Murdock.

"Where are you?" he said.

"Briallen's. We need to talk."

"No shit. Don't move." He disconnected.

Briallen crossed her arms and shook her head. "You should rest, you know."

"I will," I said, though neither of us believed it.

The doorbell rang. As I gulped the rest of my tea, Briallen preceded me to the door and opened it. Murdock stood on the threshold in a finely pressed shirt, not a hint of the early hour on his face. He gave Briallen a slight bow. "Good morning, Ms. Gwyll."

"Good morning, Leonard. It's so nice of you to ring my bell," she said with a broad grin. I had a hard time burying my own smile. The last time Murdock had picked me up at Briallen's, he made the mistake of sitting in the car and blowing the horn. Not only is that just not done on Louisburg Square, it's never done at Briallen's house. The horn blew for an hour after that no matter how many wires Murdock yanked out.

"I apologize for the time," he said, and raised his eyes to meet mine. "Do you mind if I take Connor with me?"

"Not at all. He has a tendency to overstay his welcome, then ask for cab fare." She took my mug and pushed me out the door. Murdock chuckled politely as he stepped aside to let me pass.

I shook my head. "You are not going to believe the night I've had," I said, as we walked to where Murdock had illegally parked by a fire hydrant.

"You're not going to have a very good day, either."

I tossed some magazines from the passenger seat into the back and sat down.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

Murdock started the car and backed up the wrong way until we were on Mt. Vernon Street. "Two corpses and one familiar description. You do the math."

"Three corpses." I told him about Tansy.

"Damn," he muttered. "Two fey and one human. It's going to be tough to pry you loose."

"Me!"

"Yes, you, you freakin' idiot. Who'd you think I was talking about?"

"The suspect! You know, big guy, smells bad?"

"I've got the same description from multiple witnesses and a cab driver who had a fare last night with blood on his hands. Guess who it sounds like?"

I slouched in my seat. "This has got to be a joke."

Murdock parked the car in an alley behind Downtown Crossing. "No. It's not. Now tell me everything that happened."

So I told him. When I got to the part about pulling the stone out of the chest cavity, he groaned. I handed him the stone in the bag. He looked at it briefly before slipping it into his shirt pocket. He leaned his head back against the seat and stared at the ceiling.

I finished as quickly as possible. Murdock just sat, not saying a word. He signed, started the car, and began driving again. "Okay, I can probably get you off the tampering with evidence charge because of the whole essence thing, but it won't be easy. The hard part's going to be keeping you out of a cell for suspicion."