Blood Kin (22 page)

“Thanks, bro. Gratefully appreciated.” I smiled back at him. “Sorry I’m so … bugfuck emotional, I guess.”

“No worries, Keira. It’s all pretty normal. You’re likely to be an iota more …” He paused. I looked up at his face. He, too, was struggling for words. “More volatile?”

“Oh, great, exactly what I need,” I said. “So Changing brings mood swings? How bloody wonderful.”

Tucker shook his head. “Not so much Change itself, but your particular one. Your body’s going through all sorts of adjustment now. It’s not only for political reasons that heirs are brought back to the family fold, Keira. It’s a hell of a lot easier on you to be around family, to be with people who know you and can help you through the next few months or so.”

“Months?” I pushed away from him, nearly shrieking the word.

“Whoa, hold on there,” he said. “I’m just speculating on the time frame.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “It damn well better not be months,” I threatened. “And you’ve changed the subject.
So why shouldn’t I be worried about Daffyd loose in Vancouver again?”

“Because, little sister, there is a lot of native energy in a city,” Tucker answered. “A—Daffyd recently topped up, so to speak, so he’s not likely to need to replenish his resources anytime soon. And B—a city is full of energy—from the people, from the vehicles, the electrical grid. All sorts of ways that Daffyd can top off the tank if need be, without resorting to people.”

“He can do that?”

“Seelie Court,” Tucker said. “Although … the Unseelies do that as well, they just, once in a great while, prefer humans.”

“I thought Unseelie Sidhe were no more evil than Seelie, just had a looser moral code,” I said.

“Exactly,” Tucker agreed. “If presented with loose city-type energy versus a fresh, sacrificial human, Daffyd—any Seelie, for that matter—would usually choose the former. Unseelie? It’s a toss-up.”

This certainly put a different take on a lot of things I’d thought over the years. I’d known about the other side of the coin, the Unseelie Court, because there was nothing the Sidhe liked more than to talk politics and intrigue. But I’d been a child and the only thing I’d gleaned was that the Unseelie were other, kind of like me. So at first, I’d sort of identified with them. It wasn’t until much later in a human school, when we’d done a semester on legends and myths, that I’d discovered that the Unseelie Court was seen to be Dark. Of course, this was Western society’s human interpretation, where Dark meant not Christian, not Jewish, but Other. I had a feeling that the poets of earlier centuries imbued the Seelie Court with angelic qualities and assumed that they were Good with a capital G, with all the weight
of Biblical definitions behind it. I knew better. I’d asked my Aunt Jane, who filled me in on reality. Good and evil meant nothing to Faery. Their mores and ethics resembled Western humanity’s versions about as much as I resembled a stoat. We both had four appendages, two eyes, two ears and a mouth. After that, not much in common. Of course, the same could be said about the Kelly Clan and our sister Clans around the world. Our very natures precluded us from following the same code and standards as our distant human cousins. We were, however, closer to humans than the Sidhe were. After all, we lived among them. The Sidhe, both Courts, had chosen to remain separate. The taint of the Unseelie Sidhe, though, had lingered, and my aunt had told me how they weren’t to be trusted, even less so than my mother’s family.

“Keira? You okay in there?” Tucker knocked lightly on the side of my head, an old joke. I’d often gone “into my head” as a young teen, losing myself for hours thinking and dreaming.

“I’m good,” I said. “Sorry. Just had to work this out. I’ll take your word on it for now about Daffyd, but you’ve got to promise me something.”

“If I can,” he said. “If we find him, would you keep an eye on him? Please, for me. I’m still not all that comfortable around him.”

Tucker nodded. “Rightly so,” he said. “He’s not exactly a serial killer, but neither is he harmless. I mean, look at me.” He spread his arms. “On the outside, I’m just a guy. On the inside …” He gave me a feral grin, only a faint echo of the Berserker I knew lurked beneath; the predator wolf shape he adored.

“True that.” I smiled at my brother, a sense of relief taking over the uneasiness. “I don’t think anything …
untoward is going to happen, but still, I’d like to make sure we keep tabs on him.” Assuming we found him. If we didn’t, what then? I had no freaking clue.

“You all done yelling in here?” Rhys poked his head out from around the corner.

I gave him an abashed smile. “Coast is clear. No more yelling.”

“Great,” he said as he plopped down on the chair next to Tucker and grabbed the beer I hadn’t even begun to drink. “So, what’s the game plan?” he asked and took a deep gulp of the brew.

“Game plan?”

“Yeah, bro, what game?” Tucker asked.

“Well, it’s not likely that my son the Mountie gets called in to investigate suspicious deaths of the city’s homeless population,” Rhys said wryly. “Gareth usually handles much wider-ranging cases. Reality being what it is, it’s rare for homeless victims to get this kind of attention. So, what’s really going on? I mean, you did want something to distract you, Keira. Here’s a prime opportunity. Family’s involved now.” My brother grinned like a loon. I grinned back.

This certainly was an opportunity for distraction. Now that Gareth was investigating, we could do some semi-legitimate poking about of our own while we waited for Gigi to make her royal appearance. I recognized this was nothing more than said distraction and that Rhys was reaching out to me in his own way. Because honestly? What good would it do us to “help” the RCMP? To be perfectly fair, if it weren’t for the fact I was here in Vancouver and desperate to think about something other than my upcoming meeting with Gigi, I’d have been quite content to spend the next couple of days spending time with Adam, shopping,
reading and doing a little sightseeing. Now that Tucker had convinced me my concerns about the possibility of a murderous Sidhe were misplaced and reminded me that Daffyd could, and probably was, taking care of himself, the reports of the murders would have been nothing more than something I heard about in a newscast … if even then. I wasn’t the newscast-watching type.

Tucker shook his head and
tsked
at us.

“What?” I said, every inch of me trying to radiate indignity.

“Look at the two of you,” he laughed. “It’s like someone’s given you this fascinating puzzle to solve, a new toy to play with.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “Yeah, and like you’re not as interested as we are. Your inner child is squealing, ‘ooh, shiny.’ ”

Tucker threw his head back and laughed. “So right, dear sister, so right.”

Niko appeared then, confusion written on his face. Poor guy wasn’t used to all these Kellys, yelling at each other one minute, and laughing like idiots the next.

“What is she right about?” Niko asked with a yawn. “Looks like we’re going to help Gareth solve some murders,
cariad
.”

Death

“DEAD, DEAD?” The tall woman hunching over her cigarette asks the man in the wheelchair. Her eyes dart back and forth, watching, observing, lighting on nothing, no one specific. She’s a denizen of the streets, like the rest of them, more comfortable when she’s not in the middle of such commotion.

It’s gone full dark now, but the brightness of the streetlights chase most of the shadows away from the sidewalks and main walkways. The Muni really likes to keep this section well-lit for all them tourists. Got so a girl couldn’t find a good dark spot to hide in no more.

Her companion nods at her question, his wild gray-brown hair obscuring his face. He brushes back the hair and takes a long drag of his own cigarette, the cracked leather of his fingerless gloves reflecting his social status as much as the company he keeps. The foot of one leg is clad in a beat-up sneaker; his other leg ends at the knee, the trouser leg pinned neatly under the stump.

The man’s raspy cough turns into a hacking fit. The woman bends over him, a surprisingly clean handkerchief at the ready. He grabs it from her and wipes his mouth. “Thanks, Marla.”

“It’s getting better,” she says as she tucks the man’s blanket more securely around him. “You’ve got to stay out
of the wind, Ernie. Make sure you keep on getting better, yeah?”

“I know, I know,” he says in a mutter and waves away her ministering hands. “Got some meds from the walk-in clinic,” he wheezes around another puff of smoke. “I’m handling it.”

“So you were saying …” The woman presses him to finish what he’d started to say.

He peers up at her, dark eyes glittering through the wild fringe of hair. “Over there.” He motions with his cigarette toward the building cordoned off with crime-scene tape. “One guy. Didn’t know him. Saw him, though. Last night and night before. Looked like a hippie.”

“Don’t we all.” It isn’t a question. Marla laughs the croak of a longtime smoker. “I mean look at us.” She twirls, arms outstretched, fingers elegantly pointed as if she were dancing. Layers of draped shawls, sweaters and at least two skirts on top of a pair of skinny men’s trousers float around her, a poor woman’s version of Joseph’s coat.

Ernie’s laugh turns into a cough. He quickly covers his mouth with a hand, some semblance of polite company behavior still remaining. He looks at the crowd gathered around the perimeter of the police-strung crime-scene tape.

Most of them look like they belong there, people like Ernie and Marla—residents of West Hastings, where they all hang out, the disenfranchised, the homeless, the ones who have no place other than a hostel or an empty storefront or even a doorway to huddle in. In Vancouver, they are mostly clean, mostly polite, but still, their eyes are hollow, emotions long since wrung out, leaving nothing but empty shells. Two men in the distinctive
blue-gray of the police walk among the crowd, talking too quietly to be heard, taking notes. Another, in RCMP gray-and-blue, stood watching.

“He weren’t none of our kind,” the man says to Marla. “Nothing like us … only like who we might dream of becoming …”

I
STAYED IN THE
alcove of a nearby office building with Rhys, eavesdropping on the man in the wheelchair and his colorful female companion.

We’d all agreed that five of us out in the city playing street detective might be overkill. Even though we expected Gareth to eventually show up at the condo, Rhys and I decided to try to track him down and find out what he’d learned. Adam wanted to see if he could get in touch with any of his father’s people. I still had a great deal to discuss with him, but our first order of business was to find out what was going on right here in this city.

After a quick coffee at Sciué Caffé, Rhys and I walked back over toward the hostel, only to see more of a crowd than before. We couldn’t even see the doorway beyond the throng. I wondered why they were still there—it had been at least a couple of hours since we’d first seen Gareth. I’d have figured the police would have dispersed the crowd by now.

I’d wanted to eavesdrop so, between the two of us, we’d remembered a small glamour charm, an Unseeing, that helped hide us. Didn’t make us invisible or anything, but as long as we stayed in the shadows, people would be less likely to notice we were there. We’d been eavesdropping on the man and woman for a while.

“Nah, not like us so much as like one of them music freaks from the sixties. All long hair, leather vest thing.

I don’t dream of anything of the sort.” Marla dragged on her cigarette and twirled her long scarf in her other hand. “There’s a festival on this week, yeah? They be coming in and all that. Music folk. All la-di-da and fiddle-dee-dee and music from the old times like my gran sang.”

“Yeah, could be,” the man agreed. “’Cept …” He shrugged. “Nah, never mind. Silly, really.”

“Ernie …” Marla pleaded. “You know something? Tell me.” She squatted down next to Ernie, hanging on to the arm of the wheelchair. “C’mon.”

“Was kind of different. You know. Music man, maybe, but old eyes, yeah? Saw him up by Tim Hortons. He held the door for me as I come down the street. Early, not quite sunrise. Felt odd.”

“Felt?” I whispered to Rhys. Even though there was no way Ernie and Marla could’ve heard me under the glamour. Rhys poked me, signaling me to be quiet.

“Felt?” Marla echoed my own question.

“Yah, got a small shock from him when I shook his hand. Thought it were the metal on the door, but I weren’t touching it.”

Marla stood and put her hands on her skinny hips, elbows akimbo. “You sure about that, Ernie? No person shocks with a touch like that in a wet climate.”

She was right. It had been misty and raining this morning and would be so for days. Not that I pined for the relentless sun of Texas, but the only other times I’d visited the city had been in early fall, the few weeks of the year that the sun beat out the rain. I wasn’t used to the constant overcast. Weather like this didn’t lend itself to static electricity shocks … not even from the metal of a door pull, and much less from a person’s skin.

“Sidhe?” I looked at Rhys, who shook his head.

“Spark guy? Could be.”

We’d been trying to approach the crime scene under our glamour, but there were too many people around and too few safe shadows. We were both fairly good at this, and no doubt my own ability had increased exponentially with the Change, but I hadn’t cast an Unseeing in years. It was difficult enough at the best of times, and much harder when surrounded by all these people.

Our glamour wasn’t strong enough to step out in the crowd who, by now, completely surrounded the cordoned off area. Most of the people seemed to be locals, the usual vagrants and homeless who made these blocks of West Hastings their turf. A few scattered tourists approached in caution, curiosity getting the better of their common sense. Although there really wasn’t anything much to worry about. Pickpockets, yeah, but more than that was unlikely. A couple of Vancouver PD’s best stood outside the tape, asking the crowd to keep back. I couldn’t see Gareth anywhere.