Hallow Point (12 page)

Well, unless he
did
have a piece of whatever was going down.

Or had already been paid off by someone who did.

Or was scareda someone who did, which was a worrisome notion in itself.

Or… Yeah. Any more of this, I was gonna “or” myself outta going.

I took a few turns I ain’t gonna describe, wandered along a few streets I ain’t gonna name. Wouldn’t help you if I did. Hruotlundt’s place is always in the same general neighborhood, and you can always find it if you know it’s there and it’s what you’re lookin’ for, but it does tend to hop around a bit. I’ll get into that in a mo.

So, I found myself in front of a familiar building I’d never seen before, strolled through a rundown lobby I recognized, despite never having being inside, and up a flight of stairs on a route I knew, despite never having taken it.

My feet finally led me to an oaken door, with a big brass knocker shaped like the Minotaur’s head with a ring in its nose. It gave off enough fumes to blind a basilisk—way,
way
too much metal polish—and its expression looked more constipated than fearsome.

(And for the record? Yes, it
was
the Minotaur’s head, not a bull’s. Yes, they really oughta be indistinguishable. They’re not—or they ain’t on Hruotlundt’s knocker, anyway—but damned if I’ve ever been able to figure out why.)

I didn’t knock. Nobody ever knocked. I don’t even know why he
has
the damn knocker. I shoved the door open, and for just a second I was falling forward. The world stretched out in fronta me as if it were some big honkin’ pit. Gravity got drunk and lost its balance, and the floor under my feet jerked three seconds to the left.

I half stumbled, the way you do when you miss the last step on a staircase, and then it was done. The world was where it should be, inanimate objects stayed put, and I was facing a neat little reception room. Old, sagging sofa, a few dull lamps with age-mottled shades, and a bog-standard desk with a bog-standard secretary behind it.

Well, almost standard. Her hair, blinkers, and blouse weren’t just all brown, they were all a
perfectly matching
brown. Real woodsy. It didn’t look quite real.

She
sounded
normal enough, though, when she looked up from her nails, smacked her gum twice, and said, “Help ya, mister?”

“Yeah. Lemme see Hruotlundt.”

“Ya got an appointment?”

“Never needed one before, doll.”

She smacked her gum again. I restrained myself from smackin’ something else.

“I’m real sorry,” she told me, “but Mister Hruotlundt told me he don’t wanna be disturbed for anyone. Maybe come back in a couple days?”

I poked a thumb in the direction of the inner door, opposite where I’d come in.

“He in there?”

“Yeah, but like I said—”

I didn’t let her finish, just made for the inner office.

She
didn’t let
me
finish. I was just layin’ a mitt on the doorknob when something wrapped a tight grip around my collar and lifted me not just off the floor but damn near outta my shoes.

“
Like I said
,” she repeated, her voice sounding not from right behind me but as though she was
still behind the desk
, “he don’t wanna be disturbed!”

I was too wrapped up tryin’ to figure where the sudden odor of wood pulp had come from—and okay, yeah, maybe a bit startled at being picked up like a wayward kitten—that I didn’t even realize I’d been tossed back across the lobby, until I cracked into the doorframe.

I was gettin’
real
sick of being thrown around, I gotta say.

Since the skirt was still behind the desk (though she
had
gotten outta her chair), I gave the room a quick up’n down, trying to figure who or what’d just made me a baseball. It took only a second, but since I wasn’t payin’ full attention to her, it gave her time to get in another sucker punch.

Was a pretty sharp poke, just about doubling me over as it sank into my gut—and she hadn’t taken one tiny step to throw it. Her arm’d
stretched
, reachin’ across the room to wallop me, and though it got thinner as it got longer, it wasn’t lacking for strength.

That wood pulpy aroma filled my schnozzle again, and I could hear she was
still
smackin’ that friggin’ gum!

And it finally dawned on me what those two facts together probably meant.

“All right!” I growled, hauling myself upright against the doorframe. “All right. I’m going.”

Her arm’d snapped back to its normal size and length as if it were rubber, but she was watchin’ me close.

And chewing. Good God that was annoying.

I reached for the doorknob, stopped, and looked back, hesitantly as I could.

“Do you… May I leave my card? So that Mister Hruotlundt knows I called, and can contact me when he’s ready to see clients again?”

“Yeah, sure.”

They can be real effective, real useful, these critters. But they ain’t too sharp.

By the time she could see I’d yanked the L&G from my coat, rather’n a card or a wallet, I’d already started power flowing through it. I stripped away not just luck but some of the fundamental magics I knew I’d find soon as I tumbled to what she—it—was. And I knew exactly
where
to hit, to make the whole sequence of spells and formulae come unraveled.

If I’m making this sound easy, it wasn’t. Took a
heap
of concentration, and effort, enough I actually staggered when it was over. If I’d faltered for even half a heartbeat, she’da been all over me like cheap rags. Still think she’da come out second best, but I’d have been in pretty rough shape by the end.

Didn’t happen, though. I didn’t slip. And after a few tics, she just fell apart, disintegrating into a heap of dirt, rotting wood, and quickly melting—and ever dirtier—ice.

The inner door burst open before the dust’d even settled. (Well, soil, in this case.) I’d sorta suspected it would.

“Was that
really
necessary, Oberon?”

Hruotlundt cut a peculiar figure, in two-thirds of his cream-colored three-piece suit. (Slacks and vest, I mean; he’d left his coat in the office.) It somehow didn’t entirely clash, nor entirely compliment, his own rock-grey coloring, which was so uniform you really couldn’t quite tell where skin left off and beard began.

He also stood about as high as my armpits, which puts him on the tall side for a
dvergr
.

“Don’t blow your wig,” I told him. “You can replace it quick enough, yeah?”

“Don’t blow… Do you have any idea how much effort it takes to
make
a homunculus? Let alone one large and strong enough to serve as a guard!”

I couldn’t help it.

I made a big show of looking at the desk, and the heap of muck behind it, and said, “Not the foggiest idea. Do you?”

You ever heard the expression that someone’s “eyes went flinty”? Yeah, with the
dvergar
, that’s literal. I mean his blinkers really did turn to flint.

See, Hruotlundt ain’t like most
dvergar
. He’s got no head for crafting with magic or alchemy or all that. He can follow the instructions in a grimoire skillful enough, and he’s real sharp at identifying and defining enchantments and relics and what have you. But he don’t remember formulae worth a damn, and he’s got no imagination for invention.

So he and the other
dvergar
of Chicago’d mutually decided to part ways—so to speak—and Hruotlundt found a new use for his talents.

But any kinda jab at his abilities—or lack thereof—still stung. I thought maybe I oughta be a
little
friendlier.

“The gum was a nifty touch,” I said. “Really sold the whole thing. You probably shoulda built her to stop once trouble broke out. Didn’t seem natural after that.”

“What do you want, Oberon?”

“Just to bump gums for a few.”

He snarled a bit—teeth, tongue, lips, all that same precise shade of grey as his skin—and then stomped back into his office. I followed.

Real,
real
plain Jane sorta place. Old, worn carpet. Old, worn desk, with an old, worn ledger sitting on it and old, worn chairs scattered around it. A single lamp. A candlestick phone—guess he was more willing to put up with those than me. No art, no decoration.

Oh, yeah, and two doors in addition to the one I’d come through. One to my right, I knew from prior experience, led to a storeroom and a safe heavier than a whale’s grief. And the one opposite me…

Elphame.

You remember that passage I got hidden in my office? One of a whole mess of natural portals to the Otherworld, if you know how to open ’em? Yeah, this ain’t one of those—this one’s artificial. Hruotlundt created it straight outta some ancient tome or other. That’s why the office ain’t always in exactly the same spot. He’d anchored it real firmly on the other side, but he had to leave some slack on this one to make sure the damn thing didn’t snap.

I’ve heard tell that the office looks different if you come from the Elphame side, a lot more intricately adorned, a lot more artistry to the furniture, almost as much a noble’s chamber as a place of business. But I ain’t ever come that way myself, so I can’t swear to it.

Hruotlundt was grumbling—it sounded rather like a rock-crusher—as he slumped hard into his seat.

“Seriously considering billing you for that,” he groused at me.

“Look, whaddaya want from me? She wouldn’t let me in.”

“Uh-huh. And you know what you should have done, instead?”

“What’s that?”

“
Not come in!
”

“Talk to me for a few and I’ll leave.”

He sighed. I’m not sure I ever heard a
dvergr
sigh before. Most of ’em don’t live near enough to mortals to bother picking up the habit.

“Fine, but make it quick. You looking to unload something?”

“Not buying or selling,” I told the fence—sorry, he prefers
facilitator
. “All I need’s some information.”

“Long as it’s not about a stupid spear,” he muttered, so quiet I don’t think I was supposed to hear.

I grinned broadly at him. “Well, actually…”

“Oh, god
damn it
, Oberon! This is exactly why I didn’t want to talk to anyone!”

“I take it I ain’t the first to come nosing around, then?”

“No. No, you most certainly are not!” He pounded a stony fist against the desk a couple times in a near tantrum, leaving some nice, deep gouges in the wood.

“So whaddaya know?” I pressed.

Hruotlundt sighed again—never before, and then twice in one day!—and shook his head.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the others. I don’t know a damn thing of use. If there’s an enchanted or holy or otherwise abnormal relic newly come to Chicago, spear or otherwise, I haven’t heard about it.”

“Oh, come on! You hear everything! You got more ears in the underworld—both underworlds—than a cornfield!”

“Yeah, the others didn’t much buy it, either, which is the
other
reason I had a homunculus guarding my door. But it’s the truth.”

He paused, thinking. Might as well have been a dolled-up statue, until he finally spoke again.

“I heard a rumor a few months back,” he said, voice still far away. “From across the pond somewhere. Wales, I think. That someone had dug up an artifact of the old times. From before the Romans, maybe even before the Tuatha Dé Danann fell. And I heard there’d been more than a little blood spilled over it before it dropped out of sight again.”

I’d have been holding my breath, if it woulda meant anything.

“I suppose it’s possible that it’s made its way here to Chicago,” he continued. “That it could be this spear you’re all trying to dig up. On the other hand, I hear stories of that sort from the Old World every few years, and they’re usually either exaggerations or complete tall tales woven of moonbeams and stupidity. So I wouldn’t put a whole lot of cargo on that particular raft, if you get me.”

I grunted. That was
it
? Yeah, he was right. I wasn’t buying it.

“Not really a whole lotta help, Hruotlundt.”

“Good thing I never promised I’d be helpful then, isn’t it? Now I think it’s time for you to go. As you’ve proved my guard to be less than effective, I think I’d just as soon pack up and leave town until this is over with.”

“Could you at least tell me who else has—?”

“You know I don’t discuss clients with clients.”

“But—”

“It is time. For you to go.”

My turn to sigh. I stood, tipped my hat, and—

“Wait.”

I froze, fingers caressing the doorknob as though I were tryin’ to get her back to my place. “Yeah?”

“48th and Loomis. There’s a payphone. Got a call from there asking about all this.”

I didn’t even ask how he knew where the call’d come from. Who knows what sorta improvements he’d made to his office equipment? “I thought you didn’t discuss clients.”

“This was no client of mine. I didn’t know the voice. And before you tell me it could’ve been a
new
client, I don’t
want
any new clients who are dumb enough to ask me sensitive questions over the phone! And I don’t much care for the fact that they somehow got my number in the first place.”

Made sense. Guess he figured either I’d hafta tune them up, or they’d tune me up, and either way made his day better.

“48th and Loomis,” I repeated.

“Right. Now, you were in the process of going?”

I went.

* * *

Horsefeathers. The whole crummy lot of it, horsefeathers, and enough of ’em to build your own hippogriff. Vague rumors of relics from the Old World? Nuh-uh. No way he’da brought ’em up if he wasn’t pretty sure they were connected, and
definitely
no way that was all he knew. A fly couldn’t break wind in this town Hruotlundt didn’t hear about it—not if it happened anywhere near a valuable heirloom or artifact, anyway.

So what the hell was he holdin’ back? Why wouldn’t anyone, even the people who supposedly wanted me to come out ahead on this, put me wise? Me’n paranoia were startin’ to get real friendly.

Well, open and honest or not, my
dvergr
pal had narrowed it down nicely, but I still had a lotta burning shoe leather ahead. Fact that they’d chosen that particular blower to call from
probably
meant they were holed up nearby—but “nearby” still left me more’n a few city blocks to cover. I knew the right pond, but I was still gonna have to go fishing for some real skittish fish. In other words, the next few hours of the night were spent wandering around one of Chicago’s less refined neighborhoods, looking for the sorts of people who don’t care to be found.