Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (63 page)

“Are you wearing a glamour too?” Jason asked.

Falk snorted derisively. “I don’t know just how bad I look to you without the glasses, but I promise you, if I bothered to doll myself up with a masking spell, I’d certainly aspire to be better than hobo handsome.”

“But there is something…” Jason insisted quietly. “It’s like a shadow over you—”

“The long dead leave their mark,” Falk cut him off briskly and then started walking. “Red Ogre’s isn’t far, but we’ll want to get there before the tide comes in.”

“All right.” Jason let it go and followed Falk in silence down ever narrowing alleys and across a series of badly eroded bridges, until they reached a slum of dank, half-flooded catacombs, crumbling temples, and what looked like the wrecked remains of a fleet of galleons. Strange figureheads of monstrous creatures leered from the deep shadows of the surrounding buildings while huge, glossy red centipedes sheltered beneath cracked portholes and under the eaves of roofs. Heaps of tiny bird bones littered the moss-damp ground and barnacles studded the flagstones of the largely abandoned streets.

The air smelled oddly fragrant. Jason recognized the scents of malt and yeast but couldn’t identify the clean floral perfume that drifted to him from what looked like rotting masts and collapsed rafters.

A glance over the rims of his glasses revealed not only the golden corpses of Shadow Snitches in the jaws of several centipedes but also a sea of ghostly pale flowers cascading over the wrecks and ruins.

“You take me to the weirdest places,” Jason commented.

“All part of the service.” Falk stopped in front of a white tower that looked to Jason like a cross between a lighthouse and a Hindu temple, replete with carved figures in various states of naked frolic decorating the walls and staircase that wound up some seven stories. Whelks and drooping strings of emerald kelp encrusted the lower levels of the stairs, making the images difficult to discern, but by the time Jason reached the heavy hatch-like door on the fifth floor, he’d realized that the carvings presented a far too detailed parade of mermaids, unicorns, satyrs, and griffins indulging in pornographic gymnastics with a variety of slender men and women.

If it was advertising, Jason was pretty certain he wasn’t up to making any transactions. Something pink blurred past the tiny fish-eye porthole set in the rust-red door.

“So what exactly is this place?” Jason asked just as Falk raised his scarred right hand to knock.

“Depends on what you’re looking for when you come. They have rooms to rent and don’t ask questions about the kind of company you might like to keep,” Falk replied. “But most come to the tower for the drinks. Red Ogre and her wife have been brewing their own beers from all the way back when this district served as a shipyard for the Atlantean Navy. You can still see their influence in the art.” Falk gave a nod to the lewd menagerie decorating the walls and staircase. “The most perverted culture I’ve ever encountered.” With that he gave quick rap against the door.

The scarlet handwheel spun, and then with a hiss, as if releasing some foreign atmosphere, the heavy hatch door swung open.

***

Few places remained just as Falk remembered first seeing them. But as he dropped down onto one of the wooden stools at the bar and took a deep breath of the smoky speakeasy atmosphere, he felt as if he’d stepped back to the first weeks after Frank’s death. It all seemed the same: the close proportions of the circular chamber, the shadowy patrons with their odd mix of races and lowered voices, the faint drone of an antique phonograph playing a scratched record of Selkie torch songs. Hell, even the dark stains defacing the oak counter looked like the ones Henry remembered drunkenly tracing with his one good hand.

Henry touched a deep gouge in the wood, noting against his will how it cut and curved to form a rickety
F
.

In an instant, ninety-four years seemed to roll back. He felt swallowed by recollection. An ache flashed through his chest and flared across his hand with the intensity of a raw wound. Reflexively, Henry curled his arm against his chest as if he could shield himself from injuries inflicted so long ago.

How could mere memory hurt so badly, Henry wondered. How could entire empires rise and fall and all the while part of him still remained lying there on that cold steel table with Frank’s knife buried in his heart? Why couldn’t it ever just be over?

“Lucky number seven?” Jason swung onto the stool beside him and flashed him a warm, charming smile. His cologne of cinnamon and coffee pushed back the dull, dead taste in Henry’s mouth.

“What?” Henry asked.

“Carved into the bar counter. It’s a seven, isn’t it?”

“It—” And suddenly Henry realized that Jason was right. He’d been looking at the carving upside down and misread it. “Yeah. Probably left by one of the famous dwarves.”

Jason gave him an uncertain look, then laughed.

“You nearly had me there,” he admitted easily.

Henry almost laughed himself, seeing such a friendly expression animate the guise of Agent August’s normally grim face. Watching Jason peer at the beer pulls and study the colorful array of liquor bottles behind the bar, Henry felt as though he could almost see Jason through the glamour disguising him. Jason caught him staring and flushed slightly.

“I’m gawking, aren’t I?”

“Not more than anyone new to the place would,” Henry assured him.

“I was just wondering if this is where Arrogant Bastard Ale really comes from?” Jason inclined his head toward the large crest of a scowling gargoyle that hung behind the bar. “Or is it an import?”

“It’s made here. Red Ogre must have finally gotten an export license for the United States…”

Henry wasn’t certain of why, but now with Jason sitting beside him he suddenly took notice of all the little ways in which Red Ogre’s tower had altered since he’d last cared enough to really look around him.

The gleaming amber light fixtures with their sleek chrome fittings could have come from an IKEA catalogue. Photos of faerie celebrities and kelpie queens hung on the walls where once there’d been only yellowed etchings. Even the melody that he’d initially recognized revealed itself to be no more than a catchy sample cut into a modern remix.

Jason tapped his fingers across the bar in time to the new, jazzy bass line.

Red Ogre herself was nowhere to be seen; most likely she was somewhere below, tending her hops and oak barrels. However, her pale wife, Sorcha, moved behind the length of the bar with all the assurance and musical grace of a full-blooded sidhe; even though she’d been cast out from Tuatha Dé Dannan society for her passionate love of Red Ogre, she still wore her golden hair in a courtier’s braided crown and held her head high as she glided silently up to them to take their orders.

“Half-Dead.” She inclined her head in easy acknowledgement but then paused as she caught sight of his companion. Jason offered her a winning smile, which looked utterly out of place on August’s sardonic face and brought the faintest crease to Sorcha’s brow.

“Here on business?” she inquired softly.

“Not officially, my beauty,” Henry replied. “But there is a fellow here we’d like a word with.”

“Red Ogre won’t be happy if you’ve come to drag one of her regulars out.”

“Nah. You know me, Lady Sorcha, I wouldn’t—”

“Yes, I know you, Half-Dead, but your companion has a rather different reputation, I think.” She settled a firmly disapproving glower on Jason.

“I’m just along for moral support and a good drink, ma’am,” Jason replied. Then he turned the pockets of his jacket inside out. “See, I’m not even carrying my badge. It’s my day off.”

Sorcha gave a little laugh at that but then seemed to catch herself. She raised a gleaming golden brow and peered at Jason a little too intensely for Henry’s liking.

“The man we’re looking for isn’t a regular.” Henry drew Sorcha’s attention back to himself. “He’ll only just have arrived. Goes by the name of Phipps.”

“Him.” Sorcha’s expression lifted immediately and she nodded. “Red suspected that he’d have a few visitors tracking him down…” Sorcha lowered her satin-soft voice. “Who in this day and age pays with gold dust, really? Hasn’t he heard of American Express?”

“Mind telling us which room he’s rented?” Henry inquired, though he knew what the answer would be.

“Mind ordering a drink to make it worth my while?” Sorcha returned.

“My pleasure, Lady Sorcha. I’ll have a Rotten Rye whisky and my associate—”

“A pint of the Spartacus Hard Cider,” Jason decided for himself. Henry shot him a warning glance, but Jason just appeared all the more pleased with himself.

When Sorcha moved away to procure their drinks, Henry hunched a little nearer to Jason.

“The cider you ordered is made from goblin fruits—”

“I know. I was reading about it up on the menu board. It says I’ll never taste better.” Then Jason lowered his voice and glanced meaningfully to Sorcha. “She looks human.”

Henry simply nodded.

“All the Tuatha Dé Dannan clan look human. Her, and you as well. Your ancestors were human once but also very ambitions as a people. They stole immense powers from other realms and used them without understanding the cost.” Henry wasn’t one to recount old legends, but he thought that this might be something Jason would need to know. Because one day he might very well find himself in the position of his ancestors, calling up murderous forces. “Claiming and wielding great power—the kind that sunders seas or drains the lives from entire armies—it changes you.”

“Like it turns you into a giant snake or something like that?” Jason asked. He appeared to be only half joking.

“Well, I can’t say that it hasn’t ever happened,” Henry conceded. “But I’m not talking about a superficial transformation. I mean a more fundamental change, an effect that reaches all the way down to your soul and slowly distorts your whole being. You already know that magic can alter how you perceive the world around you. It can show you things that almost no one else can even understand.”

Jason’s expression went serious. Yeah, Jason understood that part all too well.

“Wielding that power removes you from the rest of humanity even further. You do it long enough and you can become alienated from all those mundane experiences of life that allow people to understand each other. The things that make us feel connected to each other and help us give a damn about our fellow human beings. And once you stop caring, once the only thing left in your life is power itself, you become capable of sacrificing even those people who you once thought you loved just for the sake of more power.” Henry tried not to sound bitter, but it was hard. “Believe me, the greatest magic always comes at a cost. Often as not, what you sacrifice is your humanity.”

“Something like that happened to you, didn’t it? You had to pay a price for your power?” Jason asked suddenly and softly.

“What? No—I mean, sort of, but not like you’re thinking.” Henry shook his head. “I wasn’t the guy who went questing for power over life and death. I wasn’t so smart or ambitious. I was just too naive to realize that he’d kill me to fulfill his aspirations.”

Jason blanched slightly at Henry’s words but then asked, “But you’re alive now. So what happened?”

 “It went wrong.” Henry hadn’t spoken of that cold April morning since his debriefing ninety-four years ago; it had always seemed too soon. He wasn’t really certain why he was talking about it now, except that Jason made it feel like such a long time ago. “The officer in charge, the one who wanted to claim power over death—”

“Franklyn Fairgate, right?” Jason asked. “The man who recruited you.”

Henry hadn’t expected Jason to remember that. How strange it seemed to hear Frank’s name spoken by someone else, and in that unconcerned tone.

“Yeah, that’s right.” Henry couldn’t meet Jason’s interested gaze. He stared down at the stained counter in front of him. “Frank was no slouch. He just got one little detail of the ritual wrong. The incantations, the bronze knife, the symbols of binding—he had all that dead on. But he hadn’t understood what it meant to make a willing sacrifice of precious life. He hadn’t realized that immense power only gives itself to those prepared to lose everything for its sake. He figured that it would be enough to sacrifice his…friend.”

Henry swallowed hard against the tight feeling in his throat. He wished Sorcha would hurry up with his drink. “Long story short, he miscalculated and ended up getting himself and about a hundred other guys killed. I was the only one of Frank’s crew that walked out of the compound more or less alive.”

“That must have been really hard…” Jason sounded at a loss. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, everybody’s got a sob story.” Falk glanced across the bar to see Sorcha gliding silently toward them with their drinks. Last thing he needed was for her to see him going soft and self-pitying.

“Looks like we’ve got company,” he warned Jason. Then he raised his voice in greeting to Sorcha. “And speaking of angels. Sorcha, you’re a vision of lovely mercy for a thirsty man.”

“If flattery were cash, you’d have made me a wealthy woman a hundred times over, Half-Dead,” Sorcha replied with an amused smile.

Jason accepted his pint of luminous gold cider. Henry exchanged his blood-red whiskey shot for a gold goblin’s coin and didn’t ask for his change. In return, Sorcha told him a room number and withdrew to tend the other patrons gathered around the bar and slouching at the shadowy tables.