Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1) (6 page)

Tess wasn't the sort of person who had flocks of casual friends she could call at the drop of a hat. Her work used up her social energy, leaving her drained and wanting nothing more than a bubble bath or a good book. The spontaneous evening with Thomas might have begun with the deadly serious topic of Aaron and drug addiction, but by the end of the evening, she thought she might at last have made a new friend. He'd even taken her business card and the suggestion of another outing with what seemed like real pleasure.

Smiling, she turned off the ignition and gathered her handbag and the parking ticket, and went inside her half of the duplex that backed onto a greenbelt leading to Forest Park.

In the rear, she stopped at the island separating the kitchen from the living room. She dropped her purse and keys on the counter, stuffed the parking ticket into the basket for her mail, and opened the fridge. She needed a quick and easy snack before bed. The coffee had been warm and sweet, but it sat uncomfortably in her stomach. A little food would balance out the buzz from the caffeine and sugar.

While two slices of bread toasted, Tess fished in the outside pocket of her purse for the object she'd found in the market. Her fingers found the ribbon first, and tugged gently. The little thing swung free in the overhead light.

The size of a golf ball, it looked like a hazelnut still in its shell, with tracings of silver where there would otherwise have been brown markings like wood grain. The ribbon was bound tightly around its equator and its meridian, closing the two halves. Tess studied it, smiling. The fanciful knot at the top proved complicated and too tight to loosen, even when picked at with the point of a toothpick. She was tempted to snip the ribbon in two and see if the nut was made to open, but instead she took it to her curio shelf, and opened the glass door so she could tuck the newest acquisition into an empty space.

Tess was a magpie, collecting all sorts of objects that interested her, but she was most drawn to the items she'd found under the Burnside Bridge in the past year. Her count was up to fifteen, everything from a wooden thistle bristling with bronze spikes, to something like a radiometer, a clear glass bulb with a tiny bead inside that jittered back and forth whenever she held it. Some of the things were interesting enough that she'd taken them to her office for curios. At first she'd tried to find their owners, but since nobody claimed them, she'd given up and kept them for herself. She didn't find a new prize every time she visited the market, but often enough that she kept her eyes open.

The beribboned nut made a nice addition to her collection. Perhaps at Christmastime she would hang it as an ornament on her tree. Still basking in the glow of the evening, she closed the glass door and went to scramble an egg to go with her toast.

Morning came too soon, gray light from the windows waking Tess in her small upstairs bedroom. She had left the window near the bed open an inch or two, loving the fresh air even though the October nights were growing chilly. The window looked out over the green belt into the thickness of the ivy that had escaped from countless city gardens and now threatened to subsume the local ecosystem. Trees rose from a uniform sea of saw-toothed leaves and hairy tan stems. Tess liked the look, though she knew monocultures were often harmful in the long run. It had a certain order to it, a tidy regularity that pleased her. She treasured the glimpses of wildlife—raccoons, deer, opossums, rodents and birds—that were her reward for choosing the duplex on the edge of Forest Park despite its too-high rent. Her tiny slice of country peace just blocks from the pounding mechanical pulse of the city.

"Too much coffee too late. Never again." She sat up, groaning, rubbing her eyes. Her dreams had been filled with confusion and exhausting searches for something she had never quite found. Over and over again, she saw the girl Aaron had met, but each time the girl turned to stare at dream-Tess, with a glare of such open hostility that Tess was taken aback, even in her sleep. Thomas had been there, too, a vague figure on the periphery of the dreams. She bumped into his tall, bulky form when she turned around, but each time he melted away before she could speak. Always, he held out a hand to her, beckoning. The sense of loss at his disappearances saddened her and left her with a melancholy she couldn't quite shake, even after waking.

Today she would visit a long-term care facility on the far slopes of the West Hills. One of her former clients lived there—if sitting in chairs by windows, staring blankly, could be called living—and she wanted to talk to him one more time in the hopes of stirring something. Anything. Maybe if she showed him Aaron's pictures, before the addiction and now, when he was so thin and worn, Rory could give her a clue. She could ask about the lady, too. Maybe it would bring a response.

After her shower and breakfast, Tess dressed in a pair of slacks and a long-sleeved top, and pulled her hair back into a tortoise-shell barrette. She slipped her cell phone in her purse, along with a slim journal for taking notes. As an afterthought, she picked up the silvery hazelnut from the curio shelf and tucked it into the back pouch. It would look interesting in her office. She'd swap it out for something else.

Ridge Manor looked like a large house from the outside. All brick and white pillars and windows. But inside, it was still a hospital, with easy-clean floors and walls, and secured windows that insured the residents stayed inside. Tess signed in at the desk and pinned her visitor badge to her shirt pocket. She followed an attendant to the day room, where one of her former clients was spending his morning in an armchair next to a stack of puzzles and games, which he ignored in favor of staring up at the light fixtures.

"Hi, Rory," Tess said quietly, touching his shoulder. "It's Tess Gordon."

Rory Morris slowly turned his head to look at her, but Tess saw no recognition in his blank brown eyes. Still, it was a response, which was better than some days, when he wouldn't even turn his head.

She pulled up a chair and sat facing him. "Rory, I need your help." She opened a folder and put a picture of Aaron, a happy twenty-year-old at a family barbecue, in Rory's hand. "This guy was just like you, once. Happy, healthy, good-looking."

Rory's gaze drifted slowly to the photo, and then just as slowly lifted ceilingward. Tess touched the top of his head and redirected his attention. "Then something happened to him, just like it happened to you. He started taking something. Losing himself, just like you did." She slipped another photo, taken just a couple of weeks ago, into Rory's hand. Aaron was thin and drawn, his gaze blank and uninterested, unfocused and dull. His dark skin had grayed, looked almost ashy with dust.

"You've got to help me, Rory. I don't want to lose another person to this stuff. Come on." She squeezed his hand where it held the pictures. "Come on. Tell me what you remember. Where you went, who you met. Aaron sneaks out of his house at night. Last night he went underneath the Burnside Bridge—"

Wait. Had she seen Rory's eyes flicker?

"Is it the bridge? Is that where he gets it? I didn't think so, not after last night, because he met a girl there—"

"The lady." Rory's whisper was so faint it could have been an exhalation.

A frisson of excitement and triumph hummed through her. The lady! It was a link, a key. It had to be. Tess felt the tingle of knowledge tantalizing her, just out of reach. The lady. The woman at the riverside. Rory. Drugs. Aaron. It must all fit together, but she could not find the proper pieces and turn them the right way. She fumbled in her bag for her journal, opening it randomly to a blank page. Her pen had come unclipped from the journal, and a quick shake didn't turn it up. She couldn't afford to lose Rory's attention, thready as it was, so she kept talking while she emptied half her purse into her lap. Wallet, keys, the silver hazelnut, old receipts, her phone, a pack of gum, and finally the pen. She grabbed it, clicking the point out, just as Rory leaned forward and snatched the hazelnut, letting the photos of Aaron fall into the space between his chair cushion and arm.

"Rory, Rory...here, let me have that. If you'll just look at Aaron, see how he's fading, like you did..." Tess tried to put the pictures back in one hand while she pried at the other to retrieve the hazelnut. No telling what Rory might do with it, in his strange fugue state. But Rory would not unclench his hand, and Tess was afraid to cause a disturbance. Already a couple of other residents were staring. She repacked her bag except for the journal and pen.

"Tell me more about the lady. Who is she?"

Rory's head fell back against the armchair, and he closed his eyes. His mouth went slack. The photos slid from his fingers again, and Tess, defeated, returned them to the folder. She touched his arm, but he was not responsive. She tried once more to pry open the hand with the silver nut in it, but though the rest of Rory seemed limp and helpless, that hand was rigid and unmovable.

Rory had gone away again, and there was nothing more to be gained by continuing to question him. Tess went to murmur to the attendant that Rory had something of hers in his hand and they should take it away in case it caused problems. The attendant came and talked to Rory gently, taking Rory's clenched fist in his large hand. Finger by finger, he opened the hand, to show Tess Rory's empty palm.

"Nothing here. Maybe he's hidden it. I'll get him to stand up and you can check the chair."

While Tess rummaged beneath the seat cushion and shook out the knitted afghan draped over the arm, the attendant checked Rory's mouth and clothing.

"It was in his hand, I know it was."

"Did you check the floor?" The attendant let Rory sag back into the armchair. "Maybe he dropped it."

But more searching didn't turn up the nut. The attendant asked the other residents if they'd seen it, but no one had. Rory slumped in the chair, more boneless than Tess had ever seen him. In the end, she left her contact information and a description of the silver nut, in case someone should find it. As she walked to the door, she turned for one more glance at Rory. He still lay in the chair, eyes closed and hands loose in his lap, but now a faint smile curved his mouth instead of the slack jaw of the catatonic.

You know more than you're telling.
Tess scowled to herself, wondering what in the world Rory could have done with the trinket without leaving the chair. There was no place to hide it that they hadn't searched, and if he'd managed to swallow it, though she couldn't see how, there was no telling what harm it would do him.

T
HERE
SHE WAS AGAIN
.

T
HOMAS
should have known she wouldn't be able to stay away. She was like a dog with a bone, worrying at it until she got to the marrow. He stood at a slit window of his trow-hold and looked out across Underbridge, where Tess was moving determinedly from person to person and fae to fae, meeting with blank faces, rudeness or outright laughter.

A sigh gusted out of him. This couldn't end well, and he'd better go down into the market and stop her before she found a fae who
would
do business with her. Thomas knew that the likes of Sharpwit left the humans alone, but not all fae were so particular or circumspect in their dealings with humans. For a change the redcaps were not tending their cauldron of bloody dye, but there was at least one kelpie dripping about in the rainy evening, and a slender drug rehab counselor would be as tasty as a zonked-out junkie girl, once she'd been drowned in the Willamette.

Thomas slid the narrow chunk of concrete back into place and closed his window on Underbridge. His eagerness to see Tess, a full five days before they were supposed to meet at the coffee shop again, surprised him. Even if it couldn't be under favorable circumstances, he wanted to be with her, hear her voice, maybe even feel her touch again. He hurried up the spiral stairs carved from the solid concrete of the bridge pier to the cavernous, slightly damp room beneath, where he kept his clothes and his kitchen. He shrugged into the oilskin and took a moment to compose himself enough to become Thomas Human again, instead of Thomas Trow. He patted his pockets from the outside, checking for his stone blade and the six large iron spike nails he carried—well wrapped to save himself from the iron—for protection. He grabbed the wooden bucket of grubs he'd collected for Sharpwit, and went up the rest of the stairs to the hidden door that accessed the network of support girders.

In his human form, it was less painful to walk along the iron girders. He hurried along the horizontals, on the lookout for observers, swinging past uprights, until he was able to drop the ten feet to the ground in the fenced area behind the pumping station. A moment or two later he slipped through his secret glamoured gap in the chain link, instead of climbing the fence.

It wasn't difficult finding Tess in the gloom of Underbridge, though she'd moved on from the boggart disguised as a hobo sleeping in a pile of stained blankets, and was heading toward the kelpie. Thomas cursed under his breath as he rushed to Sharpwit's stall and set down the bucket of grubs with a thump, nearly knocking over a pair of brownies waiting for a snack. Tess must really think she was onto something, to come back and be so persistent. He could hear her talking to the kelpie as he approached.

"So I'm looking for some stuff for my friend. He's really sick, but he can't help it, you know? Something called 'the lady.' I promised I'd bring him back some. Just a little hit, you know, to quiet the shakes. Just one."

Bitter bluebell throats and hairy ivy feet
, thought Thomas. Did she think the kelpie was a pusher? He strode through a group of hobs who were gaming with knucklebones, disturbing their play but ignoring their shrill cries and their pummeling fists on his shins.

The kelpie stared at Tess hungrily, his eyes hot and intimate. Thomas could see through the glamour to the horse-shape just beneath the surface, a shape running with liquid and clothed in waterweed, teeth harsh as bad dreams and just as vicious. All the kelpie needed was for her to agree to walk away with him. It would take her toward the river, and Tess would not return from that walk.