Unperfect Souls (34 page)

That brought her around. Her hands flew to her stomach. “What do you mean?”

I shook my head. “I’m sensing another body signature inside you. There’s some kind of protective shield around it, and I can’t see what it is.”

“Get me up.” She grabbed my shoulder, and we helped her to her feet.

“Maybe you shouldn’t move until we know what’s wrong,” I said.

She swayed. “Get me to AvMem.”

“Keeva . . .”

“I’m pregnant, you idiot! Get me to AvMem now.”

My jaw dropped.

“Oh, congratulations!” said Shay.

Ignoring him, I draped Keeva’s arm around my neck. “Get that ward stone, Shay. I’m not leaving it here.”

Easy as he pleased, Shay stooped and picked up the bowl. Supporting Keeva with my other arm, I walked her through the chamber. “What happened, Keeva?”

She leaned against me. “I followed your ridiculous map. You might have mentioned the binding traps.”

“Sorry. They weren’t there when I was here last time.”

“How did you know I was down here?” she asked.

It was hard to decide which made me look worse, the angry drunkenness or the creepy desire that drove me back to Druse. “It’s a long story.”

Uno bounded down the tunnel ahead of us, circling around back and running off again. He acted more like an overgrown puppy than what I expected in a hound from Hel. Keeva pressed her arm against me. “Do you feel that?”

“What?”

“Something’s down here with us. I feel something moving around us. Something malevolent,” she said.

I didn’t sense anything but Uno. “You mean the dog?”

She cocked her head up. “What dog?”

Shay and I looked at each other. He looked away, sad and resigned. He didn’t have to tell me what he was thinking about the dog.

“Another long story, Keev. It’s nothing to worry about.”

When we reached the walled-off basement, I sensed the remains of a binding spell across the
leanansidhe
’s bolt-hole. Threadlike tatters dangled from the walls and ceiling. I hadn’t been in the right frame of mind to notice them on the way in.

“He wasn’t here,” Keeva said.

“Who wasn’t?”

She forced herself to walk on her own. If there was one thing I knew about Keeva, it was that she was tough. “Vize.”

Guilt swept over me. I had been wrong, and Keeva had walked into the
leanansidhe
’s chamber unprepared. “I’m sorry, Keev. I’m really sorry. I thought Sekka was hiding the ward stone. That’s what I thought the Guild wanted. I didn’t know that you were looking for Vize until tonight. I’m an idiot.”

Keeva started up the stairs. “You won’t get any argument from me on that score. Why the hell would we care about a ward stone?”

I looked back at Shay coming up behind me as he clutched the stone bowl to his chest. “I thought it was important.”

Uno burst out of the warehouse door. The morning sun blinded us after the tunnels. I blinked hard against the tears in my eyes. As my vision returned, I saw essence building up in Keeva’s wings.

I pulled out my cell. “You are not flying to AvMem, Keeva.”

A challenge rose in her eye, but she checked it. Without argument, she leaned against the building while I called the Guild’s emergency line. Keeva held a hand out to Shay. “Let me see that.”

He pursed his lips and held out the bowl. “I know you meant it, but let me see that ‘please,’ right?”

When Shay released it, it slipped through Keeva’s hands and hit the ground. She bent to retrieve it, but it wouldn’t budge. “What’s the trick?” she said to Shay.

He leaned down and picked up the bowl. His finely arched eyebrows drew together as he turned it in his hands. He handed it back to Keeva, and it fell again. I tried to pick it up, but no luck. The three of us must have made an interesting scene as we squatted around a stone bowl in the snow. Shay picked it up again. I took it and couldn’t hold it. I stared at it and remembered what the
leanansidhe
had said. “Shay, this is going to be an odd question, but are you a virgin?”

It
was
an odd question. When I met Shay, he was turning tricks on the street and living with a boyfriend. He pretended to have his dignity insulted. “A gentleman would not ask such things.”

“Right. That’s why Connor would,” said Keeva.

I scowled at her. “Funny.”

The familiar buzz of large wings moving at speed filled the morning air, and two great shadows swept overhead. Danann security agents wheeled above us and descended. “Are you well, Director macNeve?” one of the chrome-domes asked.

“Take me to Avalon Memorial, please. It’s just a precaution,” she said. She folded her wings against her back as the two agents slipped their hands into straps sewn into her jumpsuit. “Not a word to anyone, Connor. I’ll stop by to kill you after I see Gillen Yor, okay?”

I smiled weakly. “You sound like yourself already.”

The security agents flexed their wings and rose on drafts of essence. When they cleared the roofline, they swung around and disappeared. As they left, a movement caught my eye, someone on a roof watching us. The Hound. He ducked out of sight.

Shay stared at the now-empty sky. “She’s still kind of a bitch, isn’t she?”

Keeva had been less than kind to Shay in the past. When I say less than kind, I mean ignored him like he didn’t exist.

“She has her moments, Shay.”

He picked up the ward stone. “Why did you ask about my virginity?”

I shook my head. “The
leanansidhe
said only a virgin could move it.”

Shay gave me a sly look. “There’s more than one kind of virgin, you know.”

“One kind of . . .” I laughed. “Gods. You’ve never slept with a woman, have you?”

He rested his chin on upright fingers. “Look at this face, doll. The only girls in high school who wanted to sleep with me were confused lesbians.”

“I guess whoever put the taboo on the stone was a little old-fashioned,” I said.

He pouted coyly. “I try to be modern.”

“Hang on to that for me, okay? And don’t tell anyone you have it. The last thing you need is someone coming to look for it.”

He pulled his hood up. “Are you going to be all right, Connor?”

I shrugged. “I need to get some sleep. You should, too.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to do that for a while.” He clutched the bowl to his chest again and started up the street.

“Hey, Shay?” He turned his head, but his hood didn’t move. Half his face showed along the edge of fur, a few strands of his long dark hair waving in the wind. “Thank you for saving my life.”

He wiggled his nose at me. “Karma, doll.”

He weaved down the sidewalk, following a sinuous path of compacted snow. When he was a block or so away, Uno lumbered out from between two cars and followed him.

I checked the roofline again. The Hound was gone. Exhaustion weighed down on me. Thinking about Keeva and Shay—and even the Hound—were just avoidance tactics. I didn’t want to think about what had happened down in that tunnel. The thing in my head could be used. I could guide it. It reacted to what I was feeling, and I could use it. Only it seemed to work with aspects of myself that made me feel wrong. And ashamed. The worst part was, that wasn’t enough to make me not want to use it.

And that scared me.

 

 

 

 

Meryl was asleep in the middle of my futon when I arrived at the apartment. After hearing about what happened at Eagan’s the night before, she had surmised I was with Murdock and had let herself in to wait for me. How she got in with all the security warding, I didn’t know, but it didn’t surprise me. Very little stopped her when she put her mind to it. Without a word, she wrapped her arms around me and drew me into bed. Exhausted, I slept the morning away. By the time I woke up, the governor had called in the National Guard, and the Weird was under curfew. Meryl and I spent the rest of the day in various stages of undress, lolling about the apartment and watching TV.

The scent of popcorn filled the air. Meryl watched the bag revolve in the microwave while I sat on the edge of the futon annoyed by the television news.

“They’re doing the ‘Wasn’t-Scott-Murdock-a-Noble-Guy? ’ piece again,” I said.

The news had settled on its angle for the life of Scott Murdock. Television station after station outlined the life of a man who walked the fine line in Boston between fey dominance and human accommodation. Parts of it were even true. Scott Murdock was no fan of the fey, but he also knew he couldn’t ignore or eliminate them. Helping them, of course, was not on his list. That was the Guild’s job, and as long as it dropped the ball, it played right into his political maneuvering. I saw it time and again. Someone could blame the Boston P.D. for its ineffectual approach to fey crime, but its failings always paled in the face of the Guild’s indifference.

In the end, he had crossed the line. Why, only he could answer, and that wasn’t possible anymore. Maybe the catastrophic events of the last months overwhelmed him. Maybe he realized his contrived failures to protect the human populace had mutated into real ones out of his control. And maybe Moira Cashel pushed him over the edge with her revelations of his past and her revenge for his actions. She seduced him once and seduced him again. That had to suck for him.

The microwave dinged. Meryl juggled the hot bag to the counter, pulled the corners of the bag open, and let out the steam. “Eh, I’m indifferent. Police commissioner in this town is a no-win job. Whoever gets it is going to end up sucking at it one way or the other.”

I cocked my head toward her. “Are you defending him?”

She pushed a kernel of popcorn into my mouth as she settled on the futon. “I didn’t say I liked him.”

I slid back to sit next to her against the wall. “Did I mention the part where he shot me in the face?”

She grinned, watching the television. “Who am I to criticize someone who succeeds where others failed?”

I poked her, and she laughed, sending some popcorn flying as she pulled away. “It hurt,” I said.

“Yeah, your poor wallet. The dry cleaning bill’s gonna be a bitch.”

I ate popcorn off the blanket. “Ha-ha.”

She fished in the bag, as if looking for a particular kernel. “Do you think Moira healed you?”

“I was wondering that myself. What I can’t figure is why she would.”

“Maybe she thinks you’ll forgive her and be her boyfriend again,” Meryl said.

I tweaked her nose. “Oh, you’re in fine form tonight.”

She giggled and tilted the bag toward me. “I’m getting bored. We’ve been trapped in here all day. Anything from Murdock?”

I took a handful of popcorn. “Not since the text.” Just one word: Thanks. He probably didn’t intend it, but I had been worrying over that one word all day. Thanks for what? Letting him mourn his father? Telling him what happened? Or was it sarcastic, implying I said things he didn’t need to hear last night? Was it because I called him a cab? He wasn’t one for long, drawn-out explanations, and I was. The difference made us question ourselves. I think.

“You know Murdock. Man of few words,” Meryl said.

Man of few words, indeed. I never thought I’d see Murdock like I did the night before—lost and confused. He always kept control of his emotions—even his anger, which could be formidable. To see him so helpless and riddled with guilt hurt me because none of it would have happened if he had never met me. He would have never had a case that involved Vize. It always came back to Vize.

“Can you ask Zev where Vize is?” I asked.

She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Where the hell did that come from?”

I shrugged. “Because Zev knows. The night Murdock disappeared, Zev wouldn’t tell me, and I could tell damned well he knew where to find the Hound. I think when Sekka died, Zev took over hiding Vize, and the only other person present when she died was the Hound. Vize is the Hound. That’s why Zev wouldn’t tell me.”

“But you told me the Hound was one of the Dead,” she said.

I nodded. “I also told you he had something funky going on with his essence. I’m betting he’s wearing a glamour.”

Meryl considered the idea, then I felt the flutter of a sending in the air. A moment later, I felt another. “Zev said he’s busy,” she said.

I snorted and ate some popcorn. “That tells me I’m right. I’ll be talking to Zev again.”

In addition to all the troubles in the Weird, film crews had descended on the neighborhood, using the commissioner’s death as a prism to view the conflicts he was involved in. By midafternoon, a contingent of solitaries rejoicing at the commissioner’s death had managed to alienate the general public. I supposed their position was inevitable. Bad timing, to say nothing of poor taste, but inevitable. Solitaries in the Weird had suffered under the commissioner’s leadership of the police force. But they did themselves no favors by dancing in the streets over his death.

When the governor called in the National Guard, the situation had gone national. CNN fed live images of tanks and trucks stationed at the Fort Point Channel bridges at Summer, Congress, and Old Northern. The mayor and governor assured everyone they were precautions and would enter the neighborhood only if the situation deteriorated.

I reached for more popcorn and paused. Meryl was wearing an old sloppy sweater of mine with an open neck. A purple spot in her cleavage showed above the collar. I pulled her sweater down a few inches. Near the bottom of her right breast, a red circle of teeth marks showed against purple-and-blue bruising. “Did I do that?”

Meryl tucked her chin and looked down. “Well, I’m not that limber.”

I slumped against the wall. “Hell, Meryl, I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I’ve had worse. It’s a little out of character for you, though.”

I was horny as hell when I got back to my apartment and found her sleeping in it. When she woke up, we went at it like rabid cats on a hot summer night. At least, I did. The need was . . . I didn’t want to finish the thought. Something in my brain had clicked off. It hadn’t mattered who was in my bed. A need consumed me, and I wanted release.