Unshapely Things (5 page)

And now Gamelyn, a young Danann, recently arrived from parts unknown. It was too soon to have much of anything on him except he was in good health when he died. And drunk.

Annoyed, I snapped off the computer. Staring at their gutted torsos made my own chest hurt. I prowled the apartment, trying to figure the twists that lead people down the paths they take. How does anyone end up a dead whore? What loss starts the slide? Physical looks? Love? Money? Power?

I pulled off my clothes and jumped in the shower, blasting myself with hot water. The heat penetrating under my skin felt cruelly satisfying. I wanted to burn away the frustration. I turned up the water temperature to match the heat of the anger spreading over me. I could not comprehend the stupidity that drives the fey. All the power they could ever want, and they wallowed in the muck of the Weird. I've heard the reasons, if they can be called that, the mere dalliance that most of them consider the depravity they cause and find. The inconsequentiality of sex in races that rarely gave birth. The resilience of bodies that lived for centuries. I'd heard all that and more. But it all rings hollow when toted up against the waste and pain and death.

As I stood naked, my skin nearly blistering, I knew I did not want to miss a minute accorded me. Not when I had no idea if I had anything stretching beyond an average human life span. Sometimes I imagined I could feel the thing in my head, like a cancer perhaps, dividing and replicating over and over, pushing every last ounce of ability out of my body. I'd barely lived forty years, nearly a childhood for my race, but I still wanted more, while fools risk their lives for the novelty of a high or a bed. I gave myself a blast of cold water and shouted at the shock of it. The towel felt deliriously rough against my skin as I dried off. As I wrapped myself in a robe, I realized that pummeling my body with extreme temperatures was no different than the way others punished their bodies to soothe their inner emotions. It was all a matter of degree and rationality. I was just trying to feel alive. Just like them. I hated moments when I recognized my own kinship with the people who frustrated me. They only reminded me of why I loved the Weird. I made some fresh coffee and turned the computer back on.

While my ancestors had the luxury of tramping through forests and waging war to keep in shape, I had to resort to the tedium of bench-pressing three times a week. Jim's Gym was a nice little hole-in-the-wall just over the Congress Street bridge from the Weird. I liked it because I generally didn't know anyone there, it smelled like a gym, and it didn't have a juice bar. The clientele tended to be eclectic, from financiers to truck drivers, and mostly human. The common denominator was a good solid workout ethic with no prima donnas. The only mirrors at Jim's are in the locker room.

I had started working out to restore muscle tone after my hospital stay. I kept to myself, using the small weights I could manage then. It is amazing how weak lying in bed can make you. That was how I met Murdock. We'd exchanged the usual nonconversational gym etiquette before, the nods hello and shaking of heads when someone emitted gratuitous grunting. A year or so ago, in one of those fits of overreaching conceit I'm prone to way too often, I used too much weight and found myself pinned to the weight bench. In a further bit of pride, I didn't call out for help but lay there hoping I would get enough energy back to heave the bar off my chest without tipping the weights in a clatter to the floor.

Murdock's upside-down face appeared above me with just the flicker of the smirk I've since come to know too well. "Need help?"

"Yeah," I gasped, and a partnership was born. We started working out together after that, him giving me workout tips and me telling him about the fey folk. Things just progressed from there.

Friday afternoon was one of our usual workout times. I was getting off the treadmill when Murdock walked in, late as usual. He was dressed in his standard gear, regulation white T-shirt and nylon running pants. Even wearing clothes designed to sweat in, he looked freshly ironed.

We got down to it. Our routine ran smoothly, long practiced, with little conversation. Once we started working together on cases, work talk at the gym became taboo. I liked being able to get my aggressions out, not continue them. On the other hand, Murdock felt no need for such separations. He's got to be the most balanced human I've ever met. Either that, or I haven't figured out what's wrong with him yet.

Once we had showered and changed, Murdock suggested we go for an early dinner. It was unusually warm when we stepped out of the gym, so we decided to walk to the North End for Italian. The late rush-hour traffic zipped through the heart of the financial district. Some of the British fairies and German elves discovered a knack for the stock market in the early eighties and sparked a downtown renaissance of sorts. While many of the fey folk frowned upon the newfound fascination with wealth, few humans complained about the new businesses and the taxes they generated. Besides, the old parking garage in the middle of Post Office Square was now buried under a nice fairy garden and that was definitely an improvement.

We found a small restaurant off the tourist route with comfortable booths and middle-aged waitresses. Murdock liked to carbo-load after a good workout. While we were waiting for our orders, he slid an envelope over to me. Opening it, I found a police artist sketch.

"Shay's sketch?" I asked. Murdock nodded. The sketch showed a bald man, dark eyes slightly tilted, almost Asian, and a straight nose, both attributes I would have expected of several of the elven races. But his ears were smooth, not pointed, and he had full lips, which could be just about any race but elven. As usual with these sketches, the face had a crudeness about. If you squinted the right way, it would look like anyone from your next-door neighbor to the emperor of Japan.

"Not very helpful," Murdock said, as the waitress served our orders.

I dug into my pasta. "I don't know. It pretty much eliminates elves, dwarves, and trolls. And flits, of course. How old does Shay think he is?"

"If he were human, he thinks about fifty," Murdock said.

I frowned. "Fifty? For one of the fey folk to look like a human fifty, he'd have to be pretty old. Most of that generation tend to stay in Ireland or Britain. They don't like the US."

Murdock shrugged. "That fits. You said the ritual was probably old."

"When I said that, I was talking a couple of thousand years, Murdock. Fey folk that old are few and far between."

"But this eliminates elves, right? We know it's a fairy now."

It was my turn to shrug. "Like I said before, it's not likely he's human, but that doesn't mean he's not. I'm comfortable assuming he's a fairy for now, though. Keeping the stone tokens under wraps seems to be working," I said. Murdock's lips compressed into a thin line, and he distractedly rubbed the edge of the table. "I have some bad news about the stones. We sent them to the Guild for examination. They were receipted into inventory and when I called to follow up, they said they couldn't find them. They're missing."

I looked at my watch. It was coming up on eight-thirty. No way I could get any staff on the phone this late on a Friday. "Dammit, Murdock, why didn't you tell me earlier? I could have called before everyone went home."

Murdock was silent as the waitress dropped off the check. "I was just calling to confirm they got the new one. Connor, you know how it is. They haven't told us a thing about the other stones. I don't think they even looked at them yet. I didn't tell you earlier because you'd just get pissed off, and you're annoying to work out with when I bring up work."

I leaned back in my seat and rubbed my hands over my face. He was right, of course. The Guild spends its time on its own priorities first. Fairies in the Weird were on the lowest rung as far they were concerned, and prostitutes somewhere even lower. Maeve was none too pleased at the turn of events that dumped the fey in the modern world. As High Queen of the Seelie Court that rules over all fairies, she had sent out an edict long ago that people who venture outside of sanctioned territory were on their own. Part of the reason the rulers of the fey set up the Ward Guild was to handle the really egregious situations, but the Guild decided what those were. They gave token support to the local police on crimes they did not directly handle, just like the local police gave token support to fairy crimes they were stuck with. The end result is a lot of unresolved petty crime and, yes, dead fey folk some people think got what they deserved. That meant people, both human and fey, caught in the middle of official jurisdiction fights had to rely on whomever they could for justice. Murdock and I were on our own more often than we liked.

"The good news is that three dead bodies seem to have gotten the mayor's attention. He's about to authorize a task force," he said.

I smiled slyly. "Do I hear the sound of the Murdock brothers riding to the rescue?" Murdock comes from a big police family. Between friends and family, Sunday dinner at his father's house looks like roll call.

"Maybe," he said. "It's my case, but I don't see staff coming my way. Mostly, it'll be more uniforms on the street. He's more worried about tourist dollars and anti-fey protesters than the murders. The festival's right around the corner."

I nodded. Midsummer was two weeks away. What had its ancient roots in celebratory dancing had mutated into one long, wild party. Practically every religion ever had some kind of holiday associated with it, and every year the party got bigger. The Weird, as the local neighborhood with the highest concentration of pagans, became a nexus for the gatherings. It was a nightmare for residents, but it also brought huge amounts of money into the local economy. At least it wasn't England. No one in their right mind goes near Stonehenge for Midsummer. Some drugged-up fools always decide it's time to resurrect human sacrifices, and they're not picky about the virgin thing. It had become the longest day of the year in more ways than one.

"I don't want to think about Midsummer. I'm more interested in next Tuesday," I said.

We walked out into the evening twilight. Sunset had brought with it an early chill. Murdock stepped with his cop swagger, eyes instinctively scanning the sidewalk as though every passerby had some secret motive. We reached the Old Northern Avenue bridge and paused halfway, leaning in among the industrial girders to look at the water. Early-evening foot traffic passed behind us with little idea that we were probably the only ones in the city trying to figure out who had killed three people less than a mile away.

Across the channel, you could see the corner of my loft near the edge of what is still called Fan Pier. Around the turn of the century the pier, which was really filled-in harbor, was a railroad storage facility and switching station that from a height looked like a giant handheld fan. Hence the name. As the years went by, the rail yard shrank, and shacks and warehouses went up. It made the kind of picturesque jumble of shoreline that urban renewers just love to raze for luxury housing.

"What about a connection to the festival?" Murdock asked.

I gazed down at the rich gray water. Little bits of foam and debris spun slowly beneath our feet. "I don't see a connection yet. The Forest King is obvious. He dies on the summer solstice, completing the cycle of birth and death. But that's one person killed and pretty much a voluntary community event."

"Maybe just one person is doing the killing and the rest are keeping quiet about it," he suggested.

"Maybe. But I think we would hear about it. Of the sacrifice rituals I know, it doesn't make sense to go after fairies. Faith and belief by the sacrifice is just as important as the slayer's. I'm missing something. I just haven't figured out what."

"Want to hear what Shay thinks?" Murdock asked.

I rolled my eyes. "Sure, why not."

"Elves. He thinks it's connected to the old fairy/elf feud because if there were bad blood among the fairies, he would have heard about it." I cocked a doubtful eyebrow at him. Murdock just shrugged and smiled. "I wouldn't underestimate him, Connor. He may be young, but he's lasted a lot longer than a lot of kids his age."

Whenever something bad happened to elves or fairies, someone always brought up the tension between the two races. When the fey began to appear around 1900, fairies and elves were at war but reached a truce of sorts when they found themselves here instead of in what everyone calls Faerie. "Convergence" is the accepted term for the merging of the two worlds, and arguments still rage over whose world is the real one. The fact remains that the fey definitely came from someplace else, a place where time ran differently, and they had not faded into myth and legend. Whichever, in both places, elves and fairies didn't like each other very much. In fact, the two sides were currently meeting in Ireland for a Fey Summit to try to iron out their continuing differences.

"So, what's Shay's story?"

"Shay's of legal age, but he's a runaway, if you ask me. No boy that looks like a woman could have had it easy growing up," said Murdock.

Mildly surprised, I glanced over at him. "Murdock, I would have thought by now you would be over the gender thing."

"I didn't say I'd hassle him, Connor. I grew up here. I'm just stating a fact. Believe it or not, there are some places in this country where the fey don't live. You forget that not everyone is comfortable with fey folk, never mind the whole pansexual stuff."

He was right. Being fey and growing up in one of the highest concentrations of fey folk in the US, it's easy to forget the hinterlands are out there. Though the fey more often fall into opposite sex relationships, they're fairly indifferent to biology. Briallen tells me it has to do with low fertility and long lives. Promiscuity is hardly frowned upon when it often is the only way to propagate the species. Since the likelihood of producing children is so low, sex becomes more about the relationship and less about procreation. Extremely long lives leave plenty of time to breed if someone wants to try. No one would have thought anything strange about Shay in the schools I went to. Murdock pushed away from the bridge railing, and we resumed walking. "He was born in Boston, but there's no other info before last year. He's either got a sealed juvie record somewhere, or he was clean. He's gonna get snagged on a soliciting rap eventually. It's just a matter of time."