Dead to Rites E-Book

Ari Marmell

• Herausgeber: JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Mick Oberon Jobs
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 402

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Rogue fae royalty turned hardboiled gumshoe Mick Oberon needs to get a dangerous dingus under wraps as the fast and fun fantasy noir series continues… With all the dirty politics, crime, and corruption running through the streets like illegal hootch after a G-Man surprise party, 1930s Chicago already has a heap of worry on its big shoulders. But Mick Oberon knows for a fact it can get much, much worse… And it's about to. He should have seen it coming, what with the nasty streak of bad luck he's been carrying around lately. Especially since every grape on the vine has been telling Mick that someone—or something—has been asking about him around town. But what he never could have seen is the high-class dame with a job for him, a job he can't turn down: find Ramona Webb—the one woman he could never forget…and never forgive. And he'll have to move fast. Because whatever play Ramona is making seems to revolve around a mummy that's the real McCoy—and who may just be behind Mick's recent bum breaks. Now, Mick just hopes he can get it his magical mojo back before this case closes on his very own coffin… "Fans of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series will find plenty to like." —Publishers Weekly

Leseprobe

Dead to Rites

Copyright © 2016 by Ari MarmellAll rights reserved.

Published as an eBook in 2025 by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

Originally published by Titan Books in 2016.

Cover design by Tara O’Shea

ISBN (ebook) 978-1-625677-28-0

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

49 W. 45th Street, Suite #5N

New York, NY 10036

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[email protected]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Table of Contents

Dedication

A Brief Word on Language

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Fae Pronunciation Guide

About the Author

Also by Ari Marmell

For George, because everything is always in part for George, but it’s still sometimes good to remind her.

A BRIEF WORD ON LANGUAGE

Throughout the Mick Oberon novels, I’ve done my best to ensure that most of the 30s-era slang can be picked up from context, rather than trying to include what would become a massive (and, no matter how careful I was, likely incomplete) dictionary. So over the course of reading, it shouldn’t be difficult to pick up on the fact that “lamps” and “peepers” are eyes, “choppers” and “Chicago typewriters” are Tommy guns, and so forth.

But there are two terms I do want to address, due primarily to how they appear to modern readers.

“Bird,” when used as slang in some areas today, almost always refers to a woman. In the 1930s, however, it was just another word for “man” or “guy.”

“Gink” sounds like it should be a racial epithet to modern ears (and indeed, though rare, I’ve been told that it is used as such in a few regions). In the 30s, the term was, again, just a word for “man,” though it has a somewhat condescending connotation to it. (That is, you wouldn’t use it to refer to anyone you liked or respected.) It’s in this fashion that I’ve used it throughout the novels.

CHAPTER ONE

Every now’n again, I stop and really listen to the crickets.

It’s the pixies, see? Some of ’em sing along with the crickets, voices real high and squeaky ’cause their pipes are so tiny. Others got these real little fiddles and… Well, point is, if you bother to listen—which most of you don’t—and really know how to listen—which even more of you don’t—you can hear the pixies in among the crickets. Maybe you can actually make out a few words or tatters of meaning, maybe all you get is their general mood, but it can put you wise to how things are going in the tiny little bastards’ corners of Elphame.

Of course, that’s what, maybe one night in a thousand? Rest of the time, it’s just a whole swarm of bugs makin’ whoopee and irritating the spit outta everyone else around ’em. So kinda like all you lugs, then.

Yeah, sorry. I was more’n a little cranky that night. Where was I?

Right. Crickets. There were a lot of ’em, and they were loud.

It was one of those spring nights where you could forget the oven of summer was comin’ up before too long and the breath off Lake Michigan was nice and cool enough that you almost didn’t mind the stench of fish and the garbage that’d been dumped into the waters. A whole lotta acres of parkland stretch along and away from the lake shore, with winding sidewalks and copses of trees and statues to various folks you all like to think were special or important. Not so far you can’t still hear all the lovely sounds of the city, but far enough they ain’t too overpowering. Guess that’s why the damn crickets hadda pick up the slack.

This particular copse of trees was way on the south side of the greenery, part of a whole slice of park tucked away where nobody hadda lay peepers on it unless they wanted to. Y’know, where they could put the attractions and events meant for the poor saps who didn’t have the right income or skin tone. Right now, that slice was playin’ host to a traveling carnival, one of about half a million that’d come to the Windy City over the past few months. The Chicago World’s Fair was barrelin’ down on us like a freight train in heat, and while a handful of circuses and carnies figured they might make a few bucks settin’ up shop in town at the same time, most of ’em didn’t have much interest in competing. So they came’n went even faster than normal, popping up like weeds and fading again like… well, dead weeds, I guess.

This particular collection of cheap eats and rigged games and rickety rides that shook and shuddered worse’n a palsied Chihuahua didn’t strike me as much different than any other. Lights were still on, a few of the machines still ran, a cut-rate band organ still vied with the crickets and the rest of Chicago to see who could be the most obnoxious. I guess the place had a few customers, late as it was. Even from here I could smell the sweat and the grease and the burnt sugar and the drying kids’ vomit, and thank God for my aes sidhe senses ’cause I sure wouldn’t wanna have missed that delightful treat, would I?

Point is, I hadn’t the first or faintest notion as to what made this traveling carnival at all special. Can’t really say I cared much, either. But something musta been valuable or hinky about it, since the ginks I was lookin’ for wouldn’ta been here if it wasn’t.

Half a dozen of ’em, give or take, the usual gorillas in the usual glad rags with the usual bulges in their coats that didn’t come from anything friendly. Even if I hadn’t already known, I coulda figured what sorta hardware they were packin’ by the smell of the steel and gunpowder.

And there he was, right in the middle. The boss, the capo, Nolan Shea. Tall, kinda lanky but round-faced. One of those guys whose mug was always flushed, like he was real hot, real lit, or real steamed at someone.

His goons had been jawing for a while now without spouting one useful word, grousing about what they’d rather be doin’ or worrying that the Outfit might stumble across ’em. (As if any of the local trouble boys woulda had any reason for being here in the park this time of night. Then again, I still didn’t know why Shea’s people were here, either.) Now that Shea’d rejoined ’em—they’d all been prowlin’ around, trying to get a better slant on the carnival, and he’d been the last to get back—I was hopeful I might actually hear somethin’ worth hearing.

At which point I took one goddamn step and somehow managed to sidle right on into a protruding tree branch. Gnarled and spindly as a grindylow’s finger, it snapped right off, and if it wasn’t as loud as a gat, it was sure noisy enough.

Plain, random bad luck. I’d had more’n my fair share of that lately, and if I was the paranoid sort, it might not’ve been feeling too random anymore.

Well, yeah, I am the paranoid sort. So it should be pretty easy to figure on how I felt right about then.

“Evening, fellas.”

I didn’t exactly have my mitts up as I stepped from the shadows under the trees, but I made a pretty clear show of keeping ’em away from my body. I wasn’t lookin’ to mix it up with these mugs, let alone get into a shoot-out with ’em.

Judging by the half-dozen roscoes pointed my way, they didn’t necessarily share my preferences in that regard.

“Say,” I continued, “how about you ask your boys to take it easy, Mr. Shea? I just wanna jaw a little.”

“I know you, pal?” the red-faced thug demanded. He had the kinda almost-Irish lilt you sometimes hear from guys who don’t have an Irish lilt anymore. “You’re ringin’ a bell.”

“Vacuum salesman, boss,” one of the others whispered to him with that same not-accent. “He broke into your place once.”

Shea’s lamps widened a bit at that, even as mine narrowed. What were the odds any of ’em woulda recollected me at all from that one night, let alone details like my cover story? More bad luck.

“I remember,” Shea growled. “You’re one of the Shark’s guys!” A few hammers clicked at that.

“You got some sharp people working for you, Mr. Shea. But I’m not your enemy. I ain’t a salesman, and I don’t work for Mr. Ottati. Well, only the one time.”

“You ain’t helpin’ your case here, boyo.”

Boyo? “I’m a PI, Mr. Shea. I was helpin’ Ottati out on a personal matter, that’s all. And I’m only here now to put a question or two to you. After that, I’ll be outta your hair and you can get back to whatever the hell you’re doing.”

I kinda wanted to ask what the hell they were doing. I’da just figured they were maybe runnin’ a protection racket on the carnival—every one of ’em that came to Chicago wound up lining somebody’s pockets—’cept Shea’s crew was the Uptown Boys, and they answered to Moran’s Northside Gang. No way they’d risk the kinda heat it could draw, comin’ this far south, this deep into Outfit territory, for something as penny-ante as extorting a cheap traveling show.

Hell, maybe they just had a beef with someone who worked there, or had used the carnival to smuggle something into town. That stuff happens all the time. Didn’t make a difference to me—wasn’t what I was here for—and I was pretty sure that running my yap about it wasn’t gonna make Shea any less inclined to fill me so full of holes you could use me to strain soup.

Of course, he’n his torpedoes looked like they were right on the verge of squirting metal anyway.

I decided I didn’t feel like getting shot tonight.

“This is how it is, Mr. Shea. I got no intention of ratting you out, either to the bulls or to the Shark. We can have our conversation and go on our merry way. You start with the shooting, though, you think that circus music down there is gonna drown out that much noise? Even assuming you rub me out and make tracks before anyone shows, you’re gonna have a lot of people askin’ questions. You want the coppers and the Outfit knowing someone’s got an interest in that sideshow down there? Fine, start throwing lead. You wanna keep everything quiet? Let’s talk.”

I’da climbed into his head if I had to, juggled his thoughts a tad to make sure he did what I wanted, but I was a little nervous about the idea. I was already havin’ a run of misfortune, and usin’ any kinda mojo under those circumstances is chancy. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Shea didn’t look none too happy about it, but he lowered his piece and waved for the others to do likewise.

Which didn’t mean he might not try to have his boys whack me some other, quieter way, but people and creatures a lot nastier’n him had tried, and I remained thoroughly unwhacked.

It also didn’t mean he was ready to answer my questions without a few of his own, first.

“How the fuck did you even know to find me here, Mr…?”

“Oberon. Mick Oberon.” No sense in not telling him. I might look a tiny bit different to every mortal, but still basically like the same guy. Wouldn’t take someone with Shea’s resources more’n a few minutes to dig up my name once he knew I was a private dick, and I was trying to get the gink to trust me some. “And that’s what I do. I find people.”

“In other words, somebody spilled.” His tone of voice didn’t leave a lotta doubt as to what’d happen if he found out who the pigeon was. Somehow, I didn’t think that me tellin’ him the poor sap didn’t have a choice, that I’d pushed myself into his head and made him sing, would go over real well.

“I’da waited until you weren’t in the middle of work,” I said instead, “but I’m kinda in a bit of a hurry here. All I need to know, Mr. Shea, is where I can find Phil Peppard.”

“Who?” He didn’t even try to sound genuine.

“C’mon, Mr. Shea. I know he hangs his hat somewhere in Uptown territory. I know you keep tabs on every worker who operates in your kingdom. And I know he’s freelance. He ain’t one of yours, so you got no cause to wanna protect him.”

“Maybe I just don’t like nosy bastards askin’ questions. Maybe I don’t rat on principle. I think it’s about time for you to dust, Mr. Oberon, before something ugly—”

“Mr. Shea, you really wanna rethink that.”

Wasn’t as if we’d been having a calm, friendly chat already, but now the tension got so thick you hadda chew around it to get a word in edgewise.

“You threatening me, pal?”

“No, you got me all wrong. I’m tryin’ to do you a favor. The folks I’m workin’ for, Mr. Shea? They don’t want the coppers involved, see? That’s why they came to me. But if I can’t get ’em their property back, they will turn to the cops. And I been keeping ’em in the loop, so right now they know almost everything I know.”

That last bit was more fulla horse shit than the back lot at a racetrack, but whatever works, yeah?

“So if I don’t come up with Peppard, the bulls are gonna go poking around for him next. And whether they find him or not, that’s gonna be a lotta uniforms all over your neighborhood. Since my clients are rollin’ in dough, the cops are gonna take ’em real serious, which means a long search. I don’t pretend to know your business, but that can’t possibly be good for it.

“We can prevent all that, right now, Mr. Shea. All you gotta do is gimme an address, or at least the alias he’s livin’ under. Then we can all go home and not worry about career repercussions.”

It took some hemming and hawing, some discussion with his boys, a few face-saving threats, but eventually he gave me an address offa Belmont, not too far from Logan Square.

“Oberon!” he called after me as I was just startin’ to step back into the trees. “I don’t enjoy bein’ put in this sorta position. Don’t let me see your face again. Ever. Or I might just put a slug through it.”

He probably would, too, or try to. I was already pretty well sure it was only the risk of lettin’ the cops or the Outfit know about his interests here on the south side that’d kept him from it in the first place.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’ve had more’n enough fun dealing with you trouble boys over the last year. I don’t mean to get mixed up with you lot any further.”

Yeah, yeah, I know. Go ahead and laugh at me.

* * *

“…knew where to find him,” I was explaining to Mr. and Mrs. Marsters, sitting on a velvet-cushioned sofa in a room that probably cost more to decorate than my office cost to build, “it was duck soup to dig up not just your figurine but a whole heap of other hot goods. Once he knew I had him dead to rights, he sang like a canary. I dunno if your cousin’s gonna do any time for hiring him—Peppard ain’t exactly a sterling witness, and it basically comes down to who the jury believes—but I figure he’ll be too scared to try anything like this again.”

My clients, an older couple so pasty and upper-crust they resembled a pair of unbaked pies, and the younger black fellow who worked as their butler, hung on every word of my story. Well, every word I gave ’em, anyway; I left out a lot of the details, things about the underworld or, y’know, magic that they didn’t really need to hear. All they hadda know was that, yes, I’d gotten ’em their stupid little crystal wren statuette back—it was sitting on the coffee table in front of me as we spoke—and yes, just as they’d suspected, it’d been their crumb of a cousin who’d had it snatched.

On the square, though, I was barely even payin’ attention to my own tale. Whole thing’d been a minor diversion at best, something I’d taken on solely for the fee: a little bit of folding green, just to pay the bills, and an old Swiss pocket watch. No idea why I’d asked for it, but then, that was usually the case with the gewgaws that made up the bulk of my fees. Fae urges and instinct and all.

Point is, run of the mill, everyday case, kinda job you don’t ever hear about ’cause there’s nothin’ about ’em worth telling. Except things’d been goin’ just a touch hinky since right about the same time I started in on it. Stuff like that bit with the tree branch, when I was eavesdropping on the Uptown Boys. Or a few days before that, when a hinge stuck and I bashed my nose walking into a door that didn’t open. Never anything major, never anything that woulda been at all suspicious by itself. Only the fact it kept happening had made it stand out. I still couldn’t tell if it was a “natural” run of bad luck—if that ain’t an oxymoron—or if there was some kinda hex or other mystical cause. If it was the latter, it was a damn subtle one, but I didn’t wanna take steps until I was sure. Some of the remedies for normal bad luck can make it worse if the source ain’t “normal.”

And more even than that, it was makin’ me paranoid. (All right, fine, more paranoid.) I’d been jumpin’ at shadows for days by this point, sensing danger where there wasn’t any. The Marsters lived on Burton Place, real swanky digs in a real hoity-toity neighborhood. You didn’t get random street crime here, but I couldn’t shake the notion thatsomeone’d been shadowing me on my walk over. I kept a good slant on my surroundings—eyes, ears, senses you never heard of—and I made a buncha quick turns and detours. Even drew on a bit of extra luck, despite bein’ nervous about it. Shoulda been close to no way for anyone to tail me after that, and definitely no way for ’em to do it without me spotting ’em. There’d been nobody I could put my finger on, but dammit if I still hadn’t felt peepers on the back of my neck.

So yeah, that’s where my noggin was during all this, why I was only halfway there at best when I returned the Marsters’ dingus to ’em, and why I only got dragged back to myself in that fancy sitting room when the old lady started getting deep into the “effusive gratitude” part of the visit.

I hate that part.

“…thank you enough, Mr. Oberon! My grandfather had to leave all his glassworking tools behind when he came to this country. This figurine was the first thing he made once he could finally afford a new set.”

Of course it was. And I assume he left it to you on his deathbed?

“It was the last thing he gave to me before the tuberculosis took…”

We were all damn lucky in that moment that I basically can’t vomit.

“You’re welcome,” I said. Or interrupted? I dunno; I’d stopped listening, mostly in self-defense. “If I could just get the rest of my fee, I’ll be outta your hair.”

It was Mr. Marsters who answered this time. “Of course, of course! Barry, if you’d be so good as to fetch my checkbook? And a bottle of the Avize Grand Cru, while you’re at it.”

“Of course, Mr. Marsters.” I’m not even sure how, but I’d swear the butler reached the door without actually turning around first. The magic of the domestic servant, I guess.

“Kind of you, Mr. Marsters,” I told him, “but really not—”

“It’s quite legal, I assure you. Everything in our wine cellar was purchased prior to Prohibition.”

“I’m sure it was, but it ain’t necessary. I—”

“Nonsense!” You ever hear a guy actually harumph? Marsters harumphed. I think it actually requires a certain amount of wealth before you’re legally permitted to do it. “I insist!”

So how exactly was I gonna tell the man that if it wasn’t milk or cream, I not only wasn’t interested but actively revolted.

“Look—”

“I insist!” he again, uh, insisted.

He’d also gotten himself good’n riled up in his determination, so that he tried to lean forward and thump a fist on the table in emphasis, all at once. The lunge outta his chair drove his hip into the furniture with a hollow thump, an impact that managed to lift the two nearest legs off the carpet and set the whole contraption to rocking.

Not a lot. Just enough.

If he’d hit the table just a few inches to one side or the other, it wouldn’t have jolted up that way. If the cushions on the sofa had been a little less deep, or the couch itself a couple feet closer, or I’d been a touch less preoccupied, I mighta reacted fast enough to save it. If the thing itself had been a bit farther from the edge, or landed base-down on the thick carpeting instead of at an angle…

If, if, if. “If” and a dollar are worth about 90 cents.

There was a muted crack and then silence as we all stared at the scattering of chunks and slivers and powder that had just been a crystal wren and now made the carpet glitter like a starry night.

Not that it was a long silence. Mrs. Marsters began to wail like a deflating zeppelin, her husband gawped and gasped like an asthmatic grouper, and I cursed and mumbled under my breath as it occurred to me that, through no fault of my own, I probably wasn’t gonna see the remainder of my fee.

CHAPTER TWO

Goddamn it, there it was again!

Wasn’t too long a walk from my clients’—uh, former clients’—place to the L, but I was in no hurry to get much of anywhere, so I’d been takin’ it slow, eyeballing the homes of the well-to-do and mentally cataloging all the wonders I’d seen that were much more impressive than they could ever hope to be.

Whaddaya want from me? I was feelin’ petty.

The city was just startin’ to get dim as we slid on into the evening. Flivvers grumbled by in the street; radios crackled out Ethel Waters (no, thanks) or Handel’s Organ Concerto in D Minor (that’s music, thanks very much) or, mostly in the houses with kids, a new episode of some serial about the twenty-fifth century. All of it was quick enough, or far enough back, that the technology only gave me a mild itch insteada screaming, spike-through-the-conk pain.

It was distracting, though, which is partly why it took me a few blocks to realize I mighta picked up a tail. Again.

Wasn’t anything obviously hinky about her. Middle-aged dame in a purple skirt-suit and glasses so big’n round you coulda served a cuppa joe on each of the lenses. She’d been a few dozen paces behind me for a while, which didn’t prove anything in itself, but… It just tasted like I was bein’ followed, you know?

Well, no, you don’t. Just take my word for it.

Of course, I’d felt that way a lot lately, and I’d managed to prove bupkis, to identify exactly nobody shadowing me. So now that I’d spotted the broad, it was time for a little test.

I kept on goin’ my way without a care in the world (though I did decide that whistling would probably be pushin’ it a bit). Kept right on, keepin’ a slant on her in the reflection of every darkened window and every time crossin’ a street gave me an excuse to crane my neck around to watch for oncoming traffic.

Houses gave way to stores as we got closer to the elevated, and I decided I wanted to deal with this one way or the other before I actually reached the station. I’d tried bein’ patient, but it was taking too long.

Funny how often that happens.

Anyway, some kinda big delivery truck rumbled on by right after I’d crossed the street, and I used the opportunity to duck into the doorway of a flower shop that’d already closed for the night. Gave me a good slant on the whole block and anyone comin’ up the sidewalk while keepin’ me outta view. If Glasses was followin’ me, it should prove real interesting to see what she did now.

Except she didn’t do a thing. She wasn’t there anymore.

I just stood there like a lump.

What the hell? The street wasn’t empty or anything—I counted a couple dozen pedestrians just at a quick glance—but she sure wasn’t one of ’em. Had she ducked into a shop, same as me? Wasn’t impossible, but she must have done it soon as the truck came between us; if she’d waited until she noticed I’d “vanished,” she wouldn’t have had the time without me seeing it. And I couldn’t figure why she’d do that before she knew I’d tumbled to her.

All right, then. Loitering in the doorway, bathed in a mixed bouquet of florals from one side and clouds of car exhaust from the other, I tried to think. What I came up with was three possibilities.

One, I’d just gone completely crazy. Totally off the track. But given all the shit I’d seen over more centuries than I’m completely comfortable admitting, it didn’t seem too probable that Chicago’d finally driven me outta my noggin.

Two, I was barkin’ at shadows again. Glasses hadn’t been following me, she was just some skirt who’d been walking the same sidewalk. She’d stepped into one of the shops, not because I’d made her, but to do some shopping. It was just coincidence it’d happened right about the same time I’d made my own break for it. Not real likely, no, but possible, especially given how fond random chance is of makin’ Fae dance to tunes we can’t even hear.

Or three, magic.

You know, one of the reasons I’d been avoiding Elphame for so long was because I’d been lookin’ to live a normal life. What’s it say about my level of success for the past year or so that “magic” was up there with “some dame went shopping” on the list of probable explanations?

Any number of ways someone—or something—coulda disappeared, even with a whole swarm of mortals on the same street. You people are real good about not noticin’ what’s happening around you, especially if it don’t fit your slim view of the world. Goin’ invisible was one possibility. Lotta different sorts of Fae can do that. A rare few might’ve actually vanished, stepping Sideways or teleporting; not many of us can do it without the proper prep or the right surroundings (like the mildewed refrigerator niche in my office), but it ain’t unheard of. And of course any number of Fae and related entities are shapeshifters. I coulda been staring right at the bim who’d been tailing me, and I’d never have known it was…

Was…

Shapeshifting. Aw, shit.

Goswythe.

I mean, I had no proof this was Goswythe, or even that it was a shapeshifter. It fit, sure, but I hadda lotta enemies from a lotta different time periods. But it was a solid working theory; something to think about, anyway.

It’d been over a year now since I’d last encountered the phouka who’d raised Celia, Fino Ottati’s daughter, after she’d been stolen away and replaced by the changeling Adalina. He’d up and taken the run-out some time after I’d gotten my keister handed to me by the not-so-dearly departed witch Orsola Maldera, may she rot in pieces. We’d been trying to beat the stuffing outta each other, me’n Goswythe, before Orsola interfered, and I had every reason to figure the gink still held a grudge. I’d poked around some, trying to find him, now and again—partly for my own sake, partly to put the Ottatis’ minds at ease. I’d never dug anything up, though, and between my own affairs and tryin’ to find some way of waking Adalina from her coma, I hadn’t put as much elbow grease into it as maybe I should.

Might be about time that changed.

* * *

It was in the stairwell down to the basement level of Mr. Soucek’s building, where I keep my office and hang my hat (on those rare occasions I can stand to wear one), that I came real near to killing a buddy of mine.

Well, “buddy” may be too strong a word.

“Jesus Christ, Mick!” Mashed up against the wall with my wand pressed tight under his chin, Franky looked paler and just generally more pathetic even than usual. I dunno how he got that nasal whine into his voice when he was hackin’ and gaggin’ around the pressure on his throat, but he pulled it off. “All I did was say ‘Hello!’”

“You shouldn’t sneak up on a fella like that.” I stuck the L&G—that’s the wand, a Luchtaine & Goodfellow 1592—back in the holster under my coat and unwrapped my fist from around his collar. “It ain’t healthy.”

“I wasn’t sneaking! I was just waiting!”

“Yeah, well… Wait louder.”

Wasn’t his fault, really. I’d been preoccupied and on edge the whole way across town, and I’d make the mistake of relaxing when home came into view. I shoulda known better, really. Wasn’t as though I hadn’t had more’n a few people waiting for me here now and again who weren’t near as harmless as old Four-Leaf Franky.

Dammit. “Sorry, Franky. Been a bit outta sorts.” Then, since the fact that I’d apologized had him pretty well stunned, I had a breath or two to give him an up-and-down. “Looks like I ain’t the only one, either.”

His shirt and his coat had more wrinkles between ’em than the firstborn of a basset hound and a raisin, but that was nothing hinky in and of itself. Franky’d never met a suit too cheap, and his apparent allergy to clothes irons went far beyond the usual Fae distaste for the metal. Nah, what was off about him was the gold, or lack of it. Sure, he wore a couple of gleaming rings, and he was using a fifty-dollar tie clip to hold a five-cent tie. But for Franky, who had more’n a little leprechaun blood mixed into his aes sidhe ancestry, that was positively understated. In fact, I think the only time I’d ever seen him with less gold on him was after he’d been robbed.

Which wasn’t uncommon, but that’s what happens to guys who wear gold out in the open, ain’t it?

Point is, he didn’t look banged up at all. Only other reason I could come up with for him goin’ out and about without his jewelry was that he was tryin’ to be inconspicuous.

I moved back a pace, down a couple steps, and leaned against the banister.

“So who’s gunning for you, Franky?”

“Nah, you got it wrong this time, Mick. Or, well, mostly wrong, anyway. Nobody’s after me, least not personally. I’m here to do you a favor.”

“Uh-huh.”

Last few times me’n Franky’d crossed paths, things hadn’t been going too well for either of us. I’d seen him on a couple or three occasions since the whole Spear of Lugh fiasco, and we were good—no beefs, so far as I knew—but we hadn’t exactly been drinking outta the same bottle since then.

Whatever “favor” he was hoping to do me, he was looking to get something out of it, too. But just bulling through and asking him directly wasn’t going to get me anything, and while I could probably beat a song out of him, that would be a good way to make him an enemy.

Instead, I asked, “So why the play at goin’ incognito, then?”

He didn’t pretend not to know what I meant; that was something, anyway.

“Look, Mick, I’m here on behalf of the others. None of ’em really wants to be seen with you given what’s going down. I don’t really, either, so this seemed a good compromise.”

By “the others,” I assumed he meant the chunk of Chicago’s supernatural community who I sometimes palled around with. Not friends, really, but contacts, informants, people I’d helped and people who helped me—for the right price. Franky himself, of course, but also Lenai; Pink Paddy; the “L King,” this strange old entity who lives in one of the tunnel portions of the rail system; Gaullman, when he wasn’t committing himself to one asylum or another (for everyone else’s protection, he always said); a few others. Colorful characters, and mostly not the bravest sort, so them being too afraid to come to me in person if there was a problem was no big surprise.

Two issues with that, though. First, Franky was no braver’n any one of ’em. And second, given that what was going down?

So I asked him about both.

“Hey! I’m no coward!”

I just looked at him.

“I just have a healthy sense of self-preservation,” he finished, limp as wet yarn.

I looked at him some more.

Franky sighed. “Okay, so I figured, we all try to ignore this until it goes away and God only knows how long that’ll take, or who gets hurt in the process. I get you to suss out what’s happening, you solve the problem same way you always do, everything’s done with and we can all go back to the everyday.”

That… tasted of truth, but it wasn’t filling. He wasn’t lying to me, but he wasn’t spilling everything, either.

So, hey, I kept looking at him. Why not? It’d worked out pretty well so far.

“There’s people asking around about you,” he finally admitted.

A-ha! Now we were gettin’ somewhere.

And now it made sense he’d come to me. If I sussed out whatever was goin’ down, great. If I got involved but didn’t wrap things up neat’n tidy, well, I woulda found whoever was nosing around. They wouldn’t have any cause to keep pestering Franky or Paddy or the others. Either way was good for Franky.

But… “I get that it’s maybe worrying for people to come to you about me,” I said, “but this ain’t exactly the first time any of you been grilled about something you didn’t want to talk about. And I suspect that if the mugs asking the questions were anyone or anything real dangerous, you’da started off with that, or at least be a lot more frightened than you are. You’re worried, not terrified. So what’s the skinny?”

Since I know you’re wondering, yeah, it woulda been a lot more comfortable and maybe even safer if we’d taken this to my office for a proper sit-down. I’d gotten Franky talking, though, and I didn’t wanna risk losing the momentum.

“Well… Part of it, Mick, is still the whole Spear of Lugh thing. After what happened last year, everybody’s jumpy thinking about the kinda people we might have wandering around Chicago poking into things. You can’t really blame them for that, can you?”

I’d have sighed, then, if I, you know, sighed.

“The spear’s gone, Franky. And so’s everyone who was here hunting for it. All we’ve got now are the usual, run-of-the-mill Fae.” As if there were such a thing. “Same sorta people and not-quite-people you been dealin’ with your whole life.”

“Sure, sure, but nerves is still nerves.”

“Whatever.”

“Anyway, it might not be too big a deal if it was just a few guys. But Mick, there’s been a whole lot of folks asking a whole lot of questions about you. Me’n the others, we’re getting jittery precisely because there’s so many. There shouldn’t be this many people that we don’t know but who know about us. At all, let alone that we all know you.”

“Wait, wait, wait. None of you know who these people are? Any of ’em?”

“Not a one.”

Okay, I hadda give him that one. That was reason to start worrying.

“What have they been asking about, exactly?”

“All kindsa stuff. Who you pal around with. Where you go to take a load off. What we know about your cases. Sometimes sorta asking around the edges of what types of magic you can throw, though they’ve never come out and dug into that directly. Oh! And a lot of questions about that lady you were chumming it up with back during the whole spear affair.”

My blood ran cold, and I don’t mean I felt a chill. When the aes sidhe say our blood “ran cold,” we mean it. You coulda wrung out an artery to cool a fifth of Scotch.

“Ramona?”

“Yeah, that’s her. Whatever happened with her, anyway?”

Who the hell knew? I hadn’t seen her since she’d swished her way outta the Field Museum of Natural History, and I still didn’t know if I even wanted to.

No, that ain’t true. I definitely wanted to. I just didn’t know how much of me wanting to see her was actually me wanting to see her. I never had figured out if there was anything more’n her own mojo behind how dizzy I got over her.

But I was pretty sure I didn’t much like people poking around about her—for her sake or mine.

“And it’s been a bunch of different guys asking these questions?”

“Yep. Gals, too.”

“And none of you recognized a single one?”

“Nope.”

“Fae?”

I’d pretty much given up any of my usual human subterfuge by this point. I wasn’t blinking, wasn’t fidgeting or shifting my weight, damn near a statue. Not that I had to hide any of that stuff from Franky anyway, but letting all that slide wasn’t a good habit to fall into.

He shrugged helplessly. “I really can’t say, Mick. They all seemed human enough, but you know how hard it can be to tell with some of us.”

Yeah. Yeah, I did. Why’d you have to drop back into my life, Ramona? Things were a lot smoother without you.

So, who’d I seriously irritated lately? Not a whole lotta people were comin’ to mind, surprisingly enough. It was possible Vince Scola—one of Fino’s rivals—still held a grudge after our last meeting, but it didn’t seem too probable. I’d pretty well convinced his people that my world was something they wanted to steer clear of. Besides, this didn’t feel like the Outfit’s style.

My only other recent human enemy had been Orsola, and this didn’t sound like her, either. Plus the whole pushing-up-daisies thing kinda put the kibosh on that notion.

I had rivals and enemies in both Courts, but the Seelie and Unseelie both had better ways to learn anything they wanted to know about me—and anyway, they already knew a lotta what these people were asking.

Nah, this almost hadda be an independent or an outsider. And hey, who did I know who fit that bill?

“Is it possible,” I asked Franky, “that this wasn’t a group at all? Just one gink wearing a buncha different faces?”

“Uh…” Pretty clear he hadn’t thought of that particular notion before. “Sure, I suppose. I mean, I never saw more than one at a time, anyway. Guess one of the others might’ve, but they never said one way or the other. You got someone in mind?”

“I just might, yeah.”

All right, I’ll be straight with you. I wanted it to be Goswythe. The phouka hadn’t exactly been haunting my nightmares or anything, but I hadn’t much cared for having this lingering threat hanging over my head for a year. Or over the Ottatis’ heads, either, for that matter. It’d be not just neat and convenient, but a genuine relief, to have done with the bastard.

So yeah, on the one hand, I mighta been a bit more closed-minded to other possibilities than I ought to have been. But on the other, it did all fit. Somebody swapping faces the way most people change underwear woulda explained why I felt like I was bein’ shadowed but couldn’t catch anyone, and the upsurge in the curious masses asking about me. It came together, top to bottom.

Except…

Ramona. Why the hell would Goswythe be asking about Ramona? I’d only spent a few days around her, in the middle of the biggest influx of Fae your half of Chicago’d seen in a good while. At most, she shoulda been lumped in with my other occasional contacts. For Goswythe—yeah, yeah, or whoever—to be asking about her specifically? Meant someone either had a much stronger idea of the connection I’d shared with her, however much bunk it mighta proved to be afterward, than anybody should…

Or that whatever was goin’ on wasn’t just about me, but was about her, too. She might actually be a target, not just a means to get to yours truly.

Did I care? I shouldn’t care. And if I did, was it really me caring? Did the damn broad still have any magic hooks in me?

Goddamn it.

“Do me a favor, Franky? See if you can find out from any of the others if they’ve seen more’n one of these ginks at a time?” I didn’t figure any of ’em had—and it’d totally sink my Goswythe theory if they had—but better to be certain.

“Sure thing, Mick. Um, okay if I call you, though? Running back and forth across town like this…”

Makes you look up to your ears in whatever’s going on. But he’d already stuck his neck out, and if it wasn’t entirely on my behalf, well, he’d still put me wise to something I really hadda know about. So, much as the skin on my ears crawled just thinkin’ of the damn payphone hanging in the hall near my office…

“Yeah, the horn’s fine. Just keep tryin’ back if I ain’t here.”

“You got it.”

“Hey, Franky?”

He stopped in the middle of turning away, each foot on a different step. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Heh. Between that’n the earlier apology, he’d be off-balance for days. I really did mean it, though.

Franky opened the door above and—since the sun had gone and bunked while we were talking—disappeared between the streetlights. I hit the sidewalk just a minute behind him, hands in my coat pockets and leaning into the nighttime breeze. I had more’n a few questions dangling in front of me, some new, some that’d gone unanswered for over a year now. I didn’t figure it made any kinda sense to wait until morning to get started.

CHAPTER THREE

So, which fish did I wanna try’n hook?

Goswythe had managed to duck me for a year, and I had no good cause to think he’d be easier to find now. Although, if he was active again—and all indications suggested “yep” on that one—maybe he would be.

Somewhat easier, but not much. It’d probably be less of a trip for biscuits to hunt up the delightful Ramona Webb instead.

But while that might be simpler, it also meant dealing face-to-face with the aforementioned Miss Webb. And I just wasn’t sure how eager I was to do that. If she was mixed up in whatever trouble’d come knocking on my door this time around, it was probably inevitable, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t put it off as long as inhumanly possible. Frankly, I’d rather have faced down a whole chopper squad or even a few Seelie knights with iron blades. All they could do was kill me.

So how to find the phouka palooka? No way Franky or the crew knew from nothin’. I hadn’t asked around about Goswythe in a while, but I’d poked ’em about him often enough when I first started looking that they knew I was still gunnin’ for the guy. If they’d heard something about him, I’da heard it by now.

I’d already run down all the leads I could come up with, all the hunches, and nada. I suppose I coulda gone to Elphame and asked around, but it ain’t as though I’d suddenly gotten popular over there in the last few months. Even if anyone there could help me, most wouldn’t, not without cost, and I already owed more people more’n I wanted. So that was out, too. I just didn’t have anything new to try.

’Cept… Huh. There was a thought. Maybe I didn’t need to try anything new. If Goswythe’d finally surfaced, if he was active or back in town or whatever’d changed, maybe now was a good time to retry something old.

He was gonna need resources if he was up to something. For him, here in the mortal side of Chicago, that probably meant stealing. (Easy enough with his powers, right?) And if that was so, well, I had a pretty good idea who might know about it, might even be helping the bastard for a percentage.

Hruotlundt’s office was only about a block or so away from where I’d left it. You remember; I told you all about this place. Connects to both worlds, solidly anchored on the Elphame side, little less so on this one. Doesn’t move too far, and you can find it easy enough if you’re already kinda wise to where it is.

And no, I dunno what happens to whatever used to be there when it takes up a new spot, or why most of you mortal saps don’t ever seem to notice. It’s magic. You want a more detailed explanation than that, you feel free to step into the Otherworld and find an expert to ask. Me, I understand all I need to about it.

So I walked a half mile or so from the L to the door of a rundown building that sorta resembled the last one I’d found him in, tromped on up a few flights of creaking stairs that didn’t even remotely resemble the ones I’d climbed last time, and…

Say, you remember those spurts of ugly luck I told you I’d been havin’? Guess I was due again.

I gawked across the landing at them. They gawked across the landing at me. A whole lotta mugs twisted into some real unfriendly expressions, and a few hands slipped under coats, reaching for iron or—in my case—hardwood.

“I thought I made it real plain what was gonna happen if I saw your face again, pally,” Nolan Shea barked at me. “You gotta be fuckin’ stupid to be following us after that!”

My noggin was spinning so hard I’m flabbergasted it didn’t just pop on off. What the hell were the Uptown Boys doing here? This was bad news in a dozen different ways, and the strong possibility I was about to come down with some serious lead poisoning wasn’t even close to the worst.

“I ain’t following you,” I insisted, knowing he wasn’t gonna buy a word of it. “Hell, I promise I’m more surprised to see you here than you are me. I’m just here to chin-wag with the man for a spell.”

“Yeah, right. And you just happened to show at the same time, after dark, that we did.”

All I could do was shrug. “That’s more or less how my luck’s been lately, yeah.”

“Boys, whack this—”

“Don’t.