Hallow Point E-Book

Ari Marmell

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

Seitenzahl: 497

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The hard-boiled, non-stop patter-packed fantasy noir series continues as PI Mick Oberon is caught in treasure hunt he can't afford to lose… In 1930s Chicago, being a private detective can get you bumped off as easy as breathing. But Mick Oberon isn't your average shamus. He's runaway fae royalty from the Otherworld who hung up his shingle, packs a wand instead of a heater, loves warm milk, and has a serious iron allergy. Hey, a nigh-immortal guy's gotta make a living, right? That's why Mick agrees to help the cops when someone breaks into the Field Museum. Strange thing is, they didn't steal anything. In fact, they added something. Something Mick really doesn't want in his town—the Spear of Lugh, which grants invincibility in battle to whoever wields it. The problem is, some other mug steals it just as fast as it appeared. With the spear in play, a whole slew of very heavy hitters from both worlds are coming to the Windy City to claim it as their own. And that means trouble like Mick has never seen before, and is unlikely to see again… Because you tend not to see anything when you're stone dead. "Among the best urban fantasy novels I have read." —Rising Shadow

Leseprobe

Hallow Point

Copyright © 2015 by Ari MarmellAll rights reserved.

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

Originally published by Titan Books in 2015.

Cover design by Tara O’Shea

ISBN (ebook) 978-1-625677-27-3

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

http://awfulagent.com

[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

Fae Pronunciation Guide

Mobsters of Chicago

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Ari Marmell

For Eugie, who had so many of her own stories left to tell.I miss you.

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

Pools of light and waves of shadow.

After hours, the museum’s Hall of Africa was a waking dream, and not a good one. Lit only by sporadic fixtures, the light shook and shifted with every running step, so a great mask or bronze statue loomed out of the darkness here, a wave of blindness swept between me and my quarry there.

Jeez, but this cat was fast! I’m pretty speedy when I go all out, and he was still pullin’ a good lead on me.

About time to change up the odds a bit.

I had my trusty old Luchtaine & Goodfellow wand already drawn and aimed, so all I hadda do was wait another tick, let him pass from another patch of shadow into what little illumination I had, and…

Bang.

Or whoosh.

Abracadabra.

Whatever you care to imagine magic’d sound like if it sounded like anything.

It shoulda torn every shred of good fortune from the sap, sent him stumbling, crashing into all sorts of crap, probably even breaking some bones. I wasn’t goin’ easy on him. No way he shoulda been able to outrun me, and I don’t like it when people do shit I don’t expect.

I missed.

You got any idea how hard it is to miss with magic? Ain’t as though there’s a bullet involved, as though you need a straight line of fire.

But even as I felt the power discharge through the wand, the bastard leapt like he knew it was coming. One jump, up and over, he tucked his drumsticks under him, and cleared a seven-foot display case holding a bunch of necklaces and those earlobe-plug things and whatnot, made outta stone and hardwood and seed shells.

The exhibit made like it had a bomb in it. Glass shattered with a single caboose-clenching crack, thick, ugly shards sailing in all directions. Old twine rotted and frayed, and burst apart, sending pretty little rocks tumbling and bouncing all over the floor.

I didn’t even wanna know how much that display was worth. Pretty sure there ain’t enough zeroes in Chicago…

Acrobatics like that, and the goofy hombre wasn’t done yet!

Me, I’d frozen for just a blink, surprised by the detonating case and having to lean back outta the path of the glass.

He hadn’t.

Seemed his dogs barely hit the floor before he jumped again, almost as if he’d bounced. Up high, spinning like Newton’s laws had been repealed, then kicked off the wall beside him.

And, mid-tumble, he chucked something back at me.

Couldn’t tell edge-on what it was, just that it was coming fast, and aimed right at my neck. I’d swiped a lot of luck from those necklaces and stuff, and I burned all of it, and still didn’t have enough swift to duck completely clear.

Sharp pain sliced through my right ear, and a warm wetness ran down the side of my head, making my hair all thick and matted.

I slapped a mitt to the wound, and tossed the L&G to my other hand. Yep, it had taken a chunk of my ear clean off, right at the pointy part. Hell, if I had human ears, it mighta missed outright. Hopefully, it’d be one of those details you schlubs—that’d be humans, for those who ain’t payin’ attention—don’t ever notice about me. It was gonna be days growin’ back!

Then again, without my magic, that coulda been a lot more’n a piece of skin and cartilage lying flopped on the ground behind me, beside a bloody…

Shard of glass?

He’d snatched a goddamn shard of glass from the display case out of the freakin’ air and hurled it back at me! Who the fuck was this guy?

I still hadn’t gotten a clean slant on him, and that wasn’t so natural, either. Even in the pools of light, the darkness somehow clung to him, trailing off like vapor until he reached the next patch of shadow. I had seen enough to know he was a big son of a bitch—not a whole lot shorter than the glass case he’d hurdled—and that he was wearing something on his head. Weird hat? Crown? Something.

This is when anyone with half a brain in their conk woulda decided it was time to leg it, but I didn’t get where I am by not doing ditzy shit. Anyway, I was way too caught up in the chase, and way too curious.

Figure I was a cat in a past life, and that’s why it’s a past life.

We were in the main hall, now. The place was huge, stretching up through the next story to a couple light fixtures and skylights with the black of night beyond ’em. Thick pillars and lengths of wall topped with open arches, that let patrons on the second floor look in and down, separated it from the smaller halls on either side. Display cases ran down both sides of the hall, directing traffic to the final exhibit: a pair of full-sized African elephants, preserved in eternal combat.

Even they didn’t reach halfway to the ceiling. They coulda stuck a whole dinosaur in here and it wouldn’t have made the place feel any less spacious.

Some of those upper arches had banners hanging, advertising coming exhibits, and that’s where my quarry’d gone. I’d come in just in time to see him bounding like a rubber kangaroo again. From the floor to the top of a glass display, which didn’t tremble let alone break when he landed. Then from there to the back of one of the elephants, where he took two running paces to the beastie’s head and leapt for a banner just above.

Something to do with a new addition to the Ancient Egypt section. No idea why I remember that.

You know what, though? Don’t matter how nimble and tricky you are, you bouncing bastard, you ain’t dodging a damn thing in mid-air!

I was running again as I fired, and this time I felt the impact. Wasn’t able to hit him nearly as solidly as I’d tried to before—that earlier blast took a lot out of me—but it was enough. The banner, which shoulda taken his weight without hassle, tore from its moorings. I heard him slam hard into the bottom of the archway, and then tumble over onto the floor on the other side.

All right, not as keen as if he’d fallen back my way, but between the crash and the entangling fabric, he was down for a minute, if not longer.

More’n I needed, even if I can’t jump like him.

Wand back in my right hand, I took a sprinting start at the wall, hit it, and kept going. The stone was smooth, too smooth for you—but not for me. Both feet and left hand carried me up in a roachy climb. Matter of seconds, I was at the arch, leaning over, L&G aimed and ready to—

Urk.

Couple of fists that seemed less ham hock-sized and more like full sides of beef, closed on me, hard and choking. One on my throat held me aloft over the drop; the other squeezed my wrist until it almost quit in protest and went to find work somewhere else. I couldn’t even try to aim at him.

What I could do, now—way, way too late for me to undo some real poor decisions—was see him clearly.

Heavy riding boots. Thick wools and leathers, older’n my wand. A massive chain wrapped around his shoulders, which weren’t that broad across, really. Woulda only taken two of me to equal ’em, two and a half, tops.

Heavy beard, dark, not so much trimmed as looking as though it’d just naturally grown into a semi-neat shape. Eyes that were pools of liquid dark, like a stag’s. And, of course, his head.

He wasn’t wearing a hat. Or a crown.

They were antlers—and they were attached.

Fuck. Me.

“Herne,” I croaked.

“Oberon.” His voice was the growl of the leopard, the roar of the bear.

“How you doing?”

Yeah, I know. It’s called “stalling.” Or maybe “panic.”

Herne the Hunter. Keeper of the ancient boles of the British Isles. Former and probably future master of the Wild Hunt. And not, in general, a mug you want as an enemy.

Up until two minutes ago, we hadn’t been. Now?

“Can we just…” I wasn’t in any danger of suffocating, but not breathing does make bumping gums kinda hard. “Just talk for a minute?”

Looking into Herne’s lamps is like trying to stare down a cat. A cat whose best pal, the grizzly, is standing right behind you. I did it anyway.

For a long moment, there was bupkis; no emotion, no communication, just my own reflection. And then…

“No.”

* * *

Hmm. Mighta started off telling it with me in too deep already. All right, lemme back up a few steps—and a few hours. Pick this up earlier that night…

Voices. Voices and muffled pounding from far away, like somebody hammering his way free of a vat of cotton candy. I grumbled something that wasn’t even kissing cousin to a real word, and ignored it harder’n a fourth date.

“C’mon, Mick!” Pound, pound, pound. “I know you’re in there.” Pound.

Pound.

“Scram already! I’m sleeping here!”

Least, that’s what I think I said. It’s what I meant to say. But since my whole weight seemed to be on my face, which was pressed into the pillow so tight I coulda chewed through to Neverland, I can’t be sure.

“C’mon, Mick,” he said again—from a lot closer, this time. Not voices plural, then; just the one. Pete. “Kind of in a jam here.”

“Call the cops.”

Pete—or Officer Pete Staten, if you’d rather—snorted like a pig inhaling a smaller pig.

“Beat feet, Pete. We’re closed for the night.”

“Your door was open.”

It was? Damn, I musta have been all in when I got home.

“So what the hell you been knocking on?” I asked him.

“Doorframe. Then the desk.”

“Well, shit. You mind shutting that for me?”

Footsteps, a loud thump.

“Good, thanks. Beat it. Now we’re closed for the night.”

I think I told you palookas before, I don’t have to sleep a lot. Not near as much as you do. But when I’m tired enough that I do gotta bunk for a spell, I do not take kindly to being woken up.

The fact that Pete was a good friend was the main reason he wasn’t wearing my typewriter for a collar already.

He also pretty clearly didn’t mean to blow anytime soon. Groaning like a ghost in an accordion, I forced myself to sit up.

“Hey, he lives!” Pete announced all cheerful-like.

“Makes one of us.” I didn’t bother to knuckle my eyes at all, though I knew he expected me to, and tried to get something close to my bearings.

I hadn’t gotten undressed or even crawled under the sheets. Just toppled over in a two-dollar suit and coat, both of which were now made of more wrinkles than sheep. Whole office smelled of wet wool—guess there was still enough sheep in my rags to soak up the rainwater.

Pete leaned back against the desk, half-sitting on it. Judging by the glistening spots on his uniform blues, it was still coming down out there.

“Jesus, Mick. What’ve you been working on?”

“Funniest thing,” I groused. “Case of the beat cop who just flat out vanished, right in the middle of bothering a buddy.”

“Cute, but I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“Guess you know what you oughta do next, then, don’tcha?”

My not-so-welcome guest pulled the chair away from the desk and sat.

“Have a seat,” I told him.

“I brought milk,” he countered.

You might remember that’s more or less all I drink—or eat—so of course Pete knew that. Then again, if he’d really wanted to suck up to me, he’da brought cream.

“Warm?” I asked.

“Whaddaya take me for? Don’t answer that. Yeah, of course warm.”

“All right.” I reached out, waited for the feel of the glass bottle in my mitt.

“Forgiven?” he asked.

I took a big slug. “Stay of execution, anyway. All right, spill it.”

He ran a couple fingertips over his mustache, and I almost groaned again. Now that he had me listening, he didn’t wanna sing. No way that was a good sign.

“Seriously, Mick, what are you working on? I’ve never seen you this joed.”

“Miles Caro,” I said. “Don’t know him.”

I sorta waved it off. “No reason you should.”

Caro was a missing persons job who, the way things’d been going for me, was gonna stay missing. He had a worried family—which was how I had gotten roped in—and he had a few regular joints where he liked cutting the rug or whetting the whistle, all of which had proved about as useful to me as a Braille coloring book. Gink owed some trouble boys money, word was, and had either got himself involved in something ugly trying to pay ’em back, or had lammed while the getting was good, depending on who you asked. Since I don’t much care for working anything gets me too close to the Mob—you saw how well that shook out for me last time—and since clues were proving about as common as an honest alderman, I’d actually been considering dropping the case.

No, I didn’t much want to. Hate to leave a job hangin’—and the mystery was drivin’ me crazy. But I’d been up to my earlobes in it for weeks, see? Merlin only knows how many other, maybe better payin’, cases I’d missed. I had no idea what was up in the world, since I hadn’t peeped a news rag in days. Hell, I’d only just started hearin’ half-spoken whispers that there were more of us—Fae, I mean—in Chicago’n usual, and that’s the kinda skinny I usually pick up pretty early on.

I still didn’t know if it was true, or why, but least I could be fairly sure that if the Windy City did have extra guests, they weren’t Unseelie. Newspapers or no, if a buncha the Unfit had been runnin’ around, they’da been leaving enough blood’n bodies behind ’em that I’d have heard about it for sure.

Anyway, gettin’ off-track here. Point is, I’d been putting every smidge of focus I could into digging this gink up, and I had absolute bupkis left to go on. I’d been pounding pavement for days straight without a break, giving the Caro case one last big push before I hadda admit defeat. All of which is why I was so done in.

Also all of which—well, maybe not the “there’s supposedly a bunch of us throwin’ a shindig in the mortal half of Chicago” bit, but all the rest—I mighta been willing to explain to Pete if I’d been in a better mood.

“Pretty sure you proved you didn’t care what I was doing,” I said, “when you barged in here and woke me up.”

“Aw, don’t be like—”

“Pete? What? Do you want?”

Pete sighed. “I need your help on a case.”

I glared. “Deduced that much. You mighta forgotten, but I am a detective.”

“Oh, for the… There’s been a break-in at the museum.”

All right, on the square, that got my attention. “Which one?”

“The Field.”

I think I nodded, then, though I’m not sure. Somebody’d robbed the museum of natural history? Christ, that’d be all over the papers come tomorrow! Not sure why the department would bring in an outsider, but…

Actually, that was a damn good question. So. Being as that that’s what I do with good questions, I asked it.

His answer was an unhelpful, “Uh, well…”

Oh, goddamn it. “They didn’t ask you to bring me in on this, did they? You decided to do it yourself.”

“Uh, well…”

“Which means nobody’s gonna be happy when I show my puss over there, and it may not pay a plug nickel.”

“Uh, well…”

Thing is, much as I hated to admit it, Pete had got me interested. I may bust his chops, but the man’s no fool. If he thought the bulls needed me on this, he had a reason for it.

“There’s gonna be a lot of political pressure on the department here, Mick. Even if it turns out to be nothing, the Field’s big news and big dollars.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“And the whole force’s in a tizzy right now anyway, on account of Judge Meadors.”

Huh? I knew the name—local bench-warmer the boys in blue actually considered a pal, since he was a soft touch when it came to issuing warrants. No idea what he had to do with the price of tea in China, though.

“Huh?”

“For heaven’s sake, Mick, where you been? Was all over the papers a few days ago. Poor guy stepped outta some burger joint and right in front of a truck.”

I decided right now wasn’t the best time for a joke about meat patties.

“Point is, everyone’s got everything on their plate right now. So I figured, I can help my bosses and my buddy out, if I can get you on this early. Plus, I dunno if the detectives are gonna want to even bother with this one.”

He mumbled that last bit quiet as a phonograph without a needle.

“Wait…”

“Plus, this one’s just weird.”

Oh, joy. “I fucking hate the weird ones, Pete.”

“Yeah, but you’re good at ’em.”

Since it woulda been rude to bump off a guy for complimenting me, no matter how annoying, I decided against strangling him at this time.

“Why wouldn’t the cops wanna spend their time on this? Seems like solving a high-profile theft would be good for—”

“Well, see, thing is, um… We’re still cataloging’n all, be a few more hours before we can say for sure. There’s a lot to go through. But, uh, we’re not real sure anything was snatched.”

I was starting to wonder if I’d ever actually woken up.

“You’re not…?”

“Like I said, there’s a lot there. But we checked the most valuable stuff first, and, least last I checked in, there wasn’t a thing missing.”

“Shit, something’s gotta be gone! Nobody’s gonna break into the museum for no reason, unless it was just some delinquents smashin’ windows.”

“Wasn’t nothing, though. Actually, they left something. Hidden with some of the other artifacts.”

“They… You… You wanna drag me out there to investigate an… an anti-theft?”

Pete shrugged. “Guess you could say so.”

“You’re anti-sane!” I bitched at him.

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and something’ll be missing after all,” he offered through a tight grin.

Thing was, he’d got me, and we both knew it. I was curious enough now to wanna see what I could see.

“You’re a bastard, Pete.”

“So you’ve said before.”

“Just making sure you were listening.”

* * *

Pete and I probably jawed a bit on the ride out, or rather he jawed at me, but I don’t remember a word of it. Too busy trying to ignore the hornets and hacksaws buzzing around in my noggin to pay any real attention. Pain and itching and irritation got so bad, I started wondering if it was possible to scratch a headache if you stuck a finger in your ear deep enough.

I’ve told you how much I fucking hate flivvers, right? That’s how most of us aes sidhe feel when we’re all cocooned in metal and technology like that. By the time we turned onto Lake Shore, I was pretty sure I could smell time, and I was damn happy to escape the fucking thing. I know that Pete’s beat-up Plymouth wasn’t actually the corpse-grey of dead flesh, that the headlights weren’t actually staring me down, that the red spokes and fading whitewalls weren’t really bloody grins, but…

Well, yeah. But.

All right, shake it off, you lug. Got work to do.

Maybe.

Turning my back on the two-door heap, I craned my neck to get a good slant on the scene of the crime—or the not crime.

You been to the Field Museum of Natural History? Damn thing’s bigger’n a faun’s libido. Back in the olden days, in older countries, I’ve lived in towns smaller than the place.

Up front, where we were, you’d never know anything was hinky. Nobody around but one guy staggering down the street, misbuttoned coat flapping, trying to pretend he wasn’t lit like a Broadway production.

Windows were dark, building was locked up tight. No tourists climbing the broad steps, or lingering by the fat pillars.

Yeah, the main entrance is supposed to look all Classical and Greek. I saw Classical Greece, and they’da scoffed. Parth-anonymous, this place.

Ouch. Sorry.

Anyway, Pete figured they were probably around back, so we went around back. And there they were, gathered around a rear entrance I figure was probably used for deliveries and whatnot. Just a handful of bulls, a single plainclothes dick in rags almost as cheap and wrinkly as mine, and—to judge by the occasional flash and the fact I could taste the detectives’ aggravation from here—a couple’a late-shift news boys, probably hanging around just in case there was more of a story here than it seemed.

Okay, I know Pete’d said they hadn’t yet found anything missing, but I still hadda wonder about the police presence, or lack thereof.

“Looks like a lot of the guys have left since I headed out to your place,” Pete said. “All that nothing that was missing? Guess they found even more of it.”

“Guess nobody told those last couple reporters about it.”

“Maybe—but you don’t tell ’em either,” he warned me. “No comment on active investigations, you dig?”

“In other words, since you bulls don’t like newshawks much anyway, you’re deliberately wasting their time.”

Pete’s smirk was answer enough.

“Keenan in charge here?” I asked.

Pete looked at me like I’d just broken out in a rash of Austrians, and I got a sudden hunch that this was something he’d told me in the flivver, a really dippy question, or both.

“B-and-E, Mick,” he reminded me. “Not homicide. That makes this Robbery’s case, even if nothing was stolen.”

“Right.” Jeez, I musta been out of it on the way over. “So who’s in charge?”

“Galway. Detective Donald Galway.”

I didn’t know Galway personally, not to speak of. Think we’d met in passing at the clubhouse a time or two when I was there booshwashing with Pete or Detective Keenan. We’d traded nods, that kinda meaningless hooey.

“He a right copper?” I asked Pete.

“Not someone I’ll be inviting over for Thanksgiving next month, but honest so far’s I know.”

“And how’s he feel about the department using outside consultants?”

Pete wouldn’t look at me. “He’s honest, so far’s I know.”

Oh, dandy. “So why’d you bring me in on this again?”

“Like I told you, you’re good with the weird ones. Besides, he’ll be tickled not to have to waste any more of his time on this.”

Funny how I heard Pete’s “I think” so loud, though he didn’t actually say it.

When we finally approached him, Galway—who looked like Charlie Chaplin might have, if he’d traded some height for weight and then forgot to iron his suit for a couple presidential administrations—proved even less happy to see me than I’d expected.

Though of course, it wasn’t me who caught a faceful for it.

“Staten, what the fuck is wrong with you? You’re supposed to be taking Baker’s beat while he’s here securing…”

I kinda tuned out, right about then. I’d heard these rants before, and it was gonna drag on a while. I tried to nose around some without actually going anywhere, tried to find an angle on what’d happened here. I couldn’t tell much from where I was, though, and while I woulda taken some of the heat off Pete if I could, I didn’t think maybe getting pinched for trespassing on a crime scene was the wise way to go about it.

Which meant I couldn’t accomplish bupkis other’n note a wet tang in the breeze and figure it was gonna rain again before sunup.

Then I heard every copper’s favorite phrase, “have your badge,” and figured I’d have to do something after all.

I thought about just stepping between the two, snagging Galway’s gaze and fiddling around with his noodle a bit until he thought about this whole situation how I wanted him to think. While there weren’t an awful lot of people around, though, there were enough. I don’t like to fall back on the hocus-pocus with too much of an audience.

So I just needed to get Galway’s peepers on me some other way.

Whistling softly, I stuck my hands in my pockets and made straight for the last lonely remaining couple’a camera-wielding reporters.

Got Galway’s attention faster’n a priest at a peepshow, I’ll tell you what.

“Hey! Hey!” he yelled. Almost wanted to ask if he had a bit of mojo himself, given how quick he was at my elbow. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Going to talk to the newshawks, see what’s up, since it don’t look as if you’re gonna tell me.” I shrugged. “Why? What’s it look like I’m doing?”

He tossed me a glare sharp enough I felt I oughta be sitting in a barber’s chair.

“Oberon, right?”

“Oberon, actually,” I corrected instinctively. Aw, damn it. The drive and the interrupted snooze had really taken it out of me. I’m so used to people mistaking my name for “O’Brien” in this city…

Anyway, he blinked at me a few times, I blinked back—glad I don’t blush like you mugs—until he finally let it go.

“You trying to get arrested?” he demanded.

“Wasn’t my first goal, no.”

“You got any idea how bad you’ll gum this up if you start flapping your yap to the press before we suss out what was stolen?”

“If anything,” I added, just to prove that I knew what the hell I was talkin’ about. (Figured Pete wasn’t gonna get in any more trouble.) “Look, detective…”

We still had folks watching, yeah, but now he was right up in my puss. Nobody was gonna glom to anything hinky if I… pushed a little. His peepers went wide as I slipped my focus in past ’em, plucking at his thoughts a bit. Not a lot, just shuffling a few cards around: suspicion and anger to the bottom of the deck, confusion and impatience with the case to the top.

“You and me,” I continued, “we both know the department’s behind the eight ball on this one. Break-in at the Field? No way the press is gonna buy that nothing, or almost nothing, is missing. You’re gonna be chasing more rumors’n crooks. You’re gonna have the mayor and the city council climbing up your ass like cheap long johns to shush those whispers. And you’re gonna have biscuits for resources, since the force’s got better crimes than breaking-and-gift-giving to worry over. So what’s the harm in letting me give this an up-and-down? I don’t find anything, I go home. I do find something, and you’re the genius who thought to bring in somebody to take the heat off the department.”

All nice and reasonable-sounding, yeah? Least, it was thanks to the mental nudge. Galway might come out of it later wondering why he went along, but by that point I didn’t think he’d say much.

“Okay, Oberon,” he said, sounding just a touch slow, scratching under his hat with one finger as though he wasn’t quite sure what itched. “You’re on. But it’s off the books—and off the account—unless you find something.”

Sigh. Fine. “I’m sure Officer Staten can guide me from here.”

I think Galway wanted to argue that one—he was still pretty sore at Pete—but another aes sidhe-special push took care of that.

The rest of the bulls gave me and Pete some queer stares as I stepped up to him and steered us toward the entrance, but nobody said boo about it.

“You called it, Pete. He was just real tickled to see me.”

“I mighta figured that one wrong,” he admitted quietly, out of earshot of the other uniforms. “Guess I don’t got Galway worked out as good as I thought. Everything jake now, though?”

“Long as I’m here, yeah. After I make tracks, you’re on your own.”

“Gee, thanks. You’re all heart.”

“Oh, and if I come up with anything, it was Galway’s idea to call me in.”

“And if you don’t? Lemme guess.”

“Yep. Then you get the credit.”

“You this nice to all your friends, Mick?”

“Hey, you just wanted what was best for the case, right? Now, why don’tcha show me where the break-in happened, before you gotta find a doctor and get that twitch looked at?”

Turned out, though, that the actual point of entry told me squat. Nothing but a smashed window. Not a pro job; anybody with a rock or a brick coulda done it. I was kinda surprised the twit had managed not to bleed all over the jagged glass.

Sloppy. Careless. ’Cept for one teeny problem.

None of the alarms had gone off.

That much, I remembered Pete telling me in that rolling torture chamber he calls a Plymouth. And even if I hadn’t, I’d have picked it up from the whispers and conversation among the lingering coppers outside. The Field had some real high-technology stuff, with bells and klaxons, and nobody’d heard so much as the squeak of a goosed mouse.

So what kinda ham-fisted galoot smashes his way in like a caveman but manages not to trip any switches or break any connections? That’s a sort of luck even I might have some trouble arranging.

I wasn’t sure what any of that meant, yet, but I knew it meant something.

“All right,” I said to Pete. “Lead the way.”

Suppose I was kinda unfair earlier. The place actually does a decent job of emulating Ancient Greek architecture, or at least what you lot think it looked like. Got your caryatid columns and bas-reliefs and white stone and everything. It’s not your fault you weren’t around to see the real thing before it was stripped to ruins.

I just ain’t inclined to be charitable. I don’t much care for museums, see? You might think I’d feel better around all the history and old dinguses and whatnot, and yeah, sometimes I can take comfort in ’em for a few. And they’re bursting with mojo, or at least potential mojo, thanks to all the luck’n history’n symbolism of everything on display. But there’s always this bitter aftertaste of technology to it. All the lighting and alarms, all the science buzzing along downstairs, the echoes of a few million modern souls passing through… Well, imagine a relaxing, soft-handed masseuse suddenly switching to sandpaper, or free-floating globs of cod-liver oil in your cocktail, and you probably get the gist of it.

As I discovered, though, maybe I wasn’t gonna have to deal with any of that.

“Not an exhibit,” Pete told me when I asked which particular exhibit had been, uh, un-robbed. “Was in the stores, downstairs.”

So, after just a wink of the sorta dead lighting and antiseptic smell of museum hallway, we passed through a door with a big warning sign saying “authorized personnel”—sounds like a big deal, but it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be—and tromped down an open, echoing staircase, which was full of even deader lighting and an even stronger antiseptic stink from below. Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.

It wasn’t a long staircase, but we still got interrupted before we made the bottom. Voices, not shouting but sure as shootin’ not happy, drifted up to us. Pete dropped a hand to his heater, and I almost went for the L&G Model 1592 I keep in my shoulder holster in lieu of a roscoe, but none of that was necessary. Couple more of the boys in blue appeared on the steps. They were shoulder-to-shoulder with the bird doing most of the yammering: a pale old man with pale bushy hair and a pale beard, in a dark three-piece. He looked like a dandelion undertaker.

“Clancy, Pat,” Pete greeted the two of ’em. “How’s it figure?”

“Pete,” the one on the left—Clancy, I think—said. “I don’t… We’re not…”

He and Pat gave me a once-over; dunno if they figured I was another plainclothes, or what, but I guess being with Pete was good enough.

“Galway ain’t with you, is he?” Clancy asked. They both peered around me, like the fat gumshoe was somehow hiding behind one of us.

“Uh, no…” Pete replied.

“Good. I dunno how the hell we’re supposed to explain—”

“Explain? Explain?” That was the dandelion squawking now. “You had damn well better do a damn sight more than ‘explain,’ officers!”

The two flatfeet grimaced pretty much in unison.

“Pete,” Clancy said, “this here’s Morton Lydecker. Assistant Curator. Mr. Lydecker, this is Officer Pete Staten and… Uh…”

“Oberon,” I chimed in. “Mick Oberon. PI and consultant on cases of certain, let’s say, historical interest.” It wasn’t even a fib, really. There was history here, and I was interested, so…

“What,” I continued, so nobody could ask any questions or whine any whines, “seems to be the problem now, Mr. Lydecker?”

“The problem? Problem?”

I swore right then that if he kept screeching, I was gonna drag him up to the African elephant display and dangle him from a tusk.

“The problem, Mr. Oberon,” he said, calming himself with a big, deep breath, “is that it’s vanished.”

In what was already a seriously hinky case, that was not what I’d expected to hear.

“What?” I asked, ’cause that was the sort of brilliant questioning that made me a successful dick.

Lydecker nodded, resembling nothing so much now as a frantic feather duster.

“We never strayed far from the room,” he swore, though whether he meant himself and the two bulls or some other “we” I couldn’t say. “I can’t imagine how anyone might have sneaked past us! But why ever someone would break into a museum to leave an artifact, someone else must have wanted it. It’s gone again!”

* * *

A catacomb of winding halls, some brilliant as noon—if noon was, you know, electric—while others were lit by single, lonely bulbs, manmade fireflies dangling and dying in a spider web. Wooden doors with brass plaques, a few of which were even legible. So-’n-so’s office here, the department of physical anthropological what’s-who’s-ery over there; and everywhere the bug-song of halogen lights and the echoes of footsteps I wasn’t sure we’d even taken yet.

Yeah, this place wasn’t hair-raising at all.

Thing is, I only remember a lot of that in retrospect. At the time, I was too busy gawking bad as a dumb wheat fresh off the bus.

Not at the halls. The rooms.

Rooms? No, more like man-made caverns, even if the rows of metal shelves made ’em feel smaller. Bones, claws, rocks, tools, weapons, dishes, clothes, pelts… A million different gewgaws from a thousand places and a hundred centuries. Some of the crap here was older’n I was. And I wanted to study all of it, spend a few decades just glomming the whole shebang.

Couldn’t help but think of my drawer of curios, back at the flop. All kinds of weird little dinguses, stuff I collected or asked for on whim, payment for my services instead of dough. Sometimes valuable, sometimes not; sometimes important, sometimes not. But always symbolic.

That’s the language of magic: symbolism. Everything’s got power, from holy relics to a worn-out old shoe, if you got the know-how to tap into it, and you figured out what it means, and to who.

This place? Made my drawer look like… well, a drawer. Most people woulda wanted to study all the goodies and oddities here for the history. Me? I wanted to take it all in for the symbolism. I knew there was power here, mentioned that to you before. But this? A strong enough magician might rule the world with all this.

Then I thought about the last powerful magician I’d met, just earlier that year, and decided maybe I wanted to ponder on something else for a while.

All of which is a long way of bringing me back around to the table we stood around, in the room where we’d finally stopped.

According to Lydecker, the museum staff did a lot of work on their Polynesian exhibits right here. A couple of flat stone faces sneered from a nearby shelf, while a much bigger face made of feathers and wicker and teeth contemplated eating me from another. On the table itself, a bunch of necklaces made of shells and hair had been pushed aside, leaving room for the main event.

A tall wicker basket full of spears lay on its side. The wood was dry-rotted, the tips were stone and scratched up yet good, but it was still plain as day you wouldn’t wanna get stuck with one.

“Right in there,” the curator was spouting, not for the first time. “I just came into the room, and it was right there.”

“What was?” I asked him. I’d sorta already picked up on it, from his rambling, but I wanted to get it all straight.

“A spear! As I’ve already told you!”

“Uh-huh.” I made a show of giving the whole bundle a good once-over. “And you know this collection so well you, what, just knew it didn’t belong with the others?”

Lydecker got all huffy, which was what I wanted. I’ve met the type; you probably have, too. Best way to get ’em to explain anything in detail is to imply they might not know it.

“While neither the Polynesian peoples nor the tools of warfare are my specialty, Mr. Oberon, I can assure you that anyone with even the faintest understanding of history would have recognized that something was amiss. I honestly can’t fathom how the intruder thought he might hide the thing here. He must have been truly desperate, or—” no mistaking the slant he cast my way, then, “—a true idiot.”

“All right.” I let him think I’d missed the insinuation. “So how’d you know?”

“In addition to being in much better shape in general—honestly, it appeared expertly restored!—it was quite clearly an Iron Age weapon. I couldn’t tell you from where, precisely, without closer study or knowledge of when in the Iron Age it originated, but I would hazard a Western cultural construction.”

“And what makes you think whoever it was stuck the dingus here to hide it?”

“Are you sure you’re a detective?” Then, with another huff, “Can you think of any other reason for this?”

Sure, I could. “Nah, not really. After you spotted it, then what? Since you didn’t make a ‘close study’ or whatnot.”

Yeah, I was probably winding him up more’n I needed to. Whaddaya want from me? He was irritating.

“I felt, detective, that it was more important to ascertain the object’s origin. It didn’t seem to fit with any of the exhibits we currently house, but I still had to check and make certain it hadn’t simply been misplaced from another room. Only after that did I discover evidence of the break-in, and I’ve been dealing with you lot ever since.”

Amazing how much “you lot” sounds like profanity when you got the right inflection behind it.

I opened my yap to ask another question, but it wasn’t my words that came blasting through the room.

“How the fuck did you lose it?”

Guess Galway’d finally gotten wind of what had happened. He was still making his way down the corridor—I could tell by the echo, voice and hocksteps both—but he might as well have been at my shoulder.

Cat was loud, is what I’m sayin’.

“It was in a room full of policemen! In a building surrounded by policemen! How in the ever-fucking-flaming fucking hell…?”

Actually, it was in a room containing maybe two or three policemen, and there weren’t enough of ’em outside to surround a parking space. But I didn’t really figure it’d do me, or anyone, any favors to say so.

What I did say was, “Pete, I’m gonna make myself scarce a spell.”

The suggestion I’d made to Galway regarding my participation would probably hold, but the mood he was in? No sense in giving him cause to rethink it.

Pete nodded. I got a puzzled blink from Lydecker as I slipped out into an adjoining room through one door, right before Detective Megaphone darkened the other.

After listening for a tick as he ripped into Pete and the others—seemed to have slipped his mind that Pete wasn’t even here when the spear went south—I figured I didn’t find museum exhibits all that disturbing, after all, and made my way back upstairs.

Quietly.

* * *

By chance, or so I figured at the time, I found myself wandering through Dynastic Egypt, past a whole mess of stuffed and preserved birds stuck in glass displays or hanging on wires. Eventually I reached the Mammals of Africa. Sure, why not? Gazelles bounded over grassy savannahs, rhinos squatted and glared, lions crept… Ah, fuck it. It was dead, the whole lot of it. Throat-chewing formaldehyde and sawdust and glass eyes and wood-colored resins, in a morbid fever dream of nature.

I finally wound up staring peeper to glass peeper with the taxidermied carcasses of the Tsavo Man-Eaters, one flopped out on the fake rocks, the other standing alert like he was thinking of popping out for a bite. It crossed my mind that these lions ate themselves a few dozen workers while the British were trying to bridge the Tsavo River, so maybe preserving ’em and putting ’em on display wasn’t the brightest move, savvy? Especially when they’re so damn close to Bastet the cat goddess’s shrine over in the Egypt department. Just a smidge too much symbolic resonance for my comfort. Most of you mugs ain’t exactly wise to the spiritual and supernatural, and no, and they didn’t much feel haunted or cursed to me. But c’mon.

And yeah, all of that was me wasting time while my brain pounded away at the real problem in front of me.

It didn’t none of it figure. The whole situation made a lot more sense if there was no intruder, no mystery spear; just some drunk kids breaking windows, and an over-tired curator getting his artifacts confused. Or maybe staging some kinda hoax, though I really couldn’t noodle out why he would. I really wanted to call it just that way and go take a load off. Okay, yeah, Lydecker seemed awful sure of what he saw, and if the situation was on the up-and-up, it was certainly hinky enough to be interesting. But I was tired, I didn’t know if this was even an earning gig, I sure didn’t want to work with Galway, and it wasn’t as if any actual harm had been done.

Nah, this was a curiosity, not a real case. Two inches of column space in the city section before the papers moved on to the next bit of urban weirdness. Nothing more to do with me.

Except that was all of it hooey, wasn’t it? Pure bunk. And part of me’d known it the whole time.

I hadn’t just come up here to escape Galway’s huffing and puffing, had I? It wasn’t “pure chance” that had dragged my feet through empty, echoing halls to this particular set of exhibits. I’d felt it, sensed it on instinct long before it had busted through my thick skull enough for me to be aware of it.

Whoever he, she, or it was, they were packing enough magic to make Circe swear off bacon. And they were really, really close.

All right, then, Mick. Let’s see how much swift you still got.

I thrust my hand under my flogger, yanking the Luchtaine & Goodfellow from the shoulder holster. I’d had the hardwood wand for so long, I’d worn the grip down to where it perfectly fit my clenched mitt. I dropped low in the same breath, hopefully clearing the line of any fire—figurative or literal—might be coming my way.

I didn’t turn away from the Tsavo kitties. No point, since I didn’t have anywhere to aim at.

Yet.

Pumping my own magics through the wand, I swept the room, hoovering up scraps of fortune. I mean, think about it. All the artifacts on display in the Field? How long had they survived in order to wind up here? What had they made it through that a thousand other bits and gewgaws hadn’t? There’s enough ambient luck in any real museum to choke a sluagh.

Course, I didn’t wanna take too much from any one piece, but that still left me plenty.

In, and right back out again, surrounding me, seeping into me, giving me the luck I needed to punch through any sort of mystic veil, whether shadow or illusion.

I still almost missed him. Damn, this bird was good! I swear he was hiding between the glass and the reflection of one of the displays, and if you’re having trouble picturing that, imagine being there!

He was off like a shot before I was even positive I’d seen him, faster’n most of the animals on exhibit, and it was all I could do to beat feet after him. Whoever he was, I didn’t buy he was here by coincidence. He knew something about something, and no way was I letting him vanish without singing first.

If I’d gotten a halfway decent slant on him, enough to even begin to figure out who he was, I mighta rethought some of that.

CHAPTER ONE

So, right. Think that about catches us up to where I left off—Herne dangling me off a damn balcony by a neck that was probably two inches narrower and longer’n it was when this all started.

He didn’t so much drop as throw me.

It’d be a cliché to tell you time slowed down, but it really felt like that. I saw the pillars reaching up past me, the ceiling receding at a steady, uncaring pace. This was one of those “ain’t likely to rub me out but could really, really hurt” situations. I used what time I actually had to wrap myself in the luck I’d stolen from Herne’s leap, and then…

Wham.

Not the floor, not yet. Lemme tell you, ricocheting off the back of a pachyderm ain’t nearly as delightful as it sounds.

That whole “time slowed” thing? I had just long enough after hitting the elephant to think “Howdah, pardner”—I know, I know, but it’s what I thought—before…

Wham. Again.

Yep. That would be the floor. Goddamn ow.

I wondered, pain radiating through every limb and nerve, how bad that woulda hurt if I hadn’t protected myself. I wondered if I’d even still be conscious. I wondered just how far in over my head I was.

I wondered why the light above me had suddenly gone dark.

Oh.

I rolled, far enough and quick enough, that Herne missed me when he landed—by about the length of a cricket’s manhood. A particularly proud cricket, maybe, but still…

He struck the floor in a crouch, fist hammering down where my chest’d been, putting a long hairline crack in the stone. I think I visibly shuddered thinking about how that poke woulda felt if it’d landed, which I’m sure intimidated Herne something fierce.

He rose slowly to his full height, rock powder sifting from his knuckles. I scrambled awkwardly to mine, wand extended like a dueling blade.

Coulda been worse, I guess. One more floor down, and we mighta been close enough for Pete and the bulls to hear from the basement.

Oh, sure, I’d have welcomed help. The coppers, though? They weren’t help, not against Herne. They were collateral damage. Maybe sport.

“It doesn’t have to go down like this,” I told him. I’m pretty proud of how steady I sounded.

“It already has.”

Sigh. I knew he’d say something along those—

And just that quick, he was on me.

A freight train of muscle and magic. Trying to take him toe-to-toe was a bad idea—but I knew Herne of old. I couldn’t match his strength or his speed, but I might be able to out-finesse him.

I spun aside—pirouetted, really—when his meat hooks were inches from me, hauling up on my coat with my left hand to make sure the flogger flapped in his face real quick. The museum walls blurred around me, and then I was facing him again, right as he went by. I stabbed out with the L&G like a dagger, punching hard at his side.

I peeled more luck off his aura, but there was no way that’d be enough. Didn’t think my chances of messing with his senses were worth a plug nickel, either, not the way he sees the world.

So… Pain. Every bit of pain in my aching back, my memory of slamming hard into floor and fauna, I channeled it through the wand, an emotional poison to aggravate the wound.

The hunter roared, and if you’re thinkin’ I mean that metaphorically, you go right on and think again. He staggered, almost stumbling to one knee as he flew by me, and I gotta say, I marked that as a small victory. I hadn’t been too positive I’d been able to do even that much to him.

Course, that also meant he was good’n steamed, now, too.

A few almost-crawling steps and he was back on his feet, lunging back at me. Just a touch unsteady, carrying my extra pain, but not a lot slower’n he’d been. The cry had risen in his throat, and sounded more like a hissing cat now. Every running step echoed in the massive hall, until the whole room sounded like the inside of a drum being played by a rhinoceros.

I crouched low, body and wand braced against his charge. It was an obvious move, but we both knew he wasn’t enough of a bunny to fall for my matador trick a second time.

Which was why the defensive stance.

Which was why he did fall for the matador trick a second time.

No stab on this pass. I spun on one heel, letting the wand slide up a coat sleeve, while I thrust out with both hands. Nice solid grip on his tunic, I helped him on his way, throwing him hard enough that he’n the floor were gonna have to write each other to stay in touch.

I didn’t just throw him wild, mind—I ain’t a bunny either, I had to end this fast, if I wanted to be the guy ending it.

Those fighting elephants? Yeah, the tusks are the real goods. One set of them’s pretty well blocked off, since their owner’s trying to stab the other elephant, but the second? Got his trunk nice’n raised.

Wouldn’t kill Herne, but I figured that dangling impaled on a spike fatter than my thigh would make him docile enough to jaw a bit—or at least stop tryin’ to croak me.

But he wasn’t hurting bad as I’d hoped, I guess.

Herne crashed hard into the elephant, yeah, but between the tusks, not against ’em. Even in mid-air, he’d twisted himself around tight enough to make a corkscrew jealous. Not only steered himself a hair to the right, to less pointy environs, but flipped over so that his goddamn feet hit the thing before the rest of him.

Well… Shit.

I dunno how he did it, but he knifed forward when his dogs hit the thing’s face, as if he was doing a real back-breaking sit-up. His hands cleared the top of the beastie’s head, he flexed his arms, and just like that he was outta sight, somewhere on top of the damn thing.

My crouch was real this time as I swept the wand in a fan out in front of me, ready to fire wherever he appeared from next.

’Cept he didn’t.

Nothing. A minute, and more, of nada.

Know how I don’t sweat? Good thing, because I think the room woulda been flooded knee-high on the pachyderms if I did.

I didn’t wanna go up there after him. I mean I really didn’t. Coming in that close, with him waiting for me? Recipe for some serious sidhes ka-bob. I should wait. Better yet, I should make tracks.

But…

Not even worrying about what he’s doing here, if I left this hall, he could come at me from anywhere. Way too fast and sneaky. Just stand there like Lady Liberty until he showed his mug? I couldn’t see all sides of the elephant display from any one spot. Didn’t seem likely he’d jumped for one of the archways again without me noticing, but I couldn’t say it was impossible.

Unoriginal as it might be to say it: Shit. Again.

I really hope I have the opportunity to regret this.

More power through the wand, everything I’d taken from Herne on that first strike, little bits from the exhibits like I’d done in the Hall of Africa. The wood damn near buzzed with the magic current I was channeling through it. I twisted it around, conducting an invisible orchestra, until I’d woven all of that fortune, all that power, around me. If I was sticking my noggin in the lion’s mouth, I was at least gonna file down his teeth some.

So where would he expect me come up after him? Same spot he’d climbed? Opposite end?

Screw it. I sprinted over, tumbled beneath the first elephant, and climbed the second with the L&G in my teeth, like some pirate spider.

And whaddaya know, all that extra luck made a difference.

The kick, when it came, was off-balance. He’d been waiting elsewhere, had to jump to this side to hit me, and whatever elephants may be, they ain’t the most stable things to land on. So he didn’t hit me hard enough to crush in a part of my skull, dry-gulch me into dreamland, or even toss me back to the floor.

It did make my eyes ring and stars dance in front of my ears, or whatever. I went sliding, spinning sideways, and only a real solid fingertip grip kept me’n the elephant acquainted. I tried to turn that spin into a roll, so I could come up onto the creature’s back and face Herne proper, but I knew I was seriously behind the eight ball.

Not as though I hadn’t known I was in Dutch from the moment I recognized horn-head, of course.

I hadda take a couple of socks from him, rolling with ’em just enough to keep anything from breaking, so I could get a good slant on his patterns. I…

All right, yeah. Bunk and a half. He walloped me a few good ones that damn near put me down then and there, but I was fortunate enough to be able to pluck some useful know-how out of the lesson.

Fast, strong—think I mighta mentioned those a time or two already—and skilled, but he was wild. Savage. So, back to finesse.

I met the next punch with my forearm, sweeping him down and toward me, yanking him off center. His other hand came at me, I wrapped my arm around his, and for a minute we were locked up, arms making like a cat’s cradle.

No way I could keep him locked up that way, not with his strength, but I didn’t plan to hold him long. We both tried kneeing each other in the breadbasket right about the same time, nearly breaking each other’s shins in the process. My whole body went rigid from the shock, and I felt the gink pulling away…

Good. He hadn’t realized that one of the fists in the knot of flesh and bone between us held a wand.

I twisted my wrist, painfully, so the L&G pointed right up under his chin, and let loose another blast of agony.

To this damn day, I think my hearing ain’t what it was before that scream.

Herne ripped himself free of the arm locks. He was shaky, wobbling, but still standing! He came at me, both hands, and I jammed him up again with a different series of locks, this time ending it with my wand jabbing him in the side and pumping ever more hurt into him, and pulling ever more luck out.

He tried to get away. I shifted my grips, and kept going, feeling more of his weight as he slumped. And I remember thinking with more’n a small amount of real wow, Good gods, I beat Herne the fucking Hunter!

And then he completely changed it up on me.

Suddenly he threw his strength, his bulk, into pushing through my hold instead of jerking out of it.

The first poke wasn’t too bad; he couldn’t get a lotta strength behind it. But it still damn near cracked a rib, put me on my heels, shook me loose.

Which meant the next punch had everything he wanted to put into it. And the one after that. And after that.

Mighta been some kicks in there, too. Possibly a headbutt.