In the upper section of the tunnel, we passed rooms that were basements to other buildings. As we descended, the path sloping deeper underground, the rooms were shaped out of the earth and became more rough-hewn, empty of trash or other debris. “What the hell is this place?” Murdock asked.
“Boston is almost four hundred years old, and it’s riddled with tunnels. Someone’s dug a hole in the ground in every one of those years,” I said. Access tunnels, subway tunnels, sewage tunnels, utility tunnels, escape tunnels—name it, and there’s a tunnel for it somewhere in the city. At least once a month, someone doing construction or renovation stumbles on one or more passageways, some impressive enough to make the news. The ones that don’t make the news are the scary ones, small bolt-holes that were used to get out of sight fast and secure.
We arrived at Druse’s room without any surprises. At one point, she had rigged the tunnels with binding spells, webs of essence that trapped intruders. Without her, the spells had dissipated. The lack of them raised my anxiety as I waited for an attack that hadn’t come.
We stood to either side of the entrance, searching for signs of movement within. A stained-glass lamp had provided the main lighting, but it lay broken on the floor, smashed in the fight between Druse and Keeva. A bare bulb dangling from an extension cord along the ceiling cast enough light to see by after the darkness of the tunnel. Murdock entered first, his shooting arm extended as he scanned the room.
I panned the beam of my flashlight into darker corners. “I don’t feel anyone,” I said.
Murdock remained in a crouch as he worked his way across the room. “You didn’t the first time we met her. Remember? We thought she was dead.”
My light picked out the random assortment of furniture Druse had collected over the years. Judging by the volume, she had been down there for a long time. Books lay everywhere. When I first saw the room, the books had no discernible organization—stacks of them on tables and chairs, shoved into leaning bookcases and piled on the floor. That was orderly compared to now. Now, the room was in shambles. It hadn’t changed since the night I almost killed Keeva.
“She’s not here, Leo. The room hasn’t been touched since the night Shay killed her,” I said.
He swung his flashlight beam toward me. “What the hell did you say?”
At the back of the room, I slipped through a long fissure in the wall of the room. Murdock followed, his gun at the ready. Inside was a natural two-story chamber, a gap in the bedrock under the landfill far above. In the middle of the chamber, an upheaving of stone rose like a pedestal. Druse had stored the ward-stone bowl on it. Months later, the bedrock glowed with residual essence from the powerful ward. “Shay killed the leanansidhe, or at least I thought he did.”
Murdock relaxed his stance but didn’t holster his weapon. He wasn’t taking any chances this time. “Shay? Runaway prostitute Shay?” he asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“I think you better start telling it, Connor, while I decide if I’m a little pissed off,” he said.
I inhaled and closed my eyes. Time after time, I held back information from Murdock, thinking it safer for him or to avoid an argument. Time after time, Murdock found out and read me out about it. This time, I didn’t tell him because it was personal. “I didn’t tell you because I was embarrassed, Leo. I lost a piece of myself down here. I gave in to something dark inside me that had nothing to do with the dark mass. I want to blame it on the dark mass in my head, but I think that might be an excuse. I had this craving for power I never realized I had. I let it overwhelm me, and I almost killed Keeva because of it. If Shay hadn’t shown up, I don’t know what would have happened.”
“How the hell did Shay get involved?”
I chuckled in derision at myself, caught with another thing I had kept to myself. “Yeah, that’s something else I didn’t tell you about. I have a dog.”
Murdock brought the flashlight beam back to my face. “Are you losing it, Connor? ’Cause I don’t understand a damned thing you’re saying.”
“I don’t blame you. I don’t understand it myself. There’s a dog. Shay and I call him Uno. He’s a fey dog. You’ve actually been around him, but for some reason you can’t see him.”
“Okay, you’re not convincing me you’re not losing it,” he said.
I circled around the bedrock. “You’ve seen fey people vanish in front of you. It’s not exactly the same, but something about Uno cloaks him from certain people. I don’t fully understand it myself. Joe can see him. That might be because he’s supersensitive to essence. Keeva didn’t see him when he was standing right next to her. Shay can see him because he’s supposed to. The old tales of Faerie say it’s a harbinger of death.”
Murdock made a slow circuit of the room perimeter. “I’ll accept that. God knows I’ve seen stranger things around you. But if you thought Shay killed the leanansidhe, why are we down here?”
I stared around the chamber. “I was hoping to find the body. It happened the night before the riots. After everything that happened, I forgot about it. Can you believe that? I forgot about a dead body.”
“A lot happened that night.” He looked away. It happened the same night his father died.
“When I saw that darkness stuff in the Tangle, I realized I had screwed up again. I was in denial, Leo. If I told someone what had happened down here, I’d have to admit what I had done. I think I convinced myself I was protecting Shay and keeping him out of jail, but I was really trying to deny what I did.”
I walked toward the bedrock. “The leanansidhe had a ward stone that amplified essence. She showed me how to drink from it, and it made the dark mass in my head stop hurting.”
Murdock shifted in place opposite me. “The dwarf said she wanted the stone. That’s why you wanted to come down here.”
I ran my hand along part of the bedrock, and the essence in the stone danced up my arm. “Shay has it. We’ve told no one else.”
As I touched the bedrock, the dark mass shifted in my head, perhaps at the memory of that night, but it didn’t push to come out. “Like you said, Leo, the first time we found the leanansidhe, I thought she was dead. Her body should be here. The blow to the head must not have killed her. The deaths of those dwarves are my fault. I have to stop her before she kills more people or goes after Shay.”
“Now we know who we’re looking for,” he said.
“Better yet. We know what she’s looking for,” I said.
15
I went to Druse’s hiding place first because I had to know if her body was there. I had to confirm the facts with my own eyes. Part of it was my nature, which had made me a good investigator once upon a time. The important part, though, was not wanting to scare Shay until I knew for sure what was going on. He didn’t need any reminders of that night.
Sometimes I wondered where Shay would be if he had never met me. Almost a year earlier, he had been a minor witness in a murder case Murdock and I worked on. Shay’s involvement grew when I made a bad call and asked his boyfriend Robyn to act as a decoy for the murderer. Robyn fit the needed physical description of the victims better than anyone available, and I thought he would be a slam-dunk for finding the killer. I was too right, and he didn’t survive the setup. Shay lost his lover and protector because of me. Ever since, I’ve looked out for him whenever I can.
In life, Shay’s boyfriend Robyn was human, a young guy with a tough life that involved drugs and prostitution. We didn’t like each other. Robyn was convinced I didn’t care, that the only reason I wanted their help was for my own benefit. It didn’t help that Murdock gave him an ultimatum—work with us or go to jail. He was killed, maybe by his own arrogance and stupidity, but I set him on the path that led to his death.