Meryl glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah, people. Not everyone.”
I followed her up the dark stairs, winding through the building. Rand brought up the rear, summoning up a light body shield. The thump of the bar faded below as we passed closed doors, each floor painted black from floor to ceiling and covered with dust. The last flight was steep, and a door to the sky stood open at the top. Outside, years of debris littered the roof, old asphalt embedded with pea gravel. Beer bottles, condoms, broken ward stones, and shattered glass created their own layer of waste. In all the years I had been drinking at Yggy’s downstairs, I had no idea so much action happened on the roof.
A small addition leaned against the abutting warehouse. At one time it had served as a greenhouse, maybe a respite for whoever owned the building in the days it had harbored a sweatshop. Now, the south-facing wall was an expanse of dirty, cracked windowpanes, and the door hung askew.
The financial district shone overhead across the channel, office buildings lights on for no one. To the east, signals blinked blue and red on empty runways at Logan Airport. The roof gravel crunched beneath our feet as we walked toward a tall wooden scaffolding, part wood, part metal pipe, that supported old civil-defense horns thirty feet above the roof. The scaffolding was a remnant from World War II, when the East Coast had feared a massive invasion across the Atlantic. The invasion never came, but the horns remained, their original red paint fading over time to black-pitted maroon. Some were still used for emergencies around the city, but I never heard the ones in the Weird go off. They would probably go off constantly if they still worked.
Nar’s body swayed in the breeze from the harbor, the leather cord around his neck making a soft squeak as it rubbed against a wooden brace. His right eye had been removed, a stain of blood and viscera trailing down his cheek. A glossy round stone bulged in the socket where the eye used to be.
Meryl had to tilt her head far back as we stood beneath the body. “There are so many bad jokes running through my head right now, but instead I’ll question the wisdom of his meeting you in a bar.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Rand circled around the other side of the tower. “I failed you and apologize. My understanding was that those back stairs were warded, and no one was allowed elsewhere in the building.”
“No blame from me. That’s what I thought, too. Did you see Vize tonight?” I asked.
He shook his head. “None of the Elven King’s operatives entered while I watched.”
“Vize has a nixie companion. She can cloak him,” I said. Gretan was taller than Joe, but not by much. She might have been able to slip past Rand, but I doubted she had the ability to overwhelm a dwarf.
“I didn’t detect any unusual body signatures. I will check the alley again,” he said.
“Don’t bother. It was Vize,” I said.
“What makes you so sure?” Meryl asked.
I gestured at the roof. Meryl sensed essence like I did. “The dead spots of essence around the tower. Vize used the darkness to absorb his body signature and hide his trail,” I said.
“Can you do that?” she asked.
I nodded. I wasn’t ready to tell her that I had almost absorbed some of her essence at Shay’s studio. “What do you make of the stone in his eye?”
Before she answered, a welling of essence built beneath us like the shock wave of something huge surfacing from within the building. Meryl and Rand felt it, too, and we all turned toward the door. No one came out of the stairwell, but the decrepit greenhouse glowed with a deep blue light that faded. The tall figure of Heydan appeared in the doorway.
I had to admit, Heydan gave me the shivers. The power he emanated was subtle yet immense, like a placid mountain pool that hid unfathomable depths. Ridged bone showed beneath the skin of his forehead, rising from his temples and back over his bare head. His calm, dark eyes beneath a heavy brow focused over our heads at Nar’s body. With ponderous steps, he moved out of the ruined greenhouse and joined us beneath the tower, keeping his gaze on the dead body.
“This is deep work and bodes no good thing,” he said.
“What happened to his eye?” I asked.
Heydan shifted, moving his body away from tower. “It was taken for what it had seen. The stone conveyed the memory.”
I looked at Meryl. “He knows where it is now.”
Heydan lowered his gaze to me. “You know what was sought?”
I gestured at the swinging body. “Veinseeker hid a stone of power. A terrorist named Bergin Vize wants it to take down the Seelie Court.”
Heydan stepped to the edge of the roof, peering off into the night sky above the harbor. Seeing such a large person one step from the six-story drop made me a little queasy. He remained silent and unmoving for so long that I wondered if he had forgotten we were there. “It is the nature of power to invite its own destruction. Shadows grow and ebb against the future as ever. I listen and wait.”
“Do you know where Vize is?” I asked.
He didn’t answer for another few minutes, then stepped back from the edge. “I do not know this man. It matters not who he is.”
“It matters to me, maybe a lot of other people. I would appreciate the help,” I said.
Heydan’s deep eyes gleamed beneath his shadowed brow. “I watch and listen. I heard a shadow move like to the one within you. The Wheel of the World turns, and I hear the sighing of Its passage. What say you to a hanging man?”
“I warned him this would happen. He didn’t listen,” I said.
“No one ever does,” he said.
35
The sky over the alley outside Yggy’s bled gray into black. Police lights flashed on Old Northern, rubberneckers pressing against crime-scene tape. Gerry Murdock leaned against a squad car, indifference in his stance though he threw the occasional glower in my direction. Meryl wrapped her arms around me inside my jacket to keep warm in the cool morning air.
Next to the entrance to the bar, another door stood open leading to the building stairwell. Heydan wouldn’t let the police in the bar and disappeared after he opened the access door. Murdock came down the alley, all pressed shirt and clean shoes. He didn’t stop to talk to his brother. He glanced at the medical-examiner staff car. “Is Janey here yet?” he asked.
“No, OCME sent someone else,” I said.
He slid his hands into his pants pockets, standing back to let a beat officer enter the building. “Looks like we have the same case again.”
“Yeah, but this time we know who the killer is,” I said.
“Vize?” he asked.
I nodded. “He knows where the stone is now. It’s only a matter of time before he finds it.”
“Can we use the vitniri to track him?” Murdock asked.
“They’re not dogs, ya know. You can’t point, and say, ‘fetch.’ They need a reason,” said Meryl.
“I wasn’t under the impression that reason and half wolves went together all that well,” Murdock said.
A tinge of red flushed across Meryl’s cheeks. “They’re still people,” she said.
Murdock smirked and nudged her. “You’re so easy sometimes.”
“Not in my experience,” I said. They both turned to look at me like I had no business interrupting. The look, in fact, reminded me that I didn’t. “I want to get ahead of Vize. We’ve been chasing him. We’ve been everywhere he’s been. Even if he had to kill Nar to get the answer, there’s a method to his search that we’re not seeing. We’re missing the pattern.”
“Old dwarves and stone,” Murdock said.
Meryl nodded in feigned amazement. “I would never have noticed that.”
Down on the avenue, a murmur ran through the crowd. People had turned their attention from the alley to the sky. Above us, three Guild agents swept across the alley and over the roofline of the building. “That’s interesting. The Guild hasn’t touched a crime scene down here in ages,” Murdock said.