“Now.”
He winked out. He was fast. I barely noticed the flash of pink over Donor’s chest, and I knew to look for it. I didn’t think anyone else saw him. One moment, what appeared to be Aldred Core was getting the full military honor, in the next, the body blurred and changed to reveal the battered corpse of the Elven King. Donor was recognizable, but having a few tons of building fall on him had not left him with the most attractive appearance.
Horrified shouts and screams rose from the crowd. News cameramen scurried around the gurney for better angles as they realized whom they were seeing. Another cluster of shouting came from people near a news van. The local female reporter had transformed into a tall, slender version of Aldred Core. Confused, she spun in place, waving her microphone toward the crowd. Chaos was breaking out, absolute, glorious chaos.
Joe reappeared and dove onto my shoulder as the crowd surged toward the staging area. I backed against the hotel and let people pass. “You had me worried there, buddy. Where’d you go?”
He giggled. “I thought someone might sense the glamour gem if I came right back here, so I hid it.”
“Yeah, no one will suspect that the news reporter has it. I’d say that was a great idea,” I said.
He shook his head vigorously. “Well, I’ve always been the one with great ideas.”
Sendings fluttered through the air as fey folk relayed news of the event. Bastian remained calm amid the whirl of activity. He wasn’t watching the emergency personnel hustling Donor’s body into an ambulance. He leaned on his staff and scanned the crowd. A cool touch passed across my face, then returned. Bastian was too far for me to see his face, but I sensed his attention.
Your doing, Mr. Grey? he sent.
I shrugged, and Joe grabbed my ear to keep from falling.
Passions are high. You should have waited. No good will come of this. You were already a target when people thought Aldred was dead. You make things worse for yourself, Bastian sent. He strode down the slope and climbed into the back of the ambulance. It backed slowly through the bystanders, then followed a police escort toward the consulate. The ceremonial warriors milled about the scene with confusion on their faces as the rest of the crowd dispersed.
Bastian’s comment rankled, like I was participating with him in a shared scheme. The Elven King would have been exposed eventually. The Consortium couldn’t hide his death forever, and I doubted that Aldred Core—the real Aldred Core—would be willing to go into hiding for the rest of his immortal life.
The truth would come out. If I made a couple of failing monarchies uncomfortable about that, so much the better.
17
It didn’t take long for the various players in the city to react to what I’d done. People were angry when they thought I was responsible for killing Aldred Core and the people who died in the Guildhouse collapse. By nightfall, they became outraged when they realized it was the Elven King who had died and not Core. Bastian was right. Death threats flew fast and furious—even from people considered responsible members of society. Ceridwen made me move my quarters—which wasn’t that difficult—and against my wishes, she had people shadowing me if I so much as stuck my nose out the door.
In the predawn mist, I walked a twisted lane of a cobbled street with no sidewalks. On the edges of my vision, the blue-black buildings to either side shifted in place. The soft whirr of wings in the shadows overhead revealed I wasn’t alone. Ceridwen insisted on the escorts. I told her it wasn’t necessary. She said she didn’t care.
Through a strange series of events, I counted a Dead fairy queen as an ally, if not a friend. Ceridwen had died in service to the High Queen, an event that did not sit well with her. She had plans for power and plans for revenge. Where I fit into those plans, I wasn’t sure yet, but I knew she considered me a factor. I did promise to help her when she died. Now that she had become the leader of the Wild Hunt, it was going to be hard to say no to her—like accepting bodyguards I didn’t think I needed.
I turned down a lane that led to the loading docks by the harbor. The sea informed everything about life in Boston, from the way the streets were laid out and named, to the establishment of particular neighborhoods, to the smell of the air. The city’s seafaring heyday lay in the past, but it was still a port with dank buildings on crumbling pilings, brownish green water lapping against skeletal barnacles, and the ever-present tang of rotting fish.
The Weird sat in isolation from the rest of the city, bounded by the interstate to the west, the working area of the port to the south, and the channel to the north. Old Northern Avenue ran through it like a fetid artery feeding into a series of subneighborhoods—dwarf and elf gang turfs, the bar strip, the squatter warehouses—and ended in the Tangle, a chaotic mishmash of the worst the Weird had to offer.
People down in the Tangle didn’t bother anyone as long as no one bothered them. The people who made eye contact with strangers were either looking to kick ass or get theirs kicked. Etiquette dictated that entering the Tangle meant you were not visible. Wanted criminals walked its streets and byways, and no one said a word. Law enforcement feared the place and left it alone. That I was safer among the most dangerous people in the city than I was in my apartment up the street said a lot about my life.
The lane ended on a broken wharf, ancient planks of wood thicker than my arm running parallel to the shore. The occasional boat docked, but its business was more likely to be unregistered with the harbormaster’s office. I turned south toward the working port area, acres of windswept land piled with discarded shipping containers.
Strange things happened so close to the Tangle. Mechanical devices didn’t work well. The landscape seemed subject to random change. People disappeared. The city had ceased operations along that section long ago. “Abandoned the place” was a more accurate description.
Something scurried in the deep shadows of the containers. Its stealth would escape the notice of most people, but I sensed its body signature. Druids had the ability to sense essence, the powerful energy that ran through all living things. My ability was more acute than most. In addition to the Dead fairy in the air, two vitniri tailed me. The lupine men kept out of sight, marking a perimeter around me. More bodyguards I didn’t ask for.
Coming out of a narrow gap between stacked containers, I paused to watch the gantry cranes across the Reserve Channel. The giant steel towers stood several stories high like skeletal beasts grazing on the tanker ships below them. The stark brightness of phosphorus lights illuminated their movements, dockworkers moving like ants beneath their massive supports.
On my side of the channel, different lights flickered, the blue and red of emergency vehicles. Police officers and EMTs wandered along the wharf or leaned against their cars. No one seemed anxious or concerned except a lone figure standing on the edge of the wharf, hands on his hips as he stared down at the water.
“Hey, Leo,” I said.
Murdock cocked his head at me, the annoyance on his face slipping toward relief. “After this afternoon, I wasn’t sure you’d come out of your secret lair, Connor.”
“It was a tad quiet in the Batcave.”
He gestured at the water. “Well, riddle me this. I have no idea what’s going on or what they’re saying, but that’s a dead body if I ever saw one.”
Several feet below us, a Coast Guard skiff was pulled up to a decrepit floating dock. Two cadets lifted a naked woman onto a tarp on the dock, her skin bone white and mottled with gray spots, eyes a milky glaze that stared unseeing at the lightening sky. Three pale-skinned women treaded water near the skiff, thick cascades of their deep green hair floating around them. They shot angry stares at Murdock and me as they swam back and forth in the water.