“This isn’t your thing, Keeva. You don’t work like this. Let me out of here,” I said.
“You almost killed my child, Connor. How can I forgive that?” she asked.
“It was out of my control, Keeva. I didn’t know what I was doing. When I realized what I was doing, I stopped,” I said.
She moved within striking range, a step in front of macGoren. His faceted eyes glittered with a hungry anticipation. “How does it feel, Grey, to finally face the consequences of your actions?” he asked.
“Keeva, listen to me,” I said.
She shook her head, tears brimming in her eyes. “It has to be done.”
I fell back in shock as she whirled and plunged the dagger into macGoren’s chest. Essence flashed off him, and the barrier went static with feedback. MacGoren staggered back; his jaw dropped in shock. He hit the wall and held himself there for a moment, hand held out to Keeva. She raised her own hand and shot essence into the dagger protruding from his chest. MacGoren convulsed and slid to the floor. She stood over him, her back to me, shots of red spiraling in her agitated wings. I struggled to find my voice. “Keeva?”
She silenced me with a cutting gesture. We watched as macGoren’s body signature pulsed and faded, cycling darker until it became a dull haze. Keeva reached down and withdrew the dagger. She deactivated the barrier between us. “Keeva, why? What the hell are you involved in?”
She leaned down again and slid my steel blade into macGoren’s wound. “Don’t talk, Connor. Don’t say a word,” she said.
“But, you could have….”
She slammed me against the wall, her eyes blazing. She pressed my other dagger against my chest. “I said don’t talk. I did what needed doing. Now take this and get out of here.”
I took the dagger, and she shoved me aside. “What should I say about this?”
She turned away, gathering essence into her hands. “Since I was the only one who knew you were here, I suggest you say nothing.”
“Keeva, you killed him in cold blood, and now you’re planting evidence using my dagger. I’m not going to take the fall without an explanation.”
She released an essence burst to cleanse her body signature from the room, leaving behind a sterile ozone odor. She stepped up to me again. “You want an explanation? You were seconds away from your own death, and no one knows you were here. I saved your life. That’s the only explanation you’re going to get from me. Don’t make me regret my decision any more than I do. Now get out.”
“But….”
“Go!” she screamed.
28
Outside the holding cell was a short hall, a door open to another cell, and a staircase. I ran up the stairs into a typical suburban kitchen, barren of any signs of someone’s living there. My cell phone and keys lay on the table, a subtle hint of Keeva’s body signature on them. It was almost three in the morning by the clock on the stove. I turned off the lights when I saw my reflection in the window. The backyard became visible, a small square of grass surrounded by a weathered stockade fence. Neighboring houses crowded near, triple-deckers and old wooden hovels with Victorian details. The yard had no exit.
Down the hall, I peered through the sidelight windows of the front door and recognized the general area. I was somewhere in Dorchester, the large neighborhood south of Boston proper. Nothing moved on the dark street, and the surrounding houses showed no lights. I slipped out as quietly as possible.
Despite my racing heart, I forced myself to a nonchalant walk. I didn’t want a casual observer becoming suspicious. I pulled my jacket closed to hide the torn and bloody T-shirt. A block later, I took out my cell and called Meryl. “Can you pick me up?”
“I don’t pick people up. I make them desire me, then reject them for being needy,” she said.
“I’m in a bind here,” I said.
“Really? You mean you aren’t disturbing me at work because you went grocery shopping?” she asked.
“You’re at work? It’s 3 A.M.,” I said.
“Shoot. I forgot to eat my lunch,” she said.
“Can we get back to my apparently unimportant desperation?” I asked.
“Where are you?” she asked.
A few cars passed the large cross street ahead. I recognized a deli on the corner. “You know where Georgie’s is on Dot Ave? Oh, and I could use a shirt.”
“Be there in ten.”
I made myself inconspicuous near a silver electrical box on Dorchester Avenue. Dot Ave was to Dorchester what Oh No was to the Weird, only longer. It stretched through eight or nine subneighborhoods, old villages that became home turf to various waves of immigrants. At any given time in its history, two or three gangs controlled the street, making it, depending on perspective, safe or dangerous. It was like that before and after Convergence. No matter the time period, urban cycles of prosperity and poverty repeated. It didn’t need the fey to do it. It made me realize that all the crap I stressed about, the empty promises of the governing powers, the endless grind of lives unfulfilled, were as much simply the nature of life as they were symptoms of social decay.
I leaned against the building next to the box and realized that somewhere else in the city, other people were probably in similar predicaments to mine. Maybe they didn’t leave a dead body behind, but they’d fled a situation out of control, something that would lead to more problems in time. Shit happened. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but always and often, and sometimes there was nothing to be done about it. The thought didn’t make me any happier, but it gave me a little perspective as I waited alone on the desolate street. I bet myself that no one else had an intangible stone in their head or a gaping dark hole that sucked the life of everything around it. Those were my special treats.
Meryl pulled up in her MINI Cooper, and I hopped in. Without a word, she handed me a black T-shirt, pursing her lips as she eyed my bloody clothes. I leaned across the console and kissed her as she knocked me in the leg shifting gears. “Thanks,” I said.
She pulled a perfect U-turn and headed back toward the Weird. “Gods, I haven’t been down here in ages. Were you at the safe house over on Dewey?”
That Meryl knew about the house didn’t surprise me. I struggled out of my jacket and pulled off the sliced-up T-shirt. “It wasn’t very safe,” I said.
Meryl glanced at me. “So I notice. What were you doing? Your mom said you left the waiting room and never came back,” she said.
I pulled on the clean shirt. “If I told you I was kidnapped by Brion Mal and macGoren tried to kill me but Keeva showed up and killed him and let me go so I called my girlfriend to come pick me up, would you believe me?” I asked.
“You never told me you had a girlfriend,” she said.
“I’ll take that as a yes. First, tell me about Cal,” I said.
“He came out of surgery fine. The recovery is expected to take a while because of some essence and blood issue,” she said.
“A full recovery?” I asked.
She gave me a brief tilt of the head. “I’m not privy to everything, you know. I’m not family.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Meryl downshifted and turned off Dot Ave. “Why did she kill him?”
“She refused to talk and threw me out.”
“Did you call Leo?”
“I can’t do that.”
She made another turn, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Why not?”
“I don’t think Leo needs any more to deal with right now. Gerry Murdock was involved at Eagan’s. He killed Shay,” I said.
Shocked, Meryl slammed on the brakes. “Tell me that didn’t happen.”
I looked out the window. “We were trying to escape. Shay was shot, and Uno…. ate him, I guess.”
“That poor kid,” she said. Meryl liked people to think she was a mean hard-ass, but she had a soft spot for kids who got mixed up in the Weird.
“Gerry basically confessed to it when he tried to arrest me,” I said.
“Whoa! When the hell did that happen?” she asked.