On the sidewalk in front of Briallen’s townhouse, she took both my hands in hers. “Listen to me, Connor. The Guildhouse is in absolute turmoil. I actually like Ceridwen, but I’m worried she’s going after Manus. My suspicion is that she wants to replace him with Ryan macGoren because he’ll be more obedient to Maeve. If that happens, I’m afraid it will fracture the board even more.”
I cocked my head. “And I care about this because…”
She tugged my hands. “Because the Dananns are terrified of this taint on the essence here, and they don’t want it to spread. You accidentally got in the middle of all this, and you know macGoren is not your friend. I have influence, but at a certain point, I may not be able to keep them from bothering you. They think you might be lying about what you know of the Taint. It was made by a druid and stopped by a druid. All the Seelie Court sees is a threat to its power, and when that stuff starts happening, people get hurt.”
I brought her hands up to my lips and kissed them. “I promise not to poke or tease the Faerie queen, okay?”
She chuckled. “Don’t make promises we know you can’t keep. If I could make you go on a vacation right now, I would.”
I swung her hands playfully. “No, really. I have an odd little murder case I much prefer dealing with. I will avoid Ceridwen completely if I can.”
She nodded. “Okay, that I can believe.”
I gave her a wicked smile. “Am I mistaken, but did you imply back in that room that you are peer to a Faerie queen?”
She laughed again. “Oh, I’m not implying. I am. Years ago, I was made an honorary underQueen for services rendered to the Seelie Court. Since Convergence, none of the underQueens and underKings have physical realms anymore, so I ended up on equal footing. See what I mean about criteria? You never know what the results will be.”
I shook my head. “The more I learn about you…”
She kissed my cheek. “The less you know. Go solve your murder, sweetie. I have a political crisis to manage.”
CHAPTER 6
I waited for Murdock in what had to be the most run-down doughnut franchise in the city. I liked doughnut shops. They’re one of the few places that cross all social lines. Everyone likes doughnuts. If they say they don’t, they’re lying. At a doughnut shop, you can get a sense of a neighborhood in ten minutes. And, of course, the coffee kept me alive. Murdock wouldn’t be caught dead in one, but I didn’t have a public image to maintain.
Murdock pulled up in front, and I left the shop. I tossed a tattered magazine off the passenger seat and handed him a cup of coffee as I dropped into the squalor of his car.
“That’s going to cost you,” he said, as I shoved the last bite of a glazed doughnut in my mouth.
I smacked my lips. “There’s no other reason to go to the gym.”
Murdock turned off the Avenue and down D Street. “Got a call down on Boston Street in Dorchester.”
“That’s out of your jurisdiction.”
Murdock tapped the steering wheel as we waited at a red light. “Yep. Someone thought I might be interested. Even mentioned your name.”
Boston had absorbed the town of Dorchester years ago, but it retained its name and its smaller neighborhoods. Some were nice, and some had pockets as bad as the Weird, only guns were the threat instead of spellcasters. Boston Street off Dot Ave was one of the nicer places, young professionals, decent restaurants nearby, and working streetlights.
We pulled up to a typical triple-decker-a three-level wooden building with bay windows that looked like it came from a Monopoly game. The usual assortment of police vehicles clogged the street. The front door of the building stood open, crime-scene tape flanking the steps. Uniformed officers kept the human normal crowd back. A plainclothes officer dressed in dark brown pants and a Red Sox jacket nodded at Murdock when she saw him get out. “Hey, Murdock, long time, no see.”
Murdock gave her a wide grin. “Hey, Liz.” There was a subtle shifting of eye contact between them that told me all I needed to know about at least one part of their past. Murdock has a knack for loving and leaving without trailing broken hearts in his wake.
Murdock jogged the short flight of steps. “This is Connor Grey. Connor, Liz DeJesus.”
She shook with a firm grip I liked in anyone, man or woman. “Good to meet you. One of my guys was talking to one of yours, Murdock, and gave me a heads-up. I’d appreciate anything you can tell me on this.”
As I joined them on the top step, the essence hit me immediately. Druidess, definitely, and a personal essence I recognized in particular. I looked over Liz’s shoulder.
The open door revealed a small landing with a crooked area rug. To the left stood a narrow mail table, knocked askew, a vase of dried flowers on its side. To the right, a staircase went up to the second floor. Next to it, a hallway led back to an open apartment door. In front of the apartment door, the victim lay on her back like a discarded doll.
Liz led us in. “Olivia Merced, sixty-seven years old, single. An upstairs neighbor found her like this. He remembers hearing a door buzzer about seven A.M.”
Olivia Merced looked fit and young for her age. By her outfit, I guessed she had been dressing for the day when the door buzzer went off. She wore black dress slacks with a light blue T-shirt and a pair of fleece bedroom slippers. My stomach fluttered at the sight of scorch marks at the toes of her slippers. “Did she work?”
Liz shook her head. “No. According to the neighbor, she did mostly volunteer work. Check out her face.”
Her head had turned to the side when she fell. I had to press myself against the staircase to lean over her without touching her body. Slashed across her forehead were six ogham runes. “Same as our guy the other night, Murdock.”
I pulled back and rejoined them at the threshold, trying not to think about the pain the woman must have felt. “Same killer, too. The essence matches what I felt at the warehouse.”
Murdock’s eyebrows were drawn down. “What could a homeless man in the Weird have in common with a retired woman in Dorchester?”
My eyes scanned the hall. “As victims, they’re too random to be random. No one kills like this without a reason. For one thing, you have to store up essence to do this. For another, it’s exhausting. The murderer had a real motive to connect them. That makes them calculated executions.”
Liz stared at me with a classic yeah-right look. Lots of cops did when I talked about essence or the fey or Faerie. It was easier to believe it was all something called magic, that there were no rules or process or limits.
Liz shook her head. “You know what the media’s going to do with this.”
I felt a little flash of anger. “You mean now that a nice old-lady charity volunteer bought it instead of just a homeless guy in the Weird?”
Murdock cleared his throat. “We’re all on the same side here, Connor. Liz is only stating the obvious.”
Liz gave me a tight smile. “Everyone’s tense right now. Let’s look at the bright side. With all the resources the mayor’s pulling for security, maybe a little media attention might remind him there’s still real crime out here.”
I glanced at her with an embarrassed smile. “Sorry. Some people think I have a hard time not getting personally involved in my cases.” With all the street fighting going on in the Weird the last couple of nights, the Josef Kaspar murder scored one sentence on the evening news. The one mention in the local section of the newspaper I found was an inside item. It’s hard not to get aggravated about it.
Whenever a crime involves the fey, a report goes to the Guild. They’re the best equipped to handle them. In reality, they picked and chose what they wanted and left the rest to the Boston P.D., which usually didn’t know what to do with them. More often than not, most of the cases got filed and ignored. Especially if they involved the Weird. It’s bad enough too many poor people don’t ever see justice done. It’s worse when officials claimed it was someone else’s problem to solve. If it weren’t for people like Murdock, people who didn’t care where you lived or what you were or how much money you made, the Weird would have had no hope at all.