I threw my hands out. “I didn’t create any mess. I didn’t make that control spell. Meryl and I told you guys everything. She almost died, and I can’t remember a damned thing.”
He shook his head. “That’s not good enough. You have to remember something. I’m not supposed to tell you all this, you know. Ceridwen would blow a fit if she knew the secrecy I’m breaching here. She’s been speculating that you are involved. Your feelings about the Seelie Court are hardly a secret. There are bigger issues here than you and me.”
I wanted to hit him. “That’s what Ceridwen said to me. You’re not helping your case.”
He set his jaw. “We need to know what you and Meryl know.”
An angry surge of adrenaline reached out to my abilities. The black mass in my mind was having none of it. Daggers of pain blocked the connection before it could form. “Go to hell, Dylan.”
I stalked away. In my anger, I didn’t pay attention to where I was walking. I stepped through the circle of mushrooms and entered the fairy ring. Red pain flashed across my eyes as the darkness in my mind convulsed. The essence of the ring resonated with a strange sensation of otherness, something slick and clinging as it touched my skin. My vision blurred, and the ground shifted beneath my feet. Everything went dark, and I had the impression of huge towering stones. In a flash, the familiar Victorian buildings around the Common reasserted themselves as I stumbled out of the ring. People lingering nearby stared at me like I was some kind of ghost.
Dylan stood to my left, far from the stone block I had left him sitting on. Panicked, he rushed to my side. “Are you all right?”
I shook my head to clear it. “I saw…” I stopped. I wasn’t sure what it was.
He held my arm. “What happened? You froze and then fell forward.”
I pushed him away. “Nothing. Get away from me.”
He reached for me again. “Con, let’s go somewhere and talk…”
I didn’t answer. I made my way down the hill toward the Downtown Crossing retail district. Dylan called my name a few times but didn’t follow me. I mingled in among shoppers, envious of their obliviousness. No one paid me any attention. People went about their business, catching a store still open or rushing home late from work. They didn’t look like they knew or cared about fairy rings or Faerie queens or strange essence portals. Good for them. They didn’t know how lucky they were.
I was tired. Tired of the unknown. Tired of the suspicions. Tired of getting sucked into Guild politics. I didn’t care about the fairy ring or Maeve or Donor Elfenkonig. I just wanted my life back. But every day it seemed the more I tried to heal myself, the more things changed for the worse. My mind was damaged. My abilities gone, my memory screwed. The constant pain in my head. I didn’t know if my memories were buried or just not there at all. And now I was hearing strange whispering voices and seeing people no one else saw. It was starting to scare me. After everything that had happened, maybe I was losing it. The worst part was trying to figure out if I would know I was losing it or if I would become too demented to know the difference.
Dylan was right about one thing. I might not like the Teutonic Consortium, but that didn’t mean I was willing to hand Maeve the means to stomp all over Europe through mysterious fairy portals, even if I could. As far as I was concerned, the Seelie Court was only slightly less dangerous. Playing mind games with me by using my friends was a strange way to treat someone Maeve wanted for an ally. She had never done anything to make me think she cared about me, or even that she knew I existed. Why should I care about her? If that was how they all wanted to play, they deserved whatever Bergin Vize and Donor Elfenkonig threw at them, and it wasn’t my problem. I had my own hell to deal with.
CHAPTER 18
Someone was singing in my apartment. I stood to the side as I opened the door, in case it wasn’t who I thought it was. You can never be too sure of anything in my line of work. My building had security wards everywhere. Still, it had taken a year for me not to freak out when I heard noise when there should be no noise. I had keyed the wards to allow certain people past them without setting them off. It’s a short list.
Joe sat on the counter. He was on my list because otherwise he would keep setting the wards off whenever he had an urge to eat whatever I had handy in the cabinets. With his cheeks engorged, he waved half an Oreo at me. “Milk.”
I took a shot glass out of the cabinet, poured the milk, and placed it next to him. He put the cookie down and gulped from the glass. And belched. “I can’t believe you still haven’t bought a nice flit-size glass for me.”
I crossed my arms. “I can’t believe you steal my food.”
He feigned innocence. “Steal? It’s still here. Sort of.”
Popping the remains of the Oreo in his mouth, he swigged some milk and made a face. “You don’t happen to have a bit of the whiskey to go with this?”
I pulled a pint of Jameson’s from the cabinet. He held the shot glass up as I topped it off. “This is disgusting,” I said.
He sipped and sighed. “Ah, but it reminds me of my childhood. Any mother will tell you, whiskey is the best way to wean a wee one off milk.”
“Flit mothers work it a bit differently.” I resisted the urge to use a patronizing tone. Who was I to criticize what makes sense for a flit mother?
He toasted me and finished the glass. “Ah. You are a most excellent host.”
I leaned against the back of the armchair facing the kitchen counter. “Joe, let me ask you something. You’ve killed people, right?”
He fluttered up from the counter. “Only the ones I’ve wanted dead.”
“How many?”
He swayed in the air, humming. I think someone had had a little Jameson’s before he got to my place. “I’m not sure. Enough to make the complaints annoying.”
Having a conversation with Joe was an art form. I was used to his out-of-the-blue comments, but this was a new one. I’ve known him all my life, but he sometimes forgot that I haven’t known him all his life. He makes strange references and non sequiturs that assume I know what the hell he’s talking about. “Complaints?”
He screwed up his face. “ ’Course. I’m not mind-deaf like some people.”
Not the direction I wanted the conversation to go, but with an opening like that, I had to ask. “Who complains, Joe?”
With a loop in the air, he flew to the window and did a handstand on the sill. I wasn’t impressed. He cheated by using his wings to hold steady. “The ones I’ve killed with their singing all the time. Can you see the queen naked from here?”
I joined him at the window. “No, she pulls the blinds. What singing people did you kill?”
He huffed and looked at me with concern. “Are you daft? Why would I kill singing people? You’re acting strange. Are you okay?”
Said the drunk flit.
“I’m fine, Joe. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately,” I said.
He swooped back to the kitchen for another cookie. “You think too much. Think, think, think, all the time, thinking.”
He flew back to the window. Actually, he flew into the window, banged his head, and fell on his back. “You have a crack in your ceiling,” he said.
“You made it when you flew into it last month.”
“Is that a crack?” he asked.
“Drink, drink, drink, all the time, drinking,” I said.
He rolled with laughter. Laughing myself, I went to the kitchen counter to get a beer. When I turned back to the living room, I froze. Joe lay on the floor chuckling. Above him, the view outside the window was filled with Guild security agents in flight, sweeping across the harbor. “What the hell?” I said.
Joe sat up, his laughter fading when he saw the agents. Without a word, he vanished. I grabbed my coat and ran down to the street. Sirens wailed as I hit the sidewalk. At the corner of Old Northern, at least a dozen police cars swept by. The officer at the security barricade near the bridge pointed at me. “Inside! That’s an order!” he shouted.