“She can stay, but not the troll. I’m still finding maggots from last time.”
“Funny. Can you meet me on Summer Street by the Reserve Channel?”
I heard a heavy sigh. “Which one?” I told her and disconnected.
I went back under the bridge. I could tell by their faces that Murdock and Crystal were not getting along. “I found a place for you. If you don’t bring us to Croda tomorrow, Murdock puts you in a cell.”
Crystal looked uncertain for a moment, then nodded.
Murdock pulled at my sleeve. We moved out of earshot.
“What’s the deal?” he said.
“Meryl will take her for the night.”
He nodded toward Crystal. “She says she won’t talk until daylight.”
I glanced back at her. She looked tired and scared. A kid scared enough that she only felt safe with a troll under a bridge. “If she saw what happened to Kruge, I don’t blame her.”
Murdock turned to look at her again, assessing what he wanted to happen. “Think we can trust her?”
I shrugged. “She managed to keep a troll from killing me. Let’s give her a shot.”
My cell phone buzzed against my thigh. Meryl’s number lit the screen. “Let’s go. Ride’s here,” I called to Crystal.
We made our way up the embankment to find Meryl leaning against a black car smoking a clove cigarette. She wore a long leather coat with matching black gloves and her standard Doc Martens.
“Crystal, this is Meryl. She’s going to take care of you,” I said.
Meryl took a drag and eyed her up and down. “Just so we’re clear, he doesn’t mean that in a milk-and-cookies kind of way.”
“Not a problem,” Crystal said.
Meryl jerked her head back. “You look cold. Get in.”
I waited until Crystal had settled herself inside the car. “You have a Mini Cooper. Very nice.”
She smiled. “Astute.”
“I didn’t know you even had a car. I thought you’d come in a cab.”
Meryl smiled at Murdock. “Don’t you hate it when he wants to chitchat at two in the morning on a work night?”
He laughed. “I’m not touching that one.”
She looked back at me. “Hmm. Blood all over you, and, if I’m not mistaken, something’s wrong with your shoulder. Did the kid do that to you?”
I smiled. “She’s pretty tough. Would you mind helping me out a little?”
She rolled her eyes. “More favors.” She crushed out her clove and placed her hand on my shoulder. Even through the glove, a soft white light glowed. Warmth spread inside my shoulder, easing the pain. I could imagine the ligaments and muscles knitting back together. She released me, and I rolled the shoulder. It felt much better. By the time I woke up, I doubted I’d feel a thing wrong.
She turned to Murdock. “You’re pretty banged up, too. Here, this is on the house.”
She placed a hand on his chest and called up her essence again. Murdock closed his eyes and smiled. Meryl pulled her hand away and gave him a curious look. “Interesting essence you have there, Murdock.”
“So people keep telling me,” he said.
Meryl looked up at me. “So what’s the deal with the kid?”
“We just need to keep her out of sight until tomorrow. I think we all need some sleep, so how about we pick her up late morning or so?”
“Okay.” Meryl opened the car door and slid inside. She buckled up and rolled down the window. “I’ll drop her off wherever you want. You don’t get to know where I live.”
I dropped my chin and mock-glared at her from under my eyebrows. “Fine.”
She smiled. “Sleep well, boys!” She made a sharp U-turn from the curb and drove back up Summer Street.
Murdock shot me a sidelong glance.
“Do not say a word,” I said as we walked back to his car.
“What? You mean the whole flirtatious thing? I wouldn’t think of it.”
“Shut up.”
We jumped in his car. Murdock cut over to the Avenue, and we cruised toward Sleeper Street. At this time of night, few people walked the streets. Even the Weird settles down by dawn. You could find an after-hours party if you wanted, but it was a weeknight, and only the diehards and desperate were out.
“Another interesting evening with Connor Grey,” Murdock said.
“Hey! Talking to Moke was your idea.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Yeah, but provoking him into using you as a bat and me as a ball was not my intention. What set him off like that?”
“The crack about ripping off his door at noon. Sunlight kills trolls. I guess he took it more personally than I intended,” I said.
Murdock pulled up in front of my building. “I have a doctor’s appointment in the morning. Pick you up around noon?”
“Sounds good.” I got out of the car and didn’t even watch him pull away.
Up in my apartment, I chewed through a few ibuprofen and seltzer. Meryl might have sped up my shoulder healing, but she couldn’t touch what was in my head. It was pounding. I could feel the hazy black cloud in there squeezing whatever was left of my brain.
I stripped out of my clothes and crawled under the bed-covers. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. Dawn was just a few hours away. I would have to get up then and do my sun rituals. Sunrise was always too early for me. The thing I hated was that the nights when I wanted to sleep the most were when I needed to do the rituals the most. I had committed myself to doing what I needed to do to recover from my accident. The damned mass in my head never went away, but I felt stronger since I had gone back to the rituals. Hell, my shields hadn’t collapsed even when Moke threw me the second time. They didn’t work as well as they used to, but they had held.
Despite my curiosity as to how Crystal Finch ended up with Moke, I was too exhausted to care. Partying with a couple of fairies, brawling with a troll, and flirting with a druidess healer all in one night can take their toll. The sad part is, it felt like just a busy day at the office. That’s what the Weird can do to you.
Chapter 11
My internal alarm clock woke me just before dawn. Gray light filtered into my living room, the cold gray of late fall. The soft hiss of the radiator whispered to me to get out of my nice warm bed. I ached everywhere. Meryl’s healing booster had focused on the shoulder, so every other muscle reminded me that, yes, I had been tossed through the air several times the previous night.
I eased out of bed feeling every vertebra trying to decide whether it wanted to be closer to its neighbor or farther apart. I didn’t think about the headache. I always have a headache, so I only notice the pain if it’s reaching incapacitating levels. I slipped off my T-shirt and boxers and stood naked at the window, eyes closed, arms upraised. All across the city, hundreds, maybe thousands, of fey stood in the exact same posture, naked and waiting for the sun. I suppose if someone had a good vantage point and decent binoculars, the landscape made for a voyeur’s wet dream.
Being fey means being in tune with essence on a level that human normals cannot grasp. It means feeling a connection with the world, with nature, with other beings, through the essence that binds everything. Human normals don’t know what that experience is. Some have a vague sense—the sensitive types who get flashes of precognitive warning, or second sight, or dreams that feel important. The reality of the Convergent World, the world I was born in, my reality, never reaches the essence that Faerie has. Had. Still has. No one knows if Faerie is still there, missing the people and places that ended up here. But the fey here remember it and yearn for it. And so, each morning thousands stand facing east, preparing themselves for a ritual that reminds them of their abilities and keeps them connected to lost Faerie. Me, I just want the headaches to stop so I can get back to work.
I knew the moment the disc of the sun met the horizon. A flush of warmth fluttered in the center of my forehead and in the socket of my shoulder. Meryl’s healing spell continued its work, drawing a boost from the new day. I inhaled, my lungs expanding to their maximum, and I began to chant the ancient words of greeting. As the sun rose higher, I moved through the postures I had learned as a child, pose and voice and essence entwining to realign the pathways within my body that enhanced the ability to manipulate essence. As the sun rose, I moved faster, the chanting became more urgent, my intellectual mind receding as I became one with the flow. That is the core of being fey—the ability to lose oneself completely, to find one’s place in conjunction with the being of all things. As the sun lifted off the horizon, full white blaze above the heaving ocean, I thrust my arms down, my head back, and exhaled in exhilaration.