Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and Spirit. The five primal elements of Power. The five points of invocation of every ritual invoked with a pentagram. With his surprising room decorations, Corcan Sidhe was back in the picture.
In reviewing macDuin's files, I had come across numerous library searches for old grimoires. I had reprints of some of them in my study, but none made any connection for me. I spun in my chair and called Meryl. She answered on the first ring.
"Hi, Meryl. I'm in my apartment. I feel safe here because the Guild put in protection wards."
I listened to several moments of nonresponse while I hoped Meryl got me message.
"I'm busy now. I'll call you tomorrow." She hung up. I quickly turned off the ringer. Anxiously, I stared at the caller ID on the receiver. The display changed from idle mode to indicate someone was calling from a masked phone number. I put the receiver to my ear and hit the on button. A familiar sensation of static bristled out of the phone and surrounded my head.
"So you think your apartment's bugged?" she said.
"Just a precaution. I'm getting paranoid."
She sighed. "Hang on." I heard her drop her phone, papers rustling, the crash of something falling followed by cursing-the vulgar kind-then some typing, some tapping, a couple of beeping tones and, finally, an ear-piercing wave of static.
Meryl got back on the line. "Oh, okay. You're cool. As far as I can tell, your line's clean."
"I need you to do something for me."
She sighed so heavily, I thought I could feel a ripple in the envelope of static. I was starting to get used to the feeling. "You really don't know when to stop, do you?"
I grinned. "No. I get that a lot. I don't need anything that will jeopardize your position. MacDuin was researching books. Two in particular I know aren't available outside the Guildhouse. One is a collection of manuscript fragments of the writings of the druid Cathbad. The other is something called The Brown Book of Cenchos."
She laughed. "That's a joke, Connor. It's a book of nonsensical spells attributed to the Fomorians. They call it the Brown Book because it's supposedly bound with the tanned skin of a Tuatha de Danann king. Cenchos is the mythical bogeyman of the Sidhe. Legend has it that he twisted the de Dananns he captured and founded the Unseelie Court. He was defeated by being spell-bound into the sea with his followers."
"What makes the spells nonsensical?"
"They mix things up, use herbs and stones in ways that make no sense. Plus, they're written in what is supposedly Fomorian, which apparently sounds like a garbage disposal backing up."
"I still need to know if any of its spells have to do with blood, selenite, and pentagrams."
"You're assuming I can read Fomorian."
"I've never underestimated you, Meryl."
She snickered. I read the call numbers off to her. "I'll call your cell phone if I find anything."
"Wait, before you go, I wanted to ask you why macDuin's interview about the selenite theft isn't in the file."
"Oh, that's easy. He wasn't here. He was on leave."
"Meryl, he was here. He did these library searches the week of the theft, and if I'm reading these codes right, he entered several storerooms in the Guild basement, including the one where the stones were."
"Hold on." I could hear her typing for several moments, then the sound of a chair being pushed back. Several papers were shuffled around. "Nope. I was right. There are several references to preparing reports for when he came back. He was in Germany. He was gone about a month and mad as hell about the stones when he came back."
I got a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Meryl, listen to me carefully. I think macDuin may be involved in the murders. I'm finding several connections, and if he said he was in Germany, I think he's lying. I need that spell info, but don't let anyone know what you're doing. Don't leave a trail of any kind. And whatever you do, don't tell macDuin you found the stones."
"I'll give you this, Grey, you keep life interesting." The shield around my head evaporated as she disconnected.
MacDuin had firmly moved onto my suspect list. Whatever he was up to, he clearly was intimately involved. I cursed to myself for being an idiot. I should have realized weeks ago that I had a security breach in my own apartment. Someone from macDuin's office routinely recharged my protection wards. Any one of them could be a recording stone. Since I didn't have any ability to test whether any of the wards were actually recorders, I couldn't just toss them all. I did need the ones that were actually protecting the place.
In a few minutes, I had a knapsack packed with some clothes, a disc with the Guild files on it, and my cell phone charger. Standing in the middle of the living room, I tried to think of anything else that should be tossed. I had blabbed out loud to Stinkwort about the stolen files. I copied the case files onto another disc, then deleted them from my hard drive. I knew they were still on the drive like ghosts in the machine, but I didn't have time for a deeper scrub. At least it would slow someone down. The only other necessary item was my leather jacket — I never traveled without it. I grabbed the jacket and hit the street.
As I left the building, I found my disability check from the Guild in the mail. I didn't know whether to take it as a sign of irony or farce. In either case, I needed the cash. I stopped at the Nameless to cash it. There wasn't a bank or an ATM anywhere in the Weird, but the Nameless took even my personal checks. They wouldn't hesitate to take the Guild's. I grabbed a sandwich while I was there and headed out to Congress Street.
I could hole up in some cafe and plan my course of action, but the Weird was getting a little too chaotic for me to concentrate. People were already filling the side streets with Midsummer revelry. Besides, if anyone came looking for me, that was where they'd expect me to be.
Meeting Corcan Sidhe for myself seemed as good an idea as any. The Children's Institute in Southie was an easy hike. I took the same basic route I had taken home from Murdock's the other day. Once I had passed into me more genteel section of the neighborhood, the only signs of Midsummer celebration were tasteful wreams on the doors. Holly and oak, the emblems of the Wood Kings, graced the doors of both fey and human alike. Everybody likes a fun holiday.
The Children's Institute had started out life in the last century as something called the Idiot Asylum. Depending on how delicate your sensibilities were, you thought that was either quaint or barbaric. Over time, it was abandoned, then reopened years later as the Children's Institute, where once again "mentally challenged" individuals found treatment. Some of its buildings were torn down until what had once taken up the entire block bordered by M and N Streets between Eighth and Ninth was now a small cluster of squat ugly brownstone buildings that huddled on the Ninth Street side. Neighborhood kids still called it the Idiot Asylum.
I cut between two barracks-like buildings into the remnants of an old quad in front of the administration building. Children played on a pathetic patch of lawn, more crab-grass than turf. The trees and shrubs scattered here and there were bedraggled and sad, like someone had stepped on them, and they had desperately tried to upright themselves. A few kids sat in circles on the ground, while others held hands and played running games I didn't recognize. They looked awkward, everyone a bit off-balance and moving in slow-motion. It took me half a moment to realize that staff members were among them, wearing street clothes instead of the traditional whites. I had almost reached the steps to the main building when I heard a deep, distinctly adult, laugh.