"A flit was at the last murder, maybe the others," I said, before he changed his mind. "Have you heard anything?"
He kept looking at me, a sour expression on his face. "That's all anyone's talking about."
"But have you heard anyone say they were there?"
He shook his head. "No one would say so if they were. If the murderer can kill one of the Dananns…" He left the rest unsaid, surprisingly. Most of the fairy folk think their own special people are the best of all possible fairy, all the others a sad imitation to be tolerated and pitied. Flits, especially, can be sensitive about their place in the universe. For Joe to come close to admitting that killing a Danaan fairy is harder than killing a flit showed how shaken up he was.
"I know a flit was at the most recent one," I said again. "I don't know if it was with the victim or the murderer, but it's the only lead I've had."
"No flit would stand by for murder," he said. He scowled again. "Did you say 'it'?"
"Okay, given," I said. "But I don't know if he or she knows the murderer and stumbled upon him in the act this time, or if it was a friend of the victim."
Joe considered for a moment, tapping his chin. "Everyone's upset. People are talking of hiding 'til it's over." He pursed his lips then. "You said 'it' again."
I smiled my best you're-the-best-Joe smile. "But you know people, right? People who would know of an upset flit?"
"I just said everyone's upset. What are you, deaf now, too?"
"Well, maybe someone who's upset in a different way. Like maybe someone who saw something. Look, if it's out of your league, Joe, I'll understand. I can try and find someone else."
He did this funny little annoyed dance. "I didn't say I couldn't find out."
I beamed at him. "That's great, Joe. If you hear anything that might help, let me know."
He studied me for a moment, eyeing me up and down. "So, how are you feeling?"
I shrugged. I knew what he was asking. "The same. No change."
He nodded absently, trying not to show too much concern. Joe was at the hospital when I woke up from the accident. He peered up the alley as though something very interesting were happening in the next trash heap. I didn't see anything, but flits look at the world differently. "I haven't seen you around. I was wondering what you were up to," he said.
"Sulking," I said with a smirk. I was pretty sure he was lying. For all I knew, Joe could have been ten feet behind me for weeks, and I wouldn't have known. He never stays away for long. Actually, I should say he never hides from me very long. I realized years ago that he watched me a lot. He's pretty good at staying out of sight, but every once in a while he makes an oblique reference to something in my life that I didn't think he'd been present for. His clan was from the west end of Devon in the old country — old, as in most of them were originally from Faerie — and those folks tended to attach themselves to families. I've known him since I was a kid, and I know he knew my parents before that. Besides, his favorite cookies always disappear out of my apartment, and I rarely eat them.
Joe huffed a little. "You should go dancing," he said. He winked. "I could set you up with a date."
I did laugh then. It was an old joke between us. The last time I let Joe fix me up was high school. I spent two hours with a troll who talked all the way through Star Wars. "I'll work that department on my own, thanks."
He kept glancing up the alley and getting twitchy. Too exposed probably. "Well, look, I gotta go. If a flit is involved, I'll find it."
"Thanks, Joe. Um, did you say 'it'?"
He barked at me like a dog and winked out. People who don't have much exposure to flits think it's some incredibly marvelous interaction. They're just people though. A little eccentric, maybe, but still just people who happen to wink in and out of sight. And they're harder to reach than someone without call waiting. If they don't want to talk, they don't, and they're not just a little bit paranoid. But then, if I were less than a foot tall, I'd be careful where I went, too.
I strolled up the alley to Old Northern Avenue, the main drag of the neighborhood. Most people called it the Avenue, but if you lived in the Weird, you earned the right to facetiously call it "Oh No" in casual conversation because that's what the uninitiated often say when they get in over their heads down here. Thirty or so years ago if someone said an entire residential neighborhood of sorts would be thriving on the waterfront in this part of town, you would have said they were crazy. An odd mishmash of warehouses and parking lots had turned into loft apartments and new, albeit sometimes indecipherable, businesses. Most of the property is owned by dwarf syndicates who thought they'd make a killing if the state built a new tunnel access to the airport on the other side of the harbor. But, as usual, the syndicates got a little too greedy and started renting out space to the fey folk to increase their profits in the meantime. Before they knew it, tenant unions cropped up and killed the runnel plans. Now the dwarves are stuck with the property; Eviction isn't much of an option for them since many of their tenants have a penchant for turning them into stone when negotiations get nasty. It's illegal, of course, but the city doesn't have the money or the ability to trace every spell cast in a rental dispute. So the dwarves content themselves with raising rents whenever they can. They pretty much have a stranglehold on the construction business in the area, though, so I guess it eventually balances out for them.
Banners in red and yellow and orange fluttered from wires hung across the Avenue as far as I could see. Even the streetlights had giant sun-shaped pinwheels spinning on top of them. Midsummer's Day was just a couple of weeks away. Fey folk and wannabes and hangers-on would descend on the Weird like a druid fog and dance and drink until beer came out their noses or they were arrested, whichever came first. Absolute madness would take possession of the entire neighborhood for twenty-four hours. It's a week of Mardi Gras insanity crammed into a day.
The Avenue was fairly empty. Since morning is not the favorite time of day in this part of town, business picks up around early afternoon. I opened a newspaper box on the corner and grabbed a copy of Weird Times, the local rag. TUESDAY KILLER STRIKES AGAIN the headline screamed. I stifled a groan. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to notice the timing of the murders, but I hated when the press gave criminals catchy monikers. For the rest of the case, I wouldn't be able to not think of this psycho as the Tuesday Killer. I scanned the article and was relieved to see that not all the evidence had gotten out yet. Everyone knew the victims were fairies and the hearts were missing. Given the weekly time frame that was developing, even a novice could tell some kind of ritual was being played out The reporter speculated about a couple of theories, all of which I had thought of after the second murder and discarded five minutes later. No mention was made of the stones. They were the one thing Murdock and I had managed to keep quiet, and so far it seemed to be working.
The day after a crime is one of the best times to hit up sources for dirt before they calm down and realize they can barter their information for higher prices later. Given the lives the victims led, it was still too early to find their associates. Murdock wouldn't have a file on the latest victim for me yet, and I prefer to do book research at night. That left running things down the old-fashioned way.
I crossed the Avenue and cut down a small side street. Calvin Place is just a little connector street between two main drags. In better days, it had no better days. Time was marked by small service establishments that went in and out of business with the change of year. Near the middle of the north side sat one shop that had remained in place for decades with a single owner. Its wooden facade had turned ashen from lack of paint and the large plate-glass windows were so soot-stained you couldn't see inside. The sign that ran the length of the building had been installed sometime in the 1950s and hadn't been updated since: BELGOR'S NOTIONS, POTIONS, AND THEURGIC DEVICES. Half the letters were missing and a newer metal sign had been nailed just under it: CHECKS CASHED. As I opened the door, a little bell fixed to the inside rang mournfully. At first glance, dust seemed to be the major item for sale. The space was crammed with wooden bookcases rising twelve feet high, leaning toward each other in the dim ochre light as though browsing each other's wares. Yellowed boxes with faded names, blue glass jars with odd shapes, old hardcover books with no tides, and innumerable rocks, crystals, and baubles filled the shelves in no discernible order, most everything covered with the detritus of time. Here and there the subde hint of something True lingered in the air, or something that was powerful at one time, but now just a faded shell of its former glory. As I moved along to the back, the unmistakable odor of unwashed elf hit me like a fist in the face. It's a lot like burnt cinnamon and not remotely pleasurable.