Dead Beat

I laughed, and it came out a little bitter. "They aren’t worried about me. Hell, I can’t even figure out what’s going on." I rubbed at my eyes. "You said there were two things I need to know. What’s the second thing?"

"Your car."

"Oh, I got it back," I said. "It’s out front."

"No, dummy," Thomas said. "Whoever trashed your car did it deliberately. They were trying to tell you something."

"It might not even be related to this situation," I said.

He snorted. "Yeah. It just happened now, out of all the times it could have happened."

"Whoever was sending the message, it’s a little obscure. You think it’s one of the Kemmler crowd?"

"Why not?" he said.

I thought about it for a minute. "It doesn’t seem like something Grevane would do. I bet he’s more like the kind to send undead minions to deliver his messages. Corpsetaker would send a nightmare or a forced hallucination or something. She’s big on the mind magic. Ghouls don’t really send messages. They just eat you."

"That leaves Cowl, his buddy, and Grevane’s buddy with the liver spots."

"Yeah," I said. "I almost feel like there was something familiar about Liver Spots," I said. "I’m not sure what. I might be grasping at straws."

"What about Cowl and Kumori?"

"I don’t know, man," I said. "They were just a couple of people in cloaks. I never saw their faces. If I had to guess from the way they talked, I’d bet that they were Council."

"That would be a very good reason to cover their faces," Thomas agreed.

"There’s no point in chewing this over and over," I said. I rubbed at my eyes. "Bony Tony’s numbers mean something. They’ll lead to the book, somehow. I’m sure of it."

"Maybe a locker number?" Thomas asked.

"Too many digits," I said.

"Maybe it’s some kind of cipher. Substituting letters for numbers."

I raised my eyebrows. "That’s a thought." I dug the folded piece of paper out of my pocket and passed it over to him. "Stay here and work on it. See if you can make any sense out of it."

He accepted the paper. "Now I feel like James Bond. Suave and intelligent, breaking all the codes while looking fabulous. What are you going to do?"

"I think the Erlking is the key to this," I said. "And the Erlking is a faerie."

He lifted his eyebrows. "Meaning?"

"When you want to know about faeries," I said, "it’s best to ask a faerie. I’m going to call up my godmother and see if she knows anything."

"From what you’ve told me, isn’t that kind of dangerous?"

"Very," I said.

"You’re hurt. You should have some backup."

I nodded. "Watch the fort," I said. "Mouse."

The big dog lifted his shaggy head from the floor, ears perked forward, serious eyes on me.

"Come on," I told him. "We’re going for a ride."

"Oh, Harry," Thomas said.

"Yeah?"

"Before you go… would you mind if I, uh, helped Butters out by getting his polka contraption loaded up into your trunk?"

"What. You don’t like polka?"

Thomas’s expression looked strained. "Please, Harry. I like the little guy, but come on."

I rubbed at my mouth with one hand to cover up the smile. "Sure. Probably safest for everyone that way."

"Thank you," he said, and collected the polka suit and brought it up the stairs behind me as I prepared to take a chance on a conversation with one of the more dangerous beings I knew.

Chapter Twenty-one

Mouse and I took the Beetle out of Chicago proper, following the lake north out of town. For once I wished I had an automatic transmission. Driving stick with only one good hand and one good leg is not fun. In fact, it’s the next best thing to impossible, at least for me. I wound up using my wounded leg more than I should have, and the discomfort intensified. I thought about the painkillers in my pocket, and then blew them off. I needed to be sharp. When all of this was over, there would be time to muddle my head with codeine. So I drove, and swore under my breath at anything that made me change gears, while Mouse rode along in the passenger seat with his head usually sticking out the window.

By the time I was far enough from town to start calling out to my godmother, the sun had set, though the cloud-veiled western sky still glowed the color of campfire embers. I pulled off onto a side road that was made of old gravel and stubborn weeds that kept trying to grow up in the road’s smooth center. It led down to a little dead end where some kind of construction project never went through. It was a popular spot for local kids to hang out and imbibe illegal substances of one intensity or another, and there were empty beer cans and bottles scattered around in abundance.

Mouse and I left the car up on the road, and walked maybe fifty yards down through trees and heavy undergrowth to the shore of the lake. At one point on the shore, a little spit of land formed a promontory only ten or twelve inches higher than the surface of the water.

"Wait here," I told Mouse, and the dog sat down at the end of the spit of land, watching me with alert eyes, his ears flicking around at all the little sounds. Then I walked out onto the spit to its end, and a cold wind off the lake swept around me, blowing my coat and threatening my balance. I grimaced and leaned on my staff, out at that point of land where earth and water and sky met one another, and focused my thoughts, blocking out the pain of my leg, my fears, my questions. I gathered together my will, then lifted my face to the wind and called out, quietly, "Leanansidhe. An it please thee, come hither and hold discourse with me."

I sent my will, my magic coursing into the words, and they reverberated with power, echoing from the surface of the lake, repeating themselves in whispers in the swirling wind, vibrating the ground upon which I stood.

Then I waited. I could have repeated myself, but my godmother had certainly heard me. If she was going to come, she would. If she wasn’t, no amount of repetition was likely to change her mind. The wind blew colder and stronger, throwing cold droplets up from the lake and into my face. One gust of wind brought me the sound of an airliner overhead, and another the lonely whistle of a freight train. Distantly, somewhere on the lake, a bell rang out several times, a solemn sound that made me think of a funeral dirge. Beyond that, nothing stirred.

I waited. In time, the fire faded from the overcast sky, and only the darkest tones of purple were left on the western horizon behind me. Dammit. She wasn’t coming.