Summer Knight

Who were they? Why had Reuel been with them? And why had Grum seemed so intent on removing their picture from Reuel’s apartment?

The sirens grew closer, and if I didn’t want to get locked up by some well-meaning member of Chicago’s finest, I needed to leave. I rubbed at my aching throat, winced at the wrenching, cramping pain in my back, wondered about the photograph, and stumbled out of the building.

Chapter Twelve

I got out of the old apartment building and back to the Blue Beetle without being mugged by any attackers, inhuman or otherwise. As I pulled out, a patrol car rolled up, blue bubbles flashing. I drove away at a sedate pace and tried to keep my shaking hands from making the car bob or swerve. No one pulled me over, so I must have done all right. Score one for the good guys.

I had time to think, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I’d gone to Reuel’s apartment on a simple snoop, not really expecting to find much, if anything. But I’d gotten lucky. Not only had I shown up at the right place, I’d done it at the right time. Someone obviously wanted to hide something there – either more pictures like the one I’d found or other papers from somewhere in the place. What I needed to determine now was what Grum had been trying to collect or – nearly as good – why he was trying to make some kind of evidence vanish. Failing that, knowing who he was working for would do almost as well – ogres aren’t exactly known for their independent initiative. And given what was going on, it would be ludicrous to assume that one of the heavyweight thugs of the lands of Faerie just happened to be doing an independent contract in the home of the recently deceased.

Ogres were wyldfae – they could work for either Winter or Summer, and they could have a range of personalities and temperaments running the gamut from jovially violent to maliciously violent. Grum hadn’t seemed to be on the cheerful end of that particular scale, but he had been both decisive and restrained. The average walking mountain of muscle from Faerie wouldn’t have held back from beating me to a pulp, regardless of what the neighbors shouted. That meant that Grum had more savvy than the average bear, that he was dangerous – even if I didn’t take into account how easily he had ignored the spells I’d hurled at him.

All ogres have an innate capacity for neutralizing magical forces to one degree or another. Grum had grounded out my spells like I’d been scuffing my feet on the carpet to give him a little static electricity zap. That meant that he was an old faerie, and a strong one. The quick and thorough shapeshifting supported that assessment as well. Your average club-swinging thewmonger couldn’t have taken human form, complete with clothing, so ably.

Smart plus strong plus quick equals badass. Most likely he was a trusted personal guard or a highly placed enforcer.

But for whom?

At a stop light I stared at the photograph I’d taken from Grum.

"Damn," I muttered, "who are these people?"

I added it to the list of questions still growing like fungus in a locker room.

Ronald Reuel’s funeral had already begun by the time I arrived. Flannery’s Funeral Home in the River North area had been a family-run business until a few years before. It was an old place, but had always been well kept. Now the carefully landscaped shrubbery had been replaced with big rocks, which were no doubt easier to maintain. The parking lot had a lot of cracks in it, and only about half of the outdoor lights were burning. The sign, an illuminated glass-and-plastic number that read QUIET ACRES FUNERAL HOME, glared in garish green and blue above the front door.

I parked the Beetle, tucked the photo into my pocket, and got out of the car. I couldn’t casually take my staff or my blasting rod into the funeral home. People who don’t believe in magic look at you oddly when you walk in toting a big stick covered with carvings of runes and sigils. The people who know what I am would react in much the same way as if I had walked in draped in belts of ammo and carrying a heavy-caliber machine gun in each hand, John Wayne-style. There could be plenty of each sort inside, so I carried only the low-profile stuff: my ring, mostly depleted, my shield bracelet, and my mother’s silver pentacle amulet. My reflection in the glass door reminded me that I had underdressed for the evening, but I wasn’t there to make the social column. I slipped into the building and headed for the room where they’d laid out Ronald Reuel.

The old man had been dressed up in a grey silk suit with a metallic sheen to it. It was a younger man’s suit, and it looked too big for him. He would have looked more comfortable in tweed. The mortician had done only a so-so job of fixing Reuel up. His cheeks were too red and his lips too blue. You could see the dimples on his lips where thin lines of thread had been stitched through them to hold his mouth closed. No one would have mistaken this for an old man in the midst of his nap – it was a corpse, plain and simple. The room was about half full, people standing in little knots talking and passing back and forth in front of the casket.

No one was standing in the shadows smoking a cigarette or looking about with a shifty-eyed gaze. I couldn’t see anyone quickly hiding a bloody knife behind his back or twirling a moustache, either. That ruled out the Dudley Do-Right approach to finding the killer. Maybe he, she, or they weren’t here.

Of course, I supposed it would be possible for faeries to throw a veil or a glamour over themselves before they came in, but even experienced faeries have trouble passing for mortal. Mab had looked good, sure, but she hadn’t really looked normal. Grum had been much the same. I mean, he’d looked human, sure, but also like an extra on the set of The Untouchables. Faeries can do a lot of things really well, but blending in with a crowd generally isn’t one of them.

In any case, the crowd struck me as mostly relatives and business associates. No one matched the pictures, no one seemed to be a faerie in a bad mortal costume, and either my instincts had the night off or no one was using any kind of veil or glamour. Bad guys one, Harry zero.

I slipped out of the viewing room and back into the hallway in time to hear a low whisper somewhere down the hall. That grabbed my attention. I made the effort to move quietly and crept a bit closer, Listening as I went.

"I don’t know," hissed a male voice. "I looked for her all day. She’s never been gone this long."

"Just my point," growled a female voice. "She doesn’t stay gone this long. You know how she gets by herself."

"God," said a third voice, the light tenor of a young man. "He did it. He really did it this time."

"We don’t know that," the first man said. "Maybe she finally used her head and got out of town."

The woman’s voice sounded tired. "No, Ace. She wouldn’t just leave. Not on her own. We have to do something."