Hallow Point (6 page)

And yep, Pete—and one or two of the others I’d gladhanded personally now and again—all winced or muttered and looked at their toes.

The rest?

Yeah, I’d better not need the boys in blue anytime soon. ’Cept maybe as pallbearers.

“Detective Galway,” I began, “I don’t—”

He waved me off. “I know, I know. Gotta negotiate fees and all. Come on by the clubhouse tomorrow morning. Assuming they give us the go-ahead, we’ll have you John Hancock something.”

“But I—”

“Listen.” His voice dropped to a rough whisper. “You won’t just be digging for an actual burglar. I ain’t sure the old man—” he cast a glance at Lydecker that mighta qualified as subtle if it’d been at all, y’know, subtle “—isn’t putting us all on. Give him a good up-and-down, too.”

“Yeah, but I—”

“Go on and bunk for the night, Oberon. You look all in.”

Swell. Even complete strangers could see I was bushed.

Tell you square, what I’d been about to say was that they’d have to do this one without me. Been noodling on that since before I even peeled myself off the floor. I’d wanted nothing much to do with Herne even before he’d gotten himself bound to the Wild Hunt, and he was even worse now that it’d left him behind. I
sure
as shooting didn’t wanna get dragged into whatever wingding had brought him to Chicago.

And I couldn’t get his little parting speech outta my noggin, either. Maybe he was just being melodramatic—it’s a Fae thing—but I couldn’t shake the notion that he’d been legitimately trying to warn me off. Off something other’n just him, I mean.

That… wasn’t Herne’s style. When the Hunter says something’s dangerous, wise folks listen.

Fuck it for now, though. Galway wasn’t wrong; I was tired. I’d
been
tired, started the night off tired, and that was before I went five rounds with a guy who wrestles bears to loosen himself up in the morning.

And that meant I was too damn wiped to argue with Gasbag Galway. He’d just hafta find out my decision tomorrow.

Over the phone, preferably. And given how I feel about the damn dinguses, that alone oughta put you wise to just
how
bushed I was.

So for tonight, I just jerked him a nod, then a second more friendly one to Pete—poor guy was gonna be stuck here a while yet, with a buncha pals who weren’t feeling real pally—and made for the exit.

Actually, sympathies for my buddy aside, I was kinda relieved he wasn’t driving me home. Hoofing it to the station and taking the L meant a longer trip, but it also meant not crossing town with an engine right in my kisser, trying to process my brain into cheap sausage.

It was drizzling again by the time I got outside. Of course. The bulls still loitering around the property tried to hide under their caps—the two or three hadn’t been called inside—getting cold wet down their necks and cheeks for the trouble, and muttered to each other about how much longer they were expected to stand there.

Miserable as a teetotaler’s birthday, basically.

Not that I was a lot happier, but the cold don’t bug me as much, and more to the point, I was heading home. I squeezed past with a few polite words most didn’t return, and aimed my cheap Sears and Roebuck Oxfords south toward 18th Street station. Should be duck soup to hop the L over to Pilsen, even this time of night, and I could finally get some damn shuteye. Hell, after the wringer Herne put me through, I might just let myself snooze an extra day. Galway could wait to be disappointed.

Whatever the case, I was done. This whole spear thing was curious, yeah, but definitely not worth getting into. I was through with it, and whatever went down next was no skin off
my
nose.

Done. Absolutely, positively done.

I
wasn’t done. Learned that as I got to the station.

Smattering of papers danced down the street past me, carried by low gusts until they splatted against the side of this building or that, sticking thanks to the drenching they’d gotten on the way. I could almost read one of ’em; looked like somebody or other was having a huge sale on Ovaltine. I started up the station steps, making a mental note to remember not to care.

Brakes howled, tracks rumbled, shaking oily drops from the trestles overhead, granting the already rain-soaked steps just that little bit of extra slick. Normally it wouldn’ta bothered me much. I could balance on a blade of grass in my youth, I wasn’t gonna worry about wet floors. Normally.

Normally I didn’t feel like the dance floor on Come Cut a Rug With Your Donkey Night, either.

Staggered once, caught myself with one mitt on the guardrail, and—

Oh, fucking goddamn it, ow!

It was a passing touch, not as though I’d tripped and conked myself on it, so it wasn’t
too
ugly. No agony, no shakes. My hand was pan-seared, though, ready to serve up with a side of greens, throbbing to beat the band. And it itched so bad I’d have welcomed ants and mosquitoes to scratch it for me.

(Well, not quite true, since those bastards don’t bite me like they do you. Not here in the “real” world, anyway. Totally different story in Elphame, but what’s not?)

Cast iron, that rail.

It wasn’t the iron that surprised me, though. It was that I’d been dippy enough to touch it. I mean, I take the train everywhere I can’t hoof it. Ain’t as though this is the first municipal guardrail I’ve seen.

You getting fed up with me barbering on about how thrown I was, how bushed and how beat, wah, wah, poor Mick, yet? Yeah, me too. Wanted to throw one more example at you, though, since it’s important for what comes next.

By which I mean, it makes me look a
little
less like a complete dip.

So I’m sidling away from the rail like it bit me, clutching one hand with the other, spitting enough profanity to make a priest spontaneously combust. Of the tiny trickle of pedestrians actually still pounding pavement at this hour, one of ’em turns out to be a member of an almost extinct species: Good Samaritan, tryin’ to wipe drops off his glasses without knocking his hat from his gourd, while shuffling over to see what’s up with me. Somehow, I didn’t think I wanted him eyeballing my nice new iron rash.

“No problem, pal. Jammed my finger last week, keep forgettin’ not to grab stuff with it. Thanks, though,” I said.

He gave me a queer look but moved on.

I was gonna have to remember to give Pete a serious sock in the kisser for tonight. I was gonna have to get a better lock for my door. I was…

Being followed.

I just knew it, instantly. Hair on the back of my neck, phantom daggers in my spine, recollections of shapes at the edge of my vision, even tasted the flavor of lurking in the wet pollution perfume this city calls “air.” Wasn’t any sorta human tang, either. Old,
real
old, and always, always
craving
…

Except… Nah. I was just being goofy again. Stairwell was empty but for me and a couple humming light fixtures, drunk fireflies flickering against a grimy ceiling. Rumble of the train up ahead, echoing patter of the rain. Not even a sign of the Samaritan anymore.

The hinky feeling was gone quick as it crashed down on me, and there sure as hell wasn’t anybody around to’ve sparked it. Not just tired now, but paranoid. Jumping at squat and shadows. Muttering at myself—and nothing nice, either—I climbed the rest of the stairs, growled my way past the few folks standing around on the platform, and slipped between the brown sliding doors. Clunk, hiss, screech, shudder, and the train was chug-a-lugging its way cross town.

Me, I planted my keister on a random seat and leaned my head back against the wall. I’d gotten real accustomed to the steady
clack-clack, thud-thud
of the L by now, enough so that it
almost
distracted me from the damn itch of being inside the whole technological contraption.

Clack-clack. Thud-thud.

The car was empty, ’cept for one gink down at the far end trying to pretend he
wasn’t
completely out on the roof, and having exactly zero success with it. He was swaying faster’n the train was, and even one of you mugs coulda smelled the hooch wafting off him.

Couple stations passed. More screeching. More swaying. Boozehound got off at the third, looking unsure if this
was
his stop or not. Nobody else got on, not in this carriage, anyway.

Thud-thud. Clack-clack
. My noggin rocking back and forth against the wall, almost a massage, lulling me to…

Wait one goddamn freakin’ minute!

I bolted upright, a single step taking me to the middle of the car, already grabbing for the L&G. And all I could think, beyond gunning for a threat I
knew
hadda be near, was
When did I turn into such a fucking twit?

No way,
no way
do I just suddenly decide I’m imagining some danger. No way do I get a premonition as strong as the one I had in the stairwell and then just shrug it off. Uh-uh. That ain’t me at all, and if you’re wondering why I’m just now wising up when you knew something was off from the minute I talked about it, well, that’s why I kept hitting the whole “exhausted unto stupid” thing.

I’ve monkeyed with enough minds to recognize when it’s been done to me. Even if sometimes, such as tonight, it’s a bit of a belated recognition.

Right. Door.

I was hot enough—with whoever’d been shadowing me and with myself—that I forgot the mortal façade as I made for the next car. I didn’t sway with the train anymore, instead adjusting faster, more minutely, than any human. Not a fraction of an inch of wobble in the L&G, now aimed and ready. I wasn’t blinking anymore. Faintly, not so anyone else woulda noticed at first, the flickering of the lights started to change. Brighter than they shoulda been, almost daylight; then black as pitch, as if they were
projecting
dark. Slowing until each flicker matched the smack of my heels against the trundling floor. One of the bulbs, the newest and brightest, burst in a shower of sparks and slivers.

Makes me sound all tough and unshakable, don’t it? Yeah, I’ll come back to that in a minute.

The anger drained outta me just as quickly, though, fading into a sorta resigned futility even as I reached for the door handle. Three stations, with a fourth coming up long before I could cover the length of the train. Even if my tail had boarded the L at all, he (or she, or it, or any combination) could well be long gone. Even if not, well, I couldn’t be sure I’d tumble to him (or her, etc.) no matter how careful I looked.

Grumbling some profanities that woulda got me burned at the stake in other times, I thumped back down onto one of the wood benches. The lights’d gone back to their normal stuttering, and I was even blinking again, like a good little human.

Still had my wand in hand, though. If I felt even a
tingle
of magic, someone was getting a mug full of disaster.

All that cursing up a storm, though? Squeezing the L&G until it creaked, lookin’ for an excuse to shove some mojo down someone’s throat? I was
tryin
’ to stay angry, or at least focused.

Because my other option was scared, see? I ain’t the toughest thing to ever come outta Elphame, but I got my fair share of power. Wasn’t a whole lot out there could muck around in my mind too easy, and even less could do it without me at least suspecting something was hinky.

So who or what the hell had my trip to the Field gotten all riled up?

I didn’t even question that this was related to the museum case. Coincidence follows us
aes sidhe
like a begging mutt, but not
that
much.

So who was keeping tabs on me? Herne? Nah, not his style. I don’t figure I’d have noticed if he
was
shadowing me, and if I did? His method of handling it wouldn’t be rooting around in my senses. Far as I knew Herne, his notion of subtle was a
small
blade through the pump ’stead of a big one.

Well, he did say there were others mixed up in… Whatever there was to be mixed up in.

And I still didn’t give a hoot. Let ’em follow. Let ’em all see that I wasn’t getting involved. Out of the game. Washing my hands of it, like Pontius Pilate after cleaning the cat box.

I was determined. Absolutely set in stone. I’d learn all about it after, maybe in one of the Otherworld Chicago’s news rags. But I
was. Not. Involved.

Once in Pilsen, it was a couple minutes’ walk along wet sidewalks, past dingy brick facades made ghosts by street lights and the gleam of occasional passing flivvers, for me to get from the station to Mr. Soucek’s building, where I hang my hat. And rapier. I could tell ya that I
didn’t
spend the whole hike nervously tryin’ to look over both shoulders at once, but we’d both know it for bullshit.

Turned out, though, it wasn’t
behind
me I hadda worry about.

’Bout half a dozen guys and gals, who you woulda thought were human but I knew better, loitered on the doorstep, blending in like Al Capone at a girls’ finishing school. They all wore really pricy but totally off-the-rack glad rags—even the women sported suits—and every one of ’em turned to stare me down as I got near.

“You guys practice that?” I asked, then pointed at the fellow on the left. “Jack over here was half a step off-tempo.”

I didn’t slow. They didn’t clear the way. This romp was edging up on interesting, and I had had a belly full of interesting already.

“Whatever it is, I ain’t part of it,” I said. “Seriously. Go chase your plot or enemy or dingus or whatever somewhere else.”

They still didn’t budge. At the top step, I actually bumped into the one jackass directly in my way.

“You can be a door,” I said softly, “or a welcome mat. I’ll give you to ten to decide which. Eight… Nine…”

Hands went under coats, theirs and mine both. If we were human, everyone woulda tensed right then;
we
just got really, really still…

“You really don’t want this to get unpleasant, Oberon,” said a voice from below.

“It’s already unpleasant, bo.” I turned to look behind me, edging to one side so I didn’t completely lose track of Door-Mat in the process.