Bloodfever
Page 3
Im a detective, Ms. Lane, ODuffy told me with a dry smile, and I realized he had no intention of telling me. The smile vanished and his eyes narrowed with a subtle warning: Dont lie to me, Ill know.
I wasnt worried. Barrons said the same thing to me once, and he has seriously preternatural senses. If Barrons didnt see through me, ODuffy wasnt going to. I waited, wondering what had brought him here. Hed made it clear he considered my sisters case unsolvable and closed. Permanently.
He moved away from the fire and dropped the satchel slung over his shoulder onto the table between us.
Maps spilled across the gleaming wood.
Though I betrayed nothing, I felt the cold blade of a chill at my spine. I could no longer see maps as I once had: innocuous travel guides for the disoriented traveler or bemused tourist. Now when I unfold one I half expect to find charred holes in it where the Dark Zones arethose chunks of our cities that have fallen off our maps, lost to the deadly Shades. Its no longer what maps show but what they fail to show that worries me.
A week ago Id demanded ODuffy tell me everything he knew about the clue my sister had left at the scene of her murder, words shed scratched into the cobbled stone of the alley as she lay dying: 1247 LaRuhe.
Hed told me theyd never been able to find any such address.
I had.
It had taken a bit of thinking outside the box, but thats something Im getting better at every day, although I really cant take much credit for the improvement. Its easy to think outside the box when life has dropped a two-ton elephant on yours. What is that box anyway but the beliefs we choose to hold about the world that make us feel safe? My box was now as flat, and about as useful, as a tissue-paper umbrella in all this rain.
ODuffy sat down on the sofa next to me, gently, for such an overweight man. I know what you think of me, he said.
When I would have protested politelygood southern manners die hard, if at allhe gave me what my mother calls the shush wave.
Ive been doing this job for twenty-two years, Ms. Lane. I know what the families of closed murder cases feel when they look at me. Pain. Anger. He gave a dry laugh. The conviction that I must be a chuffing idiot who spends too much time in the pubs and not enough time on the job, or their loved one would be resting in vindicated peace while the perp rotted in jail.
Rotting in jail was far too kind a fate for my sisters murderer. Besides, I wasnt sure any jail cell could hold him. The crimson-robed leader of the Unseelie might draw symbols on the floor, stamp his staff, and disappear through a convenient portal. Though Barrons had cautioned against assumptions, I saw no reason to doubt the Lord Master was responsible formy sisters death.
ODuffy paused, perhaps giving me a chance to rebut. I didnt. He was right. Id felt all that and more, but weighing the jelly stains on his tie and the girth overhanging his belt as circumstantial evidence, Id convicted him of loitering overlong in bakeries and cafs, not pubs.
He selected two maps of Dublin from the table and handed them to me.
I gave him a quizzical look.
The one on top is from last year. The one beneath it was published seven years earlier.
I shrugged. And? A few weeks ago I would have been delighted for any help from the Garda I could get. Now that I knew what I knew about the Dark Zone neighboring Barrons Books and Baublesthat terrible wasteland where Id found 1247 LaRuhe, had a violent confrontation with the Lord Master, and nearly been killedI wanted the police to stay as far out of my life as I could keep them. I didnt want any more deaths on my conscience. There was nothing the Garda could do to help me anyway. Only a sidhe-seer could see the monsters that had taken over the abandoned neighborhood and turned it into a death trap. The average human wouldnt know they were in danger until they were knee-deep in dead.
I found your 1247 LaRuhe, Ms. Lane. Its on the map published seven years ago. Oddly enough, its not on the one published last year. Grand Walk, one block down from this bookstore, isnt on the new map, either. Neither is Connelly Street, a block beyond that. I know. I went down there before I came to see you.
Oh, God, hed walked into the Dark Zone this morning? The day was barely bright enough to keep the Shades hunkered down wherever it was the nasty things hide! If the storm had blown in even one more dense, sky-obliterating cloud, the boldest of those life-suckers might have dared the day for a human Happy Meal. ODuffy had just been waltzing cheek-to-cheek with Death, and didnt even know it!
The unsuspecting inspector waved a hand at the pile of maps. They looked well examined. One of them appeared to have been balled up in shock or perhaps angry disbelief, then re-smoothed. I was no stranger to those emotions. In fact, Ms. Lane, ODuffy continued, none of the streets I just mentioned are on any recently published map.
I gave him my best blank look. What are you saying, Inspector? Has the city renamed the streets in this part of Dublin? Is that why theyre not on the new maps?
His face tightened and his gaze cut away. Nobody renamed the streets, he growled. Unless they did it without notifying a single person in authority. He looked back at me, hard. I thought there might be something else you wanted to tell me, Ms. Lane. Something that might sounda bitunusual?
I wasnt worried. Barrons said the same thing to me once, and he has seriously preternatural senses. If Barrons didnt see through me, ODuffy wasnt going to. I waited, wondering what had brought him here. Hed made it clear he considered my sisters case unsolvable and closed. Permanently.
He moved away from the fire and dropped the satchel slung over his shoulder onto the table between us.
Maps spilled across the gleaming wood.
Though I betrayed nothing, I felt the cold blade of a chill at my spine. I could no longer see maps as I once had: innocuous travel guides for the disoriented traveler or bemused tourist. Now when I unfold one I half expect to find charred holes in it where the Dark Zones arethose chunks of our cities that have fallen off our maps, lost to the deadly Shades. Its no longer what maps show but what they fail to show that worries me.
A week ago Id demanded ODuffy tell me everything he knew about the clue my sister had left at the scene of her murder, words shed scratched into the cobbled stone of the alley as she lay dying: 1247 LaRuhe.
Hed told me theyd never been able to find any such address.
I had.
It had taken a bit of thinking outside the box, but thats something Im getting better at every day, although I really cant take much credit for the improvement. Its easy to think outside the box when life has dropped a two-ton elephant on yours. What is that box anyway but the beliefs we choose to hold about the world that make us feel safe? My box was now as flat, and about as useful, as a tissue-paper umbrella in all this rain.
ODuffy sat down on the sofa next to me, gently, for such an overweight man. I know what you think of me, he said.
When I would have protested politelygood southern manners die hard, if at allhe gave me what my mother calls the shush wave.
Ive been doing this job for twenty-two years, Ms. Lane. I know what the families of closed murder cases feel when they look at me. Pain. Anger. He gave a dry laugh. The conviction that I must be a chuffing idiot who spends too much time in the pubs and not enough time on the job, or their loved one would be resting in vindicated peace while the perp rotted in jail.
Rotting in jail was far too kind a fate for my sisters murderer. Besides, I wasnt sure any jail cell could hold him. The crimson-robed leader of the Unseelie might draw symbols on the floor, stamp his staff, and disappear through a convenient portal. Though Barrons had cautioned against assumptions, I saw no reason to doubt the Lord Master was responsible formy sisters death.
ODuffy paused, perhaps giving me a chance to rebut. I didnt. He was right. Id felt all that and more, but weighing the jelly stains on his tie and the girth overhanging his belt as circumstantial evidence, Id convicted him of loitering overlong in bakeries and cafs, not pubs.
He selected two maps of Dublin from the table and handed them to me.
I gave him a quizzical look.
The one on top is from last year. The one beneath it was published seven years earlier.
I shrugged. And? A few weeks ago I would have been delighted for any help from the Garda I could get. Now that I knew what I knew about the Dark Zone neighboring Barrons Books and Baublesthat terrible wasteland where Id found 1247 LaRuhe, had a violent confrontation with the Lord Master, and nearly been killedI wanted the police to stay as far out of my life as I could keep them. I didnt want any more deaths on my conscience. There was nothing the Garda could do to help me anyway. Only a sidhe-seer could see the monsters that had taken over the abandoned neighborhood and turned it into a death trap. The average human wouldnt know they were in danger until they were knee-deep in dead.
I found your 1247 LaRuhe, Ms. Lane. Its on the map published seven years ago. Oddly enough, its not on the one published last year. Grand Walk, one block down from this bookstore, isnt on the new map, either. Neither is Connelly Street, a block beyond that. I know. I went down there before I came to see you.
Oh, God, hed walked into the Dark Zone this morning? The day was barely bright enough to keep the Shades hunkered down wherever it was the nasty things hide! If the storm had blown in even one more dense, sky-obliterating cloud, the boldest of those life-suckers might have dared the day for a human Happy Meal. ODuffy had just been waltzing cheek-to-cheek with Death, and didnt even know it!
The unsuspecting inspector waved a hand at the pile of maps. They looked well examined. One of them appeared to have been balled up in shock or perhaps angry disbelief, then re-smoothed. I was no stranger to those emotions. In fact, Ms. Lane, ODuffy continued, none of the streets I just mentioned are on any recently published map.
I gave him my best blank look. What are you saying, Inspector? Has the city renamed the streets in this part of Dublin? Is that why theyre not on the new maps?
His face tightened and his gaze cut away. Nobody renamed the streets, he growled. Unless they did it without notifying a single person in authority. He looked back at me, hard. I thought there might be something else you wanted to tell me, Ms. Lane. Something that might sounda bitunusual?
