Unquiet Dreams

“I went underground. Literally.”

He narrowed his eyes and hovered in close. “Are you okay? You’ve got troll essence all over you.”

I nodded. “It’s a long story.”

He looked up and down the street like he expected a horde of Visigoths to charge at him. Seeing none, he sheathed the sword.

Where are you? Burst into my mind so sharply I stumbled. “Tell Meryl I’m fine, Joe. Is she okay?”

He paused a moment. “She says you owe her a new pair of Doc Martens.”

I smiled. Whether she realized it or not, I could tell she was concerned enough to be upset. “Tell her I said ‘deal.’ Where did you go last night, Joe?”

Joe looped and dipped around me as I walked. “I couldn’t get in. They had awesome security on that place. Tell me what happened.”

He circled around me as I gave him the rundown, peering at passersby with suspicion. His head whipped around to face me as I got to the end of the story. “You took a shower in a troll’s bathroom?”

“Uh, Joe, did you miss what I said? I met a drys, almost died, and found out C-Note is going to attack the Guild.”

He nodded. “No, I heard that. How bad did it smell?”

“What?”

“The bathroom.”

I decided not to argue. “Actually, it didn’t. It was very clean.”

He nodded in puzzled consideration. “Really. I wouldn’t’ve thought. Were there dead things?”

We turned onto D Street and made for Summer. “Not obvious, though I did smell something not very fresh as I was leaving.”

Murdock cruised up on the left and stopped. I cocked an eyebrow at Joe. “Just how many people did you do a sending to?”

He smiled. “Just two. We thought you were dead, you know. Meryl saw you fall before the whole building went down. That woman should go into demolition. You should have seen her tear into the place looking for you.”

I had a recollection of someone screaming when I fell. “She did?”

He nodded. “I had to force her to leave. I couldn’t see you at all. I thought you were dead, but she didn’t.”

I opened the car door and tossed a paperback novel and some newspapers off the passenger seat and sat down next to Murdock. Joe fluttered into the backseat and began rummaging through the mess. “Hi,” I said.

Murdock pulled away from the curb. “So you’re not dead,” he said.

“You either.”

He smirked. “I run fast.”

I smirked back. “I fall slow. What happened to you?”

“I ran to get Meryl, but we couldn’t get back up because the whole back of the building was in flames. Then it started falling apart.”

“Your essence got pretty strong in there,” I said.

He turned onto Summer Street. “I don’t feel any different.”

“Murdock, think about the other night at Yggy’s. Didn’t you notice how fast you were moving? Hell, you laid out an elf with one punch.”

He pursed his lips. “I guess I did. I still don’t feel any different.”

He might not feel anything, but I did. I had met very few fey whose essence oscillated in strength like Murdock’s did. It cycled from slightly elevated human normal to wildly strong to, like now, somewhere in the middle. “What’s the midach say?”

“Nothing. Meryl insisted I get checked out this morning. I was at AvMem when Joe called me. Where are we going?”

I considered a moment. “The Guildhouse. I need to talk to Keeva.”

Murdock goosed the accelerator. “What happened after I took off?”

“He met a drys, almost died, and learned C-Note’s evil plans,” Joe’s voice came from somewhere under a pile of papers.

“Oh, be quiet,” I said.

He snickered. “I told you I was paying attention.”

I gave Murdock a few more details than Joe had. A curious look came over his face. “Explain the drys.”

“It’s like I said last night. They’re legends. The belief is that real entities are obligated to keep the flows of essence balanced. A drys is a keeper of the wood and is the source of Power that druids tap. When a druid asks for a blessing, he’s asking the drys.”

“A goddess,” he concluded.

I stole a look at him, but couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Murdock’s Roman Catholicism is one of the wonderful contradictions about our friendship. He is a believer who wants to understand the crazy pagans. “Not quite. More an extension of a goddess. The Goddess, if that’s where your belief lies.”

“Is that what you believe?”

I paused, not expecting the question. What did I believe? If he had asked me the day before, I would have talked a lot about energy and reason. I knew what I was supposed to believe as a druid, but my rational mind always resisted. Essence was just there. I could tap it like an energy source. Whether I believed it was the extension of some higher power seemed beside the point. And yet, standing in the Bosnemeton, in a grove of oak with my brothers, I did feel Something. Feeling the purity of essence that Hala generated when I had held her, I felt Something. I knew what I was supposed to believe, even wanted to believe it, but I still hovered on the edge of that precipice, suspicious of taking that leap of faith. Maybe that was the missing key to my problem. Maybe allowing the old beliefs to become real in my mind was the step I needed to take to heal the darkness in my head.

“Let’s just say I hope all of this has a reason,” I said finally.

He nodded. “Hope is the begi

I laughed. “I thought I was the one who just had a near-death experience.”

Murdock shrugged. “Trust me. When you have a building collapsing on your ass, you find time for faith.” He leaned over and pulled a manila folder out of the glove compartment. “I had a busy day.”

I flipped the file open to a sheaf of notes with a photocopy of a store receipt for orange Nike ru

He nodded. “They were brand-new. I’d never seen them before, so I figured it might be easy to track them down. Newbury Street, of all places.”

I shook my head. A poor kid from the wrong side of Southie ends up dead while wearing shoes from the most expensive stretch of pavement in Boston.

“They were bought with a credit card, so I ran the number,” he said.

I turned the page and froze. I looked at Murdock. “Is this a joke?”

He had a sly smile on his face. “You wanted a co

I held the credit card report, staring at it, still wondering if it were a joke. “Why would Keeva buy De

Murdock pulled his chin in and looked at me from under his brow. “Well, don’t get your hopes up yet. We’ve had this kind of thing blow up in our faces before. No one at the store remembers who bought the shoes. I have someone ru

I knew Keeva well enough to know something was up. “Orange shoes are a coincidence? You know Keeva. She wouldn’t be caught dead with someone wearing orange ru

“It might explain why nothing’s happening with her investigation, though,” he said.

I slouched in my seat. I was at a loss. Other than Guild work, I could not think of a single reason Keeva would be involved with Kruge. Eagan and Gerin put me onto macGoren, not her. But they clearly had their curiosities about her; otherwise, they would have asked her some direct questions about her new beau. As much as Keeva and I had our differences, I had a hard time picturing her in a murder plot.

We made our way through downtown streets and turned toward Park Square. The Guildhouse sat like a fort under siege. Pedestrian traffic threaded through a narrow barricaded path, while concrete Jersey barriers restricted traffic in front to a single lane. Security agents flew overhead, ru

Murdock pulled over to let me out. Joe flew nonchalantly around me, pretending he wasn’t pulling bodyguard duty.