Chapter 5

I finished out my shift in a haze and drove straight to Matt’s office.

Matt’s office was south of my own apartment, past Brown University and in the Fox Point part of town. Fox Point was an odd mix of older, gentrified houses and businesses and the remains of Providence’s heavy industrialization from the turn of the century. For the most part it was a fairly pretty area, with relatively safe streets and an assortment of businesses that catered to an upscale clientele. Matt’s office was actually a historic little house on Ives Street that a developer in the seventies had carved into four cramped offices, two on each floor. The second floor hosted a pair of perennially sparring realtors, and across the hall from Matt, a home decorator was ensconced in piles of fabric, tile, and floor samples.

At just past eleven I pulled into the back parking lot, which was empty except for Matt’s familiar Buick. I’d had a key to the building for years, and I let myself in the back door and headed down the small and creaky hallway. At Matt’s door I paused and knocked. I could hear his footsteps across the bare floorboards, and he unlocked his door and let me in.

From the looks of things, Matt was living in his office again. It was always easy to tell when that was happening, since his suitcases and a few open boxes were piled behind a small privacy screen that the home decorator had given him out of pity a few years ago during another of these periods. There were a few blankets and a battered pillow strewn across the old leather sofa that had come with the office, and some decades ago had probably belonged to an earlier owner’s gentleman’s library. Every surface in the office was covered in file folders, newspaper clippings, and yellow legal pads filled with notes and scribbles about various cases. Matt’s mini fridge was barely visible below the clutter as it sat in the corner—it was actually my old mini fridge from college that I’d given him when I moved into my first apartment. Even though I knew that he probably couldn’t afford to replace it, it made me feel better that he’d kept it even during our recent rift.

Matt was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, with a somewhat incongruous set of bright red slippers on his feet. I would’ve made some joke about them, but Matt’s expression was grim and the air was charged. He nodded at me.

“I’m glad you came, Fort.”

“Of course I did, Matt. You said that you found something.” I hid how worried that made me.

Matt didn’t speak for a long moment, just stared at me with a shuttered look in his brown eyes. “They made an arrest, you know,” he said finally.

I shifted uncomfortably under his piercing gaze. Once again I was reminded that it was a good thing that I’d never had dreams of being a covert operative. “I know.”

He walked closer to me, stopping well inside my personal space. “Do you think that those were the ones who killed your roommate?” he asked in a deceptively pleasant voice.

I knew that he was testing me and that what he wanted was for me to admit that there had been a cover-up orchestrated by my family. “They were arrested, Matt,” I said, refusing to go down that road. I couldn’t see any way that it didn’t end in his death.

“That’s not what I’m asking.” Standing in front of me, Matt should’ve looked tough, like a brick wall of muscle and intent. Instead, all I could see was his very human fragility and just how breakable he could be.

“I know.” I looked around the apartment for a second, wishing I could think of a way to defuse this moment. I repeated, “You said you found something.”

Matt ignored my comment. “The Scotts have leverage in this town, Fort. It took a lot of work to get copies of the investigation, to get people to talk to me. If you’re not in on this, let me know and I’ll follow it on my own.”

He wasn’t going to drop this, I realized, and I was going to have to work past this in a way that retained the ignorance that protected Matt while at the same time got the information he’d uncovered so that I could figure out if it was putting him in danger. “Matt, the thing is . . .” I paused, racking my brain for something to say that could somehow circumvent the worst of the truth while at the same time give him enough to let us move forward. Finally I said, “I know what my family is”—and that was certainly a whopper dressed up like honesty, but nowhere near what Matt clearly read it as—“but this isn’t about them right now. My friend was killed, and now you’re telling me that you’ve found something.” I forced myself to look him straight in the eyes, and I reached deep inside myself, and when I asked it I meant it: “Can I trust you, Matt?”

I wished that I could really trust him. To tell him what I actually was and not have him look at me like a monster, assuming that he believed me and didn’t just look at me like a crazy person. I spent a lot of time purposefully not thinking about it, but one of the things I valued most about Suzume’s friendship was the fact that she knew what I was. There was no lying when I was with her, none of the deceit that was so treacherously and heavily entwined throughout every interaction I had with Matt.

But I’d told the truth to my foster parents, and they’d believed me. They’d died because they’d believed me, and I was determined that this wouldn’t happen to Matt.

Matt’s mouth gave a small, cynical twist. “Fortitude, I’m not the one who has secrets in this room.”

“This one isn’t a secret.” I refused to look away from his eyes. “This is just about Gage.”

Matt looked away first, letting out a gusty breath and shaking his head. Whatever decision he’d come to and whatever he’d seen in me in that long moment, some of the tension leaked out of the room. “Okay, Fort. Okay,” he said, rubbing one hand hard against the back of his head. He pulled a folder off of the top of the pile littering his desk and passed me an oversized eight-by-ten-inch photo from it. I recognized the floor of my apartment first, then registered that I was looking at a picture of Gage’s bare arm. There were his band tattoos, with their intricately repeated pattern of Celtic knots, and at the bottom of the picture was the grim sight of his bare, empty wrist. I swallowed hard and paid attention as Matt spoke. “Now, this is from one of the pictures that were taken at the crime scene. He had these bands tattooed around both wrists and biceps, right?” I nodded. When he’d first gotten them, I’d teased him for days about one set being just slightly higher than the other. “Take a look at this.” Matt pulled a second picture out of the folder and laid it down on the first. This was a blowup of a guy around my age, standing in the middle of an apartment I’d never seen. He was smiling widely, a beer in one hand, wearing a sleeveless shirt. Immediately I realized that he had a set of tattoos that were identical to Gage’s—Celtic bands at biceps and wrists, with the same interlocked black knots.

“Same tats, right?” Matt asked, clearly already knowing the answer.

“Yeah, that’s the same. Who is this?”

“This is Rian Orbon. He went missing one night in February, but the police never found any evidence to call it a homicide, so it was labeled a missing person and eventually dropped. Orbon’s parents hired me six months ago. I wasn’t able to find anything, but when I saw your roommate’s body the other night, something about it looked familiar.” Matt tapped the photo. “I knew I’d seen the tats before. Could’ve just been a coincidence, though, right?”

“Yeah, maybe . . .” I said, my brain weighing the new information and not liking the potential result one bit.

“Exactly. So I called up a connection I’ve got with the Providence PD. Asked him if there was any chance he could poke around the missing person’s sheets, see if there were any more with tats that match this description.” Matt handed me another photo, and I looked at it almost reluctantly. This was a younger guy, Asian, awkward and gangly in the way that a lot of guys are in the first few years of college. “Brent Jung was a sophomore at the Roger Williams University metro campus. Went missing back in April. He’d had a fight with his girlfriend earlier in the week and things were tense with the parents, so the investigating officer figured that he just hauled off and would trickle back eventually when his money ran out. You can’t see it in the picture here, but his RA mentioned that Jung had gotten tattooed just two weeks before he vanished—gave a pretty detailed description. I e-mailed him a copy of the Orbon photo last night, and he swears that Jung had an identical tat.”

I frowned. “But these guys disappeared, and Gage was killed.”

“Fort, I haven’t been able to get a copy of the coroner’s full report yet, but I talked with someone who works in the office. It wasn’t just his hands that were cut off; it was also his tongue and his genitals.” I could feel the color drain out of my face, and Matt nodded grimly. “My guy told me that there was also one long cut on his neck, but other than that there were no other injuries. To me, this suggests planning. I don’t think Gage is the first person who has died this way—it might just be that his is the first body that was found.”

“You think Rian Orbon and Brent Jung were both victims as well.” As I spoke, my mind was racing. Suzume and I had been assuming that this was a random supernatural attack, that Gage had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that his killer had probably left the area. But this suggested that not only was Gage not the sole victim and his killer had been in the area a long time, but that there had been some substantial planning and premeditation. Matching tattoos? Whatever was going on was now much bigger than just Gage’s death.

I hated that I even thought of it, but more bodies also meant that Gage’s death probably didn’t have anything to do with me, and I felt a small rush of relief. But that was quickly washed away when I looked back at the stack of photos. Something was very, very wrong here.

Matt began talking, interrupting my thoughts. “I think it’s a stretch to imagine it’s just a coincidence that we’ve got one body and two missing persons with the same tattoos. When did Gage get tattooed?”

“About a month ago.”

Matt nodded. “Orbon and Jung’s tats were both recent as well.”

“So we need to find out where they got these tattoos, because that’s the link.” When had Gage become singled out, I wondered. When he got his tattoo, or was it even before that? I tried to remember what Gage had said about the tattoos or where he’d gotten them, but all I could come up with was a blank. There had been too many weeks of minimal sleep and excessive training. It seemed like I’d come home one day and there had been Gage, sitting on the sofa with medical gauze wrapped around his arms and surfing his iPhone for tattoo aftercare instructions.

“I already did,” Matt said, and I snapped to attention, watching as he pulled another file off the desk. “I went to see Rian Orbon’s father this morning, and we spent the whole day going through everything he had in his room. We found this at the bottom of a drawer.” He pulled out a glossy advertisement card, the kind that usually arrived in my mailbox and went straight into the trash, and handed it to me.

Iron Needle Tattoos, it read. 20% discount.

I stared at the card—there was a picture on it of a black Chinese dragon tattooed on an anonymous man’s back. The longer I looked at it, somehow the more interesting it became. After a long minute I remembered that Matt was waiting for an answer. “Wow. This is just . . . I don’t know.” I shook my head, putting the card down on the pile of photos in front of me. It was hard to take my eyes off of it, and I wondered if all those hours of watching anime had finally ingrained some kind of Pavlovian response in me for Asian art. Good thing it hadn’t been a Sailor Moon tattoo. “So we know where Orbon got his tattoo. We should figure out if Gage and Jung got theirs there as well,” I finished lamely.

Matt eyed me. “Yeah, that’s the place to start. But that’s where you come in.”

That finally distracted me fully from the card. I’d heard those words before—usually before I had to pose as Matt’s accomplice. I didn’t begrudge him the difficulties in being a one-man private investigative unit, and I’d gone on more than one stakeout, but I’d never quite heard those words without a frisson of suspicion after the time he made me pose as his boyfriend to infiltrate a gay swingers’ club to catch a man’s husband in the act of cheating. And cheating. And cheating again. “Me?” I asked with no small amount of trepidation.

“These guys were all in their twenties. I know a certain guy who matches that description, and unfortunately it is no longer me.”

“You want to use me as bait?” I was having somewhat mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, this was a really good idea. On the other hand, I didn’t want to encounter whatever creature had been killing people with Matt as my tagalong. It would be like trying to maintain a secret identity while dating a journalist. And I didn’t care how good a show Moonlight had been or how much I liked Superman; it seemed like a terrible idea to me.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be backing you up,” Matt said soothingly, clearly assuming that my reticence was more from a fear of ending up without tongue, gonads, and hands. “You just go into the tattoo parlor with that card and see what the reaction is. See who talks to you, and especially see if you get nudged toward the design that your friend got.”

Now it was my turn to eye him suspiciously. “No tattoo, though,” I clarified. No matter how cool that Chinese dragon had looked, I was no fan of needles.

Matt threw his hands up, exasperated. “Yeah, Fort. Why don’t you go get a tattoo that will put you on the top of a serial killer’s wish list? Christ, kiddo. We’re just getting background here.”

That was the closest he’d sounded to my old, nonsuspicious Matt all night, and I smiled a little. “Okay. Are you coming in with me?”

“No, I’ll be staking the parlor out, though. I took a look at it today—it’s across from a coffee shop, so I’ll be parked in the front window, keeping an eye on you. Don’t worry.” And here he gave me one of those old, familiar, Uncle Mattie looks. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“I know that, Matt.” Knowing that he’d be across the street during my look around a potential monster den left me relieved, and I couldn’t help but poke him a little. “Even though you said that before the swinger party, yet I still had my ass pinched so many times that I had bruises.”

“Hazard of the job, Fort. It was important to stay in character.” Matt smiled, his shoulders relaxing as he thought back to our old halcyon days. Then a shadow crossed his face and he stiffened again, turning away and making a show of taking the photos from me and tucking them back in the folders, leaving me the discount flier. “Anyway,” he said gruffly. “Ten a.m. sharp, okay? When you’re done come over and buy a cup of coffee. There’s a booth in the back where we can talk and not be seen from the parlor.”

The moment of détente over, we said an awkward good-bye, and I left.

Back in my Fiesta, I paused for a moment before turning the ignition, reviewing all the information I’d just learned.

“Shit,” I muttered, and dug in my pocket for my phone, punching in Suzume’s number by rote. As soon as I heard her sleepy “Hello” I was off and running. “Suze, I know it’s after midnight, and I’m an asshole and I’m sorry, but I need you to come by my apartment tomorrow morning. Matt found something, and I don’t think that whatever killed Gage was just roaming through.”

There was a second while that clearly processed through her sleep-fogged brain. Then she made a small, frustrated sound.

“Forget tomorrow morning—I’ll be right over.”

•   •   •

The benefit of driving at that hour was that most of the traffic lights had been set to blinking yellow for the night, and I made great time back to my apartment, arriving before Suzume. Inside, I dumped my coat, toed off my work shoes, and put the glossy Iron Needle advertisement on the counter. A glance at the clock assured me that I had a few minutes before Suzume would arrive, and I took a quick shower to remove the worst of my work-related hair gel, having no desire to be subject to Suze’s arsenal of speakeasy jokes this late at night.

I finished up and threw on a pair of sweatpants and a shirt just as I heard Suzume’s familiar “Shave and a Haircut” knock at the door. As I went to let her in, the card on the counter caught my eye again, and for a second I wondered what kind of tattoo I’d get, assuming I ever got a tattoo. Not that I wanted a tattoo, of course, but I wondered how much it would cost to get a Tron ISO tattoo on my arm. Given how long my projected lifespan was, I would certainly get good use out of it.

Suzume had apparently saved time by not changing out of her pajamas, since I clearly remembered the pair of red argyle lounge pants that she was wearing when she walked in. Paired with an eye-searingly bright yellow hoodie, it should’ve looked bizarre. But as fiendishly clever as ever, Suze had put her hair into a set of pigtails, which somehow made the whole thing look intentional. I was starting to wonder if there was anything in the world she could wear that wouldn’t add a kick to my heart rate.

I took my mind off of Suze’s continued string of fashion triumphs by filling her in on what I’d learned. After I’d finished, she sat and absorbed it for a long second before delivering her thoughts, phrased with her usual grace and delicacy.

“Well, that certainly shits the bed on our working theory, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I—”

She glanced sharply away from me. “Is that the card you were talking about?” she asked, pointing to the advertisement.

“Yeah.” She got off her stool and went over to pick it up and studied it closely. When she didn’t respond, my mouth suddenly took on a life of its own and started filling the silence. “It’s something, right? Some graphic designer did a good job. I don’t know if it’s the font or the colors, but that is the best-designed circular I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, I look at that thing and I actually start thinking that a tattoo is a good idea.” I paused, but she continued to mutely examine the flier, so I continued. “It wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea, right? It would be like going really undercover. How do you think I’d look with a tattoo? Like, the crest of Hyrule on my right shoulder blade?” She finally stopped her examination and, with great deliberation, lifted her eyes to meet mine. Then, very slowly, she raised one terrible, feathery black eyebrow. I froze for a moment, then added, “If you don’t know what that looks like, hold on: I have it on a T-shirt.”

“I bet you do,” Suzume said, with volumes of subtext. “But it’s not the font. Or the tool with the dragon tattoo.”

“What do you mean?” I stole a glance at the flier. No, the dragon still looked badass, even better than I’d remembered.

Suze held it up. “This card is glamoured.”

It took a second for me to tear my mind away from visions of exactly how well I could pull off a tattoo to focus on what she’d just said, but once it started to penetrate the unusual fuzziness of my thoughts it cast a very harsh light on my recent monologue. “Glamour,” I said slowly, practically tasting the word. “Like what the elves use to hide their ears and look human?”

Suze nodded. “Exactly. I don’t know how many halfsies can do it, but I know that full elves can put glamours on objects to make them more attractive. Just like this.” She wiggled the card, and when I looked at it again I could now just see the hint of the heat shimmer I remembered from when Lilah had broken the glamour on her ear for me.

I shared a grim look with Suze. “Elves running the speed-dating event that Gage disappeared at. Now elf glamour on the promotional card. Starting to look like a pattern.”

“Sure looks that way, Fort. I’ll ride along with you tomorrow to Iron Needle.” That eyebrow went up again, and I knew with a sinking feeling that it would be a long time before I heard the last of my proposed crest of Hyrule tattoo. “With how you were reacting to that glamour, I’ll have to keep an eye on you. Otherwise the next time I see you, you’ll probably have a Doctor Who tramp stamp.”

For one awkward second, I realized that the only way Suzume could possibly look hotter to me was if she had a tattoo of the TARDIS on the middle of her lower back. I was profoundly grateful in that moment that the kitsune were unable to read minds.

•   •   •

After far too few hours of sleep, I rolled out of bed and picked Suzume up at her house, and the two of us drove over to the Iron Needle.

A lot of legends revolved around iron being the one weakness to elves and similar fairy folk. I’d asked Chivalry about it over the summer at one point, when we were driving up to Boston to deal with a nest of kobolds that had taken Madeline’s permission to eat stray dogs and cats and decided to apply it to people’s pets. After Chivalry had read an article about a sudden rash of dogs being snatched out of gated yards, he had thrown me into the car for a quick lesson in diplomacy, and the topic had come up in conversation. He’d told me that there actually wasn’t any true weakness to iron—the seriousness of the inbreeding and population crunch among the elves had become undeniable around the dawn of the Iron Age, and had reached truly critical mass just as the Industrial Revolution hit, resulting in a false correlation for the humans who came into contact with elven offspring so disease ridden and diminished compared to their parents that the humans had credited their sudden ability to overcome them with the availability of iron weapons. Which, in all fairness, probably helped a bit as well. I’d asked Chivalry why none of the humans who were telling the stories had picked up on that. With a rather exhausted sigh, he’d pointed out to me that these were the same kind of thoughtful scientific minds that had embraced bloodletting and treatments involving cow dung.

The neighborhood we ended up at was one that was in a slow state of deterioration. Two grocery stores were empty and boasted large For Lease signs. The small shopping plaza I pulled into had old and cracked asphalt, the kind where people’s cars got stuck in the winter. Four businesses with grimy signs huddled together in one squat gray building that was crumbling at its edges. The Iron Needle was at the far right side, and its three neighbors made a perfect trifecta: a bail bondsman, a liquor store, and a check-cashing business.

“You take me to the nicest places,” Suzume said.

“I can’t believe Gage got his tattoo here.” I mused, trying to picture Gage choosing this of all places to get inked. The front window of the tattoo parlor was blacked out, and the neon sign displaying its name was failing to light up two n’s and an e. “This place looks like an invitation for hepatitis.”

“I’m feeling some begrudging admiration for whoever set that glamour.” Suze was frowning. “For elf magic, that was packing some heat to get anyone through that door.”

“You mean you weren’t feeling respect last night, when it totally made me its bitch?” I felt moderately insulted.

“Fort,” Suze gave me a very patient look. “Convincing you to get a dorky tattoo can’t be that hard.”

“What do you mean by that?” Trust Suze to refuse to leave me at moderately when she could take me all the way to completely insulted.

“Your ex-girlfriend convinced you to go vegetarian. And you’re still vegetarian, even after you dumped her for cheating on you.”

“I have plenty of other reasons,” I defended. It was even true. While my decision to eschew eating meat had been primarily driven by my desire to date Beth, the choice to continue that had been because of what I’d discovered about the diet. It had helped quiet some of my less desirable, more predatory instincts. Since cutting out meat (other than the force-fed mouthfuls from Chef Jerome and some periodic backsliding, usually involving bacon), I’d found it far easier to ignore a few stimuli that had usually had my vampire side sitting up and taking notice. Feeding regularly from my mother had also helped, but I wasn’t about to abandon any useful element.

Suzume rolled her eyes expressively, and I very pointedly turned away from her and looked across the street. The Starbucks looked like a lone outpost of the Roman Empire against Visigoths, and Matt was seated front and center beneath the green logo on the glass window. His favorite stakeout Red Sox hat was pulled low, and an open newspaper was providing cover for him, but I knew his methods from many years of exposure. I wondered briefly how the increasing shift to notepads and tablets would affect the private detective methods of camouflage, but shrugged it off as not my problem.

The inside of the Iron Needle showed the same highly questionable sanitary conditions as the outside, with a cheap vinyl floor that hadn’t been mopped since the early years of the Clinton presidency, and a waiting area that looked furnished mainly with living room furniture rescued from the dump. There was a long counter that separated the front of the shop from the back, where the tattooing chair and equipment were set up. With the front window blacked out, the only illumination came from a set of rickety office ceiling lights, which were flickering ominously. A few half-full containers of rubbing alcohol and fat binders sat on a shelf behind the tattoo chair, beside an assortment of needles and many containers of inks. The walls were covered in layers of tattoo designs that ranged from the surprisingly delicate to the profoundly disturbing, with a distinct overrepresentation of the disturbing. In rare gaps between the pictures, knotty pine wall paneling was revealed. In the back was a half-closed door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY.

There was a long silence after Suze and I walked in, as we both looked around and took in our surroundings. We were the only people in the shop.

“Okay,” Suze said under her breath, finally looking impressed, “whoever made that card was amazing.” Then, louder, she yelled, “Hello? Paying customers!”

The Employees Only door creaked open wider, revealing a man sitting in a wheeled office chair. From his ripped jeans, unraveling wool hat, and disturbingly soiled and frayed wife-beater undershirt that matched the general décor (which Matt’s home-decorator office mate would probably have labeled Miasma of Despair), I deduced that this was probably the owner of the store. From the long and incredibly detailed arm-sleeve tattoos revealed by the undershirt, I assumed that this was also the tattoo artist.

From the hypodermic needle protruding from the inside of the man’s arm and the glassiness of his stare, I could safely state that this man was a junkie of the first order.

“I hope we’re not interrupting,” I said automatically. Immediately after the words left my mouth I began mentally kicking myself. Years of Chivalry’s pestering had ingrained social inanities that trotted out at the most insane moments.

“Nope,” the man said, and pushed the plunger on the needle. I was relieved to see a look of profound disgust on Suzume’s face that matched what I was sure was plastered over my own. “I’ll be out in five. Look through the sample sheets if you want.” With no visible change in his deadened expression, the man walked his wheeled chair backward again and closed the door.

There was a significant pause.

“He must have very reasonable pricing,” I offered at last.

Suzume nodded. “And offer discounts.”

Another large binder sat on the counter next to an aged and yellowed cash register, helpfully titled SAMPLES. I opened it up and started flipping through the plastic insert pages while Suze prowled behind me, conducting her own investigation with a few muffled sniffs. I’d turned only a few pages before I found what I was looking for, and I gestured Suze over. When she was at my shoulder, we both looked down.

Gage’s Celtic band tattoo was in front of us, painstakingly rendered in ink on a small piece of paper. Beside it was a photo printout, obviously from someone’s computer, of a shirtless guy with the bands tattooed at bicep and wrist, though the man’s face had been cropped off. I’d flipped quickly and easily to this page, but I was physically incapable of going any further, even though I knew what I was feeling was obviously unnatural and another well-laid glamour. Just like with the advertisement, I could see the vague heat shimmer, but the knowledge of its false nature only barely chipped away at its allure. It was more compelling than any masterpiece I’d ever seen hanging in the RISD Museum, where I’d spent more than a few afternoons, courtesy of the reduced student-admission rate.

“Yup, that’s Yahtzee,” Suze said. “Same glamour, too.”

I nodded toward the closed door. “So, I’m thinking elf?”

“Oh?” Suze gave me a look like a third-grade math teacher asking to see a student’s work.

“Glamour on the card, glamour on the sample, and he’s wearing a hat indoors that very conveniently covers his ears. Seems to point elf to me. Am I right?” I waited expectantly for her congratulations.

“Nope.”

“Really?” I could feel my confidence deflating.

“Psych!” Suze laughed and held up one hand for a congratulatory high five. I glared at her, not wanting to reward her successful bait and switch, but finally had to give in. After all, congratulatory high fives didn’t come along every day, and losing Gage had removed half my usual supply of them. “Yes, beneath the smell of BO and rampant pharmacological self-abuse, it’s definitely the pine-fresh whiff of halfsie.”

That was definitely a gross thought. I decided to try not envying Suzume’s ability to identify supernatural species by smell if those were some of the potential downsides.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. We’d actually located a very real lead—the first one I’d ever dealt with without Chivalry’s chaperonage. I concentrated, not wanting to screw this up. “Now, how are we going to get some information? Should we be sneaky, just pretend we’re really here for the tattoo? Or good cop/bad cop? Or—”

I broke off as Suze walked behind the counter, pounded loudly on the knotty pine door, and yelled, “Hey, Legolas! Shoot it up and get out here—we’ve got questions.”

“Or do that, I guess,” I muttered, feeling distinctly miffed. “Suze, I think that’s going beyond just the direct approach.”

She ignored me completely as the door opened and one very wary-looking junkie stuck his head out.

“Who the fuck are you?” the half-blood, whole-junkie asked.

Suze pointed at me. “Vampire.” Then at herself. “Kitsune.” And then at him. “Worm food.”

As the words managed to penetrate the owner’s drug haze, he started looking extremely freaked out and raised his hands in a supplicating gesture. “Hey, hey, if this is about paying a percentage, I’ve got zip.” He appealed directly to me. “Recession, man. Killing my business.” We all looked around, and there was a very pregnant pause as we took in the filth of our surroundings, which clearly predated the housing collapse. He continued weakly. “And a slick place moved in two blocks away. All, like, fancy and shit.”

In his world, fancy probably meant “hygienic.” I cut in before he could continue his litany of woe. “This isn’t about money.”

He blinked. I was starkly reminded of the expressions cows made when faced with something new and unexpected—it was exactly this level of blunt-force stupidity. “It isn’t?” he asked.

I picked up the binder and pointed to the drawing of Gage’s tattoo. “Start talking.”

Stupidity cleared away, leaving dawning comprehension and very real surprise. “Really? That?” He shrugged. “That’s, you know, Neighbor shit.” His lip curled derisively at the word, and he warmed to his topic, showing more energy than I’d seen yet from him. “You should be getting money out of them. Snobby pricks and star fuckers, all of them.”

The thought of someone who had just so casually shot up in front of us passing judgment on anyone else blew my mind a bit, and I was also confused about the level of hostility he seemed to have. “But, um . . . aren’t you . . .” I paused, feeling for the right words. “Kind of . . .” Suze shook her head, and the look in her eyes read epic fail. He kept looking at me blankly, and I gave up and finally just tapped the top of my own ear significantly.

“One of them?” he finally asked, then made an extremely rude noise when I nodded. “I’m one of their changelings, man,” he said bitterly. “I spent the whole first fourteen years of my life thinking I was human. You know, suburbia, soccer practice, oboe lessons. Then one day I’m snatched by those fuckers and told I’m actually an elf”—he gave a shrill laugh—“and belong in their community. And it’s not a choice, see, because they actually faked my goddamn death, and told me that the only way to keep my parents alive was to never contact them again.”

“Jesus.” I said, feeling a sudden rush of empathy. Yes, hard drugs weren’t the best response, but it wasn’t exactly like he could walk himself down to a therapist to work on that one. Maybe he was coping the best he could.

Though it still wouldn’t have killed him to run a Swiffer over the floor.

“No, actually, we were Jewish,” he corrected. “But, anyway, after all that shit it turns out that they just want me for the numbers, see? ’Cuz of their fucking ‘population crisis.’” He actually made air quotes with his fingers. “But I’m just the dirt on their shoes, ’cuz I don’t even have the juice to hide my own goddamn ears.” He pulled off his wool hat, revealing a receding hairline and a set of distinctly nonhuman ears. The ears had the same point as Lilah’s, with a soft dusting of dark brown fuzz along the backs that matched the few stubborn tufts of hair that still remained on his head, but there was a weird little sagging at the tips. They looked weak and almost unhealthy—which rather did match the rest of him. “I’m fine to knock up some changeling girl, but they don’t want me near any of their own precious kiddies.” He snorted and replaced the hat, patting and tugging it in place with the same nervous movements that I remembered from Lilah checking her braids. Though, admittedly, with Lilah there had been fewer noticeable needle track marks. “Not that I care, you know? They’re all crazy.”

“So, the glamour on that sample . . .” Suze prompted.

“No, that’s not me. I’ve tried to, you know, put glamour on stuff before. Doesn’t do anything. Man”—again that shrill laugh, and I had to work hard not to wince at the sound—“they were all so disappointed when they grabbed me. Told me I was practically human.” He snorted again, not noticing when snot actually came out his nose. I glanced down at it, then forced myself to look away. “They consider that an insult, of course.” There was a feverish brightness in his eyes now, and his words were getting faster, as if he couldn’t get them out quickly enough. Clearly his drugs were kicking in.

“But you do a lot of favors for the Neighbors?” Suze asked, and I recognized the slyness in her voice.

Another wet snort. This time some of the snot that came out was bloody. Apparently he was not restricting himself to administering his drugs intravenously. “Shit, no. Got paid up front to put that sketch out.”

“Who paid you?” I asked.

A ratlike look assessed me. “Hard to remember.” He glanced over at Suze and said, with lots of emphasis, “Might need a little help.”

Suze gave me a significant glance, which I was completely unable to decipher, and I shook my head helplessly. She rubbed two fingers together behind her back, nodding broadly. Again, I shrugged. Finally, exasperated, she snapped, “Bribe the man, Fort.”

“Oh,” I said, finally understanding. Embarrassment followed quickly. “Sorry. I mean . . .” I glanced from one to the other. “Never mind.” I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and offered the entire contents of my billfold.

My intended recipient looked at my offering and said, “Yeah . . . it’s going to take more than eight dollars, man.” At my expression he turned sullen, complaining, “Come one, everyone knows the vampires are loaded. Cough it up.”

“Maybe I’d rather beat it out of you,” I said, dropping my voice and stepping around the counter threateningly.

Unfortunately the guy looked completely unimpressed. “If you were going to do that, you would’ve already done it. Also, seriously, you really don’t look like enough of a dick.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that one. Suze gave me a one-shouldered shrug and said, “Take compliments where you find them, Fort.” Turning back to our junkie, she said, “Legolas—”

“Jacoby,” he interrupted.

“What?” she asked.

“Enough with the gay little elf name. It’s Jacoby. Jacoby Goldstein.”

Unable to stop myself, I broke in. “Actually, I’m pretty sure that Legolas wasn’t—” Suze gave me a not now, dumbshit look, and I stopped. “Okay, fine, never mind.” Then, “Not that there would be anything wrong with being—” Now even Jacoby looked irritated. “Yeah, okay, shutting up.”

After a quick check to make sure that this time I was staying quiet, Suze picked up again. “Jacoby, then. I bet you deal with a lot of impulse buys.” She glanced around and shuddered. “And a lack of comparison shopping?”

“Sure, sure. Drunk girls walk out of here with lots of dolphins and flowers.”

“I’m guessing you prefer cash transactions?”

“ATM is two doors down in the booze joint.”

Suze turned to me. “You heard the man.” She gave him a fast up-and-down look. “I’m thinking Ben Franklin?”

“If you bring along his twin brother, sure.”

As the person paying the bribe, I broke in, saying, “Goddamnit, I make minimum wage!”

Suzume ignored me. “Franklin with Ulysses S. Grant as his wingman.”

“Suze! My rent is due in two weeks!” And there was no way on this earth that I was going to call Gage’s grieving parents and try to get a partial payment out of them.

Jacoby looked flummoxed, then leaned in, dropped his voice, and asked Suze, “Are you sure he’s a vampire? He sure doesn’t sound loaded.”

“It is a recession,” she reminded him.

He gave a gusty sigh. “Fine, one fifty and I sing like frickin’ Pavarotti.”

Suze had the nerve to give me a thumbs-up.

One quick trip next door, where I was pleased to see that the owner of the alcohol store wasn’t letting a little thing like two drunks sleeping in his aisles get between him and basic cleanliness, and I returned with much more of my weekly paycheck than I could actually afford to spend. As I handed it over I shot Suze a hard look and muttered, “Way to chip in, bestie.”

“Just count your blessings I’m waiving my negotiating fee, Fort,” she replied. She watched as Jacoby carefully counted the cash, then stuck it into the top of his underpants—clearly to prevent us from trying to take it back once he’d talked. Which was actually rather smart; even I was suddenly very willing to let the money go. “Now talk.”

Looking significantly more chipper, he complied. “Beginning of January, one of the Neighbors came in. Told me he wanted me to do him a favor, so I said to screw himself.”

“Who was it?” I asked.

“I don’t remember, man. One of the older, really snotty fucks, always brownnosing it up, making like he was more important than he was. I remember him from the Neighbor gatherings, but he never wanted anything to do with the changelings. But now he wanted something from me, so he kept whining about how it was my responsibility to fucking serve our community and all that bullshit. I told him what he could do with that, but I was broke, so I said that I’d do whatever the hell he wanted for a little cash. So he took a stack of my business fliers and said that someone would come by with money and what I had to do.” He shrugged. “Nothing happened for a few days, so I forgot about it. Then this chick swings in, has that sketch”—he pointed helpfully—“all jazzed up so that every young guy wants it. She gives me a few containers of ink too; says that if any guy comes in with one of my promotional cards that has a similar mark on it, I need to give him that tattoo with this ink.”

“Do you know who the woman was?” Suze asked.

“Said her name was Soli. Girl was hot too—real sexy Latina.” A happy look filled his eyes as he reminisced. Other parts of him were revisiting memory lane as well, judging from the front of his pants. Both Suzume and I took a few subtle steps backward.

“Another of the Neighbors?” I resolutely decided that I was not looking below eye level for the rest of the visit.

Jacoby shook off his mental IMAX moment. “No, but she definitely knew what I was, so I don’t think she’s human. I don’t know what the fuck she was, but she paid enough that I didn’t give a shit. And pretty soon after that a guy came in with one of my cards that had been glamoured like crazy, and I inked him up. That was good work I did too, because Soli went really nuts on me, saying that the tat had to be perfect. If there was just one flaw in it, I wouldn’t get my bonus.”

“Bonus?”

“Yeah, each time I did one of the guys with the cards I got a bonus.”

“How many men did you tattoo with the ink?”

“Four of them.”

“Do you remember any names?” I asked, hopeful but not with much expectation.

Shockingly, he responded with a nod. “Wrote all of them down. Mailing list, you know? Gotta use new technology to grow the business.”

We both stared at him. It was as if a dog had just talked.

“I read,” Jacoby said defensively. “Anyway, figured it couldn’t hurt. Just in case Soli lost track of any of them or they didn’t show up at the speed-dating thing.”

“Speed dating?” I asked quickly. Suddenly a few things were starting to come together.

“Yeah. After I was done I had to give them another flier.” Disappearing momentarily into his office, we could hear Jacoby rooting around in a stack of paperwork. He emerged a moment later with a small flier, the photocopied kind that usually rest in stacks on side tables in alternative coffee shops. He handed it to me, and I read through it fast. It was for a specific Providence-only speed-dating site, but what immediately captured my attention was the bottom of the flier, where the sponsor of the program had taken the chance to pimp themselves a little—the Dreamcatching logo was as predictable as I could’ve expected. “I’ve got glamoured ones,” Jacoby continued, “but I just photocopied this one. You can have it.”

“Thanks.” I went as casual as possible. “How about that list of the guys you tattooed, while you’re at it?”

“Sure,” Jacoby said with equal casualness. “For another hundred bucks.”

“Fuck,” I gritted out. Another trip to the liquor store, where the cashier gave me an unnecessarily judgmental look while I cleaned out everything that was left of my most recent paycheck. I stomped back and shoved the money at Jacoby. “Here.”

He gave a beatific smile, clearly already picturing exactly what he’d be spending this on. He went over to the counter, flipped open one of the thick binders, and carefully copied out a short list. When he handed it to me I scanned it—there was Gage, along with the two names that Matt had given me last night, but one name I didn’t recognize: Franklin Litchfield.

While I was looking at the list, Suze took over. “How much for some of that special ink?” she asked. I winced. At this point she was either going to have to start chipping in for bribery costs or cover my utilities.

Jacoby didn’t even glance up from his focus of shoving his new wad of twenties down his pants to join the rest of his stash. “All out. Used it up on the last guy; haven’t gotten any more yet.” He sounded disappointed at the lost opportunity to sell out his employers further.

“How do you get more?”

“Soli drops it off. Not much—just enough to do the job. When I see her, I know some guy will be coming by in a week or so.”

“Seen her lately?”

“Last month, right before I inked up this big blond guy.” I felt a pang, recognizing the description of Gage. Jacoby shrugged. “Hey, that’s it. Pleasure doing business with you.”

I broke in. “Not so fast. What the hell is going on with this? This sounds pretty complicated—glamours, secretive women, advertising circulars. What are the Neighbors trying to do?”

Again that blank, bovine stare of complete incomprehension. “Dude, they’re paying me. I don’t give a crap what they’re trying to do. Probably another fucking Neighbor pipe dream. That’s all any of what they do is.”

I looked at Suze, who shrugged one shoulder. With nothing left to ask, we turned to go.

We’d opened the door, and either the blast of fresh air or the unfamiliarity of natural light jogged something loose in Jacoby’s brain, because he called to us, “Oh, hey, one last thing. On the house. That glamour they’ve been coating on stuff, that’s nothing any of the Neighbors could’ve done. That was put on by one of Themselves. I don’t know what the hell you’re interested in this for, but smart people don’t fuck with Themselves.”

Jacoby’s expression was as close to sobriety as he possibly got, and I asked with trepidation, “Who are Themselves?”

He smirked. “Never knew the vampires were so dumb. Themselves are the daddies, the motherfucking progenitors, the Ad-hene, the real deals.”

“Muh?” Lost, I looked to Suzume.

She made a small tsk sound at my display of ignorance. “He means the elves, Fort. The full-bloods.”

We didn’t say anything to each other as we walked to my car, both enjoying the escape from the stale air and questionable aromas of the Iron Needle. A few deep breaths each, though, as we leaned against the Fiesta. I needed to go across the street and somehow deal with Matt, but I paused to arrange my thoughts, trying to determine what and how much to tell him.

I looked over at Suzume. “Four victims now, not just three, and that’s assuming that Jacoby sold us a full list. It’s been going on for months now, it’s super-complicated, and there are elves and some mystery woman at the center of it.”

“What are you going to tell your PI guy?”

I winced a little, considered, then answered slowly. “I’ll give him the list. He can run down the basics on the last guy, and while he’s doing that you and I are going to get some better answers.”

“Where from?”

“Dreamcatching.” I handed her the flier and watched as she quickly assembled the pieces as well. “Any chance you’ll wait in the car?”

She shrugged. “I can do that. One last thing about the tattoo parlor, though.”

“Oh?”

“Whatever killed Gage has been there. More than once, judging by the smells.”

I considered everything we’d just learned, then asked, “Maybe our mystery woman?”

A wide smile crept across Suzume’s face as she looked up at me. “That’s what I like about you, Fort,” she said, real admiration in her voice. “You never underestimate the ability of women to commit homicide.”

“Have you met my family? Kipling had it right about the female of the species.”

Her laugh followed me as I hurried across the street and into the Starbucks.

Walking into the coffee shop, I inhaled the familiar, invigorating aromas. I’d spent months pouring coffee, but back at Busy Beans the primary aromas had been burned coffee, stale pastry, and despair. Given the money I’d just dropped on bribery, I should’ve resisted, but I decided that the lingering eight dollars in my wallet had just found their forever home.

I was careful not to look over at Matt as I got in line. He was always very specific about correct stakeout behavior, so I pretended to be unaware of the rustling as he put away his newspaper and got in line behind me.

“Get anything?” he asked quietly behind me, not bothering with a greeting.

Even with the tension between us, I couldn’t help but feel a bit hurt. “Hey, Matt,” I responded pointedly. He didn’t respond, and it scraped at my temper, drawing something darker and colder to the surface, enough that the pimply teenager behind the counter actually took a sudden step back when I stepped up. Chagrin immediately filled me, and I dropped my eyes and muttered my order. I didn’t want to know what I’d looked like in that moment, but something told me that it wasn’t what I was used to, at least on my own face. Maybe I would’ve recognized it on my sister’s.

I dumped all of my change into the employee tip jar as a silent amends as I walked over to the pickup counter and heard Matt step forward to place his own order. Working out so regularly with Chivalry had given me both a convenient outlet and a mask for some of the changes that transition was having on me, but this was the longest I’d been away from my brother since the transition began. Perhaps, I realized uneasily, training me hadn’t been the only reason why Chivalry had kept me so close this summer.

I closed my eyes and mentally recited as many character names as I could remember from Battlestar Galactica, reaching for calm. I couldn’t resist the impulse to run my tongue quickly along the edge of my upper teeth, testing my canines for unusual sharpness. When I found nothing, that was when I finally started relaxing.

Then Matt was next to me. We were out of sight of the front window, and now he was willing to look right at me, just when I wished that he wouldn’t.

“Hell of an impression you made on that kid.” His voice was too assessing.

Now I was the one who didn’t want to talk. I pulled the list of victims out of my pocket and pressed it into his hand, not looking at him. Instead I focused on the barista prepping my order, which was apparently having a very negative effect, as steaming foam suddenly went everywhere.

“These are the guys who got the tattoo.” I gave in and finally looked over at Matt, whose expression was completely blank as he looked at me.

He raised his eyebrows. “He had this info just lying around?”

I gritted my teeth, hearing the suspicion in his voice and unable to do what I knew I should’ve been doing, which was reassuring him of how innocent and helpless I was, not terrorizing Starbucks employees so badly that the manager was having to take over my order. “Good filing system. He’s all about growing his business.”

“Friendly.” Matt’s brown eyes were boring into me, and the ceiling lights suddenly seemed far too bright. “Handed it right over?”

“Bribed him,” I said shortly. I knew that I needed to distract Matt, so I reached over and tapped the new name. “Can you look into that last guy? Franklin Litchfield?”

“Yeah.” His coffee arrived before mine, and he took a long sip. “So, who’s your girl?”

“Just a friend who tagged along,” I said. As soon as Suze had insisted on coming I’d known that I’d be answering this question, so I wasn’t surprised. I was only impressed that Matt had held it in so long. “Her name’s Suze.”

“I remember her from the other night. Pretty girl.”

“Oh yeah.” There was a pause while the cringing Starbucks guy brought over my order—a small black coffee for me and a double chocolate-chip Frappuccino blended crème for Suze, whose enthusiasm for sugar rivaled a hummingbird’s. Matt and I both looked down at the very different drinks in front of me, and it suddenly occurred to me that this could be interpreted the wrong way. “We’re not dating. Just friends. But she is pretty—I mean, not that that makes a difference—” I was starting to feel much more like my usual self when Matt broke in to my attempt to eat my own feet.

“Amy Grann mentioned a pretty lady.”

“What?” The bottom dropped out of my stomach. The police had dismissed everything she’d said as the fantasies of a severely traumatized child, but Matt had gotten close to her long enough to hear her story, and he’d believed enough parts of it to be very dangerous.

“When she talked about who saved her. It was a dark-haired guy and a pretty lady. A pretty Asian lady.”

I tried to distract him, oddly enough, with the truth. “Yeah, but didn’t you also say that she thought that the lady turned into a fox?” The thought of what would happen if Matt started trying to investigate Suzume made my stomach cramp. I trusted Suze to leave Matt alone right now, but the kitsune were just as careful as the vampires in policing their secrets. If Atsuko, the White Fox, discovered that a private detective had the wrong kind of interest in any member of her family, she’d send someone to take out a possible threat. In all likelihood, Suze would be the one ordered to kill Matt. I swallowed hard and decided to try to brazen it out. “I think Suze would tell me if she turned into a fox and saved little girls. Anyway”—I pointed at the paper again—“that’s a real lead, so let me know where it goes.”

Matt was completely inscrutable as he sipped his coffee, studying me like a bug. “Sure thing.” I could feel his eyes burning into my back as I hurried out the door and across the street again. It was harder than it should’ve been to walk away from him. Instincts were pushing at me not to leave an enemy at my back.

But Matt wasn’t my enemy, I reminded myself. Couldn’t be my enemy. I just had to protect him from the truth. Which I was currently doing a fantastic job of fucking up at.

My face must’ve given Suzume a good idea of how the meeting had gone, because she took her drink and granted me her rarest of gifts: silence.

Halfway to Dreamcatching, I glanced into my rearview mirror and noticed a very familiar Buick two cars behind us. A shiver ran through me as I realized that Matt was tailing us. I refocused on the road ahead of me, careful not to alert Suze that anything was wrong, but unable to control the nervousness that made my hands shake until I squeezed the steering wheel harder.

I flicked a quick look in the mirror again. Matt had pulled back and was now three cars behind me, the safer tailing distance that I knew he preferred. I didn’t say anything, or even dare trying to lose him and bring him to Suze’s attention. I didn’t know how she’d react or if she’d try to discourage him herself. And now that he was connecting Suzume to the Grann incident . . . I couldn’t risk him investigating the Hollis kitsune. But with the revelations at Iron Needle, I couldn’t hold off on investigating the elf connection without Suze realizing that something was wrong. I was trapped, and I had no idea how I was going to keep Matt from joining the rising body count.

I kept my mouth shut and drove straight to Dreamcatching, praying that I wasn’t leading Matt even further into danger.