He had this sudden urge to smash Donal in the face—an alien feeling since Hunter had never been prone to violence, not even in daydreams, though lord knows, some of his customers could stand to have some sense shaken into them. Or to be sharply rapped on the top of their head with the flat side of a CD jewel case. Be that as it may, his free hand clenched into a tight fist, and it was all he could do not to take a swing at him.
“Christ, you’ve got your nerve coming back here,” he said.
Donal lifted his head, water streaming from his face, hair turned into an ice helmet the same as Hunter’s.
“Yeah, well, hello to you, too, boyo,” he said. “Weather making you a little testy?”
Hunter could only shake his head. “After what you did to Miki…”
“Oh, Jaysus. What’s she told you? We had a little tiff, is all. That’s what family’s for, isn’t it? Gives you someone to argue with, built in, as it were.”
“And trashing her apartment was just sibling hijinks?”
Donal’s eyes narrowed. “What are you on about?”
“And I suppose pissing over everything she owned and kicking apart her accordion, that was just in good fun, too.”
“Maybe you’d better start explaining yourself,” Donal told him.
There was an unfamiliar hardness in his voice, a dark light in his eyes that reminded Hunter of Miki when she’d first seen what had been done to her apartment.
“Why don’t I just show you,” Hunter said.
Doubt had begun to grow in Hunter, but it wasn’t until he saw Donal’s genuine shock and anger at the awful state of the apartment that he was sure Donal hadn’t had anything to do with it. It was that, or he was a damn fine actor, Academy Award material, no question. At this point, Hunter simply didn’t know anymore.
“I’ll kill those fuckers,” Donal said in a dark cold voice.
He started to turn away, but Hunter caught his arm.
“Don’t go off half-cocked,” he began.
Donal pulled out of his grip. “This doesn’t concern you anymore,” he said.
“But those Gentry—”
“Ah, so Miki’s been talking, has she? Strolling with you down memory lane to visit all those places she thought she’d hidden away for good in that pretty little head of hers.”
Hunter sighed. “Look, they’re too powerful for us—”
“You forget something,” Donal said, cutting him off.
“What’s that?”
“Maybe the Gentry are more powerful than us, but they’re not fucking immortal—not so long as they’re wearing skin and bones. Big or small. Human or faerie. Everything can die.”
Donal held Hunter’s gaze for a long moment before he stalked away, a small, bedraggled and sodden figure crossing the foyer and pushing out through the front door. Hunter followed him to the stoop. Small though he was, Donal walked with a straight back and a firm step, as though his anger was large and strong enough to negate the slippery ice underfoot. But it was only that one of the city sidewalk cleaners had been by while they were inside, scattering a mix of sand and salt onto the ice. With the way the sleet continued to fall, the sure footing would last another ten minutes or so at best.
Hunter watched Donal until he reached the far end of the block. He’d been so taken aback by the man’s parting comment that he simply stood there in the rain, blinking like a fool. He half-considered going after Donal, calling him back, but in the end he simply let him go.
Like Miki, Donal could be too stubborn for reason. Let Donal handle things the way he wanted, Hunter decided. He would stick to his own plan. Try to clean the place up. Talk to one of these Creek sisters. One thing at a time. Though that, he thought, as he stepped into the apartment and the full reek of the place hit him again, might be easier said than done. Wouldn’t you know it. Even faerie piss had to be bigger than life and more potent than that of mere mortals.
The windows he’d left open earlier in the day had helped some, but the stench was still overpowering. Hunter pulled a small plastic bag out of his pocket. Inside was a handkerchief, dabbed with sweet-smelling oil, some sort of peach/apple mixture. He tied it around his face and it helped a bit more, though with his luck, some neighbor would think he was a burglar wearing this thing and call the police and the next thing he’d know, he’d be down at the Crowsea Precinct, trying to explain what he was doing in this fouled apartment. Hell, they’d probably think he was responsible. Still, what could he do? He had to deal with the stench and this was the best he could come up with, though even with the perfumed handkerchief the reek of the urine and feces was enough to make him gag. Maybe he should have brought along a clothespin instead.
He decided to start in the kitchen and took his bag of cleaning supplies back there with him. Rescuing a large metal pail from one corner, he banged out its dents as best as he could with a heavy ladle, then filled it with hot water. He stirred in an industrial-level cleanser that was heavy on the ammonia, pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and got to work with a sponge. There was a secret ingredient to any cleanup, his mother used to say, and that was good, old-fashioned elbow grease. Well, she’d be proud of him tonight.
Funny, he thought as he scrubbed the linoleum, how things had turned out. The last people he’d have thought to be at odds with each other were Miki and Donal. Granted, Donal had given a good show of knowing nothing about the apartment being trashed, but Hunter wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. If you could have faerie lords like the Gentry wandering about with their skinhead attitude and bladders the size of hot air balloons, then maybe anything was possible.
He had to laugh at himself. Twelve hours ago he would have had a hard time believing in ghosts, or even precognitive hunches, but now here he was considering a whole shadowy otherworld peopled with creatures from folklore and legend, mean-tempered Gentry, doomed Summer Kings and all. Still, with all those stories… was it really such a huge leap of faith to accept that maybe they’d grown up around some kernel of truth? Mythic barnacles attaching themselves to the bones of somewhat plausible events until they took on their current legendary status.
Well, yes, he thought. It was. But here he was, allowing the possibility all the same. Or at least beginning to accept that these Gentry were more than ordinary. Still, you’d think if you were a magical being you’d do more with your life than these losers apparently did. Drink Guinness, listen to music, rough up somebody every now and again, trash an apartment, piss on your handiwork. Mind you, for some people, that might be considered living large. Unfortunately, the world did take all kinds.
He began to make good progress, carrying on a conversation with himself in his head, for lack of anything else to listen to. Drudge work like this always went better with good music—some Motown would definitely go down well right about now—but Miki’s system was a bust, literally, and he hadn’t thought to bring a boombox, or even his Walkman, along with him. He supposed he could try singing himself, but even he hated the sound of his own voice, raised in song. He was okay singing along with a recording, if you cranked the sound way up, and he could certainly be enthusiastic, but talented he wasn’t.
Whenever one ami got sore, he used the other. Look at me, he thought. The amazing ambidextrous cleaning man. He was even getting used to the awful reek—or maybe his efforts were actually beginning to make a dent in the stench.