"Stagger Lee. But she spoke to me: she said my name, or tried to."
"She hadn't ever seen you before. Not close."
"Well-" Danny told McCain about the previous night, the encounter in the hall. "I couldn't understand it, until Stagger Lee told me about the fairy dust."
"You thought that was dustV" McCain looked terribly intense. "Let's go down to the infirmary."
McCain shut the infirmary door behind him, and leaned against the frame, head tilted as if he were listening for a sound in the hall. "Piece of friendly advice. Seeing Fay that night-forget it happened." Danny started to interrupt, but McCain stopped him with a raised finger. "I know it was just an accident, and all she did was smile. Leave it at that." He didn't sound angry; he sounded concerned.
"Okay."
"Okay." McCain relaxed.
"Can you tell me what happened to her voice?"
"She used to be a singer," McCain said, almost offhandedly. "Pretty good one, as I hear. Then one night after a show, she said something to piss off an Ellyll. Big boss in the Glasa gang."
"What did she say?"
"I wasn't there, but I imagine it was something like No. Elves get upset easy anyway. So he cursed her. They do that. Crumpled her speech up, like you heard."
"And… her singing voice? The one I heard last night?"
McCain tapped one hand on another. "I stay clear of the witch ways, mostly. But I know it doesn't work right, here. Elves forget that, a lot. And some say it's to do with innocence-she hadn't done anything to bear cursing-but I don't know, it's not my idea of justice.
"Understand, she's like that with all words: she can't speak, or understand right, nor write nor read. When you're around her awhile, the understanding starts to come. And there's the Voice." He stood away from the door.
Danny said, "The elf who did it…"
"He didn't know how to undo it. Away from home they don't know how their own magic works. He's dead now."
"Aren't elves, you know, immortal?"
"They don't die of old age. But nobody ever dies of that in the Shade." He looked at the door to the surgery room. "If they can crawl back to Elfland, all the holes close up. This side, they die just like anybody."
"Okay," Danny said, because he didn't want to hear any more of this, "thanks for telling me, Lincoln."
"Wait. Fay trusts you: she doesn't talk to people she doesn't trust. You know what a glamour is?"
"Not something to do with movie stars?"
"No. It's a magic, that changes people's senses. The Voice is a glamour." McCain paused a long beat, as if considering something long and hard, then said, "It can show itself in other ways. You follow?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
"Don't mention it." McCain looked up, with just a little smile. "Really." He opened the door. "This place got everything you need?"
"Sure."
He nodded, paused again. "Oh, yeah. Can you shoot?"
"A rifle. Twenty-two."
McCain shook his head. "There's a range down in the garage, if you want to learn. 'Sides, didn't you always want to shoot a Tommy gun?"
"Well…"
"Thought so. Jesse'll teach you."
"Should I?"
"Can't hurt. Not tonight, though. See you, Doc."
It was a few minutes before midnight. "September gave up early," Stagger Lee said, and breathed out fog.
Stagger had driven Danny around town for twenty minutes or so, in one of the wobbly lightweight cars. They parked in an allev Stagger Lee carried a black nylon shoulder bag. Danny had his red paramedic's bag; the leather doctor's kit was fine tor carrying a few-essentials, but too small for a serious trauma kit. And besides, he knew his own bag. He and Stagger wore dark topcoats and hats. So did the two people on the street corner ahead. Danny saw the glow of a cigarette, no faces.
"Evening, brethren," Stagger Lee said, cheerfully though not very loud. "Have you seen the true light?"
"Shinin' like a beacon," a woman's voice said.
They were in a warehouse district. Windows were barred at ground level, or bricked up. Webs of razor ribbon caught the moonlight, and the hard shine of bare electric bulbs.
The four of them walked a block, and met two more people: McCain and Patrise. Patrise carried a silver-headed cane. There were nods, a hi or two. They kept walking. Then Patrise gestured with a gloved hand, and they stopped.
Patrise tapped the cane on the sidewalk. A fluid shape slid out of the darkness: a small figure in a wide-brimmed hat and a long cloak. The hat tilted up; Danny saw a flash of lace, and a face. It was Kitsune, the Tokyo Fox.
"Around the corner, two doors along," she said. "This is as close as I get."
"Naturally," Patrise said. He took a step, and the Fox's cloak swept; Danny was aware that something had changed hands. Then the Fox hurried on into the night, almost floating, with no sound at all.
The group moved on, around the corner, to the indicated door. It was a hinged steel door, with a massive padlock. There was no light or sign of life from the building. The woman who had joined Danny and Stagger Lee kept on walking. Patrise gestured at the padlock, and Stagger Lee reached into his bag.
Stagger wrapped a length of soft metal ribbon around the door hasp. He looked at Patrise, holding his hand arched. Patrise nodded. Stagger Lee moved his hand, and a match flared; the thermite caught, there was a ring of white fire and a spray of sparks, and the hasp and padlock dropped into Stagger Lee's gloved palm with a plop.
McCain grabbed the edge of the door and flung it wide open. Light spilled out. Patrise walked through, just as if it were La Mi-rada. The others followed.
The warehouse space was more than two stories high, lit by bulbs in green tin fixtures; cardboard and junk sheetmetal had been duct-taped over all the windows. Toward the rear was a dimmer space, a metal framework, and stacks of crates. Up front was an assembly line, snaking back and forth around the floor.
At one end, a young man took empty bottles out of crates. Another pushed them along rollers; they stopped below a glass tank of red liquid, with a long rubber hose leading from it. Another person dribbled a half inch of the red stuff into a bottle, then sent it along to another station, where the bottles were topped off with clear fluid from a tube attached to an iron tap. At the next stop, the bottle was capped, shaken to mix the contents, and placed in a wooden case. Another worker leaned on a hand truck, staring into space, presumably waiting for the case to be filled.
None of the workers seemed to have noticed the intrusion. They just kept on shoving, filling, stacking. Their clothes were battered, ragged, filthy; they wore ruined tennis shoes or none at all. Danny could see that the capper's hands were scarred and bleeding. Some of them looked like part-elves, some human, but their skin was so dirty, their eyes so red and vacant, that it was hard to be sure who was how much of what.
He looked again at the tank of red fluid. He knew well enough what it was. The workers were Vamps; the red stuff was elf blood, cut with water to make it go farther. This was where the addicts got their supply.
A woman in a red leather jacket appeared on top of a stack of crates. She had a clipboard in one hand and a long-barreled revolver in the other. Her hair shone blue-white; her skin was the color of bone, her eyes silver. She wore black jeans with a hip holster, and army boots.
"What the fuck is this supposed to be?" she shouted, in a chiming voice that might otherwise have been beautiful. "If you're coppers, you can just-"
"Not at all, madam," Mr. Patrise said, tipping his hat and bowing from the waist. "Not a copper button among us. We're merely a community interest group. North Side Citizens 1 Sanitary Committee, at your service."
He gestured with his cane, and Stagger Lee went to the kid who was filling the bottles. Stagger took the hose from the boy's hand, not roughly; he just stood there, looking slowK around.