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We ate the cake, we appropriately oo-ed and ah-ed over Pipistrelle's party decorations. I couldn't get him off the idea of a rain theme, but it is what it is. He did, however, after careful conversation, nix the ark. I thought Mindy had been exaggerating and kind of understood a bit more about the urgency of the baby shower intervention.
Unfortunately, battling evil doesn't pay unless you can invoice for it, so Killian and I needed to closeout our latest case so we could afford said party. And perhaps invest in a better security system for my sister. We didn't talk about the hex. We both knew exactly how serious it was. It was meant to send a message to me and Killian. The shadow elves were everywhere and there was nothing we could do about it.
We left Pasadena and headed west to meet with Trovac. I pulled the van into the parking lot of Griffith Park. Some weary ponies were giving a bunch of screaming children a ride around a corral. In the adjacent picnic area, a bouncy castle provided entertainment for the kids who thought a horse was not exciting enough.
The bag of Other Side gems was in my trunk in a burlap bag that read, "Horse Feed." It's hard to pass around a bag that size without raising some eyebrows, but doing it where there were actual horses seemed to be the safest choice.
Of course, Trovac was not one for subtleties. He came rolling in a Rolls Royce. His elfin chauffer popped out of the front seat and ran to open the door for him. He hauled his massive body out and sauntered over, chewing on his cigar, as the chauffer scurried to my trunk, picked up the sack of gems like it was as light as a bag of cotton balls, and popped it into the boot of his car.
"We really need to work on lowering your profile," I said to Trovac.
He gave me a grin, smoothing the lapels of his sharkskin suit. "When you are as successful as I am, Maggie, you do not hide your face. You do your business in the open and let those around you know there is nothing they can do about it."
I paused Trovac right there. "Okay, so listen. That works great for you and all, but that kind of puts the heat on your employees. Employees who benefit from some anonymity like, say, Killian and me."
He just smiled again. "How unfortunate."
"Do you have our payment?" Killian asked, keeping this conversation on track. Guess the elf was looking forward to not being here.
Trovac reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope of cash. He handed it over to Killian.
"Couldn't have given it to me?" I asked.
"Wouldn't want you to spend it all on stakes and silver bullets," Trovac replied. "But don't be too disappointed. I have something for you." He snapped his fingers and his chauffer came scrambling over with a folder. "Here's your next job."
With our payday, it would have been nice to have a little time off for some R&R. Or hiding and tracking down shadow elves before they kill you. But money is money and you gotta make the hay when the sun is shining or before Pipistrelle's baby shower or however that saying goes.
I opened the folder and sighed. "A troll?" I groaned. I motioned Killian's direction. "We're a little handicapped with the whole 'Killian is broken' thing."
"Thank you for reiterating my current foibles," Killian replied.
"Anytime," I replied, giving him a salute. "No chance you have a willowy dryad or fragile flower fairy or something. You know, something that doesn't involve a mountain of muscle to take down?"
He shrugged, moving the cigar around the front of his mouth as he chewed on it like a teething ring. "I have several hunters tracking this troll down. Whoever gets him first gets the payday." He flipped a piece of paper over so I could see how much this payday amounted to.
Well, I guess that's capitalism for you. There were an awful lot of zeroes. Guess we needed to find this fucker faster than any of the other fucking finders.
"So, what did this guy do?" I asked, as I casually flipped through a couple more pages.
"He was late delivering an item I hired him to find."
It was like a bucketful of ice water. That was one thing that gave me the icks working for Trovac. We weren't hauling people in who had run afoul of the Other Side laws. We were pulling in whoever had crossed him. We were thugs.
But being a thug paid the bills.
And the price tag on this guy's head meant we were thugs who could pay a lot of bills.
I hoped the people we were handling for Trovac weren't nice people. I mean, nice people wouldn't mix with the company Trovac keeps, right? Killian and I excluded, of course. We weren't bad. I mean, maybe we were. What's morality anyway? Something for the middle class, and we were scraping upper-lower working class at best.
"Enjoy the game," said Trovac, giving us a wink and hauling himself back over to his car. The laughter of the children suddenly seemed like a taunting, ominous soundtrack to his words.
"I really don't like that guy..." I said to Killian.
He shook his head. "Me, neither."
I jerked my head over to the public restroom. It was just a little wood and concrete structure probably built by the WPA. You gotta be pretty desperate, but I didn't know how many of Los Angeles’ freeways we were going to have to deal with today.
"I shall make sure no one steals the car," Killian offered.
"Do that," I replied.
I strode across the parking lot and crossed the road. There was a green grassy field littered with eucalyptus trees. I took in a heady breath. And it's good I did, because suddenly all the breath was knocked out of me.
Out of nowhere, I was side-tackled by what felt like a freight train. I opened my eyes as a fist descended toward my face. I managed to throw my arm up in an inside deflection, hitting his wrist and throwing the blow off course so it hit the ground and not my nose. But he was already coming in with the next go-round.
A shadow elf had found us.
So, it's an odd experience being on the receiving end of a tracker. If I were prone to introspection, he was me and I was all those whom I had taken down before. But for now, I was more focused on not dying. I'm not sure if the Queen's bounty was dead-or-alive or just dead-dead.
He seemed to be alone, however, which was odd. Usually these shadow elves travel in packs and hunt like wolves. It made me wonder if the Queen's hold was failing. In fact, the fact I wasn't already six-feet underground, singing ballads with the prairie dogs made me think the Queen's power was not what it used to be.
I flipped him over my head and saw Killian suddenly realize what was going on. To be fair, there were some bushes that hid us from view. Probably a part of the shadow elf's plan. Killian danced by the side of the road, cut off from us by a stream of cars zipping through over the speed limit.
The elf's eyes glazed over as my fist connected. Hurt like a mother as I connected with his chiseled cheekbones.
"Were you the one who left the spell in my sister's house? How did you find us?" I asked as I grabbed him by the lapels of his stupid elf tunic.
"The stench of your scent is like garbage wafting across an open plain," the assassin hissed.
I punched him in the face again. "Stop making me hit you."
He spat out blood and glared as Killian finally managed to dodge the traffic like Frogger and give me a hand.
"How dare you reject the love of our Queen, she whose life and energy fuels us all."
"I have no fight with you, my brother," said Killian, holding out the palm of his hand to calm the elf.
Not entirely sure what that was supposed to do. Hit him with some Reiki? Heal a slipped disk and hope it made him a little less murdery?
"Punch the guy, Killian!" I shouted as the shadow elf struggled to get away.
Killian was more in a talky mood, however. "I merely want nothing more to do with our queen, whose spirit has been tainted by darkness."
It was then that I realized maybe all was not as it seems. So, listen, part of my ability to track creatures is that if I focus, I can sort of see their aura. And I allowed my vision to go a little out of focus and misty, and man... what I saw on that elf's aura made my skin crawl like watching the tragically unaware get up to sing on America's Got Talent. It was like a viscous tar was oozing around him.
Back when the Queen of the Elves had been held in thrall, her energy had been siphoned off to the Dark Dimension. And though we had fixed the problem, you just can't go hanging out in a dive like that without reeking of the place like a drunk on a three-day bender. It comes out of your pores.
The issue with this is that the Queen of the Elves' energy feeds all the elves. If she dies without an heir, everybody dies. The bond was that deep. And it appears the energy she was now feeding them was as corrupt as she was. And that was EXACTLY what the world needed at this point - a tainted army of hand-soldiers trained in assassination.
"You do not have the hei-tiki and you shall die without its powers..." the elf hissed.
I looked at Killian questioningly, but relaxed ever so slightly.
So, when a creature is under thrall, usually their sane-self is lurking somewhere beneath the madness. And I realized this guy had managed to bust his way through for just a moment to give us some important information. What was this hei-tiki? And what powers did we need?
Usually, if you touch my family, I kill you. And this guy had left a spell for my sister. But it hadn't been that bad. He could have done much worse. And he managed to pass us a clue on how to survive all this.
There was also the uncomfortable truth that a lot of shadow elves had died in recent times. You don't go killing off endangered species, especially ones who normally like to eat the face off your enemy. And there was a strategic reason for their near extinction. They had been slaughtered as the vampires went after the jade lion and Quasimodo's bell, all to weaken the queen, because weakening the queen means you weaken the elves, and if you weaken the elves, you destroy the elfin kingdom. And as crazy as that woman was, if the Elfin Forest fell, the Other Side would fall and it would be nothing more than the Dark Dimension and vampire parties until the end of days.
So, I decided just to drop him through to the Other Side rather than end him. I opened a portal, let it swallow him up, and zipped it before I could think twice.
I rocked back on my heels and tried not to hork up my lunch. Ripping open portals ain't a party, but it beats pin-the-pointy-eared-head-on-a-pike.
"Where did he go?" Killian asked, bewildered.
I looked at him, daring him to ask me that question again. Like the elf hadn't seen this magic trick before. I had no time for him to have a blond moment.
"I mean, aside from you opening a portal and sending him to the Other Side. Do you know where on the Other Side? Or how fast he can come back to Earth?"
Frankly, I didn't give a shit. I rolled over onto the grass and pretended like the sun could recharge me. I managed to summon enough energy to shrug, "Not sure, but it is going to take a whole lot longer for him to get back than it took to go there."
Killian calmed himself and then heaved a sigh. "Thank you."
I think his thanks covered both my handling the situation, and my handling of the situation with uncharacteristic restraint. What can I say. I was turning over a new leaf.
I held up my hand to block out the sun as I squinted up at Killian. "Did you catch that?"
"What? The madness?"
"No. What he said. That there's a hei-tiki with some power that could protect you." I closed my eyes and let the post-portal hangover do what it was going to do to my head. "Nice of him to let that slip."
"Elves do not slip," Killian replied. I could feel the grass moving beside me as he lay down. He murmured respectfully. "He is a brave elf."
"Think it is a trap?"
"Everything is a trap," said Killian.
The sun was beating so warm on my face and it felt so good to not do anything for just a damn minute. "Is lying on a lawn, listening to the wind in the trees instead of getting into our car and trying to find the hei-tiki immediately a trap?"
"Yes. A nap trap," Killian murmured.
"Holp. I'm caught," I confessed, not even mad about it.