Thirty-Seven

 

We arrived at the café Alasdair’s contact had chosen thirty minutes before the agreed-upon time. It was a quiet and modern café with small square tables that were pressed too close together for my tastes. The light had a slight yellowness to it that gave the entire place an odd feel. The waiter serving us almost had a French bearing to him with his sharp tone and haughty manner of looking at us. I restrained my wolf and was reminded of what Alasdair said, that my wolf wasn’t separate to me. Surely, he was wrong; I was made. The very purpose of the making ritual is to add in something supernal, although some argue it’s just bringing out the supernal that was already hidden within you.

We didn’t really talk as we sat quietly waiting for the contact to show up. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t really have contacts as an enforcer. In the movies, they were usually some nervous little guy who was always looking over his shoulder and whining that the person didn’t pay them well enough for the information and risks.

Alasdair’s contact was a smartly dressed young woman who had agreed to meet us in a nice cafe. She wasn’t at all what I had pictured. We’d just ordered our second coffee, which coffee tasted burnt and cost more than Dublin prices, but I knocked it back and said nothing while she and Alasdair discussed the information we needed.

“Yes, the things you seek both come from here, but the original address is no good. They have moved on,” she said with a light accent.

She refused to keep her attention on Alasdair, her eyes kept flicking to something on the street outside. I subtly looked around out there but had to resort to using the reflection from the metal cutlery holder to get a better look. It took me a couple of minutes, but I spotted him, the older man in a long dark coat who had been reading the same page of the newspaper for the last five minutes.

“And you have no idea where they moved to?” Alasdair asked.

“None.”

“Give us the old address. We’ll have a look around.”

She tensed, and her eyes flicked back out to the guy outside. I resisted the urge to go and speak to him. She was Alasdair’s contact; I wasn’t going to fuck that up for him. She wrote down the address and excused herself, leaving money to cover her coffee.

“Do you think the man is working with her or keeping her in line?” Alasdair said as he sipped his coffee.

“She seemed very uptight and nervous for him to be working with her,” I said.

“Agreed. Let’s go and look at this old address, maybe something was left behind. We’ll have to go and visit our new-age friends afterwards to get more up-to-date news,” he said as he paid for the coffee.

Great, another visit to a hedgewitch. I resigned myself to the knowledge that I was going to have to get used to playing nice with them, given their position within the community. Still, they were better than fae.

The address the contact had given us was in the old part of the city. The area reminded me a little of Prague. The architecture was similar with thick walls carved to be made to look like great slabs of stone. Small spindly trees popped up from the path here and there, and well-worn wooden benches sat along the edges. I couldn’t relax and enjoy the warm sunshine, still such a nice respite from the rain of Ireland. There was the distinct feeling of someone watching us, perhaps more accurately stalking us. Given the part-breds had jumped us in the car park the night before, word had clearly spread of who we were and what we were doing.

“Relax, Niko, the more tense you are the more obvious it is that you know they’re there. Let them come to us,” Alasdair whispered in my ear.

I took a deep breath and relaxed my muscles while keeping my magic tamped down. The shadow had begun to slip around its bindings. The last thing I needed was for that to come out in broad daylight surrounded by non-magical people. The council likely already wanted me locked up somewhere. I wasn’t going to give them an excuse.

The address was on one of the quieter streets where the windows were covered with thick curtains and no one sat on the benches talking about idle gossip. The door to the building was unlocked; I wasn’t sure if that was normal or not. Alasdair walked to the apartment in question, one of only two doors on the ground floor. Small smudges of soot marred the off-white tiles in front of the door, and the smell of lilacs and wet dog came from inside.

I turned to watch the lobby area while Alasdair pulled a set of lockpicks to get us inside. He didn’t need to bother. The door was unlocked. We walked in to find a spacious double-height apartment which had been converted into an alchemist’s lab. Herbs and plants hung from the walls, vials filled every shelf and spare space, and three heavy wooden tables were crammed into what had once been the living area. Blood splattered the tables and old dried blood marked the wooden floors below them. Shattered glass covered the floor in half of the kitchen, crushed plants, powders and oozes dripped down from the shelves and spilled out of the cupboards.

A quick glance in the fridge showed fresh food and a bubbling neon blue liquid in a white ceramic bowl. I shut the door before it could explode or some such. They hadn’t left long ago.

I found Alasdair in a small bedroom. He was crouched in front of a stack of cages. They were large enough to house a German shepherd… or a witchling. The walls behind the bars were clawed and marked with blood and ash, the stench almost unbearable. It had been contained by something within the doorway. It hit me the moment I stepped through into the room. It smelled of death and rot. Alasdair pulled a ribbon from the bottom of the filthiest cage. It had once been sky blue with emerald-tipped ends.

“Didn’t one of the faelings wear a ribbon like this, to show her house?”

I squeezed my eyes closed and stepped back out of the room. I couldn’t bear that scent with that image.

“Yes, I believe so.” I said.

He sighed and joined me back out in the hallway.

“I wish I could say they hadn’t suffered,” he said softly.