Grave Dance

“Jeez, how do you deal with that?” I whispered, wrinkling my nose.

Falin watched me, his lips tugging down at the edges. “Iron didn’t used to bother you, did it?”

I shook my head.

“You’ll get used to it.”

“Yeah, right. If that was true it wouldn’t be one of the universal deterrents for fae.”

He shrugged. “Hey, I can offer you hope, right?” He gave me a smile, but there wasn’t much to it. “You will grow accustomed to feeling sick, but remember that the symptoms are warning signs. Fae can die from iron poisoning, and if you’re experiencing the symptoms, you might be able to as well.”

“Good to know, sensei.”

The quip earned me another frown, and I immediately regretted it. Like most people raised in the mortal realm, I had only dodgy knowledge of the fae at best, more than likely filled with enough gaps to hold one of Faerie’s endless halls. If Falin was willing to share information without making me trade for it, I really shouldn’t discourage him.

“Come on, let’s do this,” I said, nodding toward the gate. The wave of sickness washed over me again, but this time I rolled with it and forced my hand to reach for the latch anyway. Falin caught my wrist before I reached the gate.

“Gloves,” he said, splaying his own gloved fingers in front of me.

Right. That made sense—and explained the gloves he always wore.

Falin grabbed the latch, and as soon as his gloved fingers touched the iron, his glamour shattered, his ragged and bloodied clothing becoming visible for all to see. I noticed that this time his holster and gun didn’t disappear. He must have picked them up at his office. The gun added to his bloody clothing didn’t improve his appearance, and people on the street behind us stopped, staring.

I motioned him ahead of me as soon as he pushed the gate open. I followed close behind, and the moment we were inside he released the gate and let it swing shut behind us. It didn’t latch, but neither of us bothered touching it again to close it properly.

I expected Falin’s glamour to bounce back in place as soon as he released the gate, but it didn’t. I hoped Corrie didn’t peek out his window, because we certainly looked like disreputable guests at the moment.

“Give me a moment to rebuild the glamour,” Falin said. He wasn’t breathing hard, but the skin around his eyes was pinched and I knew that brief contact, even through the fabric of his gloves, had taxed him.

And how much worse did Corrie’s spell make the effect?

“Iron does more than make fae sick, doesn’t it?”

Falin nodded as his clothing returned to its immaculate glamoured state. “Iron blocks fae from the magic of Faerie.”

So what would it do to changelings? We were almost to Corrie’s front door, so I didn’t have time to ask, but I made a mental note to avoid iron when I was with Rianna. Not that I was exactly seeking it out now.

I trotted up the front steps and ground to a halt. There was no bell at the door, but a large knocker. An iron knocker. The doorknob was iron as well.

I gave a low whistle. “Man, this guy is serious.”

Falin grimaced at the sight of the knocker, but reached for it. This time I stopped him.

“Let me. I don’t have a glamour that will fail,” I said, and he acquiesced with a small smile that was either gratitude or amusement—I couldn’t tell which.

Digging through my purse, I pulled out the gloves Rianna had given me when I visited the Bloom. I didn’t put them on, as short white gloves really didn’t match my emerald green halter top, but I did use one of them to grip the knocker. After banging out three loud raps, I stepped back and dropped my gloves back in my purse, waiting. I was becoming afraid I’d have to knock again when the large door creaked open.

Aaron Corrie stood in the doorway, or at least I assumed the old man was Corrie simply because I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone older and Corrie had been a young man during the Magical Awakening seventy years ago. It was obvious that he’d been tall once, but age had stolen his height and curved his back so that the top of his head with its thin wisps of silver hair reached no higher than my nose. But his green eyes were clear and bright.

“Yes? Who are you?” His voice was gravelly, as if he hadn’t used it yet today.

“Hi, I’m Alex Craft, a private investigator with Tongues for the Dead.” I held out my hand. Corrie’s handshake was firm but friendly, and almost unbearably painful. The heat of his skin did nothing but exacerbate the chilling ache as his ring pressed against my flesh. Iron jewelry? Seriously? I’d had a lot of practice recently in keeping my face impassive during handshakes, so I managed not to wince or jerk away. When he dropped my hand, he turned to Falin and I rushed on. “And this is—” I hesitated. I’d first met him as Detective Andrews, but now that I knew he wasn’t, introducing him as such would be a lie. I also couldn’t introduce him as Agent Andrews. Corrie was fae-phobic and “agent” was a dead giveaway for the FIB. Finally I said, “—my associate, Falin Andrews.”

Falin shook Corrie’s extended hand, his glamour holding against the small quantity of iron in the ring. The old man glanced at Falin’s gloved hand and then gave him a slow, scrutinizing appraisal.

“May we come in?” I asked, trying to get Corrie’s attention away from Falin.

“What is it you want, Miss Craft?”

As in, no, we couldn’t enter. Okay. I could work with this. Somehow.

I forced a smile. “My current case involves runes I’ve never seen before, and I haven’t been able to find them in my research.” Or at least not in four hours of Internet searching. “I’m told you might be able to help me decipher them.”

He twisted his thick lips and ran a wrinkled hand over the few remaining hairs on the top of his head. “Do you have a copy of these runes?”

I nodded and riffled through my purse until I found the page where I’d sketched the runes. Corrie accepted the paper, and then patted his chest until his fingers found a thick leather cord. He pulled the cord until a mass of charms emerged from under his shirt. He flicked through the charms, finally stopping when his fingers landed on a silver charm shaped like a pair of glasses. He detached the charm and flipped it upside down before reattaching it. One of the charms around him shimmered and changed.

“I’m always having to change from a nearsighted to a farsighted charm,” he said as he dropped the knot of charms back under his shirt. He smiled, as if sharing some inside joke. “You’ll understand one day. Now let’s see what kind of runes you have here.” He lifted the page and studied the runes I’d meticulously copied from the charmed disk. As his gaze moved down the page, his eyes grew wider, his bushy white eyebrows lifting. “Now this is interesting. Very interesting.”

He stepped back, vanishing from the threshold. I waited, but he didn’t return.

I stuck my head inside and peeked around the half-open door. “Uh, hello?”

“Try to keep up,” Corrie called as he shuffled down the hall and disappeared around the corner.

“Sounds like we’ve been invited in after all,” Falin said, pushing the door open wider.

If Corrie hadn’t already disappeared deeper in the house, I’d have dawdled endlessly in the entry hall. The walls were lined with shelves and every square inch was filled with knickknacks. But this wasn’t just a collection of junk—it was a collection of magical junk. As soon as I passed the ward on the doorway, the press of hundreds of different charms and enchantments tumbled over me, threatening to overwhelm me.

They thundered through my senses, deafening my mind to anything else. Getting out and reorienting myself would have been best, but it was too late for that, and thinking above the magical roar to command my legs to move was beyond my ability. There was nothing malicious in the room, or at least nothing obvious, and not even anything terribly powerful. I felt a train that puffed out magic smoke, a doll that made children laugh, a mirror that reflected the image the viewer desired most, a spoon that kept soup hot, and other small, frivolous charms. But there were hundreds of them. And they overloaded my senses.

I rarely shielded with more than my bracelet and my mental shield of living vines, but now I had no choice. I squeezed my eyes closed and forced my focus inward—at least as much focus as I could summon. Outside my wall of briars I visualized a second wall enclosing my psyche. This wall I saw as a bubble of unbroken mirrors, the reflective surface deflecting the feel of magic.

As the bubble solidified in my mind, the roar of magic dulled and then fell away into eerie magical silence. I always felt blind, deaf, and dumb when I shielded this hard and completely cut myself off from the ebb of the world around me, but for now, it was better than being overwhelmed.

“Alex!”

My eyes flew open at the sound of Falin shouting, and shouting extremely close to my ears.

Falin stood with his face so close to mine that our noses brushed. The warmth of his palm pressed against the back of my neck, and I realized it wasn’t new warmth, but that he must have been standing there like that for some time. He must have been calling my name for a while too. When he saw my eyes open, he let out a breath of relief, and the warm air rolled over my skin. He stepped back and my gaze snapped to the gun in his hand.

“Were you planning to shoot something?” I smiled as I asked the question.

He didn’t smile back. “Was it a trap?”

“What?”

“A trap? Did we walk into a trap? What happened? You went completely unresponsive.”

“Oh.” I shook my head. “No trap. Just a nonsensitive collector showing off his trove. Where did Corrie go?”

Falin pointed at the hall, but he didn’t move, and he stared at me several more seconds before he finally holstered his gun. Then, apparently satisfied that the danger had passed, he headed for the hall. I followed, my steps slow and heavy. We found Corrie in a bedroom that had been converted into a library. He sat at a round table in the very center of the room, my page of runes directly in front of him and stacks of oversized and irregular leather-bound books piled around him.