fortunately, we didn’t mind trespassing. We chose an older wood-frame beach house a few doors down to the east. When we were as sure as we could be it was uninhabited, we went in through the front door.
The house was narrow but had three floors. The upper floors had wide covered balconies that ran the entire width of the beachfront side. The balcony on the top floor was crowded with boxes and spare furniture. Whether its current owner or one long dead, someone seemed to have used the balcony for storage. The neighbors probably wouldn’t care much for the untidiness, but the junk made a convenient concealed position for a couple of snipers.
We all sat on the deck and huddled around, waiting for showtime. Adan was working the bolt of his rifle back and forth and sighting along the barrel. Honey and Jack sat cross-legged facing each other, whispering in their own musical language. I just sat quietly and watched them. None of them had to be there. Even Adan could have stayed behind to run the business side of the outfit. We still needed juice, after all-now more than ever. They weren’t there because they were getting paid. They weren’t there for power. I knew why Honey was there-she was my friend.
If I’d been a normal person, it would have been an easy thing to take for granted. Well, if I’d been anything like normal, I probably wouldn’t have been sitting in a beach house in the spirit-world version of Malibu waiting to do a hit on a Russian river spirit. That aside, friendship wasn’t something I could take for granted because I’d never really had it. Chavez was the closest I’d really come to it and even then the outfit was always between us. We were probably as close as two gangsters could be. Maybe someday, on the other side of this war and with the outfit behind us, we could have a real friendship, a normal friendship. Of course, I knew the chances weren’t very good that either of us would live that long.
And that made me think of Adan again. It seemed like just about everything made me think of Adan. He was a gangster now, too. So what made me think he was my friend? He’d been given power and authority within the outfit, but he had little if any support. He needed to make his bones, prove he had juice. He needed to win friends and influence people, and from what I’d seen, he wasn’t all that good at it. He was smart, but he didn’t know the outfit. He didn’t know the underworld, didn’t belong to it. Adan didn’t have a history in my world. He needed to form alliances and win the respect of the big hitters and their crews to consolidate his power.
If I looked at it with a clear head, that’s why Adan was here. The wartime captain is in a tight spot, here’s Adan to step in and save the day. He wasn’t my friend. He was playing an angle, just like everyone else.
Adan wasn’t the changeling. He looked the same, talked the same, had all the same mannerisms and body language. At the club, he’d even smelled the same, like apples and cinnamon, though I couldn’t be sure if that was Adan or the fairy mojo Oberon had put on us. Since squeezing the changeling, I had defenses against fairy glamour, but I’d either let them down or Oberon’s magic was powerful enough to defeat them. What about Adan’s glamour? Why had he smelled like apples and cinnamon that night? Was it possible he knew the effect it would have on me? Might he have used his glamour to seduce me?
There was a fine line between healthy suspicion and paranoia, and it was especially fine where fairies and victims of fairy abductions were concerned. Fortunately, I didn’t share Adan’s weaknesses. I knew the underworld, I knew the outfit and I knew a thing or two about exposing rivals and forging alliances. The key to both was to slow the fuck down. Don’t make assumptions. Don’t jump to conclusions. Sit back, watch and learn. You couldn’t always know what was in another gangster’s heart, but if you had some patience he’d show you soon enough.
I glanced up and caught Adan staring at me. He smiled and went back to playing with his rifle. All I needed was a little patience. Lie back in the weeds and let this guy reveal himself. Maybe he’d prove himself an ally, a partner, even a friend. That would be nice. And maybe I’d find out he was just playing the game. That wouldn’t be so nice, but it wouldn’t be the first time and at least I’d know how it was. The ball was in Adan’s court, and I could play it either way. The truth was, he needed me more than I needed him. I liked it that way. I always had.
“It’s time,” Adan said.
I sat up and looked down the beach. An old man with a close-cropped white beard walked toward us along the high-tide line, surrounded by half a dozen ghosts. He wore an old felt hat and a bright red track suit-what was it with Russian gangsters and track suits, anyway? His bodyguards looked like disposable muscle, except that some of them had obviously drowned. Their bodies were pale and bloated and their clothes hung in damp tatters. A couple were even sporting long strands of seaweed like feather boas.
Jack pulled Honey to him and kissed her, long and hard. Then they both nodded to us and disappeared. Adan and I lay flat on our bellies, aiming our guns through the slats in the balcony railing. I’d cautioned Adan to stay back-you wanted to sight through the railing, but you didn’t want the barrel extending past it. It was the kind of thing a trained bodyguard could spot, more easily than you’d expect.
It was still daylight, though it was late enough I imagined the sun would be setting into the sea in the real world. The light in this place was indistinguishable from midday, and we’d have good visibility-by the standards of the Between-if we needed to use our weapons. The plan was for the piskies to attack when the group drew even with our position, to give us the widest possible field of fire. We waited and I watched Adan out of the corner of one eye. He was calm, breathing deeply and easily, his finger resting lightly on the trigger of the rifle.
The piskies’ initial attack went just as they had planned it, and it failed completely. One moment the vodyanoy was walking leisurely along the beach and the next moment his throat had been opened from ear to ear. Juice the greenish-brown of stagnant river water sprayed across the sand and spattered the nearest bodyguards. The old man clutched at his throat and fell to his knees. The ghosts drew weapons and closed ranks, looking around in panic, but the piskies didn’t show themselves. Then the vodyanoy reached into his jacket pocket with one bloody hand and withdrew something small and white. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like an egg. He slammed it down on the beach, crushing it, and golden light poured from within.
“It’s a true-seeing charm,” I hissed, and Adan nodded.
The light revealed the piskies, hovering in the air above the vodyanoy’s head with their swords bared and wet with the creature’s juice. When they became visible, the ghosts attacked, opening fire with a variety of weapons that ranged from revolvers to Thompson submachine guns. The piskies spun and darted and most of the bullets missed completely-it was a lucky break none of the ghosts was packing a shot gun. The piskies sang their ancient songs and their defensive glamours withstood the few rounds that found their targets.
Silver fireworks flashed in the air as the bullets exploded against the fairies’ shields, and pixie dust cascaded down on the attackers like emerald-green confetti.
When the glowing dust touched them, the ghosts dropped their weapons and began clawing at their eyes and bare skin. First their clothes and then their spectral flesh began to disintegrate under the magic’s touch and the ghosts came undone like crematory ash carried on the wind.
While the piskies dealt with the bodyguards, the vodyanoy was changing. His mouth widened and his skull expanded, seeming to bulge and bloat. His body became squat and obese, while his arms lengthened and thickened, and his hands contorted into webbed claws. His eyes grew large, and round and yellow, and his hair fell from his skull in clumps. Finally, the track suit split at the seams, revealing amphibian, gray-green skin that glistened in the wan light.
“Son of a bitch is a frog,” I said.
“Fishtail,” said Adan. I looked again. The vodyanoy’s legs and feet had transformed into a mermaid’s tail that darkened from pale gray to near-black at the fins.
“Okay,” I said. “Son of a bitch is a frog with a fishtail.”
The vodyanoy opened its maw wide and made a noise that was something between a roar and a croak. It sounded a little like a foghorn but with a sickly organic quality that made me a little nauseous. Swamp-water juice covered its bulging throat and pale, flabby chest, but the wounds appeared to be closing.
The piskies attacked again. They darted in and slashed with their silver swords, opening long wounds in the soft flesh that gaped and oozed. Honey circled around and dived at the thing’s head, her sword reversed and gripped in both hands as she went for one of its unblinking yellow eyes. At the last instant, the monster’s head snapped up and a sinuous amphibian tongue flashed from its mouth. The disgusting appendage struck Honey in her center of mass and held her fast, then reeled her in to the yawning maw with dizzying speed.
Just as a scream began to bubble up in my throat, Jack was there. He darted between the vodyanoy and Honey and severed the creature’s tongue with a powerful two-handed slash. Honey tumbled to the sand, pulling the limp, rubbery flesh from her body.
I knew what was coming before it happened, but there was nothing I could do about it. Jack had gotten too close. One of the vodyanoy’s webbed claws flashed out and snatched him from the air. The monster tightened its
