I refrained from hitting my own head with the heel of my hand, but just barely. “So it wasn’t much of a trick to turn it into a baby monitor. You just needed an old crystal radio.”
Butters listened with his head tilted toward the radio and nodded. “I explained the concept to Molly this morning and she put it together in an hour.” He waved the spotlight housing Bob’s skull. “And I can see spooks by the light of the spirit’s form. So I can see and hear you. Hi!”
I stared at the skinny man and didn’t know if I wanted to break out into laughter or wild sobs. “Butters . . . you . . . you figured this all out on your own?”
“Well . . . no. I mean, I had a tutor.” He bobbled the spotlight meaningfully.
“Ack! Don’t make me puke,” Bob warned him. “You won’t like me when I puke.”
“Hush, Bob,” said Butters and I in exactly the same tone at exactly the same time.
We both turned to eye each other for a moment. He might have tucked the skull close to his side in a protective gesture of possession.
“You shouldn’t stay here, with all the official types around,” I said.
“Just thinking the same thing,” Butters said. “Come with me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Uh. Where?”
“Headquarters,” he said.
From Butters’s other pocket, there was a hiss and a squawk from what proved to be a long-range walkie- talkie. He picked it up, looked at something on its little display, and said, “Eyes here.”
“We’ve got nothing at his old place,” said Murphy’s tired voice. “What about you, Eyes?”
“He’s standing right here talking to me,” Butters said, and not without a trace of pride.
It looked good on him.
“Outstanding, Eyes,” Murphy said, her voice brightening with genuine pleasure. “I’m sending you some shadows. Bring him in right away.”
“Wilco,” Butters said. “Out.” He put the radio away, beaming to himself.
“Eyes?” I asked him.
“Daniel kind of gave me the nickname,” he said. “They kept putting me on watch, and he wanted to know why they kept making the foureyed guy our lookout. It stuck as my handle.”
“Except we have six eyes,” Bob the Skull said. “I tried to get him to get me a pair of glasses, and then we’d have
I nodded, suddenly understanding. “You still work for the morgue.”
Butters smiled. “There are plenty of people listening to our transmissions. Murphy wouldn’t let me use my name.”
“Murphy is smart,” I said.
“Extremely,” Butters said, nodding agreement.
“She gave Bob to you?”
“She did,” he said. “You being dead and all. She wanted to keep it need-to-know.”
“It doesn’t upset me,” I said, even though it sort of did. “I entrusted those things to her judgment.”
“Oh, hey, great segue. Speaking of judgment, you’d better come with me.”
“I can do that,” I said, and fell into pace beside him. “Where are we going?”
“The Batcave,” he said. “Headquarters.”
“Headquarters of what?” I asked.
He blinked at me. “The Alliance, of course. The Chicago Alliance.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “What Chicago Alliance?”
“The one he organized to help defend the city from the Fomor,” Butters replied.
“He?” I asked. “Fomor? What he? He who?”
“I’m sorry, Harry,” he said. He bit his lip and looked down. “I figured you knew . . . Marcone. Baron John Marcone.”
Chapter Seventeen
I found Stu’s pistol on the ground where I’d dropped it during the struggle. Then I followed Butters to his car—an old Plymouth Road Runner. It looked almost worse than my old VW Beetle had the last time I’d seen it. Dents and dings covered its all-steel frame, and some of them looked suspiciously like they’d been raked into the metal with a two-pronged claw—but its engine throbbed with impressive, harmonious power. Its license plates read: MEEPMEEP.
“I kinda traded in my old one,” Butters told me as I got in, going straight through the door. I didn’t make any noise about the discomfort. Not in front of Butters. It would totally blow my ghostly cool.
“For another old one,” I said. My voice issued out of the radio he slipped into a clip attached to the car’s sun visor.
“I like steel better than fiberglass,” he said. “The Fomor and the faeries are apparently related. Neither one of them likes the touch of any metal with iron in it.”
Bob’s skull rested in a container that had been custom mounted on the Road Runner’s dash—a wooden frame set on a plate that made the skull wobble back and forth like a bobblehead doll. “Lot of interbreeding there,” Bob said. “Back in the old, old,
I lifted my eyebrows. “I haven’t heard much about it.”
“Crazy stuff,” Bob said with tremendous enthusiasm. “Even before my time, but I’ve heard all kinds of stories. The Daoine Sidhe, the Tuatha, the Fomor, the Tylwyth Teg, the Shen. Epic alliances, epic betrayals, epic battles, epic weddings, epic sex—”
“Epic sex?” I sputtered. “By what standards, precisely, is
“And tons and tons of mortal simps like you used as pawns.” Bob sighed happily, ignoring my question. “There are no words. It was like
Butters sputtered at that image.
But . . . I mean, Hell’s bells. Who wouldn’t?
“Anyway,” he choked out a moment later, “the Fomor have a lot of faerie blood in their makeup. I like having Detroit steel around me when I drive.”
“Murphy said something about the Fomor last night,” I said. “I take it they’ve been moving in on the town?”
His face grew more remote. “Big-time. I’ve been busy.” He exhaled a slow breath. “Um. Look, man. It’s really you?”
“What’s left of me,” I said tiredly. “Yeah.”
He nodded. “Um. There’s a problem with Molly.”
“I saw,” I said.
“You didn’t see,” he said. “I mean, I heard that Murphy told you she was a couple bubbles off plumb last night, but there’s more than that.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Seventeen people murdered in the past three months,” he replied in a steady voice.
I didn’t say anything for a couple of blocks. Then I said, “Who?”
“Scum,” he said candidly. “Mostly. A cop who was maybe raping a prostitute. Petty criminals. Muggers. She doesn’t even try to avoid being seen. She’s gone totally Dark Knight. Witnesses left and right have reported a tall woman dressed in layers and layers of ragged, cast-off clothing. Took the papers about two weeks to name her the Rag Lady. People call her various versions, to make fun, to show her they aren’t afraid, but . . .”
“A lot of people get killed in this town,” I said. “Doesn’t mean it’s Molly.”
“Harry . . .” Butters stopped at a light and gave me a direct look. “I’ve examined twelve of the victims. Different manner of death for each of them, but I found them all with a scrap of torn cloth stuffed in their mouths.”
