could grab a tasty rodent snack for the road. But Melusine ignored her pet. She slithered from side to side, pacing the narrow width of the alley. When the flute music could no longer be heard, she rushed forward and the vision went dark.
The scale had torn from Melusine’s body, becoming lodged in the small crevice in the pavement, ending the vision.
I blinked rapidly as my eyesight and hearing began to return. The world around me coalesced into blurry shapes, but sound was muffled as if my ears were stuffed with cotton wool. I took a ragged breath and shook my head. My naked hand became visible and I flinched, dropping the serpent scale.
I pulled on my leather glove and sighed. The vision was difficult to shake, the piper’s music still floating though my mind, but it could have been much worse. My suspicions had been correct. Melusine was involved in the kidnappings.
I swallowed hard, feeling the blood drain from my face. I had been lucky, this time. If the lamia hadn’t shed her serpent skin recently, I could have been trapped in more than just one moment in time. Melusine had lived for a millennium and she’d been crazy for at least a few hundred of those years. I had been a fool to touch anything belonging to that woman. But at least now I had a lead in the kidnapping case.
Too bad it was going to tear Ceff apart.
When no one else had seen Melusine on Market Street yesterday, I secretly hoped that she’d been a figment of my imagination. But this ghost from Ceff’s past was real and she was obviously involved in the abduction of the faerie children.
I didn’t have a clue as to why Melusine was stealing children, but I knew who I’d have to ask. My shoulders drooped. This wasn’t a normal interrogation I was considering. If I started asking questions about Ceff’s ex-wife, there was no going back.
I quickly returned the scale to the plastic bag and tucked it into my pocket. I jerked upright and headed for the nearest sewer grate. I’d have to talk to Ceff, but first I had another lead to follow up on.
Someone had been playing a flute that night and I had a nagging suspicion that the musician was fae. Faerie music has a peculiar effect on humans. Most humans, even half-breeds like me, may become overwhelmed with the urge to dance to faerie music. The compulsion can be so great that the person becomes cursed to dance until the music stops or they die from exhaustion, whichever comes first.
But I’d never heard of a faerie whose music could captivate other fae, not to mention an entire horde of rats. Were fae vulnerable to the compulsion of faerie music as children? It was something I needed to find out.
I kicked at the sewer grate, but it was securely anchored. I crouched down, shining my flashlight between the metal slats into the darkness below. No beady eyes shone back at me, no alligators in the sewer either, just filthy, stagnant water in the bottom of a large drainage pipe that branched off toward the street.
I angled the flashlight beam to the right and found something interesting. The sides of the pipe were covered in hundreds of tiny, muddy footprints like the ones a horde of rats might make. But it couldn’t have been an easy climb. In fact, the broken bodies of more than one rat lay in the water below. So why had the rats abandoned their warm, wet sewer warrens for the chilly city streets?
I stood and walked back out toward Baker’s Row, pacing the ground carefully. The alley had seemed clean at first glance. There were no piles of refuse, urine soaked cardboard boxes, or newspaper tumbleweeds, but I did find rodent feces. The small, dark pellets were easy to miss and easier still to explain away. If I hadn’t witnessed the rats in the vision, I wouldn’t have thought the scat was relevant. But the rats had been here the night of the kidnapping. I just didn’t know why. Had they been lured into the alley solely by the piper’s music?
I bit my lip and frowned. How did it all fit together? I knew that wisps, my kin, had enticed the fae children from their beds. In the case of the bean-tighe child’s abduction, Melusine had watched from the shadows as the child was lured outside. Once away from her parents, a mysterious piper had begun to play music that seemed to compel the child, and every rodent in the vicinity, to follow.
Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing if Melusine or the piper’s involvement extended to all of the kidnappings or if their presence in this one case was coincidental. I needed more information and I was running out of time.
I tilted my head up toward the third story window and sighed. I’d have to call Kaye and ask about any noteworthy fae musicians, but first I had a distraught fae family to question.
I jumped up and caught the bottom rung of the fire escape with a gloved hand and pulled the ladder down. I climbed quickly, focusing on the ache in my shoulders and calves. If I didn’t think about the vision, maybe I could keep Melusine’s possible involvement from Ceff just a bit longer.
At the top landing, I tapped on the window pane and waited. A wrinkled bean-tighe, wearing a tattered red shawl, which matched her rosy cheeks and red rimmed eyes, came to the window and pushed it open. She smiled weakly and waved me inside, shuffling back toward the kitchen in her house slippers. If she were human, I’d guess that she was in her late seventies, but after seeing the wrinkled and grey haired child, I knew this was the appearance of all bean-tighe. It was disconcerting, especially since most fae age so slowly.
I followed the faerie into the kitchen where Ceff sat at a small table eating strawberry shortcake and talking with a second bean-tighe. Strawberries are a favorite of the bean-tighe and this family was no exception. Strawberry vines grew from pots on the window sill, painted strawberries adorned white cabinets and door casings, and a fluffy, red and green, knit strawberry cozy covered the tea pot in the center of the table.
“Where are my manners?” said the bean-tighe who’d let me in. She’d started to take a seat, but jumped up and pulled another chair to the table. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
That’s the thing about faeries. They’re extremely polite, when they’re not trying to eat your face off.
“No, thank you,” I said.
I took the offered seat, but kept my hands in my lap. I would have preferred to stand, but the bean-tighe were each bent so far forward from dowager’s humps that I worried they’d strain something trying to meet my eyes. As it was, they had to tilt their heads uncomfortably to avoid staring at the table.
“Myrtha and Glynda were just telling me about their daughter, Flynis,” Ceff said.
He held out a sketch of a smiling bean-tighe child. All fae are careful not to be photographed in their true form, but paintings and sketches are allowed. The artist had captured the child perfectly. It was definitely the same girl from my vision.
“She’s…lovely,” I said. “Um, does Flynis have any fae friends or teachers who are musicians? Or perhaps a neighbor who lives in your building? I’m looking for someone who may have been a witness the night she went missing. This person is skilled at playing a woodwind instrument, perhaps a flute, panpipes, or pennywhistle.”
Myrtha frowned, brow furrowed and Glynda shook her head.
“No, not that I know of,” Glynda said. “Can you think of anyone, Myrtha?”
“Not a one,” Myrtha said.
Oh well, it had been a long-shot.
“Was there anything unusual about last night?” I asked. “Anything at all?”
“We’ve been over the details so many times, but there’s nothing we can remember,” Glynda said. The teacup in her hand clattered against the saucer as her hand shook. Myrtha reached out and took her hand, holding it in her own. “It was such an ordinary night. We ate strawberry jam on toast with warm milk, just like we always do, and put Flynis to bed. We went to our room where Myrtha read and I worked on my knitting. I’m sorry. I wish I could remember something useful.”
“That’s alright,” I said, standing. “You’ve been very helpful.”
Ceff stood and thanked the bean-tighe for the shortcake and tea. As we left the kitchen, I looked back over my shoulder.
“One more thing,” I said. “Do you have much trouble with rats in this part of the city?”
Ceff raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask where my strange questions were coming from. Myrtha shook her head and Glynda let out a barking laugh.
“Rats?” Glynda asked. “We keep a clean house, detective. There’s nothing for those vermin here, or in the alley below. There are much better places to find food in this city. If you’re looking for rats, check the docks.”
