'Franz didn't realize that was wasted effort,' I spared that worthy a smile. 'I already had his astral scent from his mageblade.'
'That's the second time you've spouted that nonsense,' Franz snapped.
'But that nonsense isn't what's really got you pissed,' I countered.
Franz made an angry gesture at Dog. 'You have neither the skills or the power to craft this vessel or bind a spirit into it.'
'Not even close,' I agreed. 'That is no vessel, that is my dog; a real dog really named Dog, now possessed by a free spirit with no name he's willing to tell me but answers to Dog.'
The three took a long hard stare at Dog. He grinned back a canine grin, all sharp teeth and mocking eyes. He clearly had no intention of showing them what he'd shown the shaman in the alley.
'You've said you feed Dog, and that you need to rest after doing so. And from that confrontation with-' he stopped himself mid-word. 'In the alley, we know Dog loans you his energy for spellcasting; so there's a quid pro quo in play.
'I can see the shape of it, but I don't understand the mechanics,' he frowned. 'This is not… usual.'
I considered explaining, but didn't see the point. Jesalie hadn't figured it out in a month of living with me; there was no way I was giving away the trick of my trade to some one-off customers who'd never see me again.
Franz had been right when he pegged me as unremarkable. I like to think I'm unique, but if you were to graph the talents and abilities of all the psychic investigators in LA, I'd be about dead center on the bell curve. What made me was my partner.
Dog, by which I mean the free spirit possessing Dog the Basenji, gives me direct access to astral data-way beyond my ability to assense. But he gives it to me in doggish: very little sight, lots of smells. Where top-dollar wizards see an astral fingerprint, I get an astral scent. You can research it-believe me, I have-and find enough evidence to make a case for the way Dog conveys information being dictated by the limitations of the creature he's inhabiting.
Personally, I think he does it because it amuses the hell out of him.
Like Franz said, everything is quid pro quo. So what does Dog get from me? Hard to say. He explained it once, I think, but I'm not sure I followed. Call it context. Interpretation. Maybe it's because he's a dog; maybe it's because he's a spirit, but everything we people do seems random. Dog finds humans fascinating; he just needs me to understand the natural world.
'So,' Rachel said into the stretching silence. 'What do you plan on doing with this information?'
'I'm kinda torn between telling Julius and getting killed or telling Horizon and getting killed,' I shrugged. 'One of the things that makes me unremarkable is the fact that I honor a confidence when there's no compelling reason not to.'
Hector and Franz glared with varying intensities, but Rachel's smile was wry.
For a moment I considered asking about the Pembrokes. Maybe they were her grandparents. Or maybe there was a network of families helping kids make it out of the ghetto into the promised land. But it was none of my business. Nothing here was.
I circled the table, Dog preceding at a thoroughly terrier-esque trot. The three made way.
'If Monica wants to go into the business, tell her to call,' I said in the doorway. 'I can connect her with some resources. She's got my card.'
'Business?' her sister asked.
'Investigator,' I said in dripping ain't-it-obvious. 'She can play a role, keep her wits while loaded on painkillers in the middle of a confusion spell, and-to come that close with a needler at forty meters and not hit me? She's a hell of a shot.'
Rachel smiled unexpectedly.
'She says you moved so fast she almost hit you.'
'Story of my life.'
Where the Shadows are Darkest
Abiola Fashola was on his way to meet with the Yoruba street gang that ran his neighborhood when he saw the old man. A cold shiver of dread rippled through the troll's massive body.
The funny part was he didn't know why. Abiola had never seen the old man before.
He didn't look dangerous. The old man was human, but then most Yorubas were human. He wore olive drab work pants and a bright yellow shirt. He was big around the belly, suggesting he got quite enough to eat, though how he managed to do that in the Shomolu quarter of Lagos was a mystery. His skin was dark, his hair the color of iron. His chin was clothed by a wispy, gray beard.
So he didn't look dangerous and he wasn't doing anything unusual. The old man stood in the busy street haggling with a fishmonger whose cart was loaded with the rich variety of fish that could be caught in Lagos Lagoon: three-eyed fish and no-eyed fish, fish with parasites and fish with stumps where fins should be, fish that looked fine, but were loaded with heavy metals or bacteria or magical maladies.
The Yoruban quarter was pushed right up against the poisonous lagoon, which the people of Lagos used as dump, toilet, bath, and larder all in one.
The cart's contents turned Abiola's stomach. He had eaten better when he'd been a merc-too bad he couldn't stomach the killing.
He was tempted to dismiss his feeling as nerves, but he knew better. The shiver meant his dreaming mind had seen some danger his waking mind had missed.
The first time it happened to him his merc unit had been working some Igbo raiders that were coming out of the jungle to harass the oil workers that fed the Lagos pipeline. It seemed like cake duty, drawing a fat corp paycheck from Global Sandstorm (washed through the Edo Kingdom, of course) to hunt down some irregulars.
Only the irregulars didn't turn out to be so irregular. Later Abiola learned they were mercs drawing their own fat corp paycheck from United Oil (washed through the Igbo Kingdom, of course.)
Anyway, it had been a pretty summer day and they were working their way through some small family farm that had met some unfortunate and violent end.
They were on the north side of the farm, moving through fields that weren't growing anything but knee-high grass. The jungle rose up before them like an emerald wall, so close that Abiola could hear the cries of monkeys, the chatter of birds, the buzz and click of insects.
They moved across the farm using standard infantry tactics. First squad would sprint forward, while second stood back ready to provide covering fire. First would stop, establishing cover, and then the two squads would trade, second exposed, first concealed.
First had taken cover behind a truck turned over on its side, men laying prone behind the truck's engine block or its bed, AK-97s pointed at the jungle.
Second readied itself to rush forward toward the burnt-out hulk of a tractor forty meters from their position.
Abiola shivered.
It wasn't that he was a coward. He didn't fear combat. He was used to being bigger and more powerful than the men he fought. And he was a devout Christian, so he didn't believe this life would be his last. He did not want to die, but neither was he paralyzed by the thought that death might be waiting for him around every corner. Abiola Fashola was not a coward.
But suddenly he couldn't move.
So when second squad moved out, they went without him.
Giving Abiola a ringside seat when an Igbo ambush cut down every last man before they could reach the tractor's limited cover.
