The relay consists of a pentagonal brass box and fifteen feet of antenna, and is one of several stations that spread the glamour through the city like an invisible web. Kelsey pops open a side panel and tinkers with the mechanical innards. The number she gave the detective piggybacks on the glamour network. It probably wouldn’t please the Engineer who made the network to know she uses it thus, but he’s an important being with more important concerns than Kelsey’s personal communications.
When she’s done tinkering she crouches, motionless. Kelsey is good at waiting, because she has to be. Finally, the air hisses with an incoming call. She places her palm on the slick brass to finish the connection.
She says, “Yes,” not really a question.
A male voice thrums through the air. “This is Detective Novak from Chicago Homicide.”
Ah, so tall and narrow has a name. “What can I do for you, Detective Novak?”
“You can tell me who you are and how you knew we wouldn’t find any traces,” he snaps.
“I knew there wouldn’t be traces of explosive because explosives weren’t used. And I am the person who’s going to stop your killer.”
He pauses. “Department policy doesn’t endorse vigilantes.”
At least he no longer seems to have her on his suspect list. “And how far have your policies gotten you on this case?”
He heaves an audible sigh. When he speaks, his words slur with sleep deprivation. “I’ve been standing in an empty alley for forty minutes, and I’m nowhere. I thought if I went back to the first scene, maybe I missed something … ”
“You’re at the scene alone?” That feels wrong. A place where such destructive power was recently released would still be weak, scarred, and a very vulnerable position.
“I mean, why here?” Novak rambles on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “If the murders are about showmanship, why do it outside in the rain where all the work gets washed away before anyone sees it?”
“Listen carefully: you need to get—” A vibration like static suddenly buzzes through the air, the call cutting off. For a split second, the whole glamour network flickers, making her breath catch as surely as a skipped heartbeat would.
“Shit,” Kelsey says to no one. Given the size of the network, even a slight fluctuation means a big power drain, and if the interruption wasn’t on her end it was probably on Novak’s.
It will take her whole minutes to fly to the first kill site. He might already be dead.
She feels the Old One from three blocks away, the city crying and cowering in all directions around it. It is unquestionably active, roiling with a sulfurous heat that chokes her as she approaches from above. For once, the Old One isn’t hiding in the glamour. Instead it twists the glamour into hideous malformations that nauseate Kelsey even before she glimpses them with her eyes.
The view of the alley nearly knocks her from the air. At one end, an enormous cloud of black smoke boils and churns, full of glowing eyes and gnashing teeth and other monstrous parts that smoke should not have. The smoke cloud seems to pulse and grow, promising horrible agonizing death.
At the other end, Novak is literally stuck where he stands. The pavement has come alive, crawling inexorably over his shoes and up his legs, and—to Kelsey’s ears—screeching like a torture victim all the while. Terror rolls off his skin in waves.
The Old One is toying with him, devouring his fear like candy. And it’s using the city’s glamour to do so.
Kelsey drops down into the alley like a stone, half shifting in mid-air so Novak will recognize her. She keeps her wings, though, to soften the landing.
The Old One’s many eyes focus on her and it exudes annoyance at her distraction.
She glares right back. “You think you know glamour, do you? You think you can use my city?”
The Old One huffs disdainfully and gnashes its teeth. Fleshy tentacles curl and whip through the smoke, eager to get on with its horrific business.
“I don’t think so.”
Kelsey goes down on one knee and places both palms against the wounded pavement. She can feel the threads of abused glamour twisted and knotted within the smoke cloud. Through her palms she senses how the wrongness radiates outward, disturbing the whole city. And if she focuses, she can feel exactly which threads to yank to make it all fall apart.
She yanks.
The integrity of the smoke cloud falters and the Old One lets out a surprised hiss. Then Kelsey flares her wings wide and reaches out through her palms to the pavement, the alley, the streets beyond, and she pulls the citylight into herself. She begins to glow with orange incandescence, the artificial light of a thousand streetlamps growing brighter and brighter until she fills the alley with blinding modernity and the Old One flees.
Kelsey lets go of the light and for a moment all she can do is cling to the blacktop, exhausted and blinded by her own trick. The city should not have lent her such an ability, not in her blasphemous state of being, but she is nonetheless glad that it did. With a sigh, she lets go of her wings and finishes the transformation into her human- form.
She stands and turns to face the shell-shocked Novak. The pavement has gone dead again, unfortunately while still wrapped around his legs. Kelsey stumbles over to him, shivering with cold and adrenaline, and she kneels down to coax the pavement off of him. After a minute of her gentle whispering, it melts back down and resumes its former shape.
Novak stumbles, almost falls. Eventually he finds his voice again. “A—are you a guardian angel?”
She blinks at him. “Even if I were, I wouldn’t be yours.”
“But … ” He leaves his mouth hanging open for a moment before shutting it and looking away. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Kelsey,” she says, with impulsive honesty.
“I … need to sit down,” he says but makes no move to do so.
Another wave of shivers runs through her fragile human flesh. “Let’s find somewhere warm. Come.”
It takes Novak three cups of coffee and half an order of cheese fries at an all-night diner before the interrogation instinct supplants the shock. After what he saw, Kelsey doesn’t see much use for denial, so she answers his questions more or less truthfully.
“So what are you, if not an angel?”
“A grotesque.”
“Are there others like you?”
“I’m unique,” she says, which is true though not the answer to the question he meant.
He shakes his head. “Look—it’s not that I’m not grateful, but why did you help me?”
“I protect.” She shrugs uncomfortably. “Humans, Lorefolk, the city itself … from each other. That’s what I do.”
“Lorefolk?”
“Things like me, and like
“It?”
“An Old One.”
He rubs his face with one hand, as if her freely given answers only serve to frustrate him more. “None of this makes any sense.”
She shrugs, not knowing what to say to that, and watches the waitress refill Novak’s mug.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” he says for the third time, in between questions.
She shakes her head. “Grotesques don’t eat.” Her human-form might be able to, but now doesn’t seem like a good time to experiment. She feels dizzy and lightheaded, and all knotted up in the midsection.
“You’re looking pretty human to me right now. Come on, try some.” He pushes the half-eaten plate of cheese fries across the plastic table-top towards her.
Kelsey picks up a single fry and puts it in her mouth. The sensation on her tongue is foreign, overwhelming, and not entirely pleasant. She works her jaw the way she watched him do and swallows it. Her midsection seems to respond, though she can’t parse out whether the reaction is positive or negative.
“So? What do you think?”
She frowns, considering. “Being human is problematic.”
