A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire
I knew how she felt. “When did she die? I need a time frame.”
“Sometime over Memorial Day weekend. She stayed late on Friday—she had a deadline to meet—and that was the last time anyone saw her alive. Terrie found her on the cafeteria floor when she came in on Monday.”
“Barbara was already dead?” I bent, prying her left eye open, and stared into the jade-green iris. Her pupil didn’t contract. I let go.
“She was . . . like this.”
“Did Terrie check for a pulse or try to perform CPR?”
“She said Barbara was cold and didn’t respond when her name was called.” She grimaced. “Terrie couldn’t call the ambulance. She couldn’t spin an illusion that would last long enough to fool the paramedics if the night-haunts didn’t come.”
“Don’t you have security cameras?” I raked both hands through my hair. “Is there a way we can get a better idea of when this happened?”
“We have cameras, but they weren’t running.”
I dropped my hands, turning to stare at her.
“We don’t know what happened. All the records were wiped.”
“So you have no idea when this woman actually died, and a four-day window for the event.” Jan nodded. I groaned. “Lovely. Terrie works nights, right? When does she get in?”
“She works from nine at night until six in the morning, usually. She’d taken the weekend off for a convention—she stopped in Monday morning to turn on the lights and make sure the place was still standing.”
“So Terrie wasn’t expected?”
“No.”
“And what time did she find the body?”
“4:52 AM.” The exactness of the answer startled me. I blinked at her, and she shrugged. “She paged us—Elliot and I—as soon as she realized Barbara was cold.”
“How did she page you? Alex said the phones here don’t work normally.”
“Most of us have modified cell phones. There are also pay phones in the cafeteria and near the third- floor bathrooms, and most offices have landlines. Any of those can dial outside the knowe, if you press nine first.”
“All right. When did you get here?”
“About five-fifteen. I don’t know exactly. All the gate time stamps after Friday afternoon have been wiped.”
I frowned. “I see. You say you got here around five-fifteen. Where do you live?”
“Here, mostly—we have some offices that we’ve converted into bedrooms—but I maintain an apartment for storage and so I can get my mail. We’re not zoned for residence.” She shrugged. “It’s about three miles away. I came straight over.”
“Had you recently lost any employees who might have been angry enough to try for revenge? Anyone you might have fired or otherwise pissed off?”
“No one. We haven’t had any personnel changes in the last three years, except for the recent departures, and those came after the killings began, not before.”
“I see. Quentin, come here.” He stepped over to join me, looking less than pleased. I knelt, patting his shoulder in what I hoped was a reassuring fashion, and studied the wound in Barbara’s neck. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but that’s never stopped me before.
“Look at this,” I said, turning her arm over to show the underside.
“What about it?” he asked, uneasily.
“The color’s wrong.” I indicated the skin between Barbara’s elbow and shoulder. “Blood seeks the lowest point in the body after death; it should be pooling here. But it’s not.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” I lowered her arm, my frown deepening. “This is all new ground, Quentin. I always knew fae bodies wouldn’t decay, but I assumed at least a few systems would break down. Jan? Have there been any changes in the bodies since they were found?”
“No.” She scrubbed at her face with one hand, knocking her glasses askew. “At first, we thought they weren’t really dead, just sleeping. We were waiting for them to wake up.”
“But they didn’t,” said Quentin.
“No. They didn’t. We moved Barbara down here after a week, to keep her cool. We didn’t know how long . . .”
“How long it would take her to start to rot?”
She sighed. “Yeah. But she never did.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry about that.”
“What?”
“She’s never going to start to rot.” I rose, crossing to the second cot. Quentin followed. “Is this Yui?” I asked. Jan nodded. “Right,” I said, and pulled back the sheet.
Yui could have been a normal Japanese woman in her late twenties, if it weren’t for her four tails and her pointed, red-furred ears. Her hair was braided, exposing the puncture wound on her throat. This wasn’t good. Kitsune express their power in the number of tails they have, ranging from the usual one or two up to seven or eight. Keiko Inari, their Firstborn, supposedly has nine. The Duchess of Shadowed Hills only has three, and there’s not much that could take her without a fight . . . but Yui looked as calm as the others. Unless we were dealing with someone the victims knew, we were looking at something big and mean enough to take down a four-tailed Kitsune before she had a chance to get angry.
I didn’t like that idea one bit. “She didn’t struggle.”
“Well, why not?” asked Quentin.
“It’s possible that she was so surprised that she didn’t have time to react. It’s also possible that she knew her killer.” I looked up. “Three weeks between Barbara and Yui. How long between Yui and Colin?”
“Two weeks,” Jan said.
“Either somebody’s enjoying themselves, or something’s hungry.”
She flinched.
I sighed. “I’m just trying to get the facts straight. We’ll move on, for now. Do you have any paper cups?”
“What?” It was an odd enough request to make her stop looking upset and start looking confused. It was an improvement.
“Small cups, made of paper? You’d probably find them in the cafeteria.”
“Oh. Yes, we do. Why do you—”
“Great. We’ll need four of them, filled halfway with lukewarm water.” I pulled the sheet back over Yui, saying, “Quentin and I are going to try waking their blood.”
“Will that work?” Jan asked. Quentin looked at me out of the corner of his eye, expression telegraphing the same question.
“Probably not, but I don’t have any better ideas,” I said. “Do you?”
“Guess not. I’ll be back.” Jan turned and walked up the stairs. We watched her go, and then Quentin looked back to me, obviously getting ready to ask what the hell was going on.
I cut him off. “The bodies aren’t decaying because they’re still fae. The night- haunts haven’t come.”
“What?” he said, frowning.
“Do you know why we have the night-haunts?”
“To keep humanity from finding out about us.”
“Partially. And partially because fae flesh doesn’t rot.” I shrugged. “Look, purebloods don’t age, right? So why would they decay? I’m not sure what would happen to a changeling body without the night- haunts, but they take the purebloods so they won’t just be lying around for the rest of time.”
“Oh,” Quentin said, looking toward Barbara. Then, slowly, he asked, “So why haven’t the night- haunts come?”
“That’s the eight-million-dollar question, kid. I’m hoping these three can tell us,” I indicated the cots, including Colin in the gesture, “because I’m not sure who else can.”
“Oh,” he said again, and looked away.
I watched him for a moment. “Beyond the obvious, what’s wrong?” He mumbled something I didn’t quite hear, and I frowned. “Try that again?”
“I said, I want to stay.” He turned to face me again. “Please?”
“Really.” I raised an eyebrow. “And what makes you think . . . ?”
“That’s always what happens. Something happens, and all the kids get sent away.” A sour look crossed his fa
He was a foster, after all. Maybe there’d been a reason for his posting at Shadowed Hills. I tilted my head, considering him. “Why should I let you?”
“Because Sylvester sent me to learn. How am I supposed to do that if you send me away when things get dangerous?” He shook his head. “I’ve never even tried blood magic before—not when it mattered. You have to let me stay. I need to know these things.”
“You’re just a kid; you don’t have to . . .”
“If I don’t do it now, I’m going to grow up to be one of those useless courtiers you’re always complaining about,” he countered. “At least this way, you can keep an eye on me.”
He had a point. “All right. You can stay until it gets too dangerous. But then you go.”
“Understood.” He grinned, looking very young, and heartbreakingly joyful.
That sort of look has never led to anything good. I raised a hand, cautioning, “You’re going to do what I tell you to do. No heroics. No investigating strange noises because you think they’ll lead you to something interesting. Got it?”
“Yes, Toby.”
“Screw around on me and I’ll send you back to Shadowed Hills so fast you won’t have time to blink.”
“I’ll do whatever you say.”
“Damn straight, you will. Now shut up and let me think.” I leaned against the wall, standing quietly as we waited for Jan to return. Quentin did the same, imitating my posture either unconsciously or by design. We’d just had time for me to start becoming really uncomfortable about the bodies when the door at the top of the stairs opened, and Alex stepped uneasily inside.
“Jan said you wanted these?”
He was balancing four paper cups on a small tray. He looked understandably unhappy about being there; the basement had become the company morgue, and these had been his friends. His expression of unhappiness deepened when he saw my scowl.
“Where’s Jan?” I asked.
“April called her to help Elliot with something. She said I could . . . look, what do you want me to do with these? I can go. I just . . .” He sighed. “I wanted to help.”
He looked so contrite that I thawed a bit, and motioned for him to come down, ignoring Quentin’s deepening scowl. “Fine. Bring those on over here.”
“Sure,” Alex said, giving the room another uneasy glance before descending. Quentin met him at the base of the stairs, taking the tray away and leaving him blinking. No one does imperious quite like a Daoine Sidhe. “Is that everything you needed?”
“For the moment.” I took the first cup from the tray, gesturing for Quentin to follow me over to Barbara’s body. Having Alex there served at least one purpose; Quentin didn’t like him, and that meant he’d be too busy standing on his own dignity to argue when I told him what to do.
“What are you going to do with the water?”
“We’re going to try waking the blood.” I started scraping dried blood from Barbara’s wrist and adding it to the water. Quentin stiffened, but as I expected, he didn’t protest. Dignity is a wonderful tool sometimes.
Alex swallowed, looking sick. “Why?”
“The blood has to be awake for us to ride it.” The water had taken on a pink tinge. I returned the cup to the tray and picked up the second. “If it works, we may be able to see the killer.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“We try something else.”
“Why can’t Jan do it?”
“Because Jan isn’t the daughter of the most powerful blood-worker in Faerie, so she probably couldn’t wake the stuff up in the first place.” I tried to focus on what I was doing. “My mother could do this without breaking a sweat.”
“Right,” said Alex. “So were you able to . . . get anything . . . from Colin’s blood?”
“No, because there was nothing for us to ‘get.’ ” I passed the second cup of bloody water to Quentin. “Here.”
Alex frowned. “Nothing?”
“Nothing. The blood was empty.” I grimaced. “And before you ask, no, it’s not supposed to work that way.”
“So how do you know this time will be any different?”
“I don’t. I’m a half-blood and Quentin’s untrained, and this blood is old enough that I might not get anything under normal circumstances . . . but it’s worth trying.” Pinching my nose, I gulped down the contents of my cup. Quentin did the same with his.
All I got was the bitter, watery taste of diluted blood. There wasn’t a flicker of memory.
Quentin coughed and dropped his cup on the tray. “There’s nothing there.”
I sighed, putting my cup next to his. “It must have been too old.” He didn’t have to know that I was lying. I crossed to Yui’s cot and folded the sheet back, saying, “Maybe three weeks will make the difference.”
“You’re going to try again?” Alex asked.
“Have you got a better idea?” I picked up the third cup, scraping the blood off Yui’s right wrist. “If so, please share. I’m all out of good ideas.”
“Not really. I just . . . I want this to stop.”
“Yeah, well, if I were you, I’d have left by now. Gone somewhere safer.” Like the middle of a minefield.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” I handed Quentin his cup, started preparing my own.
“It’s a little hard to explain.”
“Doesn’t Terrie want to go?” I asked. Quentin looked up at the mention of Terrie’s name, suddenly interested.
Alex flinched. “Not really. That’s part of it.”
“Have you tried explaining that staying here might be fatal?”
“We don’t see each other much,” he said, uncomfortably. “It makes it hard to explain things.”
“She works the night shift, and she found the first body, right?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding startled and a bit wary. Not a good sign. “How did you know?”
I looked at him blandly. “Jan told me.”
“Right.” He sighed.
“If you see her, let her know I want to talk to her.”
His eyes widened. “Why?”
I expected his reaction: no one wants to hear that someone wants to talk to their relatives as part of a murder investigation. What I didn’t expect was the expression on Quentin’s face—for a moment, he looked like I’d slapped him.
“Calm down,” I said, directing the statement to both of them. “I just want to ask her a few questions. I’m not accusing anyone of anything.” Yet.
Alex calmed marginally, saying, “If I see her, I’ll let her know.”
“Good.” I sipped the bloody water instead of gulping this time, trying to linger. Quentin saw this and did the same. Not that it did any good; the blood was as empty as Barbara’s. I spat it back into the cup. “Well, that was useless.”
“Nothing here, either,” said Quentin. He was starting to look green around the edges. The magic wasn’t working, but he was still tasting the blood.
Alex peered at us. “Are you going to throw your cups at me if I say you look like hell?”
I considered for a moment, finally saying, “I won’t.”
“I might,” Quentin said.
“I’ll risk it. You look like hell. Have you had anything to eat since breakfast?”
“No,” I admitted, and sighed. “I’m still mad at you.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to eat.
Come on. We can hit the cafeteria and get some food into you. The cooks are gone, but the vending machines still work.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” I said, grudgingly, as I dropped my cup back onto the tray. There wasn’t any blood on my fingers. They just felt that way. I wiped them against the legs of my jeans, trying to be casual about it. “Is there a phone in the cafeteria?”
“Yes,” said Alex.
“I’m not hungry,” said Quentin.
“Is there coffee?” I asked.
“You
“I’m sold.” I looked toward Quentin. “Come on. I’ll buy you a soda.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re a teenager. You’re always hungry.” I was hungry, whether or not Quentin was, and I’d focus better after a sandwich and some coffee. “Can we get an escort to the cafeteria?”
Looking amused, he asked, “You two need a native guide?”
“Please. Unless you think you have enough staff left to send search parties.”
“The place isn’t that bad.”
“Uh-huh.” I spread the sheets back over Barbara and Yui. Maybe they wouldn’t care, but I did. Quentin was tossing the cups into the garbage can, not bothering to empty them first. “Have you ever been to Shadowed Hills?”
“No, I can’t say that I have.”
“Amateur,” Quentin muttered, and started up the stairs.
“Quentin . . .” He didn’t stop. Sighing, I followed.
Alex came along behind me, pausing to close the basement door. It didn’t lock. “So what’s the big deal about Shadowed Hills?”
He was clearly trying to get back into my good graces. I considered the sincere unhappiness in his expression, and gave in, saying, “Shadowed Hills is just about as bad as this place. I guess the Torquills just have a family grudge against linear space. I’m practically a native, and I still get lost there.”
“This place is confusing at first, but it gets better. You’ll catch on.”
“I hope so.” Quentin was ten feet ahead. I called, “If you don’t know where you’re going, stop.” He glared back at me, but stopped, letting us catch up. “That’s better. Come on.”
Alex led us through the halls, choosing what I assumed was the best route through rooms that connected without attention to the laws of architecture or common sense. I was sure the physical buildings were more sanely constructed, but we weren’t in the physical buildings: we were in the knowe. Quentin walked in sullen silence, but Alex made up for it by chattering wildly, pointing out interesting quirks of the knowe’s construction and cracking bad jokes. I didn’t pay attention to a word. People were dying.
“Are we there yet?” Quentin demanded.
“Patience, young one!” Alex said. Quentin glared, and he amended, “Almost. The cafeteria’s just ahead.” Then he turned to wink at me, smiling broadly. I smiled back, almost unintentionally. It was hard to stay mad when he was working so hard at winning my approval.