Stones are useful things for people without any ability. You can buy them and pay someone to charge them. Of course, depending on the quality of stone and the strength of the charger, the price can go up considerably. Plenty of the fey make a decent living servicing wards for humans. For someone with no other skills and a dislike of manual labor, it has quite an upside. No overhead, and all it takes to replenish one's essence is a good nap.

Most stone-charging has a purpose. You can set up alarms like I had done in my apartment. Wards can be used to keep someone awake or put them to sleep. They can even be the catalyst for killing someone, though that takes some doing and is extremely illegal. The wards placed on the wings of the murder victims simply immobilized the victims. That was their only point as far as I could tell.

Which is why I was having such a hard time figuring out the selenite stones. The point of charging them with essence escaped me. It didn't seem to do anything to the corpses. It just dissipated.

The stones weren't catalysts, at least not in any sense I could understand. The cause of death was not fey ability-related. Cutting out someone's heart takes only a knife, physical strength, and at least a little psychosis.

The missing hearts were another matter. As the seat of essence, they were powerful organs. Taking them was obviously about taking their power. The essence the hearts contained could be stabilized and held for periods of time, the same way Briallen had held the flit body in a kind of chrysalis to prevent it from disappearing. Just because I didn't know how to do it didn't mean it couldn't be done.

I sat up so sharply, my desk chair squealed in protest. Essence was the connection. The hearts and the stones both held it. The killer wasn't just leaving stones as tokens for the hearts. He was leaving a vessel of essence for the vessel of essence he took.

I tried to go through the idea step by step. It was an exchange, but it wasn't equal. He took more than he left. He needed more. But for what? So far, all the other ska births had turned up dead. Was he dying? Were the murders some kind of twisted revenge? Had he somehow discovered a way to make himself well? I shook my head in frustration. Only someone with access to secret knowledge and the will to use it would take someone's essence, like Briallen had taken mine to keep Stinkwort from dying. Only she wasn't about to hand the knowledge over to me on a silver platter. I had to find it some other way.

I paced into the living room. My mind felt numb from the circles it was running in. Outside, orange light smeared across the hazy sky as the sun set. Lightning flickered as it had all day, followed by a lethargic rumble of thunder. My stomach grumbled back. I hadn't eaten, and I needed food. I debated ordering something for delivery but didn't have enough cash for a tip. Murdock was still processing my fee, and my disability check wasn't due for another week. I slipped on an old pair of boots and left the apartment.

Down in the vestibule, mail was scattered on the floor. As I picked it up, a prickling ran along the back of my neck, and my defense shields triggered. Dropping the mail, I spun toward the door in a crouch. The slab of steel was propped open with a newspaper. Flattening my back against the wall, I pushed the door open with my foot. A wave of humid air rolled in, rank with the smell of the channel. The street was dark and empty. The lamppost was out again, a fairly common phenomenon. I could sense no one nearby, though the whispering remains of essence hung in the air above the sidewalk. Some of them felt vaguely menacing, and quite a few trailed into the building.

Behind and above me, I could hear a door open for a moment, releasing a dull roar of music and voices before it closed again. My shields let go as I began to relax. A party was just getting into swing, and some idiot had propped the door open. Shaking my head, I let the door close firmly behind me and walked up the street.

Reaching the corner of Sleeper and Summer, I turned left. Three doors up, the lights of the Nameless Deli washed out onto the street, an oasis of activity on an otherwise dead block. I paused at the door. Druids can sense the essence people leave behind like perfume. Someone who had been hanging around the front of the deli had also been in front of my apartment building. The person's essence was elfin in nature, but otherwise unremarkable. The coincidence made me pause, especially since I hadn't sensed it between the two places. Looking up and down the street, I saw no one. I pushed open the door.

Walking into the Nameless is always a bit of a shock. The harsh fluorescent lights flare so bright, they make one squint even on a sunny day. At three in the morning, they can be excruciating. Very few people know it is the side effect of a protection spell that makes people less inclined to be aggressive. It is a shoddy spell, but potent enough. For such a bad neighborhood, the Nameless is rarely robbed, and even then only by someone so hopped up on drugs that they end up being arrested right outside the door.

Dmitri leaned on the counter in the empty store, reading a car magazine. He was a dark-skinned Greek with honey-colored hair who'd probably been charming his way into beds since he was twelve. He'd been working for his grandparents since he was a kid and still filled in on the occasional weekend when he didn't have too heavy a class load at UMass/Boston. He glanced up at me with a brief smile, closed the magazine, and trailed along with me to the deli case. I ordered a sub with everything on it.

A bell rang as the door opened, and I tensed. Without turning, I sensed an elf come in behind me, the same one who had been in front of my building. In my peripheral vision, I saw him step up to the register and toss a pack of gum on the counter. Dmitri looked up, grabbed a towel, and wiped his hands. He went behind the register and rang up the sale.

Casually, I looked over. The elf was not quite my height, decently built, and dressed in old jeans and a white T-shirt. Two little earrings hooped around the point of his right ear, and dark sunglasses covered most of his face. I hate people who wear sunglasses at night. He nonchalantly looked over at me as he collected his change and gum, then strolled out.

Dmitri came back and finished making my sandwich. He wrapped it up, and we went to the register. I handed him a few bills. "Ever see that guy before?"

Dmitri shook his head and gave me change. "Not really. He was in about an hour ago."

"Thanks." He picked up his car magazine again.

I stood in front of the deli for a long moment. The street was empty again, but I could sense the elf's essence trailing to the right-toward my apartment building. Shaking off my apprehension, I walked home. The elf was probably just a party guest, and I wasn't about to go a block out of my way just to satisfy a little prickling paranoia. As I turned the corner, I realized that this would be the scene in a movie where I would think, "Why would that idiot walk around that corner?"

Sleeper Street was quiet. Too quiet, I thought with delicious omen. I mentally chuckled at my own melodrama. Sleeper Street was always quiet; that's why I liked it. A few cars were parked haphazardly along the curb, sharing space with an old refrigerator, mildewed cartons, and glass fragments. No one ever parked in the loading lane of the warehouse across the street. Delivery trucks showed up way too early in the morning for most of my neighbors to get up and move their cars.

In the dimness ahead, I saw movement near my building. A bit of sheet lightning flashed against the overcast and in the brief instant of light, I could see it was an elf with a crew cut. Dressed in a tank top and shorts, he was leaning against the building. He pushed himself away from the wall and moved toward me slowly. I purposely activated my shields. He wasn't the guy from me deli, but that guy was nowhere to be seen. I gauged how far ahead of me he could have gotten before I left the deli and came up with a very short distance. Without breaking stride, I cut into the street. If the guy coming toward me were innocent, he would probably think I was an overly cautious wimp.