As Archer walked he could smell the salty scent of the nearby sea. It reminded him of Romney Marsh. Of home. Home and long ago. He was impatient with himself, but perhaps the sense of nostalgia wasn’t surprising given his mission.
Ezra lived in an old apartment building on Vine Street. The scent of lamb moussaka filled the downstairs hallway and tagged along with Archer up to the second floor. Beatles music played from a few doors down.
Archer tapped on Ezra’s door. After a few seconds, he knocked again.
The door swung open just as Ezra’s goblin face was morphing into more socially acceptable features; the lipless piranha smile transformed into something equally toothy but cheesy and human.
That smile too faded as Ezra took note of his caller.
“Green.” His voice came out in a croak.
“I was in the neighborhood,” Archer said.
“Oh. Hello. I di—” Ezra staggered back as Archer applied the heel of his hand and the toe of his boot to the door and shoved. “Wh-what are you doing?”
“I thought we might have a little chat.”
Ezra took another few steps back and looked around as though seeking an escape way that had suddenly disappeared. “Chat? About what?”
Archer slipped inside and closed the door, leaning casually back against the painted plywood. “Guess.”
Ezra shook his head.
“You set me up.”
Ezra’s human face wavered as his masking spell dissolved and reformed itself in goblin lines. He bit his nearly nonexistent lips, and though he was considerably taller than Archer, he seemed to shrink into himself.
“I heard there was trouble.” Ezra gulped. “But it wasn’t anything to do with me. How could I know the badges were watching the Moth Man?”
“That’s your story? That the Irregulars were following the Moth Man?”
“Of course. You can’t think I’d work against you.”
Archer smiled. “Can’t I?”
Ezra shook his head. “I’m no friend of the badges.”
“That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t sell me out to save your own skin. Hell, you’d sell your own mother out if you thought there was something in it for you.”
Ezra looked hurt. As hurt as a goblin could look. “That’s not true. I’ve got scruples. Not many, I admit, but I’ve got’em. Same as you.”
Archer considered Ezra’s sweaty, misshapen face. He could have been telling the truth, of course. It wasn’t impossible. Unlikely, but not impossible. The relationship between fae and goblin had always been…unpredictable. And with the mounting instability among the Irish fae in the Tuatha Dé Dannan Islands and the large goblin mercenary forces there, they were likely to become more so.
Ezra unwisely launched into further protests, finishing, “We all know what you’re doing. You and your friends. We’re all beh-ind you.”
Ezra’s intel was out of date—Archer’s radical youth was well in the past now—but perhaps that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Archer said gently, “If I were to discover that you had tried to double-cross—”
“I didn’t! I wouldn’t!”
“I have a very long memory.”
“I know that. You don’t have to do the glowing eyes thing. I know! I’m not a collaborator.”
He was lying. The more he denied it, the more certain Archer was, but what course would best serve his purpose? Knowing Ezra couldn’t be trusted made him a useful conduit for feeding incorrect information to the Irregulars. While it was true Archer was no longer involved in radical activities, his sympathies were largely unchanged and he was privy to the plans and schemes of many whose aims did not align with those of the NATO Irregular Affairs Division.
Besides, Archer wanted something more than he wanted revenge. All day long the thought of the green glass beads had haunted him. If there was a chance they still existed…
“If it wasn’t you, then it was the Moth Man.”
“Yes.” Ezra leaped at this explanation. “That’s what I told you. It had to be that freak.”
“Where does he live?”
“Somewhere in Downtown Eastside.”
“Where?”
“Hastings Street.” Ezra babbled out the address.
“All right. I’ll pay a call on him. See what he has to say for himself.” Archer watched Ezra’s fluctuating features.
Ezra’s gaze shifted. “You can’t trust anything he says.”
“Now, now. People say the same thing about you, Ezra.” Archer smiled maliciously before slipping out the door.
***
Downtown Eastside wasn’t the hellhole it had been a few years earlier, but it was still no place to be after dark if you didn’t need to be. Archer had his favorite places in the DTES. Carnegie Center with its century-old stained glass windows. The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden with its mirror-like ponds and exotic flowers scenting the smoggy night. Hypodermic needles no longer littered the pavement, but the ratio of drug addicts, prostitutes, and the homeless compared to regular citizens was still too high for most people’s comfort. The streets always smelled of blood and urine to Archer, but his olfactory sense was more highly developed than that of a pure-blooded human.
He walked briskly, and though a couple of revenants followed him for a few streets, only the still-living variety hassled him with offers of drugs for sale. At five foot nine and slightly built, Archer looked like easy prey from a distance. Up close, his faerie heritage was apparent, and while the semblance of birth defects was rarely a deterrent, possible—or at least sober—predators veered off.
Archer found the Moth Man’s place without trouble. It was an old brick building, a former hotel from the 1920s, converted into a number of single-occupant residences. A musical clash of cultures was being waged in the dingy halls, and somewhere a baby wailed unconsoled. People sat in open doorways, smoking pot and talking loudly. Red-rimmed eyes watched Archer pass, but no one spoke to him.
He knocked on the door next to a tarnished nameplate stating R. Mann.
A double look at the peephole revealed a pale, protuberant eye peering through at him. Archer waited.
There came a sound of sliding bolts, several of them, and then a chain, and at last the door swung open.
“Good evening,” Archer said.
Without speaking, the Moth Man nodded for Archer to enter.
Archer stepped out of the hall into a gloomy room full of boxes. The boxes were stacked all the way to the ceiling and marked with the brand names of televisions and stereos and fans. The fans were a little puzzling, but whatever. A chair and table were positioned a few inches from a television set. The television was on, but it was muted. Teenagers danced and sang, silently energetic on a large stage.
“I thought you would come.” The Moth Man pulled his chair out. “If you got away from the drearies.”
“The…drearies?”
“The badges. Irregulars.” The Moth Man said the word with contempt. His eyes looked pink in the poor light. If so, they were the only color in his skeletal face.
“You got away all right. From the badges, I mean.”
“Sure. I blend in with the crowd.” The Moth Man settled at the table in front of the television. There was a plate stacked with pancakes, though where he had cooked them in this tiny stove-less apartment was unclear. He proceeded to pour chocolate syrup over the heap. The syrup pooled on the plate in a brown puddle. “I was just having my supper.”
“Don’t let me interrupt.”
“I won’t.” The Moth Man neatly quartered his pancakes and then bisected them again. His attention, that which wasn’t focused on his plate, was all on the soundless television.
Archer began, “Last night you mentioned…”
“Green glass beads,” the Moth Man completed the sentence. He smiled and his teeth were brown with chocolate. The effect was fairly ghastly, but Archer didn’t care. All he heard was “green glass beads.”
His mouth was dry as he said simply, “Yes.”
“Family heirloom, eh?”