Wow, I must be hungrier than I thought.
The distraction is welcome when Marlow clears his throat and breaks the silence.
"Suppose it's about time I fill you in, huh? Tell you how we ended up in this mess."
"It would help us plan our next move."
"There isn’t much to it,” he says. “On a job for an unrelated client, I was in Brighton when I shouldn’t have been, in the wrong place when I stumbled on… on a bloodbath.” His face darkens, eyes clouding over as he remembers the grisly scene.
I’m struck by the urge to reach out and comfort him, but before I can talk myself in or out of that insane urge, he shakes it off and continues.
“Someone had opened a passage recently. I could feel it. Looked like someone killed a man and dumped his body in the beyond where it will never be seen again. At the time I hadn’t known it was a man, one Kevin Williamson who had befallen some nasty fate.”
“Then what happened?”
“The authorities found me. Surrounded by blood in the middle of a crime scene, along with evidence of opening a passageway, the kind I happen to be capable of creating.” Hegives a humorless laugh. “What’s the expression? If it looks like a demon duck and quacks like a demon duck, it’s a demon duck.”
“That’s not an expression.”
“Whatever.” He waves a hand, still clutching his meat.
“Can you even do that?” I ask. “Transport a body?”
Marlow smiles and then wipes it off his face so quickly I think it must have been a genuine reaction. Maybe he didn’t expect me to pick up on that. “No, I can’t. Not that thebrilliantauthorities listened. Creatures only come throughafterI’ve formed agreements with them. Anything else would take too much energy. I’m not exactly sure what would happen if I tried transporting things across realities all willy-nilly, but I doubt it’s pleasant.”
The knot in my chest loosens. This isn’t the kind of concrete proof that will convince the police of his innocence, but it convincesme.Finally, I have something solid to grab onto, an actual flaw in the case against Marlow instead of just this nagging doubt and whatever the hell my instincts have been screaming at me.
My shoulders drop an inch. The pheasant tastes better now, somehow.
“The police have my species and skills listed in their database,” he says next. “So they confiscated my tools.” He shoots a grin at Iggy, who is perched on the remains of a drumstick and gnawing on the bone. “Iggy managed to save my key. Without being able to summon extra help, they decided a regular cell would hold me.”
“But they didn’t know about Iggy.”
Marlow nods. “I don’t have the strength required to bend the bars, but he does.”
"And I twisted them back so no one else could escape with Marlow."
"Yeah, my little law abider.” Marlow pats the gargoyle’s head fondly. “You didn’t let any of the other villains escape."
“You aren’t a villain,” I say just as Iggy does.
"Of course, that trick didn’t work with your wolves."
"Because we made the bars and walls resistant." The bars of our cells were old and rusted, so we spelled them to be unbreakable. That meant Iggy couldn’t bend them and they needed another way to escape jail this time.
Marlow offers me something from his pocket. A guitar pick? “The real killer dropped this.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it was at the crime scene and the person who dropped it is still alive. I’ve been using my spirit form to track him. That’s what I was doing when the cops found me in the middle of a bloodbath, trying to see who did this.”
“Did you tell the police?”
He shakes his head. “I thought about it, but they were only interested in hearing a confession. It’s better this way, the pick helps guide my spirit form in the right direction.” Like the rings he’s missing that he uses to navigate.
“Is tracking them safe?”
“Should be,” he says. “I hadn’t done it before, but I’m staying on this plane instead of traveling elsewhere, so it’s easier to find my way.” He sighs. “We escaped the same night I got caught, so I wasn’t even that far behind the killer. But I’ve had trouble tuning in ever since he arrived in Concordia. I saw glimpses of the Iron Pack and nothing’s changed, so I think he’s still there."
