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I’d forgotten Catcher had been an expert, had given my mother her first katana lessons. From what I knew about him and his particularity where weapons were concerned, I didn’t think he’d approve of Lulu’s Everything in the Duffel Bag method of storage.
She pulled out the wakizashi and a handgun, then rezipped it and put it away again.
She belted the short sword expertly, checked the handgunexpertly to see if it was loaded, then slipped it into her pocket. “Ready to go.”
“I can see that.”
“One thing,” she said, then held up a finger. She pulled a sticky note from a pad on the counter, scribbled something, and stuck the note to the refrigerator door.
I stepped closer to read it.GONE TO QUESTION FAIRIES, it read, then listed the date, followed immediately by,IFNOTBACKIN24HRSPLZ RETRIEVE BODIES.
“You’ve also gotten more morbid in my absence.”
“I dwell in darkness,” she said flatly. “The ravens are my minions and the moon my master.”
“I know I haven’t lived in Chicago for a while, but do you really think we can just drive right up to the castle and ask for an invite?”
“We’ll find out,” she said, then looked down at the cat. “Eleanor of Aquitaine, guard the door. We’re going hunting.”
THIRTEEN
Calling Lulu’s vehicle a car was too generous. It was, at best, a caricature of a car. A soup can rolled onto its side, with pasted-on tires that had more in common with doughnuts than road-ready wheels.
“An Auto could be here in minutes,” I said with a grimace.
“Autos are corporate; corporations lie.” She unlocked the door, began to wedge her way inside. “It’s small and it’s ugly, but it runs on used cooking oil. Zero Waste, remember?”
That explained why it smelled like peanuts and fried chicken. I folded myself—origami style—into the front seat. “No point in paying for aesthetics or space.”
“Exactly.”
She hit the ignition, which I assumed released a snack to the hamsters under the hood.
I hoped to god we wouldn’t need a getaway car.
• • •
The moon was nearly full, only a fingernail of shadow along the edge, and it cast an eerily strong glow over the gravel where we’d parked across the street from the fairies’ home.
When they’d followed vampires, shifters, and sorcerers into the public sphere twenty years ago, they’d bought an unused tract of land in South Loop along the south fork of the Chicago River. The strip of land had been an empty lot for years. They’d built a fence around the property and a castle in the middle.
A narrow path of crushed white stone led onto the grounds beneath an arched gate in the iron fence. At the end of the straight drive was the dark stone wall of the castle. There were round, crenelated towers at each corner, square towers at the midpoint of each side, and a gatehouse in front.
“You have to go through the gatehouse to get in,” Lulu said. “The courtyard’s behind that—it’s called a bailey—and it circles the building that holds the living quarters. That’s called the keep. There will probably be a lot of guards.”
“You really looked into this fairy-castle thing.”
“I’m nosy. We could skip the steel,” she said, looking down at the wakizashi in her hand. “Reduces the odds of the OMB finding out about it.”
“No weapons is not an option. We both go in with what we can carry. And are people really calling it that?”
“OMB? Yes. Fewer syllables.”
“I don’t approve.”
“Color me shocked.”
“Let’s go,” I said, casting a final glance at the moon. Not even full, and it was still nearly bright enough to read by. We wouldn’t exactly be making a secret approach; they’d see us coming up the path. But maybe that would make them feel more secure about our visit—and less likely to freak out.
