J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough by J.L. Doty Page B

that kind of power and he didn’t even come close to a full summoning. This just doesn’t add up.”
    “No,” Colleen said, her voice almost a dreamy, absent-minded sigh. “It doesn’t. And let’s not forget they were undoubtedly Tertius caste, new emergents, and yet they exercised restraint, didn’t feed blindly, didn’t simply go on a killing spree. That young man should’ve been dead within seconds of their emergence, unless something else helped them, controlled them. And it clearly was not that young man.”
    McGowan looked at her sharply and was surprised to see she’d dropped her shadows. “You said something , not someone . You don’t mean to imply a nether-being summoned them?”
    She shook her head. “No. We all know that’s not possible. But I sensed something else at work here, and I don’t know what that something was.”
    “And let’s not forget the succubus,” he said, returning his attention to the street in front of his car. “Before the emergents showed up I sensed one, I’m certain of it.”
    He could hear her breathing as she considered his words for a long moment. “Yes, there was something. For a few seconds it was right there in the room with us. I’m almost certain it tried to protect the young man from those Russian thugs. But it wasn’t a succubus. In fact, I don’t think it was a demon of any kind.”
    “Then what was it?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, “and that bothers me no end.”
    This whole situation bothered McGowan. “We have to find young Conklin. And fast.”
    “So you can kill him?” she asked, and he could hear the disapproval in her voice.
    He’d known her too long to be anything but honest with her. “Maybe. I don’t know. We can’t allow him to summon demons without the proper protections. You know as well as I that one demon loose in this city could kill hundreds before we put it down. And if it was healthy, really healthy—unlike that wasted emergent I put down tonight—it could hide among us and feed off the population for years.”
    She spoke hesitantly. “I felt no summons, just yearning. The young man was filled with pain and sorrow, and a lot of love and a deep longing. But he performed no summons.”
    McGowan looked at her again, but she’d recalled her shadows so he looked back to the street ahead. When Colleen spoke her Irish accent had thickened considerably. “Old Wizard, do you think you could find it in your kind heart to offer an old woman a shot of good whiskey? Just a wee dram, purely for medicinal purposes, of course.”
    He looked at her with a glint in his eyes. “Your place or mine, sweetheart?”
    She breathed a deep, exasperated sigh. “Well now, old man, my place is six thousand miles from here, so it’ll have to be yours. But all I want from you is good whiskey and something to eat, and a good night’s sleep  . . . by myself, you old pervert.”
    “Sorry, my dear,” he said. “I can offer you the whiskey and food, but no sleep tonight. Karpov is resourceful, so we have to get to Conklin before he does.”
    She nodded and asked, “Did you catch the background scent in the young man’s apartment?”
    “Ya, Sidhe. Faint, but there, almost like a Sidhe nest.”
    She continued nodding. “Yes, a Sidhe nest, vacated for some time now, but still a nest, and unquestionably Unseelie, Winter Court.”
    After Joe Stalin ran back into Paul’s building the night sky lost its dark pinkish-purple hue, the otherworldly feeling that had overlaid Paul’s neighborhood dissipated and the street returned to normal, as if anything about this night could be normal. He and the midget picked themselves up and the midget led Paul up the street, staying in the shadows as much as possible. Paul moved slowly, limping and shuffling painfully. He felt guilty for abandoning Suzanna and Cloe, but he knew he was bug-fuck nuts, and they were just figments of his imagination. Come to think of it, the man-sized bat-thing that climbed out