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"None. There's definitely something not right."

  "We should learn a lot from the healer."

  "You sure he doesn't know about Old Bones?"

  "Believe it or not, Garrett, almost nobody outside your acquaintance does. Particularly since you've been inactive for so long."

  Things do get forgotten quickly in TunFaire. Maybe that's an urban survival skill.

  "The Dead Man is barely a spook story. He's something kids scare each other with. Nobody really believes that he exists."

  "Interesting."

  "I have to go soon. But not right away. I want to be here for the healer."

  "If he ever gets here."

  "He'll show up. He might not come inside if he doesn't see me."

  He would-unless he could shake off Loghyr mind control.

  The healer is close now but is very uncomfortable. He is not a people person.

  Belinda did not react. He had not included her. I told her, "His Nibs thinks the healer is finally here." Old Bones would avoid direct contact till it was too late for the man to get away. And, maybe, Belinda would go on believing her own thoughts were inviolate.

  I felt a tickle of Loghyr amusement.

  I told Belinda, "Your man is really nervous. Get him before he spooks." And, "Let's don't jump him before we lock the door behind him."

  I got a hint of something like the old saw about teaching grandma to suck eggs. At the same time Old Bones used a gentle influence to move our guests into his room or Singe's office.

  Moments later I said, "Doctor. There you are. I'm getting really worried about my friend."

  The healer gripped his bag in front of his chest. He stared at the three ratmen. He looked like he had just been sentenced to hang.

  "Are you all right?"

  His mouth open and closed. Nothing came out. Belinda filled the doorway behind him. She did not keep her expression benign.

  I said, "Don't mind these guys. They're here to protect Morley."

  Almost inaudibly, the healer asked, "You spilled the medicine I gave you before?"

  "Yep. Fumbled it when I was opening it. It hit the floor and rolled under the bed. It was empty before I could fish it out." He relaxed slightly. I grinned. "No, not really. That was a lie. We thought having you think that would help us get you here, you villain."

  His eyes got big. He managed to turn even paler.

  His attempt to flee failed totally. Belinda didn't move.

  Oh, yes. He is guilty. The medication he provided was designed to keep Mr. Dotes unconscious. Our villain is greedy but he is not a murderer.

  I told the little man in black, "Friend, you have reached a crossroads. This is the pivotal moment of your life. And it could be fatal."

  Take care. He believes he still has options.

  "The lady behind you isn't happy with you. She paid you to heal this man. You poisoned him instead. The gentleman behind her is General Block of the Civil Guard. He wants to ask you some questions, too."

  Easy, Old Bones sent. Stop pressing. I have to get control of his body functions, especially his heartbeat. He could die if I do not.

  I started to ask a question.

  Silence! His heart is about to burst.

  I'd heard of that in mice and horses but never a human being.

  I raised a hand to Block and Belinda. We had to let the Dead Man work his magic.

  Old Bones stilled, calmed, and reported, He was prepared for entrapment by a master hypnotist who was unaware that he might encounter someone like me. I have undone the commands driving him toward heart failure but I have failed to discover who placed those commands.

  Inspiration. "Belinda, why did you choose this particular healer?"

  "I went to the Children of the Light. I asked for someone. Then I proved that I could afford them."

  Maybe that inspiration was halfway a dud. "How long did it take them to decide to help you?"

  "Oh. Several days. More than three."

  "You went to them before you came to me." Which didn't hurt my feelings. My skills as a healer are slightly inferior.

  Old Bones sent, This one was given the assignment by lot. He was suborned between his first and second visits to Mr. Dotes. A great deal of money was involved. He has done wicked things before. This is the first time his perfidy has been detected.

  The old devil was gleeful.

  Belinda said, "You have a lifesaving opportunity, healer. That life being your own."

  The Dead Man stabilized the healer's vitals, denying him the escape of death. I'm sure he plundered the man's memories at the same time.

  I said, "I'm feeling generous. I'm going to offer you a chance to save two lives." Playmate was asleep in a chair in the Dead Man's room. I would make this greedy idiot heal him after he turned Morley around.

  This is remarkably difficult, the Dead Man sent. I cannot negate the full regime of posthypnotic commands. What we want we will have to get quickly. The self-destruct sequence has only been stalled. I may not be able to hold it off indefinitely.

  I looked at Morley, at the healer, at Morley again, and could not find in myself any sympathy for the healer.

  39

  I called General Block back. He had drifted away, seduced by the siren of free food and beer. Plus, for the moment, he was a celebrity. Even he craves admiration.

  "See if Kolda is still here."

  "The poisoner?"

  "He's a chemist. An apothecary. A natural extracts guy." Why was I making excuses for Kolda? Because I kind of liked him? He did try to poison me, once upon a time.

  "Whatever."

  "Never mind. Skipper, find Singe. Tell her I need Kolda."

  One of the ratmen left. While I waited I filled Block in on what we had dredged out of the healer while he was away enjoying his back-patting. He was aghast. "And now he's doing his damned best to die before we can get anything else. While he's practically begging Old Bones to save his ass."

  Block lost color. He swallowed a few times. That one of the Children of the Light could be so twisted was a shocker, apparently.

  In this mean city we should find nothing darkly amazing. Even in the age of police protection.

  Block gurgled, "He's awake. I thought he was asleep. I was promised that he was in a full, deep sleep."

  I got it, then. It wasn't the twisted healer. It was the Dead Man. I laughed. "Somebody lied. But not to worry. He doesn't poke around inside people just because he can. And when he does he passes on only what is germane. In this case, what this man knows about what was done to Morley Dotes. Meantime, we're going to lose him if he carries out the hypnotic instructions driving him."

  "That can't be. I know a little about hypnotism. We use it in interrogations. You can't make somebody kill himself."

  "Old Bones tells me you can if your victim doesn't know that's what he's doing. You make him think he's doing something else."

  Whoever prepared this man was a genius. He started with a typical healer and made the man over into an assassin without triggering any serious conflict.

  "And quick enough to prep him for Morley?"

  Pay attention. We have established that this man has committed other crimes. I suspect that similar mental manipulations were used on Jimmy Two Steps.

  "There is a connection?"

  Information in General Block's mind, compared with facts in the healer's, makes that seem likely. The puppet master evidently agrees with the Al-Khar about you. You need to be kept away. You are a wild card. The cascade of events so far suggests that they might be right.

  "Interesting." I began making further connections.

  Yes. The attack on you and Miss Tate took place soon after Miss Contague decided to ask you to protect Mr. Dotes. Then, on successive nights, attempts were made to get you at Fire and Ice.

  "Me? Not Morley?"

  You, I am certain. Mr. Dotes would be useful collateral damage but would be neutralized anyway once he started his medication. You, however, have a history of stumbling around and causing
avalanches of unexpected consequences. It is what you do. Particularly in the mind opposing us.

  "This is someone we've run into before."

  I expect only obliquely, if at all, with us taking no notice. Aha! I broke the code. I found the key to the sequence.

  "Huh?"

  The healer. I can save him. I have cracked the progression of suggestions laid into his mind.

  "Good. Once you have him calmed down and set to go, turn him loose on Playmate. Accept no excuses."

  Of course.

  Block asked, "Interesting private chat?"

  "Yes. He figured out how to save our healer assassin from himself."

  "Excellent. I do have some questions for that man."

  "Go through His Nibs. Otherwise, you'll be wasting your time."

  Block did follow. He nodded, admitted, "This isn't the first bad guy to turn up with no notion why he did what he did and no idea who told him to do it."

  Intriguing. The General is reflecting on thefts of chemicals that turned up in that warehouse.

  "Bring them around, General. Let Old Bones chat them up. Meantime, how about you see the Children of the Light about this guy? They might be able to shed some light."

  He refused to acknowledge my clever word play. "Ooh! That sounds like fun. Deal will be all over that. We wouldn't even be breaking any recent rules. This would be a separate case. An attempted murder possibly connected to successful murders that had no obvious connection with a warehouse in Elf Town."

  I started to ask if the Guard had canvassed the neighborhood. I got a caution from the Dead Man. That had been ruled out by Prince Rupert.

  "How about hunting the resurrection men? Has that been disallowed?"

  Block smirked. "Not yet. But they're damned hard to find. They've been told to lie low and keep quiet by somebody who scares them more than we do."

  That figured.

  Belinda leaned into the doorway, which was the best she could do because of the crowd in the room already. "I got Kolda. It took a while. We had to run him down."

  40

  Block had arrived looking for one thing. He went out with something else in mind, but happy and eager to get to work.

  The Dead Man would give him additional information. Soon the Al-Khar would be a-bustle. No one but the Director and the commanding general would know that the Guard was violating the spirit of their orders.

  Kolda joined me in with Morley. He was nervous. Our history, while limited, left him no reason to think that he was in a good position. I told him, "You're an expert in chemicals and exotic herbs. My friend, here, has been poisoned. It's not lethal, it just keeps him from waking up. And it makes him heal really slow."

  Kolda gave me a big-eyed, frightened look but didn't say anything.

  "The pudgy character with Dollar Dan's paw tangled in his collar delivered the poison. That was given to him, along with a lot of money, by a third party, after Miss Contague engaged him to heal my friend. She gave him a lot of money, too."

  Kolda had a worse flair for fashion than me. He couldn't keep his hair combed or his shirt tucked in. He was always nervous. His social skills were negligible. But he was a genius in his field. And he owed me.

  I had insisted, to Block, that Kolda wasn't a poisoner. But he did poison me, once upon a time. I'm still breathing and complaining. The evidence suggests that I found the antidote.

  I said, "Healer, give this man the bottle you brought today. Then Dollar Dan will take you across the hallway. Your redemption begins when you start work on Playmate."

  He didn't want to do that. Freebies went against the code of the Children of the Light. "I understand." His voice was slow and toneless. He dug out a little bottle identical to the one he had given us during his visit to Fire and Ice.

  I asked the air, "What are the chances this bottle contains the same ingredients as the first one?"

  Indeterminate. Ten seconds passed. Clever catch, Garrett. He did, in fact, consult a contact after he heard that you needed more medicine. The excuse we provided was of a sort to excite the suspicions of a paranoid supplier.

  "We do still have the original philter. Kolda can compare them."

  The healer surrendered his new bottle. Dollar Dan hustled him across the hall.

  I gave Kolda the original bottle. "This stuff goes three drops to a two-quart pitcher of water."

  "Potent, then." With commendable caution he unstopped each bottle and took a gentle sniff. Of the new bottle he said, "This is vanilla, a touch of clove oil, another of castor oil, in wood alcohol. There is something more that I don't recognize." After sniffing the original bottle, he said, "This includes everything in the other bottle, with less of the unknown odor and more of something that smells like death."

  "Definitely different formulas, then?"

  "Yes. But subtly. Both would be deadly, in different ways."

  I asked the air, "What do you think?"

  You may be on the right trail. Neither oil of clove nor oil of castor ought to dissolve in cold water but their presence, with the vanilla, might be there to suggest that the concoction is medicinal.

  "The poison has to be something that is effective in amounts so small. ."

  The beans from which castor oil is rendered. They contain a poison so deadly that infinitesimal amounts can kill scores. The poisoner's dilemma has always been how to remain unpoisoned himself, then how to disperse the poison in an effective manner. It would appear that someone has found a way to use it, one customer at a time.

  Ah! Friend Kolda has begun thinking along the same lines. I will spare you the admiration he has for the genius of his fellow chemist.

  Kolda said, "Someone has done the impossible. Someone has achieved an unbelievable breakthrough."

  I asked, "What do you mean?"

  "Someone has found a way to extract the poison from castor beans."

  "You dud. That's been known for years. What nobody does know is how to use the poison safely."

  Kolda gave back an unhappy grunt. He might not be as ignorant as we hoped.

  He was ignorant about the Dead Man. I'm not sure I approve but last time we crossed paths Old Bones added some trapdoors to Kolda's memory.

  Kolda will never remember anything he learns while visiting us.

  I was beginning to think my partner wasn't as swell as I claimed he was.

  I felt a touch of amusement from outside.

  41

  With Kolda and the healer gone to see the Dead Man there wasn't much for me to do with Morley. And it was almost time for the ratwomen.

  I decided to cultivate my atrophied social skills. But only a handful of guests remained. The healer, Kolda, and Playmate were in with the Dead Man. The rest were in Singe's office. Jon Salvation was talking up his next play. I checked the corners and under Singe's desk. Still no Winger. How did he manage?

  The Dead Man's special student, Penny Dreadful, hadn't fled when I turned up. There had been enough witnesses for her to feel safe.

  My, how she had grown!

  You notice these things when you're male and still alive.

  Morley's longtime associate Sarge was there, too. He looked lost. He looked like somebody just poisoned his kitten.

  I snagged the last available chair, beckoned Sarge, indicated my willingness to share the contents of a pitcher clearly in need of refurbishing. Sarge was slumped on a chair in a corner not occupied by Saucerhead Tharpe's or Singe's office furniture. He brightened slightly and dragged his chair over.

  "How is the restaurant managing without our boy?"

  "We don't need no barkin' from Morley to make dat work, Garrett. We been in da racket so long da business rolls on like a mill wheel turnin'. But he's our frien', too. An' none of us know what we'll do if'n he don't make it t'ru dis."

  "Belinda has probably made you crazy trying to figure out what Morley was up to when he got hurt, but. ."

  "Dat's for sure. But she don't listen to what nobody tells her so she ain't never gonna get nowhere
. She's one a dem people what figures out ahead a time what dey're gonna believe, den dey don't never hear nothin' dat disagrees."

  I'd known Belinda longer than I liked to remember and more intimately than the world needed to know. She had huge intellectual flaws. Willful disdain of facts was never one of those. "For sure? Like how?"

  "Well, you know, Morley don't got a lot a use for his et'nic roots. He's a dark elf, but, yeah? So what? He's in business in a human city an' half da people dere, dey don't know dat, can't tell dat, an' maybe don't need ta know dat if'n dey're da kind what gives a shit about dat."

  I nodded. Sarge's dialect was thicker than usual but I was following him. He was saying Morley wasn't one for living in the past. "Did something change?" He had been found in that zone where greater TunFaire fades into the neighborhood known as Elf Town. Folk there, who never saw a house in their home country, live in tenements twelve to a room and insist that they'll never put the old ways and old tongue behind them.

  "Sumptin' did. Maybe dat bint what his folks arranged him ta marry came ta town."

  "I thought he bought his way out of that a couple years ago."

  "We all t'ought dat. Maybe he just wished he did."

  Jon Salvation joined us, uninvited. He planted himself in front of me, hands on his skinny little girl hips. "Garrett, you have to help me."

  Story of my life. "I can't afford to invest in one of your plays. And I'm busy, here."

  "I don't need investors. I have people lined up to buy into anything I put on. I stick with the Weiders because they give me artistic control. But you're the only one I can count on to make my next project a success."

  I forgot Sarge and Morley briefly. Pilsuds Vilchik had presented me with a grand conundrum. No way could a street operator like me assure the success of a stage drama. Unless he wanted me to sell seats at knifepoint. Or maybe he wanted Winger kept out of his hair.

  "Where is Winger?"

  "Getting into mischief somewhere." He shrugged. "What I want is for you to get Tinnie to come back. She's perfect for the lead in The Faerie Queene."

  "You want to cast Tinnie as a fairy? Man, that's a stretch. She is way too substantial." That wisp Furious Tide of Light was far more suitable.