Elaine Cunningham - Changeling Detective Agency 1 - Shadows in the Darkness

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SHADOWS IN THE DARKNESS

Elaine Cunningham

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

EPILOGUE

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are

used fictitiously.

SHADOWS IN THE DARKNESS

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cunningham, Elaine, 1957-

Shadows in the darkness / by Elaine Cunningham.—1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

ISBN 0-765-30970-X (alk. paper)

EAN 978-0765-30970-9

1. Women private investigators—Rhode Island—Providence—Fiction.

2. Providence (R.I.)—Fiction. 3. Runaway teenagers—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3553.U472S47 2004

813'. 54—dc22

2004051749H

First Edition: October 2004

Printed in the United States of America

To Brian Thomsen

Thanks for Gwen and Liriel!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Frank Weimann and The Literary Group for the opportunity to explore the shadows in my

hometown and for a heroine who's very much at home in the darkness.

PROLOGUE

Unlike her more glamorous sister to the south, the city of Providence slept—or at least gave a damn

good impression of it.

Staid brick buildings huddled together against the winter chill, and the white dome of the statehouse

gleamed like the bald pate of a dozing sphinx. The entire Waterfront area, the showcase of the former

mayor's Renaissance City, looked as tidy and upscale as it had the day the mayor went to jail. The

second time, not the first.

Charming yet colorful, historic and historically corrupt, Providence was home to an Ivy League college

and more strip clubs per capita than any city in the country. It was, in short, a town that tolerated, and

occasionally embraced, its multiple realities.

Tonight was such a time. Despite its somnolent mien, the city was watchful, expectant. There was a

voiceless murmur in the air, an uneasy sense of shadows hiding in the darkness.

Midnight had come and gone. A bitter wind whipped across the circular basin that concluded the

Waterfront walk, sending a shudder across the dark water and forcing bare-branched saplings into a

brittle dance. Two burly figures shouldered their way through the gale. They climbed the broad stairs

leading up the hill between the brew pub and the steak house, and turned down an otherwise empty

street.

Tom Yoland, the smaller of the two, was a thick-bodied man just short of six feet. His black knit cap

was pulled down over hair nearly as red as his windburned cheeks. He had the look of a fisherman who

didn't like his job and didn't particularly care who knew about it. Moniz, his companion, was Latino and

at least three inches taller, a big man with an aggressive swagger and the type of muscularity that

indicated serious time in the weight room. Both men walked with shoulders hunched against the cold, but

their coats were left open and their ungloved hands held loose and light at their sides.

The big man drew in a long breath. "Smells like snow tonight."

"Snow doesn't smell like anything," Yoland said dismissively. "You've got ice on your mustache, that's

all."

"No, man. It's not the same thing."

"It's all frozen water, and who the hell cares?"

They walked in silence for a few steps. Then, "A little snow would be good, it being Solstice and all."

"How's that?"

"Solstice. The beginning of winter, the longest night of the year. It's the darkest night, too, what with the

new moon."

Yoland sent his companion an incredulous glare. "What are you, the farmers' fucking almanac?"

A gust of wind sent a small flurry of city trash scuttling toward them, mostly paper cups discarded by

people too hopped up on designer caffeine and self-importance to concern themselves with trash cans.

Moniz absently kicked aside a vat-size cup.

"It's just that Teresa talks about this shit sometimes. How far we are from the cycles of the earth, how

we've lost the ability to see things all around us. Like this star that's supposed to be visible during the day.

We could see it if we looked, but we don't."

"And you mention this because?"

"Teresa might be right. I don't like thinking about what I might be missing."

"Then don't." Yoland sent a meaningful look at the shoulder harness faintly visible under the big man's

coat. "We've got more important things going. How about you keep your head in?"

"Just talking. Passing time, you know?"

"And you know what? It'll pass all by itself, without the New Age bullshit to help it along. No offense to

Teresa."

Moniz acknowledged this with a shrug. They continued in silence for several blocks to a narrow side

street and into a small parking lot filled with high-ticket cars. On the far side of the lot, on the back side

of a multistory building, was a plain wooden door. A discrete sign welcomed them to Winston's.

A blast of dance music hit them as they edged into the narrow entrance hall. Two very blond bouncers,

one male and one female, blocked the way like a pair of matching Aryan pit bulls. Both wore unrelieved

black, and their white-blond hair was cut short and slicked back. Someone's idea of designer muscle.

The female bouncer looked the two men up and down, a pointed and practiced gesture that quickly

summed them up and dismissed them. "This is a private club," she announced. Her blue-eyed gaze was

icily superior, and her tone suggested that membership was not an honor to which they could aspire.

Yoland stared her down, unimpressed. He swept off his woolen cap, the gesture of a man who intends to

stay a while. The movement, not coincidentally, opened his coat enough to show off the gun in his

shoulder holster.

"Yoland and Moniz," he said curtly, indicating himself and his companion. "Mr. Leone told us to come

by. He's expecting us."

That name wilted the bouncers' smug expressions. "Oh, right," the man said quickly, his tone much more

cordial than his partner's had been. "Amy here will take care of you."

"Sounds good to me," Moniz murmured, treating the woman to a variation of her insulting up-and-down

scrutiny.

Yoland added a smirk. "Amy? Not Gretchen? Or Brunhilda?"

She sent them both a scalding glare and led the way into the club. The throbbing music enveloped them

as they inched their way through the gyrating throng.

Glitzy place, Yoland noted. The bar was a vast expanse of carved mahogany; the small tables along the

walls had fancy tile inlays. At the far end of the room, three sleek young women, dressed for holiday

clubbing in festively skimpy red or green dresses, danced on a raised stage. They were dancers, not

strippers, which would have been too obvious for this crowd.

The club drew a young and obviously overpaid clientele. The air crackled with that brittle, frantic energy

of people who are grimly determined to have fun. Yoland was willing to bet that none of these

post-yuppies would leave until at least one deal had been made—a pocketful of phone numbers for

future reference, a hit of Ecstasy in the ladies' room, a private dance or a party for two (or three) in one

of the discreet back rooms.

The music softened, shifting to a slower, sensual dance that pulsed through the crowd like a collective

heartbeat. Dancers fused into pairs. Yoland predicted that the back rooms would fill up before the

number finished.

Sure enough, the crowd started to thin. Their escort picked up the pace. They moved briskly up a flight

of stairs and through a VIP area that wouldn't have looked too out of place in an old-school men's

club—gleaming dark wood, comfortable leather chairs.

Amy strode to a door on the back wall, rapped twice, and opened it. She stood aside to let them enter.

Inside, all pretense of respectability had been abandoned. Three very large bodyguards stood against the

far wall, arms crossed, flat eyes assessing the newcomers. All wore guns at their belts, as well as coldly

confident expressions that, for intimidation purposes, probably worked nearly as well as the hardware.

Tiger Leone, the club owner, was a huge man who carried a lot of muscle and even more fat. He was of

mixed race, from the looks of him mostly Asian and Black, with just enough Narragansett blood in the

mix to earn him a portion of the state's legitimate gambling revenue. He was seated in a huge armchair of

purple velvet that must have been custom-made to accommodate his bulk, and the expression in his

narrow black eyes was that of a medieval despot holding court. Tiger wore an enormous black silk shirt

and cream-colored pants, way too much gold, and a pair of teenaged girls.

An aerobicized Black girl in skimpy workout gear draped herself over his shoulders, and a bottle blond

who out-siliconed Pamela Anderson was perched on his lap. The blond wore pink shorts and T-shirt,

both very bright and very brief. A third girl, a slim, feline brunette, curled up on the floor beside an

ottoman that matched Tiger's throne. She was dressed in a strapless front-laced bodice of purple suede

and a matching leather skirt, so short and so daringly slit on the sides that it was little more than a

loincloth. Purple makeup encircled her catlike eyes and made her full lips look like a very ripe plum. With

one long, purple nail she traced a circle around the handgun lying on the ottoman. The girl was definitely

representing—all she was missing was a big gold necklace reading "Badass Fashion Accessory." Subtle,

Tiger wasn't, but the overall effect—a modern-day sultan, a vice lord in his sleazy little palace—came

across just fine.

The huge man nodded to the newcomers. "Right on time. I like that. You want a drink?"

Yoland shifted his gaze from the brunette. "Maybe after."

"Have yourselves a private dance, too. Consider it part of the deal."

He nodded his thanks. "We're short on time tonight, so someone's gonna have to tell us which girls are

working and which ones just came to play."

The implication pleased Tiger. "No one can tell the customers from the whores just by looking," he

boasted. "And some people never know, not even after they've paid and played."

Odd as that sounded, Yoland knew it to be true. Winston's had a quiet rep as a safe place to get

high-quality recreational drugs, particularly those offering an erotic boost, as well as an attractive variety

of like-minded, short-term friends. A few couples came to the club to spice things up, but most of the

clients were young singles looking for an evening of fun.

The formula was simple: buy pretty girls or guys their drug of choice, drop a few bills for one of the

private rooms available for discreet hire, go home with a smile on your face and a phone number in your

pocket. Some of these encounters led to "second dates"—at the club, of course.

For employees, there was never a third date.

House rules.

The working girls and guys were rotated from club to club so that even some of the hard-core regulars

didn't catch on to the hustle. Others probably figured it out but didn't want to let on, even to themselves.

Winston's was the kind of place where people who "would never pay for sex" could count on getting laid.

For a price. It was the sort of distinction this crowd could rationalize.

"Since you're short on time…" Tiger prompted. He removed his massive hand from the blond's rump and

pointed to the cat-eyed girl at his feet. "Give the delivery to GiGi."

Yoland peeled back his coat and reached into an inside pocket, moving slowly so that the watchful

guards wouldn't think he was reaching for his gun. He took out an amber vial and tossed it onto the

ottoman. The girl picked it up and opened the lid. She spilled the contents into her hand. After a

moment's study, she looked up at Tiger and nodded.

"You want to count them?" Yoland offered. "Seeing as how you're paying per pill."

"We've been doing business for what? Eight, nine months? I got no reason to doubt your word. But GiGi,

she doesn't have a trusting heart, and she likes to look out for them who do. Sing for me, baby," he

demanded. His leer added a dimension to the remark that Yoland didn't want to contemplate and refused

to envision.

"Thirty pills, just like they said," she announced. Her voice was low and just a little bit husky, a

been-there alto that sounded far too old for the rest of her. A street-waif version of Lauren Bacall,

wasting time on this big-ass Bogart. The thought didn't sit well with Yoland.

Tiger shot a look at one of the henchmen. "Pay them."

Before the man could comply, a muffled, tinny rendition of—of all things—"Amazing Grace" came from

the general vicinity of the blond girl's bosom. Tiger's leer returned. He reached into the girl's preternatural

cleavage and produced a small cell phone.

His smile faded as he listened. His eyes flicked to the brunette, who had just finished putting the pills back

into the vial. In response to her boss's unspoken command, she reached for the gun on the ottoman and

trained it on Yoland. With one smooth motion she was on her feet, never taking her eyes from his.

Tiger's other girls were not quite as loyal. Both leaped up and fled shrieking to the far side of the room.

His men drew their weapons and circled behind Yoland and Moniz.

"This," Tiger brandished the cell phone, "was a friend of mine." His voice was quiet, but it shimmered with

suppressed violence. "He just finished doing time for possession. He says he knows you two—knows

you from a 'sale' pretty much like the one you hoped was going down here." His eyes shifted to GiGi.

"These assholes are cops. Get rid of them, make sure they don't get found."

The cat girl clicked off the safety on her gun. In the heavy silence, the sound seemed as explosive as the

shot to come. Then she spun and put the gun to Tiger's head.

Yoland wished he could laugh at the slack astonishment on Tiger Leone's face, but that didn't seem

smart, seeing that he and Moniz were outnumbered. Still, the sight was highly gratifying.

"Tell your boys to throw down," the girl said calmly, "and we'll all wait quietly until backup arrives."

Tiger sputtered for a while before he managed to form words. "Backup? But you're… You're not—"

"Sure I am," she affirmed. "Gellman, Lieutenant Gwen. GiGi to people who think they're my friends."

She turned a steel-edged smile toward the bodyguards, who were frozen in furious indecision. Slowly she

slid the gun down Tiger's jowls and under his chins. A quick little shove forced his head up and back,

giving her a nice angle toward the back of his head. A clean, killing shot.

"Do it," Tiger grunted. As the power shift took place, his massive shoulders rose and fell in a resigned

sigh. He rolled his eyes toward the undercover cop.

"I don't fucking believe this," he mourned. "You were my girl—my best girl."

A hard, humorless smile lifted one side of her lips, but she didn't offer any comment.

A sliver of light appeared on the paneled wall behind Tiger's throne, a slim vertical beam from no

discernible source. Before Yoland could absorb the implications of this, two of the panels flew apart,

slamming into the wood on either side with a sound like gunshot.

Three thugs pounded into the room. One of the bodyguards lunged for Yoland's gun.

The cop shoulder-slammed him out of the way, shot him, and sighted down one of the onrushing men.

Moniz fired at about the same time, and two of the thugs went down. Before either cop could squeeze off

a second shot, Tiger's remaining two bodyguards jumped Moniz. The three men went down in a tangle of

flailing fists. A knife rose and fell, more than once.

Yoland saw all of this as if it were a movie played in slow speed, almost one frame at a time. He saw

Tiger's two girls flee through the escape route, their frantic pace appearing almost leisurely. He fired

again, hitting the last of the thugs in the shoulder. The man staggered but didn't go down.

Another shot came from the floor beside him. One of the bodyguards rolled off Moniz, screaming, both

hands clamped to the pumping wound on his neck. Yoland kicked the third bodyguard off his partner

and put a bullet in him to make sure he stayed off.

Moniz lay flat on his back, his gun held in both hands. The triumphant gleam in his eyes was icing over,

and blood bubbled at the corners of his mouth. A knife was sunk hilt-deep between his ribs, deep into his

lung.

A glance told Yoland the whole tale. His partner would drown in his own blood and there wasn't a damn

thing he could do but break the news to pretty, witchy little Teresa. The thought occurred to him that,

somehow, Teresa already knew she was a widow.

Someone punched Yoland in the gut—a mystery, since no one was within arm's reach of him. That

wasn't good, but at the moment he couldn't remember why.

The thumping music from the club below abruptly stopped. A murmur of many voices took its place, a

sound that rose swiftly in volume and indignation. Then police sirens sounded outside the club, and pique

turned to panic. Screams and scuffles came from the dance floor as those who had reason to avoid the

police—which probably included most of the employees and half the customers—remembered urgent

business elsewhere.

With a furious roar, Tiger surged out of his chair, taking the female cop with him and slamming her against

the wall. They grappled, and for a moment she was lost to sight behind his bulk. The gun reported, and

Tiger reared back, screaming. Her second shot sent him stumbling to his knees. The third, to the floor.

Somehow Yoland found himself at eye level with Tiger, staring into the huge man's empty black eyes. He

was glad that Tiger was dead but vaguely puzzled by his own proximity to the man's body.

Then the pain came—a white fire kindling in his gut. He realized that he was shot, and down.

The chaos downstairs, the battle in the room—it was all fading into a dreamlike haze. Yoland was dimly

aware of the door flinging open and more of Tiger's men pouring into the room. They charged toward

Gwen.

Three shots, Yoland realized. At best, she had three shots left, and that wouldn't be enough. The thought

filled him with something very close to sorrow. She'd been his best girl, too, if only for a week or so, and

they'd been partners for a lot longer.

Then the lights died, pitching the room into darkness. Gunfire exploded again and again, overlapping like

the finale of a high-budget Fourth of July display.

Yoland's fading awareness suddenly snapped into focus, captured by a strange, soft glow. It was faintly

blue, and it clung to Gwen like the light on a mist-shrouded streetlamp. Strange as that was, weirder still

was the fact that no one, not even Gwen, seemed to notice its existence.

She made her way through the darkness, sure-footed, picking her shots as she went. By the time she

reached the door, the gunfire had stopped. She stumbled out into the hall, shouting for backup, unaware

that she was the only one left standing. Unaware of the light surrounding her like a Madonna's halo.

Yoland remembered what Moniz had said not an hour before: They'd all been missing things. Important

things. The truth of this flooded him, along with a sense of profound loss.

The light surrounding Gwen began to fade, and the room with it. Yoland took some comfort in the

knowledge that at least he'd been able to see her, really see her, before the darkness came for good.

In an unlit room, in a once-stately home poised on the hills overlooking downtown Providence, a tall,

black-haired man stood by the window. He stared out over the quiet winter vista with eyes that saw what

others did not.

His slender frame was draped in a robe of dark silk. Beneath the robe he was naked and barefoot, and

his watch and ring lay on a nearby table. There could be no metal to disrupt the flow of power, no leather

to provide an unwanted link to the creature whose hide it once had been. Not on the Convergence, a

time of uncommon power, a rare event that occurred when the moon and sun cycles aligned.

"The shortest day, the darkest night," he murmured in quiet exultation.

The ebb and flow of the moontides sang in his blood, and the pull of the year's turning wheel drew his

Qualities more fully into the mundane world. All of his kind could do as much, but never had he felt the

flow of power so keenly. Surely now he could finally claim the gift that was rightfully his, as the last

member of his clan and bloodline!

He listened to the silent crescendo of starsong, waiting for the precise moment of the Solstice. When it

was upon him, he reached for the blue gem on the table—the final link to his ancient birthright.

Power surged through him with a force that lifted him from his feet and hurled him backward. He hit the

wall hard, his arms flung out wide. The gem fell from his benumbed hand and rolled away.

He slid down along the cracked plaster wall and slumped to the floor, staring with astonishment at the

faint blue glow in the gem's heart. The pain of impact was forgotten, rendered irrelevant by the disturbing

truth before him:

The clan's greatest gift had been claimed—and not by him.

That could mean only one thing: he was not, as he had so fondly believed, the last of his line.

But never in his family's long history had an heir come into the clan's power without the assistance of the

gem. Whoever had usurped his hard-won place was a creature of considerable power—or at least,

considerable potential. Someone who walked beneath these stars, someone whose name and face he did

not know, had the power to Remember.

The thought filled him with fear, an emotion he had seldom experienced and nearly forgotten. He pushed

himself to his feet and stalked over to a table that held a cut-glass decanter and a large crystal snifter. He

poured enough brandy to take the coppery taste of fear from his mouth, and settled down by the

fireplace to compose himself.

By his third brandy, he had forgotten why this new development had seemed so troubling.

This would not, after all, be the first time he had killed a fellow elf.

CHAPTER ONE

A cold spring rain pelted the city as Gwen Gellman maneuvered her battered blue Toyota up the hill north

of Benefit Street. As she negotiated the maze of the narrow, one-way streets that characterized much of

Providence's East Side, the brick buildings of Brown University and the art school gave way to old

three-story frame houses, many of which had small shops or cafes in the bottom floor. She pulled into an

empty spot across the street from a small Thai eatery, happy to have found a parking place so close to

her destination. Tap-dancing through April showers was not her idea of a good time.

Gwen dashed across the street, dodging rain-filled potholes, and climbed the stairs leading up the side of

the building. Once on the landing, she took quick stock of her appearance. A quick swipe of fingers

under one eye assured her that her waterproof mascara was living up to its claims. She brushed off some

of the raindrops beading on the shoulders of her leather jacket and ran both hands through her short

dark-chestnut hair, not sure whether this would tame her hair or spike it and not particularly caring which

outcome occurred.

A tall young woman, barefoot and semidressed in a navy blue sports bra and capri-length bike pants,

answered Gwen's knock and gazed at her uncertainly.

Gwen couldn't fault the girl. Sometimes she tried for a traditionally professional image, but today wasn't

one of those days. She wore jeans so snug they looked as if they'd been spray painted on, a sleeveless

black shirt that stopped a couple of inches north of her pierced navel, a leather jacket she'd bought

secondhand during the Reagan administration, slim-heeled ankle boots, and far too much makeup. Her

eyes, which were wide and very blue and slightly tilted at the corners, tended to remind people of

Siamese cats. Gwen liked to play down the feline aspect with a few layers of judiciously applied paint,

which had the added benefit of making her look older. Or at least, it made her look like a high-school kid

who was trying to look older.

"Rachel York?" she asked.

"Yes…"

"I'm Gwen Gellman. Lauren's mother asked me to talk to you. She said you'd be home and expecting

me."

The girl's brown eyes widened. "You're the private investigator?"

"That's right." Gwen waited a beat, then glanced over her shoulder at the rain.

Chagrin replaced incredulity on the young woman's face. "Oh. Sorry." She moved aside to let Gwen into

the apartment.

Unlike most student apartments, this wasn't furnished with parental castoffs and Salvation Army specials.

The couch was a new-looking futon with a burgundy cover and a dark oak frame. The matching coffee

and lamp tables had the square, clunky look Gwen's friend Marcy called "mission style." The walls were

painted a shade of orange that somehow managed to look cozy and inviting. An area rug covered the

floor with geometric shapes in colors that brought to mind citrus and spice. A large abstract canvas in

similar hues dominated one wall. Two small-paned windows faced the street, and between them stood a

large vase—hand-thrown pottery, no doubt—that held a sheaf of willow branches covered with soft gray

catkins. The painting and the vase boasted a stylized signature, the letters "LTS" entwined in curving lines.

Lauren Simpson had talent, as her mother had claimed.

Gwen turned back to the roommate, who was studying her with open skepticism. She lifted one

eyebrow. "Is there a problem?"

"How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?"

It was a familiar question, one that got more irritating with each repetition. Still, she managed a thin smile.

"Let's put it this way: In two years, I can legally sleep with guys half my age."

Rachel looked puzzled for a moment, then years of math classes kicked in and her eyes widened. She

looked Gwen up and down, taking in the mall-rat outfit and, if she was like most people, probably

pegging her for about seventeen. "Thirty-four? How is that possible?"

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Color---1--2--3--4--5--6--7--8--9-TextSize--10--11--12--13--14--15--16--17--18--19--20--21--22--23--24SHADOWSINTHEDARKNESSByElaineCunninghamContentsPROLOGUECHAPTERONECHAPTERTWOCHAPTERTHREECHAPTERFOURCHAPTERFIVECHAPTERSIXCHAPTERSEVENCHAPTEREIGHTCHAPTERNINECHAPTERTENCHAPTERELEVENCHAPTERTWELVECHAPTERT...

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Elaine Cunningham - Changeling Detective Agency 1 - Shadows in the Darkness

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