A sigh tickled my ears, whispering in from all sides, the sibilant pitch sending shivers down my spine. I shuffled backwards toward my apartment, weighing if I had a fight-or-flight situation. My building vestibule had a warding spell on the main door that could be sealed if I was in trouble. Before I had a chance to consider running for my life, the essence dissipated in a current of air, and the whispering cut off. The pain in my head eased when it was gone.

Another flash of essence, this time radiant pink, pulled me up short. Joe Flit hung upside down above my head, his pink wings keeping him hovering in place. “Where have you been?”

I ducked my head away. “I’ll throw up if you stay like that.”

“Sorry.” He shrugged-disturbing upside down-dropped headfirst, and looped a couple of times in front of me.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Okay, not helping, Stinkwort.”

Joe hated his real name, so I used it to give him a subtle hint that he was being annoying. When I opened my eyes, he was in his more normal position when we go for a walk, a few feet in the air to my side. Normal since Joe is a twelve-inch-tall fairy known as a flit, with bright pink wings he found embarrassing. He’s an old friend, which meant we drank together often, laughed at jokes no one else got, and were highly tolerant of each other’s less-desirable personality tics except when we weren’t.

Joe raised his eyebrows. “Touchy, touchy. Not my fault you’re drunk.”

“Not drunk.” The burr in my words didn’t help the denial much.

He opened his mouth to reply, but frowned. He flew over my head and hung in the air, tilting his head from side to side. “I feel something unpleasant. Were you on a date?”

I walked away. “Not funny.”

He zipped in front of me. “What’s wrong?”

The cracked sidewalk made it difficult to keep from stumbling. “Just remembering stuff I’d prefer to forget.”

Joe rolled his eyes. “First you complain you can’t remember stuff, then you complain when you do. You’re never happy.”

I gave my shoulders an exaggerated roll. “So leave if you don’t like it.”

He didn’t. Making a point of not looking at me, he flew ahead, humming to himself. Joe put up with a lot from me. Quid pro quo, though. “Sorry, Joe. Dylan’s in Boston.”

Joe cocked his head back. “Ah, that. No wonder you’re drunk.”

“He said he’s over it.”

Joe snorted. “Yeah, people always get over a knife in the heart. Stay away from him.”

“Yeah, I intend to.”

Joe stopped abruptly, then grunted with a sour look on his face. A second later, it hit me, too. Two things happened simultaneously: My sensing ability kicked in, and I threw up in the gutter.

Joe wrinkled his nose at the odor. “Port? Ick.”

I ignored him. I was always good at sensing essence, but lately my ability had gone into overdrive. On the one hand, it was great that one of my abilities was getting stronger. On the other, it was so strong, I barely saw past it sometimes. Fortunately, this time it came on an empty street between warehouses. Because essence is organic in nature, stone and brick buildings had little essence of their own. They picked it up passively and could even be intentionally infused with it. The buildings around me had the faint haze of white that all buildings in the Weird have. With so many fey living here, ambient essence was everywhere.

Joe hovered in front of me, a concentrated blaze of pink and white. At his side, a faint sliver of blue flickered. He wore a sword at all times, invisible to normal vision. He used a glamour spell to hide it from sight. My ability was so sensitive now, I could see through his sword glamour.

Above us, remnants of the Forest Hills control spell floated, a thin patch of sickly green essence with black mottling shot through it. Even though I had collapsed the main spell at the cemetery, fragments permeated essence everywhere, especially in the Weird, where it had been tested. Anyone with fey ability who touched the essence found their suppressed impulses provoked. The Weird was a cesspool of suppressed impulses, so the spell had ample opportunities to trigger bad behavior. As far as I knew, the only way to get rid of the stuff was a purging spell, and the only person who had been able to do that was Meryl Dian.

Joe shuddered. “That stuff makes me ill.”

I wiped my hand across my mouth. “Me, too, apparently.”

Joe laughed. “Remind me not to get drunk on port.”

I forced my sensing ability off. The haze didn’t affect me the way it did everyone else. The dark mass in my head acted like a firewall. I didn’t need to see it, though. I could feel it.

“Carmine wants to see you,” said Joe.

Carmine. A solitary. Solitary fey fall in two categories: clans of like fey in very small numbers and true solitaries, one of a kind. In Carmine’s case, he’s one of the latter. In certain places, he’s known as a party planner. In less polite places, he’s known as a pimp. We had more than a passing acquaintance in my youth. “I haven’t seen Carmine in ages,” I said.

“He said he needs to talk about a case,” said Joe.

“He wants to hire me?”

Joe screwed his face up in exasperation. “I don’t know. He wants to talk to you, not me. I’m thirsty again. Let’s go find him and grab a drink somewhere,” Joe suggested.

We stopped in front of my apartment building. “I’ve probably drunk enough tonight, Joe.”

He looked doubtful. “What’s that like?”

I tried to smile. “Maybe tomorrow.”

He pouted. “Killjoy.”

He vanished in a spark of pink. I inserted the key into the front door of my building. Joe popped back in. “For the record, Connor, you did your best, and Dylan needs to get over it.”

I belched. “Thanks.”

He waved his hand in front of his nose. “And for the love of everything, stop drinking port.” He popped out again.

Between bumping into the corrupted essence and getting sick, I wasn’t that drunk anymore. I made coffee and checked my email. Murdock had sent me a copy of his case report on the warehouse murder. The victim had a name: Josef Kaspar. He had a long list of petty crimes-loitering, shoplifting, breach of peace-typical of a homeless man of his age. I wasn’t in the mood to review the whole file. The end of a long night wasn’t the time to look at someone else’s failed life.

My wooden desk chair squealed as I leaned back and gazed out the window. The lights of the financial district glittered across the channel. So many empty offices and yet so much light. Everywhere I’ve ever been, nobody turned off the lights in offices. It’s as though everyone wanted to give the impression they had only stepped out and would be right back. Only, sometimes, through no fault of their own, some don’t come back.

All through dinner, I had listened to Dylan’s stories-the trials and tribulations of life in the Guild, the puzzle of a complex investigation, the satisfaction of closing a case. Over and over, waves of envy stirred within me. He had the life I used to have. He had the access and the power. The money.

My eyes sought a small piece of worked stone on the bookshelf that ran around the top of the wall of my study. Dylan had made it years ago when he was interested in stone carving. A smooth sphere fit snugly inside a larger sphere cut with Celtic knotwork. The inner sphere moved freely, and the knotwork had affirmations engraved in ogham runes. The one most easily read said “Life is a series of trust moments.” After our worst case together, he gave it to me. At the time, I thought he was being overly sentimental, but it was one of the few things I kept when I lost almost everything else.

He had seen how a life could be snuffed out in a moment. Even though we hadn’t spoken to each other in a decade, he knew what had happened to me. And yet, the ease with which he talked, how he took for granted what he did, gave no hint of anxiety that it could all disappear. No hint he could end up like me or, worse, a dead homeless guy like Josef Kaspar.