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It was pure instinct. I ducked, and dove for my badge just as an unnaturally long arm sliced through the air where my neck had been only moments before.

I landed hard on the floor, just missing the fallen drawer. My hands slid on loose papers and slipped out from under me. I half-rolled in time to take it on my shoulder instead of my face.

I pushed myself up onto my knees.

He wasn’t stooped any more, and everything about him was longer – arms, legs, nose and definitely teeth. He stretched to the ceiling, seemed to fill the room, and he was very, very angry.

Badge, where the hell’s my badge? I thought. Papers all over the floor, but it should be on top of them. 

“Hands up! Put your hands up!” Bradley was shouting. I didn’t have time to spare him a glance as Definitely-Not-Glenn-Jackson swung at me again.

Still kneeling, I grabbed the drawer, held it up as a shield.

The thing’s hand smashed through the cheap, old wood, but I’d thrown off his aim at least, because he just managed to clout me on the ear.

The old expression is wrong, by the way. It’s much more like seeing lightning than stars.

I fell again, but this time I didn’t feel it when I hit the floor. Everything seemed muted, like someone had turned down the volume on the world. I just barely heard what sounded like more shouting, and the boom of a gun, and I knew that Bradley had fired.

And then, in the weird, impressionistic way that unused senses and half-forgotten thoughts can suddenly become prominent when others go away, it suddenly occurred to me that I recognized the elusive scent that suffused Glenn Jackson’s bedding.

Dry autumn leaves, I thought.

I didn’t smell what I expected, but more on that in a moment. What occurred to me immediately, along with a rush of relief, was that certain smells were absent. What smells? Well, clearly Glenn Jackson wasn’t in the habit of using scented fabric softeners, or detergent, for that matter. But other smells were missing too, smells that you might have expected to be there.

Like alcohol, or stale pee, vomit, or unwashed body. Not even a hint.

I sat up quickly. Bradley, by now, could tell that something was up, and looked at me with eyes full of questions.

I glanced at Jackson, still down on his hands and knees peering at the papers on the floor. I thought of trying to express in gestures, Hold on, something’s very off here. Hang back and follow my lead. But ASL is not one of my languages, so I settled for holding up a hand, hoping he’d get that I wanted him to wait.

I know that I’m kind of dwelling on smells, or lack thereof, but there’s a reason for that. I had just consciously verified something that my intuition had noticed a spurk of a long time before I did: That nothing in Glenn Jackson’s little room smelled, except for him. And that just didn’t make sense, if he’d been in here for hours sleeping it off and being indiscriminate with his bodily functions.

It did make sense, though, if he was wearing that stench like a suit of armour… or a costume.

Now my intuition was telling me that something was worrisome about what I did smell in Jackson’s bedding, but I didn’t have time to think about that right away.

Because I looked down, and there, at my feet, in plain sight, were what looked to me like discharge papers from the Canadian Armed Forces.

But I’d seen him search that part of the floor already. He could be stalling us, I thought. But why?

The other possibility, of course, was that he had no idea what the papers he was trying to find actually looked like.

I stood up, reached into my pocket and palmed my badge. I cleared my throat.

Jackson stopped going through the paperwork, and looked up at me.

“Do you like living here, Mr. Jackson?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We can’t all live in a fancy condominium, eh? It’s crap here, but it beats the shelter, or sleeping rough. Ever tried living under a bridge this time of year? I’m dry, I’ve got a bed and a door that locks.”

“You’re awfully close to the Border, though,”

He stood up, grimacing – a bit theatrically, I thought. “Eh, I don’t bother the Little People, and they don’t bother me. Where’s the fun in troubling a broken-down old man with their tricks, right?”

“Some of the Little People aren’t so little. And not all of them care much who they play tricks on… or what they eat, for that matter. I noticed that you don’t even have a ward on the door, like your neighbours do.”

“Used to, used to,” he said, not meeting my eyes, “But I lost it.”

Then, “You don’t ask a cop’s questions, Officer MacAvoy.”

“Sorry,” I said brightly, “I should have introduced myself. Officer Roberta MacAvoy,”

I held out my hand. Reflexively, he clasped it – clasped my hand, where I was still concealing my Iron Badge.

“Borderland Guard.” I added.

He screamed, in pain and in rage at the touch of cold iron, shoved me away. I flailed as I fell and dropped my badge.

And he staggered back, clutching his hand to his chest as though it burned him.

And he changed.

Bradley sniffed as he entered the room, just behind me. “Maybe time for a little spring cleaning, Mr. Jackson?” he asked.

“Oh, surely,” Jackson said, with a mucusy chuckle, “I’ll just be telling the maid to get to it, before the Queen arrives for tea, eh?”

I looked around. Bradley had been talking about the smell, but the odd thing was that, aside from that, the room really wasn’t all that badly in need of cleaning. It was cramped, dingy and run-down, but it was tidy. No clothes lying around, no dirty dishes next to the hot plate, and the grime on the tiny window was on the outer pane, not inside. It didn’t look like anyone had been stumbling around in a drunken stupor.

Either Glenn Jackson was the world’s neatest drunk, or he’d retained more habits from his days in the army than was otherwise obvious, or…

“You were going to show us your discharge papers?” I said gently.

“Oh yes. Yes, yes.” he nodded, and turned to a beat-up dresser that would have been laughed out of the Goodwill. “Right here.”

He pulled at the top drawer. It rattled, but seemed stuck. He tugged again, making more noise, but without managing to open it.

Bradley shook his head, and turned to a shelf beside the door. He picked up what looked like some pieces of unopened mail and flipped through them.

“Do you need a hand, Mr. Jackson?” I asked.

“No. No thank you, I’ve got it.” he said, then muttered, “There’s a trick to it, I remember…”

I was curious to see how his papers were arranged, so I moved a little closer – not quite breathing down his neck, but so I could look down into the drawer when he opened it. The room was, like I said, really organized, and the state of his paperwork would corroborate the “kept up his habits from the army” theory. Or not.

He tensed up at my approach, and half-turned to shoot me a look that was all suspicion and daggers.

“I said I’ve got it,” he snapped, and then he pulled hard on the drawer and lifted it a bit at the same time – and it slid open and kept going, somehow not hitting Jackson on its way through the air towards me.

I didn’t have time to swear, let alone dodge, just lifted my arms to shield my body and head and block it as best I could.

It hit my crossed forearms and damn but it hurt, then bounced off. It spewed paper like leprechaun after St. Patrick’s Day then hit the floor with a clatter

Bradley was already moving for Jackson, who held up his hands to placate and gave us a simpering smile. “I’m real sorry, real sorry.” He said quickly. “It was an accident.”

Ow spurk me ow, I thought.

Then, So much for seeing how his papers were organized.And then, How did he get out of the way?“It’s okay,” I said, more to Bradley than Jackson. Bradley nodded and stepped back.

“Why don’t you find your papers,” I told Jackson, “And… that took a bit out of me. Do you mind if I sit down?” I pointed at the bed.

“Um, you might not want to do that, Miss,” he said. Bradley, understanding, wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“Please,” I said.

Jackson shrugged helplessly, and crouched to go through the papers that littered the floor. “Well, be my guest, then.”

I sat. Jackson was looking down at the floor as he combed through a life’s worth of errant documents. He didn’t see me lean down into his bedding and – with some trepidation – inhale deeply.

At last, a long, low groan broke the almost-silence, the first real indicator that there was someone alive on the other side of that door – although, from the sound of it, he wished he wasn’t.

“Glenn Jackson?” Bradley called, more quietly now.

Silence fell again.

“Mr. Jackson, this is the police. Open the door.”

Another groan. Then, some muttering that sounded like muted but strongly-felt profanity.

We waited

More sounds: Feet shuffling, more cursing and then – from just on the other side of the door – a long bout of tubucular coughing.

We waited.

Finally, a voice, albeit slurred and shaky, “Can’t fool me. Already talked to the cops. Go ‘way.”

“We have a couple more questions for you,” Bradley said to the door, and added, with a glance at me, “This shouldn’t take long.”

“Yeah, well… If you’re a cop, let’s see a badge, flat-foot.”

Bradley blinked, then said, with what I thought was, for him, a remarkable degree of patience, “The door is closed, Mr. Jackson. How can I show you my badge?”

A moment passed, during which I like to imagine that Jackson blinked as well, just for symmetry’s sake, then: “Well-reasoned, well-reasoned,” he said.

The door opened, and Glenn Jackson poked his head out.

He looked very much like Jenny Kim had described him: Skinny, hunched over in a way that made it hard to say how tall he was, ill-fitting clothes that looked like Goodwill fodder, long uncombed grey hair and a scraggly beard to match.

Not that I took all this in right away, because the stink that erupted from the open door to his apartment made my eyes water too much for finer details at first. Puke, and stale booze and the tang of unwashed body.

He was a textbook example of a derelict on a bender.

Maybe… a little too textbook?

Bradley, when we could both see again, held up his badge, “I’m Detective Bradley. This is Officer MacAvoy. You’re Glenn Jackson?”

Jackson peered at Bradley’s badge, “Well, of course I’m me. Who else would I be?”

“So you won’t mind showing us some I.D.?” I asked.

He scratched his head. “I got the papers they gave me when I got out of the army.”

“That’ll do for a start,” Bradley said.

Jackson turned and walked into the room, “Well, come on in then. I’ll find them for you. They’re around.”

Bradley turned to me, “After you,” he said.

“Oh, thanks,” I replied, and followed Jackson in.

Bradley rapped on the door for the second time. “Glenn Jackson?” he called, “This is the police. Open up!”

The door was a nasty sort of Seventies green, and as dingy as everything else in what I’m going to be charitable and call the rooming house. I was mildly surprised the door was still standing; it didn’t look like it would hold up to a harsh word, let alone sustained knocking. And yet, there it was.

And there we were. My eyes had adjusted to the crappy lighting in the windowless upstairs hallway. It was a hall that, like the house it bisected and, I suspected, most of the residents, had seen better days.

A hundred or so years ago, this had been a new and well-appointed house in an upscale neighbourhood. But times change, and upscale can go downhill pretty quickly. Now, the only hint of former glory was what looked like the original baseboards, miraculously intact.

The place smelled. Like mold, and the kind of food you have to cook quickly because you’re really not supposed to have that hotplate.

This wasn’t just poverty. This was down, out and just barely hanging on to “down and out”. This was being just one bad day away from the street. This wasn’t the kind of place where you suddenly come into a suitcase full of money.

I’d mentioned this – not, you understand, in so many words – to Bradley on our way up the stairs. He had shrugged, which now appeared to be his default response to anything I said that he couldn’t or didn’t want to argue with.

Then we’d arrived at Jackson’s door and the knocking had started.

Bradley raised his hand to knock a third time, then stopped himself.

He listened. So did I.

There were people around, on this floor of the house – sitting quietly in their run-down rooms, I suspected. Hoping that whatever Glenn had done to bring the cops down on his head twice in one day wasn’t going to stick to them. Praying, when they couldn’t stay still and their floorboards creaked, that we’d think it was just random old-house noises and leave them alone.

I wished we could oblige. But if Jackson didn’t open his door, we were going to need to figure out where the hell he was, and that might mean shaking someone down for a list of his usual places.

Anyway, none of the noises I was hearing were coming from Glenn Jackson’s room.

“Time to check in with the neighbours,” I said quietly.

Bradley shook his head, “If he’s half as drunk as the uniform I sent over here said, he’s here. He’s just dead to the world.”

Then he pounded the door so hard that clouds of dust drifted up from the jamb. “Jackson,” Bradley boomed, “Police. Get. Up and. Open. The. Door.”

I looked up and down the hall. This part of town was close enough to the Border with Fairyland that nobody would live here if they didn’t have to – and, I guessed, even the people who did have to live here were careful as spurk if they had to go anywhere after dark.

They were careful in other ways, too. On every door up and down the hallway were the little wards that the old folk wisdom had passed down. An iron horseshoe over one door; a little bell – it looked like it had once been a child’s toy – over another. A piece of toast hung from a string on a third; that one was kind of a longshot, really, but you do what you can. Regardless, everyone living here had done something to safeguard themselves from the Fair Folk.

Except one. There was nothing at all above Glenn Jackson’s door to keep the fairies at bay. Not even a piece of toast.