For the next little while, in place of weekly installments of the adventures of Mac and Martin we’ll be bringing you  the secret personnel files of the Borderland Guard, guaranteed to answer some of your questions about Christine, Delric, Bunny, Ray and Mysti. Whether they raise a whole bunch of new questions… well, that’s a different matter entirely, isn’t it?

Tune in next Friday for our first profile, featuring excerpts from the personnel file of Lieutenant Christine McCall.

“There was this conversation we had,” he said, “About you explaining what you’re doing?”

I didn’t fault him for being wary. Our standard-issue knife is not something that inspires a whole lot of confidence. It’s four inches of blade, plus handle – all of it an ugly, dull grey. Dull being the operative word, since it’s pure iron and therefore can’t hold an edge for toejam. There’s a reason people ditched iron weapons as soon as steel was an option. Alas, for us, it’s the Iron Age every day, from now until happily ever after.

“Relax,” I told Bradley, “I’m not planning neurosurgery.”

I pulled the bottom of my t-shirt away from my stomach and carefully cut into the fabric. One short cut down, at the side, one long cut across the middle, and one more short cut that turned into a sort of sawing, because the damn knife was, yeah losing its edge.

Now I had a strip of cloth. And Bradley could see my belly button.

I grabbed the hand sanitizer from my jacket pocket, squeezed some out, and rubbed it into Bradley’s head and ear. He winced, but didn’t make a sound, just looked at me with those eyes that made you want to confess things.

I tied the strip of cloth around his head, covering as much of the damage as I could. Then I sat back and examined my handiwork. It would do. It would have to.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No worries,” I said, “But it’s not very stylish. You look like…”

“The Karate Kid?” he asked, “Ryu, from Street Fighter? Rambo?”

“Well, I was going to say a dork, but…”

I stood up and offered him my hand. He took it, and pulled himself up.

We both turned to look at the mouth of the outflow pipe.

“Chinatown,” he said.

I blinked and turned to look at him. He was still staring at the doorway into darkness.

“Forget it, Bradley, it’s Fairyland,” he added, “It was a Chinatown reference. The end of the movie.”

“If you got it…” I said.

He shrugged. “I didn’t think it related. It’s a tragic ending where the innocent suffer, the bad guy triumphs and the good guy’s powerless.” He finally turned to look at me, and his lip did that twitching almost-smile again. “Nothing like our situation, right?”

“Nothing at all,” I said.

We walked into the tunnel.

“Wipe that silly grin off your face,” I told him, and he did. He tried for passport-photo neutral in its place, but just looked kind of constipated. I didn’t care, as long as I didn’t have to see him smiling.

“I don’t have time for any crap,” I said, “I’m going to ask questions, and if I don’t like the answers I’m going to shoot pieces of you off until you aren’t spurking there anymore. Got it?”

“Aye,” he said.

“You wouldn’t spurk with the Guard unless your arms were being twisted. So someone sent you. Who?”

He sighed. “Nobody,” he said quietly.

Bradley drew himself upright, “Maybe you weren’t listening –” he started.

“Bradley,” I said, “Ease up. That was a real answer.”

“Oh. Well, it’s your party. Just let me know when you want me to shove this pole up his…”

“Thanks,” I told him, then turned my attention back to the Redcap, “Nobody? So he’s real?”

The Fae nodded.

“He happen to say why he wants us dead?”

“He did nae confide in us. He held our caps, and we dared not question him too close. We had no choice,” he said, “No choice but to obey.”

The caps dyed in blood aren’t just grisly souvenirs, they’re the source of a Redcap’s strength and power. Without them, or fresh blood to dye them red anew every night, a Redcap will die with the morning. It was, I reflected, a pretty big bargaining chip.

But Nobody. How the spurk did he fit into this? What I’d thought was a run-of-the-mill little con gone wrong was turning into something several orders of magnitude more complicated. Or hell, maybe this was about Joey Pennylegion.

If being wise means knowing that you don’t know, I was spurking Socrates. One thing I was sure of: I had to talk to the thing that had been pretending to be Glenn Jackson. And fast.

I pointed my gun to the ground. “You remember,” I told the little man who stank of someone else’s blood, “Who took your cap, and who didn’t. Remember who beat you in fair fight and gave you your life.”

He nodded, blood-soaked wool cap bobbing up and down.

“If I see you on this side of the Border again,” I said, “Nobody will be the least of your worries. Now go. Run.”

He blinked at me, incredulous. Then without another word he turned and ran, across the grass, towards the lake. I watched him go. It was a shuffling, awkward run, his body full of tension, hunched over. He was expecting, I realized, to be shot in the back.

As the Redcap rounded a bend and disappeared from sight, I glanced at Bradley. He dropped the iron pike and he sat down hard.

I crouched beside him and looked at his head. Even a glancing blow from iron-shod shoes can do serious damage, but – I checked to make sure his eyes were reacting to light and motion – yeah, Bradley had dodged a concussion for the second time today.

“Somebody up there likes you,” I said.

“Yeah? Then why did he jump on my head?”

I almost fell over. Bradley, joking? It was turning out to be a day of miracles and wonders.

I had a look at Bradley’s ear, and it confirmed my hunch that his little friend had clipped the side of Bradley’s head, ear and shoulder on the way down with those damned shoes. Better, of course, then taking an iron pole to the skull.

I had no first aid gear. Bradley probably did, back in his car, but…

“Look,” I said, “We can take the time to get this looked after properly, but we’re going to risk losing the Autumn Man.”

He nodded. “That’s why you let Toque-boy go,” he said, “Nowhere to put him. No one to hand him off to. No time to waste.”

I relaxed, as the fight I’d been bracing myself for evaporated before it began.

“If deciding which of the two perps who tried to kill you to go after makes for a time-management crisis,” Bradley added, “You guys are more understaffed than I thought.”

“We have high turnover,” I said, “So, want me to MacGyver something for your head? It’ll be…”

“Improvised,” he said, with a slight smile.

I smiled back, and pulled my knife.

It’s raining men, I thought. I wanted to look at Bradley but didn’t dare. The Redcaps were between us.

And the one that faced me was swinging his iron staff again. I ducked, and the pole just barely missed me. He tried to stop it and pull back, but I fired before he could recover. The iron bullet slammed into his side and knocked him off his feet. He landed hard and didn’t move again.

Redcaps look like tiny little old men… little old men with muscles like stevedores. The eponymous hats are dyed in the blood of their victims, and they wear iron-shod shoes and carry iron staves. But they aren’t immune to iron. They wear it, carry it, as a sort of Fae machismo thing, to prove how tough are. They have no spurking fear of iron – no point waving the Badge at them – but it sure as hell can hurt them.

I looked around. Bradley was standing, thank Goddess, but the little bastard had clipped him on the way down. Bradley was bleeding from the side of his head and his left arm hung limp, as though he’d taken bad hit to the shoulder.

Bradley was backing away slowly, gun levelled at the Redcap in front of him. It was advancing, iron staff raised high to strike. I aimed my gun, but the three of us formed an almost straight line, and there was no way to take a shot without the risk of hitting Bradley.

And I didn’t want to shoot Bradley. The paperwork would be a bitch, for one, and… I cut the thought off when I saw it.

There was a third Redcap, and it was closing on him from his left with a vicious feral smirk and a pike made of iron.

“Bradley, eight o’clock,” I called.

I couldn’t tell if he’d heard me, or understood, and I still couldn’t risk a shot. Hand-to-hand it is, I thought, and ran towards them, but I was too spurking late.

“My kill,” cried the one in front of Bradley, and swung its pike.

“Nay, mine,” shrieked the other, and swung too.

Bradley twisted and dropped, and my heart and stomach lurched, but he was just in time. Like a dancer, like a spurking dancer, he slipped under the pikes as they met just over his head with a clattering clang. The Fae behind Bradley was knocked back and fell on his wizened ass.

Then Bradley was up again, he’d dropped his gun, and with his good hand he grabbed the pike of the Redcap in front of him, twisted and pulled.

And then it was Bradley who held a pike. He swung, and then there wasn’t a Redcap standing in front of him with empty hands. It was lying on the ground, and what was left of its head was the same color as its cap.

Bradley tried to hoist the iron staff again, but couldn’t. He used it to prop himself up instead. The last Redcap scrambled to his knees and reached for his pike, but reconsidered when it found itself looking down the barrel of my gun.

Bradley took long, slow, deep breaths and leaned on the pole.

Because Bradley was right again, or half right; it wasn’t technically a sewer. I waved him over to join me.

“Okay,” I said, “But I’m warning you now. This is perfectly logical.”

“So it won’t make sense, right?”

I hid my smile by scratching my chin. He thought he was joking. No such luck.

“With the Border sealed,” I told him, “He’s going to need to go to ground. Do you remember what he said about being glad to have a roof over his head?”

“He said it beat sleeping under a bridge.”

“I’m guessing that part of his patter was true,” I said. “But almost every bridge is the city is either staked out heavily by the Guard, or already claimed by other Fae. No joy there.”

He did that almost-smile lip-twitch again. “Let me guess. There’s another but.”

“But,” I said, “And most people don’t know this, there used to be dozens of rivers and streams crossing what became Toronto. Some got diverted, some dried up as their sources got paved over. And some,” I went on, “Got buried. They’re still there, but flowing through underground pipes. They still wind up in the lake,” I pointed to the mouth of the pipe, “Same as the stormwater drains.”

I could almost see the penny drop behind his eyes. “So this isn’t just a drain,” he said, “It’s a river. And a road that crosses a river is a bridge. Which means that every part of the city that’s above the drain…”

“Counts as a bridge,” I finished.

“But that doesn’t make any…” he stopped himself. He reflected, redirected and resumed, “I get what you’re saying, but the whole theory lives or dies by a freaking technicality.”

“Forget it, Bradley,” I said, “It’s Fairyland.”

He looked at me, and cocked his head.

“It’s Fairyland?” I repeated, “Don’t you…? I mean they have their own rules, and they stick to them. Yeah, we’re talking about a loophole, but it’s one they’re smart enough to exploit. And you,” I added, “Have no appreciation of the classics.”

He held up his hand. Oh, spurk, I thought, and listened.

Yeah, I heard it too. But it wasn’t coming from the tunnel, as I feared. It was coming from the top of the embankment, from the concrete blocks around and above the pipe. Something, or someone… no, more than one… was moving around up there, making an odd, sort of scraping sound, like…

I lost the thought when Bradley held up a hand again. He pointed at me, then traced an upwards arc that pointed behind me then to the top of the embankment.

I go back, up and come at them from the side, I thought. Made sense. I nodded.

He pointed to himself, then straight up.

Since he probably wasn’t trying to explain that he was Superman, I surmised that he meant he was going to take the direct approach.

That struck me as a Very Bad Idea, but before I could say so, I heard the scraping sound again. It was the sort of sound that makes your teeth tingle. It sounded like metal, scraping on the concrete. As if someone was creeping around up there wearing metal shoes.

Metal shoes oh spurking hell.

I pulled my gun and my Badge just as the little man in the red hat jumped on Bradley’s head.

To Be Continued

Last night, I had one of those occasional completely-forgetting-what-day-it-is moments that I like to think happen to everyone but it’s probably just me. I was under the impression until this morning that the update needed to be posted tonight, to be up in time for tomorrow morning.

So the next chapter of my deathless prose waits patiently on a memory stick at home, sitting on the shelf where I keep things that I don’t want to forget to take with me, like my keys, my wallet and my memory stick.

Sorry, to everyone who was waiting to see what happened next — and I like to think there are at least a few of you. I’ll post Part 23 tonight.

There is one upside: All this means that the day I thought was going to be Thursday is actually Friday. And that’s a lovely thing to realize. Less lovely than when I means that I’ve blown a deadline, but at this point I’ll take what comfort I can.

Nothing. I turned around, and peered into the depths of the outflow pipe. I couldn’t see anything, of course, and I couldn’t hear anything but the water flowing, the city and the lake. I hadn’t seen him go in there. But I hadn’t seen him do anything at all, and now he was nowhere.

Spurk, I thought. Surely not even Bradley would be so arrogant, so chip-on-his-shoulder thick, as to go in there alone, not knowing what he was going to find.

I thought about it again. Oh, spurk.

I slipped my badge into my left hand. Pulled my gun with my right.

And nearly jumped out of my skin as Bradley landed beside the mouth of the pipe.

He saw me standing there, weapon aimed at the darkness, and pulled his own gun. I shook my head.

“It’s okay,” I said, lowering my pistol, “There’s nothing. I just… Where the spurking hell did you go?”

He slid his Glock back into the holster. He looked at me for a moment, then at the pipe.

“You thought…?” he started to ask, and his lip twitched, just a bit, “No,” he said. He held up his left hand; he was holding a Maglite, “I had this idea that you were hinting that we were going in there. So I thought I should go back to the car and get this. Since you were busy on the phone anyway.”

I flushed. I would have loved to have been in a position to lecture the smug bastard about not being forthcoming with his plans.

“Sorry if you got bored while my partner gave me vital information about the perp,” I said, and filled him in on the details.

At the end of it, he looked puzzled, “So why would a tree elf be stuck in the fall?” he asked.

“We don’t know enough to be sure,” I said, “Maybe he’s a Year King who skipped out three-quarters of the way through his term.”

Bradley just looked blank.

“Or maybe,” I went on, “He’s connected to a tree, and it’s the fall where the tree is. Maybe he’s from somewhere in Fairyland where it’s always autumn. Maybe it’s a time-share and he only has the tree between summer and winter,”

Bradley snorted, and I shook my head, “No, for real,” I said, “It’s one possible reason. Of a huge mess of possible reason.”

“And none of them,” he said, “Make any freaking sense.”

“It’s Fairyland,” I told him, “The parts that make sense aren’t logical, and the parts that aren’t logical…”

He looked at me. “Is it always like this, for you guys?”

“Like what?”

“Guessing,” he said, “Improvising.” He gestured towards mouth of the pipe with his flashlight, “Walking blind into the dark,”

It was my turn to snort. “Pretty much,” I said.

We were both silent for a moment.

“I didn’t know,” I told him, “That Jackson was Fae. Until we were already in the room.”

His gaze was as cool as the breeze coming off the lake.

“I thought,” I went on, “That the real Jackson was the one in the apartment. I figured the one in the bank was the Fae, and he’d stolen Jackson’s identity.”

I suddenly understood how it must feel to be sitting across a table from Bradley, answering awkward questions.

“Then, I thought he was just a Puck. A little trickster. That’s who pulls the money-that-changes-back-to-something-else scam, not a spurking giant psychopathic tree spirit. I didn’t want to tip him off, so I kept him talking until I could make him touch cold iron. It broke the glamour – the disguise – and if I’d been right, it would have knocked him on his ass, too. But I was really, really wrong.”

Damn, I’d been wrong about something else, too: Bradley was good.

He looked at me for another long, silent moment. And he smiled.

“Hell, MacAvoy,” he said, “We all screw the pooch in this job once in a while. I like that a lot better than being your pet mushroom.”

I stared at him. He stepped forward, gave me a companionable clap on the shoulder, and turned to look into the mouth of the outflow pipe. “And on the subject of being kept in the dark, now maybe you can explain why we’re going into a sewer.”

To Be Continued

At our feet, in an ugly, rust-stained concrete channel, water trickled out towards the lake. I stepped into it.

“I hope you aren’t too attached to those shoes,” I told him.

“I’ve stepped in worse,” he said, and walked into the water.

Into, not on, I thought sourly, no matter what he thinks.

“Now,” he began.

But I could feel my cell phone buzzing in my pocket. I took it out and checked the caller ID. “I’ll be able to tell you more in a second,” I said.

I flipped open the phone, “George,” I said, “What have you got?”

“What I have got?” he asked, “I’ve got a partner who nearly got herself killed, is what I’ve got. What the spurk do you think you’re doing?”

“Your concern is touching, as always,” I said. “But we’re busy solving a crime over here, and I need information.”

“Hey, we’re –” George said, but I cut him off.

“Right, you’re working the case too. But we’re the one who, you and Colby decided should go chasing down the real lead while you talked to Jackson’s sister. And let me guess, her story checked out. No matter what went down, she was out of the loop, right?”

He muttered something that he was probably lucky I didn’t hear, then added, “Yes.”

“So what I need from you, George, is two things. I need you and Colby to go to Jackson’s place, secure the crime scene and look for evidence. Everyone else is manning the Border, and you guys are already briefed.”

He said something else, to Colby at his end, I think, then said, “Fine.”

“You can’t miss it,” I told him, “It’s the room with the bullet holes, the smell of scorched leaves, and a cop-shaped hole in the door.”

“Yes, Bobs,” he said, “Fine. I understand, okay?”

“Good. Just so we’re like spurking crystal on the comprehension front,”

“The other thing,” I went on before he could grace me with another comeback, “Is to know more about what the spurk I…” I glanced at Bradley, “That we’re dealing with. You saw the APB. What is this thing?”

He was silent for a minute, and I could almost hear him thinking. “Well…You’re right, he’s not a standard mythotype. Probably a localized personification of nature. I see two possibilities. One is, he’s an autumn fairy associated with trees. The other is that he’s –”

“I swear,” I said, “If you say, ‘a tree fairy associated with autumn’ then I will reach right through the phone to punch you.”

“Well, excuse the spurk out of me,” he said, “But those are the choices, and yes, the difference is relevant, okay? Would you like some suggestions about how to deal with this guy, or keep winging it? Since that’s been working out so well.”

“Oh, by all means enlighten me,” I said.

“The fact that he scorched, rather than melted, that says to me that he’s a tree fairy. But the problem with that is, Fae associated with trees are associated with specific trees.”

“So,” I replied, wincing at the unavoidable pun, “We need to know why he’s out of his tree.”

“Exactly,” George said with a professorial sort of chuckle.

“But why the autumn?” I asked.

“Not sure,” he said, and I could infer the shrug. I waited for him to continue, but no. Apparently that was it.

“That really, really doesn’t give me a lot to go on,”

“I could speculate,” he said, “But it would just be giving you a license to yell at me some more.”

“Hey!” I began, then stopped myself.

I hate it when George is right.

I inhaled. Exhaled.

“I just got punched in the head,” I said.

“I know. Look, I’ve told you what I know. The tree is the key. Sight unseen, I can’t be sure of anything else,” George said, and he even managed to sound apologetic.

“We should all get moving,” I told him.

“Yeah,” he said, “Look, Bobs, just… just take care of yourself, partner.”

I tried to think of something clever and mood-lightening.

I finally settled for, “You too. I’ll be in touch.”

“Okay,” I said over my shoulder as I slipped the phone back into my pocket, “We know a little more than we did before.”

It was, I suddenly noticed, oddly quiet.

I looked up. “Hey, Bradley,” I said.

But Bradley was gone.

To Be Continued

Bradley and I went out through the front door, and I took a deep, grateful breath of comparatively fresher air.

There was a downside; I wasn’t thrilled to be leaving a crime scene unattended – any evidence there was now well out of the chain of custody, and totally unusable at trial – but I didn’t see that there was much choice. With the alert that I’d just called in, the Captain was going to need all hands just to keep the border covered, let alone if there was, Goddess forbid, another emergency. They’d be pulling in the off duty Iron Badges too, all three shifts.

I had better, I realized, actually collar this spurk. I’d be facing a decidedly frosty atmosphere in the break room if this all turned out to be for nothing.

Bradley unlocked the car doors and I slid in to the passenger side. He sat in the driver’s seat, and moved the key to the ignition. Then he stopped and looked at me.

“I was pretty sure we were dead, there,” he said.

I nodded, “Whatever the hell he is, he’s tough.”

Bradley seemed surprised. “You don’t know?”

“Nope. He fits some of the key Fae criteria: Big, misshapen, some kind of connection to nature. But he’s not a standard model. George,” I added, “might have some ideas. He knows the Bestiary better than I do.”

“So,” Bradley said, looking a little horrified, “The tactics you used. Which worked. You were…?”

“Improvising,” I agreed, “Yeah. We do that.”

His lip twitched. “And you guys wonder why normal cops don’t like you?”

“I didn’t see you coming up with any brainstorms,” I snapped, and I could feel myself flushing, “Or was getting tossed through the door your way of lulling him into a false sense of security?”

I turned away and looked out the window. I thought I’d seen an olive branch for a moment there, and I wasn’t sure which one of us had thrown it away.

“Hey, maybe if you’d seen fit to pass along some of your fancy pixie-piercing ammo, I could have done some good. You didn’t tell me the guy was a ringer.”

“I…” I almost said didn’t know, but stopped myself. “I wasn’t sure.”

“You gave me nothing to go on,” he said, “I walked in there blind. It’s a damn miracle we’re both alive. Fine, credit where it’s due, you got us out of it. Well, you got us into it too.”

I bit back the first response that came to mind, and the second.

Also the third.

I counted to ten, then – and only then – turned back to look at Bradley.

“You going to start the car, Ace?” I asked.

“You going to fill me in this time, Maverick?” he replied.

I thought for a moment, “We need to find the nearest major stormwater overflow outlet… Yeah. Queen’s Quay, east of Bathurst. Right at the waterfront. Give me a minute and I’ll confirm the street address.” I pulled out my phone.

“And when we get there?” he asked.

“Not sure yet,” I said.

“Right,” he said, “Improvising. Jesus.”

And he turned the key in the ignition.

To Be Continued

“Barry, I can’t hear you,” I enunciated loudly, “Do you copy? I need – oh.”

Feeling really spurking stupid, I switched the phone to the ear that hadn’t suffered what I still hoped was temporary hearing loss.

“Sorry, Barry. Go ahead.”

I held out a hand to Bradley. He took it without a word, without looking me in the eye, and I helped him to his feet.

“Bobs, I copy,” said the dispatcher over the phone, “But I need confirmation. Are you calling in…”

“A Brick House Alert. Yeah, confirmed. It’s Brick House Alert,” I said, “Tell the Captain we need to close the Border. Put out an APB to all patrols and checkpoints for Alias Glenn Jackson.”

I gave Barry a description of our perp in both his guises, and added the armed-and-dangerous warning.

“Affirmative,” Barry said when I was done, “Now, get your cop back on the leash and get back here. Sounds like you both need medical attention.”

“We’re okay,” I replied.

“Bobs –” Barry started, but I cut him off.

“Barry, don’t spurking mother me. I have a lead to run down and you need to fill the Captain in. I’m okay. We’re both fine.” I turned to Bradley, “You’re fine, right, Detective?”

Bradley was still staring into Jackson’s apartment, “He says he’s fine, Barry.”

“Right. Whatever you say, Roberta,” Barry said. He only calls me that when he wants me to know that I’m not fooling him even a little bit, but since he wasn’t arguing the point anymore, it didn’t much matter if I was fooling him or not, “Just be careful,” he added.

“Okay, Mom,” I said, “Keep me posted,” and I snapped my phone closed.

I looked at Bradley. He still hadn’t said a word, and I wondered if maybe I’d been a little too flippant about his condition. “Bradley?” I asked him, “You there, or did he break you?”

He finally looked at me, his forehead a freshly-plowed field of consternation, “How did he get through the window?” he asked me.

I must have looked almost as puzzled as he did for a moment, then understood.

“He was… huge,” Bradley went on, “Just freaking huge, a giant…”

Bradley was wrong, of course. I saw a giant once. From a distance, thank Goddess. Alias-Glenn-Jackson wasn’t even as big as a small giant, but I knew what he meant.

“So how,” Bradley demanded, “The hell. Did he get. Through that tiny little window?”

“Come on, Detective,” I said, but gently, because I’ve seen logical thinkers confront Fairyland for the first time before, “You know how.”

He sagged. “Magic,” he said.

“Yeah,” I nodded, “Spurking magic. So seriously, you okay? Because I have an idea where we might find him.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s go,” he said.