Io shook her head. “Her name’s Chloe. She disappeared? I don’t for one minute believe she’s here willingly.”
“Neither do I.”
“But then why didn’t Xanthe ask us to find her?” Io wondered aloud, speaking more to herself than Jack. “Zayn and I are
here.
We could be looking.”
“Probably because a rescue op has a damn poor chance of succeeding, and Xanthe doesn’t want anyone cowboying about and getting the kid killed. There is also the credibility factor. I don’t think H.U.G. higher-ups would take kindly to having a director-in-charge of the northern U.S. with a sister who is a goblin-fruit junkie.”
“So, instead of asking for help and admitting that she is compromised, Xanthe is dithering about, not doing anything to directly mess up Horroban’s plans, but trying to gather information and look efficient while she comes up with some arrangement to save her sister?” Io sighed. “Well, hell. I knew something was wrong when she pushed so hard for me to come back to Goblin Town. The goals were too amorphous. The mission had no shape. And the only reason she wanted me near you was so she could tell Horroban where the real danger was coming from.”
“My thoughts exactly. But I’m glad you see it.”
“It’s a little hard not to. It’s like finding a big, fat spider swimming in a glass of curdled milk.” Io thought about the developments, unconsciously resting her head against Jack’s shoulder.
“I don’t honestly know what she’ll do,” she told him after a moment. “Not if push comes to shove. Xanthe is really fond of Chloe.”
“I know she is. So, for sure she can’t be trusted with any information. You can’t pass anything along through Zayn.”
“Goddess, no!” Not with how fond of Chloe Zayn was. He’d had a sort of crush on her forever.
“However, this mess doesn’t change our job any. Our objectives are the same as before,” Jack reminded her. “It’ll take the lab a day to do the analysis of that fruit and see if the addiction content has been raised. In the meantime, we still need to find out what Neveling Lutin is up to—that is, if you’re still in. Things are getting really tricky and I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to pull out.”
“Put a sock in it,” Io snapped, without real heat. “I’m in, and I’m staying. So, we go back into the Labyrinth and find Neveling?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Damn. Want to bet the gargoyles are on duty tonight?”
“Almost certainly.”
Heat began to drain from Io’s body as it finally understood what it would be doing that night. The
flesh of her nape began to creep, lodging its own protest at this plan.
Jack laid a warm hand on the back of her neck and stroked gently.
“Let’s go by your place and I’ll change shoes,” Io said, proud of the calm in her voice. “If I have to run, I don’t want it to be in heels.”
“Okay. I have some nifty tools there as well.”
“Yeah? What kind of nifty tools?”
“Well, for one thing, there is a neat little handgun that shoots bullets forged of cold iron. It even has a silencer.”
“That’s a really nifty tool,” Io agreed, looking up at Jack. “Who gets to play with it first?”
“You know how to shoot a pistol?” Jack asked.
“Yes.”
“Then it’s all yours.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
They went down and in near Neveling’s factory, and their first stop in the Labyrinth was another cavernous farm covered in a field of the ripening ruby goblin fruit. Io was better prepared for the sight this time, but the spectacle still left a bitter taste in her mouth and had her gut clenching. It was too easy to recall her mother nibbling on the glossy spheres as a smiling Drakkar fed them to her. Feys didn’t age the way humans did when they took the stuff, but they became just as addicted to goblin fruit, and their minds became just as given over to obsession.
“Shall we find out what’s feeding them?” Jack asked.
“Yes.” Io swallowed hard. “Do it.”
Jack knelt down at the end of a row and, drawing on a glove, he pulled back the tangle of barbed vines. The plants were being supplied nourishment by individual drippers, two tubes for each cane. One
was filled with a clear liquid; the other was not. It was difficult to judge shades in the eerie green twilight, but Io was willing to bet that the other was thinned-down blood. That was, after all, what goblin fruit needed to grow: human blood, human bones.
“Where are those destructive garden gophers when you want them?” Io muttered.
“At the donut shop with the cops, probably,” Jack muttered back. “Keep an eye and an ear out for goblins. I want to see where this goes.”
Jack pushed vines aside and followed the plastic tubing into the field, tracing the red line to a tank located nearly twenty feet in. The thing was about the size of a coffin and sprouted a dozen spigots off its sides. He laid a gloved hand against its corroding surface and gave the tank a shove. As expected, there was the sound of sloshing liquid. But there were also several hollow thumps, suggesting something solid inside.
Io thought of the junkie she and Jack had seen and tried not to be ill. Jack’s face was also grim.
“There must be what—fifty of them down here in this field alone?”
Io nodded.
They followed an ear-assaulting whine back to a small pump house at the edge of the field where the largest feeder lines disappeared. The pump sounded as if it needed oil. Goblins weren’t big on mechanical items and tended to be careless about maintenance.
“Can we break in?”
“Do we need to?”
“We could do a little sabotage,” Io suggested.
“Not yet. We don’t want them to know—quiet!” Jack grabbed Io and quickly drew her to the far side of the pump house. Two goblins appeared out of the south tunnel and approached the pumping station, hissing dry sibilants at each other as they carried on their argument. They held long bloody scythes in their bony hands, which they occasionally brandished at one another. Apparently goblin gardening was a gory business.
Jack waited until the pair was almost upon them and then he flattened Io against the wall and plastered his mouth against hers. Magic raced over her tongue and down inside where it exploded through every cell of her body. A spell screamed through her nerves, making them wail in shock at the violent intrusion. It was like being spun in a giant centrifuge. At the moment when she thought she might cry out, the invisibility spell completed its circuit, covering up the sight, smell and—most importantly—noise of both of them.
The goblins passed so close that Io could feel the displaced air move around their gore-covered bodies.
Jack held her up against the wall, mouth to mouth and their bodies mated to the knees, until the goblins had left the cave. Only then did he gradually pull his magic back and set her body away from his.
Though he was gentle about the extraction, it took a moment for the world to right itself.
“Are you okay?”
“Never better,” Io lied, her voice rough.
“Swell.”
She braced her hands against the wall and ordered her knees to stop buckling.
“Did you catch any of that tiff?” Jack asked, turning away from her. His voice was calm, but Io felt what their proximity had done to his body. He was not as unaffected as he sounded.
“No.” Io’s voice was nowhere near as calm as Jack’s. She still sounded husky enough to be a torch singer, and her breath tended to catch midsentence. “What were they complaining about?”
“There is some other, more important garden back the way they came. One was feeling crabby because none of the fruit was for them. It all goes to Neveling Lutin for ‘the project.’ The other one wanted to steal some, but his buddy was afraid to try it because Lutin’s gargoyles ate the last poacher—feet first.”
“An important gardening project for Neveling Lutin,
and
gargoyles too,” Io mused, straightening her spine. “That would seem to have our names written on it. I guess we’d better go see it the very first thing.”
“Yes, damn it, we do need to see it,” Jack agreed. “But we had better make it quick. We’ve also got to get into Neveling’s hole tonight and see what he’s up to. His damned aerosols are being used all over
town and we still don’t know what’s in them!”
Io nodded. “And I think it is high time that someone got a look at Horroban. That creature is more mysterious than Moriarty.” She couldn’t stop a shiver at the goblin warlord’s name. “Neveling is just a pawn. We need to find the mastermind.”
“Right, that’s on the to-do list, too,” Jack agreed. He blotted his brow. “These fields are damned hot.”
“So, let’s get this over with and then go have a beer,” Io said, credibly faking heroic bravado.
“Yeah. A beer would be good.” Feys didn’t usually drink beer, since alcohol interfered with their magic, but both Io and Jack’s human side found the idea appealing.
Jack set off at a fast pace, and Io forced herself to keep up. Her nerves were sniveling softly about their close call with the goblins, and her body was screeching about again having Jack inside her but not
really
inside. At least not in the physical way that counted.
She told them both to shut up, but it didn’t seem to help. She was still both terrified
and
aroused.
The passage seemed to go on forever, a glowing green tunnel that might lead all the way to Hell. Jack knew that with the constant gloom and white noise, a sort of sensory deprivation could start to set in. The brain, bored with nothing to look at or listen to, started inventing things to entertain itself. Small hallucinations could quickly turn into big bogeys. The
problem was, of course, that sometimes the bogeys weren’t figments of the imagination, so you couldn’t just go on your way ignoring them.
He wanted to explain this to Io, so she would be prepared if her brain started freaking, but he also needed to keep his ears peeled for light-footed goblins. They might not have time to share the invisibility spell again, and he needed to be prepared to clobber anything that got close enough to endanger them. He didn’t want to leave suspicious corpses lying about as calling cards, but he would if there were no other choice.
Io would probably resent his protectiveness. She would point out that she had his gun with her. But Jack was not certain that his little fey would actually use it. He had found his visit to her treetop house very instructive. The place was a lot like Io—open to the sky, full of life, and well-hidden from casual passersby. On her shelves, she had a number of books on animal first aid and herbal lore, and a collection of various bird and animal foods stored in glass canisters for refilling the feeders hanging in the tree.
And he’d already seen to what lengths her compassion for the junkies would lead her. This was a woman who respected life. Given that love of all things living, it was ridiculous to have her functioning as a soldier in a situation where she might have to kill. What the hell had Xanthe been thinking?
Well, both Io and he knew what Xanthe was thinking about—and it wasn’t Io’s welfare.
Of course, to be fair to Xanthe, the other thing that Io Cyphre had in abundance was stubbornness, and apparently a decade of revenge mapped out in her mind. Things like the murder of a parent needed some form of closure, Jack supposed. Chances were that if she knew of something afoot in Goblin Town, Io would have found some way to be here, no matter what Xanthe said.
No, the present situation was not a happy one, but Jack still saw that there was a potential silver lining. He was not usually big on philosophical consideration, but any moron could see that it would be helpful for his future to build a relationship founded on life-and-death sort of trust. He could build just such a relationship while helping Io take care of a lot of old personal business.
And Io was definitely warming up to him. She hadn’t fought at all when he pulled the invisibility spell over both of them. She could have pulled the steel-fist spell out of him, and knocked him and both goblins into next week if she’d wanted, but she hadn’t done anything except press herself against him as if she were trying to crawl inside his body.
It had been a hard invitation to decline. His body still wasn’t happy at being told to get back to business, but it would just have to endure. Far more important was that his wary fey continue to have faith in him. And that they stay alive, of course.
“I think we’ve found ‘the project,’ ” Jack said softly, shaking off his musings.
The tunnel opened up into another cave, this one hung with lamps to provide lighting other than the walls’ luminescence. Plants were being grown in raised tubs in an obvious if unusual form of hydroponics.
Each plant was loaded with what appeared to be enormous fist-sized strawberries that looked deliciously succulent.
“You’d never know they were grown underground.
Except for their size
, they could pass for normal fruit,” he murmured.
“Only more irresistible. They’re like the apples the wicked queen fed Snow White: perfect, deadly, the perfect marriage of high tech and black magic.”
“And they’re all organically grown in eco-friendly ways. Nothing but the finest evil fruit for our every dining need. What would you pay for one of these beauties?”
They stepped closer. The sound of trickling fluid feeding the goblin-fruit plants’ basins was too thick to be relaxing. Ears knew that they weren’t listening to water rippling down a stream.
“Gotta love hydroponics. No pest-control problems,” Jack commented, looking at the fruit plants’ enormous leaves. “I bet some salt in the water would screw things up though.”
“Or an imported dose of red stele infection—or spider mites.” When Jack stared at her, Io added, “I
like gardening. I have my own strawberry patch.”
“How fast could either of those things kill off a plant?” he asked curiously. “Could we use them as subtle sabotage of this crop?”
Io looked at the huge foliage and the nearly ripe fruit around her, then shook her head.
“They’re not fast enough.”
“Okay, so much for subtlety.” Jack took out his bandanna and plucked off two of the lower pieces of fruit. Again, each tiny stem drooled red sap. “We have samples. Enough with our goblins’ farming endeavors. We need to go see the production end of things. They have to be
doing
something with all this fruit, and I am sure it isn’t going to the Saturday farmers market. Damnation! We will never make it to Neveling’s factory at this rate.”
“Wait. Not the farmers market, but…” Io thought hard for a moment, obviously trying to fit a couple of odd facts together in her mind. Jack waited patiently. Her intuitions were usually sound, if oddly arrived at.
“Jack, they said these were for Neveling.”
“Yes.” He mopped his brow. “And speaking of him…”
“Wait. I need to think.” She laid a hand on his arm, probably making sure she had his attention—as if he had stopped thinking of her for a moment since sharing the invisibility spell.
“We’ve been looking at three things and thinking they were mostly unrelated,” she continued. “But
maybe we don’t have three problems. Maybe we have just one.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve been worried about what Glashtin is pumping through The Madhouse’s ventilation system, right? We have also been wondering what Neveling is up to in his factory with this new perfume he’s making from goblin musk—or at least Ferris is wondering that.”
“Don’t forget Horroban.”
Io shook her head. “I haven’t. Our éminence gris is up to his ears in this stuff, one way or another. But to me he seems a sort of a side issue. In the long term he’s important, but he’s not something we have to deal with right now.”
Jack shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But go on. What is the third thing?”
“The last thing we’ve seen and wondered about is the increase in goblin-fruit junkies—and how sick they are. I keep asking myself—Why would so many new people be eating the goblin’s poisonous fruit when they are educated against it? People aren’t that dumb. And if they did start using, intending it to only be recreational; when they first saw that they were really getting sick, surely they’d go for help—try rehab or something.” She turned to Jack, her eyes wide and worried. “But they don’t. You want to bet it’s probably because this new super-fruit the goblins are growing is being delivered in innovative and experimental ways and people don’t even
know
they
are being addicted? I mean, the goblins would want to test it, right? See how it is most effectively delivered?”
“Maybe.” Jack began to put it together on his own. “You think Glashtin is testing Lutin’s new perfume in the ventilation system of his club. And the perfume is made not just from goblin musk and some man-made hallucinogenics, but from goblin fruit—this
super
goblin fruit—as well. And all at Horroban’s instigation.”
“Well, think about it. What if they could make a fruit so potent that you didn’t need to ingest it to become addicted? All you had to do was get a few parts per million on the skin, or inhale it. Don’t forget what Ferris said: Neveling’s basic perfume is a perfect biological delivery agent. It has something to do with its molecules being small enough to pass through human skin.”
Jack shook his head. “Nobody would want strawberry juice cologne, though—even from a regular cosmetic company.”
“No, not because it’s strawberry juice. But what
would
be oh so fashionably chic to wear is the firstever goblin musk perfume.”