Free Madhouse by Rob Thurman

patted the couch for Promise, giving her another wide smile before turning to Nik and me. "No problem. Like I said, if Ishiah lets you work in the Circle, then you're good by me. He's not one for slackers or troublemakers."
    Unless you happened to be a friend of Robin's, because I fell in both of those categories. But I kept my mouth shut on that and got to the point. "There's this thing in town." It damn sure didn't qualify as anything else. "A Redcap. Sawney Beane. He's been killing some people and we'd like to chat the bastard up." Chat with a sword, a gun, a cannon…whatever it took.
    "With his history, 'some people' will soon become many people and we'd like to stop that before it happens," Niko added.
    It was a tricky subject. There were monsters and then there were nonhumans. Monsters ate people and nonhumans didn't—they just lived their lives. There were crossovers sometimes. A wolf could be either or. I knew both kinds. Some others qualified as well. No matter what Promise said about vamps and their vitamins, you couldn't tell me there wasn't the occasional rogue out there bleeding people for all they were worth. But the tricky part was that some nonhumans had a policy of keeping their mouths shut. The way they saw it, they weren't going to get between a monster and his meal. That was dangerous, maybe deadly, and not their job.
    It was ours, though.
    The smile faded as he sat down beside Promise, slinging a casual arm on the top of the couch behind her. Great. Another Goodfellow. I didn't check to see if Niko was jealous. If he was, he wouldn't show it anyway, but I doubted he was. He trusted Promise, five dead husbands aside. And if he trusted her, then she deserved it. Niko didn't often make mistakes when it came to trust. "Sawney Beane. I heard that son of a bitch was dead a long time ago."
    "He was. He's back. And if you do not remove that arm, I will. Permanently," Promise said coolly.
    It wasn't the type of thing to build up goodwill and useful conversation, but I didn't much blame her. Ham only flashed a smile and pulled the arm back. "No harm in trying. Didn't know one of these pups was yours." No harm, no foul. If he was the Pied Piper, we were pups to him. "That'd be the only thing that'd have you resisting my skills."
    "Yes, of course that's the reason," she said dryly.
    Niko steered the subject back. "We were thinking that soon enough Sawney will begin to prey on the homeless. They're more vulnerable in that they'll be less likely to be missed. He was burned at the stake once. I doubt he'll want to risk getting caught again."
    "We thought you might know a few of the guys from the subways and the streets. All kinds of people hang around to hear you play at the bar. I figured it wouldn't be much different on the streets."
    "Yeah, people have always lined up to hear me play." The smile was more sly than friendly now. "And for professional jobs I always get paid. One way or another."
    Such as having children follow his piping out of a town some six or seven hundred years ago when he got stiffed on a job he'd done on their rat problem. But he did give the kids back once he got paid. So the story went at least. That kept him off the monster list. Barely.
    "But, yeah, I know some guys and those guys know some guys. Some of them are cool enough— for humans. Just fell on hard times." His smile disappeared this time. "And if they have a nickel, hell, even a quarter, they always toss it in my case. Good guys who appreciate a little entertainment." He drummed long fingers on his knee. "Let me ask around. See what I can find out. These guys do come and go, so it may take me a few days, maybe more. Disappearing for a while isn't so unusual for them and Sawney's not the only one who thinks they're easy prey."
    That was true enough. I'd seen the Kin try to take an entire busload of them once. That took balls. Furry ones, but balls all the same. Yeah, the homeless were easy prey all right, but if Sawney was still