Free Unperfect Souls by Mark Del Franco Page A

fairy, a solitary I don’t recognize and, I’m not sure, but I think it might be a Dead human.”
    “Human? I thought there were no humans in Faerie,” he said.
    I ducked my head under a ceiling beam. “No humans came here from Faerie during Convergence. That’s different. There were humans in Faerie who lived and died. Whoever I’m sensing died as a human in Faerie.”
    Murdock stopped. “We’re here.”
    The pipe continued a few more feet, the end suspended over a wide catch basin filled with water. A dozen feet across it, another pipe entered from the opposite direction. Fetid water trickled out of both pipes. Joe circled in the air, examining the debris floating in the water. Murdock would have killed me if I knocked him into it, no matter how accidentally. I was very tempted, I was.
    “See anything, Joe?” Murdock asked.
    His eyes glowed with excitement. “It’s essence soup.”
    Essences smeared into each other, reds and yellows dominating with streaks of blue and green. Here and there, the pale essence of the Dead twisted on cast-off garments and, yes, indications of body fluids. My head buzzed with the mess, the dark mass pulsing against my skull.
    A wet, hollow sound filled the air with a rumble and a rush. I grabbed Murdock’s sleeve. “Better step back.”
    We retreated a few feet into the tunnel as a gout of black-slimed water gushed out of the pipe. As if triggered by its companion, more water spewed from the opposite pipe. The pipe continued dropping a steady stream after the nearer one slackened. The catch basin sloshed as water fell and kicked up debris from the bottom. The water level rose and spilled into a culvert on one wall between the two pipes. The rancid smell of sewage and rotten garbage thickened. The stench had a texture to it that clung to the back of the throat and made it impossible not to gag.
    In the midst of the swirls of essence, something pale floated, a void of essence. It rolled up and sank, then rose again. Wet hair spread across the surface, spreading the weight of the thing it was attached to. It bobbed, and dead white eyes stared up at us.
    “Jesus,” Murdock muttered as he played the flashlight on the face.
    “That is one big head,” Joe said.
    The body found at the headworks was one of the Dead. This head, however, didn’t have the signature of one of the Dead. It rolled, its face rising out of the water.
    “That’s not the head we were looking for,” Murdock said.
    “I think we just found Zev’s friend Sekka,” I said.

8
     
     
     
     
    As the cramped space around the catch basin became crowded with the arrival of the medical examiner and more MWRA workers, Murdock and I shuffled along a ledge to the opposite outlet pipe. The sewer workers fitted a temporary flexible pipe to the end of the outflows to bypass the basin, and pumps had been brought in to drain it. The medical examiner had the unpleasant task of fishing the giantess’s head out of the water.
    Joe wandered around the edges of the space, swooping down whenever he saw something interesting. Interesting, in this case, was everything from a sodden stuffed bear to things that did not bear scrutiny.
    “A headless body and bodiless head that don’t match,” Murdock said.
    “I hate to say it, but if Zev’s attitude was any indication, there’s going to be more of this,” I said.
    Murdock shook his head. “With multiple perpetrators.”
    Joe wandered between us and flew up to face level. “Um . . . guys? If I, say, noticed a crack in a wall in a tunnel and a cold, creepy draft came out of it and it smelled like three-day-old lasagna, would you, um, want to know about that?”
    Murdock and I exchanged glances. “You invited him,” I said.
    “Show us the crack, Joe,” Murdock said.
    Joe turned around and lowered his loincloth.
    I tilted my head back with a grin. “You so walked into that.”
    Murdock shook his head with a half smile. “I did, I did. Okay, what I meant was, where’s the