Free Spiritwalk by Charles De Lint Page A

glowing would guide him; then she gave him a thin white rope made of a material Chance didn’t recognize. “Faerie living so long in the cities of men can’t be bound with either cold iron or the holy word anymore,” she told him. “But this will do—witches’ rope.” Chance took it gingerly. The last thing she did was rub an ointment into his eyes so that he could see into Faerie. Chance didn’t find that it made any difference until Joey was driving him into Ottawa, and then...oh, Christ, then.
    They seemed to be all over the place. Weird little wizened beings—those were the hobs, he guessed—and others. Black dogs that only he could see. Men and women riding little ponies. Things that looked like they had scales instead of skin. All this, side by side with the everyday reality of cars and buses, skanky secretaries in tight skirts and CFMPs and bozos in their three-pieces.
    “You see that horse there?” he asked Joey once.
    They were stopped at a red light, waiting for it to change. Joey looked all around. “What horse?” he asked.
    Chance watched the tall black horse cross the intersection and trot off up the Sparks Street Mall. “Nothing,” he said, rubbing at his eye. “I was just pulling your leg.” Joey gave him an odd look, but then the light changed. “Take a right here,” Chance said as they came up to Laurier.
    They found the hob in a back alley off Laurier—the seeking stone glimmering brightly in Chance’s hand as he pointed it at what appeared to be a rubbie sleeping off a drunk in a mess of newspaper and trash.
    “That’s him,” Chance said. “Get him, Joey.”
    “But, Chance—”
    “Just get him!”
    The rubbie woke at the sound of their voices, but before he could flee, Joey had him in a headlock and was dragging him back to the car. Chance quickly bound their captive with the rope Glamorgana had given him. Joey looked into the backseat where they threw him and saw a frightened old wino, but the Lady’s ointment let Chance see the little hob for what he was. The little man acted like the ropes were burning him where they touched his skin.
    “What are we doing with this guy?” Joey asked.
    “He’s a Faerie,” Chance told him. “We’re snatching him for Our Lady of the Night.” Chance wasn’t stupid—he hadn’t told any of the other Dragons about what he’d found out in the woods near Lac la Pêche—but Joey was different and Chance had told him the whole score. The secret was safe with the big galoot. Joey’d been his partner since day one, and besides, the poor guy was too stupid to really understand anyway.
    “What does she want with a fag?” Joey asked.
    Chance shrugged. “Guess we’re going to find out. Let’s go, Joey.”
    Glamorgana paid them well—in both gold and, at least for Chance, her favors. It was a good gig. An easy one. And that night they got to sit in as Glamorgana cut the little hob to pieces. Tough little bugger, Chance thought, watching the proceedings with interest. All he had to do was talk, but the little man wouldn’t give up squat. Still, in the end Glamorgana found what she wanted. She was looking for a power—something she could turn on Kinrowan’s Laird and the giant-killing Jack so that she could have the place for her own. It took time—Chance and Joey brought in two more Kinrowan Faerie before the Lady’s gnashers got a chance sniff of what she was looking for in a snug little house in Old Chelsea.
    Because the house was in the Borderlands between Kinrowan and Dunlogan, the gnashers had done the Lady’s work for her that time. But it took Joey and me to clean things up, Chance thought with satisfaction as he checked their captive in the rearview mirror. Nice little piece of ass, this one. Maybe the Lady’d give her to Joey if there was anything left of her after tonight.
    They pulled into the Dragon’s farm outside of Saint-François-de-Masham, having the place to themselves for a change.
    “It’s a little stopover,”