Free Dead to Rites by Ari Marmell

me and actually took some to think about it, yeah, she’d heard some talk about some mugs being “relieved” of certain goods, gewgaws of the sort you really didn’t want falling into the wrong hands, but that the bulls couldn’t do a damn thing about. Never anything big, nothing like, oh, just for example, the Spear of Lugh, but still significant. A talisman here, a tattered fragment of ritual there.
    “Names, Lenai. I need specific names.”
    She called me plenty of ’em. Not exactly the ones I was lookin’ for, though.
    “The hell makes you think I’d even remember?” she finally demanded. “We’re talking rumors here. And not about anything I thought was important.”
    “Because you remember everything.”
    “When I’m old and wise!” she crowed, spitefully triumphant. “I’m younger right now! I don’t remember. You’ll have to leave.”
    “Nah, I can wait.”
    In mythology, the glare of Medusa turned men to stone. Lenai’s glare woulda turned statues to flesh—mostly so they could get up and scram.
    “You said you’d make this quick,” she accused.
    “Yeah, quick as I can. So soon as you calm down and get to aging, I can call it a day.”
    “You being here agitates me!”
    “You’d be surprised how often I been told that. I suggest a stiff shot of whiskey.”
    All right, I’ve subjected you to enough of this. Today was a bit worse’n normal, since Lenai was worried about whoever knew enough to look her up to ask about me, but on the square, she’s pretty much like this all the time. I did eventually coax a few names outta her, tossed another few bucks her way, and blew the place quick.
    It’s
tiring
bein’ around her.
    Anyway, names. None of ’em were anybody I knew well, and most I hadn’t heard of at all. That bugged me some. Much as I wished otherwise, the last year-and-change had made it clear I wasn’t gonna be able to restrict myself to “mundane” cases; that what you call the supernatural was gonna keep intruding itself into my life. This bein’ the case, I really hadda do a better job of keeping track of who in Chicago knew something about something, savvy?
    All that said, one of the names did jump out at me, but at first I couldn’t figure why. “Georgina Kessler.” I knew I’d come across it, but I’d left Lenai’s dump and ankled a good couple of blocks before it dawned on me.
    I hadn’t
known
the dame as “Georgina.” I’d only learned that was her full name when I poked into her background a little after the fact. Now that I’d sussed out who she was, though, it oughta be duck soup to actually find her.
    And it was. Place was in her boss’s name, not hers, but that wasn’t much of a hurdle.
    How many apartment tenements you want me to describe to you, anyway? It was a lot nicer’n the one I’d just visited, not quite as swanky as some. Comfortable without being ostentatious. That enough for you? Good.
    Spotted a couple goons keeping a slant on the place, too. Oh, they were makin’ a stab at inconspicuous, but their aim was off. One guy had his keister planted on a bench and was peeping over the top of a folded newspaper, but you only hadda watch him for a few minutes to figure that either he wasn’t reading at all, or he had the reading comprehension and speed of a particularly uneducated marmoset. Down by the corner, another one sat behind the wheel of a cherry-red Packard 840, smoking what—to judge by what looked like a fog bank struggling desperately to escape the car—hadda be his forty-ninth or fiftieth gasper.
    I didn’t figure them for the mugs—or mug—who’d been following me. Didn’t seem to be their style, and anyway they’d already been here when I showed. Whatever else Goswythe or whoever might be, I hadn’t seen any sign yet that they were prophetic.
    Which still left any number of options. Coulda been coppers. Coulda been some of her boss’s rivals, or even his own guys keeping tabs. Hell, coulda been a couple of jilted