27 March 2019
As we got away in the car, the dogs chased us; sometimes they got more solid, and Miss Yvette was able to shoot one as it passed semi-materially through the car.
I stayed with the boat and the body, and we went up river, in search of heavy things for a burial at sea.
Mac and Miss Yvette evaded more dogs with the car, and took a look at the address on Miss Eva’s business card. It wasn’t certain, but it seemed possible someone was in residence. They lost one on the way to crossing the river.
On the boat, Max and I got the feeling that something in the water was following us, and getting closer even when Max gunned the engine. We slowed to steerage way, and a thing came out of the water; something dog-like in the mouth and head, but more eel-like in the back, which didn’t help it in its attempts to get onto the boat.
Max spoke to the thing once it was on the deck, saying that we’d return “it” but we’d have to find it. It lunged at Max, who slashed back, and Terry shot it too. Max’s second blow went home, and that seemed to finish it off, and it lost solidity as the other one had.
With some weights on board, we ran back down the river to Mercy Island, and dropped the dog overboard there. Then back up to where we could let off Federwell’s body in deep water, and clean up the boat – then get some rest.
In the car, they were still being followed, and crossing the river didn’t seem to help much. Mac looked for some shallows, in the hope the dogs would become more solid and perhaps vulnerable. Mac ran down the dogs, and there were hard thumps and two lumps left in the road; he turned round and did it again, to make sure. Some way down the road they stopped to take a look, and the car was clearly damaged and somewhat bloodstained.
They went back to Mercer, to the shop, and knocked on the door to the upstairs business. They got a response eventually, though the woman who opened it wasn’t Miss Eva. She was suspicious, but Miss Yvette talked her way into giving some answers: she hadn’t seen Eva for the best part of a week. She didn’t want to give away any details, but Mac and Miss Yvette talked her into Miss Eva’s home address.
This was clearly a shared apartment; the lady who answered the door (waiting for a gentleman caller) was happy to talk with a bit of persuasion, but hadn’t seen Eva since Sunday.
She’d come home on Saturday morning and started making French toast – usually a sign that she was cross. Later she got a phone call – apparently from her “pretty” caller (Louie, Lucian, Luther, something like that), since her voice went soft. Then she got herself prettied up and went out.
This lady, Ella, didn’t know where Eva was, but had an emergency number to call, and Mac asked her to pass on a message from both of them. Apparently the woman who took messages was kind of twitchy…
Another young lady, Lucy, came in. She hadn’t seen Eva recently but had run into her little friend (the short one with the temper, but without the wings – Pepper) on Tuesday. Pepper had said she wouldn’t be home for a while, but the rent would be paid. There was a “brawling club” where he might be found, and a better time to look would be tomorrow night…
Ella had gone to sleep on Mac’s shoulder, but the newcomer was happy for the pair to see Eva’s room; there was nothing obviously magical about it. A search revealed plenty of makeup and clothing in good repair; a pile of piecework; a stack of high-grade fashion magazines. There was also some cash, and a good but probably fake out-of-state driver’s licence in the name of Rebecca Harding.
Lucy gave some suggestions about where else Eva might be found – at least if she wasn’t trying to stay hidden.
Out on the boat, Terry summoned his invisible friends with a saucer of rum… not so invisible in this light, sprites or something like, with a glow about them. He asked about the dogs – they usually hunted people, and killed them. But finding who’d set them on the hunt, that was a harder task – and somewhere there was a hunter leading them. The sprites looked forward to watching… and the only practical way to stop the hunt would be to find whoever it was who wanted us hunted. There were only two really big Folk in the city… Her and Him, and they didn’t get on.