I dialed Brian Clay, listened to ringing, and hung up. “Surprise surprise,” I said to everyone. “He’s not answering.”
“So what kind of a thing is this Claybriar?” said Teo. “Green Lantern forgot to mention that, so we don’t know if he has any weird powers.”
“He did mention it,” said Caryl. “You just don’t know what hircine means.”
Teo shrugged. “Got me there.”
“Hairy?” I guessed.
“That’s hirsute,” Caryl corrected me. “Hircine means goatlike or pertaining to goats. So, a faun.”
“Ah,” I said. Then in another tone entirely, “Aaaaaah!” I looked at Teo, but he just stared blankly back at me.
“Caryl,” I said, “how common are fauns?”
“Claybriar is the only one I have ever seen.”
“In that case, I need to talk to Baroness Foxfeather again.”
? ? ?
Baroness Foxfeather, Seelie noble and bartender, was renting a posh little one-bedroom apartment during what was apparently an extended stay in our world to search for her Echo. Since Caryl felt that five people was a bit much for an interrogation, she managed to talk Gloria and Tjuan into staying home with her to look through files.
When Teo and I arrived at the painstakingly restored Hollywood apartment building, Foxfeather buzzed us in and answered the door naked.
“It’s Ironbones!” she said in delighted surprise, as though I had not identified myself at the buzzer. “What a terrifying honor! Would you like to come in for sex and oranges?”
I’ll confess I missed a beat. “I’m honored by the invitation,” I said solemnly, “but we’re just here to chat.”
“Okay,” she said, letting us in. She gestured to a closed door off to our left. “Three of my friends are sexing in there, but I told them to be quiet since the Authorities were coming. How can I help the Authorities?”
I tried not to stare at the closed door. “You carved a faun into the bar in West Hollywood.”
“Mmm,” she said. “Now everyone has started carving things. I’m wonderful that way.” She turned and padded off to the right toward the small kitchenette, separated from the living room only by a long stretch of countertop. Her long braid was a strawberry-blond arrow pointing right at her magnificent ass.
“Should I ask her to put some clothes on?” I said to Teo quietly.
“I promise she’s safe from my evil groping man-hands.”
“What? That’s not what I— You know what, never mind. I’m just going to let people keep thinking I’m an asshole. It’s so much less trouble.”
Foxfeather grabbed an orange from a basket on the counter and dug into the peel with her fingers, her eyes hot. “You sure you don’t want some?” she said, as the sharp citrus smell began to waft over to us.
“Orange?” I said. “It’s just a regular orange?”
“No,” she said with wide, serious eyes. “It’s Valencia.”
I glanced at Teo. He slipped on his shades for a moment. “It’s clean,” he said, and slipped them off again.
“Uh, okay,” I said, turning back to her. “So, this guy you carved, was that someone you know?”
Foxfeather tore a long spiral strip of peel from the orange, shivering with anticipation. Her eyes never left the fruit as she answered me in a dreamy tone. “I don’t know the faun personally,” she said. “But yes, it did come into my bar one day, and I had to throw it out.”
“Why?”
Foxfeather looked up at me and gave her thumb a long, slow lick. “It was a bad faun,” she said. “Very, very bad.”
31
“In what way was this faun bad, exactly?” I asked Baroness Foxfeather, watching her peel long white fibers away from the pulp of her orange.
“Mmm, it put on such an interesting human face, I didn’t think to look underneath until we were already talking. And then I had to throw it out of the bar. Filthy thing.”
“So his crime was—being a commoner, basically. Got it. Was his name Claybriar?”
“Probably. That sounds like the sorts of names those things have.” Her fingers savagely tore loose a slippery wedge of orange and pushed the end of it into her mouth. As she bit it in half, her eyes grew fixed and bright with joy. She beckoned me closer with one finger.
I glanced at Teo, who gave me a go on gesture. He himself looked like his feet had grown roots in the floor.
Leaning heavily on my cane, I made my way toward her. The countertop was between us; she leaned her elbows on it and continued to beckon me as though intending to whisper. I leaned over the counter helpfully, but instead of speaking she held out the other half of the orange wedge. When I reached for it, she laughed and moved it behind her back.
I sighed. “Do you remember what Claybriar talked to you about?”