We take the subway to 103rd Street Midtown. Tink has commandeered my fedora and my mohair mix greatcoat. She is wearing another one of my muslin oxford shirts, deep blue, softened over time, the cuffs fraying, and another necktie as a belt that will never hang right again.
So you have given up the sugar plum look then?
Tink side eyes me.
Barty, I’m a fashion icon. Girls gotta set the direction, OK?
And she hands me her phone which she had been scrolling as the A train rattles along. It’s her TikTok feed full of Tink posing and pouting, cat-walking along the Hi-Line, Moody shots at night. She looks like a tall blonde Annie Hall. This Annie Hall has over 5 million followers. I am not sure how I feel about that. It makes her very stable, which is a good thing, but it’s Tink. She has never had much of a grip on reality at the best of times. A shard of the goddess Inanna with global reach is something Jung never had to think about, I am on my own now.
The train rattles and bangs and the light flashes. It always does between West 4th and 59th Street, but in the flash of darkness there are shapes watching Tink. Other Elementals. New York is ground zero for archetypes, that rich cultural gumbo we live in simmering with potentials. There are a couple of candidates I can see in the carriage, a woman with icons on her face and feathers in her hair. A large man in coveralls who is so broad he prefers to stand, his heavy brow and wide nose suggesting some deviation from Homo Sapiens. It never fails to amaze me what you can hide in a New York crowd.
Kama Central Park Hostel is three blocks north from 103rd Street and back from the park. It has a black awning like a proper hotel. Inside it’s got this Goth meets capsule hotel vibe leavened by its clientele who are all young and colourful. Steps lead to the reception and a Jazz cafe off to one side. It’s mid morning, the cafe is busy, but I still need a coffee.
Tink orders a Coke which she turns green and deadly once we have sat down. The smell of licorice and alcohol turns heads on the next table.
Have you got pictures of Sparrow on your phone?
Tink cackles.
Head shots Tink
Oh… yeah, sure.
She scrolls to pictures of a jubilant Tink and a serious Sparrow. They are in Central Park.
Good, this is what we are going to do…
The young guy behind reception is on his own but he is brisk and efficient. He has a neat goatee beard, a pierced lip and an easy smile. I take officer Campbell’s badge out of my pocket and hold it up for him to see.
‘Ok, he laughs a little nervously, my first Fed, how can I help you Agent Baal….-Bardo? Cool name…
Maybe my eyes are as wide as his. I flip Campbell’s badge to face me. Definitely an NYPD badge.
Tink sniggers.
‘…let’s keep this informal for now Ok…I glance at his shirt badge, Tony?
Sure, how can I help?
We are looking for this party.
I hold up Tink’s phone with the shot of Sparrow, serious faced, a curl of copper hair falling across her forehead.
We were told she hired a room here.
Yeah, but—your partner knows that, you were with her in the cafe a couple of days back, no? I remember you. You were kinda loud.. Tony is looking at Tink
Just answer agent Baal-Bardo’s questions, Tony.
Tink is using this clipped dry agent Scully voice.
Is she here?
No, in fact we were gonna clear her locker today. Normally she pays a week in advance, but she is two days late and about to lose the room.
So she has moved on?
I guess so, she’s normally on time with her room hire. Been here a while.
OK. In that case we will take her locker contents, after we’ve seen the room
Yeah , you see that’s not what we do, sometimes folk just forget to…
We’re the FBI son.
Tink is leaning on the reception counter pretending to snap gum.
We walk up two floors to Sparrow’s single room. I wait until we are in the room and the door is closed.
Tink, dammit, what did you do to the badge? Why did you do it?
Gee Barty, still a grouch? I just saved your bacon is all, i’d expect a little gratitude.
How exactly did you save my bacon?
You were about to impersonate an NYPD police officer. I turned that into the FBI.
How is that supposed to help?
You are Fae Bureau of Investigations, Barty. You forget that already? My way, officer Campbell doesn’t get into trouble as well. He was a sweet little puppy when I left him, really needy, but sweet. You wouldn’t want to kick a puppy would you?
We are going to talk about this, Tink.
Sure Prof, that’ll work.
Sparrow’s locker is full of Sparrow artefacts. It’s like excavating a site, the information lies in the fragments, the shards of detail. There’s a Greyhound bus ticket in a pocket of a pair of old and well worn jeans, size 10, Levi’s. Thin fabric and thinner stitching, Chinese fabrication to budget margins. Her purse is missing as is a handbag or a rucksack, but there are white USB leads and EarPods, no computer. The clothes left in the locker are unwashed. There’s makeup and sanitary products in a pouch. That suggests she left fast with the minimum of possessions, or it suggests something worse. There is no such thing as the smell of panic in inanimate objects, even something as intimate as clothing, but I can’t shake the idea there is.
Taped to the inside of the locker there is an old photograph, creased and fading. A Polaroid print. The bleached and blurred picture of a little girl with copper locks.
Sparrow had told us …
I had a little sister once. Now no one talks about her. No one says her name.
I think this may be her.
The bus ticket was from the Wilmington Bus Station to the New York Port Authority and cost Sparrow $52.98 a year ago almost to the day. I don’t know for sure but I am guessing it is close to the Delaware forest region or Sparrow got a lift into the city for her bus.
And there was a USB. It lay loose in the bottom of the locker. It may or may not be Sparrow’s but I put it in my pocket with the Greyhound ticket.
Tink is watching me, sitting on Sparrow’s unmade bed.
She gone Barty?
Looks like it
Didn’t even say goodbye.
Our studded receptionist agreed he would let me know if Sparrow returns and I drop him my number. Tink leaves me at the lobby and goes in search of comfort or victims, time will tell how that turns out. She looks sad, is unnaturally quiet, gives me a vestigial wave as she walks away to the park. My bet is she will ask Old Kiri to look out for Sparrow and spread the word. I think Sparrow is more complicated than Tink thinks she is but you can’t tell an Elemental anything that counters their instincts. There is something about their mentality they can’t be moved from the track they prefer.
I have a lecture to get to and I need to notify my Phd’s of the revised date for the missed consultation, and send a mea-culpa to the department.
Then I open the USB.
Sparrow can draw. And she has taken photographs of the images she drew. An endless reel of them. They are pictures scribbled on a cabin wall, rough wood, country build. Each image made with crude black slashes, stark violent geometries. Endless repetitions like sigils but not sigils, proto-forms of some brutal alphabet. Violent letters built like cages to trap her fears. And endlessly repeating themes, a triangular shape made of slashing strokes with something trapped inside, a black wall of frenzied vertical stripes, sometimes so dense that the wood was nearly black. And a moon, but a dark moon scrawled in angry spirals, an anti-moon.
A wood where the moon doesn’t reach the floor.
If you want to read about Tink from the very beginning Series 1 starts here…
"Tink orders a Coke which she turns green and deadly..."
Absinthe Coke? (Not impossible: they currently have Cherry, Vanilla and Orange variants).