Spade held the pocketknife towards the miniature face. The eyes regarded it nervously. "Spade? What are you doing?"
Sam Spade had never failed to solve a mystery, and he didn't intend to start now. "I want the truth," he said. With an unsteady hand he began to scrape away the flesh of the miniature face's cheek. A viscous, transparent fluid oozed out. Spade cut deeper. He began to scrape away at the falcon's throat.
"That's the jugular vein," the bird whispered hoarsely. "You might want to be careful around that."
"Will it kill you?" Spade asked.
"No," the bird answered.
Spade sliced it. A thick line of blood billowed forth, splattering dark spots across the desk. Spade gasped. "Blood?"
"Blood," the bird confirmed. "That's as deep as you're going to get."
Spade put down the knife and frowned. "That's the answer to your mystery? Blood?"
"I never said there was an answer." The bird scowled. "Quite the opposite, in fact."
Spade looked disgusted. "That's not a mystery."
"Au contraire," said the bird, "that is a true mystery. Real quests for the truth usually end in fits of self-destruction and bitter disappointment."
"I'm not finished yet," Spade said.
"Oh no? What's left to do? You've already—" The bird paused. "Uh-oh, Spade," it added, "looks like you're bleeding."
"What?" Spade stuck his hand to his throat, and it came away sticky and soaked with wet blood. He leapt to his feet, ran across the room, and leaned towards the mirror.
"I told you it wouldn't kill me," said the bird. "Beyond that, who's to say?"
Blood oozed from a gory section of Spade's cheek, and a deep gash ran across his throat. Spade seized a cloth to staunch the flow of blood out of his neck, but it soaked through instantly.
He spun around, and looked at the bird.
"I said you might not like what you found," the bird said, almost apologetically, "but you didn't listen."
Spade sank to his knees, his blood dripping wide, wet spots across the carpet.
"No girl for you," the bird scolded. "No handshake from the mayor." It hopped down off Spade's desk and slowly walked across the carpet towards him. "I told you that you were out of your league." The bird shook its head ruefully. "I said to stay away from real mysteries, but would you listen? You've learned your lesson now, though."
Spade's neck collapsed and his forehead struck against the carpet.
Spade watched warily as the bird loomed closer and closer, speaking with its identical, bleeding face. Finally, it stood over him, casting a dark shadow across his eyes.
"Nevermore," it answered, chuckling. "Nevermore!"
The Enchanted Bunny
David Drake
Joe Johnson got into the little car of the airport's People Mover, ignoring the synthesized voice that was telling him to keep away from the doors. Joe was trying to carry his attaché case—stuffed with clothes as well as papers, since he'd used it for an overnight bag on this quick trip to see the Senator—and also to read the wad of photocopy the Senator had handed Joe in front of the terminal "to glance through on the flight back."
The Senator hadn't wanted to be around when Joe read the new section. He must have thought Joe wouldn't be pleased at the way he'd handled the Poopsi LaFlamme Incident.
The Senator was right.
Joe sat down on a plastic-cushioned seat. At least the car was empty except for Joe and the swarthy man—was he an Oriental?—the swarthy Oriental at the far end. When Joe flew in the day before, he'd shared the ride to the main concourse with a family of seven, five of whom—including the putative father—were playing catch with a Nerf ball.
The doors closed. The People Mover said something about the next stop being the Red Concourse and lurched into gentle motion.
Joe flipped another page of the chapter over the paper clip holding it by the corner. It was about that time that I met a Miss LaFlamme, a friend of my wife Margaret, who worked, as I understand it, as a dancer of some sort. . . .
Good God Almighty! Did the Senator—did the ex-Senator, who was well known to be broke for a lot of the reasons that could make his memoirs a best-seller—really think he was going to get away with this?
The publishers hadn't paid a six-figure advance for stump speeches and homilies. They'd been promised scandal, they wanted scandal—
And the Senator's rewrite man, Joe Johnson, wanted scandal, too, because his two-percent royalty share was worth zip, zilch, zero if The Image of a