A Crack in Everything

by Ruth Frances Long

  ‘I’m okay.’ His voice sounded much brusquer than he intended, but that didn’t seem to upset her.

  ‘They think it was a gas explosion.’

  ‘And what was it? What was that – that thing?’

  She settled down beside him, feet in the gutter next to his. ‘Banshee. Never had much time for them myself. Nasty cows.’

  ‘Is Marianne—?’

  Silver took his hand, her grip gentle but firm. ‘Mari wasn’t meant to be here, was she?’

  ‘She’s dead.’ Saying the words just made it worse, even more unreal. Jesus, what was he going to say to his parents? He’d been sitting there. He’d been sitting right there!

  The shock made his breath come in short gasps, made his body tremble uncontrollably. He clamped down on it with an iron will he wasn’t aware he possessed.

  ‘Oh, Dylan …’ Silver murmured helplessly.

  ‘Who sent her? Who did this?’ He wanted to find them, to break them, to make them pay. Suddenly nothing in the world seemed so important as that. His sister was dead.

  ‘I don’t know. But I mean to find out. Come on. Izzy has blundered into something far more dangerous than I thought.’

  Mention of Izzy’s name was like being doused in cold water. Blundered? That didn’t sound good. ‘What’s wrong? What happened?’

  ‘They’ve gone somewhere they shouldn’t. Annoyed someone they shouldn’t. I need your help to get them out. You’re a neutral party. Well, pretty much.’

  ‘A what?’ This time he couldn’t stop the words. He didn’t feel neutral. He felt out of control.

  His sister was dead. That creature had killed her while looking for Izzy. His parents didn’t even know yet. How was he going to tell them?

  Silver sighed, her voice dropping as if she was explaining something to a relatively dense child. ‘We Sídhe have our own rules. One is safe conduct for the sake of negotiation. But to do that I need a neutral party. What do you say? I can elaborate on that offer I made. Maybe even give you a sample or two?’

  What the hell was she on about? Didn’t she realise what had just happened? Mari was dead. His sister … His mind shied away from that thought, like a horse refusing a jump and galloping out of control. ‘Silver, is Izzy still in danger?’

  ‘That sort of depends on your definition of the word.’

  So yes. When you got down to it. Yes, she was.

  And whoever was after her had killed Mari.

  ‘We have to tell the police, Silver. I have to go home. My parents—’

  Her eyes narrowed, taking on a cunning glint he wasn’t sure he liked. ‘You can’t, not now. You’ll bring this down on them as well.’

  ‘Why? Why would anyone follow me?’

  ‘Because the person who sent the banshee doesn’t know where Izzy is. But they know you and your sister have a connection to her. They could follow you. Think, Dylan. They’ve lost one child.’

  He ripped himself away from her with a snarl, but Silver was quicker than him. In a rush of air, she was standing in front of him, stopping him in his tracks. She looked ferocious, terrifying and far too alien to be a part of his world.

  But she was.

  ‘They killed your sister trying to take Izzy.’

  Red rage flared behind his eyes, rage like physical pain. ‘Who did?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. But first, I need you to help me retrieve Izzy and Jinx. He’s my family, Dylan. I want him back before someone does something equally fatal to him.’

  ‘Tell me now.’

  She shook her head, a small smile lifting the sensuous corners of her mouth. She already knew she’d won. And that made Dylan even angrier. ‘After. I promise. And a Sídhe can’t go back on that.’

  Jinx’s body raged with the need to change to his hound form, and with the pain that such a feeling always brought. Izzy and Silver stood in Brí’s hollow, at her mercy. Worse yet, Silver had dragged Dylan along as well. He didn’t give a damn about the human, but this was no place for him. No place at all.

  In spite of what she’d said about the human’s talent, she probably saw him as no more than a shield of impartiality right now. One she desperately needed to stand in Brí’s hollow.

  ‘I come as an emissary,’ said Silver. ‘Holly feels that this enmity has gone on long enough. You have taken one of her kith. She wants him back.’

  ‘He trespassed on my land,’ Brí replied, with a haughty tilt of her chin. ‘And he’s not so much “kith” as pet assassin. That’s what she’s made of him. That’s all she sees the Cú Sídhe as – hunters and killers. Pretty though you make them, let’s not mince words, Silver. For all I know she sent him to kill me. It’s her way, is it not?’

  Silver stood very still, and her voice was pitched so carefully that only those closest to her could hear it – Brí, Dylan, Izzy, Jinx and Blythe. ‘With respect, Lady Brí, perhaps you should ask that of Jinx’s father. But you can’t. You sent him to Holly’s Market, if I remember rightly, for much the same reason. Shall we make that public as well?’

  Brí scowled and Blythe recoiled from her with a hiss of rage, but Silver didn’t flinch. Even Dylan stood firm, his gaze determined, his mouth hard. Something was wrong there. He looked different. Dangerously different. Like something had broken inside. He wasn’t charmed or bound to Silver, but something had happened.

  Jinx’s mind reeled sickeningly as it tried to tackle what they were saying, make sense of it all. He’d always thought he was just an honour payment for Holly’s daughter’s elopement with one of Brí’s kith – and a hound at that – for the shame of their forbidden union. But if Brí had sent his father there to kill Holly, then he understood Holly’s hatred. He hated his matriarch all right. Hated and adored her. She’d woven enchantments beneath his skin, punched silver through him and made him her own. She’d taught him to fight, to kill, and to hunt. But never to turn on her. Holly was his matriarch. She held his life in her hands.

  Silver had been the one small element of kindness in his entire life. Until he met Izzy. He struggled to rise, but Izzy stopped him, her hand on his shoulder far stronger than he would have thought possible. She stilled him, with just a touch.

  Silver smiled, a carefully designed smile that married triumph with reconciliation. ‘Shall we instead work out a mutually appealing solution? As we did before?’

  ‘When you stole my prize pup? Supposing I just take him back now …’

  Stolen was different from a gift. So what was he? They talked such rings around each other, he couldn’t follow all the undercurrents.

  ‘I never stole him, Brí. He was a gift. An honour payment. And to return him now?’ She laughed. Such a carefully modulated laugh. Calculated just enough to charm, but not to enrage. ‘I’m afraid Holly would never agree to that. He is our blood kin. Belladonna was my sister. Besides, with so much of Holly’s magic wrought around him, it would be impossible.’

  ‘Well, then, we’d need to find something else, Silver. Something as valuable.’ Brí glared at Blythe and the hounds, who were staring at her in a mutinous way, still surrounding Jinx and Izzy, but with a more protective stance than before. ‘I told you to get them out of my sight. They don’t need to hear these negotiations. Take them away. And make yourselves scarce.’

  The Cú Sídhe weren’t gentle, but Blythe was less aggressive as she led them away. Jinx kept as close to Izzy as he could, determined to protect her in any way he could. And now he had Silver to worry about as well.

  Damn it. She was more like an older sister to him than an aunt, had been ever since Holly had first claimed him. She’d loved him for her sister, Belladonna: an Aes Sídhe, the daughter of a matriarch, with the temerity to love something as lowly as a Cú Sídhe. But Brí had sent Jasper to the Market to begin with, to kill Holly … And Brí had given Jasper and Belladonna’s child up; she had paid the blood debt by sending Jinx to Holly, to be her servant, her kith. But she’d cursed him with his geis first …

  He’d never been given answers
to his questions. Not even by Silver. Honour debts, blood debts … it didn’t really matter when you were little more than a chattel. And when magic bound more powerfully than anything else.

  Had Brí foreseen Izzy saving him? Had she foreseen him being tied to her own daughter? How far ahead did Brí’s machinations extend? She had sight, everyone knew that.

  They were bundled into a small room, but Blythe and the other Cú Sídhe remained at the door, gathered like the pack they were.

  Izzy sat down on the narrow bench-like bed and Jinx stayed where he was, barring the way, a makeshift barrier though he was. All the protection she had.

  ‘Jasper, your father …’ Blythe began, but then stopped as if unable to finish the sentence.

  Jinx drew his chin up, steeling himself for another slur, another insult. ‘Jasper is dead. Weren’t you listening?’

  ‘Yes, but I knew him, Jinx, even if you did not. She never told us she sent him there. He vanished for months before he returned with you. I don’t know where they hid. He went to retrieve your mother, but he never came back. He was pack. There are few enough of us, even here, isolated amongst other Sídhe. For the last twenty years we thought …’

  She refused to meet his eyes.

  ‘You thought what? That he left? That he betrayed you? Hardly the act of a Cú Sídhe, is it?’

  ‘Or the act of a father.’

  Jinx just snorted. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘We never saw her, Belladonna, but we were told she was beautiful.’

  Jinx stiffened at the sound of her name, his mother, the woman by whose blood he called Holly grandmother, when he dared. He knew little enough about her. Just what everyone else did. They called her traitor.

  ‘Ancestors, are you always this dense?’ Blythe snarled.

  ‘You have met him, haven’t you?’ Izzy supplied in a miserable tone. Not helpful at all. Luckily Blythe paid her no attention. Jinx wished he could do the same, but her pain and fear pulsed inside him, transformed to his own emotions by their connection.

  ‘You’re our kin, Jinx. And Brí sent you away. Just as she sent Jasper away. We thought he had left us for your mother, for an Aes Sídhe, and then abandoned their child. No Cú Sídhe would do such a thing. Never. But we thought the worst. And then Holly demanded you as well. You’re our blood. One of us.’

  One of us. Words he had always hoped to hear from others of his kind, though he’d never admit it. Nor would he now. They were a pack for sure, intimate and comfortable with that closeness, living in the company of each other, pining without it. He would never be like that. It wasn’t in him. He had other blood too. Blood that couldn’t bear to be a hound for long. Each part of his heritage loathed the other.

  Cú Sídhe would never understand that. The very thought of trading one of their own away horrified them. They weren’t Aes Sídhe, though they could look like them. They had a duality of nature that needed to live in both forms at different times and found harmony in their transformation. They switched from one to the other as easily as breathing and he envied them that. Silver had tried to explain, tried to help him understand himself, but it wasn’t the same for him. Not when changing to hound form hurt so much.

  But Aes Sídhe were different. They’d do anything to get what they wanted. The High Sídhe. The Lords and Ladies. The Gentry. Not a true heart amongst them. Perhaps not even Silver, who walked a different path. She might see humans as nothing more than a thing to be used and cast aside, but so did all the Sídhe. She was one of the few Aes Sídhe who didn’t regard the lesser Sídhe in much the same way. To those she loved, she was a fierce protector, eternally loyal and kind. He trusted her with his life. She was the only one.

  But he had never tested her. He’d never dared to. All he knew of the Aes Sídhe was cruelty and abandonment. If he pushed Silver, would he find that he was just a means to an end as well, a tool like Dylan?

  He hadn’t even dared to dream of being part of a pack.

  ‘It’s history,’ he told Blythe and willed her to leave him. But Blythe didn’t move.

  ‘History repeats. History is always with us. The history writes the tale of the man to be.’

  ‘And old adages don’t solve anything. Certainly don’t get us out of here. Or bring my father home. Don’t try to excuse him. It doesn’t make us family any more than it makes Brí and Izzy mother and daughter.’ Misery dragged the words from him. Knowing more about what happened didn’t help. Knowing that he hadn’t been abandoned couldn’t erase the years of believing that they hadn’t wanted him.

  ‘But their blood does.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Izzy interrupted, her voice stronger than he would have imagined. ‘She’s nothing to me.’

  To Jinx’s surprise, Blythe gave a brief but respectful bow. To Izzy. If the girl noticed, she didn’t react, too much anger running its course through her still, perhaps. Much as his own.

  ‘Do you need anything, Lady Isabel?’ Blythe asked.

  Izzy stared at her. ‘Yes. Obviously. We need to leave. And Jinx needs out of those chains.’

  Yes, he thought. Because then I can fight our way free. For once they were of the same mind. The thought pleased him almost as much as the need to attack bit deep into his guts.

  And at the same time … he didn’t want to fight through this Cú Sídhe pack. Not now. Not knowing what he had discovered. Something unwound within him. Just for a moment.

  If Blythe would just take the chains off …

  ‘I can’t,’ Blythe sighed. ‘Not without her command to do so. She is quicksilver, our Brí. For the last twenty years, she’s been worse than ever. But she cares, deep down. Unlike Holly. She wouldn’t have given you up lightly, Jinx. I know she didn’t. If you can find it in your heart—’

  ‘Weren’t you listening to her back there?’

  ‘Perhaps we heard different things. Perhaps you should think about it.’

  ‘She bound me with silver. She tortured me.’

  Blythe shook her head, her eyes coming back to his face as if she could see inside him. ‘Well, you were about to say something terrible. And she is still a matriarch. We would have raised you better.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t. I don’t have a pack.’

  She reached out her hand unexpectedly, too fast for him to dodge out of the way. But instead of striking him, her fingers brushed against his head, stroking his hair so gently.

  ‘Yes, you do. You have always had a pack. I’m sorry you can’t see that. Truly.’ She drew back, smiling at his stunned expression for a moment before she snapped her fingers and led the Cú Sídhe away, closing the door behind them.

  Jinx turned to her, but Izzy just sat there, watching him with a careful expression. ‘You’re her daughter,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ The vehemence with which she said the word gave her the lie.

  ‘Izzy—’ he warned.

  She wilted, in that instant, curling into herself, her hands covering her face and her shoulders shook as if she had a palsy. Guilt left him unmanned. He couldn’t leave her like that. She was just a girl, after all, confused, afraid, and so far out of her depth now that she didn’t know the way back to shore. Jinx knelt before her and took her hands as best he could, the chains hampering his movements. The fire of their touch seemed to lessen in her presence, or perhaps that was just wishful thinking, but she’d healed him before.

  Her hands were very small in his and so cold. She blinked at him, her eyes so bright a blue they might have been sapphires. He could see Brí’s gaze in them now, knowing what he knew, though there was nothing of the hatred and the disdain. Had Brí charmed her father so? She must have, but he couldn’t imagine it.

  Although, she could command too, and would. She was Aes Sídhe, just like Holly. Charm took too long.

  ‘It can’t be true,’ said Izzy.

  ‘What do you feel? Not think.’ Humans were creatures of thought. Sídhe were different. Creatures of emotion.

  ‘I don’t know. Afraid. Confuse
d. Lost.’

  Lost. Yes, he could recall that feeling. It came back to him now. He had been four years old when Brí used him to pay the blood debt to Holly. He’d run through the hollow and the surrounding woodland like a feral child, more puppy than Sídhe, secure and safe in the midst of pack he barely remembered now. But then everything had changed. All that warmth and security had been snatched from him when Silver came to take him to Holly. And, just before they left, Brí had laid down that geis upon him. The one that now tied him to her daughter, Izzy.

  Had she known? How could she have known?

  Or was this just an elaborate trick of heaven, or hell? The angel had drawn her to him. She’d walked right up to the gate and the angel was waiting for her.

  Waiting just for her, leading her to him.

  Back to the world which she came from. To Brí.

  To the ghosts of his past.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he told her.

  She gave him a look like he’d said the sky was yellow. ‘I’m going mad. Hearing voices, delusions, seeing things … it’s the only explanation. I’m having a breakdown. Because of Dad. Because of … I don’t know. But Jinx, this can’t be true. None of it.’

  ‘I know it might seem like that, but it is. You have to stay calm. We will get out. Silver will think of something. It’s what she does.’

  ‘Silver.’ She sighed. ‘Why did she bring Dylan?’

  The thought had worried at the base of his brain as well. Why bring a human here? But Silver had. As if she needed something from him. A Leanán Sídhe had only one use for a human – the lover she inspired, the victim she eventually destroyed. But in between those two states—

  Someone she could trust unreservedly. Or someone with a reason to be there of his own so powerful he didn’t care about his life anymore. Who would protect her, who Holly couldn’t touch, who could take care of her if anything—

  His grip tightened on Izzy’s hand and she winced. ‘No,’ he whispered and surged to his feet, just as an unnatural scream tore its way through the halls of Brí’s hollow. ‘Silver!’

  Jinx threw himself at the door, slamming his shoulder over and over against the wood. Running footsteps on the other side were the only thing that made him pause. When Blythe opened the door again, he pushed past her, sprinting down the hallway. Even with the chains he was faster. Silver’s scream cut off abruptly, but he kept going, pushing harder and harder, his body still struggling in vain against the enchantments of the collar.