The Shadows

by Chance, Megan

  Whatever I’d expected from the evening, Patrick Devlin was not it. He’d thought of me while he was gone. He’d brought me back a book of Irish poetry. I didn’t know what to make of it. But I knew I liked it.

  Mrs. Devlin poured tea, and Rose came flouncing up to me. “Well?”

  “He thought of me while he was gone.” I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Rose gasped. “No—he said that?”

  “Those were his very words.”

  “Grace, my dear, do come sit down.” Mrs. Devlin patted the settee beside her.

  Rose looked as surprised at the invitation as I was. She gave me a little push, and I went over to sit beside Patrick’s mother, who asked, “Cream or sugar?”

  “Both, please. One lump.” I folded my hands in my lap as demurely as I could, squeezing my fingers together to hide the stain on my gloves.

  She said, “You must tell me what you think of my son.”

  I glanced around the room—no one was watching us but Rose.

  “I think him very nice, ma’am,” I said.

  “He’s a good boy. He’s done a fine job taking over the business, you know. He’s inherited his father’s eye. There was never a clever idea passed Mr. Devlin by, and Patrick’s just the same.”

  I sipped the tea. It was too hot, burning my lip so I jerked the cup away, too fast. Tea sloshed against the rim, but thankfully I didn’t spill it.

  She went on, “Your own family . . . well, so unfortunate. Your poor father . . . We all feel terribly for you and your mother.”

  I noted that she didn’t mention Aidan, though she must have known about him as well. It made me like her even better.

  “You know that your father and my husband had always hoped for a match between you and Patrick.”

  If I’d been drinking my tea, I would have choked. “No, ma’am. I had no idea.”

  “A sound business idea. The Knox ready-made shop with our tailoring business. A single location for all a man’s needs. Well, you can see how it would have been.”

  I could. A pity there was no longer a Knox Emporium. I didn’t know what to say. I settled for “It would have been nice.”

  “The world seems to be falling apart before our eyes, doesn’t it? This depression and . . . well, you know I hold you blameless for your family’s misfortunes. The decisions men make . . . as women we’ve not much choice but to accept them. You’re a good girl, the way you take care of your mama and your grandmother. A good, solid girl, as I said to Patrick. And Lucy likes you as well. I would welcome you into our family.”

  It took a moment before I realized that she was giving me her blessing. She was telling me that she wanted me to marry Patrick.

  This was all too fast and too strange. I’d only agreed to a debut yesterday, and now suddenly Mrs. Devlin was talking to me about her son as if everything was already decided. I felt my mother’s hand in this, and I was unsure and . . . angry. Though Patrick would be perfect—too perfect—everything was moving too quickly, everyone scheming to manage my life. Was I to have no say in it at all?

  I wondered if Patrick was just as caught. Was he forced into this too? It had to be the reason for his attention. Why else would someone like him even look at me?

  When the men rejoined us, I couldn’t remember a word of the rest of the conversation I’d had with Mrs. Devlin, and I could not look at Patrick. I wanted only to go home. But Aidan ignored my pointed glances, and when everyone sat to hear Lucy sing some silly ballad, I slipped out the French doors, which were open to let in the warm spring air. I heard the tinkling strains of the pianoforte, Lucy’s light and trilling soprano, and I stepped farther away from the house and toward the rose-twined trellis separating the yard from the bordering park. I stood just at the edge, watching the strollers, the couple in the gazebo beyond who seemed oblivious to everything around them. In love.

  There was no other way for me, and what somehow made it worse was that I liked Patrick. He was the perfect solution. Rich, young, and handsome. I should be happy for his attention, whether it was real or not.

  But not if he felt as trapped as I did.

  I heard the footsteps behind me. “Miss Knox, are you well?”

  Patrick. No doubt his mother had noticed me sneaking away and sent him after me. Sharply, I said, “I’m quite well, thank you. You should go back inside.”

  He came up close. He smelled of something citrusy and clean—a good smell among the others that never quite left the air, no matter what part of the city you were in: manure and garbage, dust and cooking food. “How can I leave a damsel in distress?”

  “With some luck, you can find a white knight to save us.”

  “Mr. Devlin,” I said, turning to face him. “You must believe me when I tell you that I expect nothing from you. You’re very good to want to help, but there’s . . . there’s no need. Please tell me you understand me.”

  Awareness dawned in his gray-green eyes. “My mother’s said something to you.”

  I looked away, toward an elm tree, the shadow of a squirrel racing crazily up its trunk. “Our parents . . .” I could not say more. I would not cry. Not in front of him. “Things are no longer what they were; you must know that. There’s no more Knox’s Clothing Emporium. There’s nothing at all.”

  “What if I told you that didn’t matter to me?”

  “Patrick,” I said, his Christian name slipping out, what I’d called him always, the boy I’d once known. “I understand you might feel some obligation. Please let me release you from it. You don’t have to pretend.”

  “I’m not pretending,” he said. “I’ve loved you for some time, Grace. How could you not know that? All I’ve been doing is waiting for you.”

  I felt fluttery and weak-kneed; Patrick’s words pierced my heart and stayed there.

  “That can’t be true,” I whispered.

  He stepped toward me, taking my arms, a loose hold, easy to break free if I’d wished it; but just then I didn’t. “It’s true. My mother will tell you so. Nearly every letter I wrote asked after you. I was afraid I’d return too late, that someone else would steal you away.”

  “We hardly know each other—”

  “‘And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest,’” he quoted. “Do you remember?”

  “That’s Percy Shelley.”

  He nodded. “‘I want to be that sky-lark,’ you told me once. ‘To fly ever higher and sing the entire way.’”

  We’d been in this very park. Aidan and Patrick and me. Clouds skimming across a summer sky, and a breeze laden with the scents of mown grass and melting sugar from the confectioner’s on the corner. “I . . . I can’t believe you remember that.”

  “It left an impression,” he said. “Everything you said. I think I know you, Grace. But I begin to wonder if perhaps you don’t quite know me.”

  “You were always Aidan’s friend.”

  “And yours too.”

  “We were children then.”

  “You speak as if you’re a hundred years old instead of just sixteen.”

  “Seventeen,” I corrected distractedly. “In a month.”

  “Seventeen,” he echoed. “June fourteenth.”

  He knew my birthday too. “This is a dream, isn’t it? Pinch me so I wake up.”

  “Do you really want to wake from something so pleasant?”

  “How do you know I find it pleasant?”

  He grinned. “Because you haven’t tried to pull away.”

  “Oh! Oh, I . . .”

  “Don’t pull away, Grace,” he said in a low, sinking voice, and I was mesmerized. I wanted to be in this garden with him forever. He was so much more than I had ever thought possible.

  Patrick reached into the pocket of his coat, drawing out a small chapbook. He pressed it into my hands. “Here. This is the book I promised you. The poet. Read it. I think you’ll like it, and I think it will tell you something about me. If you want to know it.” He paused. His gaze searched mine. “Do you want to kno
w it, Grace?”

  And I heard myself saying, without thought, without hesitation, “Yes.”

  His smile was quick and blinding. “My mother plans to ask you and your mother to tea. Please say yes when she does.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  “Thank you.” The relief in his voice surprised me. As had everything else about this night. How fast this was. How very fast.

  Patrick offered his arm. “Can I escort you back inside before they begin to miss us?”

  I nodded. But he didn’t move. When I glanced up at him, his eyes were dark. His gaze slid to my mouth. I knew he was going to kiss me, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

  There was a movement in the doorway just beyond. Aidan—waiting, watching, the good little chaperone, just as he’d promised Mama. Patrick stiffened. “Well then,” he said, and led me back to the house.

  And I was startled by how much I wished that my brother had stayed away.

  THREE

  Diarmid

  They brought the man in cowering and trembling. His red hair was disheveled; there was a bruise on his pale cheek where Ossian had been a bit too persuasive. He wore an old deep-blue frock coat, and his gray tie was crumpled and loose about his throat.

  “Please,” he begged, his voice cracking. “Please, I’ve done nothing. I don’t know what you want. Please—”

  “Quiet.” Finn sat on the edge of the scarred, blood-stained table they’d raided from the Butcher Boys just last week—another gang, another fight that left them bruised and battered. But they’d won it, just as they’d won the others. They’d quickly gained a reputation as one of the most indomitable gangs in the city. Well, why shouldn’t they? Even without their familiar weapons, even in this strange world called New York City, they were the Fianna.

  Finn spun his dagger between his fingers while the man watched, then stabbed the point into the wood—a bit too much, Diarmid thought, but Finn had always been dramatic.

  Diarmid glanced away. He hated the way Finn toyed and played, like a cat with a mouse. It was that mean streak in him, one you forgot most of the time, because Finn was usually just, and generous, and he was so good at knowing what they needed that sometimes Diarmid believed Finn could read his thoughts. But Finn had a temper, too, and he could hold a grudge a long time, and if he wanted something you didn’t want to give him . . . more than the others, Diarmid knew what that was like. He loved and respected Finn. But Diarmid feared him in equal measure.

  Finn said, “You’ve nothing to be afraid of.”

  “No?” the man squeaked. “How is that, when you kidnapped me from the Luxe? There are people looking for me, you know. They’ll tell the police. You think I don’t know who you are?”

  Finn raised a dark-blond brow. “Who are we?”

  “Finn’s Warriors. I recognize you. We’ve all heard the talk on the streets.”

  “What talk is that?”

  “That you’re the worst gang since the Whyos. You wounded more than half of them in that fight even when you were caught by surprise. Seven against twenty-five. Everyone knows it. What you want from me I can’t imagine. I’m no one. I’ve got nothing. No money—”

  “You’ve the gift of Sight, haven’t you?” Finn asked.

  The man blanched. “No.”

  It was a lie; even Diarmid could see that from across the room.

  “Is that so?” Finn glanced at Goll. “How did you find him?”

  “A boy told us about him,” Goll said, tugging at the newsboy’s cap that now covered his light-brown hair. “Said if we were lookin’ for magic we should get Cannel the Fortune-teller over on the Bowery.”

  “A parlor trick,” Cannel protested. “Truly. I read people’s faces, that’s all. I tell them what they want to hear. It’s nothing more than that.”

  Finn snatched the broadsheet from Goll, one of the many that adorned nearly every surface in the city. Finn glanced questioningly at Diarmid, who shook his head. He couldn’t read it though he was the most educated of them; he’d been fostered by the love god, Aengus Og, with Manannan—master of illusion and trickery—as his tutor. But even Diarmid found the language of this place inscrutable, and it troubled him that these people so casually ascribed their greatest secrets to paper. Did they not understand the power of words?

  Finn handed the broadsheet to their captive. “Read it to me.”

  The man licked his lips nervously. “‘Bond’s Circus. Three weeks only. Come see the Circassian Women! Magio the Sword Swallower! Chief Many-Scalps and his three wives!’”

  “What’s a Circassian woman?” Finn asked.

  “Women from a harem,” Cannel said. “They belonged to Turkish sultans.”

  Whatever that meant. Finn grunted. “What else does it say?”

  “‘Antonia and her amazing, three-legged dog! The Wild Man of Borneo! And introducing Cannel the Fortune-teller!’”

  “The fortune-teller,” Finn said, jabbing his finger into Cannel’s chest. “Why would it say that if you weren’t?”

  “It’s all a show!” Cannel cried. “It’s a sideshow, for pity’s sake! The Circassian women are just girls with curled hair!”

  Finn gestured to Keenan, a tall man with a chiseled face and thick brown hair tied in a queue that flopped between his shoulder blades.

  “He read your hand, didn’t he? What did he say to you?” Finn asked.

  “That I’d cared for birds. That I had strength enough to kill a formidable enemy. Something to do with the sea, he said.”

  Diarmid caught his breath. In Ireland, long ago, Keenan had been charged with the task of bringing two of every kind of bird as a hostage price to win Finn’s freedom. And it had been Keenan who killed Lir, the god of the sea, Manannan’s father, during the Great War between the gods.

  Finn’s full lips curled. He turned back to Cannel. “I think you have more power than you’re admitting, cainte. Now why don’t you tell us the truth? We’re in need of a Seer, as it happens. If you do the task well, we’ll let you live.”

  Cannel swallowed hard. “I can’t. I don’t think I’ve the skill you need.”

  Finn asked Goll, “Did you bring his divining tools?”

  Goll reached into his pocket and took out a deck of very worn, tattered-edged cards, handing them to Finn, who looked ill at ease as he touched them. He set them on the table without rifling through them—one did not meddle with another’s magic.

  “Tell us what you know,” Finn ordered Cannel.

  Cannel glanced around the room, and Diarmid saw the resignation on his face. “I need a chair.”

  Finn made a motion, and Ossian brought over a barrel, setting it down with a thud. Cannel flipped up the skirt of his coat before he sat and picked up the cards. His hands were clumsy and shaking. “I need a question first,” Cannel said hoarsely. “Tell me what you want to know.”

  “Where is the veleda?” Finn said.

  Cannel frowned. “What’s a veleda?”

  “A Druid priestess.”

  Cannel swallowed again. “You won’t find that in New York City, I’m afraid.”

  But he shuffled the cards, separating them into piles, murmuring the question. They all watched. It was never quiet in their flat; the sounds of outside—horses and wagons and children playing, couples screaming drunken obscenities at each other, gang fights—echoed through the thin walls and floors, but Diarmid felt the silence of his fellows like a force, and he knew the Seer felt it too.

  Cannel fumbled with the cards, laying them out in a facedown formation. Diarmid had seen oracles divine with ogham sticks and the entrails of animals, the flight patterns of birds, or the movements of the heavens, but this was new. He watched curiously, feeling the power in the little man at the table grow with every passing moment. Whatever Cannel’s protests, there was some magic in him.

  Finally, the cards were all laid out. Cannel turned them over one by one, studying them. No one said anything. They knew to be patient with Seers—interruption could be fata
l.

  “She’s here,” Cannel said. “You were right. This—What did you call her?”

  “Veleda,” Finn provided.

  “Yes. This veleda is in the city. I can’t tell for certain where. Somewhere near.” Cannel bent closer. “There are others around her. A society or . . . a club.”

  “What kind of club?” Finn asked.

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell.” Cannel lifted another card, studied it, frowned. He looked up, scanning the room, his gaze stopping on Diarmid. Uncomfortably, Diarmid shifted against the wall.

  “What?” Finn’s gaze followed Cannel’s. “What is it? What do you see?”

  “I think it’s him,” Cannel said.

  “Diarmid? What about him?”

  “Diarmid?” Something flashed in Cannel’s eyes, some troubling understanding. He looked again at the cards, turning up another, frowning more deeply. “Yes. A dark-haired young man with blue eyes. And . . . and a spear. A bad death.”

  Diarmid’s gut began to churn.

  Oscar said with a nudge, “Well, that would be you, wouldn’t it, Derry? What does it say about him?”

  “That he’s been chosen.” Cannel pursed his lips. “There’s a prophecy. A promise.”

  Finn’s gaze hardened. Diarmid’s dread grew as his leader took a few steps toward him. “What prophecy would that be, my friend?” Finn asked very, very softly. “What promise?”

  “Something about this veleda.” Cannel looked up from the cards. “His aspect surrounds her.”

  Diarmid’s mouth went dry. He’d faced a hundred warriors alone, warring kings and thundering gods and vengeful men shape-changed into angry boars. But Finn’s measuring expression was worse than all of them.

  Diarmid wanted to turn away, but he pulled himself off the wall, standing straight. “There was a prophecy. Manannan told it to me. There was no veleda then—it didn’t matter. I’d forgotten it.”

  Finn waited.

  “He—he told me that it was by my hand that the veleda must die. That if I didn’t do this, we would fail, even if she’d chosen us.”