A place to sit quietly and think. A place that doesn’t remind me of Gil.
Gil Adair had been The Gate’s other apprentice during the time Diego was with him. Once the brothers were adults, Dee had moved out and established himself independent of his mentor. Gil had stayed with The Gate, worked in the tattoo shop his mentor owned, and lived upstairs in the same building, just down the hall from where The Gate lived. It stood to reason that Gil’s betrayal had pained The Gate every bit as much as it had hurt Dee.
My phone vibrated in my purse. I pulled it out and checked the screen to see who was calling, and thumbed the phone on.
“Where are you?” I said in a normal tone. “Are you all right?”
Dee’s voice came through the ether. “I’m on the freeway. Drake’s been hurt. I can’t take him to an ordin hospital. Do you think— Would your mother be willing to help?”
“Yes. Yes. Of course. Go straight to her house. I’ll text you the address and then call and say you’re coming.”
Dee rang off. I punched in her address and sent it to him, then called my mom. Both The Gate and Jack had locked their gazes on me, but I wasn’t going to explain anything until I’d spoken with my mother.
“Are you home?” I said as soon as she picked up.
Her voice carried a worried edge, likely in direct response to the tone in my voice. “Yes. What’s happened?”
“A friend of Diego’s has been injured. He was attacked by a werebear. Dee’s bringing him to you. Is that okay?”
I felt The Gate stiffen beside me and Jack’s intense focus on my words.
“I’ll be looking for them,” she said.
Nothing medical ever fazed my mom. In a weird way, emergencies seemed to calm her. Healing was what she did and she was very, very good at it.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
I turned to The Gate.
Is Diego hurt? The Gate asked in his thoughts.
“No. Not that he said. Just his friend.”
“You must go,” he said aloud and silently added, Don’t worry about me. I’m quite fine here for a while.
I pressed his hand in mine and dropped my voice low. “They want to know where you were when Hugo was killed. Why not tell them?”
I have my reasons. Now go. See to Diego and his friend.
“Will you at least tell me?” I said.
Come back tomorrow. We’ll consider options. Bring Diego, if possible.
I nodded.
“McGowan will want to see you before you leave,” Jack said.
“I can’t. I need to get to my mother’s house.”
Jack pursed his lips and shook his head. “You’re not leaving without seeing McGowan.”
Chapter 6
Since Jack had beamed me here and I had no idea where here actually was—we could be in Mexico City or two blocks from my house for all I knew—I had no choice but to talk to McGowan.
I don’t know who killed Hugo, The Gate thought as I walked toward the door. I want you and Diego to find whoever or whatever it was and take care of it.
I glanced at Jack and then at The Gate.
Whatever it takes, he added. I’m counting on you.
My throat went dry but I nodded.
Jack took me upstairs to McGowan’s office. The head of the local magic police sat behind the same gunmetal gray desk he’d had the last time I was here. Two hard, metal chairs sat in front of the desk. I took one and sat. Jack stood behind me, one hand on my right shoulder, as if worried I would bolt—either to run off or to bash McGowan over the head. I wasn’t planning on either. I was planning on answering a few stupid questions and then trying to convince Jack to beam me to my mother’s.
Take care of it, The Gate had said. Or rather thought. It was a rather Mafioso statement, and not The Gate’s usual way of speaking. I wanted to know who killed Hugo, but I didn’t want their destruction to come at my hands. It wasn’t who I was. Wasn’t what I did.
Though maybe it was. Maybe the Oona Goodlight who’d stood shocked and heartbroken at seeing Brad Keel’s body on the ice had morphed into Oona Goodlight who’d killed the klim with her bare hands and hadn’t flinched at spraying potentially killing water at the marid. I wasn’t sure I was all that happy with that new me.
“Are you listening, Ms. Goodlight?” McGowan snapped.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Would you say it again?” Before he had a chance to speak, I rushed on. “The Gate didn’t kill Hugo Bernard and doesn’t know who did. That’s all he told me and all I know.”
McGowan pulled to his feet, braced himself forward with his hands on the desk, and curved a tiny, humorless smile onto his mouth. “We’ll let you sit here a while and think about it. Perhaps you will remember a little more of what you know.”
I stood as well, surprising Jack who still had a hand on my shoulder. He stepped back as I rose. I felt him consider grabbing hold of me again and deciding against it. Felt his curiosity to see how things would play out between McGowan and me.
“I could spend a week here,” I said, staring into McGowan’s eyes, “and I still wouldn’t have anything more to tell you. There’s somewhere I need to be. The Gate has asked me to return tomorrow. Let me leave now and come back then and speak with him. Maybe I’ll learn more.”
McGowan was shorter than me, and I’m sure it annoyed him to have to look up since I was standing straight, but he was still leaning on the desk. His phony smile faded. He glared at me a long moment. I watched him back, waiting.
Finally, McGowan snorted and sat again. “Officer Schneider will get you home and come fetch you tomorrow morning.”
“Fine,” I said.
I was relieved that Jack didn’t beam me home right from the office. Instead, he opened the office door and motioned for me to step into the hallway.
“It doesn’t pay to antagonize McGowan,” he said as we walked down the pea-soup-green-walled and brown linoleum-floored hall. God, this place was ugly.
I shrugged. “Can I ask a favor? Could you send me to my mother’s house instead of mine?”
“Guests are to be returned from where they were gathered.”
“Is that formal for, ‘No?’”
“It’s polite-speak for ‘Don’t ask for favors; I’m not in the mood.’”
I touched his arm lightly. “You heard my conversation with Diego. His friend is injured. They’re on their way to my mother’s. Don’t send me home and make me drive all the way there. Just beam me over. No one will know. Do it for Diego, if not for me.”
The look in Jack’s eyes shifted slightly. He leaned close and said low, “One time only.”
Dee’s navy blue Audi coupe was already parked in Mom’s driveway when I found myself standing on the sidewalk in front of her house. I was torn between concern for Drake and sheer joy at the thought of seeing Dee, hearing his voice, breathing in his scent, and holding him tight.
I glanced around, but this wasn’t a neighborhood where people spent much time walking and no one was mowing a lawn or digging weeds from a flower bed. Not even a curtain twitched in the local busybody’s front room. My sudden appearance out of nowhere had gone completely unobserved.
I wondered if Jack had arranged the lack of witnesses—similar to the way Dee did his traffic trick—sending out a magical suggestion that this would be a good time for everyone to go inside and not look out their windows.
I walked up the long brick pathway and stepped up on the porch. My parents knocked when they came to my house, but Dad had said I should never knock at theirs, that it was my childhood home and I should always come right on in, which I did.
Mom had removed some walls and converted what had been the servants’ rooms when the house was built into a clinic where she saw patients who, for whatever reason, didn’t want to or couldn’t go to a regular doctor or hospital—wounded fae, wizards, and witches worried that standard medical practices could set off non-standard magical reactions, and the like.
I heard voices leaking through the closed door but couldn’t understand what was being said—Dee’s voice, then my mother’s, then Dee’s again. Both used hushed tones. I knocked softly and opened the door.
Mom and Dee were standing acquaintance-distance apart—closer than strangers who’d recently met, which they were, but further apart than people who were completely comfortable together. They turned to look my way.
There was blood all down the front of Dee’s shirt and pants. From the smears, I thought he must have carried Drake at least part of the way out of the forest back to his car. I felt Dee’s concern for his friend as a heavy tightening in my chest. Tears welled in my eyes. I blinked them away.
I wanted to throw my arms around him and take away his pain and worry. I gently touched his arm instead. “How’s Drake?”
My mom answered. “He’s lost a lot of blood and has muscle and nerve damage but with time and rest, he’ll be fine. I’ve seen to his wounds and brewed a potion to help him sleep and heal. He’s upstairs in one of the guest rooms. I’d like to keep him a day at least for observation.”
That was good news. The vibe in the room was cautious optimism from Dee and full confidence from my mother. If mom felt confident, I had no doubt Drake would be fine.
I pushed my hair away from my face. It was weird standing there for some reason. Uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure what to say, what to do. Mom and Dee hadn’t met before, though she knew we were seeing each other and that it was serious. She hadn’t much approved based solely on his reputation, though she’d agreed to meet him. I doubted meeting like this was what either of them had envisioned.
Seeing him like this for the first time since he’d gone home to his family wasn’t what I’d envisioned either. I wanted the two of us to go off someplace where he could tell me the whole story of what happened with the hunt for the blade, even though I’d seen some of it. And we could both talk about his family and discuss The Gate and what, if anything, we could do to find Hugo Bernard’s killer.
Instead, we all stood there, Dee glancing between my mother and me; me glancing between him and her, Mom with her gaze fixed on me.
Dee turned to my mom. “Thank you, Dr. Goodlight.”
“Katrina,” she said and half-smiled. “You should go home and get some rest.” She flicked her gaze my way. “I know you and Oona have things to talk about.”
Dee nodded.
“I appreciate all you’ve done for Drake,” he said.
“You’re welcome, Diego. It was nice to finally meet you, even under these circumstances.” Mom smiled slightly. “Go now. I’ll keep watch over your friend.”
I glanced down, hiding the pleased smile on my face. Mom could be remarkably kind but formal to people she hadn’t warmed to. First names from my mom were a sign of acceptance, maybe even a sign she liked him a bit.
Outside, Dee wrapped his arms around me and held me close. Neither one of us seemed too concerned about the dried blood on his clothes. I certainly didn’t care. I hugged him back with an equal need, taking the moment to be grateful he’d safely made it back from his hunt. Happy to be with him again. If only there weren’t all these swords dangling over our heads.
Like the fact that Mom, G-ma, and I were off soon to find the chalice.
Dee murmured into my hair, “Where’s your car?”
“At home,” I said. “Jack beamed me here. I’ve been to see The Gate. We need to talk.”
Dee nodded, kissed the top of my head, and turned me loose. “You can talk while I drive.”
I grabbed him again and gave him a quick hug before climbing into his car. Damn, I’d missed the man.
“I like your mom,” he said as I was fastening my seatbelt. “She’s kind and very good at what she does, from what I saw.”
“Yeah,” I said. Because she was kind, and she was very good at healing. I could have done much worse in the parent department.
“We’re leaving as soon as Drake is stable,” I said, knowing that Mom had already arranged to have her shifts covered at the ordin hospital and arranged for another magical healer to care for any of her special patients who might need help while we were gone.
Dee nodded, his lips pulled into a taut line.
“I guess,” I said, making my voice light and casual, “we’d best make the most of tonight.”
Chapter 7
We spent the evening and much of the night letting our bodies become reacquainted and talking and talking and talking in between. Dee was worried about Drake, obviously, but also about all of his family members in the aftermath of what had happened with Gil. Cracks were forming—his mother and father at odds. His sister Valentina, the one who wanted to disavow her magic and be ordin—blamed magic in general and their father in particular for what Gil had done. She also thought Dee should have seen it coming and done something to stop it. Gil’s mother blamed her ex-husband for having sent Gil to The Gate for training. She blamed me, too, for getting the fairies involved. Even Dee somehow thought that Gil had been bespelled or something. No one wanted to say Gil made his own choices and was responsible for what had happened. Some truths take a long time before they can be faced square on.
I talked about coming to grips with my parents’ having basically lied to me my whole life about their own magical abilities and having denied me the training I would have liked to have had when I was younger
“So,” Dee said, “are you more pissed or more hurt that your parents hid things from you?”
“Pissed,” I said, and then thought about it. “No, hurt.” I thought about it some more. “Pissed and hurt equally, I think.”
He twirled a strand of my hair around his finger. “What are you going to do about it?”
I thought about that, too. “Let it ride for now. There’s more to it than just my mother not wanting me to have the same upbringing she’d had. Eventually, I want the truth.”
He lifted one shoulder in a bit of a shrug. “I don’t know your parents well, having just met them, but I get the feeling they’ll tell you if you ask.”
I wasn’t sure why his confidence sent a chill running through me. The truth didn’t always set you free.
“Do you have a guess as to who killed Hugo Bernard,” I said, deftly changing the subject.
Dee and I had gotten pretty good at finding ways to track down bad guys. This one had us stymied so far. Where do you start when the victim had plenty of people who disliked him but no one in particular who disliked him enough for murder? How do you find a killer when you can’t begin to answer the question of why?
Sure, to start a war between humans and fairies, but why? What did the killer hope to gain from a war? Until we could answer that question, we were pretty much throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something would stick.
The next morning Dee wanted to check on Drake. A phone call wouldn’t do, he wanted to see him, so we drove back to my parents’ house.
When we entered the house, Drake was sitting on the couch in the living room with my mom. He was wrapped in a blanket even though the day was warm. He looked a little better than he had yesterday, but his dark hair hung in lank strings and his eyes lacked sparkle. I felt his pain, deep and bright, where the bear had torn him. Unconsciously I grunted low and put my hand where, on Drake’s body, the pain was worst.
I realized what I’d done and moved my hand away. Mom had caught it though. Her eyes widened, though I don’t know why she was surprised—growing up I’d often been able to tell her where her patients were hurt, even if they were unconscious. Not in some nice, easy visionary sort of way, but because I felt their pain in my body as if it were my own. It was part of the whole empath thing. The part I didn’t want to have thrust on me anymore. The part The Gate could help me screen out, though so far he’d put me off every time I’d asked him to teach me how to do it.
Dee sat next to Drake. His eyes searched his friend’s face and then flickered over the sky blue plush blanket wrapped around him, hiding his wounds.
Drake smiled as best he could. “Katrina is taking good care of me. The wounds aren’t infected, but there’s been some muscle and nerve damage, or so she tells me.”
I glanced at Mom. She nodded agreement to Drake’s words.
“Four weeks, right?” Drake said, looking toward my mother. “Four weeks and I’ll be like new.”
“If you take care of yourself in the meantime, yes,” Mom said.
Drake turned his gaze toward me. “And this is Oona.”
I felt Dee color slightly—or rather, I felt his emotion rise—and knew he’d talked about me. The knowledge pleased me more than I would have thought it would.
“I’m glad to finally meet you,” I said. “Diego speaks so highly of you.”
Drake tried to smile again but it turned into a grimace as a twinge of pain shot through him. And through me.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, too,” he said when the pain subsided.
“Drake has given me the blade,” Mom said, neatly sliding our attention away from Drake and his pain.
The marble in my pocket that Modis had given me to call it with and that I’d been carrying around felt suddenly heavy. I didn’t reach for it. No point until we had the chalice as well.
Dee pressed his lips together in that way I’d learned meant he had something to say but wasn’t sure how it would be taken.
“I noticed,” he said, “that the wards on this house are light to non-existent.”
My mother nodded. “This is a clinic. People come here who are injured, sometimes severely. In an emergency, the time spent to take down wards could mean life or death.”
“I understand that,” he said. “But the blade is here. Two people have already been killed to possess the artifacts—Hugo Bernard and the fairy Keeper. I’d suggest either putting up some good strong wards, which I’d be happy to do for you, or let me take the blade somewhere it’ll be safe, and you won’t be in danger from whoever is after it and the chalice.”
Chalice and Blade Page 5