Jack cleared his throat. “McGowan has released The Gate. As far as I know, he’s at home now.”
“Really?” I said. “Why?”
Jack shrugged. “The witness who claimed she saw him at Hugo’s has recanted. She’s no longer sure it was The Gate she saw. Since the evidence against him is dissolving, McGowan couldn’t justify holding him any longer.”
Dee ran his hand through his hair. “Do you believe that?”
Jack walked over to the refrigerator, helped himself to a Tecate, and came back to the living room. “I hardly ever believe McGowan. Thanks for the beer, by the way.”
“You’re welcome,” Dee said.
Jack popped the top on the can and took a deep swig. “Okay. I’m off.”
The air shimmered and the policeman was gone. He took the beer with him.
I turned to Dee. “Was that weird?”
He nodded. “Very. Not like Jack at all.”
“Does he usually just pop into your house like that?”
“Never.”
I pushed my hair away from my face with one hand. “What do you think is going on? Why does he want us to know where The Gate is? And why come in person? He could have phoned.”
“I have no idea.”
I wondered about Jack for another moment. The man was a cipher—one who clearly had his own agenda.
“So, we’re off to see The Gate?” I said.
Dee knocked on the midnight-blue door of The Gate’s apartment. I let my eyes go lazy, focusing on nothing in particular. The glow of protective runes not only surrounded the door, but stretched down the hallway, shielding the two apartments The Gate rented to ordins, and what had been Gil’s apartment. Still protecting it, though Gil would never step into it again. That said something.
I rolled my shoulders to loosen the tension of being in this building where both The Gate and Gil had lived above Merlin Tattoo. Where Gil had worked. Where Gil had inked Dee and me with each other’s sign.
I’d felt the moments when Gil flitted through Dee’s mind—how could we be back here for the first time since it all happened and he not think of his brother? He’d not held onto the thoughts. This place was just a building to him, which made sense. My memories of Gil were mostly centered here, the good memories at least. Dee had a lifetime of memories of his brother and nearly half a lifetime’s worth of The Gate. His emotions weren’t tied to a building, but to the people.
“Diego! Oona!” The Gate called through the solid wood door. “Come in.”
Dee turned the knob, opened the door, and we entered.
The Gate and Bridget, the sea witch, were seated on his bright yellow couch that, like all his furniture, looked as though it had been bought new in the 1950s but remarkably hadn’t worn in the years since. The two looked up as we walked in. Bridget pushed a strand of white-blonde hair away from her face and smiled a greeting.
The Gate, wearing blue jeans, a button-up pale blue shirt, and tan leather slippers, looked quite relaxed for a man recently freed after several days in lockup. Bridget wore all black—a black, lightweight, V-necked sweater, a single strand of black pearls around her neck, black jeans that hugged her athletic frame, and black leather flats. All that black served to highlight her pale, pale skin, pale hair, and strikingly pretty face.
The first time I’d met Bridget was when she, along with The Gate, had divined that a messenger would come to my house and I shouldn’t let it in. She’d left out that the messenger would be a reanimated crow corpse that would totally creep me out. She’d been right about the message’s importance, though.
The Gate’s divining stars lay scattered on the top of the teardrop-shaped coffee table.
“How did you know who it was?” I asked.
The Gate chuckled. “Who would it be but the two of you?” He patted the spot beside him on the couch in invitation for us to sit.
Diego moved a chair over to sit on the other side of the coffee table from the pair. He liked to look straight on at anyone he was talking to.
I sat next to The Gate. He leaned forward, gathered up the stars, and put them back in their pouch.
“What did the stars say?” I asked.
“That you two were on your way over.”
Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t. It was often hard to tell with The Gate.
“McGowan cut you loose,” Dee said.
“You must have seen Jack,” the older wizard said. “Not enough evidence to keep holding me, the witness who claimed to have seen me leaving Hugo’s house shortly before his body was discovered amazingly recanted, or so McGowan claimed. You never know with him, though.” He leaned forward and dropped his voice low, but I heard the chuckle in it. “McGowan may have nefarious intent.”
Dee cleared his throat. “What were you really divining for?”
Bridget laughed softly and crossed her black-jeans-clad legs. Her laugh was like gently tumbling waves.
The Gate sighed. “The name and face of Hugo’s killer, and where he or she is at this moment. We failed, though. The killer isn’t on this plane.”
“And likely not human,” Bridget added.
A chill ran through me, a chill that said Bridget was right—we weren’t looking for a human killer.
“Which doesn’t change my charge to you,” The Gate said, glancing between Dee and me. “Find it. Take care of it.”
“We’ll try to find the killer,” I said, resisting the urge to say, You want it gone, you can do your own dirty work.
The Gate regarded me with a level gaze.
“Cui bono?” Bridget said.
Okay, I hadn’t expected a sea witch to use Latin, but she was right—who benefited if humans and the fairies went to war? Humans who benefit from chaos, of course—arms dealers, politicians, the media, leaders who would rise as either for or against the war and the enemy.
Who benefitted among the fairies? Maybe someone wanting to wrest power from the current queen.
Who outside of humans and fairies? Anyone who wanted power, I supposed. Someone who thought they could pick up the pieces once the humans and fairies had destroyed each other. Or several someones, a cabal.
The Gate turned and looked at me. “Finding Hugo’s killer isn’t about revenge, Oona.” He shrugged. “Not solely about revenge.”
I nodded. “I know. It’s about stopping the war. But we’ve recovered the artifacts. All we have to do is hand them back to their new Keepers and the threat goes away.”
“I don’t know that the threat automatically vanishes,” The Gate said. “Ask Bridget.”
“I’m neither human nor fairy,” Bridget said, “but if I were to guess, I’d say the fairies won’t settle for simply having their chalice returned. They will want the killer. They will want to mete out fairy justice. So long as the fairies believe the killer was human, which they do now, there can’t be peace.”
Fairy justice. Which Elgin, the fairy warrior described as slow, painful, and always fatal. Fairy justice, which was meted out to Gil Adair.
The Gate suddenly laughed. Startled, I stared at him.
“I do believe you thought I was asking you and Diego to kill this thieving murderer yourselves. And, of course, in a way I am. The killer must be given to the fairies, and you know what they will do. But you mustn’t think that blood will be on your hands. It won’t be. The killer spilled its own blood the moment it decided to carry out this plan.”
Was that supposed to make me feel better?
The Gate evidently thought there was only one killer, since he didn’t say killer or killers, to be handed over to the fairies. Or maybe he was only concerned with the chalice and the murdered fairy. Maybe he didn’t fear that the human magicals would be willing to start a war over Hugo’s death. Maybe he knew they wouldn’t.
Dee had been quiet through much of this conversation. He shifted in his chair and said, “You’ve divined that the killer isn’t on the Earth plane. Can you divine what plane it is on?”
“We can try,�
�� Bridget said.
Bridget had used tea leaves in her divining before, but today she pulled a bag made of some sort of animal skin from her pocket and poured a dozen or so small seashells, each one no bigger than the top joint of my little finger, of various colors and patterns onto the coffee table. Both she and The Gate peered at them but neither said anything. The Gate had already stowed his divining stars in their bag. He shook that bag, loosened the drawstring that held it closed and poured the stars onto the table near where the shells lay.
Both peered at the patterns the shells and stars had made but neither spoke. Nerves jangled through my body. Were the omens so bad that they didn’t want to tell us?
Bridget blew out a long breath. “The creature you seek travels between many planes, the Earth plane, the fae lands, the brume, and others. We can tell you that the being is now in the fae land but is not fairy or fae. Neither the shells nor the stars can see more than that.”
“It’s not much to go on,” Dee said, echoing my own thoughts.
The Gate huffed. “It’s nothing to go on, except that this is an exceptionally dangerous foe, one who can move between planes the way we might cross a street, and remain unseen when it chooses.”
I crossed my arms over my belly and hunched into myself. An invisible killer that could travel between worlds. Great.
Bridget glanced at Dee and then at me. “The shells say more death is coming.”
“Whose death?” Dee asked. “Tell us who and we’ll protect them.”
The sea witch gathered up the shells and shook them between her hands. She muttered under her breath sounds that seemed less like words and more like water crashing against rocks. She threw the shells onto the coffee table and sucked in a breath.
Dee leaned forward. “Whose death, Bridget?”
Her face hardened. “Mine.”
Chapter 18
“We can keep you safe,” Dee said firmly.
I shook my head. “Not in the ocean we can’t.”
A silence set in as we all contemplated that reality. Bridget was a sea witch. The ocean was her home and natural environment. She could spend time on land and look like a normal human, but she had to return to the sea periodically or die.
The Gate fixed me with a strong stare. “But you might be able to, Oona. You carry the blood of the selkies in your veins. A seal could watch over Bridget in the water.”
Heat spread through my chest. “I can’t transform.”
The Gate cocked an eyebrow. “No? Are you sure?”
I nodded. I seemed to have inherited psychic abilities from my ancestors, but that was it.
But I knew someone who could change whenever she wanted, to whatever she wanted. I kept the thought to myself. I couldn’t speak for or make promises for my grandmother. I could ask, though. I would ask her. It would be her choice to take to the water and protect the sea witch or not.
On the drive to my house, I told Dee what I was thinking about protecting Bridget in the ocean.
“When we were in the darkling lands, I saw my grandmother transform into an eagle. Before that, at my mother’s, G-ma made herself into a tiny dog and then into a chimpanzee.”
Dee chuckled to himself. Not at the idea of shifting into animal form, I knew, but at G-ma’s choice of animals.
I shrugged. “Supposedly she can transform into any animal she chooses. So she could be a seal or a fish or a dolphin, or whatever, and stay close to Bridget and fight off anything that attacked her.”
Dee rubbed the side of his face, thinking. “But would your grandmother be willing? It was one thing to go with you and your mother after the chalice. It’s something else again to ask her to go alone to protect Bridget, a total stranger.”
“There must be permanent sea creatures who’d be willing to help as well. Magical sharks or barracuda or something,” I said. “Maybe they could rotate watches.”
“If there are, I never heard about them,” Dee said. “You should have asked Bridget while we were with her.”
He was right, but I’d fastened on the idea of G-ma helping and gotten stuck there. I should have thought further. I should have asked Bridget what protections she had in the sea. On land, The Gate would look out for her. But maybe I was assuming again. The Gate pretty much did what he wanted, the rest of the world be damned.
“The Gate has a phone,” I said. “We could call and ask now.”
I expected Dee to flip on the Bluetooth in his car and call right then and there. He didn’t. Instead, he said, “When we get to your house.”
Okay. Probably he had reasons.
I pulled out my phone and dialed my mother.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. “Do you have a phone number for G-ma?”
“Hello, Oona,” my mother said. “I’m well, thank you. And how are you?”
I half rolled my eyes. As much as my mother could be bottom-line when she needed to be, she always wanted the niceties from me before getting to the reason for anything other than an emergency call. Her penchant had been driving me crazy for years.
I started over. “Hi, Mom. It’s Oona, your daughter, and only child. How are you and Father doing? I hope you are both well. I am fine. Do you by any chance have a phone number for grandmother? I’d like to speak to her.”
Mom laughed. “I do. I’ll text it to you.”
“Thanks.”
I glanced at Dee. He was giving me a look.
“How’s Drake doing?” I said and pressed the speaker button so he could hear, too.
“Remarkably well from what he says,” Mom said. “Diego hasn’t spoken with him?”
“Not yet today, Dr. Goodlight,” Dee said.
“I’m sure he’d like to hear from you,” Mom said in that way she had of telling people what she thought they ought to do. “And it’s Katrina, Diego.”
That cheered my heart. Mom only used a person’s first name if she liked them. She only offered her first name if she really liked them. And this was the second time she’d told Dee to call her by her given name.
“Thanks, Katrina,” he said and flashed a quick grin.
I hung up and said, “She didn’t want to like you, you know. Didn’t like the idea of her daughter dating a wizard with a reputation for womanizing. You’ve won her over.”
He looked stunned. “Womanizing?”
If we’d been standing, I probably would have put my hands on my hips in a gesture of disbelief. “Do you not know what a reputation you have?”
He turned his attention back to the road, looking for a parking space now that we were near my house. “I guess not.”
Chapter 19
“Oona,” Dee said, a note of concern in his voice, as I took down the wards on my house and we went inside, “I like women. Women seem to like me. But there hasn’t been anyone but you since we met.”
I hung my purse on the peg in the foyer. “I know that.”
“Yeah. Psychic. You’d know if I was lusting for someone else.”
I turned and put my hands on his shoulders. “That’s true. But I don’t need to be psychic to know I have your full attention, any more than you need to be psychic to know you have mine. Have you for even a moment wondered if I might be losing interest or straying away from you? Did it ever cross your mind while you were away that I might meet someone I liked better?”
“No.”
“Now see, that answer could come from a man who’s so full of himself he can’t imagine any woman not falling at his feet in total blind devotion, or it could come from a man who feels secure in the relationship.”
“Blind devotion sounds nice,” he said with a smile. “I could live with that.”
“Ha. You’d be bored inside of a week.”
His smile increased. “Maybe. But, you know, if you wanted to fall down and worship at my feet—”
I pinched my lips together and punched his shoulder, which was really the only appropriate response.
He rubbed his shoulder and sighed quite dramatically. “Well then
, if you’re absolutely sure— I suppose I can stay with you the way you are.”
I took his hand. “And me with you, Diego.”
We did a few long moments of gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes and then started to giggle at the same moment at the terrible seriousness of it all.
I let go of his hand and turned away, walking toward the kitchen. “Tea? Beer?”
“Whiskey,” he said.
I looked back over my shoulder. “Things get a tad too intense there for a moment?”
“Just right. But a little goes a long ways.”
A red-hot romantic, that man. Yeah. No.
I poured two fingers of Bushmills for him and went upstairs to call G-ma.
She answered on the third ring. I told her about the sea witch and her divination that her life was in danger from whoever had killed Hugo Bernard and the fairy guardian.
“So I wondered,” I said, “if you could transform into a seal or shark or something to protect Bridget while she’s in the ocean.”
G-ma was quiet and I felt her thinking. Felt her hesitation, too.
“I could do it, of course,” she said, “but wouldn’t you rather handle this yourself?”
I sat heavily on the bed. “I’m not a shapeshifter.”
“That you know of,” G-ma said. “It’s in your DNA. You might try and see what happens.”
My hand seemed to lose strength. I felt the phone slipping and forced my hand to tighten around it. “I wouldn’t even know how to begin trying.”
Another silence. I felt her mind turning, considering options.
“I have a little time tonight,” G-ma said. “Shall I come by and see what I can teach you in an evening?”
It was my turn to hesitate. I wasn’t sure which made me more nervous—the possibility of being a shapeshifter or the finality of knowing I wasn’t.
G-ma ignored my hesitant silence. “I’ll be at your house around eight if that suits you.”
“That’ll be fine,” I said and we rang off.
When I went back downstairs, Dee had moved himself and his whiskey into the parlor and settled on the sofa. He looked up when I walked in.
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