Autumn Thorns

by Yasmine Galenorn

  Peggin shifted, tumbling the cats onto the sofa. “That’s a good idea. A lot can happen in twenty-four hours.” She started to gather her things together.

  “So, where’s the meeting tomorrow night?” Bryan dropped into a chair, looking just about as tired as I was.

  “Niles’s garage, of all places.” Niles Vandyke was from my high school class and, apparently, he’d managed to open a garage. He was a genius with motors and engines, and from what Peggin had told me, he washed up pretty good under all that oil and grease.

  “Niles . . . yes. I’ve always wondered about him. It seemed odd to me that he would be content with the small-town life, but I guess he has more going on beneath that muscled exterior than I thought.” Bryan grinned. “He makes all the women swoon, I gather.”

  Peggin laughed. “Yes, yes he does. Hunky, inked, and a wicked sense of humor. I dated him for a few months, but I’m afraid he’s looking for a woman who’s a little less edgy than me. But we’re good friends now.”

  Leaning back in the chair, I closed my eyes and let my mind drift. I was tired, so very tired, and all I wanted was to fall into bed for a long night’s sleep. But the doorbell roused me from my impending nap.

  I jumped up. Bryan motioned for me to wait until he had my back—after the past few days, who knew who was going to be on the other side—and then I flipped on the porch light and peered through the peephole. Aidan—he looked a lot like his picture in the locket. I opened the door.

  But it wasn’t a ghost or more toxic mist waiting for me. Aidan was burly, wearing weathered jeans and a button-down shirt under a Windbreaker. His hair skimmed his shoulders, and even though he looked around his midforties, the look in his eyes was far older. I ushered him in.

  I wasn’t sure what to say. In one week, I’d met my paternal grandmother and my maternal grandfather and they were both shapeshifters.

  But Aidan solved the awkward problem by breaking into a wide smile and holding out his arms. “My granddaughter.”

  The warmth in his voice was so infectious that I couldn’t help but move into his embrace and give him a big hug. He felt warm and snuggly and cuddly, like a big teddy bear. When he let go and stood back, holding me by the shoulders to look me up and down, the oddity of him seeming so young fell away. He felt like a grandpa.

  “Aidan . . . come in. Meet Bryan Tierney—”

  As Aidan turned to Bryan, he paused, then held out his hand. “Blood recognizes blood. Which clan?”

  Bryan inclined his head. “Originally Ó Tighearnaigh of Brega. And you?”

  “The Corcoran clan comes from the MacCorcráins clan of Leinster. So, do you stand guard over my granddaughter?” Aidan glanced at me and I blushed.

  At that point, both Peggin—who was watching from the sofa—and I were mesmerized as Bryan went down on one knee and lowered his head.

  “By my blood and clan, I pledge my life in her service. I will guard against the powers that seek to harm her.” He glanced up at Aidan. “With your grace, Lord Corcoran.”

  My grandfather made some sign over him—I couldn’t tell what it was, but it was deliberate and had to have some meaning. His voice grave, he said, “You have my grace and my trust, Tierney. You have pledged on your blood to protect my own. Let your blood be spilled if there is need.” And with that, he reached down and offered his hand to Bryan, pulling him back to his feet.

  They both turned to me. By now, Peggin had crept up behind me, and we both stared at them. I had no clue of what to say, but Peggin was never at a loss for words.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Bryan and Aidan began to laugh. Aidan shook his head. “Girls, clan recognizes clan. I spotted him for a shapeshifter first thing. But if two guardians meet, it’s a little more complicated. Not to mention I wanted to make certain he was here for your benefit and not some other reason.” Arms at his side, he gave a half bow to Peggin. “My granddaughter is remiss in her manners. I am Lord Aidan Corcoran. And who might you be?”

  I blushed. “I’m sorry—I was just so taken aback. This is Peggin Sanderson, my best friend.”

  Peggin raised one eyebrow, grinning, but held out her hand. “Lord Corcoran, my pleasure.”

  He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “No, the pleasure is mine. And a beautiful friend you are.” But his eyes were serious and he turned back to me. “We need to talk. And we need to talk now. Is this house secure?”

  “Secure in what way?”

  “It’s not being monitored, is it? Bugged?”

  I frowned. Now we were talking spy movies? “I have no clue. That never occurred to me. Who would want to bug my house?”

  “Anybody who didn’t want you back in Whisper Hollow. There are magical ways of doing it, but the old-fashioned kind is so much simpler and easier to install.” And then he looked around and his shoulders slumped. “I haven’t seen this house since I was eighteen. Since I left town. Lila . . . I can’t believe she’s dead.”

  The catch in his voice stabbed me in the heart. He still loved her. Beneath that gruff exterior, I could still hear the love in his voice. I escorted him to sit down.

  “When was the last time you saw my grandmother?”

  Aidan held my gaze. “When she came to visit me in Seattle. In late September, it was, 1973.” A pause, then—“Please, you really should be sure nobody is listening in. I have equipment that can pinpoint just about any sort of electronic surveillance devices around.”

  “Go ahead, then.” I was curious now. The house had been left empty after my grandparents’ deaths; someone could have gotten in and planted a bug, though why they would want to still confounded me. But then, considering the ledgers I had hidden in the secret room, it wasn’t all that far outside the realm of possibility. Cú Chulainn’s Hounds weren’t going to want that information in the hands of the Crescent Moon Society.

  Aidan ran out to his car, a huge old pickup truck, and returned with both a suitcase and a messenger bag. He extracted what looked like a miniature walkie-talkie from the bag, except that it had several buttons and a line of lights on it. He flipped it on and the lights remained a steady green. As he swept it around the room, he visibly tensed. The lights began to flicker from green to red.

  Aidan held his finger to his lips and began to sweep around the room. I stared at the device, flabbergasted. What the hell? Duvall was aligned with the Hounds. Why would they have bugged his office?

  The lights held a steady red near the landline. Aidan picked up the phone and turned it over. Pulling out a pocketknife, he settled himself at the desk. He opened the knife to the screwdriver function and began unscrewing the bottom of the phone. Another minute and he pointed to a small black nodule that was tucked inside the case. It had been taped there and obviously wasn’t part of the phone. Aidan cut the tape holding it in place, and then, setting it on the ground, drove his heel down. He was wearing cowboy boots, and he twisted his foot, smashing the bug into bits and pieces. The lights on the device turned back to green.

  I knelt to clean up the mess before the cats got into it, still wondering who had put the bug in place. I didn’t want to bring up the subject of Cú Chulainn’s Hounds just yet—but would they have really bugged the home of their president? But then . . . Lila was here. Duvall wasn’t the only one who used the phone.

  Aidan glanced at me. “I can tell you don’t know what to think, Kerris. But let’s finish sweeping the house first before we talk this over.”

  We checked out all the other rooms and found nothing. I wasn’t about to reveal the secret room to him, though. Grandfather or not, I wanted to keep some secrets for myself.

  When we were back downstairs, I turned to him. “Okay, before we go any further, I want to know something. I know this is a painful subject. I can tell you still miss Lila after all these years. But why did she send you away? What did Duvall hold over her head that made it p
ossible for him to force her to marry him?”

  Aidan settled into a chair as Peggin emerged from the kitchen, carrying a tray. She had made a pot of tea and set out an assortment of cookies. She poured, while Bryan jumped up to help her hand out the cups. I was grateful when I saw she had opted for a raspberry lemon tea rather than caffeine. I was just about wrung out and my nerves were shot.

  Clearing his throat, Aidan took a sip of the tea. “I was born in 1736, Kerris. I came here, to the United States, in 1922—my clan sent me. From the beginning, my parents knew I was to guard a spirit shaman, but it would not be till later in life. When I arrived in Whisper Hollow, I could still pass for a teenager and so I enrolled in high school. I met Lila when she was fifteen, and we began dating. Trust me, I never touched her in any untoward way, not until she made the first move—and then it was just kissing. I told her I wanted to save myself for marriage because while I fell, and fell hard, I wasn’t about to take advantage of a woman who wasn’t of full consent by the law of the land.”

  I realized he thought I might be uncomfortable with the idea of a man who was over two hundred years old making goo-goo eyes at my underage grandmother. “I’m dating a man who was born in 1872. I think age gaps kind of go out the window at this point, as long as you weren’t feeling up a young teen.”

  He ducked his head, smiling. “I just wanted you to know that I always treated your grandmother with utmost respect.”

  “I believe you.” And I did.

  “She knew who I was, by the way. She knew right away—the first day we met, she looked at me and said, ‘You’re my guardian, Aidan Corcoran, and I’m going to marry you one day.’ And I did not argue with her.”

  I laughed, then. I could imagine Lila doing just that. “I wish I had known her before Duvall. I saw glimpses of the girl you’re talking about, but he changed her.”

  Aiden’s look darkened. “Duvall did at that. He was always a dark soul. He was two years older than she was, and until I came around, she said he paid little attention to her. But after we started to date, Duvall was always hanging around the outskirts, watching. When we got engaged—she was seventeen—things grew worse. He was constantly trying to get her to go out with him. I wanted to beat him senseless, but Lila begged me not to. She was scared because Duvall and his friends had joined the Cú Chulainn’s Hounds. You know who they are? I’m not sure how much your grandmother had a chance to tell you.”

  “Not as much as I wished. I left home when I was eighteen and only now returned. Grandmother left me her Shadow Journal, but there’s so much I don’t know yet. And yes, I know of the Hounds.”

  “Well, things grew more tense, and then one day, I was out for a walk in Bramblewood Thicket. A group jumped me—Duvall and several of his friends—and beat me a good one. As strong as shapeshifters are, there’s a limit to how many opponents we can fight off. But I managed to break free and, in the scuffle, I slammed one of them hard and he landed against a tree trunk. I don’t even remember his name; he wasn’t from Whisper Hollow.”

  Bryan growled. “Not good.”

  “Not good is right.” Aidan frowned, then let out a long sigh. “He hit hard, and broke his neck. Duvall just laughed. He told me that if I didn’t leave town, he’d tell the police that I had murdered his buddy.”

  “But you were the victim—” It seemed hard to believe that the police wouldn’t take that into account, but then I stopped. I had only to look so far as the news to see that this happened on a regular basis. Someone portrayed as a thug when they were, in fact, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “The chief of police at that time was a friend of Duvall’s family. My blood was on the body—I had been cut and had bled all over him when I was fighting. I was an outsider, and Duvall and his friends had the Hounds to back him, and the members of that group? They had clout in this town and in other towns.”

  “What happened? Did you leave?”

  “No, I decided to tough it out. I was determined to find a way around it, but they began to threaten Lila. One of his buddies had taken pictures of me attacking the man, then of the body. They sent copies of them to Lila and told her that if she didn’t agree to marry Duvall and send me packing, they’d turn everything over to the cops. They would tell them that she knew about it, and that I’d hang and her family would be dragged into a major scandal.”

  “Blackmail. And given the high placement of some of the Hounds, they probably could have managed to implicate her somehow.” Peggin was sitting cross-legged on the sofa. She reached for another cookie. “What did she do?”

  “She confronted me and I told her the truth.” He shrugged. “I told her I’d face whatever they threw at me, that somehow I’d prove my innocence, but she was afraid for my life and she was afraid for her family. She ordered me to leave. I begged her to reconsider, but she said she couldn’t live with herself if something happened to me. We fought for three days about it, and finally, I realized she wasn’t going to back down. I left, though I sent her my address and kept in touch with her secretly.”

  “And she gave in to their demands and married Duvall.” I mulled over the story. “So what happened in 1973 that she . . .” I didn’t know how to say My grandmother paid a booty call to you, so I just left the sentence unfinished.

  “We had been writing for years—she had a post office box that Duvall didn’t know about, and I wrote to her, never signing my letters and never putting a return address on them. She was desperately unhappy, and at one point, I told her to take a trip to Seattle—we would meet. Her mother knew, I think. Mae was sharp as a tack. So Lila showed up, and . . . well . . . all the old feelings were still there. She was unhappy because she couldn’t get pregnant. We slept together—it was the best weekend of my life—and then she went home. A few months after that, I got a letter. She was pregnant, with my child. After Tamil was born, I got one last letter. I had sent a locket for the baby.”

  “I found it. That’s how I recognized you tonight.” I smiled softly, thinking about the rocky road my grandmother had walked.

  “Lila wrote to me saying it was too dangerous to keep in contact. She told me she’d always love me, but she didn’t dare let Duvall find out Tamil wasn’t his child. She was afraid he’d take it out on the baby if he did. And that was the last I ever heard from her.”

  I stared out the window at the dark night. But Duvall had found out—he had known since the beginning. And, for whatever reason, he had eventually done just what Lila feared he might—only years later. Why, I didn’t yet know, but the fact was, my grandfather had known he was sterile and he’d never told my grandmother. So when she showed up pregnant, the question was: Did he know who the father was? And if so, why had he taken so long to avenge himself?

  CHAPTER 18

  Peggin took off for home, and Bryan stayed over that night. I put Aidan in the guest room. By the time he was done with his story, I was too exhausted to do anything but retreat to bed. The next day, Aidan would keep a low profile—he would be too recognizable to a number of people who might still remember him.

  * * *

  Bryan and I were up at dawn—he had a busy day ahead of him before we headed to the meeting that night. “I’ll grab a bite at home. I have food that needs to be eaten. Call me if you need me. I’ll be back at around five or six.” He gave me a hurried kiss and then headed out the back door toward his house. After he left, I fed the cats and made myself some toast and eggs for breakfast before settling in with Lila’s journal at the table.

  Half an hour later, around seven A.M., Sophia called. She had plenty of news.

  “I just got off the phone with Ivy. We’re certain the remains are those of your father. I’m so sorry, Kerris. I also had ballistics look at your mother’s jacket. The hole? Matches the bullets that belong to your grandfather’s gun. While we can’t be absolutely certain, I’m willing to state that evidence points to the gun in the office
being the likely weapon that fired the bullet through the jacket. We’ve sent the blood on the jacket and bone scrapings from your mother’s remains out for DNA analysis. This will take some time, but I’m betting there’s a match, given what you’ve told me. While we’re going on circumstantial evidence, my guess is that your grandfather did have something to do with your mother’s death.”

  I wondered whether to tell her that Duvall hadn’t been a blood relative, but then decided that could wait till later. “What will happen if it’s a match?”

  “We’ll close her case with him listed as the likely suspect. You need to make arrangements, by the way, for her remains.”

  “I will.” I frowned. The fact still remained that I knew Duvall hadn’t been acting alone. “What if I suspect he had help and that the person I think was involved is still alive?”

  “The problem is, do you have any proof?”

  That stopped me. The fact was, I had nothing to link Heathrow to my mother’s death other than her spirit showing up pointing fingers when I’d been talking to him. And that wasn’t admissible in court. “No, to be honest, I don’t.”

  “Then there wouldn’t be much we could do about it. We have to have something to go on in order to investigate, especially when we’re potentially exposing a living person to a murder accusation.” She sighed. “Look, you find me some evidence that I can act on, and I promise you, I’ll move on it. But until then, my hands are tied.”

  I cleared my throat. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Just don’t put yourself—or anybody else—in danger.” She paused. “Talk to Frank and Gareth tonight. Don’t ask questions of me, just do it. You know what I’m referring to.” And with that, she ended the call.

  My grandfather was still asleep, so I went back to my studies. Luckily, my photographic memory would help me with the rituals I had to learn. The journal was filled with them, along with notations for every time Lila had been called out to calm the dead, which seemed to have increased in frequency as the years went on. In fact, the last two years were packed with more and more cases of the dead crossing back from the Veil.