“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t be able to move around down here if macGoren found out it was accessible,” she said.
Ryan macGoren was Acting Guildmaster, a title he had by default since the actual Guildmaster, Manus ap Eagan, had gone into a coma. MacGoren and I didn’t get along at all. I tried to warn him about the Elven King, but he had ignored me. When the Guildhouse fell, he looked like the fool that he was and didn’t want me running around telling the truth of the matter.
“I wasn’t complaining. You don’t have to do all this work by yourself is all I meant. The city’s been declared a national disaster area. No one’s going to know if you knew the archives were accessible. You deserve a break. I’m a big boy. I can find what I need by myself.”
She tugged at my jacket. “Are you saying you don’t need me?”
I pulled her close. “You, my love, are hungry and arbitrary. What say I get some food in you?”
She laughed and pushed away. “Okay. Let’s do Chinatown. It’s about the only neighborhood left that hasn’t been trashed.”
An hour later, we were sitting on cheap metal chairs at a wobbly table for two. Meryl was digging into a bowl of pho as big as a tureen. “You’re awfully slurpy,” I said.
“You’re supposed to slurp. It’s a cultural thing,” she said around a mouthful of noodles.
I picked at my tempura. “Yes, tell me more about your Chinese heritage.”
“Vietnamese. County Clare,” she said. I laughed. Meryl had a comeback for everything. “How’s your research going?”
“Boring. I’m not finding anything in the construction files about the faith stone. I know there has to be something there. Eagan knew about the stone and never told anyone. I want to know why,” I said.
Eagan had the stone built into the structure of the Guildhouse. Its power was obvious. What was less obvious was why Eagan didn’t want it known where it was. I hoped the answer was somewhere in the archives, lost in years of neglect. For a century, Eagan had watched over the dwarf—now dead—who had given or sold him the stone. Meryl had found documents dating back decades that proved Eagan protected the guy. If those records existed, others had to.
“You can question his methods, but Manny always had good reasons,” she said.
“Well, he better have had a good one. I’ve got a rock in my head,” I said. At the moment of his death, Donor had lost control of the faith stone. In the resulting explosion, the stone tore through my head and into my mind.
Meryl squirted more hot sauce into her pho. “If it was a real rock, you’d be dead. It would have crushed your skull and smooshed your brain into pulp, although sometimes I do wonder.”
“You told me Gillen Yor said it was the stone,” I said. Gillen was my healer, my frustrated healer who had no idea how to help me. Meryl had been acting as go-between for us since people had a tendency to take a shot at me whenever I showed my face near any secure facilities.
“The stone is a metaphor for essence that has somehow become bonded to you. It’s a stone, and it’s not a stone,” she said.
“Okay, that hurts my brain more than having the stone in there,” I said.
Meryl produced a distinct snicker. It was cute when it was because she was amused. It was embarrassing when it was because she thought you had said something stupid. Sometimes it was hard to tell which was which. “That’s what you get for abandoning your druidic training when you did. What we do, Grey, is not just manipulate essence. We interact with the Wheel of the World, and that’s a much bigger deal. It’s about faith and balance and fate as much as it is knocking someone on his ass with a bolt of essence. Whatever the faith stone is, it is also something tied to the Wheel of the World. That’s power on a level we can’t understand because it’s starting to touch the ineffable, so we try to reduce it to a concept we do understand.”
“Like a stone,” I said.
“Precisely. The stone is a metaphor for an idea with a purpose wrapped in essence,” she said.
“And the dark mass is the opposite,” I said. The dark mass had been the bane of my existence for over three years. When I was working for the Guild, I had tried to capture a terrorist named Bergin Vize. I cornered him at a nuclear power plant north of the city. Something went wrong. I woke up weeks later in the hospital with my memory and my abilities gone, and Vize still on the loose. A dark mass had appeared in my brain, preventing me from manipulating essence. I went from being one of the most powerful druids to come along in a long time to a guy living on disability checks.
The dark mass in my head drained essence from anything it touched. When the faith stone hit me in the head, it achieved a coexistence with the darkness. They pulsed against each other in my mind—one hot pain, the other cold. The plus side to the whole thing was my body shield came back. I could form a full one again, thickened essence around my body that slowed physical objects and deflected essence-fire.
“Nothing can be in the World and not be in the World. The dark mass can’t be devoid of essence and be in the World. The World, by definition, is essence,” she said.
I smiled. “Teacher, teach thyself. It’s no different than saying a stone can be a stone and not a stone at the same time.”
She twisted her lips in thought. “I’m not buying it. The stone and the idea of faith are things that we can define. You’re defining the dark mass as something that can’t be defined.”
“It has a definition, though. It’s the Gap.”
Meryl frowned with dismissiveness. “Don’t forget who your source was for that idea, Grey. Brokke worked for the Elven King and protected Bergin Vize.”
Brokke was a dwarf who had been a high-level advisor to Donor. He was also one of the most powerful seers in the world. The only thing he didn’t see coming was his own death when the Guildhouse collapsed. I watched him die. As much as he frustrated me, I took no joy in his death.
He gave me somewhat of an answer to what the black mass in my head was. He called the darkness the Gap, an indescribable force that existed as nonexistence. It devoured the essence that made the World possible. It drained the life out of people. It had the potential to destroy the World, which meant I had that power. Brokke claimed I couldn’t control it, that no one could. I didn’t believe that—yet. While I lived, I believed I had a choice to let the darkness overwhelm me or to find a way to stop it.
“Brokke understood the darkness, Meryl. He told me he had been studying it for years. That’s why I’m down in the archives. If Brokke found answers, I can find them, too.”
“If he understood it, why didn’t he lift a finger to stop Vize? He knew Vize has the darkness in him, too,” she said.
“Just because he didn’t understand it doesn’t mean he was wrong. I can’t dismiss him. I might not agree with his methods and motives, but Brokke told me more about the dark mass than anyone else did,” I said.
“And you’re still no closer to the answer,” she said.
“So what am I supposed to do? Sit around with a dark mass and a stone in my head, and pretend they’re not there?”
“Not acting is just as much of a choice as acting,” she said. “Maybe you need to take a break. You’re stressed. You’re tired. You’re the target of every law-enforcement agency in the city. Maybe doing nothing for a while is what you need. The dark mass hasn’t killed you in over three years. The faith stone has been in there a few weeks. Enjoy not being dead for a while.”
“Maybe you’re right. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s doing nothing,” I said.
She leaned across the table and patted my hand. “Sounds like someone needs some self-esteem sex.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, and someone needs I’m-right-again sex.”
She grinned with basil in her teeth. “Are we the perfect couple or what?”
3
The next morning, Murdock and I waited inside the doors of the international terminal at Logan Airport as armed security positioned themselves nearby. The plane from Ireland had landed
over an hour earlier, and its passengers had not been processed through customs yet. More guards filled the concourse, and the baggage area had been closed to the public. Only people on an approved list had been let inside, and we had been ID-checked several times. With the number of high-level Guild staff and important members of the Seelie Court aboard the plane, the government was not taking any chances.
Before he died, Donor Elfenkonig had been going to great pains to blame the solitary fairies under the leadership of Eorla Elvendottir for the attack on the Boston Guildhouse. He had come to Boston in disguise in order to discredit Eorla. It worked, to an extent, but Eorla was a member of the elven royal house, and many people made no distinction between her and her deceased cousin, the king. The general public didn’t know that Donor was dead.
High Queen Maeve fed the paranoia. Anything that made the elven fey look bad made her look good by comparison. The human government had been swayed by what they called credible threats against the Celts. If I knew the way Maeve operated, she had made the threats herself.
Murdock had taken to wearing a black tactical uniform when he was off duty. It intimidated the hell out of people, and they gave us a wide berth. He felt more like a bodyguard than a friend, but I wasn’t going to complain if it kept someone from taking a shot at me.
In the roped-off area near the gate, various fey waited for their loved ones and friends to arrive. Body signatures jostled for my attention. I tamped down my sensing ability to ease the noise. Since the faith stone had lodged itself in my head, the pain from the black mass had diminished. It still wanted essence, but with the stone helping out, I didn’t need to eat ibuprofen like candy anymore.
When I had lost my major abilities, my sensing ability had become more acute. At first, it was a confusing side effect, a curious piece of the puzzle of what had gone wrong with me. As the black mass had grown and changed inside me, the reason for the acute sensing became clear. The black mass wanted essence. That was how it worked. It absorbed essence from the world around it, around me, seeking out the most intense sources to drain. What had been a nice little investigative tool for me to use had become a means for the black mass to hunt.
The faith stone tempered the hunger of the mass. The stone produced incredible reserves of power, and the black mass fed off it instead of using my sensing ability to feed off others. The two mysteries had formed a kind of alliance, right next to my cerebellum.
Behind me, a strong druid body signature pressed against my sensing field even though I had dampened it. Once a druid met someone, that person’s body signature became a recognizable feature, drawing attention like a familiar face in a crowd. There was no mistaking a signature I had known all my life.
“Hey, little bro,” Callin said. My brother towered over me. He was a big man, like our father, built to brawl and not one to retreat. From the healing nicks and cuts on his face, he had been in one recently. Behind him lingered Clure—the Clure, actually—head of the Cluries clan and Callin’s comrade in trouble. The faint odor of alcohol clung to both of them, a not-uncommon condition for either.
“Hey, guys. You remember Murdock,” I said. Hands were shaken all around. Since his presence wasn’t unexpected, Callin’s arrival wasn’t suspicious. His showing up on time did surprise me. It wasn’t in Cal’s nature. I doubted the Clure had anything to do with it either. The only time the Clure kept track of was happy hour.
Cal and I had a complicated history infused with competition, family loyalty, and anger. We had been close as children and into adulthood, but something always managed to drive us apart as we aged. When we were kids, my abilities manifested before his, which he resented. When we hit our twenties and both worked at the Guild, I was promoted faster. No matter what I said, Cal couldn’t blunt his aggressive attitude. The more things failed for him, the more alcohol he consumed, with all the attendant fallout. He was drummed out of the Guild and lost friends. He became estranged from me and our parents.
An awkward silence descended as everyone took the opportunity to look elsewhere. Murdock knew about the friction that characterized my relationship with Callin and kept a diplomatic eye, scanning the crowd rather than starting a conversation. The Clure, though, couldn’t care less. “Greetings, Connor. You’ve been missed in the finest swill halls the Weird has to offer.”
Despite what I thought of his negative influence on my brother, I could not not like the Clure. With his infectious smile and mop of curly auburn hair, he had a way of making you feel like you were his best friend. “I’ve been a little distracted, Clure.”
He grinned, a rakish slash of teeth that split his face in two. “Ah, distraction needs its own distraction betimes.”
“If I remember correctly, all times are betimes around you, Clure,” I said.
He chuckled, a warm, smooth sound of unapologetic self-awareness. Callin didn’t react. Drinking—his, in particular—was a topic we avoided unless we were alone. Then, the conversation degenerated into argument. The moment was saved by the appearance of the first passengers coming down the escalator. The waiting crowd shifted in place, excited and attentive to the procession of tired people making their way into the baggage-claim area.
The first person I recognized was Keeva macNeve, my old partner at the Guild. I had almost killed her and jeopardized her unborn child when the dark mass had taken me over. She had been at Tara these last few months on bed rest for her pregnancy. Her skintight bodysuit revealed that she had had the baby, but I didn’t see a child with her.
Cal whistled low under his breath. “Did you ever tap that, little bro’?”
“No, and I’m glad I didn’t,” I said.
He chuckled with that edge of derision that he knew got under my skin. “Yeah, there’s the difference between you and me. I’ve never regretted getting laid.”
Keeva was smart, hot-looking, and tough as nails. Too tough for my taste and with a side of arrogance I had never liked. That she ended up in a relationship with Ryan macGoren proved my point that we wouldn’t have made a good couple.
I caught Keeva’s eye, but she frowned and looked away. I guess she hadn’t gotten over what I did to her even though I wasn’t in my right mind at the time. “I don’t see a baby. I hope that doesn’t mean anything bad.”
The Clure cleared his throat. “Not at all. She had a boy. Word is she fostered him out to relatives.”
Fostering children out—even babies—was not unusual among the fey, especially among the ruling clans. Keeva was related to the High Queen’s family. Not as close as she liked people to think, but enough to make her miserable to be around sometimes.
In the next wave of passengers, I spotted my father and was struck at how much Cal resembled him. They shared the same blunt features that marked them as strong men—the height, the muscle, the swagger—and the same easy smile that could vanish at a moment’s notice. A space next him indicated the presence of my mother, shorter than average and lost in a crowd. As they neared the waiting area, I saw—and heard—her. My mother kept a running commentary at all times, and right then, the jingling of massive amounts of jewelry on her neck and arms added a musical accompaniment.
When a gap in the crowd opened and she saw us, her face lit with excitement. She pushed her way forward, leaving my father behind, and ran toward us with outstretched hands. “Callie! Connie!” she shouted, and grabbed me and Cal around the waists in a hug full of bosom and lavender.
She stepped back and rubbed each of us on the side of the face. “What have you boys been doing? Fighting? You’ve been fighting again, Cal. And, you! Look at you. You’re too skinny, Connie.”
Callin and I exchanged amused glances over her head, comrades for the moment. Our mother was, well, a mom. We received brief flashes of treatment as adults, but at the end of the day, she was convinced she should have never let us out of the house to fend for ourselves. “I missed you, too, Ma,” I said.
My father hugged Callin with a back pat, then me. If I was with my brother, i
t was always in that order. I often wondered if it was a subtle signal to Callin that he always came first with our father. I didn’t take offense. It was one of those things I noticed and could as easily mean my dad hugged in age order.
As I introduced Murdock, both my parents put on their professional smiles. I was sure they didn’t know what to make of him, a police officer giving off a druid body signature and wearing an iron weapon.
We wrestled with their bags as my mother pointed out one after another. She pushed back her thick dark hair and cast an appraising eye at us. “Let’s have the others sent on.”
Murdock, weighed down with two shoulder bags and a suitcase, looked at me. “Others?”
“This is an awful lot of stuff, Mom. How long are you staying?” I asked.
My mother and father exchanged glances as we moved toward the exit. “The High Queen sent us home,” she said.
I tried not to stumble. I loved my parents. I did. But I had gotten used to not making the obligatory weekly trips to visit since they had moved to Ireland over a decade ago to work for the Seelie Court. I didn’t know everything going on in their lives. The converse was true, but that was for the best. “Is something wrong?”
We piled the suitcases on the curb next to a black car. “Of course, but she didn’t say. She sent most of the court away. It’s all very mysterious. Is this us? I thought we ordered a limo.”
“I have a car,” Murdock said.
She smiled up at Murdock. “That’s so sweet of you. You can take those bags and meet us at the hotel.” She cocked her head up at my father. “Where are we staying, dear?”
“The Bostonian,” he said.
Murdock’s eyes went a little wider as Callin helped the driver pack bags into the trunk. I covered my smirk by slipping a suitcase into the backseat. “We’ll be right along behind you.”
My mother hopped into the backseat of the black car. “We’ll make room for you, Cal. The Clure can sit up front. See you at the hotel!” She waved as Callin squeezed in next to her and closed the door.
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