by Jodi McIsaac
It was a Merrow, her hair swirling around her head like a rainbow cloud, her tail a shimmering gold. But she looked wrong—she was mottled with a sickly green, and her eyes and mouth were open, her eyes sightless. She looked even worse than Queen Deardra had before Nuala found the red hat that had restored her to her usual beautiful self.
“Is it…dead?” Niall asked.
“I…I think so,” Eden whispered. A sudden change in the current pushed the Merrow’s body toward them, and they both leapt backward as her bloated face pressed up against the glass.
“Let’s get out of here!” Niall said, his voice going up an octave.
Eden couldn’t agree more. This no longer felt like a harmless adventure. She grabbed Niall’s hand and concentrated with all her might on the air in front of her. As soon as the shimmering patch was big enough, they ran through it, and Eden closed it with more force than necessary, sending small sparks up in the air.
“Why was it dead?” Niall said. His pale skin looked more ashen than usual, and they both sat down hard on the forest floor behind his cottage home.
“I don’t know!” Eden said, trying not to freak out. “They were all fine before! They had an amazing magical underwater kingdom, with all kinds of fish and plants and everything. Now it’s all gone!”
“We should tell someone,” Niall said. “What if no one else knows? They might need help.”
Eden was silent. She knew he was right, but then she’d have to confess that she’d opened a sidh to Earth—and back to the Merrow, of all places. Her parents would be furious, and they’d probably figure out a way to keep her locked in her room forever. Or what if…what if they took away her ability? It had worked on her mum when she had been a baby—Gran and Kier had given Cedar the gift of humanity, and it had masked her Danann talents. Could they do that to her?
“I don’t…I don’t think we should,” she said in a small voice.
Niall was watching her shrewdly. “You’re worried you’ll get in trouble,” he said, and she nodded meekly. “I don’t want you to get in trouble, and I would love to keep using the sidhe. But that Merrow was dead. We need to do something.” He cocked his head to the side and frowned, as if he were thinking hard. Eden thought it made him look rather grown up. Finally he met her eyes again, and said, “You know Toirdhealbhach, right? The healer?”
“Yeah, but I just call him Felix. He’s like my dad’s best friend.”
Niall laughed. “Felix! That’s an odd name. All right, let’s call him that. Anyway, my father is also a healer, so they work together sometimes. And sometimes they get me to run messages for them and stuff. I’m not supposed to tell anyone this, but I know that Felix has a gancanagh in his home, and that he’s really sick. Felix has gone away for a few days, so my father is looking after this guy.” Niall puffed out his chest.
“What’s a gancanagh?” Eden said, stumbling over the strange word.
“It’s kind of like a Merrow—I don’t mean the tail and stuff, but it’s kind of in between us and the humans. It’s a magical creature, but it lives on Ériu.”
“So…what about him?”
Niall shrugged. “I dunno. I was just thinking there might be a connection. Sick gancanagh, dead Merrow, both from Ériu.”
Eden considered this. “Maybe…,” she said. “I know!” she said after a moment. She almost told Niall about Helen and their secret lessons, but stopped herself short. “There’s someone I know who can help us. She knows a lot of stuff about Ériu.”
Niall looked at her suspiciously. “Yeah? You won’t get in trouble, though?”
“I don’t think so. Look, why don’t you see what you can find out from your father? Try and listen in on more of his conversations. And I’ll ask my, um, friend what she knows about the Merrow. We’ll be detectives, like Nancy Drew!”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
They headed back to the house just as Riona emerged from the back door.
“I was just about to call for you,” she said when she caught sight of them. “Did you have fun?”
Eden nodded her head vigorously. “Oh yeah, tons of fun!”
“What did you do?” Riona asked.
“Oh, nothing. Just climbed trees and stuff. Had races.” Eden and Niall glanced at each other from the corners of their eyes.
“Yes, your mother tells me you are quite the runner,” Riona said, giving Niall an approving smile. He muttered something that sounded vaguely like “thank you” and shuffled his feet.
Riona and Eden stayed for dinner with Atty and Niall. A couple of hours later, when Eden thought she possibly couldn’t eat another bite, Riona said it was time to go.
“I could…you know,” Eden said, giving her grandmother a hopeful look.
“Make a sidh? You could, indeed, since you have a guardian with you. But I thought you might like to ride back,” she said with a wink.
“I would, but maybe next time?” Eden said.
“Go right ahead, then,” Riona said, taking a step back.
Eden winked at Niall and then leaned casually against the wall of his house. “Bye, Niall!” she called as she let herself fall through the sidh into the front room of her own house. Riona followed her, shaking her head in amusement.
“So did you like that boy?” she asked once Eden had closed the sidh.
“Yep,” Eden answered. “Can we go see him again tomorrow?”
“If you would like,” Riona answered. “After your lessons.”
Eden gave a mock groan, picked a book up off the floor, and skipped toward her bedroom. There was a mystery afoot, and she and her new friend were going to solve it.
CHAPTER 10
Cedar and Finn had returned to their bedroom from Helen’s room, and Cedar was practically dancing with anticipation. All they had to do was ask Abhartach to locate the jewels, and the Unseen would be saved. She wished she’d had this information in time to help Logheryman, but at least now no one else would need to die. She pulled a backpack out of her wardrobe and started thinking of what they would need for the next leg of their journey. She knew Eden must be having her lessons with Nevan in the library now, and then Riona planned to take her to meet Niall, so they probably wouldn’t see her until they got back.
“Do you know where Abhartach is?” Cedar asked.
“Last I heard from Brighid, he was headed for MacGillicuddy’s Reeks,” Finn said. “There are folk stories about blood-drinking fairies in those parts, and I think he hoped to find some of his own kind there.”
Cedar shuddered at the thought of a colony of blood-drinking dwarves. “Where’s that?”
“It’s a mountain range in County Kerry, Ireland.” He watched her bustle around the wardrobe, a peculiar look on his face. “Are you going to let them go now?”
“Let who go?” she asked as she pulled on a clean T-shirt.
“Helen and the other druids,” he said. “You can’t keep them locked up forever.”
“Why are you thinking about that now? We know what we have to do next! Aren’t you excited?”
“If it weren’t for Helen, we’d still have no idea what was going on with the Unseen. She’s told us everything she knows. The other druids have cooperated too. I just thought it was maybe time to let them go home.”
“We don’t know that she’s told us everything,” Cedar pointed out. “Maybe she’s just telling us what she wants us to know.”
“Do you really think that?” Finn asked. “What could she possibly stand to gain? She clearly wants to get back to the library, so it’s hardly like we won’t know where she is.”
“The reason she wanted to go back to the library so badly is that she thought the jewels had a chance of being returned there,” Cedar said. “But now we’re going to find them. We have no idea where she might go once the jewels are destroyed. Besides, why didn’t she tell us the truth from the beginning? She only told us about the Unseen after we confronted her with what Nuri said. She knew we were on to her.” H
er voice hardened. “I don’t know what her game plan is yet. But I still don’t trust her. I didn’t think Liam had anything to gain by betraying me, either…until it was too late.”
“Helen’s not Liam,” Finn said quietly.
Cedar met his eyes with a steely gaze. “We don’t know that yet.” Then she softened. “Listen, we can talk about it more once we’ve found the jewels. We have to stay focused. Abhartach is—”
Suddenly Cedar felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. A look of horror spread across her face. “Oh no,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Finn said, alarmed.
“He’s a dwarf. He’s one of the Unseen.”
Finn’s hand flew to his forehead. “You’re right. Why didn’t I think of that before?”
“He might already be dead,” Cedar said. “We need to go find him now.”
“Wait,” Finn said. “He’ll need human blood in order to find the jewels. Do you think Jane—”
“Absolutely not,” Cedar said forcefully. “I’m not subjecting Jane to that again. He nearly killed her last time.” She thought for a moment. “I used to donate blood in Halifax. We’ll go there first and grab a couple of bags.”
“It’s the middle of the day—you’re just going to walk in there and steal some blood?”
“It’s Thanksgiving Monday,” she replied. “It’ll be closed. It’s perfect.”
“Okay, but even if we don’t bring Jane, we’ll still need Felix. Neither of us speaks ancient dwarvish, remember?”
Cedar rubbed her temples. “You know, sometimes I wake up for a moment and forget that all of this has happened. I’ll find myself thinking about a client project for Ellison or Eden’s schedule for the week. And then I remember that I’m the queen of Fairyland, I can shoot fire from my palms, and I’m about to break into a blood-donation center to steal blood for a vampire-zombie-dwarf living in the Irish mountains.”
Finn laughed and rubbed her shoulders. “Just another day in the life of the Tuatha Dé Danann. You wouldn’t want to go back, would you?”
“Depends on the day,” she muttered. She exchanged her Keds for hiking boots and grabbed her backpack. “You said he’s in the mountains somewhere—where, exactly? We can go straight there once we grab the blood.”
“Apparently there’s a fortress in MacGillicuddy’s Reeks that the locals call Dun Dreach Fhola, which means ‘the Castle of the Blood Visage.’ That’s where the stories come from, but I’ve never been there, and I don’t know exactly where it is. All I know is that it’s near one of the more secluded mountain passes. But that still gives us a lot of ground to cover—it might take us a while to find it. And it will be dark in Ireland soon. We’ll find him faster if we wait until morning.”
“What if he doesn’t make it until morning?” Cedar protested.
“If we go now, we’ll just spend the whole time wandering around in the dark. Even with your fire to guide the way, we won’t be able to see more than a few feet in front of us. And I don’t think we can count on the friendliness of whatever creatures live in those mountains. I’d rather not be ambushed in the dark, especially since I’m assuming you’ll be leaving your guards behind again.”
“I’d like to leave them behind forever,” Cedar said. “Fine, we’ll wait until morning, but I’m going to get the blood now. You coming?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Finn said.
She opened the sidh into the far back of the donation room—the only part of the building she’d ever visited. It was empty, as she’d predicted. She stayed perfectly still for a moment, wondering if there were motion detectors. But when Finn strode in behind her, she relaxed. It was an older building, and it wouldn’t make sense for their security technology to be state-of-the-art. Besides, she thought, who in their right mind would want to steal blood?
“Where do they keep it?” Finn wondered.
“I don’t know,” Cedar said. “This is the room where you donate it, but I don’t know where it goes after that. It must be somewhere refrigerated, though.”
They started searching, moving from room to room with Cedar in the lead, a ball of fire balanced in the middle of her palm. “Here, help me open this door,” she said. “It’s locked.” Together, they shoved their shoulders into the door, which opened with a loud clang of metal. A rush of cold air greeted them.
“Excellent,” Cedar said, stepping into the refrigerated room. Bags of blood hung on hooks on all the walls, labeled by blood type. She started hauling bags down and stuffing them into her backpack.
Finn’s comments about the druids kept replaying in the back of her mind. He had been deceived by Liam just as she had been. Did he really think they should trust the next druid who came along to offer them help? Was he that naive? She pulled another bag down more forcefully than she’d intended, and it split open, blood spilling down the front of her shirt. She swore loudly, shaking her arms and sending red drops spraying around the room.
“I think we have enough,” Finn said. “Let’s get back.”
Cedar had dismissed the fireball from her hand and was just about to open the sidh back to Tír na nÓg when all the lights in the room turned on. A security guard stood in the doorway, one hand on the light switch, the other bringing his radio up to his mouth. Then he froze.
“Cedar?” he asked. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Cedar couldn’t speak for a moment. This was the worst-case scenario. She had been caught red-handed—literally—by someone she knew. And not someone who was apt to do her a favor.
“Troy! Hey! How’s it going?” she said, forcing a cheery smile.
He scowled at her and stalked over. “I asked what you were doing here. And why are you covered in blood?”
“Um, well, one of the bags broke,” she said, wincing. “Sorry.”
Troy and Finn sized each other up, and then Finn stepped in front of her protectively.
“You told me you were gay,” Troy said to Cedar, giving Finn a defiant glare.
“I am,” she lied, not wanting to piss him off further. “This is my brother. Look, I know this seems weird, but we’re just in town for the day and a friend of ours needed some blood. An emergency thing, you know. And we’ve got a doctor and everything, so it’s all good. If you could just…not mention this, I’d really appreciate it.” She tried to give him a coy look, but she knew the effect was probably ruined by the blood dripping from her hair.
“Whatever,” he said, reaching for his radio.
“You know, you really don’t want to do that,” she said, stepping around Finn so that she was directly in front of Troy again.
The security guard stuck out his chest. “Oh yeah, and why’s that?”
“Because we’ll be long gone by the time your reinforcements come,” she said. “And then you’ll look like an idiot.” She refrained from adding “more than usual.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “You stay right there.”
Cedar sighed and silently thanked whichever politician had decided not to allow Canadian security guards to carry firearms. She jerked her head at Finn. “Let’s go.” She took off running, the backpack full of blood bags bouncing behind her, Finn on her heels. She waited until they had flown up a flight of stairs and shut themselves into an office before opening the sidh. She could hear Troy pounding up the stairs behind them, shouting into his radio. But by the time he opened the office door, she had already opened the sidh. The last thing she heard before they ran through it was “I know how to find you, Cedar McLeod!”
“Shit!” Cedar said, dropping her blood-filled bag on the floor of their bedroom.
“What?” Finn said. “We got away. It’s not like he’ll be able to find us.”
“No, but he’ll be able to find Jane,” Cedar said. “He’s a friend of her cousin, which is how I met him. And he’s enough of an idiot to start harassing her or get her wrapped up in some police investigation…all because I wouldn’t go out with him. Ugh. Where’s the Tír na nÓg witn
ess-protection program when you need it?” She sighed. “We’d better go get them.”
A few seconds later they were standing in the living room of Jane’s apartment. Felix was sitting on the sofa alone, watching TV with a beer in his hand. He jumped to his feet when he saw them. “What happened?” he asked, rushing over to Cedar. For a moment she was confused, but then she remembered that she was drenched in blood.
“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “It’s not mine.”
“Well, whose is it, then?” he said, stepping back to look at her. “And what did you do to them?”
Before she could answer, Jane emerged from her bedroom, holding a glass of wine, which she promptly dropped. “Oh my god, Cedar! Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine!” she assured her, wondering why they were drinking in separate rooms.
“What’s going on?” Jane asked. Hastily, Cedar filled them in on what they’d found out from Helen, their plans to go see Abhartach, and the disastrous run-in at the blood bank.
“Oh, Troy,” Jane moaned. “What a complete dickhead. God, Ceeds, I’m so sorry my cousin ever introduced the two of you.”
“It’s no big deal,” Cedar said. “But I think you should come with us. Call in sick for a day or two more and let this thing with Troy blow over. He didn’t seem too impressed, and I don’t want him to take it out on you or send the police to look for me. You can hide out at our place while we track down Abhartach.”
“Oh, jeez, I can handle that blockhead,” Jane said with a dismissive wave. “I’ve got loads of vacation days stored up, though. And I’d rather come with you anyway—as long as Abhartach doesn’t drain me dry this time, that is.”
“You would?” Cedar said, surprised at Jane’s laissez-faire attitude toward the whole thing.
“For sure.” She grinned. “Adventure is good for the soul, remember?”
Cedar grinned back and hugged her. She stole a glance at Felix, who was watching them warily.
“Okay. Let’s head back to Tír na nÓg for now. We’re going hiking tomorrow, so pack some clothes. Then let’s get out of here before the police show up—or worse, Troy.”