The Morrigan's Curse

by Dianne K. Salerni

  “No experiments that could get you decapitated, Jax,” Riley said. “That’s an order.”

  It wasn’t, though—at least not a magical order. Riley was too busy concentrating on driving to throw his talent at Jax. Rain pattered against the windows, and a gust of wind pushed the Land Rover sideways. “Is this what storms are usually like?” Evangeline asked.

  “Regular storms don’t move this fast. And the main part of this one hasn’t hit us yet,” Riley said. “When it gets here”—his eyes met Jax’s in the rearview mirror—”it’ll be like Hurricane Sandy, except without any warning for the Normals.”

  “Any chance it’ll vanish at midnight along with the Kin who made it?” Jax asked.

  “There hasn’t been weather on the eighth day since the Llyrs were put into Oeth-Anoeth, so who knows?” said Riley. “We can hope.”

  He didn’t sound hopeful, though, and neither was Jax. Why should things start going our way now?

  Evangeline wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “I read the newspapers,” she said. “I know what Hurricane Sandy did.”

  Jax rummaged in the duffel bag to find her a sweatshirt. While he was searching, the bag began to vibrate, and a muffled burst of music came from the bottom. “Is that your phone?” Jax asked Riley incredulously.

  “Get it,” said Riley. “It’ll be Deidre.”

  Jax dug for the phone. The screen was dark, showing no incoming call, but the ringtone inexplicably continued. Jax stabbed the answer button. “Hello?”

  “That you, cutie?”

  Nobody but Deidre Morgan called Jax cutie. Thankfully. It wasn’t something he wanted catching on. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “Making the phone work on Grunsday? Pretty impressive.” Jax knew the Morgan talent was working with machinery, but he’d never really thought of phones as machines before.

  “Tell Riley you guys need to leave that motel now,” Deidre said. “Head inland as fast as you can.”

  “We already are.” Jax held the phone out so Riley and Evangeline could hear too.

  “Arnie said he’ll meet you at the mountain house,” Deidre continued. “Transitioners are leaving the city as fast as they can. I’m sure the storm was meant to attack us, but it’s the Normals who are going to get clobbered. Three airplanes that were frozen en route to JFK or LaGuardia have been knocked out of the sky already.”

  “Thanks for the warning, Deidre,” Riley called out.

  “I’ll add it to the list of things you owe me for, sweetie.” Deidre’s reply faded away, and although there was nothing visible on the phone to indicate the end of this magical call, Jax knew she was gone.

  He looked out the rear window. A.J. and Mrs. Crandall were behind them in the truck. The black cloud of doom hovered over the New York skyline like bad CGI in an apocalyptic movie. Jax wondered what the Normals were going to think when they reappeared at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday. Seconds ago, by their own timeline, they’d been enjoying a clear summer night. An instant later, they were going to find themselves in the middle of a massive storm—or, at best, in the aftermath of one. Some of them wouldn’t have time to register the situation before they were, as Deidre said, clobbered.

  Riley drove west, heading for Pennsylvania, where they had a cabin in the middle of the Pocono Mountains. He made good progress at first, matching the storm’s speed and staying on the outer edge of wind and rain. He steered the Land Rover around stationary vehicles on I-80 that were frozen in the moment between Wednesday and Thursday. Only once did he clip somebody’s side-view mirror, when an unexpected gust made their car swerve. “Sorry, dude,” Riley muttered. Then he looked ahead and cursed, braking.

  Construction on a bridge had left one lane open, and it was currently blocked by a line of cars. Neither the Land Rover nor A.J.’s truck were going to fit through. Riley reversed and turned the SUV around. “Holler if you see a way to get past the median and into the oncoming lane.”

  “It won’t do any good,” Jax said, pointing. The oncoming lane on the bridge was blocked by two tractor trailers traveling side by side.

  “Okay then.” Riley turned the wheel hard. “We’re going off road.” The Land Rover bumped its way over a large grassy stretch with A.J.’s truck following, down a small hill and onto a secondary road.

  “Do you know where this road goes?” Evangeline asked worriedly.

  “Doesn’t matter, as long as I keep that in the rearview mirror.” Riley stabbed with his finger at the mirrored reflection of the black clouds behind them.

  But it did matter, and he’d made a poor choice. This new road took them along the river that the I-80 bridge had been crossing and wound its way through a heavily wooded region. They had to cut their speed, and the storm caught up with them.

  The sky had grown darker as evening fell, but it suddenly became pitch black. Trees whipped back and forth. Torrential rain sheeted down. What was probably a shallow, slow-moving river on a normal day now overflowed its banks. Riley’s hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. “Keep your eyes peeled for a better option,” he said.

  Jax pressed his face against the window, looking for a side road that would lead them uphill, away from the water. It was hard to see anything except darkness and rain.

  Then a flash of white. A face.

  “Stop the car!” Jax yelled.

  Riley braked. “What is it?”

  “There’s someone by the side of the road!” Jax threw open the door and jumped out.

  “Jax, wait!” Evangeline cried.

  Driving rain plastered his clothing to his body. He jogged back up the road toward A.J.’s truck, which had stopped behind the Land Rover. Mrs. Crandall rolled down the passenger window and shouted something, probably asking him what in the world he was doing.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d seen, but he’d had the impression of someone—a fairly young someone—standing by the side of the road with an arm raised, signaling for help. Had it been a girl? In a white dress, maybe?

  Jax heard a loud crack behind him, and turned to see the shoulder of the road collapse into broken chunks. The Land Rover tilted, its right rear tire plunging into river water that gushed into the break. Jax heard the car’s engine roar, and the front wheels spun. The Land Rover lurched upward momentarily, but another chunk of asphalt broke away. The Land Rover’s second rear tire sank into the water.

  Jax watched in horror. The river was going to break across the road and wash away the car. Riley and Evangeline would drown. Just like his dad.

  Then A.J.’s truck surged forward and smacked the back end of the Land Rover, propelling it out of the gully. Riley gunned the engine; the back wheels came up onto the road, and the car sped away. A.J. reversed and jerked the truck to a stop beside Jax. Mrs. Crandall threw open her door and nearly yanked his arm from its socket, pulling him in. The door wasn’t even closed when A.J. hit the gas and spun the wheel, careening into what remained of the left-hand lane.

  Jax hauled the truck door shut, then turned to look out the back window. Around the motorcycle, which was still miraculously tied in the bed of the truck, he saw the river bust across the remaining width of the road.

  “That was close!” gasped A.J. “Jax, what’d you get out of the car for?”

  Jax trembled violently. “I saw a girl by the side of road.”

  “In the woods in this storm? Alone?” Mrs. Crandall twisted around to look.

  “Forget what you’re thinking, Mom,” said. A.J. “We can’t go back. Unless you expect me to jump that new canyon back there.”

  “I must have been imagining things.” Jax wiped his wet face with both hands. What had he seen? A girl in a white dress?

  I’ve seen her before.

  Jax shuddered again, and Mrs. Crandall pulled him close and rubbed his arms vigorously. But he wasn’t cold; he was horrified.

  The Morrigan.

  Last week Jax had seen a dark-haired girl in a short, shapeless dress standing at the edge of Central Park across the street from the Dulac bu
ilding. He’d seen her from inside the brownie tunnels, which should have been impossible, and there’d been crows flying above her head even though there weren’t normally any birds on the eighth day. Evangeline had tried to explain to Jax what the Morrigan was, but the explanation was confusing. She wasn’t a Transitioner or Kin; she was the personification of chaos and disorder, three beings in one. The version of her that appeared as a girl with crows was supposed to manipulate events in order to foster the chaos the Morrigan wanted.

  Just after Jax had seen the Girl of Crows last Grunsday, a vengeful horde of brownies had set a wyvern on the Dulacs at the exact same time that the Llyrs had shown up to abduct Addie Emrys. Now she’d appeared again, causing Jax to stop the Land Rover at a dangerous place on the road. She’d almost gotten the two people most important in the world to him killed. Do you know my father drove his car into a river and drowned? Is that why you picked that spot? So I could see my friends die the same way?

  Evangeline and Riley could have been killed by that wyvern last week. Riley almost had been. Was that a coincidence, or was the Morrigan targeting them deliberately?

  Jax clenched his jaw. He didn’t care what she was—a person or three people or a force of nature, or whatever. She was his enemy.

  Game on, Girl of Crows.

  5

  ADDIE’S HEADACHE AND NAUSEA faded quickly. Healing spells had been easy for her to learn, once she’d seen someone else use them. Feeling better, she wandered downstairs, running a hand along the polished banister of the L-shaped stairs to the living room below with its walls of glass.

  The sky had grown too dark to see the ocean. Midnight would arrive in a couple of hours, thrusting everyone on this island a week into the future. Kel’s father had assured them it was safe here, that no one would find them while they were absent from time and vulnerable. “This is my private island, and the house is warded against intruders,” Madoc had told them on their arrival. “No one comes here except by my say-so, and the ones who do are well paid to perform their jobs and leave without talking about it.”

  Addie heard raised voices outside. She crossed the room and pressed her face against a window. A crowd of younger Aerons had made a bonfire off the patio and were cheering two boys wrestling in the sand, each of them trying to push the other into the fire. From what Addie knew of this clan, if one of them got burned to a crisp, the other would probably be rewarded with a tattoo.

  It had been an Aeron who originally enticed Addie to run away from the house of her foster parents, the Carroways. Addie hadn’t known that at the time, because sharing family names and talents was against Dale Carroway’s rules. The girl, Wren, hadn’t known Addie’s family name either. She just thought Addie was fun to be with. “Let’s leave,” Wren had said. “We can have adventures and see the world, and you won’t have to put up with these old people and their rules anymore.” Addie, who’d recently been punished for breaking a minor house rule, had jumped at the chance.

  But Wren had been wild—more than Addie had counted on. She’d said she was taking Addie to meet friends. “But there’s no hurry. We can have fun along the way.” Wren had led them on a meandering path across New England, magically “hot-wiring” the cars of Normals and then, as each vehicle ran out of gas, setting it on fire.

  “Why?” Addie had asked, shocked by the wanton destruction.

  “For fun!”

  Addie had gotten the impression that Normals weren’t real to Wren. Their world was a playroom, and Wren liked to knock over the blocks and break the toys. She also wasn’t in any hurry to rendezvous with her friends, but in the end, they found her.

  “Hey, cuz! How’d you know I’d be here?” Wren had cheerfully asked the tall Kin boy who caught up with them in an expensive vehicle called a Hummer on a highway in New Hampshire.

  “How?” The boy had been irate. “Everywhere you go, you leave disaster behind, you moron! You’ve made a dotted line marking your trail!”

  “I was bringing a recruit to Condor,” Wren said. “Well, eventually.”

  Then a second Kin boy got out of the Hummer. “Kel Mathonwy,” Addie said in surprise.

  “Addie Emrys,” Kel replied, breaking out into a grin. The other boy stopped yelling, his eyes bugging out of his head. Because Wren Aeron, certified moron and pyromaniac, had accidentally stumbled across an Emrys heir.

  The friends Wren had been taking Addie to were some of her own father’s allies, the people he’d included in his secret meetings when she was just a child. They were trying to resurrect his plan to break the Eighth Day Spell, and that was when Addie knew that fate—or something—had brought her to them.

  But Wren’s cousin had been right to be furious with her. She had left a blazing trail of senseless vandalism that had attracted the notice of Transitioners. The Dulacs ambushed the Hummer less than twelve hours after they met up. Even Wren’s talent for destruction hadn’t saved them. Kel had escaped in the confusion, but Addie had been captured. Wren and her Aeron cousin had been killed.

  Voices drew Addie away from the mansion’s windows—quiet, level voices that contrasted with the shouts and catcalls outside. She approached the doorway to a large dining room where Normal owners might’ve held dinner parties. The Mathonwys had turned it into a war room.

  “Elwyn wouldn’t allow it,” Madoc was saying. “He said it would taint the counterspell and ruin what we hoped to achieve.”

  Addie pressed herself against the wall, out of sight. Elwyn had been her father’s name.

  “The rest of you allowed him to have the final say?” Bran Llyr asked. “You trusted an Emrys to lead you?”

  “He was the spell caster and the one who knew the most about the original casting,” Madoc explained. “We had to. Wylit argued with him, of course. But Wylit was half mad even before he got his face melted off trying to break the spell with a little boy too young to do it.”

  “You’re sure the male Emrys heir was killed?” That was Bran’s son, Griffyn, speaking with disdain. “We’re left with nothing but this girl?”

  “I had no contact with Wylit after Elwyn was killed. Wylit worked alone after that, but I’ve pieced together what happened. The Emrys boy died in a poorly planned spell-breaking ritual, and the older daughter was killed by Transitioners in Wylit’s recent failed attempt on the pyramid in Mexico. That’s what the Dulacs discovered when they investigated, and Luis Morder passed the information on to Kel,” Madoc replied. “There’s only one Emrys left.”

  That’s me, the leftover. Not as good as my little brother, because he was male, and not as good as Evangeline, because she was always better at everything.

  “Elwyn was counting on the power of the Kin Treasures to reinforce his counterspell,” Madoc continued. “The Cauldron, of course, was destroyed centuries ago as far as we know. But he acquired the Stone and the Sword, and he believed the final Treasure was located with the Llyrs in Oeth-Anoeth.”

  “Which was the only reason he had any interest in freeing us.” Bran’s voice was dry. He did not confirm or deny whether he had a powerful Kin relic in his possession. But Addie had been suspiciously eyeing that staff Bran never let out of his sight. None of the Kin Treasures had been a staff, but there was the Spear of Lugh . . .

  “What happened to the Treasures Elwyn Emrys had acquired?” Bran asked.

  “They disappeared after his death,” Madoc said.

  “How could he have the Stone of Fal and the Sword of Nuadu and not defeat his enemies?” Griffyn asked incredulously. “The Stone by itself should’ve protected him!”

  “I wasn’t there when the attack occurred,” Madoc said. “I don’t know what happened.”

  Condor, the leader of the Aerons, spoke up. “I think he must have been taken by surprise and wasted valuable time making sure his children escaped.”

  “No Kin should consider that time wasted,” Bran replied. “We’re lucky to have the remaining Emrys heir with us. She needn’t lurk behind doors.”

  Addie sti
ffened, imagining everyone in the room turning to stare at the doorway. How did he know? Then she lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders, and walked into the room as if she hadn’t been eavesdropping. As if she’d been invited to attend the meeting and take her father’s place. She was the Emrys clan leader after all, even if she was the only member of that clan. By rights, she was equal to Madoc Mathonwy, Condor Aeron, Ysabel Arawen, and even Bran Llyr. They didn’t outrank her.

  Nevertheless, they were an intimidating group for a thirteen-year-old girl to approach. Oddly, Addie was drawn to Bran more than the others, despite the fact that he’d zapped her with his magic a few hours ago. She met his gaze unafraid and sat across from him. Only then did she notice Kel seated beside his father. He’d been silent in the discussion.

  “Do you know what happened to the Stone and the Sword?” Bran asked her.

  “No,” she said. “When Transitioners attacked my house, my sister made me run with her through the woods to escape. We were met by the Taliesins, who separated us and sent us into hiding. I was only eight years old, and nobody explained to me what happened.” She’d known her parents were dead, though. No one had needed to explain that part.

  Griffyn made an impatient noise. “It’s no mystery. Transitioners took the Treasures.”

  “Or they were hidden for safekeeping, and Elwyn couldn’t get them quickly enough,” Ysabel suggested. “That would explain why he was defeated.”

  “I searched,” Madoc argued. “If they were hidden anywhere near the Emrys home, I would have found them years ago.”

  “Do we really need them?” Condor said. “Human sacrifices would provide the power we need, and Elwyn Emrys is no longer here to object.”

  Addie wondered who Condor planned to sacrifice and whether it included volunteers from his own crazy clan. Madoc gave Condor a look of disgust. “Countermanding the Eighth Day Spell involves dangerous magic, and we have Wylit’s failed attempts as exemplary models for disaster. Locating the Treasures would be our safest bet.”

  “An oracle might help find them,” Addie piped up.