by C. E. Murphy
Kelly made a satisfied sound. “All right. I’m stopping at my bank to withdraw as much cash as I can before they put a lock on any of our accounts or a trace on the cards. Dickon, we’re going to have to abandon our cell phones, and thank God you thought the ten-year-old Nissan was a good bet at that car lot, Lar, because that means it hasn’t got GPS installed.”
Lara’s voice cracked. “Get rid of the cell ph—Kelly, when did you turn into an undercover sleuth? This is insane.”
Kelly scowled at her in the mirror. “We just ran away from a crime scene, Lara. One where, if we’re really, really lucky, there’s a police detective who’s only dying instead of dead. The cops are going to come together to find us, and being incredibly easy to track is a price tag of modern society. I’d get rid of the car if I knew another one I could get to, one that wasn’t associated with any of us.”
“I have one.” Dafydd sounded as though someone had taken razors to his throat, cutting his speech to a rough whisper. “Up north, in Peabody. If we can get out of Boston …”
“You’re sure?” Kelly asked sharply. “It’s not registered in your name?”
Dafydd chuckled, low raw sound. “I’ve been doing this for a hundred years, Miss Richards. I’m sure.”
“This is fucked up,” Dickon said abruptly. “Kelly, I can’t do this. Stop the car.”
Twenty-Six
“Dickon …” Lara spoke at the same time Kelly did, then bit her lip. She barely knew Kelly’s fiancé, and was all too aware of how little he’d been told over the past weeks.
“Dickon,” Kelly said again. Her knuckles were white around the steering wheel, jaw tense in the rearview mirror’s reflection as she met Dickon’s eyes there. “Please don’t. Let us just get out of town first, okay? So we can talk?”
Dickon raised his hands like he was blocking a physical assault. “We went way past talking about it already. I don’t know what the hell David is, I don’t know what the hell Lara is, but Washington’s probably dead because goddamned monsters attacked us, and I can’t handle that.”
“If you can just let David explain—!”
“Explain what? That Lara really was in some kind of fucking fairyland? That my best bud for the past five years is some kind of alien freak? I think I needed an explanation a long goddamned time ago.”
Lara put her hands over her mouth, caught Kelly’s despairing glance in the mirror, and tentatively reached for Dickon’s wrist instead. He jerked like she’d branded him, and she pulled back, ashamed. “I know you didn’t believe me, Dickon. I’m sorry. I thought pushing it would be worse until you could see it was real.”
“You should have tried making him believe you, like you did the judge today.” Kelly’s gaze danced between the road and the mirror, miserable accusation in her voice.
“No!” Dickon pulled further away. “I don’t know what the hell that was in there—”
“I’ve never tried that before today, Kel. And they all hated it. It wouldn’t have helped if I’d tried it with Dickon.”
“It sure as fuck wouldn’t have.”
Crescendos of broken crystal, pure shattered tones, slivered into Lara’s skin and burrowed deep, scores running to the bone. It wouldn’t have helped, but knowing that, even for an absolute certainty, didn’t make her feel any less as though she’d failed. She whispered “I’m sorry” and turned her face away, unready to meet Kelly’s eyes in the mirror. Traffic lurched by them, horns honking, windows rolled down, all the normal things expected on a warm city afternoon. Lara wondered how many of the rolling rooms around them encapsulated their own singular dramas, played out in solitude close enough to touch.
“Dickon, please,” Kelly whispered, and Lara saw a faint reflection in her window as the big man shook his head.
“Please what, Kel? Please let you explain? Please let you tell me why it’s okay we just left somebody to die on a greasy concrete floor? Kelly, I thought I loved you, but now I don’t think I even know you. How could you have done that?”
Lara looked back at her friend, whose eyes were wide, fixed on the road, though tears spilled down her cheeks. Her voice was distorted, struggling for calm through sobs that hiccupped her breath. “I could do it because we weren’t guilty of anything and because there was no explanation and because Reg might live if the paramedics got there in time, but there is no way they would have let David live. He’s not human—”
“And you’re okay with that?” Dickon cried out. Kelly hit the brakes instinctively, as though his shout warned of danger. A car behind them honked and she flipped them off, a burst of obscenity accompanying the gesture. Lara flinched and ducked her head, searching for something to defuse the situation, but Kelly spoke with unnerving calm.
“I’m really not in the least freaking bit okay with it. Lara told me, but believe me, knowing and seeing aren’t at all the same thing. But we had to get out of there. I couldn’t exactly stop to have a fit. I still can’t. I’ll fall apart later.”
“You didn’t stop to think about the trouble we’re gonna be in?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with thinking!” Kelly slammed the heel of her hand into the car horn, its pathetic beep doing less to shatter the tension than Lara thought it might. “I was just trying to make sure we all survived!”
“What about Reg?”
“We couldn’t help him!” Kelly yanked the blinker indicator up so hard Lara was surprised it didn’t break, and cut off traffic as she jerked the car toward the sidewalk. “You want to get out? Fine, get out! I don’t care!”
“Just lend me the car,” Lara whispered. “I can get us out of the city. You two don’t need to be any more involved in this.”
“Oh like hell.” Kelly threw the emergency brake on and her seat belt off, twisting around. “No, Lara, look, at the very least you need somebody with a driver’s license at the wheel if you run into any cops—”
“You let me drive your car without a license before,” Lara objected quietly.
Kelly glared at her. “I know you can drive, Lara, that’s not the problem. There weren’t likely to be police looking for you before. And I know you haven’t gotten a new license, so you need a driver, and he,” she said, jabbing a finger at Dafydd, “can’t drive right now. More to the point, you need somebody who can tell lies if it’s necessary. David’s in no shape to talk and you, well.” She snorted, making a mockery of the anger and fear in her eyes. “This is the most universally fucked-up situation I’ve ever been in, but I’m right. We couldn’t do anything for Reg, so the best I can do is protect you. You’re my best friend,” she said more softly. “What else am I supposed to do?”
“Maybe choose me over them?” The accusation had gone from Dickon’s voice, leaving him defeated as he unbuckled his seat belt, too.
Fresh tears tracked down Kelly’s cheeks, but resolution tightened her jaw. “I’m sorry, Dickon. I didn’t know getting David out of there meant I was making a choice between you and them. I thought I was choosing all of us, to get out of a situation we were never gonna be able to explain. But if it’s one or the other, I’m sorry. Right now it’s them.”
“You’re going to get arrested,” Dickon said quietly. “We’re all going to get arrested.”
“No,” Kelly said, clarion horns in the single word. “Worst-case scenario, three of us are going to get arrested. But first we’re going to get David to safety, because otherwise he’s going to die. And, Dickon, I love you, I really do, but I’m not going to let somebody die just because he’s not exactly human.”
Dafydd, unexpectedly, let go another soft chuckle. “Not human at all, but I play one on TV. Dickon”—he rolled his head back, tilting his sunglasses so his amber eyes were revealed—“a useless confession, my friend: I was going to tell you. This morning, in fact, I thought, ‘he should know.’ I’m sorry I was too late. Secrecy is an old habit to break.”
Dickon’s gaze skittered to Lara. “Is he telling the truth?”
“He is.”
“Hnh.” Dickon rolled his jaw, then jerked his head at Kelly. “Let me out.”
“Dickon—”
“No, you know what, Kel? Just let me out. I’m going to the hospital. I gotta see if Reg is okay.”
“But what about—”
“I don’t know, Kelly. I don’t know. Maybe if I’d had a week to get used to this, but I don’t know. You … you go do your thing, this thing, whatever it is. Save the freak. Call me when it’s over, maybe. I don’t know.”
Kelly, hollow-eyed, opened her door and stepped out of the car without saying anything else. Dafydd, though, spoke into her silence. “A week ago,” he murmured, “a week ago you were my champion, Dickon, and Kelly was my doubter.”
“I know, man.” Dickon pushed the Nissan’s seat forward, shouldering out. “A lot’s changed since then.”
Everything, Lara thought. Everything had changed since then. Kelly got back in, rebuckled her seat belt, and pulled back into traffic, all of them trying not to look at Dickon’s reflection receding in the mirrors.
“Maybe it’s a good thing. They’re looking for two women and two men in a Nissan, not two women and a man in a Toyota.” Kelly, still driving, turned the radio off with a resounding click, her jaw still set. According to local news, an unnamed detective had been rushed to the hospital and police were looking for four suspects to question. Lara’s stomach turned to lead as their names and physical descriptions were announced, along with Dafydd’s recent jail time and her peculiar disappearance.
“Maybe it’s good,” she echoed, dissonance running over her skin. It wasn’t a lie, but she didn’t believe it any more than Kelly had.
They’d stopped at Kelly’s bank less than five minutes after Dickon left them, and Kelly had withdrawn most of her savings. “Eight and a half thousand,” she’d said when she got back in the car. “I left about forty dollars in the bank. This is all we’re going to be able to get, unless you’ve got accounts in other names.” The last was directed at Dafydd, who nodded vaguely, as if he hadn’t understood the implied question.
The Seelie were, by Lara’s estimation, a fragile-looking people to begin with, but even so, Dafydd’s weakness frightened her. His bones seemed to shine through parchment-fine skin, as if he faded before their eyes. He’d burned up too much power: the truth of that rang through her in ceaseless waves, like water at the shoreline. Whether he could recover with time and rest, she didn’t know. It seemed all too likely that, cut off from the Barrow-lands, he would never regain his strength.
He’d given them the address of his storage unit in Peabody, and at Lara’s urging, the combination to its lock, before fading into a restless drowse he hadn’t fully woken from. The car they’d found there was new enough to be unremarkable, but old enough to lack the global positioning system that most new vehicles were automatically fitted with. With luck it wouldn’t matter; with luck no one would trace their change of vehicles and be looking for a mid-range blue four-door Corolla. Lara glanced behind her to where Dafydd sprawled gracelessly across the seat as he dozed, and said “With any luck” aloud.
“I’m not going to assume luck is on our side. Lara, look, not like any of this was planned, but do you have any kind of … plan?” Kelly’s fingertips tapped the wheel, quick nervous rhythm. “I’m running on adrenaline and spy movies here. I know about not using credit cards and sticking to blue roads instead of interstates, but beyond getting us out of the greater Boston metropolitan area, I don’t know what to do.”
Lara pressed her temple against the window, watching the roadside scenery turn to a blur of green. “I keep thinking we need to go to Wales.”
“Wales? What, like in Britain? Not a chance, sister. I don’t think eighty-five hundred dollars is enough to buy us fake passports, even if I had any idea where to go to try to get that kind of thing. Wales? Are you serious? Why?”
“Because it’s where Dafydd said he was from. That the Barrow-lands are close to it, in terms of how his world and this one map to each other. Ioan said something about how once upon a time people from this world were able to cross to the Barrow-lands through underground paths.”
“Long ago,” Dafydd murmured from the backseat. “Long ago. Even in Oisín’s time it took royal blood casting the worldwalking spell, and that was a long time ago.”
Lara twisted around, hooking her arm over the back of the seat. “Hey, you’re awake. How do you feel?”
Dafydd took a breath, held it, and on the exhalation admitted, “Terrible.”
“You look awful.” Lara wrinkled her nose at the raw truth, but it got a chuckle from Dafydd. She smiled wanly in return, then found herself echoing his deep breath and long exhalation. “Have you ever heard of a worldbreaking weapon? Not me, but something that might have been used to destroy Unseelie territory?”
He frowned. “The Unseelie lands have been drowned as long as I can remember, Lara. Having spent so much time in your world, I’d say it was probably just a result of climate change.”
Unexpected burrs ran through his words, pulling their truth out of tune. Hairs stood up on Lara’s arms, reinforcing the feeling of wrongness, and she blurted, “No,” without meaning to. “Whatever it was, it wasn’t climate change. My power’s getting stronger, Dafydd. I’m starting to hear it now when people are wrong even if they believe it’s the truth.”
Delight lit his face briefly, pushing his weariness away. “Truthseeker indeed.” Then a touch of dismay creased his features and he relaxed into the seats again. “But I’m wrong?”
“I need you to try and remember any legends or stories Oisín might have told you. Did he ever mention someone named Brendan?”
“There’s a mortal name,” Dafydd said absently. “Brendan, ah, Brendan the sailor. They were friends from before he came to the Barrow-lands, I think.”
Lara, under her breath, said, “No,” as the words soured in her mind, but Dafydd continued undisturbed. “I remember, just barely.” His eyes closed and he sank further down, voice rising and falling in a soft murmur. “He was blind with age already, Oisín was. I never knew him as a sighted man. But he used to carry a stick, a walking staff. Carved bone, I think. A gift from my mother, I think. I only remember him having it after she died. I asked once if I could have it, because I barely remembered her and I hoped it would remind me. But he said we had to give it to Brendan, to take across the sea.”
Hope surged in Lara’s stomach, making a knot as nauseating as fear. “Did he say where across the sea?”
“I supposed he meant to Tir na nÓg, the lands to the west. I never asked.”
“But Brendan was Irish,” Lara whispered. “Across the sea to the west was America, for him.”
“So it is here,” Kelly said triumphantly, then made a face. “Or it was at some time.”
“No.” Music had turned to a crescendo with Kelly’s first statement. Lara turned to grab the dashboard with both hands, as if she could direct the car through will alone. “No, it is here. Still is. It felt true when you said that, Kelly. Pull over, can you pull over?”
“Uh, yeah.” Kelly pulled off, tires scrabbling over gravel as she went too near the ditch. “What are you going to do?”
“It’s here. It’s here somewhere. I found a path through the Seelie forest back to the palace, maybe I can find one here. It’s got to have some kind of similar feeling, doesn’t it? They’re both magical constructions.”
Dafydd climbed out of the car as she spoke, leaning heavily on it as he pulled Lara’s door open as well. He offered her a hand, and a faint smile as she looked up at him in concern. “We can share a little of thought and emotion with those we’re close to,” he reminded her. “And I hold the image of the staff in my mind. But I can’t do it within the confines of that vehicle.”
“You can’t at all! You don’t have very much power left!” Lara got out, more to herd him back into the car than to accept his help, but he caught her hand.
“If there’s an item of Seelie, or even Unsee
lie, power here, Lara, it’s more likely to lend me strength than anything else in your world. It may mean my survival.”
“Even if you burn out looking for it?”
“I believe the risk worth taking.”
“Either way,” Kelly said from within the car, “make a decision. We’re not exactly in suburbia, but I don’t like you standing around outside the car when there’s an APB out on us.”
Dafydd tipped his head toward the vehicle. “Kelly makes a compelling argument.”
Lara raised a palm in defeat. “All right. If you can give me the image, I think that’ll help me build a path. How do you do this, like with a …” She trailed off, but lifted her free hand to Dafydd’s face, approximating a gesture she’d seen in film trailers.
Dafydd laughed out loud. “A Vulcan mind meld? Would that make it easier?”
Color rushed Lara’s face. “Actually, yes, I think so. It’s sort of familiar.”
Kelly leaned over the passenger seat, peering up at Dafydd as he confidently settled his fingers against Lara’s cheek and temple. “Today has been one hundred percent full of suck, and yet at this exact second I gotta say I love my life, because I’m watching somebody perform a mind meld for real.”
Enough truth ran through that to make Lara smile. Dafydd, looking into her eyes, smiled as well, then gently tugged her forward to put his forehead against hers. “Proximity eases the sharing. Close your eyes. Think of sandy beaches, cloudy skies.”
The clear white path truthseeking had created when she’d searched for her way out of the Seelie forest filled her mind, as neutral an image as she could come up with. It had song to it, distant tolling like water against a shore. Oisín appeared on the path, less frail than he’d been when she’d met him, though he was by no means a young man. He still wore fine Seelie raiment, but now he carried a staff taller than he was.
If it was bone, it came from the largest animal Lara had ever imagined. Even an ivory tusk seemed inadequate for its height, and it had no curve to it at all, standing slim and ramrod straight. Intricate carvings along its length showed that it was hollow, and though the carvings were delicate in design, the staff itself warned of strength and power. In Oisín’s hands it had no bent toward either destruction or creation, but the sense of it said it could be used for both.