Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel)

by D. L. McDermott

  She did not call Miach. She wasn’t ready. When Beth came home, they went out to lunch in the Back Bay at one of those chic little bistros that served elaborate cocktails and farm-to-table food, and washed fancy french fries down with martinis. It was cheaper than therapy, and Helene doubted she could find a therapist who would believe any of what she told him, unless she spun him a fairy tale that soft-pedaled the Fae sorcerer and his enemies as prosaic psychopaths.

  The idea held little appeal. Instead, she poured out her doubts and fears to Beth, who listened and made no judgments. The only advice the archaeologist tendered was that Helene had to decide whether being with Miach was worth taking the bad with the good.

  “Because his world, my world,” admitted Beth, “will never be safe.”

  Which you could say about love in general.

  The heist at the museum dominated the news for a full week. The case broke after fourteen days when one of the stolen paintings turned up in a storage container on the South Boston docks. The other two were presumed sold on the black market.

  From this the police developed a working theory that the same Irish gangs who had pulled off the Gardner Heist almost two decades ago were probably involved, although with the paintings returned and the dead security guard’s family amply provided for by an anonymous trustee at the museum, there was little incentive to dig further.

  The donation turned up three weeks after the night of the heist. Helene was surprised when the paintings arrived at the loading dock, because the gift had not been arranged through her. When she went to see the director, he acted astonished that she didn’t know about them. The paintings, he explained, had been donated by a new trustee. This mysterious benefactor was also giving the museum enough money to put them on exhibition, and because they were American nineteenth-century paintings, Dave had thought Helene would want to take time away from her fundraising responsibilities to organize the show.

  She knew then who had donated the paintings and planted in Dave’s head the idea of Helene’s participation in the show. When the pictures were uncrated, she recognized the contents of Miach’s collection.

  And was staggered by the beauty of it. In Miach’s long picture gallery the effect had been diluted, but crowded together in the exhibit staging area, the paintings were a visual feast.

  Miach had given them up in hopes of winning her.

  The gesture took her breath away. Canvas after canvas of heart-stopping beauty. He’d told her he had planned to woo her with them, but by “woo” she had assumed he had meant seduce, and she had already succumbed to his seduction.

  It took two months, exactly, to organize the exhibition, to write label text and a gallery guide and send out announcements and buy advertising.

  During that time Helene took stock of her normal life. The one without Druids or Fae sorcerers or charming criminals. It was . . . nice. And somewhat empty. Her open-floor-plan condominium in the Back Bay was a world away from Miach’s rambling Southie Victorian. She enjoyed the privacy and the anonymity of it, but she also missed the boisterous sounds of family life.

  And she missed Miach.

  She missed the sex, of course, but she found herself wondering what he would think of the exhibition as she planned, wondering if he would like the little café bookstore where she liked to stop for juice after a run on the esplanade, and which newspaper she read. The Herald, she suspected, for the outrageous headlines and local working-class flavor. But probably also the Globe for its arts coverage.

  She wanted to share things with him.

  The night of the opening arrived, and Helene chose her clothing with care. She wore a black silk sheath elegant enough for cocktails, but simple enough to blend in with the guests.

  The show drew a significant crowd, and for about an hour Helene was mobbed. Her friends and colleagues congratulated her; the museum’s members and trustees expressed their excitement about the show.

  When the evening started to slow down and the gallery began to empty, she had the bartender pour her a whiskey and she indulged herself with a minute alone in front of her favorite painting in the show, a monumental canvas of an Old Testament scene.

  She finished her drink and wished she had gotten a double so she could enjoy the painting and the moment, and thought about what Miach MacCecht might say, and then suddenly he was there beside her with two drinks in his hand.

  A waiter appeared at her other elbow and took her empty glass away.

  “Cheers,” she said.

  “Slántu,” he replied touching his glass to hers. He pointed at the painting with his whiskey. “I knew him, you know.”

  “King Solomon?” she asked.

  “Very funny,” he replied drily. “The painter.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Irish and a spectacular drunk. Very fond of dogs. I missed you.”

  She had missed him as well. He was Fae and a criminal and he had a family that could be difficult. But he had also lived and traveled and could show her new worlds that didn’t involve Druids or the long-simmering enmities of the Aes Sídhe.

  And she loved him. Seeing him again now, she knew. She felt the same heart-wrenching emotion she had experienced when she had seen him chained at the feet of the Prince Consort. She did not want to contemplate life without him.

  “Would you like to go for a walk?” she asked.

  He offered her his arm. They left their drinks on one of the trays provided and walked out into the night, heading for the square.

  “There’s a café near my house in the Back Bay where I like to eat breakfast,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to give up the apartment,” he replied.

  “Or my job,” she said.

  “Or your job.”

  The square was filled with buskers and students. Miach took her hand as they passed a quartet of young singers, hats lying on the pavement waiting for spare change. He tossed a coin in as they continued on to one of the quads.

  When they were alone on one of the paths that crisscrossed the quad, Miach stopped and swung her around to face him.

  “I don’t know what the future will bring, Helene. There’s a fight coming, and I’m committed to it, and if you fall in love with me, you’ll be dragged into it. Only you can decide whether I’m worth it or not.”

  “I already have decided,” she said, and kissed him.

  He kissed her back. His hands slid up her arms and stopped at the half-finished tattoo. He broke away.

  “I am sorry you had to endure this,” he said. “I can remove it for you, if you like.”

  She considered the band of whorls and dots that wound halfway around her biceps. “I’ve gotten used to the idea of having a tattoo,” she said. “Though I’m not especially fond of the design.”

  “Then let me write over it,” he said, tracing a new pattern over her arm with his finger. “Let’s create something new, together.”

  Keep reading for a sneak peek of Book Three in the Cold Iron series

  Stone Song

  Available June 2014 from Pocket Star Books

  Chapter 1

  “We’ve got gentry in the audience tonight.”

  Sorcha Kavanaugh felt the hair on the back of her neck rise, and her fingers curled instinctively around the iron strings of her harp.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “Dunno,” said Tommy, perching his lanky frame against the dressing table and beginning to tune his fiddle. “Could be just the one I saw, but it felt like more.”

  Tommy Carrell didn’t sound worried, but Tommy Carrell didn’t have any special reasons to fear the Fae.

  Sorcha Kavanaugh did.

  “What did the one you saw look like?” she asked.

  “Tall and pretty,” he said.

  “They’re all tall and pretty,” said Sorcha.

  “So they are,” said Tommy. “And it doesn’t do to be caught staring at them. They come for the music, Sorcha. You know that. We play what they ask and pay the
m no mind—and in return they leave us alone.”

  Except, of course, when they didn’t.

  Tommy was mostly right, though. When the Fae turned up at the bar the strange immortal creatures usually sat quietly and listened, but only because it suited them to do so. Music was one of their pleasures, and there were almost none among them who could make it now.

  Occasionally the Fae sent a note—and a drink—to the stage and asked to hear the old music. Sean nós. Unaccompanied singing.

  That was the dangerous part.

  They’ll come for you. Sorcha could hear her grandmother’s voice in her head—musical as a bell—though the woman was dead these five years. If they hear that voice, they’ll come for you.

  After her parents were killed, when she was just six, Sorcha had been sent to Gran’s with nothing but a pink suitcase and her father’s beloved fiddle.

  The woman from social services, who had picked her up in a car smelling of juice boxes and Cheerios and driven her to the rambling old farmhouse in Jamaica Plain, had explained to Sorcha how lucky she was. Sorcha had family to take her in. A grandmother. Someone to love her. Unlike most kids in the system, Sorcha wouldn’t have to go into foster care and live with strangers.

  But Gran was a stranger to Sorcha. Her parents had never spoken of her, never taken Sorcha to visit the peculiar house in JP, which had once sat on acres of land but was now tucked at the end of a quiet suburban street.

  It was so different from the home Sorcha had shared with her parents that it felt like another planet. There was never any music in Gran’s house. No instruments, no radio, no television, and certainly no singing. Gran had confiscated the fiddle the day she arrived, hiding it away in the attic where she thought Sorcha wouldn’t find it.

  But Sorcha had always been able to feel the fiddle’s presence, and whenever Gran was out, Sorcha crept up to the hot, dusty space under the eaves and practiced as her father had taught her. When Sorcha was away from the house and chanced to hear some tune, she’d commit it to memory in her head and then find it again on the fiddle’s strings, as thought it had always been there, waiting for her.

  Gran never found out. But once, when Sorcha was twelve, Gran caught her humming while raking leaves. Sorcha hadn’t even realized she’d been doing it. The day had been crisp and still with the first bite of autumn chill in the air. Sorcha had been alone in the big yard that surrounded the house, the remnant of the farm it had once been, when she’d felt a stirring that came from deep in the ground. There was no one around to hear her, and the tune had risen up out of her throat like a spring.

  The leaves had danced to it, swirling into piles around her knees, until she was encircled by a high wall of autumn gold. Faster and faster they’d spun, drawing all the fall color from the yard into a vortex, a maelstrom, with Sorcha at the center.

  She hadn’t heard Gran yelling, hadn’t seen her running across the lawn, screaming at Sorcha to stop. But she’d felt the long wooden spoon when Gran struck her with it, hard across the shoulders. And she’d felt the music fall away from her and back into the earth like the death of all joy.

  That’s when Gran had told her about the Good Neighbors, the Fair Folk, the Gentry. It was bad luck to call the Fae what they truly were: ancient, bored, tricksy, and cruel. The unfeeling race that had once ruled over man and made war on Sorcha’s ancestors, the Druids.

  Gran said the Druids had won that war long, long ago, had freed humanity from the yoke of the Fae’s tyranny. But then the few free Fae had allied with the Romans and over the centuries, with malice and spite, had hunted the Druids to near extinction. A few escaped and went underground: those who were able to suppress and hide their power, to blend in with ordinary men. It was easier for some than for others. And if it turned out to be hard for Sorcha, if she could not contain her voice, the Fae would find her and kill her.

  Just as they had her parents.

  Fairy tales and nonsense. Sorcha hadn’t believed a word of it. Her parents had died in a car accident. There were no such things as fairies.

  But Gran’s wooden spoon was real enough, and Sorcha learned to fear it if not the Fair Folk.

  After that Gran forbade her to sing in the choir at school, because it might attract them. There were no concerts for Sorcha either, because they liked such gatherings, and if she was foolish enough to sing along, the Beautiful People might hear her.

  The other children at school thought Sorcha’s gran was some kind of bible thumper. She wrote notes to the principal forbidding Sorcha from attending school concerts and told other parents that Sorcha couldn’t visit their homes or ride in their cars if they listened to the radio or turned on the TV.

  Sorcha didn’t bother to correct their impression of Gran. It would only make her seem stranger if it was known that Gran didn’t own a bible and never went to church. That she piled stones in strange patterns and spoke to them and whispered, when she thought Sorcha wasn’t listening, to the trees.

  There was another reason Sorcha didn’t tell anyone else about the Good Neighbors: doubt. If Gran was right, and Sorcha was wrong, then there really was something to fear, and she’d heard often enough that names had power. If Sorcha spoke of the Fair Folk, she might conjure them to appear, and they would take her away to fairy land, which, according to Gran, had nothing to do with laughter or winged sprites and everything to do with cruelty, torture, and death.

  Sorcha tried to make Gran happy, tried to swallow the voice that rose in her when she hiked the Arborway or rowed down the Charles River, but when she was finally out of Gran’s house and away at college, she couldn’t deny the force inside her.

  There was music everywhere at the university, calling to her, and there was music inside Sorcha that wanted out. She could feel it trembling at the tips of her fingers, rustling in the back of her throat. Sometimes her whole body seemed to be a sounding board for any music that happened to wash her way.

  When Sorcha changed her major from English to performance, Gran cut her off without a penny. So Sorcha put herself through school. First, she transferred from her liberal arts college to a conservatory in Boston, and when she surpassed her teachers on the fiddle and the cláirseach, the Irish wire-stringed harp that had called to her the first time she’d seen it, she went abroad to seek more advanced instruction.

  She’d slept on the floors of bars and played in public houses across the length and breadth of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, anywhere the old music still lived. She’d played for bed and board and lived cut off from the digital age, with no cell phone, no computer, and no gps. She’d hiked on foot to secluded cottages where old men had taught her forgotten lore—and sent her away with the same warning as Gran’s: keep your voice hidden from the Fair Folk.

  She hadn’t believed them either. Not until she ran into the Fae herself, in a bar on New York’s Lower East Side. The encounter had cost her dearly, and she had been lucky to escape with her life.

  Now she was more careful. She tightened the three iron strings on her harp—the rest were silver and gold—so they sounded sweet in her ear, in case she needed them.

  Tommy chucked her on the chin and said, “We’ll play a nice, dull set to please the tourists. Three bars of ‘Danny Boy’ and I promise you the Fae lord out there will run for the hills.”

  Or three notes from the iron strings of her cláirseach. That would show him.

  The Fae lord—or whatever his rank might be among his own kind—was seated at a table that practically kissed the stage. The Black Rose was always bustling on a Friday, but the bar was particularly crowded that night. It was the students that made the difference, Sorcha thought. The public house’s proximity to Faneuil Hall made it a favorite of tourists. The live music made it a favorite of the local Boston Irish who worked downtown. But it was the return of college kids at the end of summer that turned the tap room into a standing-room-only crush.

  The crowd was thick with athletes. Even in that press of youthful, toned bodies, he stood out. S
he had seen him before, standing up at the back of the bar near the door.

  She’d noticed him because he was handsome. High cheekbones, chiseled jaw, intriguing gray eyes. An instant flare of attraction. Then she’d looked closer, studied that flawless profile, and caught her breath. Too perfect to be human, he was undoubtedly Fae.

  Sorcha knew now that she had probably encountered the Fae before she believed in them and had been oblivious to them, just as the other patrons in the Black Rose were at that moment. But once you’d had contact with one, once you understood what they were and the subtle differences that set them apart, you couldn’t understand how you’d failed to notice them before or how others fail to notice them.

  It was difficult to describe how to spot them to someone else, but she’d done her best to teach Tommy to look for the signs. Almost always it was their proportions that gave them away. Not their height, though they were always tall and beautiful, as Tommy had said. It was the way they were made: arms, legs, shoulders, and waist, all in perfect proportion to one another. A Vitruvian ideal. A piercing perfection that compelled attention and at the same time set your teeth on edge.

  While they were all exquisite to look at, some drew the eye more than others. The only word that came close to describing what she felt when she looked at this Fae was sublime. A combination of beauty and terror. A delightful frisson of fear and arousal.

  It was often that way with them, and normally she was able to put aside the inconvenient feeling of desire the Fae aroused, but not with this one.

  He’d never sent Sorcha a note, made a request, or tried to speak to her, and for some reason when they had locked eyes in the past she’d gotten the impression that his distance was intentional, cultivated, disciplined—that he was taking care not to spook her—like a hunter watching his prey.