CHAPTER 59
‘You’re not going in there alone,’ Sorcha announced.
Ren turned to stare at her in the back seat. Her expression was set.
‘And what do you think you’re going to do to help?’ Ren asked. ‘Scream with terror when we get in a lift? Pull a knife on the first orderly who asks you why you’re there?’
‘He has a point, Sorcha,’ Darragh said, a little more sympathetically than Ren. ‘This is not your realm. Or mine. Trása is a better choice to accompany Rónán.’
They were sitting outside the St Christopher’s Visual Rehabilitation Centre as far from the main entrance as they could get and still be able to see it. Although it wasn’t quite seven in the evening, it was dark, the street lit by glistening puddles of light. A misty rain was falling, obscuring their clear view of the six-storey building — a square, ugly, concrete-and-glass monstrosity squatting on a street of more elegant older buildings.
Ren had parked the car in the shadows while they decided their next move. If there were cameras at the entrance, Ren didn’t want them to capture more than a fleeting glimpse of any of them. Once Hayley vanished from her room, he figured there’d be some hard questions asked at St Christopher’s about how the centre lost one of their patients.
There was also the question about whether or not Hayley would even agree to come with him. Ren had no idea what she’d been told about his disappearance. For all he knew, she thought he was dead and would scream the house down when he appeared. He didn’t think that likely — Hayley was a level-headed sort of girl — but it wasn’t impossible. Then there was the problem of how he would explain what was going on. How was he going to convince her he had come to help? Or even that he could help her? ‘Hi, Hayley, did you want to come with me to an alternate reality so we can heal your blindness with magic?’ It didn’t seem like a very promising opening.
And even if she believed him, would she consider leaving this world for another, with the possibility she might never come back?
Ren had the advantage there. He’d grown up knowing he was adopted — that somewhere out there he might have another family. As a small child, he’d fantasised his real family would find him one day. When they were finally reunited, his long-lost mother would hug him and kiss him and tell him the fabulous story of how he’d been kidnapped by evil faeries and spirited away, and how she hadn’t slept since that moment.
Ren smiled briefly. He may not get his moment with his long dead mother, but he really had — as it turned out — been kidnapped by evil Faeries.
Still, he wished Hayley had some other sort of injury. One that didn’t obstruct her vision. Then he could have just appeared in her room with Darragh at his side, told her about the whole psychic twin business with his brother there to prove it, and everything would be so much more believable.
He didn’t share his fears about Hayley’s reaction with the others. They were already worried about their conversation a short while ago, with Brógán.
The puddle-phone had worked, eventually. It had taken forever to get through to Brógán, and by the time Brógán’s face appeared in the water bowl, Ren was freezing. Not only was the rainwater icy, but they were sitting in the rain without a stitch of clothing on, their hands soaking in the chilly bowl, concealed in a small thicket in a suburban park as the sun went down, while Sorcha and Trása kept watch.
It had taken the combined magic of both tattoos to reach the other realm. And when they did make contact, it wasn’t what they were expecting. Ren wanted to know why they were even bothering with Brógán. Not that he didn’t like the young Druid, but it seemed far more efficient to contact Ciarán directly, seeing as he was the one who had to open the rift.
Both Darragh and Sorcha had scoffed at the idea. Brógán was, in the general scheme of things, fairly unimportant. He was not likely to be noticed if his eyes suddenly rolled back in his head, a sure sign that someone was trying to contact you by puddle-phone, apparently. Ciarán would have had many more questions to answer if he was caught in such a compromising act. It was better not to make things more awkward for him than they already were, by advertising that he had opened an unauthorised doorway to an alternate reality so the Undivided could go rift running.
Brógán seemed nervous and evasive when Darragh spoke to him, particularly on the subject of where Ciarán was. But the call had been necessarily brief. It had ended with Brógán promising to have Ciarán open the rift at moonrise.
That might have been useful information if Ren had some idea of when moonrise was going to happen.
Still, at least they had a timetable now. Ren put aside the bizarre notion that they’d called up someone from another reality using a bowl of water and a tattoo, and instead worked on the more immediate problem of finding Hayley. He figured they had a couple of hours to get into St Christopher’s, locate Hayley, convince her to come with them, get her out of the building, drive back to the Castle Golf Course, find the stone circle again and jump through the rift.
After that … well, he’d deal with that when they got there.
‘Let’s go, then,’ Trása said, her hand on the door latch. ‘Time’s awasting.’
‘Wait!’
‘For what!’
Rónán pointed to the entrance of St Christopher’s. A Gardaí car had pulled up in the ‘no parking’ zone at the entrance. Two officers climbed out of the vehicle and entered the building.
‘Shit,’ Ren muttered.
Darragh looked at him curiously. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘The cops are here.’
‘That may not have anything to do with us,’ Trása said, leaning forward to stare over Ren’s shoulder through the rain-spattered windscreen. ‘I mean, they didn’t arrive in a blaze of light and sirens. If the Gardaí realised you were here, Rónán, wouldn’t all the police in Dublin be converging on us?’
Trása had a point. Chelan Aquarius Kavanaugh was an escaped fugitive on the run from a murder charge. If they thought he was here, they’d be descending on the place like a swarm of locusts. And probably armed. The Gardaí didn’t carry guns as a rule, but if they thought they were in pursuit of an escaped murderer, someone was sure to have brought out the sidearms and started handing them around.
‘How would they even know we are here?’ Sorcha asked.
‘Warren might have blabbed,’ Ren said, not entirely happy with the way they’d dealt with their hapless captive.
‘I thought you said Jack was going to take care of Warren.’
‘Yeah, but even if he doesn’t tell anybody about us, an anonymous tip-off might be his way of getting revenge. I mean, he heard us talking enough.’
‘Not about this place,’ Darragh said.
‘No, but he heard us mention Hayley. Maybe he phoned in a tip, and the cops are just checking if everything’s okay with her.’
‘Then it’s a good thing we waited,’ Sorcha said. ‘When they return to their vehicle, it will be safe to proceed, yes?’
Ren shrugged. ‘I suppose.’
It took a nerve-wracking half-hour before the Gardaí returned and climbed back in their car. As it pulled away from the kerb, Ren turned to Darragh.
‘Did you pick up enough during the Comhroinn to learn how to drive?’
Darragh looked around the car a little dubiously. ‘I certainly know the principles involved, but I’m not sure if that’s the same as knowing how to control this thing.’
Ren shrugged. It would have to do. ‘If we’re not back in thirty minutes, make your way back to the golf course, wait for Ciarán to open the rift and then go home.’
‘I won’t leave you here,’ Darragh objected.
‘Sure you will,’ Ren told him, glancing at the clock on the dashboard. They were running out of time and really didn’t need to have this discussion. At least, not here. Not now. ‘You can come back and get me when it’s safe. It’s not like you won’t have done it before.’
‘No.’
‘Dude, we really
don’t have time to argue about this. If I’m caught here — in this place, in this reality — I am royally screwed. There is no reason on this earth — or any earth for that matter — for you to go down with me.’
‘Your brother displays wisdom worthy of the Undivided,’ Sorcha told Darragh approvingly.
‘Wisdom?’ Trása asked with a short, sceptical laugh.
‘Nobody asked for your opinion, sídhe.’
‘Good thing, too,’ Trása said, leaning back in her seat with a scowl. ‘Because if they had, I might have been compelled to point out that the Undivided both jumping into a magic-depleted realm where one of them is wanted for murder so they can kidnap some girl who might not even want their help, hardly qualifies as wisdom.’
‘And what was your reason for jumping through the rift after us into this magic-depleted realm where one of them is wanted for murder because of something you did?’ Sorcha asked. When Trása just looked away and didn’t answer, Sorcha turned to Ren. ‘Don’t worry, Leath tiarna,’ she assured him. ‘I’ll make certain Darragh gets home safely.’
‘But how will we even find the golf course and the stone circle without you?’ Darragh asked.
‘I remember the way,’ the warrior assured him. ‘I have an excellent sense of direction, even in this realm.’ She turned to his brother. ‘Go, Rónán. We’re losing time.’
He nodded. ‘Come on, Trása. Let’s go.’
Trása showed no inclination to move. ‘Oh, so my opinion isn’t wanted,’ she said sulkily, ‘but you need me to hold your hand on your little adventure?’
‘I need you to keep watch while I explain things to Hayley.’
‘Give me one good reason why I should help?’
‘Because if you don’t,’ Darragh informed her flatly, ‘when we get back to our realm, rather than release you from Marcroy’s curse, I’ll add another one to it and you’ll never be free.’
Ren wasn’t sure if Darragh could do that, but Trása seemed to believe it. ‘Fine,’ she snapped, opening the door. ‘Let’s go find your friend and get out of here. I’m sick of this realm. I want to go home.’
CHAPTER 60
Dinner was served before five every evening in St Christopher’s Visual Rehabilitation Centre. Like the hospital from which she’d so recently been discharged, the meal schedule had more to do with the time the cooks finished work and the nurses changed shift, than the time people might want to eat. Hayley ate in the dining room with the other inpatients, an eclectic mix of people, who, like Hayley, had been recently blinded — either by accident or degenerative eye disease. They were all learning how to deal with it.
By seven thirty she was usually hungry again, but by then the dining room was closed, and although there were scheduled activities for the residents of the facility, they didn’t involve anything more than a cup of tea and biscuits. Fortunately, Kerry had brought her a plastic container full of homemade shortbread earlier in the day. Now Hayley was out of actual hospital — although she had a visit every day from either her father or her stepmother — the whole family only visited as a group on weekends. Neil had school, and homework, and football practice and her parents both had jobs.
Kiva Kavanaugh still required her entourage, regardless of Hayley’s problems.
Hayley munched on Kerry’s deliciously buttery shortbread and leaned her head against the cool glass of the window, wishing she could see the city lights. She still hadn’t accepted she was going to be blind. She didn’t want to master blind chess. She didn’t care if she could take up archery with a spotter, or sailing, or skeet shooting, or one of a score of sports the chirpy counsellors here kept trying to interest her in. She wanted to go back to school. She wanted to hang with her friends at Frascati Mall, not have them visit her one at a time in this determinedly cheerful place where they sat with her in painful, drawn-out silences, because they didn’t know what to say.
The idea that her life could have changed so dramatically just because she ran out onto a suburban street, was incomprehensible to Hayley. And even if she could believe it, she didn’t want to.
Ren’s mother had been to visit her again, without the publicist, thank God, leaving Hayley with a set of crystals that Kiva’s homoeopath had assured her would aid her recovery. Thus far, Hayley hadn’t noticed a difference, but Kiva’s blindness-curing crystals certainly gave the rehabilitation therapist and the counsellors something to smile about.
Hayley hated her ‘independent living’ lessons, too. Learning what they were trying to teach her about sewing safely and using an iron — a pointless lesson, she thought, when the obvious solution was simply to buy stuff that didn’t need ironing — meant admitting she needed to learn it. That meant accepting her sight was irrevocably gone.
Her first day at St Christopher’s, they’d shown her around and told her all about the things she needed to relearn, like cleaning her teeth and applying make-up, doing her own laundry, cutting her toenails and managing money, now that she couldn’t tell one note from another. Rather than cheer her up, the list depressed her — a perfectly normal reaction, they promised her cheerfully, and something they’d help her work through.
She wasn’t blind, they said, she was challenged. ‘Visually impaired’ was the politically correct term. Up the creek without a paddle was the expression Hayley considered more appropriate.
Deep down, Hayley knew the counsellors were right. She would have to accept her disability eventually. She really didn’t have a choice, and she’d been lucky. With the head injury she’d sustained, she could have been injured much worse, suffered brain damage or even been killed.
Admitting that, however, felt like giving in.
Hayley didn’t want to nobly accept her fate and go forward like a little trooper. As petulant and unrealistic as she knew it was, Hayley wanted her life back the way it was before.
‘Damn you, Ren Kavanaugh.’
Hayley said it aloud, because blaming Ren out loud helped to mask her own woes. Her predicament was his fault. She’d never have been standing in the path of Murray Symes’s car if it hadn’t been for Ren. And as if her injury wasn’t bad enough, he’d compounded his mistake by being mixed up with that girl and some drug dealer.
People had been cagey about what they thought Ren’s disappearance meant, but Hayley could read between the lines. Even though they hadn’t discussed it with her, everybody considered Ren dead, killed by Dominic O’Hara’s henchmen, who’d busted him out of gaol to keep him quiet.
It was plausible, she supposed, except she knew Ren better than anybody. He was no drug dealer’s lookout, although she was finding it increasingly difficult to convince herself Ren was still alive and well out there somewhere and staying away by choice.
The Ren she knew would have moved heaven and earth to reach her, if he’d thought she was in trouble. That he hadn’t so much as tried to call her was enough to make Hayley think the cops might be right about Ren being dead and lying in a shallow grave somewhere.
She heard the door open, but didn’t react. It was probably her roommate, Carrie, back from another thrilling evening of listening to the TV. Carrie was twenty-five and losing her sight to diabetic retinopathy. Far from being pissed about it, Carrie was facing her future with equanimity, which might have been why they’d roomed her with the cranky seventeen-year-old who didn’t want to accept the truth.
Despite that, Hayley liked Carrie. She figured there wasn’t much to be gained by burdening her roommate with her bad mood.
‘Did you want some of my mum’s shortbread?’ Hayley asked. She could make out a shadow roughly the size of a person coming toward her. When the shadow didn’t answer, she realised it wasn’t Carrie. For one thing, her roommate was in the throes of a passionate love affair with Elizabeth Taylor’s new White Diamonds perfume, which Carrie’s fiancé had given her for her birthday a couple of weeks before Hayley arrived. On a good day, you could smell her coming down the hall.
‘Love some,’ her visitor said.
/> ‘Ren?’ she squealed.
‘Yell it out a bit louder,’ he said with a smile in his voice. ‘I don’t think they heard you in Antarctica.’
Hayley dropped the box of shortbread onto the floor in a shower of buttery crumbs and threw herself at him. Ren hugged her tightly as she burst into tears, not sure if she was crying from relief, happiness, shock or fear.
‘Christ almighty, Ren,’ she gasped, tears running down her cheeks. She sniffed inelegantly and wiped them away. ‘Where the hell have you been? Have you called your mother? Do the cops know you’re back? Why didn’t you tell someone —’
‘Hey!’ he said, placing his finger on her lips to silence her. ‘Enough with the questions. I’ll explain everything, but we can’t talk here.’
‘We could go to the common room,’ she suggested. ‘There’s a phone in there, too, if you want to call Kiva. She’s been sick with worry, you know. We all have. God, Ren, she cancelled an opening.’
‘Wow,’ Ren said. He sounded genuinely touched. ‘Kiva missed a red carpet because of me? That’s epic.’
‘You have to call her, Ren. Everybody thinks you’re dead.’
‘And I will be, if we don’t get out of here soon,’ he promised her in a tone that made her realise he wasn’t joking. ‘Can you just walk out of this place or do we have to sign you out?’
‘I can leave.’ She sounded a little worried by the question. ‘It’s a rehab facility, not a hospital. They don’t close the place to the public until after nine. Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere we can talk,’ he said. ‘I’ve got so much to tell you, Hay, and some of it’s going to be really hard to swallow. But …’ He hesitated. She could feel his nervousness. ‘Look, just trust me, okay?’
Before she could answer, the door opened again. ‘You done saying hello to your girlfriend yet?’ an unfamiliar female voice asked impatiently. ‘I’m getting funny looks from people out here, and I’m guessing they’re staff because the patients can’t, well, you know … look.’
The Undivided Page 42