Liam seemed afraid to ask, but he did. “What did she do?”
“She engaged in a blood sacrifice, in a ritual designed to hide you from all our eyes. No magic is as powerful as a human blood sacrifice.”
“She sacrificed someone to keep me safe,” Liam said.
“She sacrificed herself to keep you safe,” Eoin said.
Eoin’s words sunk in to Liam, and he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. The ultimate price, all taken for him, to keep him safe from whatever these people were who were trying to kill him. “She killed herself,” Liam said. That fact struck deep with him.
“Sacrificed,” Eoin said. “There is a difference. She poured everything she had, every ounce of herself and her magic into the ritual. It happened in the desert in New Mexico, and I got there just as the ritual was complete. That’s the only time I saw your father. I’ve never seen a Fae myself, but if anyone fit what a Fae would look like in my mind, it was your father. We exchanged only a few quick words before he disappeared. He said he was going to put you with someone safe, a family disconnected from the Council or anyone else. With any luck, you’d grow up not even knowing who or what you were.”
Liam huffed. “Some good that did.”
“None of us could have ever foreseen this,” Eoin said. “I thought it was over and done. We all did.” The two up front, Brodie and Katina, they looked back and nodded an agreement. “Until everything started happening a few days ago. Honestly, we’re all just as surprised as you are, and we were the ones who were in the know.”
“Well,” Liam said, “sorry for saying it, but that’s no real comfort.”
Twenty-One
Wilmette, IL
The house in Wilmette was across the street from a large white-domed church. But that wasn’t the most impressive thing.
The black SUVs turned into a gated driveway, a circular drive that went up to a porte cochère and a house that seemed almost too big to fit on the size of the lot it was placed upon. A tight driveway slipped down one side, but the place was massive.
The house was a French style limestone mansion with a mansard roof and a light and bright exterior lit up by accent lights shining up onto the facade. The multi-paned windows were expansive yet dark, but considering the hour of the night, that wasn’t unexpected.
“Who lives here?” Liam asked. He carried the stone with him.
“Servants, mostly,” Eoin said. “It’s a house owned by my family, the Corbetts. We only use it occasionally. For storage, mostly, or a place to stay if we’re in Chicago.”
“If this is your storehouse, I can’t wait to see the houses you actually live in,” Liam said.
“This is one of our smaller holdings,” Eoin said as he stared up at the house as if appraising its value. “No Corbett is actually in residence here. There’s a team that’s responsible for the upkeep of most of the Council properties, this one included. Typically, they’re people in the know but who don’t have any sort of direct role on the Council proper.”
“Did they know we were coming?” Patrick asked as he came around the car to stand next to Liam. Liam was comforted with him there. He reached and touched Patrick’s hand, and Patrick returned the gesture.
“I sent a message,” Eoin said. He didn’t say more. He started for the entrance, large double doors shrouded in shadow. He had a key, and he unlocked the door and turned on the lights in the foyer.
Inside, Liam tried to take it all in. But there was a lot. It was the largest room he’d ever been in that wasn’t some sort of public building. Two grand staircases and a chandelier the size of his dorm room hung down from ceilings that were at least twenty, maybe thirty, feet high. The floors were marble and columns fronted the view of more house further back. Beyond lay a shadowy living room that Eoin strode into and turned on more lights.
“This is a single-family home?” was all Liam could say.
“Where is everybody?” Brodie said, coming in behind them.
Eoin peered down the long hallway and further back. They all listened. It was quiet. Eoin still didn’t say anything, which made Liam nervous.
“I’ll go have a look around,” Brodie said.
Patrick seemed to have the same idea, because he disappeared down a hallway.
Liam walked into the living room. The large windows took up most of the back of the room and looked out onto Lake Michigan. The sky above the water was just turning to morning, the thin rays of the sun casting just over the horizon. Looking at the water in the thin light, Liam could almost believe it was the ocean and that they were someplace else, someplace far from everything that had happened to him that day. It was too easy to pretend. The reality of his situation was too weird, too frightening.
And not just because the fomoire or the kidnaping. Those were terrifying all on their own. But because of the other piece of information given to him tonight: The man he’d believed his father was, in fact, not his father. Walter Yates was the man that Liam grew up calling dad, a good man for all intents and purposes. He was a Christian man, someone who believed in God—perhaps a little too much in some cases, because Liam was scared to talk to him about being gay, and sometimes Christians can lose their way when it came to homosexuality. But he was a man who also chose to pick up a gun one night and shoot everyone that Liam had ever loved then turned the gun on himself.
Should he feel relief to know he wasn’t related by blood to that kind of submerged violence? Part of him was relieved. A larger part wondered what kind of violence the blood that did run through his veins was capable of.
Walter Yates had come into the bedroom where Liam hid that night. He aimed his gun. Liam wasn’t spared. If what Eoin said was true and Liam’s biological mother put some sort of magic on him, Walter Yates hadn’t been able to see him.
Still, he carried some responsibility. That morning he’d told Becky everything, and Becky had promised to make it right with his dad. Then the murders happened. It was easy to connect the two. Ever since that horrible night, the narrative that played through Liam’s head was that Walter Yates killed them all as punishment for what Liam had done, what Becky had witnessed with him and Brian Grazinsky.
Liam was supposed to go with them. He was supposed to die that night too.
At least now it made sense why his father looked at him without seeing him. It didn’t make it any easier, this knowledge he was supposed to die that night. But it oddly lifted some of the burden he carried since that night, the guilt at being the only one left behind.
Brodie returned to the living room. “Everyone seems to have gone,” Brodie said.
“How many were here?” Katina asked.
At the news, Eoin frowned. “There were at least twenty people here the last time I was in. Along with the typical staff, we had archivists set up in some of the rooms downstairs.”
“Can’t rely on the help,” Katina said.
“Maybe they fled,” he said. Eoin moved to the window to stare out at the lake alongside Liam. “I’m afraid this is only just beginning,” he said.
Liam peered over at him. “That’s reassuring,” he said, the sarcasm obvious.
“I don’t mean to scare you. I’m just saying we need to prepare.”
“And what does that entail?”
“We’ll get the tracker removed, then, after we get some rest, I’ll take you downstairs. You need to train to better control your magic.”
Liam paused. “Okay, that actually does scare me a little.”
Eoin smiled, a reassuring smile. “What I’ll show you is the least of your worries. In fact, I mean for it to help keep you safe.” He faced everyone in the room. “We’ll rest up here at the house, assess our situation, then we can figure out what to do next.”
“Killing Cyril sounds like a great plan,” Brodie said. “Just to put in my two cents.”
“We don’t know if that will solve anything,” Eoin said.
Brodie tensed. “It can’t hurt.” Then, when Eoin didn’t say anyth
ing else, Brodie moved toward him. “You were an Ephor before. Now you’re just one of us. We don’t have to wait for you to decide.”
Katina made a sound of agreement, though Liam wasn’t sure if it was agreement or dissension.
Eoin didn’t back down. “We’re a team,” Eoin said. “We may be all that’s left. It won’t do us any good if we all go off on our own.”
Brodie didn’t say anything else. He moved to a chenille couch and flopped down into it like a dejected teen.
Eoin turned to Liam. “We’ll discuss our next steps,” he said.
“Works for me,” Liam said.
Katina stood by Liam. “If you follow me, I can get that tracker removed for you.”
Liam followed her.
They walked through an expansive kitchen, marble countertops and a kitchen island large enough that Liam had a hard time imagining that much food to spread out on a space that size. And she took him deeper into the house into a sort of office that was lined with books, but, instead of a desk, there was a low-standing cabinet made of a rich wood and a stone top polished smooth. It wasn’t marble like the kitchen but something else. Liam knocked on it.
“Granite,” Katina said. “Supposed to open the mind to other possibilities.”
“So, you guys are crystal and stone types?” He said it with a hint of skepticism. He put the stone he carried down on the corner of the work table.
Katina glanced at the stone, then she turned her eyes to Liam. “Really?”
“What?” Liam said. His face flushed. “That stone is different.”
She smiled, a sarcastic kind of grin. “I’m not judging,” she said. She moved around the workstation. “Besides, the earth is full of magic. It’s been thousands of years since Tir na Nog was here, but it was another few thousand years that magic was the reality of this world. In that amount of time, some of that magic seeped into the earth and became a part of everything that we see and touch.”
“Everything?” Liam glanced around the room.
“Everything natural, anyway.” She bent down and opened small drawers. It was an apothecary’s cabinet, full of places to hold a wide assortment of items. “The magic has weakened over the years, but it’s still there. And it’s not like everybody is going around slinging spells. There’s plenty of magic stuff to go around, so long as it’s not an everyday thing used by everybody in the world.”
“Is that possible? That everybody could learn to cast magic?”
Katina began pouring a gray powder out of a small envelope onto the tabletop. “Not likely,” she said as she worked. “It’s not impossible, yet most people wouldn’t even begin to understand how to access magic. But there are probably more than a few who have a little bit of it in them. Humans were slaves of the Fae, after all. And not all of them escaped with the refugees. Some may have fled to other parts of the world. It’s safe to say that there are quite a few lineages who have more than a little Fae blood still in their veins and passed down through the ages.” She reached into another drawer and pulled out a velvet pouch that, when she opened it and dumped it out into the pile of gray powder, turned out to be rough-cut diamonds. “Now give me your hand.”
“You really do just have this stuff lying around,” Liam said. He picked up one of the diamonds. It was the size of his thumb and probably worth a few million.
Katina acted like it was perfectly normal to have several million dollars laying out on a table in front of her. But then Liam guessed it was. She plucked the diamond from his hand and put it back into the pile of powder. “Hand, please,” she said.
Liam was hesitant at first. He remembered the last time. But he held his hand out for her anyway.
Katina grabbed his hand and turned it over, then she moved it down to the work table, in spite of Liam’s apprehensive resistance. She placed her hand over the spot that was the tracker on Liam’s hand, and she whispered something. Words in the same language that Liam was becoming much too accustomed to in such a short time. He tensed, expecting a pop like last time, but it never came.
“Hmm,” Katina said, her mouth pressed tight into a small frown. “This one’s not going to be so easy.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means this tracker was made by someone pretty powerful.” She let go of Liam’s hand, and he drew it back to himself. Katina bent down and dug through the apothecary cabinet a little more. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she turned to the shelves, and, with her finger tapping her bottom lip, she scanned…for something. She moved over to one of the shelves and dropped down to her knees to a cabinet to open the doors.
“I thought Eoin said this place was only staffed by servants,” Liam said.
“It is,” she said without turning around. She dug deep into the cabinet.
“You seem pretty confident of where everything is.”
“Of course,” she said. “This library is a standard setup…One of my duties is to catalog the magical components. Ah, here we go.” She stood again, carrying a wooden box. “This house isn’t a chapter house, but the cataloging is the same. Everything here is similar to what we’d have in any of the chapter houses, and we organize everything to the Codex system.”
“Chapter houses? The Codex system?”
“The chapter houses were where the veil was monitored. Our Codex system helps us all find components easier. Kind of like the Dewey Decimal System but for our own magical libraries.”
“This is a magical library?”
“This one?” She glanced around again with a slight shrug. “Kind of tame, to be honest. There’s not much up here. The real stuff is usually kept below.”
“Interesting.”
Katina placed the wooden box on the work table, and she opened it up. Inside was a large silver blade.
Liam jumped back from the table, cradling his hand. “What are you planning to do with that?”
She held the blade up like it was a popsicle. “We gotta cut it off,” she said.
“The hell you are!” Liam grabbed the stone and started for the door.
Behind him, Katina laughed. “Stop. STOP! I’m just kidding.”
At the door, Liam stopped. Katina was still laughing at him.
“Should’ve seen the look on your face.” Then she opened her eyes real big and jumped back, making a silly sound. Then she laughed some more.
But Liam still wasn’t entirely convinced. Katina still giggled.
“It really wasn’t that funny,” Liam said.
She put a hand on her hip. “Really? Seriously, come on. I was just joking around. A little fun, that’s all. It’s nice to take the mind off of everything else going on.”
She had a point. A little levity to their situation was kind of welcome. But dick jokes and an Adam Sandler comedy work just as well. Tentatively, Liam made his way back to the work table. He still wasn’t sure he was going to let go of his hand and let her do what she needed to do. “What are you going to do? Exactly.”
She held the knife up so he could see it. It was an intricately carved blade with an ornate handle. The blade itself gleamed and caught the light from overhead. “I just needed some silver to interact with the bone powder.” She waved the blade. “It’s a silver blade. That’s all I could find up here. They probably have more downstairs, but this will do.”
Liam sighed. “Okay,” he said, weak and small. He put the stone back onto the work table and held his hand out to her again.
She took the gray powder and put a pile of it on Liam’s hand.
“Bone powder,” Liam said.
“That’s right.”
“Mind if I ask from what?”
She stopped what she was doing and looked at him. “Human. It’s the only kind that really matters.” This time, Liam didn’t think she was joking.
With the blade of the knife, she touched the very tip of it to the bone powder, muttering more of that magical language. It began to tingle on his hand. Then she picked up one of the diamonds, a pretty
good sized one, this one about the size of the tip of Liam’s pinky finger. Probably worth a couple tens of thousands of dollars. What it must be like to have that much money that they could just leave diamonds lying around in a work table…
She pinched the diamond between her index finger and thumb and stared at it for a second. Now Liam could really feel it in the air, the sensation that he’d come to understand meant magic was happening somewhere nearby. At least this time, he knew the source and who was casting it—even if he still smarted a little about the knife joke.
The diamond turned red like a ruby. She lowered it down to the spot on Liam’s hand, and she gripped Liam’s wrist tight. “Hold still,” she said.
Liam gulped, but he nodded.
“I mean it! Don’t move a muscle.”
Now he couldn’t help it. This whole thing was making him nervous. The tingling spot on his hand was still there, still noticeable. He shuffled on his feet and gripped an edge of the work table with his free hand, even as his hand was held into place by her firm grip. He was careful not to move his hand directly, though. “Okay!” he said. “Got it. Don’t move.”
Katina touched the red diamond to the bone dust.
At first, he didn’t feel anything.
But then the bone dust flared up. A green flame that reached up a good inch or two. On instinct, Liam cried out.
“Hold still!”
He was doing his best. It hurt.
It hurt a lot. He screamed.
Then, as quickly as it hit him, the pain stopped.
“There,” Katina said, brushing her hands together. “All done.”
At the door of the library, there was a commotion. Eoin and Patrick first. Brodie was behind them. Patrick looked like he was about to rush into the library, but Eoin stayed him with a hand on his chest.
Liam studied the back of his hand. He expected there to be a blister, a searing pain from the flame. But there was nothing.
The Stone (Lockstone Book 1) Page 27