Trása climbed to her feet and began to get dressed. The Doherty twins had found her very quickly, so she was certain one of her Youkai "friends' had told them where she was.
"Trása, where the hell ..." Pete demanded, slipping a little on the steep path as he and Logan approached the pool. His brother was right behind him. "Whoa! Put some clothes on!"
"I am putting some clothes on," she pointed out, as she pulled her shirt down over her head. Once she was decent, she turned to face the brothers, frowning. "And would you mind not yelling. You'll frighten the Youkai."
"Where is Ren?"
"I don't know."
"You two vanished out of Edo nearly a month ago," Logan said. "Have you been here all this time?"
Trása didn't think they'd been here that long and, normally, the time dilation effects of Tír Na nÓg did not affect her and Rónán - or Pete and Logan either, given they were almost wholly Faerie. But they had been in the Pool of Tranquillity, after all, where the magic was so concentrated they might easily have lost years had they not managed to drag themselves out of the water.
"It didn't seem like ..." she decided it wasn't worth explaining. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you two," Pete said, clearly annoyed. "Dammit, don't you realize what's been going on? Wakiko is beside herself. The whole Empire is in an uproar. To make matters worse, the Konketsu are trying to worm their way back into favor by blaming us for Teagan's kidnapping."
"So you can imagine how it looked," Logan added, "when the two of you vanished into thin air."
Trása hadn't really thought about what might happen in the palace after they left. And she hadn't really left by choice. Rónán had whisked her out of there without warning.
"I'm sorry," she said, crossing her arms. "I didn't mean to cause more trouble. But Rónán had to come back here to unlock Delphine's memories."
"You couldn't take five seconds to leave a note?" Pete asked, sounding quite disgusted with them. "How the hell did you get back here to Tír Na nÓg, anyway? With the stone circle shattered you ... oh, of course. He did that waning thing, didn't he?"
"He didn't give me five seconds, Pete."
"Did he do it?" Logan asked. "Did he manage to unlock Delphine's memories?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"Shit," Logan said, looking at his brother.
Pete frowned. "How did he seem? Afterwards."
"He seemed fine."
"So where is he then?" Pete demanded. "The Youkai are claiming he's not here."
"I told you before, I don't know where he is. Has it really been a month since we left Chucho?"
"And a few days," Pete said.
"Is Isleen okay?" If she was still alive and unharmed, it meant the Matrarchaí had not hurt Teagan.
"She's fretting for her sister, but other than that, she seems fine. Where did Ren go?"
"I told you already, I don't know."
"It doesn't matter anyway," Rónán said, suddenly appearing behind Logan, "because I'm back."
The Doherty twins turned on Rónán angrily, giving Trása time to wonder why he was dressed in black from head to toe like a ninja.
Where has he been - and more importantly - what has he been up to that requires him to dress like that?
And how long had he been gone? Down here by the pool, Trása had lost any sense of time. Perhaps they hadn't made love and fallen asleep entwined in each other's arms last night, but days, maybe weeks ago.
Rónán held up his hand to halt Pete and Logan's barrage of angry questions. "I don't know where Teagan is," he said, "or how to get back to our realm."
Funny how the three men insisted on calling the reality where they had been raised "ours," when none of them really belonged there.
"Why don't we try first," Pete suggested, "before we write off the idea completely."
"I did try," Rónán said, as he pushed back his hood and began to unlace the fastenings at the top of his shinobi shozoko. "That's where I've been. The rift Delphine brought you through in the Sears Tower is no longer there."
"There must have been other rifts in our realm," Logan said. "We know the Matrarchaí had at least two stone circles, just in the US alone."
Ren nodded in agreement. "They have quite a few. There's one in Dubai, another in Taiwan ... trouble is, Delphine never used them. She knew about them, but she wasn't responsible for setting them up and she doesn't have any memory of coming through them that I can find."
"It's early days yet," Pete said. "If you just keep looking ..."
"The information simply isn't there, Pete," Rónán said, shaking his head. "The only other circle in our reality that Delphine knew how to access is one she was arranging to be built, but it's not there yet."
"When will it be there?"
"In another seven years or so."
"Are you kidding me?" Pete exclaimed. "Seven fucking years!"
"Teagan will be a grown-up by then," Trása said, watching Rónán closely. She was trying to work out what was different about him. Having access to Delphine's memories was bound to have an impact on him. What that impact might be, remained to be seen.
Logan seemed to take the news better than his brother. "Were you able to get to any other realities?"
Rónán nodded. "Quite a few. A lot of them the Matrarchaí have already cleansed of the Faerie, but there are plenty more realities they scheduled for intervention that we can get to. I didn't want to waste the gampi paper by visiting too many."
There's something he's not telling us, Trása decided, as she watched Rónán explaining things to Pete and Logan. He's too calm, too controlled. Where has he really been?
"Can you get back to our realm?" she asked.
Trása wouldn't have noticed the hesitation had she not been looking for it. "No luck with that, either, I'm afraid. Delphine never visited your realm."
He's lying. Trása was certain of it. Her realm was his realm, too. He didn't need Delphine's memories to find it.
"Then we're stuck here," Logan said, throwing his hands up.
Pete shook his head. "No, we're not. Ren said he could open rifts to other realms the Matrarchaí have marked. He can show us how to get there, and maybe we can capture someone from the Matrarchaí who knows another way back our to reality. I say we start doing a bit of rift running of our own. Let's take this fight to the Matrarchaí."
"What about Teagan?" Ren asked.
"She's probably lost to us," Pete said, "unless they send her back."
"Is that likely?"
Pete looked at him closely. Perhaps he sensed Rónán was lying, too. "You tell me, Ren. You're the one with the head full of intelligence taken from a Matrarchaí general. Speaking of which, why don't you share the Comhroinn with us now, so Logan and I can start searching these new realities?"
Rónán nodded and smiled, and Trása just knew he was stalling. "Sure," he said. "Give me some time to get my head sorted and I'll share whatever you want to know."
He had to say that. Even if Teagan's life had not been in danger, Pete and Logan would still not accept excuses from Ren for not sharing knowledge of their origins and the reason they had been raised by the Matrarchaí in complete ignorance of who or what they were.
Rónán turned to head back up the path.
"What's with the outfit, by the way?" Pete called after him. "You planning a new career as a ninja."
Ren glanced over his shoulder with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I know it's ridiculous, but I wasn't sure what I'd find when I opened rifts to those other realities, so I thought it best to wear something dark. You know what this place is like ... it was the only thing I could find to wear that wasn't embroidered to death and colored like a circus tent."
It sounded plausible. It might have even been the truth. But Trása knew he'd been up to something and the reason for it eluded her. She would find out, she promised herself.
Because if she didn't - if Rónán was telling the truth about not being able to get back to the
other realm until the new stone circle was built - Darragh and Sorcha would be stranded in that other reality for another seven years.
Chapter 12
Trása wasn't sure what woke her. She lingered for a moment in that limbo between sleep and consciousness, trying to remember simple things like where she was, what time it might be and who was holding her in his embrace while she slept.
The first answer came easily. She was in Tír Na nÓg in this strange alternate reality that had become her home these last ten years. The magic tingling against her skin gave that away. In light of that revelation, the second question was meaningless. Time was different here in Tír Na nÓg. Who knew what time it was out in the real world?
The third answer brought a smile to her face. The warm body holding her was Rónán.
He'd come to Tír Na nÓg last night, after returning from a reality he refused to name. As usual, he wouldn't tell her about the realm he'd been visiting and Trása had learned not to press him for details. Rónán carried a burden she couldn't comprehend and even though she'd begged him, time and again, to share the Comhroinn so she could understand, he always refused.
She turned to study his sleeping face in the soft twilight of her bower cave. His dark hair was longer than it had been when they first met, his chin shadowed by a three-day growth, his face relaxed and at peace - something she rarely saw when he was awake. Just beneath his ear was that tiny, wretched cut that never seemed to heal and there were lines on his brow now, even while he slept, that could not be attributed to age. Although Rónán was almost pure Faerie and would never age like a normal man, the lines came from the burden he carried, the terrible knowledge he owned, not the passage of years.
And, she suspected, his inability to do anything meaningful about his lost twin.
He would wake soon, she guessed. He'd smile, get up and shave, and joke around with the lesser Youkai. But the smile would never reach his eyes and the jokes weren't all that funny, although the lesser Youkai weren't sophisticated enough to appreciate that.
Trása smiled to herself, knowing there was one burden she would soon be able to take from him.
Something tickled Trása's cheek and she realized what had woken her. She batted away the irritation, a little annoyed Echo had woken her so early and was undoubtedly going to disturb Rónán if she tried to ignore her.
"The boys are back. The boys are back. The boys are back." The pixie's high-pitched buzz hummed around Trása's ear as the little Youkai hovered above her head, wings flapping like a hummingbird. If she didn't move or at least acknowledge she was awake, Trása knew from long experience that Echo would start nipping at her ear.
"All right, I heard you. They're back," she whispered, turning her head to look at the pixie as a surge of excitement welled up inside her. If Pete and Logan were back, her laborious and secretive plan to finally bring Darragh home might be about to bear fruit.
"Hurry up. Hurry up," the pixie buzzed impatiently. Echo was naked except for a strip of brightly colored ribbon around her neck and some shiny silver string tied around her wrists that looked suspiciously like bits of Christmas tinsel. As there was no Christmas in this reality, and certainly nothing like Christmas decorations, she guessed Pete or Logan had brought it back for her on one of their runs. It also accounted for the pixie knowing they were back from their latest rift running expedition.
Taking great care not to disturb Rónán, she carefully wiggled from his embrace and stepped out of the bower cave and onto the wide branch outside her home. Tír Na nÓg was laid out before her, no longer sad and empty. It was filled with Youkai now, although few were the original inhabitants of this realm. Most of them, like her little pixie, Echo, were refugees from other realities where the Matrarchaí were making their presence felt.
"Better put come clothes on. Better put some clothes on," the pixie sang, buzzing around her ear to be certain she'd heard. The pixie's annoying habit of repeating everything at least twice had earned her the name Echo. Trása forgot who first called her that. She thought it might have Isleen. Whoever it was, the name had stuck and now everyone called her Echo.
"Boys will blush. Boys will blush."
Trása smiled at that. Pete and Logan, even though they had spent the last decade among the sídhe folk of this realm and countless others, still suffered traces of the inhibitions their upbringing had ingrained in them. Echo was right. If she didn't put some clothes on before she greeted Pete and Logan on their return, they wouldn't know where to look.
Trása returned to the bower cave and grabbed her clothes, including her boots, and took them outside onto the ledge so as not to disturb Rónán while she dressed. Not only did she not want to alert him to her plans until everything was in place, he'd looked exhausted when he came to her last night. She figured he needed all the sleep he could get, and here in Tír Na nÓg was the only place he ever slept soundly.
"Nika's home, too. Nika's home, too," Echo chanted as Trása got dressed.
The news gave Trása pause. She hadn't even realized the Merlin had gone with Pete and Logan on a mission that was supposed to be secret. Not that the news bothered her unduly. If anything, she probably should have thought of it herself. Trása didn't doubt Nika would be looking out for her interests. The Merlin was ridiculously loyal to the Tuatha Dé Danann half-beansídhe she considered responsible for her rescue. "Was she rift running with Pete and Logan or does she just happen to have arrived home at the same time?"
"Running with them, running with them," Echo told her, darting about Trása's head, probably because she liked the way it made the tinsel around her tiny wrists glitter. "Brought you a present. Brought you a -"
Echo gasped and suddenly blinked out of existence.
Trása sighed. The present, she guessed, was meant to be a secret. "You didn't tell me which rifuto they came through," she called, but knew it was useless. Echo was probably miles away by now, fretting that "the boys" - her collective name for Pete and Logan - might be mad at her for ruining their surprise.
Trása made her way down the organic wooden stairs that encircled the massive trunk of her tree home, trying to work out the most logical place for Pete and Logan to have entered this realm. She had impressed upon them the importance of keeping their mission a secret from Rónán so they were unlikely to have emerged at the stone circle near Nara in Chucho, in this reality's version of Japan, where Rónán normally resided. They would not be expecting to find him here.
She didn't think the others knew about her and Rónán. They certainly didn't live together or do anything else normal couples might do. Since he'd unlocked Delphine's memories seven years ago and discovered how long they had to wait until they could return to the realm where they'd left Darragh, they'd lived in different hemispheres, and even when they were together, Rónán was not one for public displays of affection. Trása wondered about that sometimes, figuring it was nothing to do with the burden of responsibility he carried, and everything to do with being raised by a woman who thrived on making a spectacle of herself.
"An Bhantiarna, a word, if I may?"
Trása stopped, as one of the refugee Tuatha Dé Danann Pete and Logan had rescued from another reality about four years ago stepped in front of her, blocking her way. She silently braced herself and forced a smile, wondering how much noise he would make if she pushed him off the stairs. He wouldn't die. They weren't so far up the branches it would kill him if he fell. Besides, he was pure sídhe. And even if it hurt when he hit the forest floor, he could heal himself.
It's nice to dream sometimes.
"I'm sorry, Stiofán, I'm in kind of a hurry. Can we talk later?"
"You are here and I am ready to speak. Why should it not be now?"
Because you're an insufferable pain in the backside and Nika should have let the Matrarchaí slaughter you, so I wouldn't have to put up with your self-important pomposity. That's what Trása really wanted to say to this tall, handsome Faerie. She knew his type well. In his own reality he'd b
een a sídhe of high standing and had the ear of his queen. Here he was safe from the Matrarchaí, but a nobody. The work they were doing, the battle to save as many sídhe as they could from the Matrarchaí in this reality and countless others, was a job only the mongrel sídhe like her could fight. Stiofán couldn't step out of a magical realm without dying and it was in the magic-depleted realms where the Matrarchaí had their strongholds. When it came down to it, though, Trása knew this swaggering, displaced Tuatha Dé Danann lord wasn't upset that he couldn't join the fight; he was just having trouble coping with the notion that he owed his life to a bunch of mongrel sídhe.
She sighed. "You have one minute."
Stiofán sniffed. "I do not know what a minute is, but I will assume it is all the time I need to state my case regarding my accommodation."
"What's wrong with your accommodation?"
"It's intolerable."
"Why is it intolerable?" she asked, the temptation to shove him off the stairs something she found herself having to consciously control.
"I sleep only a short distance off the ground."
"And that makes your accommodation intolerable, how exactly?"
"A sídhe of my stature should be much further up. The higher branches are filled with Leipreachán, pixies and sprites. It is beyond comprehension how you can allow the normal order of things to be so perverted, you would honor lesser sídhe over those of the Tuatha Dé Danann."
Trása couldn't stop herself from smiling, although she did manage to control the urge to laugh out loud. "Really? That's your problem, Stiofán? You think we're perverted because you don't have the penthouse suite?"
The sídhe glared at her, not understanding her words, although he understood her tone. Sarcasm was the same in any language.
The sídhe drew himself up and looked down his long, aquiline nose at her. "This unacceptable state of affairs would not be tolerated in a realm where there was a proper Tuatha Dé Danann queen, rather than a mongrel pretender."
Trása took a deep breath. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Logan had taught her that a few years ago. He claimed it was the only way to cope with living in the public eye and not go mad listening to everyone else's opinion on how you were living your life. He'd gone so far as to make her memorize the tiny refrain and promise to repeat it over and over - or at least until the urge to throttle the name-caller receded - whenever she found herself in a situation such as this.
Reunion Page 8