Reunion

by Jennifer Fallon

  Darragh sighed. He didn't blame Connors for being careful, and it was a moot point anyway. He had nothing with which to buy off Connors, or any other guard, assuming he could find out who were the few who could be bribed, and nothing to purchase an electric razor with, either.

  Perhaps an opportunity would present itself. Maybe he should do what some of the inmates in here were fond of doing and start writing to some lonely, gullible spinster on the outside, looking for a penpal. Fergus had several and they often sent him presents, not all of which were confiscated as contraband.

  If he grew desperate enough, he might ask Eunice Ravenel back and offer to do a trade with her, he supposed.

  That would be a last resort. He didn't want to give the Boyles false hope.

  No, he needed to find another way.

  Somehow, one way or another, Darragh needed to get his hands on a sliver of titanium.

  It didn't need to be much. Just enough to cut his skin and let Rónán know - in whatever reality he was hiding - that it was time to bring his brother and their guardian home.

  Chapter 14

  As it turned out, Trása didn't have to go far at all. By the time she'd reached the forest floor, Pete and Logan had entered Tír Na nÓg and were coming to her.

  The reporter and the cop who had been brought to this realm bound and unconscious by the woman they believed was their mother were, in many ways, unrecognizable. In other ways, they hadn't changed at all.

  They looked the same. Like Rónán, although they hadn't known it growing up in a world almost devoid of magic, they were mostly sídhe, despite looking human. Neither had aged like ordinary men. In the realm where they had been raised, they should have been approaching middle age, yet neither Pete nor Logan looked a day older than when Delphine, Tiffany and Chishihero had carried them into this realm through the rift Delphine had opened at the very top of the Sears Tower in Chicago.

  As Trása watched them approach carrying a large sack between them, it occurred to her that Delphine must have been planning for these twins to have "accidents" at some time in their early thirties in order to avoid awkward questions about why they weren't aging as they should. Maybe she'd planned to murder them once they'd fathered children for her with one of the Matrarchaí's many protégés who she controlled under the guise of running a modeling agency. Poor Logan. He would have been first. After Delphine confirmed Trephina was pregnant, his days had probably been numbered.

  Good thing then, Trása mused, that Rónán destroyed the heartless bitch before she had a chance to act on that part of her nefarious plan.

  That the late and unlamented Delphine had a nefarious plan went without saying. The exact details of the plan, however, were something only Rónán knew for certain, although Trása wondered sometimes if Rónán had shared everything with Pete and Logan, or just given them an edited version. It was likely - Trása figured - that the only reason Delphine brought Logan and his brother to this reality was to kill them without any questions being asked in the realm where she had raised them. In the other reality, Logan, at least, had been quite well known and might be missed when he disappeared, particularly as his twin was a cop and would have left no stone unturned in his quest to find his brother if anything happened to him.

  Even now, although he shared her bed, Trása still wondered if Rónán didn't trust the Doherty boys more than her. Trouble is, wondering about that led down a path she didn't want to go. She didn't know if Rónán loved her. She wasn't sure if she loved him or if he was just a convenient stand-in for his brother, Darragh, whom Trása had loved for as long as she could remember. She wasn't even sure if her love for Darragh was real anymore, or just a fond memory that had never been tarnished by reality.

  She had a plan to find out though, one way or another. Rónán just didn't know about it yet.

  In spite of whatever loyalty the Doherty boys felt toward Rónán, right at this moment Pete and Logan had come to visit her and the burlap sack they carried between them - sealed closed with a magical spell Trása could sense from several feet away - was wiggling and jiggling and protesting loudly at the indignity of its predicament.

  Trása smiled as Logan and Pete stopped before her and lowered the sack to the ground.

  "Echo said Nika was with you."

  "She's still at the circle," Pete explained. "Taking care of a ... complication."

  That sounded a little ominous, but as Logan and Pete had left the Merlin to deal with the "complication" on her own, Trása figured it couldn't be too important.

  She looked down at the wiggling sack and smiled. "Rumour has it you've brought me a present."

  "Rumour has a big mouth," Logan said, glancing about, probably for the loose-lipped pixie who'd spoiled the surprise.

  "She's right, though," Pete added. Dressed in the garb of a Celtic warrior from her own reality, he might not have visibly aged these past ten years, but he was unrecognizable from the man Delphine had brought through the rift. Anybody who had known him in the reality where he had lived and worked for the first twenty-seven years of his life would barely recognize him now.

  Trása felt the surge of magic as Pete released the spell, and with his brother's help, unceremoniously dumped its occupant on the leafy ground at Trása's feet.

  Trása took a step back and waited for the creature to take stock of his surroundings. The Leipreachán looked around suspiciously, taking in the many curious sídhe gathered on the edge of the clearing to see what all the fuss was, the magical trees, the eternal glimmering twilight of Tír Na nÓg, and then his eyes fixed on Trása. He stared at her for a long moment.

  "Well then," he said after a time, his wrinkled face drawn into a thunderous scowl, "that be explainin' how these two brigands be knowing me true name."

  "Hello, Plunkett."

  The Leipreachán drew himself up to his full height and glanced around, glowering at the crowd, and then rested his eyes on Trása once more. "Ye found a way to break ye uncle's curse, I see."

  Actually, Trása hadn't found a way to break the curse that doomed her to life as a barn owl, courtesy of Marcroy. Flying headlong through a rift into a world without magic had broken it, and this world, although drenched in magic, was not the realm where the curse held sway. She had no doubt that if she tried to return to her world, she would immediately revert to avian form. Rónán had the power to break the curse and with the combined memories of Darragh and Delphine, had the knowledge, as well.

  But Rónán had pointedly refused to do anything to break the curse. He didn't want Trása, or anybody else for that matter, returning to his native realm, and he figured - quite rightly - that the curse would prevent her from doing so.

  He hadn't counted on her ingenuity, however. Or the fact that she might eventually co-opt Pete and Logan to her cause.

  "I've managed quite a bit since I saw you last, Plunkett. And how is dear Uncle Marcroy?" Trása needed to know that urgently. She was reasonably certain she could talk Rónán into forgiving her for breaking her promise not to return to their own reality. She was much less confident of her ability to predict Marcroy's likely reaction to the news that his errant niece was alive and well, free of his curse and living it up in another realm with one half of the Undivided whom he thought he'd disposed of.

  Plunkett shrugged. "How should I be knowing? He don't be confiding in the likes of me." The Leipreachán glanced around again and nodded approvingly. "Seems like ye've carved yeself a handy wee niche in this realm, by the look of things. Ye uncle be very interested to learn ye whereabouts, I suspect."

  "I'll speak to Marcroy when I'm good and ready," Trása informed him, a little amazed that, even after ten years, the idea that Marcroy might come after her could still spark a small sliver of fear in her belly.

  Maybe Rónán was right. Maybe I should just leave well enough alone.

  Pity that was no longer an option.

  She looked up at Pete and Logan. "Did Abbán give you any trouble?"

  Logan sighed. "
That would be the complication Pete spoke of."

  Trása cursed under her breath. "Tell me he didn't ..."

  "Oh, yes," Pete assured her, "he did."

  Rónán is going to kill me.

  Trása forced a smile. It wouldn't do to let the fact that Rónán knew nothing of their expedition slip now. "Well, we'll just have to deal with him." She turned her attention back to Plunkett. "Would you like to meet your eileféin, Plunkett?"

  The Leipreachán gasped. "Ye canna be introducing me to me own self! It be a grievous flauntin' of the rules!"

  "The rules are different here," Logan explained, amused by the Leipreachán's alarm. He glanced at Trása, adding. "Are you sure you want to let this guy and the knee-high ninja swap notes?"

  She nodded and glanced up at the canopy of trees. Rónán had been sound asleep in her bower when she left him, but he might wake anytime and decide to come looking for her. She didn't want him finding out that Plunkett was here until she'd gleaned some useful intelligence from the Leipreachán. If she could produce proof that Darragh had found his way home, or that Hayley was cured and safely back home, perhaps he'd be willing to finally break the curse that kept her here and she'd able to go home, too.

  If not ... if Darragh was still stranded in Rónán's magic-less realm ... well then, it was time to bring him home.

  Trása didn't seriously believe Darragh had managed to get home, because he would have tried to contact Rónán and they'd have been reunited long before now. If he was anywhere there was magic, Darragh could easily have scried Rónán out and let him know he was safe.

  Darragh's long silence meant only one thing. He was still in the reality with no magic, where they'd left him, and it was up to them to get him back.

  That time was soon approaching. Seven years, Rónán had said after Teagan was taken. That's how long it would take the Matrarchaí to construct another stone circle in the Enchanted Sphere of that magic-less world.

  There would soon be a way into that realm that Rónán had knowledge of, thanks to Delphine's memories.

  And it was likely to drive him and anyone who stepped through the rift with him, straight into the arms of the Matrarchaí who had commissioned the stone circle, something Rónán never seemed to consider and refused to discuss whenever she tried to bring it up.

  But now, thanks to her brilliant plan, there was another way into that realm. A safer way. It was such a good plan that Pete, Logan and the normally hyper-cautious Nika had agreed to it.

  Now, she only had to break it to Rónán ...

  Perhaps then, when he smiled, it would reach his eyes for a change.

  "The Leipreachán will be fine," she told Logan, pushing aside the niggling doubt that, far from earning Rónán's gratitude, he was likely to be furious with her. She had more immediate problems to deal with. "My cousin, Abbán, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about. Will you do the honors?"

  "Sure. I'll introduce them," Logan said. "Do you know where Toyoda is?"

  "Not offhand. But I'm sure if you call him, he'll be here in flash. After all," she added, looking pointedly at Plunkett O'Bannon, "you know his real name."

  The Leipreachán muttered darkly and crossed his arms over his waistcoat, not well pleased.

  Pete pointed back down the path. "Nika's waiting with him at the circle. We'd better get there before she decides to take matters into her own hands."

  "Don't let them get into any trouble," Trása ordered Logan, as she hurried after Pete down the leaf-strewn path, wondering what had possessed her to think she could arrange to kidnap a Leipreachán from another realm without causing problems, or that she could rely on her cousin, the merman Abbán, to do anything but make trouble.

  Chapter 15

  Pete Doherty sometimes felt the need to pinch himself just to be sure he was still conscious and the last decade of his life hadn't been one spectacularly complicated and fantastic dream from which he could not wake.

  He was having one of those moments now as he escorted Trása back to the stone circle just outside Tír Na nÓg, so she could do something about the merman they'd brought back from another reality.

  The merman in question was Trása's cousin. Somehow, whether by fair means or foul, Trása had scried Abbán out and convinced him to open a rift to his reality to allow Pete, Logan and Nika through and then to open it again to allow them to return to this reality with a kidnapped Leipreachán.

  Such an event was such an absurdly long way from the life he'd once known, it didn't seem possible it could be real. Sometimes, he felt as if the real dream had been the first twenty-seven years of his life, and this life he had now - where he and his twin brother, Logan, could wield magic and cross realities at will - was the only life he had ever known.

  Other times he wondered if, perhaps, he was just going mad.

  For now, though, the bit where he was mostly Faerie and able to move from one reality to another was winning.

  Trása had organized this particular cross-reality excursion, claiming she was doing it on Ren's behalf, although Pete was beginning to doubt that. She'd been very cagey about them discussing the trip with him. Pete gathered, given the fuss Abbán had made when he realized Trása wasn't coming through the rift, that she'd made some sort of promise to turn herself over to Marcroy, to get her cousin - all the Tuatha Dé Danann seemed to be cousins of one sort or another - to open the rift in the first place. The honor and kudos the merman could claim by handing her over to Marcroy was apparently sufficient enticement to get Abbán to open a rift.

  Foolish merman. Anybody with even a passing acquaintance with Trása should have known the chances of her voluntarily stepping into the reality where she was cursed to spend her life as a barn owl were vanishingly small. Abbán had fallen for it, however, and became quite vocal when he realized he'd been duped.

  At that point, Nika, their refugee Merlin from yet another realm depopulated by the Matrarchaí, had become concerned about the noise Abbán was making, so - without any thought as to the consequences - she'd wrapped him in a magical cocoon and shoved him through the rift after Logan and Pete and then closed the rift behind them.

  "Did anybody see you in the other realm?" Trása asked as they hurried along the leaf-strewn path toward the entrance to Tír Na nÓg.

  He shook his head. "We did exactly as you asked. In and out as quickly as possible. Some of the lesser sídhe may have seen us, but I doubt they'd know who we were or what we were up to."

  Trása frowned. "But you bought Abbán back with you."

  Pete didn't appreciate the accusation in her tone. "Hey, you were the one who got Abbán involved, O Great and Omnipotent Acting Faerie Queen. Logan's suggestion, if you recall, was that if you wanted to go back to your own reality so badly, you should just ask Ren to lift the curse on you."

  Trása shook her head. "That would have ruined the surprise."

  "Yeah ... about that. Ren doesn't know a damned thing about this little expedition, does he?"

  All hint of reprimand vanished as Trása flashed him a smile that was as blinding as it was forced. "You have a wild imagination, Pete. It's a hangover from being a cop. You think everybody is up to no good."

  "That doesn't mean you aren't up to no good," he pointed out ... quite reasonably, he thought.

  Trása didn't answer him and because they'd reached the entrance to Tír Na nÓg it was easy enough for her to avoid the subject. As they stepped through the veil into the mundane world outside, Pete could feel not only the temperature dropping, but the magic draining from the air and he wanted to weep for the loss of it. This whole reality was seeped in magic, but it was never as concentrated, or as heady, as it was in Tír Na nÓg.

  The stone circle was only few minutes from the entrance, located at the very top of the cliff known in other realities as the Giant's Staircase. The stones were similar to those they had stepped through in Trása and Ren's reality, except these were covered in Japanese symbols, rather than the Celtic designs of the other reality.r />
  The top of the cliff had a windswept, flat area on which the circle sat overlooking the Giant's Staircase. Nika was sitting on one of the low stones, her back to the ocean, watching over a young man who stood naked and scowling in the center of the circle, his arms pressed to his sides, held there by the invisible bonds the Merlin had wrapped around him. Pete smiled at Nika's ingenuity and made a mental note to be careful he never did anything that might tempt her to try the same trick on him.

  Trása's mara-warra cousin, Abbán, wasn't quite as tall as Trása. Although his upper body was muscular and well-tanned - only the gills running in line with his ribs marking him as different - his legs were spindly and pale, a sure sign, Pete now knew, that he spent as little time as possible on land. As soon as they let Abbán back into the water, his fishtail would return and he would once again be the magnificent specimen of mermanity - if there were such a word - he fancied himself to be.

  But that wasn't going to happen while he was threatening to run straight to Marcroy Tarth and tell him where Trása and one half of the missing Undivided had been hiding all these years.

  The Merlin rose to her feet as they approached, bowing low to Trása with a respect that Pete found hard to credit. Nika was a powerful woman, both physically and magically and in Pete's eyes, quite the most beautiful creature he'd ever met. Another of the countless refugees they'd gathered here over the past seven years, Nika's reality had been devastated by the Matrarchaí just before she'd inherited her position from the previous Merlin who had died trying to fight them off. Alone, exhausted and helpless, Nika had been fighting a last-ditch battle against the Matrarchaí to save what Faerie she could when they'd stumbled into her world.

  Perhaps it was because she'd seen Trása first, that day, or because here in this reality, Trása had - by default - become Queen of the Faerie, Nika had sworn her allegiance to the mongrel half-beansídhe and had been Trása's most ardent supporter ever since, even when it meant disagreeing with her lover.