"He won't," Trása assured her friend with a confidence she certainly didn't feel. "Pete loves you."
"He has never expressed that opinion to me."
Really, Trása wanted to ask. We have to talk about this now? "Some men don't seem to think it's necessary to tell a woman they love her," Trása said, thinking of Rónán rather than Pete.
"I would not make him choose," Nika said, squaring her shoulders with the stoic determination of somebody who has already lost the fight. "If Pete wants to stay in this realm, I would not try to dissuade him."
"Let's cross that bridge when we come to it," Trása said, thinking the last thing they should be worrying about right now was Nika and Pete's love life. They had to survive the next few days first. "Let me do the talking."
"What?"
"When we get inside. Until we know for certain that Pete and Logan are here and this place is safe for us, let me do the talking."
"It they have harmed Pete in any way, I will turn them into cockroaches and step on them," she said, in a matter-of-fact sort of voice as Trása headed up the neat path to the front door.
Trása glanced over her shoulder at the Merlin. "No magic in this realm, remember?"
"Then I will find another way."
Oh dear, Trása thought, as she lifted the brass knocker and rapped on the door a couple of times. And I used to think Sorcha being in this realm was a problem.
Pete opened the door almost as soon as Trása finished knocking. "Get inside, quickly."
She hurried through the front door and into an elegant, carpeted hallway followed by Nika who stepped over the threshold with great trepidation.
"Nika! Thank God you're safe," Pete said when he saw her.
Of course he loves you, you fool, Trása thought. Anybody can see that.
Nika wasn't buying it. She bowed her head and then stared coolly at Pete. "My lord."
He looked stunned by her aloof reception. "My lord? What?"
Trása sighed. "She thinks you're going to choose staying in this realm over her. Whose place is this?"
"It belongs to someone I used to work with," Pete told her as he stepped forward and took Nika in his arms. He really wasn't interested in Trása. He only had eyes for the Merlin. "I'm not staying in this realm, Nika. I promise."
"He says that like we have a way out of here," Logan remarked from a door a little further down the hall.
Before Trása could say hello, another man pushed past Logan with a panicked look on his face. "Shhh! You'll wake Stella."
"Who is Stella?"
"Annad's wife," Pete explained, still holding Nika in his arms. She wasn't convinced by his assurances, Trása guessed, because the Merlin was still scowling and holding herself stiffly apart from him, refusing to melt into Pete's embrace the way he obviously expected her to.
"This is Annad?" she asked, turning from Pete and Nika to study the man who'd scolded them for making too much noise. When Pete said this house belonged to someone he used to work with, she'd assumed he meant another cop. This man didn't look like a cop. He was Asian, with a delicious caramel-colored skin, a soft brogue, kind, although worried, dark eyes and the air of a man unused to the trouble that was visiting his house.
"I am," Annad said. "Now, please, can we go back to the kitchen? My wife is asleep right above us. I'd prefer she stayed that way so I don't have to explain even more strange visitors arriving at the crack of dawn."
It seemed a reasonable suggestion. Without another word, they followed Annad through the tastefully furnished living room to the kitchen at the back of the house. He closed the living room door behind him and leaned on it for a moment, before looking around. "Is the fairy here?"
"Pixie," Logan corrected. "And no, she's not here. Where is Echo, by the way?"
"I sent her away with Toyoda until I was sure this place was safe," Trása told him. "What are you doing here?"
"Making my life a misery," Annad remarked, as he pushed off the door. "Would anybody like some tea? I think I need to make some tea."
"Is this where you'll be staying?" Nika asked Pete, looking around the room, probably trying to figure out what the strange appliances were.
"Why do you think I'm staying?" Pete asked, and then turned to Logan. "Why does she think I want to stay in this realm?"
"I have no idea," Logan said, not the least bit interested, Trása guessed, in what Nika was worried about. "What I want to know is what the hell you're both doing here in the first place?"
Trása shrugged. "Marcroy found us. Nika decided we should escape and convinced everyone I was dead, used her talisman to bring us first to my realm and then I opened a rift to here, looking for you. Where is Rónán? Has he found Darragh, yet?"
"We don't know," Logan told her, taking a seat at the table. "Darragh's in prison here, and the last we saw of Ren, Marcroy had him."
Trása stared at Logan, not sure which bit of the devastating news he had just so casually delivered was the one of most concern.
Darragh is in prison.
Marcroy has Rónán.
It was almost too much to take in. "How ... how did Marcroy find Rónán?"
"How did he find you?" Logan asked.
Trása sat down opposite Logan. "Um ... I think Abbán may have contacted him from the Pool of Tranquillity."
"You think?" Logan asked with mock surprise. "What happened to asking Ren to wipe Abbán's memory and send him home with some story about how he lost the jewel in a bog?"
"We were still talking about it when Isleen went missing, remember? Things got rather hectic after that. And why is this suddenly my fault, anyway?" she asked. "You're the ones who left without telling anybody. If you were so worried about Abbán, why didn't you ask Rónán to do something about him before you went haring off across realities to save Darragh?"
"My lady is right," Nika said. "This is not her fault. What is this?"
Trása glanced up. Nika was staring at a box with a glass door and glowing numbers sitting on the kitchen counter. "It's a microwave," Logan told her. "Leave it alone."
"Do you have a television?" Nika asked Annad who was spooning tea from a small metal caddy into a teapot, concentrating on the task as if he believed that by doing something normal, the abnormal things happening around him would make sense.
"Over there," he said, jerking his head in the direction of the set on the sideboard.
Nika turned to study it for a moment and then looked at Trása. "I do not see what you find so intriguing about this thing, my lady. It does nothing."
Annad glanced at Pete. "Is she serious?"
Pete smiled, walked over to the sideboard, picked up the remote, and pushed the power button. "It's a bit more interesting when it's on." Nika's eyes widened at the sight of the screen coming to life. "This button here changes the picture," he explained. "This one controls the sound. You just point it at the TV and push, okay? Don't turn it up or you'll wake Stella."
Nika nodded, her eyes glued to the set. Without taking her eyes off it, she dragged a chair over, perched herself close to the set and started flicking through the channels forgetting, apparently, all about her fears that Pete was planning to stay here in this realm without her.
With Nika concentrating on the TV, Pete returned to the table and took the seat opposite Logan. Annad brought a tray to the table with the teapot, cups, a jug of milk and sugar bowl. Without asking if they wanted any tea, he began to pour a cup for each of them.
"Is Darragh really in prison in this reality?"
Pete nodded, his expression grim. "He's in Portlaoise. Don't know if you've heard of it, but it's not a very pleasant place."
Trása's heart went out to Darragh. All this time he was in prison. What had they done to him? What had prison done to him?
And Rónán. What must he be feeling? He had been so sure Darragh was living a life of luxury and extravagance in this realm with Kiva. It was how he'd justified leaving him here for so long. He'd clung to that belief so strongly. It was
how he slept at night. His nightmares had stopped and he didn't need to feel guilty about it because Darragh was living it up and loving every minute of his time in this reality.
Rónán had been telling himself the same story for years.
"What did Rónán do when he found out?"
"Before or after I stopped him walking in front of a speeding car?"
Trása couldn't find it in herself to be angry at Rónán, certain nothing she could say to him would come close to inflicting the guilt or remorse he must be inflicting on himself since learning of his brother's fate. "After, obviously."
"He went to see Kiva."
"His mother from this realm? Was that wise?"
"Of course not, but that didn't stop him." Pete looked at her like she was just a little bit dim. "This may come as a shock to you, Trása, but Ren frequently doesn't do the wise thing. Haven't you noticed?"
She had noticed. But this was probably the dumbest thing he'd done in the past few years - stepping into a realm that had no magic to save his brother without an actual plan notwithstanding. "Where is he now? You said Marcroy has him? How can that be? Marcroy would die the moment he set foot in this realm."
"He ambushed me in your realm," Logan explained. "It had to have been the jewel we used to open the rift, I figure. He must have some way of tracking it ... some innate sense of where it is, perhaps. I was at the Drombeg circle in your realm, waiting for the right time to open the rift for Ren and Pete to come back when next thing I know, there's Tuatha Dé Danann everywhere, I can't move a muscle, Marcroy's invaded the circle, taken back his jewel and there is no sign of you or any hint about what had become of you back in the ninja realm."
"He put Stiofán in charge."
"Seriously? That guy's a monumental pain in the arse."
"And he's loving every minute of being the new king of Tír Na nÓg," Trása said, realizing now why Marcroy had arrived in the ninja realm and then left again so quickly, allowing her and Nika to escape. Marcroy had other fish to fry. He'd been on Rónán's trail the whole time.
She shouldn't have been surprised. Where are they, little bird? It was the first thing Marcroy had said to her when he arrived in Tír Na nÓg and took her prisoner. "RónánDarragh. Where are RónánDarragh?"
Trása sighed. It was the story of her life, really. Marcroy hadn't wanted her. He hadn't really cared about her at all, which is why they got away so easily. There was a time when this realization would have burned Trása like acid in the pit of her belly, but now she just accepted it, marvelling at how the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. "Why does he want Ren?"
"He didn't say," Logan told her. "I take it he didn't tell you why?"
"No."
"It can't be for anything good," Pete said. "How long have you been in this realm?"
"A few hours. We came through the circle at the golf club."
"What did you use to open the rift?"
"This," Nika said, holding up the mummified baby's foot talisman she'd brought with her from her own realm without taking her eyes from the TV. She had the remote in the other hand and was changing the channels so quickly it was impossible to fix on any one program for long enough to tell what it was.
Annad paled and turned to Pete. "Dear God, is that ..."
"No," Pete lied. "Of course not."
Logan's eyes lit up at the sight of the morbid talisman. "That means we have a way out of here. We can open a rift."
"Not here in Dublin, we can't" Pete reminded him. "We'd have to get to London or one of the other circles the Matrarchaí has built in the Enchanted Sphere. That thing won't work at ground level. There's no magic."
"Details," Logan scoffed with a grin. "Point is, we have a way out of here."
Trása stifled a yawn, adding, "Wonderful. Maybe when we leave here we can find somewhere safe enough to sleep. I'm exhausted. We've been up all night and I was dead yesterday. I don't think I'm over that yet, either."
"I know how that feels," Annad remarked sourly. "Are you people planning to sleep at all?"
"I'd love to get some -" Logan began, but Nika cut him off.
"Did you say Darragh was in Portlaoise?"
They all turned to look at her. "Why?"
"There is something about it on the television."
Annad's tea forgotten, they jumped up from the table and clustered around the TV set while Nika tried to work out which button on the remote increased the volume. Logan snatched if from her after a few seconds and pointed it at the TV where a reporter was talking to the camera, standing in the rain outside Portlaoise Prison. As the volume increased, the reporter glanced over her shoulder at the high, razor wire-topped walls, saying, "... are refusing to confirm or deny that an escape or an escape attempt took place here yesterday, although multiple reports of shots being heard coming from the prison have been received by local media outlets. Authorities are only admitting, at this stage, that an incident took place and there was one casualty, a prisoner named ..." She stopped and glanced at the notepad she was holding. "... Ciarán mac Connacht, serving a term for armed robbery."
"That's not possible," Trása said. She couldn't believe it. Not Ciarán. Not here. Not in this realm.
"What's not possible?" Pete asked, as the others shushed him so they could hear the rest of the report.
She turned to Pete, shaking her head in bewilderment, and said in a low voice, "Ciarán mac Connacht. That's the name of the Druid warrior who is ... was Darragh's guardian and protector in our reality. He's not here in this realm."
"Coincidence?" Pete asked, not quite as ready to accept that there was something odd in the name. "I mean, aren't all realities connected in some way? Don't the same people keep cropping up in the same places, over and over?"
"Not in a reality that's as diverged from ours as this one. I mean, they do, and Ciarán mac Connacht's eileféin is almost certainly in this realm, but he'd have a different name, and wherever he is, Ciarán's eileféin is not in jail for armed robbery. There is no more honest or honorable man alive in any realm."
"Can you please be quiet?" Annad hissed. They turned to look at him and realized he was on the phone to someone. Logan muted the TV as Trása began looking about for the nearest exit. She didn't know this man. He didn't really act like a friend. Was he calling someone, even now, to tell them what he knew? Was he ringing another one of Pete's old workmates in the Gardaí to tell them ...
What? That his house was full of travellers from another reality?
"... no, I just saw it on the news," Annad was saying to whoever was on the other end of the telephone. "Yes ... no ... of course ..."
Trása wanted to snatch the phone from him and find out what he was being told. Pete must have guessed her intentions. He placed a hand on her arm and shook his head when she looked at him.
"... if I hear anything," Annad assured whoever we was talking to. "I've had limited contact with him these past few years. I don't know that he'd try to contact me." He stopped to listen for a moment and then added, "No ... no ... I don't think it's necessary to send a car here. I'm leaving for work soon, and truly, he probably doesn't even remember my name. Who is the treating psychologist? ... Then he'd be a much more likely prospect if he's going to make contact ... yes ... of course ... if I hear anything at all."
Annad hung up the phone and turned to face his expectant audience.
"Darragh escaped from Portlaoise yesterday morning," he said. "His cellmate, a man named Ciarán mac Connacht was killed covering his escape. The nurse who witnessed the escape claims Darragh walked into the medical unit with mac Connacht, disappeared into the room he should have been confined to, came out with another version of himself and then vanished into thin air. She's being treated for post-traumatic shock. They're not sure they'll ever get the 'real' story out of her." He stared at the four of them for a moment. "Only she didn't imagine it, did she?"
None of them answered him.
It was Pete who broke the silence. "I guess he
managed to pull it off."
"So where are they?" Logan asked. "If Ren actually succeeded in waning out of the prison with Darragh, where did he go?"
"Why not send the pixie to find out?" Annad said.
Chapter 44
It shouldn't be so easy to take a life.
Darragh pondered that thought as he watched Rónán approach the cradle rocking gently in the center of the room that was somehow different from before. The room was no longer warm or candlelit. It was dark and the walls were glistening in the moonlight seeping through a sliver in the closed curtains.
There was no sign of the nurse. Darragh wondered if she'd run away or if her fate had been the same as everyone else who'd approached this nightmare.
He watched Rónán step up to the cradle and stop to study it for a moment. The oak cradle was carved with elaborate Celtic knotwork, inlaid with softly glowing mother-of-pearl, just is it always was, but even from his vantage here in the shadows, he could see the mother-of-pearl was smeared with something that smelled like fresh blood.
Dear God, is he really going to do this? Am I going to allow it? Am I going to stand back and do nothing while he kills my children?
Rónán glanced down at the blade he carried. Darragh wondered if it would be enough. The airgead sídhe caught the light in odd places, illuminating the engraving on the blade. He hefted the razor-sharp weapon in his hand. Faerie silver was useless in battle, but for this task, no other would suffice.
She'd been very clear on that. Before she died.
The twins must be asleep - Rónán would not have been able to approach otherwise. If they had been awake, would they recognize the danger that hovered over them?
Maybe they would. Whatever made my children what they were, must give them some inkling of approaching danger.
They really couldn't just exist to destroy. Could they? They seemed so innocent. So human.
"You can't seriously mean to do this."
Rónán glanced over his shoulder and saw Darragh standing in the shadows by the door.
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