by Horn, J. D.
“You, Oliver Taylor, want to take things slowly?”
“Is that so unbelievable?”
“Yes. Who are you, and what have you done with my real uncle?” He blew me a very wet raspberry in response. A question rose to my mind. “How is it that Adam doesn’t react poorly to your magic?”
Oliver raised his eyebrows and frowned at the same time, considering the question. “He did at first, when we were young, back when we first met. But I suggested that he not ‘react poorly to it,’ as you so quaintly put it.”
“You compelled him?”
Oliver nodded. “Yeah, but that was the one and only time. I owned up to him that I had done it, and I promised us both I’d never suggest anything to him again.” He took a sip of coffee and then looked at me over the rim of his mug. “Adam is worried about you, you know?”
“Worried about me? Why?”
“ ‘Gut feeling,’ he says. Peadar Tierney showing up with a hole punched through him. You’ve been acting all cagey around him, he says. Don’t worry; I didn’t say anything about the old guy.”
“Is it hard for you, keeping secrets from Adam?” I found myself piling up secrets in my relationship with Peter: my mother’s return, the truth about Maisie, the incident with Peadar, Emmet throwing himself at my feet, my liking that Emmet had thrown himself at my feet.
“Honestly, I don’t know, but the way things happen around here, I am sure I will have many opportunities to find out. Tell me, Gingersnap. What was all the commotion with Claire last night?” He sat down his cup and leaned his chair back so that it balanced on its hind legs. “No, I was neither too wasted nor too preoccupied to notice.”
“You tell me. Claire thinks she knows Emmet or at least ‘his people.’ ”
“People?” he rocked his chair back on all fours and tilted his head.
“She says he isn’t human. She thinks he is something otherworldly, but other than that I don’t know more than you do.”
“But you will get to the bottom of it?”
“Of course. I have ideas, but they sound crazy, even to me.” My instincts told me to hold off on sharing more than I had to, at least until I knew the full story of what was going on with Claire. “I love Peter, and I want to marry him, but I want to know what I’m getting into with the Tierneys. You know?”
“Indeed I do. Let me know if I can help.” The sun had made its way high enough in the sky to illuminate the whole of our garden. “Lord, doesn’t that feel good?” Oliver asked as he stretched up into the golden light. He stopped mid-stretch and stood, walking over to where he had placed the sundial. He held out both hands, palms down, toward the marker. “Someone has been messing around here.” He turned and regarded me, his right eyebrow raised. “You have been messing around here. Just what have you been getting up to, Gingersnap?”
My mind breezed over a thousand lies, none of which I had the heart to tell. I rose and rushed over to his side. “Connor,” I said and gave a slight nod toward the dial. So much for taking the secret to my grave. “I was trying to resurrect a memory of Mama,” I said. “He hijacked the energy.”
Oliver’s face turned gray, somehow understanding the whole of the situation from these few words. “I’m sorry. I had no idea. Say nothing . . . to anyone. I’ll handle this. Okay?”
I felt myself begin to tremble in spite of the sun’s warm rays. I drew my arms up around myself and nodded once. And with that began yet another Taylor family conspiracy. That’s all it took. A secret and a shared desire to protect the ones we loved. Oliver put his arm over my shoulders and led me back to my chair.
“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what the Tree of Life told us about your sister’s situation,” he said in an obvious attempt to pull my thoughts away from Connor. “I think we ought to consider borrowing from your mother’s bag of tricks. We need Tillandsia.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I think it’s what the Tree of Life was trying to tell us, you, when you saw the doorway to the new Tillandsia house.” He leaned in toward me. “We need power. Big power that the families cannot trace, power that the anchors can’t just switch off if they figure out what we are doing.”
“And you think we can get this power through Tillandsia.”
“Think about it. We may not know what Emily intended to do with the power she was summoning, but we know that she spent years using the Tillandsia ‘gatherings,’ ” he said, and I felt grateful for the euphemism, “to build up a battery of power. Power that the united families could not control.”
“Assuming that power still exists, that it hasn’t all been used up or dissipated, how would we access it?”
“If I knew my Emmy, and I do believe I did, that power is still locked up tight somewhere. We, however, don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting at it.”
“Then why even bring it up?”
“Because we don’t, but you, Gingersnap, do. I’m sure Emily put some kind of lock on it, so that only she could access it, but you carry a bit of Emily in you. I’m willing to bet that it will make itself accessible to you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, I don’t, but don’t you think it’s at least worth a try? For your sister’s sake?”
I turned my face toward the sun and closed my eyes, letting myself hide behind the flamingo color of my eyelids. “Of course I’ll try, but I don’t have a clue as to how I’ll do it.”
The brightness faded, Oliver having stepped between me and the light. “’Fraid there is only one way to get ahold of the Tillandsia power.”
“And that would be?” I asked, opening my eyes to see him standing there, haloed like some earthbound angel.
“The only way to access the power built up through Tillandsia is by ‘participating’ in their activities.” This time I didn’t appreciate the euphemism. Not one little bit.
The thought of participating in a Tillandsia gathering—or, throwing all niceties aside, orgy—was repellent. Growing up, I had thought Tillandsia was merely a private group where public people gathered to get their party on without having to worry about headlines. Now, I knew it was oh so much more. My heart broke at the thought that my lovely Ellen had been a willing participant in the group during the years after Paul and Erik had died. She said that even though she knew it was wrong, Tillandsia had somehow eased the pain of her loss. Still, I doubted she had ever used it as more than an anesthetic. It seemed unlikely that she had a hidden agenda like my mother had had, or possibly still had.
A freshly showered Iris rejoined us in the garden. I forced my full focus on her, not daring to let my eyes even stray toward the sundial. Her hair was damp and pulled back into a ponytail. She wore no makeup, but in spite of that fact, she looked younger than I’d ever seen her. She had on her favorite yoga pants and my favorite T-shirt. “Hope you don’t mind,” she said, noticing my noticing.
It had grown way too tight for me these days anyway. “Not at all. It looks cute on you.”
She smiled and blinked slowly, like a happy cat. “Thank you. I thought so too. Have you told her?” she asked Oliver.
“No, not yet. We were discussing other things.” He winked at me.
“Told me what?” I felt a tingle run down my spine.
“We have a plan,” Iris said, “to deal with the situation with the demon at the old hospital. Well, actually, it is Emmet’s plan, but I think it’s a good one. I’ll fill you in later, but clear your calendar tonight, because we are going demon hunting.”
FIFTEEN
My phone rang, and I looked at the number. It was Claire. “Hello?” I answered.
“Oh, Mercy dear, I’m glad you answered,” Claire said, her voice betrayed her anxiety. “Listen, we need to talk. Any chance you could drop by?”
“Of course. I’ll come right over.” I knew she would try to convince
me not to share the encounter I had witnessed between her and Emmet with Peter. I felt Peter should know about his brother. Still, I hoped it wouldn’t fall to me to do the telling, as once again, I’d probably lose my nerve. I hoped that his parents would in time come to terms with their grief and tell Peter themselves. In the meantime, I had to set Claire straight about Emmet. She knew he wasn’t exactly human, but still I knew he couldn’t be whatever she believed him to be. To begin with, he had no people. He had donors, the witches who had made him. My family was as close as it came to his having people.
I left Iris and Oliver in the garden and went inside to change into a more presentable outfit, a pleated cerulean blouson sundress Ellen had bought for me. My inner tomboy fought back, so I paired it with some beat-up tennis shoes. I was glad Ellen wasn’t around to catch me pairing the dress with this footwear. She’d never let me out of the house this way. It hit me that I hadn’t yet thanked Ellen for all the trouble she had gone to on my behalf. I decided that I’d at least pick her up a card before returning home.
Stepping back outside, I decided the temperature had risen too high for me to walk, and for the first time, I felt too pregnant for my bike. I grabbed its handlebars and wheeled it inside the garage. “See you later, old friend.” I couldn’t help but give it a pat. An eerie sense of finality washed over me, and I started to cry. “So silly,” I said to myself, shaking off the tears. Hormones and capricious magical abilities made for some very intense, if peculiar, emotions. I closed my eyes and felt my body slipping. My one attempt at keeping my eyes open while jumping from one place to another had made me sick and dizzy. When I opened my eyes, I was standing in the alleyway behind Magh Meall. I rang the delivery buzzer and tried to collect myself, still feeling an inexplicable sense of loss.
I waited as I heard the sound of the large steel bar that secured the back door being removed from the brace that held it. The deadbolt turned and the door opened. Even though Claire had been expecting me, she looked surprised. “Oh, dear, it’s you. That was fast.”
I worried about rubbing her nose in my magic after the meltdown she’d had around Emmet. So I fibbed a little. “I was nearby when you called.” I entered and watched as Claire returned the steel bar to its place and flipped the deadbolt.
“I appreciate your coming by,” she said, weaving her way through the kitchen and out to the bar. I followed on her heels. “We need to talk about what happened last night. I must explain to you . . .”
“About Peadar, and about this preoccupation you have with Emmet.”
“Yes, Emmet,” she responded, taking a seat at the table with the best view of the front door. She motioned for me to join her, and I sat across from her. “I cannot warn you away from that one firmly enough. He isn’t what he appears to be.”
“And what if I told you that I already knew that?”
Her head tilted back slightly and her eyes widened as she took in my words. “You know?”
I knew Emmet was not human, even if I wasn’t sure what she believed him to be. “Yes,” I said, justifying my half-truth by holding it up against the years Claire had been keeping secrets from Peter and me. “But I don’t understand why you think I should be afraid of him.”
Her face grew taut, and she leaned into me, grasping my hand in hers. “Because he’ll try to take your son.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Mercy, hear me. I knew the first time I saw Emmet that he spelled trouble. I should have come to you then, but I had hoped to deal with the situation myself, sparing you. I thought I’d found someone who could help me. Someone who could convince Emmet to take off and leave our family alone. When they found Peadar’s body, I knew I couldn’t keep it from you any longer. I had to share the truth with you, for the baby’s sake. I don’t understand why his people need our children, but they find you when you are hopeless. They come to you when you are too desperate to tell them no. They come with their deals and their promises and their lies.”
I pulled my hand from her grasp. “What did they offer you in exchange for your son?” I, of course, had no idea who they even were, but now that Claire was finally sharing her secrets, I wasn’t going to say anything that might stop her.
She was taken aback by my words. Her skin grew ashen, and she leaned forward suddenly, almost as if she were about to pass out. “They promised me,” her words came out in a ragged whisper, “that he would live.” She raised her eyes to meet mine. “He was dying. Blood cancer. The doctors could do nothing for him. Only their kindness forced them to admit this to us and let us bring him home at all. When we got to the bar, she was waiting here for us.”
“She?”
“I have no name for her. Never laid eyes on her before and never laid eyes on her or her kind since, until this Emmet. She was such a beauty. A beauty so perfect I found it impossible to believe her to be anything but good. I thought we’d left her kind back in the old country, but it looks like they followed us here too. She said it was our music that had attracted her to Magh Meall. When she spoke, her words had such power over us.” Claire paused. “Or maybe it was only the hope they offered that affected Colin and me so. She promised us that our boy would live. He would know a life of love and luxury. Her people would raise him as a prince,” she said, her eyebrows knitting together over her sad smile.
“She promised us we would see our son again before we died. It never occurred to us that they would send him back to us a shriveled-up old man. A desecrated corpse.” She began to shake, and I reached out to her. “I don’t know why they would have done that to him, my girl.” She shook her head, her eyes imploring me for an explanation, even though she couldn’t really think I had one to give. But I did, and I could not let her go on thinking her son had been murdered in cold blood.
“They didn’t,” I said, the weight of my guilt collapsing my fear of confession.
“But how could you know that? How could you know what his last minutes were like? What he was thinking as they ripped his heart from him?”
“Because, it didn’t happen like that.” I got up, and then knelt before her. “You know that my family is different, that I am different.”
Her expression turned wary as she looked down at me. “If by that you mean you are a truckload of witches, yes, I’ve always known. I’ve got a bit of the sight myself.”
“Peadar, your son, he didn’t die alone,” I said, reaching up to smooth her hair. “And no one murdered him.”
“Then you tell me what happened to him.” Her voice grew stern. She stopped my hand from stroking her.
“He was lost, confused, and dying when I found him.”
“You found him?” she echoed me.
“He wasn’t alone. I was with him,” I said, trying to ease her pain. “I tried to help him. To restart his heart.”
She pushed herself back with great force, knocking her chair over as she stood. “You? You did this to him?”
“Not to hurt him. To help him,” I pleaded. I stood and took a step toward her, but she raised her hand as if she would slap me.
Her palm quivered as her fingers curled in toward it, leaving only the pointer aimed at me. “Don’t come near me. Not right now. Don’t come near me.”
“Claire, you must know I’d never intentionally hurt your son. I didn’t kill him. I swear. He had no pulse. I was only trying to help. You have to believe I’d never hurt Peter’s brother.”
Her hand fell to her side. Her mouth fell open, and then she laughed. A hard and bitter laugh. “Oh, you stupid girl. You stupid girl. You don’t understand at all.”
“Understand what?”
“The deal Colin and I made. That’s what,” she said and drew nearer. “Peter has no brother. The man whose heart you burned out, he was my son. My only son. My Peter.”
SIXTEEN
Shock sent the sensation that I was falling from my head to my feet, and t
hen back up again. My mouth gaped open, but no words came out.
“That’s the deal we made, my girl. They’d take our Peter, and in return for keeping him alive, we would raise her son. The boy we raised, the boy we love as if he were our own true son, the boy you let fill your womb, he’s one of them, the daoine sidhe. One of the gentry. That is why he can never know any of this.”
“Come on. This is crazy. It can’t be true. There’s no such thing as fairies,” I said. The words came out by reflex, but I myself had encountered stranger things. Even so, even if fairies existed, it was not possible that my Peter could be one of them. That my baby could be half Fae. I placed my palm over my stomach. Ellen had not sensed anything unusual about my son. At least nothing she had told me about.
“And there is no such thing as witches either, but here you stand before me.”
I couldn’t argue that away. “Okay.” I said. “Accepting for the moment that this is possible, how can I keep it from Peter? If it’s true, he has the right to know.”
“But there’s the rub. If you tell him, if he ever learns the truth about his nature, we will lose him. He will go to them. He won’t be able to resist, no matter how much he may love you and his son. Trying to resist would only drive him mad or kill him. No, Mercy, you have to lay aside your opinions of right and wrong and do what I tell you. This secret, the truth about Peter—whom I very much consider my son in spite of it all—you have to take it with you to the grave.” Wow. Twice in one morning. I was still trying to process the fact that Emmet had been right all along when a loud knock rapped the door and both our eyes darted toward it. “They’re here. They don’t know about Peter, so keep your mouth shut about him.”
“Wait. Who are they?” I halfway expected King Oberon and Queen Titania to be waiting on the other side of the door.
Claire didn’t respond. She righted the chair she’d knocked over, then crossed over to the door. She undid the deadbolt and opened it, but my view was blocked until she swung it wide and stepped aside.