Stone Song

by D. L. McDermott

  So as soon as he’d gone down, she’d run. There had been a second when she’d stopped, less than a block away, stricken with conscience. What if she’d killed him? What if he’d been telling the truth, and there were good Fae, or at least less-evil Fae, and they genuinely wanted to help her, could teach her how to control the voice?

  Then reason and her survival instinct had reasserted themselves. It didn’t matter if there were good Fae or less-bad Fae. After Keiran, she wanted no Fae in her life at all.

  She ran. She had her T pass and her keys in her pocket, along with some cash. She never carried much more. There was a case for her harp languishing back at the Black Rose, but she had another at the house.

  Fortunately Faneuil Hall was crowded with tourists, the weather still warm enough for outside tables at the restaurants and couples strolling from shop to shop. She was able to disappear quickly into that press. Her modest height, for once, was an advantage. Even so, she couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder as the crowd thinned. Part of her hoped to see Elada following her. At least that way she could be sure he wasn’t dead.

  And part of her dreaded seeing that gold-shot, dirty blond head above the crowd.

  When she reached North Street, she paused. Congress Street was too open, too exposed for her liking, so she walked as quickly as she could without appearing to run past the Union Oyster House and into the T station at the Haymarket.

  Once she was underground, she felt dangerously exposed on the platform as she waited for the train. There were a few dozen other passengers waiting as well, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the Fae she had just fled from was going to emerge from behind one of the pillars, as he had in the alley.

  Gran should have warned her about that. That they could pass. Whatever that meant. Some kind of superfast travel ability, no doubt. Sorcha now had the distinct impression that she didn’t know enough about the Fae to survive another encounter with one.

  Finally the orange line arrived. Twelve stops to home. Two minutes between stops. Thirty seconds at each station, if she was lucky and the platforms weren’t too crowded.

  At every stop she expected her Fae pursuer to appear when the doors opened, but she reached the cavernous concrete and glass station at Forest Hills without incident and began the long walk to her house.

  Normally Tommy would walk with her at night, but she hadn’t wanted to wait for him. If she’d gone back into the Black Rose, if he’d come home with her, he would have stayed the night and made it more difficult to slip away in the morning. She would pack and prepare the house for her absence tonight and make her way back into Boston tomorrow with the commuters, safe in the rush-hour crowd.

  When Sorcha had lived with Gran, she’d seen the old farmhouse with a child’s eyes. She’d liked the attics in the main structure and the service wing, the ell that projected at a right angle from the back, because they were secret and private. She’d loved the fireplace in her room, even though Gran had never used it, because it had seemed romantic and old-fashioned.

  She’d never noticed all the iron. It had just seemed like part of the antique decor. She’d seen similar door latches on other old houses, similar gate hinges, hooks, and railings, but never, she realized when she’d returned as an adult, so much in one house.

  The batten doors were banded with iron and studded with iron nails for good measure. The fireplaces all had iron dampers. Most of the ground-floor windows were covered with iron grilles that Sorcha had always assumed to be security bars, a precaution against the crime that flourished in Jamaica Plain when she was a child and had still not been banished by the community’s slow gentrification. The rest looked like leaded glass casements, but they were really panes of glass set in iron muntins.

  It was only when she’d come back to claim her inheritance, after one of the lawyer’s dozens of letters had reached her at the home of a college friend, that she‘d seen the house for what it was: a fortress meant to keep out the Fae. But if she stayed here and let that Fae track her, it could just as easily become a prison.

  As it had always been, Sorcha now understood, for Gran.

  It was late by the time she had a bag packed and the water turned off where it entered the house in the basement. She would call to disconnect the power once she was on the road. She was exhausted and eager to climb into bed, trying not to think about how much she would miss the comfort of the thick down topper and the burnished wooden headboard, nearly buried behind feather pillows, when the phone rang.

  Sorcha would have never bought a fancy phone with caller ID, but Gran must have done so some time before she’d died, because the cordless beside the bed had been there when Sorcha had come back.

  It was Tommy calling from his cell phone. She considered letting it go to voice mail, but decided against it. Tommy had known about the Fae in the crowd, seen Sorcha talking to him. She hadn’t told him she was leaving. He would have good reason to worry, and knowing Tommy, if he couldn’t get her on the phone now, he’d come to the house, and she didn’t want that.

  She picked up.

  Tommy’s voice on the other end sounded high and hoarse. “You need to come, Sorcha,” he said. Then he began sobbing.

  “Come where, Tommy?”

  “Back to the Black Rose, now.”

  She looked at the clock beside the bed. It was one in the morning. The bar would be closing. “I’m all the way home, Tommy. The T stopped running an hour ago.”

  “He doesn’t care, Sorcha.”

  Her stomach lurched.

  “You need to come back,” he said. “Or he’s going to kill me.”

  There was a click on the other end.

  Sick fear washed over Sorcha. She was safe here in her citadel against the Fae. The creatures couldn’t enter unless she allowed them, unless she lifted the latches and held open the ironbound doors. She could stay here and the bastard wouldn’t be able to touch her. She could run now, while he was expecting her at the Black Rose, and it would be hours before he realized she wasn’t coming. A head start, enough to disappear into the backwoods of New England. A haircut and a dime-store bottle of bleach would change her appearance enough that no one would recognize Sorcha Kavanaugh.

  She could disappear, and be safe.

  She couldn’t do that to Tommy. She had seen how the Fae behaved when they were thwarted. They were like children. When their toys disappointed them, they smashed them to bits. Tommy would be hurt. Maimed or killed. If this Fae was particularly cunning, he might only cripple Tommy and hang on to him to use against Sorcha when he caught up with her. Or if he was particularly fickle and cruel, he might just keep Tommy to torment, for petty vengeance against Sorcha for defying him.

  She had misread that Fae completely. Or perhaps he had really intended to help her, had really been, at that moment, as . . . gentle . . . as he seemed. And Sorcha had pushed him too far. Using the harp had been a desperate act. She didn’t understand exactly what it did to them, but she could tell that it hurt like hell. And it would hardly help if he knew that she’d only used the harp to avoid using the voice. . . .

  Because of her, the Fae might snap Tommy’s neck tonight.

  She thought of herself as tough and resourceful, but she’d never been called upon to perform heroics, only to persevere in the face of discouragement and discomfort, to play another set, walk another mile, when she was tired and footsore.

  She’d never really understood people who put themselves in harm’s way when they had an easy out, but Sorcha considered how she would feel about herself tomorrow, sitting on a Peter Pan bus, speeding north into New Hampshire, the autumn leaves turning red and gold, if she left Tommy in the hands of this Fae. She knew she would never be able to enjoy the riot of color in the trees, woodsmoke in the air, or the taste of beer, ever again.

  She wouldn’t be able to live with herself.

  Sorcha left her suitcase
where she had placed it beside the door. She called for a taxi and then found the spare cover for her harp and slung the carrying strap over her shoulder. She locked Gran’s house and went outside to wait for the cab.

  There was no traffic at this time of night, and the trip was shockingly fast. She reached the Black Rose and paid the cabbie with no real plan for what to do once she got inside. But she had her cláirseach, and she knew it worked on this Fae.

  She wasn’t surprised to find the back door unlocked and a light on in the hall. She followed the corridor, heart in her throat, to the taproom, and stopped dead when she saw Tommy sitting in a chair at the center of the space.

  Behind him, holding a knife to Tommy’s throat, stood a Fae she had never seen before. He was dressed like the one she’d killed in New York, in the finery of half a dozen centuries and several continents, but his beauty outshone Keiran’s in every way. His hair was long, black, and swept all the way to the floor, threaded with silver leaves. Long legs were cased in indigo-dyed blue jeans, artfully frayed at the hem and no doubt ruinously expensive. His shirt was Indian, silk, and embroidered with jewels. Atop it he wore a rococo frock coat of gray velvet embellished with silver wire roses.

  For a second she felt a sense of relief. This was not the Fae she had attacked in the alley earlier, angry and intent on revenge. Then the sense of relief vanished and cold dread took its place when she remembered that Fae’s warnings about others who might be looking for her.

  “Who are you?” she asked. She realized she didn’t even know the name of the Fae she had spoken to earlier in the night, but she suspected she knew the name of this one.

  Her question appeared to amuse him. “I am,” he said, considering, “shortly to be the one fixed star in your dwindling universe.” And he smiled as though pleased by the thought.

  Suspicion turned to certainty. “You’re the Prince Consort,” she said, wishing she’d asked her earlier visitor more questions.

  “At your service,” he said, managing to bow—gracefully, the hem of his coat swirling around his knees—without removing the silver knife from Tommy’s throat.

  “Put the harp down there against the wall, gently,” he said, “lest it make some unpleasant sound and I flinch.” He turned the pale blade against Tommy’s neck to catch the light. “Your friend might not enjoy that.”

  Without the harp, she’d be defenseless against the Fae’s glamour. She hesitated. The Prince Consort flicked his blade again, and this time a red spot bloomed on Tommy’s throat.

  She set the harp down.

  “Come closer,” the Prince Consort said.

  She walked to the center of the room but kept a table between herself and the dangerous Fae. His assessment was as blatant as the one she had received from her unnamed visitor earlier that evening, but there was a coldness, a clinical quality to the Prince’s perusal. It was the opposite of the warm appraisal she had been treated to by her mysterious Fae, the one who had only sought to warn her, and she suddenly very much regretted felling him in the alley with her harp.

  “Let Tommy go,” she said.

  “I think not,” said the Prince Consort. “At least, not as long as you’re wearing cold iron.” His eyes slid over her neck, her wrists, and her ankles, searching for the metal.

  He wasn’t going to find it. And she wasn’t going to take it off. If she did, she’d be his puppet, powerless to resist his commands. Like she had been with Keiran. This Fae would be able to reach down into her soul and take her very identity from her, as Gran and the old men had warned when she’d been too young and too foolish to listen.

  “I won’t take it off,” she said.

  “Then I will kill him,” said the Prince.

  Chapter 4

  Sorcha tried not to focus on the knife at Tommy’s throat. She looked the Prince in the eye and said, “You won’t kill him.” She prayed she was right.

  “Why not?” he asked. It sounded like he was quizzing her.

  “Because you want something from me, and Tommy is your only way to get it.”

  He looked pleased, which was worrying. “You reason well,” he conceded. “Not all artists do. Some of you are skilled, and some of you play by pure instinct, and there are those who can bring both to their craft, but intelligence is the rarest component. We will deal well with each other, I think.”

  She had no plans to deal with him at all. “I won’t be your trained lap-Druid.”

  The Prince sighed. “I suppose that is what Elada told you, but then he is Miach MacCecht’s lapdog, so he would put it that way.”

  So his name was Elada. “Elada didn’t seem like anyone’s lapdog.”

  “Even Fae dogs are superior in all ways to human men.”

  She could see only one weakness in this glittering creature: his vanity. She had no other weapons to use against him, so she struck at it. “‘Superior’ isn’t the word I would use for your kind.” Cruel. Soulless. “But Elada at least seemed somewhat human.”

  “He’s not,” said the Prince flatly. “And I would caution you against making that mistake with any of our kind. A flannel shirt and an affinity for electronics don’t make a Fae human. What makes you think the sorcerer and his right hand have your best interests at heart any more than I do?”

  “I don’t,” she admitted. “But Elada never held a knife to my friend’s throat.”

  The silver blade glimmered and then disappeared in the blink of an eye. “There,” said her adversary. “No knife.”

  Tommy scrambled to get away from the Fae, but the Prince said, “Sit,” in a voice resonant with power, and Tommy dropped to the floor, obedient as a dog.

  As Sorcha would be if she took off her cold iron.

  “Now can we talk?” asked the Prince, indicating a chair. He took a seat himself—the silver leaves in his hair tinkling like bells when he moved—and waited for her. She looked at Tommy’s pleading eyes and knew she didn’t have a choice.

  “What did Elada offer you?” asked the Prince.

  “Nothing but a warning about you,” Sorcha replied.

  “Because he and Miach wish to exploit your power for their own ends,” said the Prince pleasantly.

  “So do you.”

  The Prince shrugged. “You have a choice between two masters. We all answer to someone, and derive our place in the hierarchy, our prestige, from the one we serve. Miach MacCecht is a petty criminal and Elada is his right hand. They are exiles from the Court. When the Wild Hunt returns—which it will, have no doubt, whether you help me or not—Miach and Elada will die, along with all their followers.”

  “Why? When there are so few of you left, why kill your own kind?”

  “Because Miach MacCecht has possessed the power to free the Court for two thousand years. Because he has thwarted others who sought to do so. He is a traitor to his race and he will be punished for his treachery. And he has fathered an army of bastards who fancy themselves equal to the People. They will not be tolerated by the Queen when she returns.”

  “It seems to me that I have a third choice,” said Sorcha. “That’s to have nothing to do with either of you.”

  “Neutrality is not an option for you. Even if you sit this fight out, once the Court returns, they will find the last of the Druids. Some they will keep. The ones they know they can trust, the ones allied to true Fae. The ones who make themselves of use to us. The rest they will kill.”

  “You say that, but if I don’t help you free them, who will?”

  “There are others like you. Hundreds, possibly thousands of latent Druids. If you don’t help me, others will. Refuse me and your friend dies for nothing. Accept my offer, accept my training, unlock your gifts, and you will be rewarded.”

  She knew better than to accept rewards from the Fae. She didn’t believe the Prince’s brothers and sisters would spare her if she released them, but she couldn’t
let Tommy die.

  She would have to go along with the Prince’s plan until Tommy was safe.

  “Let Tommy go and I’ll help you,” she offered.

  “Remove the cold iron you are wearing and we will strike a bargain.”

  “I can’t.”

  The Prince’s perfect brows rose. “Can’t, or won’t?”

  Both.

  “Can’t,” she replied. “It’s a piercing. I can’t remove it here.”

  He smiled. His nostrils flared, his eyes widened fractionally, and he assessed her once more, this time with avid interest.

  Cold terror washed over her. Keiran had never looked at her like that. To him, she had been an object. The Fae were not fond of recorded music. They were sybarites, hungry for sensation, because their own ability to feel was so atrophied. They prized the physical sensation, the vibration of real music. They acquired musicians the way rich men acquired stereo components, and gave them as much thought.

  They did not become aroused by them, and the Prince was clearly—visibly, through the denim in his jeans—aroused.

  “Show me this piercing,” he said.

  “No.”

  The Prince snapped his fingers. “Come,” he said in a voice that Sorcha could tell was resonant with power. The iron allowed her to hear through it, to understand the sense of the word without responding to its command.

  Tommy had no such protection. He leaped up like a dog and trotted to the Prince’s side, eyes alive with terror and guilt.

  “I’m sorry, Sorcha,” he sobbed.

  “Quiet,” said the Prince.

  “It’s all right, Tommy,” Sorcha said. “This is my fault, not yours.”

  “How gracious,” said the Prince. “I knew you had no family, and I feared you might have no attachments, possess no lovers or friends. That would have made it hard to convince you to act in your best interest. And then I would have had to hurt you to compel obedience.”