“He’s right,” said Elada.
Miach cursed. “When were you going to tell me that part?”
“I only learned myself last night. She told me about it. His name was Keiran. He kept her as a singing pet, like a caged bird, for a year.”
“That won’t matter to Donal.”
“Does it matter to you?”
“Yes. Of course it does,” said Miach. “But Donal understands what that means as well as you and I do. She’s already killed. She’s got access to her Druid power, even if she doesn’t know how to use it. That makes her very dangerous.”
For a second Miach was silent. Then he added, “And she could have killed you in that alley, old friend.”
“She didn’t mean to kill Keiran. She was horrified by what happened. She’s softhearted. That’s why she went back to the Black Rose. The Prince had her friend prisoner.”
“Another liability,” said Miach. “There is no room in this fight for a softhearted Druid with the power to bring down the wall. She can be manipulated through her friends.”
“She knows that. She wants to bring the fiddler with us so the Prince can’t use him against her.”
“You cannot come here,” said Miach, “because Donal has made himself at home and I cannot eject him without causing a war with New York. And Finn’s people are watching the house. You know what the Druids did to his wife. He only tolerates Beth Carter to keep the peace and because he’s not certain he can best her and Conn together. You cannot come here.”
“Where, then?”
“Deirdre’s?”
“She hates Druids,” said Elada. “Almost as much as Finn does.” And she was mad, unpredictable, her mind unhinged by the horrors she had experienced when the Druids had held her and tried to warp her art for their purposes.
“She hates Druids,” agreed Miach. “So it will be the last place Finn and Donal look for her. And Deirdre is a recluse, so they’re unlikely to pay her a visit. Her house, in any case, is warded, so the Prince won’t be able to scry you or Sorcha there. And I may call on Deirdre without eliciting comment. At least, from anyone but my wife.”
That much was true, as Miach had been Deirdre’s lover in the past, and Fae like Finn and Donal would not see the sorcerer’s liaison with Helene Whitney as a reason to forgo sex with the beautiful, damaged Deirdre.
It was not ideal. Deirdre’s house was a neat little Georgian structure tucked away on Beacon Hill’s Pinckney Street. It was no fortress, but it was discreet. And perhaps if he could enlist Conn and Beth to his cause, it might be made secure.
“I’ll tell Liam and Nial to bring you the Range Rover. Hopefully no one is watching them.”
“Tell them to drive out of the city first, shake off anyone who might be tailing them, and leave the keys in the ignition,” said Elada. Then he reconsidered. “Tell them to bring the minivan.” He hated the minivan, but it was armored and spacious, and while the Prince couldn’t use guns, his Druid followers almost invariably did.
Elada called Deirdre’s landline next, because she had no cell phone and there was always someone—the housekeeper, Deirdre’s human lover, Kevin, or Deirdre herself—at home.
Kevin picked up after a dozen rings. When Elada explained the situation, he agreed immediately.
“Don’t you need to check with Deirdre?”
“It’s my house, too,” said Kevin. “And we failed Miach when Helene came to us for help.”
Elada had known there was something amiss between Deirdre and Kevin, but he didn’t know it had originated that night. Elada had been in Ireland, injured in an explosion—a bomb filled with iron filings—at the Prince Consort’s compound. Miach had been taken prisoner by his son Brian, who’d planned to kill him as part of a scheme to release the Prince Consort from the other world. The Prince Consort had been released, but Miach had lived, and his son Brian, a half-breed, had been flung into that other plane.
Elada did not want to come between whatever trouble was brewing between Deirdre and Kevin, but he couldn’t turn down their offer.
When he returned to the kitchen, he found Sorcha wearing a floral kimono—another vintage find, no doubt—and stirring sludge in a pot. It was an appealingly domestic image, except for the sludge. She poured a steaming mug and handed it to him.
It didn’t smell like coffee. “What is this?”
“It’s a coffee substitute,” she said brightly.
“Made out of what?”
“It tastes better if you don’t know what’s in it.”
“That is never a recommendation.”
“You could at least give it the benefit of doubt.”
“If you’d given me the same last night, you would be safe from the Prince now.”
“That’s an argument for giving the coffee-like beverage a try.”
Elada set the cup on the counter. “No, it isn’t. I’m the exception that proves the rule. You’re right to be wary of most Fae. We cannot go to Miach’s yet, because there are other Fae hunting you—who know what you did in New York.”
Chapter 9
Sorcha felt light-headed with terror. She’d always feared that Keiran’s friends would connect his death with her singing, that the Fae would begin hunting her. She glanced at the iron lattice of the kitchen window, almost as good as new. Almost. But Elada had burst through it . . .
“It isn’t safe to stay here,” he said, following her eyes to the window. “But there is a place we can go. A friend’s house. Deirdre doesn’t like Druids, but her house is warded against magical attacks and because of her history with your race, no one will suspect she is hiding you.”
“Why is she willing to take us in?” she asked.
“Relationship troubles,” said Elada.
“That answers absolutely nothing.”
“You’ll see when we get there. For now, pack a bag.”
“I already did, last night,” she admitted. “I was going to run, but I couldn’t go when Tommy called. I couldn’t leave him with that Fae. And I can’t leave him in the hospital.”
“We’ll pick him up on the way,” said Elada. “As long as we can stop for coffee first.”
He dumped Sorcha’s roasted dandelion brew into the sink.
“You didn’t even taste it.”
“Did it have caffeine in it?”
“No.”
He flashed her a smile. “Then I don’t care how it tastes.”
She supposed she ought to be happy. Elada’s caffeine addiction made him seem a little more human.
When they were ready to leave, Sorcha slung her harp in its carrying case over one arm and her bag over the other. Elada took the bag wordlessly off her shoulder and headed down Gran’s long gravel drive.
There was a minivan parked at the end. No one ever parked in front of Gran’s house. The neighbors had been tongue-lashed one too many times by the old woman and no one had been brave enough to discover if Sorcha was any different. The sight was unusual enough that Sorcha hesitated.
“It’s okay. It’s mine. Miach had his sons bring it here for us. You didn’t think I was going to carry your fiddler friend on my back, did you?”
“I didn’t think you drove a minivan.”
“It’s an armored minivan,” he said defensively.
“Where do you get an armored minivan?”
“Quincy,” he said, without missing a beat.
“Right. I’m sure they have year-end armored minivan sales there. Where did you really get it?”
“The same kind of place you get an iron-strung harp. The kind of shop where the owner knows better than to ask questions about what it will be used for.”
The two Fae who emerged from behind the armored minivan had taken care to remain hidden until it was too late to run back to the house.
Sorcha experienced a new kind of terror. She couldn’t reme
mber the last time she’d seen a Fae outdoors in broad daylight. Usually she encountered them in bars, shadowy, liminal places, the spaces fairy tales existed in, between dawn and dusk. Out in the open, with the sun shining down on them, they were somehow more real and more frightening.
They weren’t idle Fae like Keiran. These two looked more like Elada. At least in terms of their physique. They both wore their hair long, but not so long that it reached their elbows, and not loose. They had swords on their backs, and their backs were broad. They looked much alike otherwise. It was possible they were brothers. They were both blue eyed and blond and had wide, cruel mouths.
“I knew your master had perverse tastes, Elada Brightsword,” said the one who edged out in front. “But I didn’t know you shared them.” The nod of his head indicated Sorcha.
“Don’t worry about them,” said Elada. “Just get in the car.” He was talking to Sorcha, but his eyes never left the Fae. Or, more accurately, his eyes never left the Fae who wasn’t talking.
But the talker had more to say. “So Miach spoke the truth. You bound yourself to a bantling Druid.”
“What does he mean?”
“Just get in the car.”
“We’re going to kill the Druid, Brightsword,” said the quiet one, finally. “But we’d prefer to kill you first. We’ll get no credit for killing you after. Everyone will say you were going to follow her into death anyway.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” Sorcha said, feeling like she was watching a movie in a foreign language.
Elada ignored her and drew his sword from his back. “Can we do this quickly?” he asked. “I haven’t had my coffee yet.”
“With pleasure,” said the talkative Fae, who drew his own weapon. It wasn’t a sword. It was more like an ax, glimmering silver in the early morning sunlight, the blade chased with patterns of writhing animals, the handle set with flashing diamonds, and it would have been a pretty ax if Elada’s head hadn’t been its target.
She felt the music then. Just as she had when she was a girl, when the leaves had danced and swirled around her. And just as she had in the snow with Keiran. And in the alley with Elada. Her killing voice was climbing up out of her, like a squirrel scrabbling up a tree. Only this time it wasn’t trying to protect her, it was trying to protect Elada.
Stupid voice. It could definitely kill both the talkative and the quiet Fae, but she had to stop it, or it would kill Elada, too.
The quiet Fae drew two short knives and began to circle her Fae. When she had begun to think of him as hers, she wasn’t quite sure, but there it was.
Unfair. Two against one. The voice wanted out, but what Sorcha wanted was to help Elada.
She ripped the cover off her cláirseach just as the first clash of blades rang out: Elada’s sword meeting the talkative Fae’s ax. Collision and withdrawal. When Elada stepped back, the quiet Fae darted in and tried to stab him.
That’s when Sorcha struck. Not a full chord, but two deep notes. The Fae closest to her, the quiet one with two knives and no sense of fairness, dropped his blades and cried out. He clasped his hands over his ears and crumpled to his knees.
Elada was next in the line of her sonic fire, but he didn’t go down. His back was turned to her and she saw his powerful shoulders shudder, but instead of falling to his knees, he lunged and skewered the Fae armed with the ax through the stomach.
He wrenched his sword free and his victim wailed. “That,” Elada said to Sorcha through clenched teeth, “is the part that hurts.”
The talkative Fae stumbled back a pace, clutching at his wound. Then he backed purposefully toward the line of trees, keeping his eyes on Elada.
Elada paid him no mind and turned to Sorcha. Her heart stopped. His eyes were bleeding. Crimson ran from his nose and ears.
She placed her hand against the iron strings and took the vibration into herself, deadening it.
“I hurt you,” she said.
“It’s not as bad as it looks. Get in the car,” Elada rasped.
“I was trying to help,” she said. And trying not to kill you, she added silently to herself.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Just get in the car.”
“I’m sorry about the coffee,” she replied, completely irrational.
He smiled then. “Just get in.”
“What about those guys?” she asked. The quiet Fae was lying on the grass, not moving. Sorcha couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive. The other had disappeared into the trees.
“Donal can clean up his own mess,” said Elada.
“So these aren’t the Prince’s men.”
“No. These are Donal’s followers. He’s the Fae who controls Manhattan. And you are racking up a lot of enemies, Sorcha Kavanaugh.”
“How did they find me?”
“They probably followed Liam and Nial from Miach’s house, which means we definitely can’t go there. And that’s inconvenient, as I’m iron poisoned and can’t heal myself.”
He reached stiffly for the driver’s-side door. “Let me,” she said, taking the keys.
She watched him climb gingerly into the passenger side. “Mass General,” she said decisively as she started the car. “We can get Tommy and they can look at your . . .”
Elada shook his head. “Human doctors can’t do anything for iron poisoning, or iron injuries.”
“What does the harp do?” she asked. “I’ve never been sure. It doesn’t seem to have any effect on humans.”
“You should ask Miach these questions,” said Elada, sounding hoarse and exhausted. “He’s the sorcerer. He understands how your power works. And until you do, please don’t try to help again.”
“That was two against one,” she said. “I thought they were going to kill you.”
He shook his head, sending drops of blood spattering over the dashboard and onto Sorcha’s hands on the wheel. “I had it handled. It’s what I’m trained to do. What I’ve done for two thousand years. I can fight multiple opponents and keep someone else safe while I do it.”
“That isn’t why I used the harp,” she said.
She took a deep breath. Her life was in his hands. There was no running from these creatures. She understood that now. She had to learn to defend herself, and until she could, she would be at the mercy of Elada and his sorcerer. It was time for the truth.
“I used the harp,” she said, “because I was pretty sure it wouldn’t kill you, and I know that my voice will. I can’t control it. The day I killed Keiran, it just happened without any warning. And I think it tried to come out once when I was a child, and Gran stopped it. Today I felt it clawing its way out of me. It happened when that Fae drew his ax on you. But I couldn’t make it come when the Prince had Tommy. It won’t answer to me.”
She took her eyes off the road—and the Jamaica Plain traffic—to look at Elada and see how he had taken that.
He was pale, but the bleeding had stopped, and he was looking at her intently.
And a creeping suspicion dawned on her. “You know something about my power that I don’t know,” she said. “Do you know how to control it?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “And I was young, just with Miach a few decades before the revolt. I’ve only seen a handful of Druids trained, and never a stone singer. I assume that it’s a lot of the same things that other kinds of Druids do. They learn about patterns and how to channel energy through their bodies, how to control the flow instead of being washed along with it.”
A beat later he added, “Or they die.”
• • •
She had tried to save his life. His frightened little Druid had survived an evening of torment from the Prince Consort, weathered a night of Fae-wine-fueled lovemaking, and tried to fight two of Donal’s company. She was reckless, stupid, and brave, and he couldn’t think of any finer qualities in a woman.
/> Admittedly, she’d almost killed him. She would certainly have killed him if she’d used stone song, and a little iron poisoning was preferable to being flayed alive by her voice.
She needed to learn to control it. She’d come into her power accidentally, unknowingly, the day she had killed Keiran. Elada knew from observing Helene and Miach that keeping secrets damaged relationships, but telling Sorcha was too great a risk until they were someplace safe. She’d been through too much in the last twenty-four hours. Even if Elada did tell her, she would have questions he couldn’t answer.
His nose had stopped bleeding by the time they reached Mass General. They stopped, to Sorcha’s amazement, at a Starbucks along the way, but it was going to take more than coffee to patch him up. For now, though, he would do what he had to do to keep her safe.
• • •
“What now?” Sorcha asked as they pulled up to the emergency room.
“Park up there,” said Elada.
“That’s the fire lane.”
“The building’s not on fire. Pull up there.”
“Do you always break the law so casually?” she asked.
“Human laws don’t apply to the Fae.”
“Well, I’m human, and I have a human driver’s license that I don’t want to lose.”
“You won’t,” said Elada. “I promise. Stay here and don’t move the car for anyone except a fire truck. I’ll be right out.”
“I don’t like this.”
“You don’t have to like it. But sometimes you have to do what’s necessary for the people you care about. I’ll be back with Tommy in a few minutes.”
Sorcha watched Elada cross to the emergency room entrance. He stopped along the way to speak to the policeman who stood outside, pointed at the minivan, and received a nod and a handshake in reply. Then he disappeared inside the glass doors.
She rarely drove and when she did, she wasn’t a rule breaker. She stopped behind school buses, she slowed down in residential neighborhoods, and she never double-parked. Sitting here like this, in a strange car, made her nervous. Given the Fae attitude toward private property, which could be called casual at best, it was possible that this was a stolen car. Or that it had stolen plates. Every time the policeman directing traffic at the entrance turned her way, Sorcha tensed.
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