His idiot grandchild had relayed to him Deirdre’s exact words about Brigid last night. They did not surprise him. Few Fae had understood what he had with Brigid.
The Fae rarely made permanent alliances like the one he had made with her. In human terms she had been his wife, but in his experience, mortal marriages were rarely the kind of partnership he had shared with Brigid. Most of the Fae and all of the human women he had ever slept with had been dazzled by his charisma. On the battlefield, a war leader wanted followers. In the bedroom he wanted something else entirely.
Brigid had given him that. She had never been blinded by his charm, beguiled by his voice, or in search of wealth or position for herself. She had been drawn by his power, but only because she was such a formidable female that she could find no equal for her will.
Brigid had been the kind of woman the pale northerners had written sagas about. When an insult threatened the honor of his house, it was Brigid who handed him his sword. When intrigue gripped the court, it was Brigid who plotted how she and Finn would come out ahead. She got the better of almost everyone she dealt with—sometimes she even got the better of him.
They had been equals, partners, and lovers, even if no one else had loved Brigid the way he had. He had often noticed that strength in a man was admired and in a woman despised. Brigid had been so strong that the Druids had been forced to invent new ways to torture her.
He would never forgive them. He had decided to tolerate Beth Carter, because she had some of Brigid’s strength and none of the Prince’s desire to bring down the wall.
While Finn hated the Druids, he did not want the Wild Hunt back. The Queen’s rule had been corrupt and arbitrary, and while he enjoyed making war, he loathed making it on the whims of a decadent ruler. And he had a family here he was fond of, even fucking Patrick, who was not the brightest of his descendants. That didn’t mean he wanted to see him dancing to the Queen’s tune.
Altogether, he liked running Charlestown. It required much of the same skill as leading an army into battle, without the drawbacks of sleeping in a tent or dickering over territory. And if he sometimes coveted Miach’s holdings on the other side of the city, he also recalled how difficult it was to hold multiple positions during a war. Besides, he didn’t much like the beach.
He would be content if he could keep the Druid and return to a state of low-level hostility with Miach. That Miach’s granddaughter was here probably meant the sorcerer was ready to negotiate to get his former right hand back. Finn was prepared to let Elada go, though he wanted a right hand for Garrett. They could find another Fae with that talent.
Nieve was preceded into Finn’s parlor by little Garrett. Finn had been keeping a human lover until recently who had wanted to bar the child from the public receiving rooms in the house. She’d fussed over occasional cereal or chocolate ground into the Persian carpets and the damask upholstery, about the vases that sometimes broke and the mirrors streaked with handprints.
Finn had turned her out. He enjoyed luxury as much as any Fae, but he did not want to be owned by it. And he had raised generations in this house, thank you very much, without a care for handprints on mirrors.
Some things, however, had changed. Today Garrett blazed into the room like a comet, gave him a perfunctory, “Hi, Gramps!” and climbed into the chair behind the desk in the corner to peck away at Finn’s laptop.
“Gramps” was no doubt Miach’s doing, and it would have to stop. The computer . . .
“Sorry,” said Nieve, coming in breathlessly behind the boy. “He’s looking for games. His little friends have them, but we don’t have any at Granddad’s house. Except on Elada’s computer,” she added pointedly.
“Your husband is busy today,” said Finn. “But you can leave the boy here for a visit, if you like.”
The girl didn’t accept the dismissal. “We can’t go back to Granddad’s. The social services people are there and they want Garrett.”
“Can’t Miach deal with them?” asked Finn. They had these problems from time to time with the human authorities from the city. The ones who were newly assigned to Southie and Charlestown and didn’t know better than to tangle with the Good Neighbors.
“Miach dealt with the ones who wanted to vaccinate him.”
Human medicines were toxic for the Fae and half-bloods. Nieve had nearly died in a human hospital while having Garrett, their drugs poisoning her as she labored to deliver the child.
“It’s that teacher from the elementary school who won’t leave us alone. They’ve seen Garrett at the playground with the other children and they assume he’s six and should be in first grade. That teacher is the one who called social services on us. The old man glamoured the child welfare people into forgetting about us, but he can’t seem to glamour the teacher.”
“If the teacher turns up here, we may need to use more persuasive methods,” Finn said. And he didn’t have time right now to dicker with some jumped-up human pedant.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Nieve. “Eventually Garrett will probably go to that school. But not just yet,” she said scooping the child up. Finn had to agree. Little Garrett still had the energy and attention span of a three-year-old and would not do well caged in a classroom. He’d hated his own lessons, forced on him because even a warrior had to be able to read and write in the overcomplicated language of the Fae.
“And Elada?” Nieve finally asked. “Can we see him?”
“Do you think you can persuade him to renounce the Druid?”
“I’m not sure. He didn’t just meet her, you know. He’s been going to the Black Rose and mooning over her for months.”
“How romantic,” said Finn. “Will you convince him to give her up?”
“I’ll try.”
“Do. It’s the only way you will get him back.”
• • •
Nieve left Garrett, at her father-in-law’s request, in the drawing room. She climbed the stairs to the third-floor bedroom she usually shared with her husband, but Garrett, as Finn had said, wasn’t there.
She checked the rest of the bedrooms at the top of the house and the attics as well but found no sign of the Druid or her father’s former right hand.
She didn’t want to check the basement. The idea of finding Elada or the woman he was in love with chained in the cold and dark filled her with dread.
Nieve went anyway.
She had fought her grandfather for three long years to be allowed to see her husband and his family again, but she’d never felt completely welcome in this house. For one thing, Finn had true Fae followers who were not as assimilated as Miach and Elada. They tended to hang about the house, playing video games in the basement and teasing the half-breeds. Nieve found them cold and alien, and just occasionally one of them would try something with her. She didn’t roam the house without Garrett if she could help it.
Today there was a knot of them in the finished portion of the basement clustered around the giant television playing a game that involved castles, knights, chivalry, and jousting. And clustered at the pool table, resenting the appropriation of their game console, were a half dozen of Finn’s half-breed descendants.
“Make us something to eat, would you, Nieve?” called one of the half-breeds.
She flipped them the bird and headed for the unfinished portion of the basement.
“Have a little pity,” said another. “We’re starving.”
“After I find Garrett’s winter coat,” she called out. It was an excuse for searching the basement, and she knew none of them would want to help.
She didn’t miss the movement when one of the Tuatha Dé Danann set aside his game control and followed her down the long hall. She ignored him. If Cermait wanted to watch her rustle through boxes for half an hour, he could.
She entered the dank and unplastered portion of the cellar, where the furnace was located and
the hot water heater and all the usual jumble of a large family’s off-season possessions, the sleds and kiddy pools and skis and boxes and boxes of clothes.
Neither Elada nor Sorcha was there, but she made a show of opening and closing boxes until she was almost certain that Cermait was gone, then she waded through the stacked cartons on the other side of the storage space where a padlocked door beckoned.
Nieve didn’t have the craft her grandfather or Garrett did, but simple locks were easy enough to pick with the magic she did have. She felt the tumblers slide into place and the lock fall open, then she opened the door.
It was pitch-black inside and she almost missed the figure lying on the ground. Sorcha Kavanaugh was curled into a ball. She lifted her head from the ground and squinted at Nieve.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Nieve. I’ve come to help you escape.”
She heard the footstep on the gritty floor a second too late. She whirled to find the door blocked by Cermait, who was watching her with cold intent. “What, I wonder, will Finn and Garrett say about this?”
Chapter 17
Finn had to take his computer away from little Garrett and get some work done. No sooner had he wrested the device from his grandson than he was interrupted once more, this time by Patrick, who was still smarting from the tongue-lashing he had received from Deirdre.
“There’s a teacher to see you.”
Finn sighed. “Take him out back and make it clear to him that Garrett is none of his affair.”
“It’s not a he,” said Patrick. “It’s a she.” He grinned. “And she’s pretty.”
“And impervious to glamour,” said Finn.
Patrick’s face grew puzzled. He did not, Finn recalled, have an extensive vocabulary.
“Can we still take her out back?”
Or much judgment.
“Show her upstairs, Patrick,” Finn said. “And take Garrett down to the kitchen for lunch.”
Miach might not be able to glamour the girl with magic, but the suddenly puritanical sorcerer had probably not tried more direct tactics. She was human and female. Bending her to Fae will would be easy.
The teacher, when she appeared, was more than pretty. She was lovely and fresh faced and strawberry haired and he decided that he had just discovered an entirely agreeable way to pass his afternoon and deal with a vexing problem at the same time. She had freckles, which he liked, and slightly crooked front teeth, which made her pretty Cupid’s-bow lips all the more appealing. Her beauty wasn’t the kind that graced magazine covers today, but it was the sort he had regularly plucked from hedgerows in another era, and enjoying it today would make him feel young and alive instead of weighted with care.
“Mr. Finn?” she asked in a voice that was huskier than he expected.
“Just Finn,” he replied, taking the hand she offered and bringing it to his lips.
She looked more skeptical than flattered and retracted her hand without seeming to be affected by his presence. Unusual.
“I’m Ann Phillips,” she said. “And I teach at the school your son should be attending.”
Her gaze was steady and forthright. She was completely unintimidated by him.
And she thought Garrett was his son. Why wouldn’t she? In human terms he looked to be in his early thirties, though other Fae could sense or guess his true age easily. And his was a famous name, so few would fail to know his years or exploits. Normally he took pride in his longevity. Many Fae had tried to kill him over the years. Most of them were dead. But somehow he did not want this pretty young teacher to know that he was old enough to have grandchildren, even though he was old enough to have, quite literally, nations of descendants, if the Fae reproduced with the alacrity of humans.
“Garrett is being homeschooled,” he said.
“By you?” she asked, the note of astonishment in her tone vaguely insulting.
“You think me incapable of schooling a toddler?” he asked.
“You don’t seem the juice-boxes-and-nap-time type,” she said.
That was a promising opening. “May I offer you a drink, Miss Phillips?”
“In the middle of the day?”
“Are you teetotal during daylight? I’ve always found that to be a peculiar Americanism.”
“No,” she said flatly.
He reached for the decanter. “Then what will you have?”
“Whiskey,” she said without hesitation.
He liked her more and more. He offered her a seat, and she took it. That was getting closer to the position he wanted her in.
“What type do I seem, Miss Phillips?”
This was the moment she would warm up. “Call me Ann,” she would say, and matters would progress from there.
“You seem the criminal type. I realize that I’m new to the neighborhood and I could be trading in stereotypes, but the flashy cars and preponderance of tattooed young men does suggest that you aren’t an ordinary businessman.”
“And what would you know about ordinary business in Charlestown, Miss Phillips?”
“Would it make any difference if my name was Donohue? Or Kenny?”
“If it was, you would know better than to meddle in my business.”
“Is that meant to be a threat?”
“A warning. Charlestown is not Boston, Miss Phillips.”
“Then I’ll take it as a challenge. Social services might not be willing to cross you, Mr. Finn, but I am. That child belongs in school.”
“What is it you think you’re going to accomplish?” he asked, fascinated by her resilience. She was standing by one of the long windows and the sunlight turned her strawberry hair a warm golden hue. He found her lower lip, plump and red, deeply enticing.
“An intervention. I’ve seen the birth certificate. Garrett’s mother was barely more than a child herself when she had him. I’d like to break the cycle here and get her and her child out from under your thumb.”
“Garrett,” he said, coming clean, because he didn’t want this woman to think he seduced children, “isn’t my son. Nieve is in a relationship with . . . my nephew.”
“My mistake. I apologize.” She set her glass on the table. It was empty, but the whiskey hadn’t seemed to affect her. And she seemed genuinely to regret her assumptions. “There was no father named. The address the hospital had on file was this one. And there is a lot of that kind of thing to go around in neighborhoods like this—young girls being taken advantage of.”
“My nephew lives here as well. It was he who gave this address at the hospital. And he was only a few years older than Nieve at the time.” Not that it made what he did right, though Finn was never going to admit that to Miach.
The whiskey glass on the table began to shake. It triggered a memory vivid and hateful. Stone song. And he knew what would happen next.
Out the trembling window he saw a familiar figure exit the house and run across the street to the grass slopes of the monument.
The glass shattered. The windows blew out. The entire house began to tremble and without another thought Finn wrenched Ann Phillips into his arms and passed.
• • •
Sorcha had lain in the darkness for hours. She’d sensed Elada’s distress with her hearing, known that someone had beaten him sometime during the night. She wished she could send more than her hearing, that she could send her thoughts to him as well. He was there because of her, and she loved him.
Garrett had left her unshackled and that was something, but she was locked in the cold damp closet and had no way to get out. She touched the thing circling her neck repeatedly, trying to figure out how to remove it, but it felt as though it were underneath her skin, had burrowed into her flesh.
She’d tried to quiz Garrett about it, about the kind of magic it was, because Miach had been teaching her defensive skills, how to counte
r the things Fae and Druid mages were likely to throw at her. She decided after some time that the lariat around her neck, the one that started to choke her every time she used her singing voice, was a geis of some kind. It was a simple command, a binary spell. It could prohibit one thing and one thing only. If she thought like a Fae, she should able to circumvent it.
So no singing. That much was clear. But there were other sounds she might able to make that had power. They’d spent so damned much time on humming, on using her voice without opening her mouth, because that was safer than unleashing her full power, that she was a master of that minor art.
She tried it now. Just a tentative little buzz in the back of her throat. She tensed, waiting for the lariat to move, to start closing around her neck. When nothing happened, she kept on. In the darkness she heard little eddies of dirt on the floor begin to dance. She stopped.
Moving dirt wasn’t going to get her out of here. And it wasn’t going to save Elada. And she was beginning to think that a house in Quincy and possibly even an armored minivan sounded nice. Wonderful, in fact. A home without iron beds or windows or door latches. Maybe with a few pots, though. She liked cooking in iron, wondered vaguely if it would poison the Fae the way lead in pewter had poisoned past generations.
Her mind was drifting. That was the cold and the dark and her body’s exhaustion and she couldn’t give in to it. She tried to think of how to use the hum. She could move things with the hum. Not large objects. Just small, light things. Leaves, when she had been a child. Pebbles with Miach. But leaves moved in storms; so did sand. Large collections of small objects moving could be powerful.
Garrett had said the spell around her neck was a geis. Miach had told her that most gaesa were tattooed on or cut into the skin. In a pinch, or for a more temporary spell, a sorcerer could just use a pen. She didn’t think that the design had been cut into her neck. There was no blood and the marks didn’t feel like scars. And she didn’t think Garrett had had time to tattoo her skin. Tattoos were painstaking. The needle deposited pinpoints of ink, not great swaths.
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