“But uncle, I love you. You can’t die, you can’t!” I wanted to curl up in a ball and sob. As a goddess, I’d been better equipped to handle these sorts of things, disappearances, instant aging, large dogs. I could probably have healed him.
Then I remembered something that my father said to me after I’d turned mortal. Jumping up, I placed a hand on either side of my mouth and yelled, “Father!” Nothing but the night sounds of the woods responded. Kneeling back down, I took Dillion’s hand.
“He can’t hear you,” Dillion said. “No one can. Only the power of the amulet granted me entrance. Cali, listen to me. You need to get out of here and get back to Ireland.” Dillion winced, seeming to be in an extraordinary amount of pain.
“What? How? I have no idea—” The very idea of finding my passport and going to that air-o-plane place again felt completely overwhelming to me in my current state.
“Listen to me,” Dillion said. “You have to climb the mountain. Climb to the top and jump off of it. There is a portal there that will take you home.”
“My home…or yours?” I asked, wariness sliding into my voice.
“Ireland. Go to Cadillac Mountain and find the portal. Get help…”
“Wait, uncle. Who is the true bearer of the amulet?” My heart pounded. “Is it Kellen? I need to know.”
He smiled at me, his eyes wistful. Dillion’s hand, which had been squeezing my own, relaxed its grip and his body disappeared before my eyes.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
KELLEN—FISHERMAN
“Cali!” I cried out as the car’s headlights drew closer to me in the middle of the road. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. I’d tasted death before, when it’d encroached like bile in the back of my throat. We were not strangers. Yet now, I’d become frozen. My death sped toward me, only a few feet away, and one thought popped into my mind: Cali.
“Move out of the way, eejit!” The sound of the male voice with a thick Irish brogue jolted me. So did the shove that forced me out of the road and into woods that banked it. Large hands gripped my shoulders, not intending to cause me pain, I assumed, but instead to save me. The car skidded some distance away, turned around, and began to return. It had been coming for me.
In the dark, I couldn’t see who had helped me, or see anything at all really. My eyes still worked to adjust from being plucked off of Skyler’s back in the moonlight and being plunged into the darkness of the still woods.
The hands picked me up and carried me. We ran through the dark as I caught the distinct smell of fish and woods. It tickled my nose as we moved forward. Intuition told me that this person could be trusted, but wariness still hovered. “Put me down. I can run myself.”
“And we’d be a-waitin’ all night for you for certain. I’ll carry you.”
Ignoring it, I looked ahead. A small cottage, cheerfully lit, stood in the distance. The last time I’d been in a cottage, it had been home to a psychotic warlock. Hopefully this experience would be better or I’d be giving Faerie a zero on the customer service scale.
Lights twinkled at each of the windows, and flowers sat in pots illuminated by exterior lighting. This wasn’t a hideout, but a home. Where had I felt that homey feeling before? Easy. Gran’s house, when she’d still been alive.
My savior lowered me to the ground and as we reached the front door, he pointed. “Wipe your feet on the mat.” A mat lay on the small cement porch before the entrance and I leaned toward it, squinting in the dark to read the word Welcome.
Dense woods surrounded the place, and I strained my ears to hear the sound of the sea. I couldn’t sense Cali anywhere. She’d disappeared from the map—or maybe I had. Cali, where are you?
Maybe if I called to her? “Cali!” My scream echoed back to me in the night, and though I listened intently, there was no reply.
An exclamation came from inside. “Why don’t you give them directions to this here house. Eejit!”
Scowling, I stayed on the porch, unsure of whether or not I could trust this person. Then from inside I heard: “Are you coming in or not?”
Short on options, I scratched my head, wiped my feet three times on the mat, and went inside.
My rescuer stood by a modest stove and looked up when I entered. “Tea?” he asked.
What the hell. “Yes, please. Make it plain.”
He smiled and went back to his preparations.
Unzipping my coat, I went to sit on a bench that faced a blazing fire. The warmth teased my frozen digits, making them feel incrementally normal. Chancing a look around the room, I noted that the cabin, though small in proportion, was well-kept. There weren’t many decorations and you certainly couldn’t say that it had all the comforts of home, yet it appeared tidy. Fishing nets and poles rested by the door. As I inhaled, I could smell the odor of fish again. Either this unusual man had eaten it for dinner or he worked as a fisherman. Judging by the size of his gear, I assumed the latter.
The home had a good feeling to it, like I’d be safe there—for the time being. At least until I came up with an alternative plan. It would be unfair of me to bring Arawn’s wrath down on this man, so I’d need to be on the move soon. Cali. I promised her that I’d come back to her, but I didn’t know where “back” was anymore.
The man dropped a blanket onto my shoulders and held a steaming mug of tea under my nose. Looking up, I could see the man clearly. He had a pale complexion with deep-set hazel eyes that regarded me with an air of speculation. His dishwater-blond hair had been cut very short, probably for ease of management. He looked younger than I’d first thought. Perhaps in his mid-thirties, like Stephen…
Taking the tea from him, I inclined my head in his direction. Sipping the tea, I tried not to wince as it scalded my tongue. The spicy concoction slid down my throat in a slow burn. “Thanks,” I offered after I’d finally managed to swallow my first taste. Glancing at him again, I took in the fisherman in detail.
He was dressed in a pair of overalls with worn knees. The canvas-looking material seemed to have discolored over time and there were unrecognizable stains all over it. Long underwear, white in color, peeked out from the sides of the overalls as he leaned over to stoke the fire.
The fisherman sat up and took another sip. “What’s your name, lad?”
“What’s your name? I know that you know mine, so why pretend?” I lifted the cup to my mouth and took another sip.
Chuckling, he smiled. “Taiclaigh. Call me Tai.”
Now that I’d warmed up, with a cup of tea to sustain me, I picked up on Tai’s Irish accent. “Oh, like a Thai restaurant.”
“They have named a restaurant after me? I’m famous.” His eyes crinkled as he smiled.
Extending my hand, I smiled. “Kellen.”
“Pleased to meet you, Kellen.” Tai clasped my hand and shook it heartily.
“Thanks for saving me.”
“My pleasure. That loony nearly took you out.”
“Yeah. That’s what it looked like anyway. Thanks for having my back. What were you doing out in the middle of the night, anyway?”
“What were you?” He chuckled as he countered, mimicking my earlier approach.
Another sip of tea to stall the questions I didn’t think I should answer. “I got lost. I had no idea where I was going. The car probably didn’t see me.”
Tai sipped his tea and nodded in agreement. “I was fishin’ for sea bass. You get some good ones at night.”
My cup at my mouth, I sipped before asking, “So you’re a fisherman, then?”
“Yes. Ten generations.”
“And you’re Irish.”
“Born and raised.”
We sat in companionable silence for a few moments, sipping our tea. Outside, I could hear the howl of the wind, or perhaps something else. The something that tried to run me down, maybe? Shivering, I drank more tea. “My Grandda was a fisherman,” I said.
“Is that so?” Tai got up and left the room. He soon returned with a plate of cheese, crackers,
summer sausage, and grapes. “Thought you might be hungry,” he said.
“I’m starving.” Gran had always warned me not to eat anything that the Good People gave me. If Tai was one of them, I’d already drunk the tea, so I’d sort of thrown that concept out the window.
Tai looked me in the eye. “How long are you going to run away from the second part of the prophecy, Kellen?”
Nearly falling off the chair, I spilt the dregs of my tea on my pants. “So you are one of them, huh? One of the Children of Danu? You people are everywhere, aren’t you?” I brushed ineffectually at my newly soaked pants.
“I am not one of them,” said Tai, his voice calm.
“Where did you learn of the prophecy, then?”
“Inside a cave in County Clare, when I was a boy.”
My breathing seemed to stop as a rushing sound filled my ears. I sat up straighter and took a deep, slow breath. “The second part of the prophecy has nothing to do with me.” I kept my tone even as I repeated what Cali had for so long. My eyes went to the pictures on the wall, different photographs taken of Tai with various people. Looking back at Tai, I reinforced my position. “I would never turn against Cali and her family.” I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. Cali…She was my life.
Tai looked back at me sadly. He reached up to scratch the stubble on his face. “It’s hard to know what we will do when we’re offered everything we’ve ever wanted.”
“I know,” I said. Staring into the fire, I did know, because Cali had been what I’d always wanted. I couldn’t imagine anything more.
“Maybe,” Tai said, tipping the remaining contents of the cup into his mouth with the palm of his hand. “Well, you really should get some rest.” Tai gestured to a cot directly behind me that I hadn’t noticed until then. He stood, reached into a nearby cabinet, and extracted a stack of blankets that he placed on one end of the cot.
“Do you really think we should be sleeping now?” I asked. My mind raced with thoughts of Cali, but exhaustion weighed me down. “What if the car comes back?”
“You need your strength, Kellen. Sleep.”
Those were the last words that I heard Tai speak. The instant my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep. And the dreams began again.
***
“Kellen!” Stephen immediately got up and walked around the desk, holding out his hands. A smile brighter than the sun lit his face as he came forward and clasped me by the arms.
This had to be a dream. Struck dumb, I simply looked at him, unable for the second time that night to move or even speak. This couldn’t be my father. I couldn’t even remember the last time he touched me, let alone looked happy to see me.
“Are you all right? You look surprised,” he said.
Clearing my throat, I found my voice. “You don’t usually seem this happy to see me.”
Stephen’s face fell and he led me to the couch—no longer the stiff brown leather of my youth, but a blue-and-white-checked version. It was comfortable, with cushions that squished underneath me when I sat.
He fixed a look of chagrin on his face. “About that. I owe you an apology.”
Again, my mouth hung open like an idiot. Clearly I was no longer capable of coherent speech.
Stephen smiled a sad smile, as if he’d expected this sort of reaction from me. He continued without prodding. “I’ve been a terrible father to you, Kellen. I do love you, but when your mother died…Well, I’ve never been very good at showing emotion.”
My anger kicked in and it snapped me from the daze that I’d been in. “You had her committed when she was fully mentally competent!”
“I thought she would receive the best care there. I truly thought I was putting her into a cancer treatment center. How was I to know? I’m not a doctor of medicine, though I really wish I had been. I might have been able to save her.”
“You told me she was dead.” My voice was steel.
“It was her doctor, see? He told me that she wasn’t going to make it. He suggested that I just tell you she’d passed, get the pain over with.”
“You had a funeral for her.”
“The better to help you with the grieving process, son. I only ever wanted to take care of you and Roger. Sure, I’ve made mistakes—quite a few, actually—but I want to start again.”
“No.” My voice held a childish note and I wished, not for the first time, that I could be cooler, smoother.
“Kellen, please try and forgive me. I want to be the father that I should have been to you. I want to make it right. I love you.” A tear glistened in his eye.
***
I woke up on Tai’s cot, sweating from the roaring fire. Wrapping my arms around myself, I brought my chin down to rest on the backs of my hands. I’d wanted this for so long from Stephen and now—now after he’d done so many unforgivable, unspeakable things—he finally asked for my forgiveness. Only now did he want me in his life. But it was all wrong. Too many things had happened that I couldn’t move past. Though he said the words, they came too late.
I sat up and looked around, trying to get my bearings. The time of day seemed to be early morning. The first rays of light were streaming in through the cottage windows. Tai walked into the room then with two cups of tea, took one look at me, and set them down on the nearby coffee table. “It has started, then.” He stared at me.
I wiped my face on my sleeve, feeling like the worst kind of wimp. “What has?”
“The offer you cannot refuse.”
Historic movie quotes aside, I swallowed as I processed the dream. Tai was right. The wheels of the second part of the prophecy had been set in motion. Maybe it was already coming true.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CALI—CADILLAC MOUNTAIN
Sitting on the ground beside the space where Dillion had been only moments before, my senses went on high alert as Skyler’s ears perked up. He began to growl a low growl. The sound of it sent chills through my body. I could only imagine what it would feel like if I’d been the enemy, meeting Skyler head-on in a dark section of the forest.
“What is it?” I asked. “Is it Kellen?” Though I asked the question, I had no hope that it would really be him. Yet I found myself listening for the sound of his voice just the same. However, the voices that I did hear weren’t familiar to me.
“She’s betrothed to the one the mistress wants. Surely the mistress would appreciate her, too.”
“But she didn’t ask for her, Bob. She only asked for the other one, the one who has the amulet. Kellen St. James.”
“Surely we would be rewarded with our freedom sooner if we brought her as well.”
“She didn’t say to bring her! After the other one escaped, we’re in trouble enough as it is.”
The second voice sounded increasingly agitated. I assumed that they were talking about me, but I didn’t want to wait to find out. Climbing onto Skyler’s back, I whispered in his ear. “Skyler, run.”
But before he could take a step, Skyler disappeared beneath me as though he’d never existed. With a thud, I landed on the cold ground, freezing. Of course. Dillion had made him appear. It made sense that he’d disappear without Dillion’s magick to sustain him.
I fought back tears, sucking in a breath as I tried not to give myself away. I would miss Skyler. He’d helped us so much; he was a good dog.
Neither of the voices seemed to notice what had happened and instead continued to argue.
“We should take her!”
“Shouldn’t!”
“Should!”
“Shouldn’t!”
Their voices faded in the distance as I ran in the opposite direction. If only I could find my way to the top of the mountain. My newly mortal mind had such a difficult time comprehending my location, geographically speaking. Without Kellen and Gabe, I couldn’t even tell anyone where to find me. Not that I had anyone to tell.
Creeping away into the darkness, doubt circled me like a vortex, threatening to suck me in. Kellen, Dillion, Gabe, my parents…they were
all gone and I had no one to protect me. There was no one to save them. Except me. I had no one that I could ask for help. Though I was mortal, the burden fell on my shoulders.
If only my father had told me what special power I’d been granted. When Lugh changed me into a mortal he promised that I would get to keep one special gift. However, I’d yet to figure out what gift I’d been given. It would have been immensely helpful now to be able to fly, for example. Perhaps the only way to figure out what power I’d been given was to test out the possibilities and see if any of them awoke within me.
As I ran, I closed my eyes and focused on flying, just as I would have been able to before. Taking a swift jump, I raised my arms to fly, but instead of soaring into the air I fell over a fallen tree and got a mouthful of mud. When I’d been a goddess, I’d commanded the elements, but air obviously hadn’t been the power that my father gifted me. Air: no.
“Ugh.” Thoroughly disgusted, I spat mud out of my mouth and brushed myself off as I stood up. So flying was definitely out. I started running again. Closing my eyes almost all the way, I whispered, “Water, I call upon you.”
Looking around I glimpsed and experienced nothing different. Water: no.
My feet pounded on the ground and I wondered if I hadn’t been giving the elements enough focus. I had to get away from the voices that I’d heard before. I also needed to find out what gift I’d been given.
Stopping, I whispered, “Earth, I call upon you.” But as I stood there, no scents or smells or sounds came to me. Earth: no.
“She came this way.” New voices were fast approaching.
You’re a fool, Cali.You need to get away from here and you’re just walking around like a lost little girl.
Turning, I ran, fearing that I would trip at any moment. I tried to be aware of my surroundings, but with only the thin moonlight for illumination, that was next to impossible.
Giving up, I took to a nearby tree, climbing its large branches. With no foliage to hide me, the hiding place was risky, but what choice did I have? Upward and onward I climbed, gripping the rough bark. The night had grown still around me. Too still. Not two seconds after I reached the tallest branch, they arrived. There were three of them this time.
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