by Scott Duff
“John, could you send someone up to our rooms for clothes?” I asked. “Shrank can show them what to get and come down then.”
“Certainly, sir,” he said and left the room, leaving Gordon to jockey his cart into place at the other end of the couches. He was having a more difficult time, obviously not used to such tasks. I helped myself to some sort of stew and some rolls and plopped back down on the couch heavily.
“Hmm, this is good,” I murmured. I was hungrier than I thought.
Gordon grinned tightly as he handed me a bottled water from his cart. “I’ll be sure to tell Ronnie,” he said. “She argued with John quite strongly that it wasn’t good enough for you.”
“If you’d seen the microwaved crap I’ve been living on for the last year…” I responded sopping up the gravy of the stew with a roll with gusto before shoving it in my mouth. Gordon paced around the cart nervously till I waved at the other end of my couch.
“Sit down, Gordon,” I said, barely remembering my irritation with him considering the rest of the day. “I’ve had too hard a day to bite. Just don’t do it again.”
He sat on the couch with a barely vocalized “Yes, sir,” leaning forward elbows on knees, still anxious. “Da took Harris to the airport and should be back anytime now,” he said. “Harris was very upset when Ethan and Peter were yanked out before they would make a commitment. Puffed up like a peacock, he was.”
“We wouldn’t have committed to anything anyway,” said Peter, filling a bowl with the same stew I was eating. He, too, was dressed in a robe and had a towel around his neck. Kieran had opted for a hunk of roasted beef and braised potatoes. I decided that the food was more important than a shower just then.
We heard an angry buzz of wings and a scarlet flash entered the room as John opened the door with a stack of clothes in his arms. It stopped in front of Kieran’s face and turned into Shrank. The pixie studied Kieran intently, then turned to Peter as he passed in front of Kieran to sit, making Peter stop for his head-to-toe inspection. He flew to me next, staring hard with his tiny eyes. It was disconcerting in ways. When he lit on me, he rode on the rise of my neck instead of the flat of my shoulder, which was unusual. He was making sure he touched my bare skin, anchoring in my shirt. I smiled when I felt the velvet touch of his wing as it folded around to the nape of my neck. He still hadn’t said anything.
Enchanted by the display, Gordon shook himself from watching Shrank. “Do you still want to go with me to get Marty tomorrow?” he asked. “You said you had a rough day…”
“Want to? No,” I answered. “Need to? Yes. With Ethan… away, we need a buffer more than ever.”
Kieran nodded begrudgingly as he ate. “You’ve learned far more today than I would’ve taught you in a month,” he said. “Ethan is right. You are surprising in what you can just do, but don’t ‘just do’ anything tomorrow. I’ll stay here with Lucian and see what I can find out about our traitors and prod him into helping Olivia, if he can.”
“I’ll call Dad shortly,” Peter said, “and have him start looking into that name for us. He might even have candidates for an assistant already lined up.”
“Good,” Kieran said. “Shrank, you stay close to one of us at all times, okay? There is something wrong in Faery and I don’t want you alone until we find out what.”
“Yes, Lord,” he replied, speaking for the first time. He stayed glued to my neck.
I eyed Kieran’s roast beef across the table against my now-empty bowl of stew, not wanting to move and disturb Shrank. Gordon took pity on me, took the bowl, and fixed a generous plate for me. He even tossed a few strawberries and blueberries on the plate for Shrank as he passed the beverage cart.
“Da just came onto the grounds,” he said absently as he handed me the plate, eyes distant. “Will you need to leave again tonight?” Kieran answered no and we felt a wave of power rush over the house and onto the rest of the property. It had a faint taste of Gordon’s power but it had a stronger sense of all the Cahills, including Enid. It occurred to me then that Gordon had charged the wards of the castle. Unlike mine at home which were always on, the castle needed different modes to operate effectively. I supposed this was “night mode.”
I offered a strawberry to Shrank, who stabbed it with the sword he carried but never showed, then cut into the roast beef vigorously. John had stacked our clothes on top of the desk near the bathroom and carried off Kieran and Peter’s dirty uniforms already, presumably to be washed.
“Let me leave you to your dinner,” said Gordon standing. “I’ll come back with Da in about fifteen minutes or so. Make some calls so everything happens as smoothly as possible tomorrow.”
Once Gordon left the room, I reasserted the privacy shield and asked, “You are planning on explaining what happened today, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Kieran, putting his empty plate down. “I was planning on doing that at the Pacthome but things didn’t quite go as I expected there.”
“A number of things haven’t gone as we’ve expected,” Peter said.
“True,” said Kieran. “And I just don’t see how anything relates to another. Too many people have already been hurt or died. We need to find an answer and stop this.”
“Before the war starts, you mean,” I said, startling Peter with the pronouncement.
“You mean Harris is right?” he exclaimed.
“If he thinks that the Fae are poised to attack, then yes,” I said, locking eyes with Kieran. “If he thinks that either Winter or Summer are poised to attack us, then no.”
Kieran nodded his agreement with my assessment. I did get something out of the conversation with the Queens then. Peter’s eyes darted back and forth between us. I could feel Shrank moving against my neck now, peeling away uncomfortably.
“How can that be?” Peter asked.
“That’s part of what I wasn’t understanding that Kieran will have to explain later,” I said. “Shrank? I need a shower before the Cahills come back. Are you waterproof?”
“Yes,” he giggled as he peeled himself completely off my neck. “But you humans scrub too hard.” He jumped into the air, flying in slow circles around us, finally landing on the table in the center so he could see all three of us.
I got up, carrying Kieran’s and my plates to the cart, and headed for the bathroom, moving very slowly. Eating helped to assuage the weariness, but I could still feel Peter’s concern following me through the room. It was comforting. The Stone’s privacy fell away as I passed through it. I separated the clothes piled on the desk, grabbing mine, and went into the bathroom. As I shut the door, I heard Kieran say to Peter softly, “If anything, Peter, he’ll be proud. Don’t worry.”
Great. Somebody else with a secret. I needed this shower.
~ ~ ~
“You can tell that woman that if she can serve this stew to my houseguests then she can damn well serve it to me, too!” I heard Cahill’s gruff voice as I left the bathroom in a fog of steam. I’d probably stayed in too long but the hot water felt way too good. Cahill was scraping the last of the stew from the tureen while John waited patiently to pull the cart away. He dropped the tureen and snatched up the bowl. As John removed the cart, Cahill dragged the chair back into place and dropped into it.
Unlike the previous members of my party, I came out dressed but still damp in places. On my neck was an angry red welt that, before my shower, had been barely a mark. It matched perfectly in shape and position to where Shrank had laid across my bare neck. I thought it’d be kind of insulting if I just brushed it off. It had been a sweet gesture from him.
“I love this stew and the woman refuses to make it except when I’m not around,” muttered Cahill, digging into the bowl. Gordon was chuckling about his father by the bookcase while Shrank was above him contemplating dropping a book onto him. Peter and Kieran were drinking coffee, smiling at the grumbling man.
“Shrank, no,” I warned, moving past Cahill to sit on the couch again. Gordon followed my look to see the pi
xie above him and stepped away from the bookcase, grinning up at Shrank.
“What did Harris want anyway?” I asked.
“Same ol’tripe,” said Cahill, shoveling in his stew. “The Fae are rallying for a war. This time e’s added traitors to councils an’ humanity to it. Wants support to root ‘em out. Has some pretty convincin’ circumstantial evidence.”
“It’d be nice if he were wrong,” said Kieran, letting his head fall back. Cahill stopped in mid-spoon lift.
“Are you sayin’ he’s not?” Cahill asked, wide-eyed and letting his spoon fall back into the bowl.
“Yes, I am,” Kieran said, still looking at the ceiling.
“Not every conspiracy theory is just a theory,” added Peter.
“Gordon, call the airport. Get him back here,” Cahill said, putting his bowl on the table, his appetite forgotten. Gordon left the room hurriedly. “What happened in Faery today, Ehran? What did the Queens tell you and why do you believe them?”
“The Fae are always fighting with each other. That’s a given,” said Kieran, sitting upright again. “Now they seem to have another mutual enemy. And we find ourselves with a new enemy, one who has no problem killing us off piecemeal. Now there are similarities in what the two enemies are doing to the Fae and to us. Wouldn’t it be wise to consider the idea that it’s the same enemy? This is a war of attrition on two fronts, human and Fae.
“When we went our separate ways,” Kieran continued, “Seth and I followed a trail looking for our father. That led us to Lucian and the fifth curse. Then things really got interesting because we also found how the curses are set. Seth, would you mind showing Felix the five bugs, please?”
I pushed images of the five insects out onto the astral for Cahill to see. Thinking better of it, I also put a clearer structural image of each right below it along with the curses that each insect stamped onto its victim. It was a lot of information to take in with just fifteen pictures. Cahill studied the diagrams intently without moving, paying the most attention to the newest, fifth group.
“You’ll notice,” Kieran offered, “the fifth one can fly while the third mimics flight with long jumps and glides.”
Gordon came back into the room quietly, slipping around all of us and stopping at his father’s right side.
“Lucian had three different curses set on him when we found him,” Kieran told the Cahills. Cahill gasped in shock and whipped his head around to stare at Kieran. “He’s the first we’ve found who had more than one. I can only surmise that is because at the time he had powerful protective wards on him because we didn’t find him until Seth removed all of the insects from the bubble realm we were in and the stasis spell Lucian was in deactivated.”
“Can we assume,” asked Gordon, “That by ‘removed’ you mean Seth cut the bugs up with the fancy black and silver sword he has tucked away?”
“You could,” said Kieran, grinning. “You’d be wrong, but you could. We hope what Seth did was a bit more flamboyant and destructive than that. Lucian’s realm was a human colony adjacent to Faery that had visitors from time to time. The gate would have caught the insects trying to enter, even with someone smuggling them in. Someone went in and opened a small portal and let them in. Seth found the hole and Ethan and he set about closing it. Seth, why don’t you tell this part?”
“Huh?” I muttered, confused. I was perfectly happy listening to Kieran. “Well, Ethan went through the conduit to close the other side while I was closing this side. He showed me what to do. As soon as he went in, though, all of the bugs started converging on me, firing active curses onto my shields. There were over two hundred of them beating on me and there was no way I was gonna get the hole closed before they got through. Then something on the other side of the tunnel grabbed control away from me. At that point, I’d lost control of the portal and my shield was eroding—I was pretty much toast.
“I figured that if the guy at the other end of the tunnel liked explosions so much he could have ‘em and we’d seen so many tornadoes with the Queens, why not use that? Basically, I put four tiny tornadoes in a box and started sucking up all the bugs around me and shooting ‘em through the tunnel. I added energy to their power cells as they passed through the entrance. Only a few exploded in the tunnel. Once the bugs were gone, I started closing the hole up when Ethan came back through. Something was following him, but I was able to close it before whatever it was got there. Ethan was down and there’s no way I could have handled someone he couldn’t by myself. Then I called for Peter and Ehran for help. That’s when we found Lucian and came back here.” I hoped I left out the right information. I really didn’t want to say that Ethan had been hurt, but it just came rolling out.
“If Ethan is hurt,” asked Cahill, “Why didn’t you bring him back with you?”
“Because you can’t help him,” I snapped and regretted it instantly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cahill. Ethan is receiving all the care he can get from us at the moment.”
“And Lucian?” asked Gordon. “Who is he, exactly?”
“The leader of a small colony of humans,” answered Kieran. “Several families lived there for a long time. Reclusive and private with few visitors, they had a fair amount of trade, considering. Nothing particularly amazing about them.”
“Except that they were heavily targeted,” said Cahill. “Why?”
Kieran shrugged. “If Lucian knows, he hasn’t said.”
I almost laughed at the way he dodged the question. He wasn’t lying but he wasn’t truthful either.
Gordon stiffened, eyes glazed, then said, “A car is at the east gate. It’s Harris. He’ll be back here in ten minutes.”
“Bring the defenses up a notch, will’ya, lad?” Cahill said.
“Yes, Da,” Gordon said, robotically. I felt another rush of power pulse through the nearest ley line. Through the windows, the lights of the castle dimmed noticeably. Farther out, I could feel something like sentry posts being established in the outlying areas of the grounds, points of heightened awareness in key positions that watched for trespassers. Closer to the house the awareness-coverage was absolute, but it was a large property. John entered the observatory as Gordon relaxed.
“We’ll be running wary for the next few weeks, John,” said Cahill without preamble. “And we’ll be having more guests for the night, so please see to accommodations.” John nodded and left again.
“What do you want to tell Harris?” asked Cahill.
Kieran answered, “As little as we can get away with. Nothing about Ethan.”
“Harris isn’t going to be difficult anyway,” said Peter, shaking his head. “It’s everyone else that’s going to be hard to convince. I was there and I barely believe it.”
That was an interesting point. I dropped part of my attention down into my cavern and pulled the first curse from memory, an active version, not the clipped, branded version, and started toying with it.
“He has a point, Da,” agreed Gordon, waving his hand at the still floating images of the curses as if they were in real space. “Really, these look like so much gibberish to me. I’m not denying they’re real and do what you say, but others will.”
“Oops,” I said. The curse started drawing power. Well, Gordon wanted to see it work, so I pushed it out onto the energy plane and planted it on a chair on the far side of the room. Making sure Shrank was nowhere near it, I pushed more power into the curse and said, “Fire in the hole.”
Chapter 37
The chair exploded. It was pretty loud, too, and I recognized Kieran’s touch as a shield contained the damage around the conflagration. It only lasted a few moments and the fire was out. When Kieran pulled his influence away, only ash remained. I looked for Gordon’s reaction.
“So much for gibberish, eh, Gordon?” laughed Cahill, turning in the chair to look at his son. “Pick your jaw off the floor before Harris walks in.”
“Sorry about the chair, Mr. Cahill,” I said. “I was trying to see if I could pin it down for show. I guess be
ing in the middle of a ley line isn’t the best place to try that sort of thing.”
“No,” said Kieran, chuckling. “But you got one convert.” He walked to the desk and picked up the stack of his clothes, going into the bathroom. Peter followed a few moments later and waited by the desk while Kieran changed. Gordon studied the astral structures while Cahill used a little magic to reheat his stew.
“Do you understand these things?” Gordon asked me.
“Only parts,” I admitted. “The power siphons, the motivators, for instance. I can see where the trigger is but not what causes it to finally activate. Flooding the power cells will do it, but there are other things that’ll do it, too. Proximity to others, that sort of thing.”
“Would you show me?” he asked. I pulsed the sections of the image I understood as I ticked them off, explaining what I knew, but stayed seated. I was still really tired. Meanwhile Peter had taken the bathroom and Kieran had resumed his place on the couch. Shrank landed on his shoulder, barely visible and took off again with a brief nod from Kieran.
Harris burst through the observatory door in an angry huff followed by two of his men. John was fast on his heels. On his first step into the room, Harris shouted, “You grounded my plane?”
Cahill said calmly, “Clifford, the McClures have lent some credence to your claim and found both another curse and the beasties that are causing all of them. I thought you might want to know about that as soon as possible.”
“You grounded his plane?” asked Peter in a stage whisper, passing behind Gordon to sit beside Kieran. “Way to go, Gordon!”
Gordon shrugged, “They were taxiing into the queue and Da said he wanted him here.”
“We are training our youth to take our places,” said Kieran to Harris, grinning. “Think of it as Gordon flexing his muscles.” That pretty much covered Gordon from any reprisals from Harris, even verbal ones. Harris stopped at the table between the couches, his colleagues, Calhoun and Bob, took up position on either side a step back with their hands clasped in front of them.