“Or we could stop off at your hotel, and leave the luggage there?” Sally offered.
Thor gritted his teeth. “The sooner we get this business attended to the better.” He pushed forward and shot Heimdall a look. “Our travel planning apparently didn’t get as far as arranging a car or accommodations.”
Heimdall kept his focus forward as the group followed Sally toward Dublin Castle. “You try finding four seats together on a last-minute, 6,000-mile flight from Oregon to Ireland, plus arranging for transportation to the airport, figuring out the bus system at your destination . . .”
“Don’t forget having no place to sleep once you get there,” Thor grumbled.
“How much farther is this place?” Heimdall changed the subject.
“Not far.” Sally finished typing on her smartphone and hit SEND. “Niall and Clare are meeting us there.”
Sally shoved her phone into her pocket. She was desperate for a cup of hot chocolate—at this point she might even settle for coffee even though she hated the taste of the stuff.
A day-long nap would have been ever better. After Clare and Niall had managed to fall asleep the night before, camped out in the living room, Sally had remained awake to maintain a protective shield around them. She wouldn’t have been able to sleep through all of the shrieks, banging, and thumping anyway.
Sally yawned.
“Who are these people, exactly?” Thor tripped on a bit of uneven pavement but regained his balance with a frustrated growl.
“Yeah, you’re going to hate them,” Sally replied. She glanced back at Freya, and at Freyr who had dropped back to walk beside his sister. “What’s up with them?”
“Don’t ask,” Thor growled.
“It’s a long story,” Heimdall began. He paused while Sally helped them navigate through a throng of men and women in matching blue jerseys standing outside a popular pub. They patted each other on the back and chanted their team’s fight song. Many of them were obviously inebriated.
“Not even noon, and the locals are already off their asses.” Thor deliberately rolled his suitcase over the toes of a particularly vociferous young man. The kid kept singing without interruption.
“Look, I know it’s a stereotype,” Sally said. “How Irish people are drinking all the time, but—”
“But stereotypes exist for a reason,” Heimdall replied. “It’s not your job to defend the whole country.”
Sally shrugged. “Yeah, I know, but—”
“Did you ever stop to consider why the people here like their Guinness?” Freyr appeared at Thor’s shoulder. “That maybe there’s a deep pain here, in the land itself, and that drowning their sorrows in a pint or two is the only way to tolerate it?”
Thor shot Freyr a rough look, then cleared his throat as they approached another drunken crowd—this time clad almost entirely in orange—spilling out of another packed pub. “I think this lot has had a good bit more than a couple of pints.”
Freyr smiled with a glint of mischief. “Thanks for making my point for me.”
Thor stopped and frowned at Freyr in confusion. Freyr laughed and kept moving, pulling both his and his sister’s suitcases behind him.
Sally led them through the Palace Street Gate of Dublin Castle and across the succession of cobblestone parking areas toward the castle gardens.
“It wasn’t me,” she told Heimdall as they hurried along. “I mean, it might have been. By accident. I wasn’t doing anything, I swear. I was just going to classes and studying hard . . .”
“Doing all the normal things you weren’t able to do back in Portland,” Heimdall finished her thought. “Because you’ve always been caught up in our dramas.”
And here they were again. Sally wasn’t sure that she would classify saving the world from Ragnarok and fending off Køjer Devils as dramas, but Heimdall had a point.
“It was my roommate,” Sally said.
They wound their way through the Garda Síochána Memorial, dedicated to the Irish police officers killed in the line of duty, and exited onto the grass circle at the center of the castle gardens. Clare stood on the green, arguing with Niall and gesticulating wildly. Niall was shrinking away from her. He noticed Sally’s approach and smiled in relief.
“The scene of the crime.” Sally gestured toward the center of the grass.
Heimdall parked his suitcase at the edge of the green. While the others stood along the perimeter of the circle, Freya brushed past them and stepped onto the grass.
“Freya,” Freyr cautioned.
“The Black Pool,” Freya whispered. She walked about halfway toward the center of the circle, ignoring Sally’s friends as they stood gaping at her. She surveyed the unfamiliar buildings, gates, and pavement that lined the sacred space. Freya shivered.
Sally stepped onto the grass but didn’t get too close. “What is the Black Pool, exactly?”
“I told you!” Clare took a bold step forward. “It’s the sacred well of Ireland. Kind of like The Morrigan’s swimming pool. Or maybe her bathtub.”
Niall sighed in existential pain.
Freya turned to Sally with a sad frown. “I should have prepared you better for your time here,” Freya said. She placed a hand on Sally’s shoulder. “I honestly believed there wouldn’t be any trouble for you, that all of this was long past . . .”
She looked down at the grass.
“They filled it in,” Freyr said to no one in particular. “This was the site of the original settlement.” He looked askance at Heimdall and Thor. “When the Æsir invaded.”
Sally sank to her knees and rested her palms flat against the damp grass. “So this really is Vanaheim.”
Clare’s face brightened. “See, Sally? I told you this place was sacred. There’s a huge amount of history here! And magick like you wouldn’t believe.”
Sally shook her head. “Not now, Clare.”
“Maybe your friends would like to know what’s really happening here.” Clare smiled at Freyr in particular. “The very soul of Ireland makes its home in this place—”
Freya rounded on Clare and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Quiet!” she demanded. “You have no idea what you’re speaking of.”
“That’s not true!” Clare protested. She tried to shrug out of Freya’s grasp, but Freya held her firmly in place. “You should have seen the mists I called up last night, and the figure of the goddess that started to take shape right over there.” Clare pointed toward the center of the circle. “Bave,” she said in triumph.
Freya’s eye grew wide and she struggled against the urge to slap the girl across the face for her careless utterance. “You did this?”
Sally looked at Heimdall. “I told you it wasn’t me.”
Freya released Clare’s shoulders and studied the girl who stood before her. Finally, Freya shook her head and stepped away. “No, it wasn’t her.”
She then glanced at Sally. “Not entirely.”
Sally got an itchy feeling at the back of her neck and tried to shake it off. She kept telling herself that it wasn’t her fault. As soon as Freya looked away, Sally felt better.
Freya wandered around the garden. She studied the grounds and paused to look up at the sky every few paces.
Niall watched Freya move past him, then walked over to Sally. “This is your trouble from home?”
Heimdall stuck out his hand to Niall. “Heimdall.”
Niall’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s an unusual name for an American, isn’t it?”
Heimdall offered a forced smile in reply.
Niall turned to Thor and extended his hand in greeting. “I’m Niall.”
Thor grumbled and walked past him. “This is no time for pleasantries.” He growled at a nearby trio of Japanese tourists and sent them scurrying.
Freyr stepped up beside Niall. “You’ll have to forgive my grumpy cousin.” He nodded toward Thor. “We’re here on official business.”
“Freyr!” Freya called out from the center of the grass c
ircle. “She’s not here. She’s awake.”
Freyr whistled through his teeth and glanced at Clare.
“Who’s not here?” Thor asked.
Heimdall got a sour look on his face. “Where is she?”
Freyr glanced around the garden, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Close. And I don’t think we want to find out just how close.”
Clare lifted her chin. “I’m quite powerful, you know.”
Freya ignored Clare and walked straight toward Sally. She rested a gentle hand on the Moon Witch’s shoulder. “Sally . . .”
“No!” Sally took a step back. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do this.”
Freya sighed. “Maybe not intentionally.”
“Crap!” Sally stomped on the ground, then looked up at Freya. “I’m sorry. I know this is sacred ground, but I was trying to stop her.”
“It was me!” Clare stormed over and stood in front of Freya. “I called down the Moon. I called up the sleeping goddess of the Black Pool!”
Freyr grabbed Clare’s shoulder and forced her to face him. “And precisely why would you want to do something as fantastically bone-headed as that?!”
At that outburst, even Thor backed away from Freyr.
It took a few seconds for Clare to find her voice. “I, uh, I wanted to connect with the local spirits of Ireland,” she stammered. “I wanted to introduce myself as a visiting witch and include them in my magickal work.”
“Sally and I did attempt to prevent this.” Niall stepped toward Freya and extended his hand.
Sally sighed and motioned between him and Freya. “Niall, Freya. Freya, Niall.”
“Freya?” Niall looked hard at Sally, then cast suspicious glances at Heimdall, Thor, and Freyr.
Sally shrugged. “Long story. Just go with it.”
“Right.” Niall gestured toward the center of the grass. “We were here last night, trying to fix what Clare had already done. When it happened.”
“What had Clare done, exactly?” Freya asked.
Niall frowned. “Of that we’re not certain—”
“There were these fireflies,” Sally cut in.
“The Morrigan’s sentinels,” Niall said. “Nothing to worry about these days.”
“I called them!” Clare crowed.
Freya stepped closer to Sally. “And you knew your friend was casting spells? In this space?”
“No!” Sally protested. “I mean, not exactly. I thought she was just playing at being a witch.”
“Now wait just a second!” Clare shot Sally a murderous look. “I studied long and hard before I even got here—”
“Not long enough.” Freyr cursed, his voice heavy with a disappointment more crushing than any blood-curdling shout. He looked at Sally. “Rent-a-witch here says she raised mists in this place? That a figure began to take shape?”
“You should have seen it!” Clare exclaimed, her eyes alight. “It was just like something out of Lord of the Rings. It was better than Twilight! And it was all me.“
Freya looked at Niall. “And you thought you could fix it.”
Thor balled his hands into fists and inhaled deeply. “ENOUGH!”
Glass rattled in the windows of the surrounding buildings. The few tourists who were ambling through the gardens made hurried and discreet exits.
“YOU!” Thor pointed a meaty finger at Freyr. “Explain what’s happening here.”
Heimdall rested a calming hand on his brother’s bicep. With an exasperated sigh, Thor backed down.
Heimdall turned to Freya. “Talk to me.”
“As near as I can tell,” Freya said as she nodded toward Clare and Sally, “these two have managed to awaken Badbh.”
Clare gasped in delight. “I told you!”
“Badbh?” Thor clenched his teeth.
“The goddess of the cauldron,” Freya sighed in defeat. “The keeper of the Black Pool of rebirth. One of the three sisters of The Morrigan.” She glanced at her brother. “Our grandmother.”
“She’s your blasted grandmother!” Thor’s voice boomed against the close walls of Sally’s apartment, followed not even a second later by a crash from the kitchenette.
Eyes closed, Freya was curled up in one of the upholstered armchairs. She had no doubt that Sally’s “fireflies” had flung out the contents of yet another of the kitchen cupboards.
“Freyr.” She gestured to her brother, sitting on the floor beside her.
“You want to keep the cursing to a minimum?” he addressed Thor in a cooler tone. “Sally’s parents are going to have to pay for all of this, you know.”
The floor of Clare and Sally’s sitting room was littered with empty bags and grease-soaked newspaper cones—in addition to the mess the fireflies had made the night before.
Clare had insisted the pixies would clean up. Freya left it to Sally to remind her roommate that her initial spell hadn’t worked and they had considerably more serious concerns at the moment than an untidy apartment. Clare had not taken kindly to the rebuke.
Once that particular spat had come to a head, Clare disappeared into the shared bathroom and Sally started picking up the take-away boxes, balled up napkins, and other remnants of dinner. She had to crawl beneath Thor’s legs to grab the last of the discarded soda cans.
“Sally, I’m sorry,” Heimdall said from the upholstered armchair opposite Freya. “We’ll get this sorted out.”
“I’m getting used to it.” Sally carried another load of trash to the refuse bin in the kitchen. Niall lifted the lid for her.
The Vanir twins and the Æsir brothers had been arguing all afternoon—and all through a dinner of take-away noodles and a dozen orders of fish-and-chips. In between bouts of yelling, Sally was able to catch them up on Clare’s spells, the visit to the marketplace, and the pesky sparks that had been plaguing her ever since Clare took her new talisman to the castle gardens.
Thor took up most of the small sofa with his legs stretched out on the rickety coffee table. The television was on, with the volume turned down. Niall kept hovering in the threshold to the kitchenette, fetching water and making tea for anyone who asked.
The empty bookcase in the corner rattled and creaked as though it were trying to detach itself from the wall.
“Can’t you do something about these little buzzards?!” Thor growled as a pair of tiny lights zoomed past his head and ruffled his beard.
Though Sally’s “fireflies” had no apparent interest in leaving the flat, Freya had placed wards on the doors, windows, and air vents to keep the sentinels from escaping.
“I understand wanting to keep them contained,” Thor continued, “but they’re worse than a swarm of angry tatzelwurms.”
“We can’t have them reporting back to Badbh.” Freya leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes again.
Freyr got up from the floor. “Sally, do you have an empty jar of some kind? Something with a lid?”
The voices continued around her as Freya steadied her breathing and started drifting. She tuned out the activity in the flat. Her breath slowed further, and she followed the beat of her heart down into the shadows of shamanic space.
Freya felt unaccountably cold. She tightened her shoulder muscles to keep from shivering.
“Your voice does you credit, young one,” the crackling voice came out of the darkness. “You did well today.”
Freya blinked her eyes open and found herself standing again in Badbh’s cauldron. The old woman stood before her, hands folded serenely. She’d been waiting for Freya.
“Grandmother, you must stop this. You are putting innocents at risk!”
Freya had retched when Sally told her about the traffic accident that had taken the lives of a young mother and her child. She didn’t imagine the Trinity students strapped to the bog goblins’ trebuchet or those who were about to be set on fire by the manglarees would have fared much better if she hadn’t intervened.
The old woman laughed. “Innocents, you say? You’ve developed q
uite a soft spot for these creatures who infest our lands and poison our rivers.”
The crone stepped closer to Freya and ran a clawed finger along her granddaughter’s jaw line. “Has your brother grown as soft and weak as you?”
Freya’s stomach tensed at the mention of Freyr. She wanted to lash out at Badbh, to challenge her openly, but they both knew she didn’t have the strength.
The old woman laughed again. Her eyes were cold fire. “You dare to make demands of me? You, who brought the enemy to my sacred well?”
Freya took a shaky breath. The cauldron was filled with Badbh’s familiar scent of blood and battle smoke. “We meant no offense, grandmother. I needed to feel your power for myself.”
This seemed to please the aged woman. She paused to run her taloned hands through her dark hair. “You came to renew yourself?”
Freya lifted her chin. She had to choose her words carefully, now more than ever. Her grandmother was playing at distracted indifference, but Freya could feel the rage coming off her in waves.
“It is not yet my time for the Black Pool.”
The crone nodded once. “Not your time, perhaps, but the Tuatha de Danann will not be denied their rightful king.”
Water began trickling into the massive cauldron from all sides. It tickled Freya’s bare toes and soon covered the tops of her feet.
“Grandmother! There can be no king in Vanaheim!” Freya shouted as water ran down the curved sides of the cauldron and the level rose faster. “What you are doing will bring war!”
The water reached Freya’s calves and continued to rise.
Badbh smiled, showing the sharp points of her stained teeth. “Then war we shall have, granddaughter. How certain are you of your allegiance?”
Before Freya could answer, Badbh raised a clawed hand and pushed sharply at the air in front of her. Freya felt herself thrown backward out of the cauldron and out of her shamanic vision. She jerked awake in the chair in Sally’s flat with a violent gasp.
“Freya?” Her brother was immediately at her side, with Heimdall and Thor looming over his shoulder. “What is it?”
The Black Pool (Valhalla Book 3) Page 10