The Amulet of Caorunn (A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 7)

by Juliette Harper

  Instead, I said, “Oh, really.”

  Smart men know that when a woman says “fine,” she isn’t — and neither are they. The phrase “oh, really” indicates an equal threat level, especially if it’s not couched as a question. In case you didn’t catch on either, I wasn’t asking him a darned thing.

  “Yeah,” he plowed on. “I wanted to get a look at the spot where Findlay was robbed. Right before I arrived, Katrina talked to Dagda and his other two daughters, Bea and Brig. They’re Brighid’s sisters.”

  I managed to keep my mind on business, but I planned to have a talk with Mr. Lucas Grayson and get to the bottom of this whole Katrina Warner thing. If he was some witch-hopping-playboy-water-elf, my name wasn’t getting added to his list of conquests.

  “Who is Dagda?” I asked.

  Myrtle answered, and judging from the look on her face, Tori wasn’t the only one who picked up on my silent little hissy fit. My wise, all-knowing Fae mentor looked distinctly amused.

  “Dagda is also a remnant of the Tuatha Dé Danann,” she said. “He has always preferred to remain among the Irish, however. In their mythology, he is seen as a father figure, a Druid chieftain who concerns himself with matters of time and the seasons. His eldest daughter, the first Brighid, was long ago entrusted with the transition to and from the warm months of summer.”

  Tori frowned. “There’s more than one Brighid?”

  “Each of Dagda’s girls bear the same name,” Myrtle explained, “so that individually they embody different qualities of that identity.”

  All I could think of was the guy who sells those grills on TV, George Foreman? He has five sons and they’re all named George Foreman. Of course, I’m named for a blond bombshell starlet who had an affair with John F. Kennedy, so I guess I don’t have much room to criticize.

  Even though I might have been in a snit over how Lucas obtained the information, the confirmation of the kidnapping sealed the deal for me. We had two good reasons to enter the Middle Realm. Save the Mother Oak and rescue the Queen of Summer.

  “Okay,” I said, steeling myself for what I knew was coming. “We’re all here and there’s never going to be a good time to say this. I’ve come to a decision. I’m going to use the door here in the fairy mound to enter the In Between. Tori is coming with me — that’s her idea, not mine. We’ll deliver the Jar of Prometheus and then work with Brenna and Aquila to rescue Brighid.”

  In the same instant, Chase and Lucas both said, “I’m coming with you.”

  Then they looked at each other and leaned in like a couple of junkyard dogs spoiling for a fight.

  “The two of you can just stop it,” I said. “Right now.”

  Both heads swiveled toward me as each man prepared to argue for his position and against the other.

  “Don’t. Do. It.” I warned them. “You’re both welcome to come with us, but not if you’re going to act like Neanderthals. Either agree to work together peacefully or stay here with the others.”

  Neither man wanted to be the first to give in, which only irritated me more. Greer, as she has a habit of doing, stepped in to smooth things over.

  “These lads will be just fine, won’t you?” she said. “Because I’m coming, too, and if there’s any misbehavior from them, I’ll settle it myself.”

  She smiled when she said the words, and nothing about the statement conveyed the overt level of threat she’d laid out for Brenna, but the effect was much the same. Chase and Lucas backed down and agreed to play nice.

  After that, an uneasy silence fell over the group. I could barely look at my mother, whose face had gone ashen.

  When no one else mustered up the courage to speak, Beau cleared his throat. “And what of the rest of us?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but you’re all just going to have to wait this one out. If our plan doesn’t work, someone has to be here who can help Barnaby and Moira to stop Chesterfield.”

  At one time, I would have expected Myrtle to argue with me. Instead, she nodded her head and said simply, “A prudent plan.”

  That was too much for my mother.

  “Prudent?” she gasped. “We’re all sitting here blithely talking about sending Jinx into the Middle Realm like it’s just the easiest thing in the world. Am I the only person here who remembers that if she doesn’t answer the Golems’ questions correctly one of us is going to die?”

  Maybe she didn’t mean it exactly the way it sounded, but her apparent lack of belief in my abilities stung. “Mom,” I said, “if I don’t do this, a lot of people may die. Have some faith in me.”

  All that accomplished was making Mom look like I’d just slapped her in the face. After several seconds and a couple of abortive attempts at responding, she threw her hands up in frustration and stormed out of the lair.

  I expected Dad to go after her, but instead he looked at Gemma. “Go talk to her, Gem, please,” he said. “You’re the only one who can make her listen when she gets like this.”

  Gemma took a few steps toward the stacks, then came back and stopped in front of Tori. “Young lady?”

  I saw Tori swallow hard, but she stood up to face the music. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I’ve never been prouder of you in my life,” Gemma said. “You’ve turned into a fine, brave woman. You and Jinx won’t fail. I know it.”

  Impulsively, Tori threw her arms around her mother. Gemma held her hand out to me, and I joined the group hug, grateful that one of the moms believed in us and saw we had no choice but to go ahead with the plan.

  “Don’t worry, Norma Jean,” Gemma said. “I’ll deal with your mother. She didn’t mean what she said. You girls start getting ready to go.”

  With that, she released us both and went after Mom.

  I watched until Gemma disappeared from sight, then I spoke to the group with what I have to admit was false bravado. I didn’t want to go into the Middle Realm and leave things unsettled with my mother, especially since her life was one of the ones I was placing in danger, but we were also running out of time.

  “Okay, everyone,” I said. “Let’s figure out what we need to take with us on this journey. I want to get going as soon as we possibly can.”

  Right up until that point, I felt completely in charge. Then Myrtle asked a delicate, but pertinent question. “Are you going to speak with Barnaby about this?”

  Letting my confidence waiver at this point didn’t seem like an option. Aunt Fiona always says, “In for a dime, in for a dollar.”

  “Yes,” I told Myrtle, “I’ll talk to Barnaby, but only to let him know that we’re going, not to ask his permission.”

  Thankfully, she totally had my back. “You do not need his permission,” Myrtle replied, “but your grandfather is due the courtesy.”

  On that part, I agreed.

  “I’ll go in the alcove and make the call now,” I said.

  Amity, who had been uncharacteristically quiet during everything that had happened, including Brenna’s call, chose that moment to get back in the game.

  “I’m coming with you to make that call,” she said, in a tone that indicated she wasn’t interested in arguing the point.

  The annoyance at Lucas that I’d managed to stuff down came bubbling out. “I didn’t invite you,” I snapped, much to the shock of everyone in the room.

  “I know,” Amity replied, just as acerbically. “I invited myself. You can start the call on your own if you like, but as soon as Barnaby hears what you’ve got it in your head to do, he’s going to want me there anyway.”

  The nerve of this woman. She sits on the bench for everything we’d been through for months, and now she thinks we can’t win the big game without her. Uh, no.

  “If that happens, I’ll come get you,” I said, completely confidant that my grandfather wasn’t going to do any such thing.

  Uh, yeah. I don’t eat crow often, but when I do, I like it served feathers and all.

  31

  Kelly stared disconsolately into the fi
replace that had appeared out of nowhere along with the settee and the lap robe draped over her legs. As she’d walked farther and farther away from the lair trying to escape her whirling thoughts, an involuntary shiver had wracked her small frame. An awareness of the cold crossed her thoughts, and just like that, around the next corner, the warm sitting area appeared.

  “Thank you,” she said to the fairy mound. “You’re certainly in a generous mood these days.”

  In response, the flames in the oil lamps flanking each end of the mantle flared, and then Kelly was alone. Only the crackling of the fire interrupted the silence until she heard the approach of familiar footsteps.

  Jeff had sent Gemma to find her. He wouldn’t know what to say himself, not in a situation involving magic at this level, but he’d never want his wife to be by herself.

  The steps stopped, and Kelly knew her friend was standing behind her surveying the setting.

  “Nice digs,” Gemma said. “Mind if I join you?”

  “You don’t have to ask,” Kelly said. “Come. Sit with me.”

  Gemma claimed the opposite end of the settee. “Where’d this come from?” she asked.

  “The fairy mound,” Kelly replied woodenly. “Magic giveth and magic taketh away.”

  Sighing, Gemma said, “That’s a little melodramatic.”

  “Is it, Gemma?” Kelly said hotly. “Is it really?”

  “Okay,” she said, “are we in venting mode or talking mode? Because if you want to vent, I’ll just sit back and listen until you run out of steam. If we’re going to talk, then you know where I have to start.”

  Kelly covered her eyes with her hand. “You have to tell me the girls are right and that I have to trust Jinx to know what to do when she meets the Golem.”

  “Oh, good!” Gemma said brightly. “You are still in there.”

  Kelly didn’t look up, but her shoulders shook with suppressed mirth. “Do not make me laugh,” Kelly warned darkly. “There is nothing to laugh about.”

  “Then there’s nothing to live for, honey,” Gemma said softly, “and I know that’s not how you really feel.”

  Kelly shook her head, drying her damp eyes with the back of her hand. “No,” she said, “it’s not, but you’ve read Awenasa’s grimoire. You know as well as I do what she wrote. You can’t possibly have forgotten.”

  “I haven’t,” Gemma said. “I remember her exact words. ‘I did not know who I loved most until he was taken from me.’”

  “Exactly,” Kelly said. “Jinx might think that losing me or her father or Tori is the worst thing that can happen to her, and maybe it is, but she won’t know until the Golem exact their revenge. ‘They inflict the wound that will never heal.’ That’s what Awenasa wrote at the bottom of the entry. If that happens to Jinx, what will become of my girl?”

  Gemma ran a tired hand through her short, unruly hair and stretched her long legs toward the fire.

  “Kelly, we can’t control any of that,” she said. “Don’t think for one minute that I haven’t considered the collateral damage. If someone dies, it’s going to affect every one of us, but the girls are going. Period. The only thing you can fix is to make sure Jinx doesn’t enter the Middle Realm thinking her mother doesn’t believe in her. I know you’re scared, but you have to do this for your daughter.”

  “Have you talked to Tori?” Kelly asked in a small voice.

  “I have,” Gemma said.

  “What did you say?”

  “That I’ve never been more proud of her in her life.”

  From behind them, a voice said, “Which is exactly what Jinx needs to hear.”

  “I wondered when you’d show up,” Kelly said without bothering to look toward the speaker. “How long have you been spying on us?”

  Festus, back in his small cat form, limped around the settee and turned his bad hip toward the fire. “You know as well as I do that cats don’t have any better hearing range than humans,” he said. “It’s all about frequency. I didn’t follow the sound of your voices, I followed the scent of your perfume. Still Chanel, eh?”

  “Jeff bitches to the high heavens about how much it costs,” Kelly said, “but he never lets me run out.”

  The ginger tom scratched absently at his ear, and then said, a little tentatively, “I’d apologize for butting in, but you know me, I butt in at will. Like I said, I agree with Gemma. You can’t let the kid go into the Middle Realm the way you two left it back there. You have to talk to her, Kelly. If she thinks you’re expecting her to fail, you’re kinda stacking the deck against her. Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not,” Kelly said. “I don’t want any of this.”

  “Want isn’t in the deal, darling,” Festus said. “You can’t stop what’s about to happen, good or bad. Make it right with Jinx before she goes through that door.”

  Kelly looked at her old friend with tears in her eyes. “Your son is going through that door, too, Festus,” she said. “What if he’s the one to die?”

  “Then he will have died doing his job as a McGregor,” Festus replied. “I don’t want to lose my boy, but he has to answer the call of his destiny the same way Jinx does. The same way we all do.”

  “Don’t you ever think destiny asks too high a price from us,” she asked.

  The old cat bowed his head for a second before he answered. “Of course, I do,” he said at last. “My wife died protecting what we are. I sacrificed my . . . dreams, to do the work I was born to do, but this is who we are, Kelly.”

  “I’m sorry for that, Festus,” she said, in a tone that told him they were no longer speaking of their children and the danger they faced.

  Never taking his eyes away from hers, Festus said, “I’m not sorry, Kelly. Not for one second. I’d do it all over again, just the same way.”

  Before Granddad sent me out to get Amity, I have to say that he took the news about my decision to enter the In Between and Brenna’s sudden reappearance better than I thought he would.

  “I do not like Brenna Sinclair’s involvement,” he admitted, “but I know this gryphon, Aquila. Like Myrtle, I thought him to be dead. He has an excellent reputation as a scholar and a gentleman.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “Then why has he had to live in the Middle Realm all these years?”

  “The precise details of that story would have to come from Aquila himself,” Barnaby said, “but I will tell you what I know.”

  As I listened, my grandfather described the days when the Fae began to retreat from the human world. Obviously, creatures with physiology as distinctive as the gryphons were among the first to leave the company of man.

  “Even in their absence, however, these creatures live on in the mythology of the humans,” Barnaby said. “Their images decorate the pages of storybooks and the heraldic shields of the noble families of Europe. The real gryphons went into the Otherworld where they continue to work as scholars and physicians. It is little wonder Aquila nursed Brenna back to health. The healing abilities of his kind are legendary.”

  Even during our short conversation, I recognized a being of distinction in Aquila’s patrician bearing. Everything Barnaby was telling me made sense, except the gryphon’s exile.

  “Aquila told me he wasn’t welcome in the Otherworld,” I said. “Was he lying?”

  Granddad shook his head. “No,” he said, “gryphons are also renowned for their honesty. Many believe that they are incapable of telling a falsehood. In his conversation with you, Aquila simply chose not to go into the political intricacies of the Fae Reformation, I expect for the sake of expediency. During those days, I know for a fact that Aquila ran afoul of Reynold Isherwood.

  Him again? I was starting to think my grandfather had a point about this guy.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Aquila offered an interesting theory in counterpart to the rise of the Creavit,” Barnaby said, “one that he may have proven with the rehabilitation of Brenna Sinclair. He held that we who opposed the Creavit should not so
quickly dismiss their capacity to exercise free will. As his line of thinking went, although the Creavit bargained with the darkness to gain power, they themselves were not inherently evil and could choose how to use their newfound magic.”

  “But isn’t that what Isherwood has been saying to you all along?” I asked. “Isn’t he trying to get you to trust the assimilated Creavit in Europe?”

  “There is a difference, Jinx, between assimilating into a society in which you desire to advance your interests and exercising free will to use acquired powers in the pursuit of just ends,” Barnaby said. “I am intrigued by Aquila’s argument now, as I was then, but I am not convinced. Reynold, however, was, in those days, a zealot who branded Aquila a traitor for collaborating with agents of the darkness. It was not until the abilities of the Creavit to play power politics captured Reynold’s imagination and lined his pockets that the first made practitioners found their way into the halls of the Ruling Elders. Shortly thereafter, I washed my hands of the whole business and brought the first settlers to Shevington.”

  So, add another layer of intrigue to the Fae Reformation. No wonder Granddad hadn’t been back to Europe in centuries.

  “Do you believe Brenna is reformed?” I asked.

  “I believe Aquila, Myrtle, and Greer,” he said. “Moira will have to confirm alchemically if blood magic could have awakened Brenna’s native dormant powers. But even if that is the case, do I think Brenna has abandoned her evil ways? She was an angry young woman bent on revenge when she became Creavit. Only time will tell if that has been exorcised from her soul. Like you, I think we have no choice but to work with her, but I would reserve absolute trust until actions have proven the purity of her motivations.”

  I laughed. “Isn’t that a fancy way of saying that right now you wouldn’t trust her as far as you could throw her?”

  Granddad smiled. “I so love human idioms,” he said. “I have not heard that one before, but the concept seems to correctly match the topic we are discussing. Now, if you don’t mind, could you please ask Amity to join us?”