by R. F. Long
But she could not lose herself in it. Not this time.
Daire’s silhouette by the window cast a shadow over the whole room and she was reminded once more how insignificant her problems really were in comparison to his. Or rather, to theirs.
His problems were her problems too. And their problems had brought all this down on the art group’s show. If she hadn’t suggested they have it here, if they had stayed in the town hall, their work would never have been put at risk and they would have been spared this sort of trauma. Like it or not, this was as much her fault as Aynia’s.
She could not tell her friends the truth. Only Daire knew and fully understood the nature of those who had done this. To the others it was a random attack by vandals.
But she knew the real story.
Daire needed her too. More than the gallery, or her friends. Though she said nothing last night, she had felt him slipping away, fading beneath her touch, before she responded to his kiss. His time was almost up.
She stared out the window at the carved pumpkins in the shop displays across the street, the witch silhouettes and miniature ghosts. It was Halloween. She needed to find a way to help him. Even though doing so would mean losing him.
“What are we going to do about frames?” Maggie asked, startling Rowan out of her thoughts. “No way we can get a framer to do them all for tonight, can we?”
“Not likely,” Rowan sighed. No one could do that. She had to think of another way around it. “Tell you what; I have an attic full of framed pictures. What about if we take the pictures out of them and put these in? We’ll have to use tape to seal them up again, but it might work, at least for tonight.”
“But Rowan,” John protested, “you’re talking about your pictures!”
Her pictures? What did that matter? She grinned at his dismay. “I’ll get them redone if I ever take them out of the attic. They’re so useful up there.”
“Need me to go get them?” asked Matthew.
Rowan hadn’t seen her brother arrive. Despite her earlier thoughts, she marvelled at how caught up in all this she had become.
“Great.” The shock of his appearance made her voice a little too jolly. Matthew looked awful. His skin was flushed and coated in a light sheen of sweat, as if he was coming down with a fever or something worse.
Rowan took his arm and steered him away from the others. Daire watched them placidly, but his shoulders tightened and she felt his tension. What was he sensing or did his suspicion extend to everything now?
She studied Matthew’s glittering eyes and waxy pallor. “Matt? Are you okay?” She put out her hand to check his temperature, but her brother shied back from her and scowled. He hadn’t liked to be mollycoddled, as Grams put it, even as a baby.
“I’m fine. Bit of a cold, that’s all. I heard what happened.” He gentled his tone apologetically. “I wanted to help.”
“Thanks. If you don’t mind going to the cottage and picking up the pictures in the attic, that would help.”
“Sure. How many?”
“As many as you can fit in your car, Matt. We’re going to have to redo all of these and we’ll need a few options to see what fits best.”
“Fair enough, but I’ll need another pair of hands.”
She glanced around the room. Everyone was hard at work and she wasn’t sure who she could spare.
“What about Daire?” asked Matthew.
Rowan’s gaze swung back to her brother. “You want to take Daire back?”
Matthew shrugged, although she still saw the distaste buried beneath his attempts to make peace. “Well, he has the muscles and we’re going to be moving quite a load.”
She winced, but what else could she do. “I—I guess.”
Her brother gave her a grin she knew usually spelled trouble, the very expression she found endearing since they were children. Matthew had always been able to rope her into the most outrageous schemes. “Besides, I don’t have to talk to him, do I?”
Rowan gave him a warning glare and went to Daire.
They stood with the sunlight from the world beyond the gallery warming the air around them as it fell through the glass. His skin glowed with life. Rowan slid her arms around his waist. The sensation of touching him sparked images in her mind, vivid scenes of all they had shared last night. Wonderful memories, snapshots of unutterable bliss. She pushed back the ache inside her and hugged him close. His hard body melded around her, a comfort and a torment all in the same instant.
“You need to go back,” she said. “To look for the key before sunset.”
“Am I that obvious?” he asked ruefully.
“Yes, but it’s okay. This is Samhain, isn’t it? Your last chance?”
His eyes trailed up and down the street, pausing on images of witches, bats and pumpkin heads, all the garish modern trappings of an ancient celebration of the year’s passage. “It is,” he replied reluctantly. “But Rowan—”
She lifted her fingers to his mouth, shushing him. His breath wreathed her hand, warm and inviting. She longed to touch his lips with her own but didn’t dare with half a dozen people, including Matthew, watching their exchange.
“Matt will take you to the cottage.”
“Matt?” Daire’s eyes narrowed.
Her brother’s mistrust of him hadn’t gone unnoticed then. Well, he would have had to be blind and deaf not to have noticed and she had never met anyone as insightful as Daire.
“Yes. He’s going to fetch some picture frames for me. I thought you could help him load the car and then…” She dropped her hand to her side. This could be it, of course. If he found the key, he would have to go away. All they had shared would be for nothing, last night, all the times he had saved her, everything.
He closed his fingers around hers. “If you ever need me, I will find a way to come back,” he said. “If I find the acorn key.”
“When I’m old and grey.” She smiled.
“I may just be waiting for you this afternoon. You will have come back before the opening to ready yourself, will you not? If I have not found the key, I can linger there until sunset.”
Her ears pricked up at the words and her breath stopped in her throat. If he expected to be there, had he resigned himself to remaining here, with her?
“Daire, even if you don’t find the key, Aidan will come. He has to.”
He bowed his head and pressed his lips to the crown of her head, his breath playing on her hair, against her scalp. He kissed her. “As you say, milady. Until later.”
Later. What a useful word. It could mean hours, days or years. It could mean decades. Time altered in the veil.
“Until later,” she replied.
Rowan couldn’t tear her eyes from Daire until Matthew’s car pulled out of sight. She tried to shake the gnawing uneasiness that nestled at the bottom of her stomach, but it remained, coiled there, cold and disturbing.
–—
Matthew drove his vehicle much faster than Rowan. Daire watched him grip the steering wheel as if it might try to escape him.
“How long are you staying?” Matthew asked, his eyes fixed ahead.
“I hope to be leaving tonight,” Daire replied and wondered why it felt like a lie. Perhaps hope was the wrong word. But he couldn’t think of the right one.
“And where’s your play on?”
The youth was confrontational this afternoon. Daire withdrew to formality seeing no reason in allowing an argument to develop.
“In London.” It seemed the best place to centre a lie. When previously he had visited the Iron World, all culture seemed to centre on London, especially the theatre.
“I gathered that.” Matthew persisted. “But which theatre? What company? Who’s the director?”
The enclosure of metal seemed to contract around him. Daire gritted his teeth uneasily and tried to stay calm. Matthew shared blood with Rowan and most likely the same illness that filled her with iron. In Rowan, iron bred strength of will, of purpose, of personality. But i
n her brother, it emerged in anger.
“Matthew, I beg you to stay calm.”
“You beg me? Stay calm? She was right, wasn’t she? You’re lying to Ro. There’s no bloody play. I have web access. I can check theatre listings. Who the hell are you?”
“I am—” Daire paused, his reply becoming guarded as he processed Matthew’s actual words. “Who is she?” he asked at length.
Matthew glanced his way and Daire recognised the full effect of an enchantment clinging to him. More than that. He was elf-shot, probably fae-ridden, and for more than his precious soul fire. That had been all but drained, and shadows had been poured into him instead. The web of dark magic snarled around his soul, robbing him of reason or the ability to think clearly. And tying him to something else, something dark and eternally dangerous.
“And she didn’t think you would notice. Not when you are so enthralled with my sister.”
Enthralled? An interesting choice of word. “Matthew? Whatever Aynia told you—”
Before Daire could anticipate his actions, Matthew leaned towards him and released the passenger seat belt. It shot across Daire’s chest, hooking awkwardly under his arm. Matthew slammed his full weight on the brakes and momentum hurled him forward. Daire’s head crashed against the windscreen and blood filled his mouth. The world cracked around him as he slid into unconsciousness.
–—
Rowan waited for an hour and a half, the malingering unease growing all the time. They ate a lunch of ham salad rolls and drank tea from polystyrene cups. She tried Matthew’s mobile twice, but there was no answer. The group started to run out of things to do, waiting for the frames.
“Would you like me to go and get them?” Maggie asked
“Sure.” Rowan patted her pockets, looking for her car keys. “Anyone seen my jacket?”
“Over here.” Maggie grabbed it from the table where Rowan had slung it that morning and, as she did so, the contents spilled onto the floor. The keys clattered against the wooden boards and something else rolled out from underneath them. It made a light, bell-like sound and caught the midday sunlight, glinting at her.
Maggie picked up the necklace. “That’s beautiful, Rowan. Did Daire give it to you? Why aren’t you wearing it?”
Rowan stared open-mouthed at the gleaming acorn dangling from a gold chain, the one Aidan had worn, which she had picked up before her memory got scrambled that first night. Daire’s spells, the confusion which had followed and everything that happened since had put it entirely from her conscious mind.
An acorn pendant. Both Sidhe princes had worn one. She remembered clearly how it had nestled at the base of their throats, rising and falling as they breathed.
An acorn. Rowan sucked in a breath of shock. “The acorn key,” Daire had said right before he left. He called it an acorn! But he’d just referred to the key up until then, hadn’t he? Her mind whirled in dismay. She’d pictured one of those huge metal things from cathedral doors, carved in an elaborate shape. Not something as delicately beautiful as this.
She took the necklace reverently from Maggie. She’d had it all the time. Through all his fruitless searches and all the dangers, it had nestled in the bottom of her wool jacket’s right pocket. The jacket she had worn that first night and not again until today. It had hung at the bottom of the stairs, all innocently ignored.
What would Daire say? He’d be furious with her! She had to get it to him, and as soon as possible.
“Tell you what,” she told Maggie rapidly, “we’ll both go. You can come back with the frames. I’ve a couple of things to take care of at home.”
“But how will you get back? You’ll be here for the opening, won’t you?”
Would she? If Daire left, how would she be able to face them all? And yet she held the key, the very same key he needed, in her clenched fist. She couldn’t keep it from him. Her throat tightened. “Sure. It isn’t ’til nine. I’ll work out something,” she whispered, only partially answering Maggie’s question.
Matthew’s car sat silent and still in the driveway. Rowan ran her hand over the bonnet, finding it cold. They had been here for some time then. Why? What was going on? There was no sign of either man inside the house. Directing Maggie to the attic for the frames, Rowan checked each room. Everything was exactly the same as they had left it this morning. Even the rumpled bedclothes.
Rowan stood in the doorway to the bedroom staring at the bed. He couldn’t be gone. Not just like that. All last night, he’d made her feel like a goddess and now…
She curled her hand around the acorn pendant until it dug into her palm. This was the key he had sought. But if Aidan had come to take him home, if Aidan had finally made it back through the veil, Daire would have gone anyway.
Maybe it was better this way. If Daire discovered she had the key all along, he might think she had lied to him, that she had hidden it to keep him here. And would she have done so? The question taunted her. She looked at the bed and couldn’t bear to think she would never see him again. She slipped the necklace around her neck and tucked it beneath her blouse.
But what about Matthew? Where was her brother? They would hardly have gone off into the forest searching for the key, would they? Not together.
“Coming through!” Maggie called as she trundled by, her arms piled high with a tower of pictures. “While you’re contemplating your laundry, this is the last batch! I’ve got one of yours to put up too, okay?”
“Fine,” Rowan replied, still not able to leave. She pressed the necklace to her chest and tried to make herself move. Her feet felt like blocks of stone. “You head on back, Maggie. I’ll need to… I have to…”
“Has he gone?” Maggie’s voice gentled.
“I think so,” Rowan replied, painfully aware of the way her voice shook.
“Just take your time. Maybe get Matt to bring you along for the opening later.” Maggie seemed to understand her need to be alone now and Rowan’s eyes stung with tears of relief. “You’ve done enough for today. Leave the rest to us.”
Rowan followed her downstairs and helped her load the pictures into her car.
Maggie hesitated before getting in and took Rowan’s free hand. “He’s going to come back.”
Startled, Rowan nearly pulled out of her friend’s loose grip. “What?”
“Daire. He may have said he had to go away, but I saw the two of you.” Maggie’s eyes twinkled. “I saw the way he looked at you. He’s going to come back.”
“I hope so, Maggie. I really do. But it’s not very likely.”
Rowan only waited until Maggie pulled out of the drive before retreating to the house. She was almost at the door when the acorn necklace warmed against her skin. Surprised, her feet came to a faltering stop. She gripped the necklace. The metal definitely felt hotter. She closed her hand around it, letting its touch tingle through her skin. She shut her eyes.
Daire. The sense of him came over her so strongly that she took a step back. He was still here. Well, not here, not at the house. But nearby. She concentrated, forcing her mind to take in as much as it possibly could. She felt him, felt his body wrap around her, could smell the rich and heady sense of the Sidhe surrounding her.
Pain broke over her like a great wave. It hit her stomach and her knees buckled. Pain and fear, though he would neither accept nor admit to it. No, Daire would never be prepared to give fear an inch. Cold fire burned against his skin, leeching him of energy, infecting him with despair. She felt his heart throb weakly, drained by continual pain. Iron bonds encircled him, held him and would gradually destroy him.
No! It couldn’t be happening. She shook back her own terror and tried to make herself see where he was, to know what was happening. She tried to see through his eyes. There was nothing that would help, nothing but darkness. But there were sounds. Dripping water, echoes. She felt water underfoot, cold, eating at his bones. The walls closed in around her and eyes opened just a crack to reveal stone speckled with moss. She could smell old damp cave
s and hear the sound—the sound of a river.
Rowan’s eyes snapped open, but the image from Daire’s mind hung like a photographic shadow over the cottage door. Grams called them the Nighey Caves, an evil place, and had warned Rowan and Matt to stay away from them. Wasn’t that where the banshee could be seen, washing the bloody clothes of the soon-to-die in the stream that cut through the woods, beating them against the rocks as she wailed out her lament? All who saw her died within a week. Children needed to stay away and never go too close.
Grams never mentioned that the caves were a treacherous labyrinth, and it was easy to lose one’s way there. Matt and Rowan had spent more than a few hours with a line of thread trying to find their way back out, more afraid of Grams’ reaction than they were of the caves themselves.
They were no more than half an hour away on foot through the forest.
Rowan gripped the acorn tighter, embedding its warmth into her skin and tried to force her voice directly into Daire’s mind. “I’m coming, my love. I know where you are.”
She pushed aside the wash of dismay and misery, the agony and the whispered reply. It’s a trap.
Chapter Sixteen
As Rowan scrambled up the steep incline towards the caves, she struggled to keep the heavy bag slung across her body from tripping her up. Blood and iron were the strongest weapons available to her. In her head, a dozen old wives tales and rhymes jangled their raucous tunes, muddling together in her mind, mocking her, and she was certain Aynia caused it. That would make her laugh, wouldn’t it? To take the very information Rowan needed to survive this and turn it into a torment. That meant Aynia knew she was on her way. But how could she not come? She couldn’t leave him in the clutches of that monster.