“Huh?”
“ You are important,” I clarified. “In a city suffering from a severe shortage of good leaders, you’re the best of the best. You are smart and strong-willed. You are empathetic and compassionate. You are collaborative and supportive. You are bold and inspiring. You are the kind of leader that the Watchdogs need, that this city needs, because you stoke the fires in people’s hearts and drive them to overcome their hardships.
“And so, you are vitally important. To me. To everyone. Wanting to help you be healthy and happy is extremely logical, because it’s extremely critical to the well-being of Kinsale as a whole.”
I drew her into a tight embrace. “Your depression has been making you undervalue yourself. And you need to stop that. You need to take care of yourself. Because you matter.”
I pressed my lips against her curly red hair, dusted with debris from the fires that had ravaged the city all over again. “And even if you weren’t important to the city, you’d still be important to me. I would find time for you. Because fae blood or not, you’re still my friend. You’re still my mentor. And I still love you, Saoirse.”
Saoirse stood stock-still for a long moment, and then she sagged into my arms and returned the embrace, her fingers digging into my jacket in a way that struck me as desperate. “You have no idea how nice it is to hear you say that.”
I sighed deeply. “God, I really wish I had more time before I had to leave.”
“I’ll still be here when you get back,” she said. “I’m not suicidal, Vince, just miserable.”
“You’re not just anything.” I rubbed circles into her back, reassuring her. “I, on the other hand, am just south of stupid. I knew damn well that Rian did a number on you—it hurt me so much seeing you in that hospital bed, barely able to move—and yet I let my obsession with getting revenge on Manannán and one-upping
Abarta grow so strong that, in a bitter case of self-defined irony, I stopped paying attention to your well-being.
“I’m so sorry, Saoirse. I should’ve done better. The paranormal isn’t your wheelhouse. It’s mine. And so it’s my responsibility, far more than it is yours, to rectify these sorts of problems.
But I’ve been so self-absorbed these past months that I didn’t even notice there was a problem. I failed you. You deserve so much better.”
Saoirse didn’t reply for some time. Then she pinched me. Hard.
“Ow! What was that for?” I whined, letting her go. “I thought we were having a touching moment.”
“We were.” She pulled away from me and shot me a critical look.
“Then you moved into self-deprecating territory and ruined it.
How many times do I have to remind you that all the world’s problems are not your fault?”
“I didn’t say they were. Your problems—”
“Are my problems,” she finished. “While I very much appreciate your offer to help me get over my problems, I will not have you blaming yourself for their existence. You didn’t eat my life force. Rian did. You didn’t set a horde of zombies loose on the city. Vianu did. You didn’t necessitate my rise to a prominent and stressful position in the PD. Abarta did. So dial down the pity party, will you? It doesn’t need that many decorations.”
My cheeks grew warm. “Are you ever going to stop acting like a stern schoolteacher?”
“Nope.” She flicked the space between my eyes. “Because clearly, you’re never going to stop needing one.”
“Hey, that’s not fair—”
Loud footsteps sounded on the stairs. Odette appeared, followed by Indira. They’d both wiped the blood off their faces, fixed their mussed hair, and loaded up with weapons. So from a distance, they looked ready for a jaunt into the Otherworld. But up close, you could see the fatigue swimming in their eyes, subdued only by stim potions and sheer force of will.
They would both keep going until they dropped because they believed in fighting for the greater good. But just like I wished Saoirse didn’t have to support the whole city while she herself needed support, I also wished Indira and Odette didn’t have to put themselves on the line again and again. They hadn’t had a real break from fighting powerful paranormal forces in months.
None of us had.
Odette glanced between Saoirse and me. I could tell from her overt scowl that she sensed the heavy, uncomfortable emotions hanging between us. Which wasn’t difficult, considering the atmosphere of the room was denser than the smoke lingering in the streets.
“You ready to roll, Whelan,” Odette said, “or do you need a couple more minutes to finish your tearful goodbyes?”
Saoirse patted my shoulder. “He’s all set.”
I gave Saoirse a searching look, silently asking if she thought she would be all right until I returned.
Saoirse smiled, a tired but genuine smile, and waved me toward the stairs. “The question here isn’t whether I can handle my job for another nine hours. It’s whether you can make sure I still have a job after those nine hours are up. And the answer to that question is up to you. So get going, Lieutenant Whelan, because I’d like to still have a place to live at the end of the day.”
Nodding stiffly, I mumbled, “Take care of yourself.”
“I will if you will,” she replied, and gestured to Mallory and Granger, who’d just reached the base of the stairs. “You guys all set?”
Mallory and Granger answered in the affirmative and rounded the checkout counter. Saoirse shuffled over to the door and hauled it open, letting in the acrid stench of smoke and the distant echoes of suffering. Granger exited first, pointing his gun to and fro as he scoured the street for any hostiles, while Mallory paused at the threshold to wish us luck before she stepped out into the war-torn street behind Granger.
Saoirse followed on her heels, casting me one last soulful look as she let the door swing shut. There was a lot of pain buried in that look. But there was also a hint of the same unshakable determination she had always possessed. Rian had damaged her, but he hadn’t destroyed her.
Saoirse was only human, but humans were a great deal more resilient than the fae cared to admit.
As Saoirse, Mallory, and Granger set off for Watchdog HQ, I walked over to the door and reactivated my wards. Once they were in place, I joined Indira and Odette, and we took the second set of stairs that led down to the basement.
Halfway down, Odette scoffed, “Daly’s not made of glass, you know? You don’t need to encase her in bubble wrap to keep her safe.”
“I know that,” I said defensively. “But I’m still allowed to worry about her.”
“No, you aren’t. You’re allowed to do one thing and one thing only: focus on the mission.”
I frowned. “I know you think I’m stupid and all, but I can handle having more than one thought at a time.”
“Worrying about Daly isn’t a thought,” she said, “it’s a distraction. And we can’t afford distractions when we have so little leeway for screw-ups.”
“So you’re not worried about Tori then?”
“No, because Tori’s an adult and I trust her to take care of herself for half a day.” She clicked her tongue in reproach.
“Daly’s not going to fall to pieces just because you go off gallivanting through the magic forest. You are not that important to her stability, and you’re certainly not the source of her strength. She survived the collapse. She’ll survive this.”
I halted on the steps. “You knew?”
Odette stopped and peered over her shoulder, irritation smeared across her face. “What, that Rian fucked her up? Yeah, I knew.
Because he fucked me up too. He took a big bite out of my life force, remember? I spent weeks after that trip to Niflheim feeling like death warmed over before the side effects of that gancanagh feeding finally faded.
“Daly felt the exact same way, and we talked about it on and off.
Thing is, Rian took a lot more energy from her than he took from me, so her recovery has been a lot slower. But she is recove
ring.
She’s a hell of a lot better than she was a few months back.”
I ground my teeth together until my jaw joints popped. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because one, it’s not my job to pull your head out of your frosty faerie ass—you know how gancanaghs work, so you should’ve realized that Daly would end up depressed for a long time after an attack that vicious. And two, because you were practically drowning yourself to get the Watchdog combat division up and running in time to make it a formidable threat to the vampires.
Daly didn’t want to disturb you, and neither did I. Project Watchdog’s success was more important than any individual’s personal struggles. And that’s still true.”
She pointed to the bottom of the stairs, where Indira was waiting for us to catch up. “So let’s go be successful.”
I pinched my eyes shut. God, what a mess.
Breaking my soul glamour had given me a huge power boost, but it had ironically made me worse at my job than I’d been after I stripped my mind glamour during the neamh-mairbh invasion. Then, I had been entirely focused on the bigger picture without regard
to individual suffering, to the detriment of everyone I cared about. Now, I was struggling to focus on the big picture at all because I couldn’t stop noticing the suffering of individuals, to the detriment of everyone I cared about.
Had I dropped my glamours years ago, I could’ve worked out the kinks in my faerie quirks, grown used to seeing through the surface-level deception that people used to hide their true selves and combined that ability in a nuanced manner with the sense of hard logic encoded into my half-sídhe mind. That would have allowed me to make more informed decisions based on a broader and deeper understanding of the situations I was in and the other people involved in them. And that would have been an immensely useful skill to possess when trying to support a city on the brink of disaster.
But because I’d clung to my false façade of humanity for so long, it had unraveled at the worst of times. I now had all the spiritual and mental aspects of a half-sídhe trying to crudely integrate themselves with the faux human persona I’d been building since I was six years old, and it had left me woefully off balance.
I couldn’t afford to be off balance when a literal apocalypse loomed on the horizon. Get it together, Whelan. You’re better than this. You have to be.
I opened my eyes and said to Odette, “What’re we standing here for? We have things to do.”
Odette eyed me critically for a second, then gave me a quick nod.
“Don’t make me lecture you again. I’m not your goddamn kindergarten teacher, and you’re not a child who needs guidance writing your ABCs. So get your head in the game, and keep it there.”
“I will.” I motioned for her to continue down the stairs. “And I’m sorry. You’re right. I can do better.”
“Well, at least you listen to criticism.”
“Now if only you did too.”
She elbowed me in the gut with her metal arm. “Check yourself, dickhead. Check yourself.”
Chapter Four
Eight and a Half Hours Till Dusk
With a whipping flurry of snow, we emerged from the void five miles south of Camhaoir. In the sky above us hung a large moon that never set, and speckled throughout the black sky around this moon were countless twinkling dots that marked the positions of the many mysterious realms of the Otherworld. On either side of
the dirt road on which we stood loomed tall evergreen trees, and from among their dense boughs, glowing eyes of all colors and sizes observed us.
But these woods here were not the old forests, and so the creatures that watched us did not constitute real threats. Some were just typical wildlife, Tír na nÓg’s variants of owls and deer and foxes. Some were the people of the forest, the groups of lesser fae and non-fae who preferred to steer clear of the overbearing weight of sídhe society. And some were ephemeral creatures of light and shadow spawned from the magic of the forest itself, their attention spans as short-lived as their existence.
None of them would harass us unless we provoked them first.
Orlagh stepped away from our tightly packed group to orient herself, her boots crunching on a thin layer of freshly fallen snow. The stars and moon as a guide, she determined the cardinal directions and used them to figure out which way we should go from here.
“There should be a crossroads about two miles on,” she said, pointing at the stretch of road that cut through the deepest part of the woodland. “We’ll take a left onto the Royal Mainway and continue due north to the gates of the city. There will likely be a long queue at the security and customs checkpoint a quarter mile outside the gates, but my credentials should allow us to bypass the inspections.”
Odette brushed a few snowflakes off her face and asked, “Why didn’t we just portal onto this Royal Mainway?”
“You can’t,” Boyle answered. “The whole road is warded to bounce portal exit points. So you can portal off the road, but you can’t portal onto it. It was built that way to prevent thieves and other criminal elements from ambushing merchant trains and military convoys.”
Indira swept her gaze from side to side, tagging all the eyes that were looking back. “Got a big problem with thieves in these parts, do you?”
“Nothing we can’t handle,” Orlagh assured her. “Now, let’s hurry along. I don’t know how long it will take us to get an audience with one of my contacts. They are all very busy people, and as they are possibly high enough up the chain of command to have been alerted to the potential breach of Maige Mell by ‘the man calling himself Abarta,’ then they may be much busier than usual.”
“Not to mention that you can also see the Wild Hunt forming on this side of the veil,” I said. “When Abarta cast the first stage of the ritual, it blasted a hole through the ceiling of Maige
Itha and tore the sky wide open. It happened in the Seelie Court, but I’m certain that everyone in Tír na nÓg sensed the magical disturbance.”
“So everyone in the realm, military and civilian alike, will be on high alert.” Boyle swept his boot across the ground, kicking up loose snow, and asked Orlagh, “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather visit your mother instead of trying your luck in Camhaoir?
It would probably take us less time to get an audience with her at the fort.”
Orlagh grimaced. “I would have to explain to her what happened to McCullough. Which would spur the launch of a formal investigation into his conduct and ours. Which would result in us being detained for an indeterminate period of time.”
Unconvinced, Odette said, “Your mom is such a hardass that she’d risk the entire civilization of Earth just to pin down the details of what happened with Colonel Asshole?”
“My mother is a stickler for the rules.” Orlagh tapped a finger on the hilt of her sword. “She might not scratch this mission entirely, but she would definitely swap Boyle and me out for two others, as soldiers under conduct investigations are always removed from active duty until the investigation concludes.”
Drake, who’d been lingering silently at the back of the group, piped up. “If you two get replaced by sídhe who aren’t as forgiving of necromancy, then I’m going to end up dying in a friendly fire ‘accident’ that involves my head being detached from my neck.”
Boyle frowned. “I suppose that outcome is not out of the realm of possibility.”
“Then let’s stick with the original plan and head to this fancy capital of yours,” Odette snapped. “There’s no point in standing around here arguing about unreasonably strict parents and shitty faerie laws.”
The two soldiers were unamused by Odette’s ridicule of sídhe society. Wisely though, they let the matter drop, and we all set off at a brisk jog down the dirt road.
Orlagh and Boyle, as full sídhe, could run at astounding speeds if they put their all into it. But since the rest of us didn’t share that attribute, they moved just slow enough so that we wouldn’t lose sight of them in the di
mness.
Drake the dhampir wasn’t nearly as fast as a vampire, but he was still quick and light on his feet. So he settled into the middle of the gap between the soldiers and the rest of us.
Indira, by virtue of being half lesser fae, was no slowpoke either, which was why she ended up a few feet in front of Odette.
Odette was fueling her run with a tiny pinch of magic, but she couldn’t push herself like she had in that cavern in the Divide; she didn’t have enough energy to spare.
Everyone was faster than me, on account of my scrambled guts. I hobbled along ten paces behind Odette.
I couldn’t hasten the healing of an iron wound. So instead of allowing my body to take heinous amounts of punishment, like I’d done during the fight with Abarta in Maige Itha, I would have to rely more on clever strategy than perseverance and brute strength.
You have no glamours now, I thought, so you have no excuse not to use your fae wiliness to its full extent.
“Christ, Whelan,” Odette called back to me. “You’re moving like an old man.”
“I’d like to remind you that my intestines were literally hanging out of my abdomen not long ago,” I said. “And while they might have enjoyed that bit of freedom, I would prefer that they stay on the inside from this point on.”
Odette threw a smirk my way and gestured to the right side of her head. “Are you sure you aren’t just getting decrepit? I mean, you’re even going gray.”
I brought a hand to my hair, which was too short for me to see without a mirror. “Liar. There’s no way I have gray hairs. I’m half sídhe. I age slowly. You’re going to end up old and gray way before I do.”
Odette squinted harder at the designated area of my head. “Well, it’s certainly not the moonlight playing tricks on my eyes. Fifty chits says the stress of Project Watchdog is making you go gray prematurely.”
“I’ll take that bet.” I stuck out my tongue. “I’d favor my fae genetics over your human eyes any day.”
She snorted. “Being in Tír na nÓg is making you cocky. Either that or the lack of glamours.”
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