by KB Anne
His body twitches like he stuck his hand in a socket. His arms and legs start to spasm as if what he’s sharing is in direct conflict with someone else’s wishes. Red blotches erupt across his face and neck, soon followed by red welts.
“Go on,” Granda murmurs and begins a counter spell.
Scott’s eyes widen in alarm. Maleficium is afoot.
“Why did Declan let her in?”
“She whispered something to him—I couldn’t hear what she said, but it made him kneel in front of her. She rested her hand on his head, then he rose and turned to us.”
Whatever counter spell Granda cast seems to be working because the welts recede back into his skin. Madigan’s no longer twisting in pain when he speaks.
“And what did he say?”
“He said that Alaric was dead and that you killed him.”
The thought of Alaric dead gets me every freaking time. I swallow the lump before continuing.
“And you believed him?”
“Yes,” he says in a small voice.
“Why?”
“Alaric was our alpha.”
“Okay, but why would you automatically believe Declan?”
He blinks, his pupils still completely dilated. “Declan was Alaric’s second in command.”
“So that makes him . . .”
“Our new alpha.”
“And what does that make Maria?”
“Our queen.”
Madigan’s eyes return to normal, the effects of the tea wearing off. “Whew, are you sure you didn’t slip in some whiskey?” he says to Scott.
Scott winks at him. “Maybe I did. Why?”
“I feel a wee bit knackered.”
I reach out and pat his hand to push out any remaining magic and ask him again, this time to find out how he’ll answer on his own. “Have you heard anything about Alaric?”
“He’s dead.”
I clear my throat. I’ll never find him if I can’t get past the fucking concept that his pack thinks he’s dead. He’s not dead. I don’t know where he is—Breas probably has him—but he’s alive.
“Where’s his body?”
Madigan scratches his chin as if he hadn’t considered that part of the riddle. “I dunno.”
Now to get him to admit truths without being spelled or compelled. “Your band thinks I killed him, don’t they.”
He glances away.
I grab his hand. “Do you?”
“Declan said you did. And Maria was the last person to see Alaric. She told us he was with you.”
Maria again. What’s her fucking deal?
“And what do you think?”
“That’s why I’m here. To find out if you did it.”
Deep down he wants to find Alaric. He doesn’t trust Declan or Maria. “Do you think I’m capable of murdering him? I want to find him as much as you do—that’s really why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he finally decides. “I want to help you find him.”
I smile. He gave us exactly what we wanted. At least now I have an idea who we’re dealing with. “Madigan, would you do something for Alaric?”
He blinks, his pupils shifting back into discs. A little extra compellation motivation never hurt anyone. “Anything for our leader.”
“Will you watch Declan and Maria and let us know what they’re planning?”
“I know what they’re planning.”
“You do?” Scott says.
“They’re planning to create an army of werewolves. They want to break the curse that binds the werewolf to the full moon.”
“And how do they plan to do that?”
He blinks again, and his irises reappear. “They want to kill Gigi.”
“Why?”
“She is the Goddess Brigit reincarnated. They say she killed our leader.”
Scott hands me the empty teapot and gently pushes me away from Madigan so he can get close to him without being weird. “And what do you think?”
“I know that Alaric trusted her.”
A thousand scenarios swirl through Scott’s head before he settles on what he expects to be the best outcome.
“You trust her too.”
“I do.”
So Scott did some compelling of his own.
“You don’t like being a werewolf, do you.”
Madigan stiffens. “I didn’t say anything about being a werewolf. Where’d ya get that notion from?”
Scott hands him a nightlock-imbued crystal. As soon as it touches his palm, the crystal glows.
“What sort of magic is this?” he whispers in complete awe of the power emanating from the crystal. My own crystal warms against my chest, reinforcing the power of any magically imbued yet naturally occurring object.
“That will keep you from shifting if you wear it around your neck.”
He holds it up to the light. “Really?”
“Really,” Scott says. “No more painful shifting every full moon.”
He slips the leather thong over his head, letting the crystal rest on his neck. “Wow.”
“Now,” Granda says, appearing with a fresh pot of tea—I hadn’t even noticed he’d disappeared— “let’s get down to logistics and plans.”
Madigan fingers the crystal again. “Let’s.”
5
Watch out, Devil Child
Madigan left Granda’s after we came up with a plan. Once he accepted the crystal, we didn’t even need to compel him to do anything for us. He was more than willing to spy on Declan and Maria and report back to us when he learns anything. Scott worried about his safety because at the surface, Madigan seems, well . . . simple, but really he’s just loyal to his true leader, and now that he knows Alaric is alive, he will do anything to assist his return. He wanted to go to Newgrange with us today, but we convinced him it would be better to hang around Declan and Maria, at least for today. But now I kinda wish he had come, because the conversation in the car is not exactly titillating.
Ever since our late-night visit to the fairy mound following our night of drinking and debauchery at Hell’s Gate with Alaric and his band, Run with Silver, Scott’s been quiet. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with him keeping his sidebar commentary about every random thought that enters his reincarnated god brain to himself, but I can tell something is bothering him. I mean, we had a lot of shit go down before the fairy mound incident and he still managed to talk incessantly the majority of the time, so the fact that he’s not talking now is cause for concern. He didn’t even laugh when I told him I was thinking about making black T-shirts that read “Team Alaric” with a giant white wolf on them for us and “Just Say No to Breas” shirts for Granda and Clarissa’s coven since they’ve made it their life’s mission to find the jackass god and the Vessel of Life—which I think is especially funny because now that Granda and Clarissa have realized they were spelled by Breas the night he came over to Granda’s cottage, they are really pissed off. Evidently, it’s acceptable for mortal humans (albeit Clarissa isn’t exactly mortal) to spell reincarnated gods, but gods spelling humans is a big no-no. The coven’s been canvasing the countryside, hitting every cottage and hovel from Kildare to the Irish Sea. Of course Scott and I have too, but our search, or at least my search, is less motivated by the Vessel of Life and Breas, and more by my desire to find Lizzie and Alaric.
Scott slips into an unusually long silence after my T-shirt joke. It makes me itch with even more concern.
“Penny for your thoughts,” I say, smiling at him. My use of cliché ought to get some type of reaction from him. Dad rarely punished or corrected us, but when he did, it was always because of our cliché usage.
When Scott doesn’t react, I think about swatting him, but he’s driving. And on the wrong side of the car. And the road. In a foreign land. I probably shouldn’t hit him.
“Hellooooo? Earth to Scott, Earth to Scott, this is your incredibly bitchy sister trying to get some attention.”
Still nothing.
“Sco
tt!”
He swerves into the other lane before swinging back into ours. Add shouting to the list of “What Not to Do While Driving in a Foreign Country.”
“What the heck, Gigi? I could have killed someone.”
I glance out the window at the countryside on either side of the road, then into the far distance. “You’re right. Those cáera look like they plan to stampede.”
“Cáera?”
I point at the herd in the far distance behind the wire fence. “Sheep.”
He snorts. “Ms. Monacelli would never believe me if I told her how talented you are at acquiring a new language.”
“To be clear, Irish isn’t exactly a new language to either one of us. Well, some of the new slang is, but I’m not a complete fecking gobshite.”
He snorts again. “I disagree. You are a complete fucking idiot.”
“Hey!” I hit his arm and he swerves again.
“Feck,” he shouts as he readjusts the wheel. “Careful.”
“Sorry, you made me fecking angry.”
“You’re going to try and incorporate ‘feck’ into every sentence now, aren’t you.”
“Fecking right, I am.”
He shakes his head, laughing.
“So Scott . . .” I start.
“So Gigi,” he replies, and I’m reminded of the beginning of my conversation with Gram back in Vernal Falls following my cutting incident in school. Breas was the cause of it, or at least the tipping point, when he kissed Kensey right in front of me after kissing me the night before. I haven’t cut myself since, but Breas brought out the worst parts of my nature. Now I know why. I think I’m stronger now, as I’ve mostly embraced my reincarnated goddess nature, but still, in a moment of weakness, I can’t promise that it won’t happen again.
But I don’t want to talk about me or Breas. “You’ve been quiet recently. What’s going on?”
“Don’t you mean, ‘You’ve been fecking quiet? What the feck is going on?’”
He does make a point. “Apologies for my fecking oversight, but really, what the feck is going on?”
He clears his throat. “Nothing.”
“Something’s bothering you. We’ve already established I’m not a fecking gobshite.”
He laughs again. “I picture chocolate-covered raisins every time you say that.”
“You’re the fecking gobshite. Quit changing the subject. What the feck is going on?”
“Fine,” he says, pulling into the Newgrange parking lot. “We’ll talk on the way to the monument.”
I don’t want to wait, but obviously whatever he has to say is fecking huge, and he wants to give me his full attention. Of course, parking takes for-fecking-ever. The lot is mobbed with old people all wanting to get a look at Celtic history.
Should we wave our hands and tell them to look at us, because we’re probably more ancient than Newgrange? I plant in Scott’s head as I elbow my way past some senior citizens and wait for him in the grass.
That’s exactly what we need—another spectacle made of us. “Get off the grass, miss,” he says aloud, pointing to the small sign clearly stating, “Stay Off the Grass.”
I roll my eyes and follow him down the path. “Why did Granda suggest coming here? I can’t imagine Breas hanging around a crowded tourist trap with Alaric and Lizzie wrapped together with a fecking tidy bow.”
“Maybe he wanted to get you off his case. You’ve been on him nonstop about finding them. It’s downright annoying.”
This time, instead of elbowing an old person out of the way, I shove it into his ribs. “What’s annoying to me is that you’re avoiding telling me what’s bothering you, Mr. Keeps-to-Myself.”
He sighs. “All right. Promise you won’t laugh.”
I stop in the middle of the path. “You know I can’t promise that. There’s usually too much fodder to just let it sit and rot.”
“Right. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he says and hurries past me—definitely not the reaction I expected.
His hunched-over frame clues me in that I, once again, acted like an insensitive bitch. I rush to catch up to him. “Scott, wait.”
When he doesn’t, I yank his arm. “Scott, I’m sorry. I promise I won’t laugh.”
He looks down at me. The rims of his eyes are red. He’s something of a softie when it comes to emotions. I never felt I could share those inner parts of myself, especially based on my fecked-up childhood (which turned out to be a lie, but the damage had already been done). But Scott has never resisted letting his emotions take him wherever they want to.
I pull him over to a bench. “What is it?”
He swallows hard. “Ever since Hell’s Gate, I’ve had dreams of my true love.”
“And this is a problem why?”
“It’s getting to the point that I can’t eat or sleep. I’m becoming obsessed with this image in my head. I don’t know how much more of it I can take. I need to meet her or I’m going to lose it.”
“Do you have any idea when that will be?” We leave for the Shadow Realm in less than two weeks. Meeting his true love before we go would certainly put a strain on the romance, not to mention affect his training with Gallean—and not in a good way.
“No, but she’s all I can think about.”
“Does she come to you as a human or a swan?” I try not to let my lip twitch. “I mean, whenever you lose your Oegden mind and sprout tornadoes, four birds circle your head when you get your shit together, and now a true love swan.”
“Swan?” An old lady shuffles by. “Did you know that when two swans meet, they are bound together for all time? Their embrace inspired our heart shape,” she says, tracing an imaginary heart in the air in case we don’t know what a heart looks like.
“I have heard that,” I answer for us both of us. “I’ve also heard that people shouldn’t listen in on someone else’s conversation.”
Everyone can thank bitch Gigi for getting rid of the old broad.
She dips her head. “Forgive me.”
“No, wait,” Scott says and walks over to her. For the first time today, I let myself read his mind without his permission. He’s about to confess who he is to this strange woman. He’s always been far too trusting in my opinion, but it’s not like him to share intimate knowledge about us. It’s not just our lives at stake. According to Granda and Clarissa, it’s everyone’s.
“Scott, would you mind helping me with this?” I withdraw my never-ending spiral stone from my pocket. He glances at it, then at me.
Don’t tell her, I think at him with all my power.
His mind drifts to the potential impact his “Confessions of a Swan Lover” could have.
“Forgive me,” he says to the woman. “I should be going.”
“Remember to be true to your heart,” she whispers before continuing down the path to the shuttle bus area.
He returns over to me. “That was weird.”
“Yeah, it was. We weren’t even talking that loud. Do you think she’s a spy for Breas?” I let my mind focus on the woman. She’s still thinking about swans and true loves, and how true love shouldn’t be kept apart. Nothing sinister or even mildly creepy, and no hint that Breas is responsible for her interrupting our conversation, but I’m skeptical. Breas wreaks havoc whenever he’s around, and since he really is a god, I imagine he’s capable of manipulating people from a distance to do his bidding. The real question is his range. How far away could he be?
I scan the area and notice some grass-capped mounds in the distance. It gives me an idea.
“Come on.” I cut off the path.
“Gi, we’re going to get in trouble.”
I whisper an invisibility spell as I wiggle my fingers. “No, we won’t. I cloaked us. Now come on.”
But of course Scott doesn’t completely trust me or my magic. He stops and pushes his arms out to the sides of the boundary. “I don’t feel anything. I thought I’d be able to feel a cloak.”
I roll my eyes. He’s newer to the mag
ic game than I am but, my god, he’s so naive. “Do you think I borrowed Harry’s invisibility cloak? I mean, seriously. A little faith here.”
He crosses his arms. “If you can’t prove we’re cloaked, then I’m not going anywhere.”
I release an exasperated sigh. “You were the one who was about to confess everything to the old lady, and now you want me to prove we’re hidden? How am I supposed to do that?”
“Damien, come here!” a woman calls out. We turn to find out who this Damien is, because of course I’m picturing Damien from The Omen and wondering what type of magic I can project to stop a devil child from revealing us, or worse.
Scott, of course, is not thinking devil child possession. He’s thinking child in danger. He squats down and holds out his arms. I’m guessing he thinks the child will run right into them.
Damien teeters off the path, veering toward Scott. I hold my breath. It’s the first actual test of my magic, and while I’m ninety-nine percent sure the cloaking spell will hold, that one percent is a real bitch sometimes.
The devil child approaches the boundary of the barrier at a fast hobble.
“Hey, buddy,” Scott says. “Why don’t you wait with me until your mom comes.”
But Damien’s crazed, sugar-rush-induced stare doesn’t indicate that he’s heard Scott or that he plans to stop any time in the near future. In fact, instead of slowing down he speeds up, running headfirst toward the cloaking perimeter and 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Boing!
Damien bops right off the boundary, shakes his head like poor Boo Bear—I miss that dog—and tries again. Then again. And unlike Boo Bear who can learn, and who better be well taken care of by Mrs. Paige, he keeps knocking into the boundary like he’s the star of a two-second video on instant replay.
Damien’s mother finally catches up to him and throws her arms around him before his next attempt.
“Mama, Mama, game, fun,” he laughs, pointing at us.
She looks in our direction. I swallow.
“What game, sweetie?”
“There, there!” He points again.
Her forehead scrunches as she keeps staring. It’s like one of those awkward encounters when the teacher pairs two students together who don’t know each other and have nothing in common and they stare at each other in silence, wondering if they should say something first or let the other one do it while also thinking, “My god, why does she do this to me every time? Doesn’t she know she should just pair me with Lizzie and be done with it?” Or at least that’s what went on in my head when I was in elementary school, but you get the idea.