“Then just let it alone, why don’t you.”
“Yes. Yes, I think I will.” Sonny wasn’t at all certain that friendship with a boucca wasn’t substantially fraught with peril.
“At any rate . . .” Bob cleared his throat and continued. “Some time ago, I think I bragged to you in some fashion that I’d never been Auberon’s fool.”
“You did.”
“That statement may not have been entirely accurate.”
Sonny glanced up sharply at the boucca. “You . . . lied to me?”
“I was misinformed. There’s a difference.” Bob snorted. “You know perfectly well that I’m not capable—”
“Of lying,” Sonny said impatiently. “Yes. Yes, I know. All right, so you were misinformed then. About what? Tell me.”
“In a moment. Perhaps.”
Seven hells, Sonny cursed silently. Faerie prevarications could be so tedious. He could have made a simple amendment to his demand. He could have said, “Tell me, Bob,” and the boucca would have had no choice. Instead he waited.
“A question, first,” Bob said. “So please you.”
Sonny waved a hand for him to get on with it.
“How stands it between you and the princess?”
Sonny frowned and stared at the wall as if the answer to that question might be written there. “I . . . don’t know,” he said.
“Shouldn’t you?” the boucca asked.
Sonny lifted a shoulder. “A few days ago, she said she wanted nothing to do with me.”
“She said that?” Bob’s eyes grew wide.
“Plain as day.”
“Are you sure you weren’t misinformed?”
“I don’t know,” Sonny snapped. “How does the phrase I don’t love Sonny Flannery strike you?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“And now?”
“And now . . . I’m not really certain what’s going on.” That much was true—he could still feel Kelley’s kiss burning on his lips—but Sonny wasn’t sure he felt like telling Bob about what had passed between him and Kelley only a short while earlier.
“So . . .” Bob tugged on his earlobe. “If something were to happen to her . . . something bad . . . that wouldn’t bother you?”
“Is she all right? If Kelley is in trouble—”
“That’s not answering questions. That’s asking them.” Bob was gazing at him so intently it almost made Sonny’s skin start to crawl. “What if the princess was in dire peril, right at this very moment. Would you care?”
“Of course I care.” Sonny felt a surge of dread at the thought of Kelley in danger. He could hear the blood begin to pound in his ears as his heart rate accelerated. Bob was still staring, and the air between the two of them began to feel charged, as if a microstorm were brewing in the cavern. Very suddenly, Sonny could not look away from the boucca as Bob took a step toward him. He found himself locked in the circle of that ancient, wily gaze as surely as if it were a prison. The edges of his vision began to tunnel, but the boucca Fae continued to stare deep into Sonny’s gray eyes. Fire flashed at the periphery of his sight. Green witch fire. Red mist. Smoke and shadows. Sharp agony lanced though Sonny’s head, and he heard a murmur of song from far off. . . .
The music grew louder, and Sonny struggled to remember where in the world he’d heard that tune before. It was maddeningly familiar. Then he heard Bob grunt in pain as though he’d been struck by something. The music stopped abruptly, and Sonny staggered back a step or two as though a rope connecting him to the boucca had snapped.
Silence passed between the two of them.
What in the name of the goddess was that all about? Sonny wondered. “If Kelley is in some kind of danger,” he said quietly, “I think you’d better tell me.”
Bob laughed nervously. His voice, Sonny noticed, was tremulous, and his gnarled hands shook violently as he clasped them together. “Resourceful young thing like that?” Bob muttered. “I think she can take care of herself.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?”
Bob looked up at him, his expression inscrutable. The boucca was, of course, painfully aware that Sonny could compel him with a single word. Sonny didn’t. Even if it meant he was sacrificing any chance of learning why Kelley had done what she’d done—even if it meant losing her because of that—he could do nothing else. It wouldn’t be right. The ancient boucca waited, watching closely as Sonny came to that decision.
Sonny would let Bob keep his secrets.
So Bob told him everything.
“Where is Kelley now?” Bob asked Sonny once his silence had stretched out for a very long time. “Do you know?”
Sonny only half heard the question. His mind was still reeling with the implications of all that Bob had told him.
“She was here,” he murmured. “Only a little while ago. I sent her up to the Tavern to try to find Herne.”
Herne the Hunter. Herne, his father. I have a father. . . .
Sonny dragged his attention back to Bob, who sat waiting patiently for Sonny to digest the bombshell revelations he’d just dropped on him. Not just that he had a father—although that, in itself, was enough. But the idea that his father had apparently passed on the Green Magick to him . . . Sonny was having a hard time assimilating that notion. It was a lot to take in.
The boucca brushed idly at bits of grit that had stuck to the pale green blood seeping from the scratches on his legs.
“What exactly did that to you, Bob?” Sonny asked. “Was it the redcaps?”
“No . . . but good luck to them. Whoever gave them that bottled rift may have wanted them dead rather than just gone, you know. The Between is full of wraiths. Mean ones.” The boucca grimaced, gesturing to his leg. “Once I hightailed it out of the Autumn Lands, I hunted around for a rift—they’re popping up all over the place now—and tried to make my way here. But the rifts are unstable. I got stuck halfway, and it’s not an experience I would recommend. The space between the realms is full of peril. Restless, angry shades. Unquiet dead. A lot of them.”
“Where did they all come from?”
“I don’t know. There’s always a few wanderers—ones that never seem to find their way to their chosen afterlife, be it Heaven, Hell, Elysium, Valhalla, Annwn. . . . But it’s never enough to even notice during a passage through the Gate. Now, though, it’s like a hornet’s nest. And something—or someone—is throwing rocks at it. Mind you”—he looked around at the strewn bodies of fallen Lost Fae—“it seems things are perilous everywhere. Almost makes you want to crawl into a hole and pull it in after you until the storm blows over.”
“Except you didn’t. You could have lain low in the Otherworld, but you came here instead. Why?” Sonny asked. “What are you really doing back in the Hereside, Bob?”
“Hereside?” Bob snorted. “Aren’t we sounding ever so hip and underground? You’ve been spending too much time with these Lost Ones, boyo.”
Sonny gave him a look and waited.
“Oh, all right.” The boucca relented when he realized that Sonny was in no mood for games. “In truth, I was trying to find you.”
“Me? Why?”
“You have unique qualifications that I figured might come in handy in my attempts to keep one step ahead of Mabh so she doesn’t manage to track me down and wipe clean the tables of my poor memory.” He shrugged nonchalantly, but his weird stare intensified. “I also figured I owed you the chance to discover who and what you really are before Mabh compels me to forget.”
Sonny stared at him blankly. “How could she? Unless . . .”
Bob’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “Aye. Your girlfriend, sweet and lovely, sold me down the river. Handed over my name to the Queen of Air and Darkness without much in the way of a moment’s pause.”
“Are you sure?”
“In my long years, I’ve developed certain helpful skill sets. Listening at keyholes is one of them, and it’s saved me from having my bacon smoked on more
than one occasion.”
Sonny shook his head. “I can’t believe she’d do a thing like that. Not willingly. Mabh must have coerced her.”
“Nudged, yes. Coerced, no.” Bob lifted a shoulder. “She didn’t have to. All Mabh had to do was remind Kelley what grave danger you would be in if anyone found out about your little secret. Insofar as I was at the theater when you went all ‘Green Power’ scary, I was obviously something of a liability in that respect. Mabh told Kelley she’d take care of things and all she needed was my name. Wasn’t long before the dear girl sang like a bird.”
“Falcons don’t sing,” Sonny murmured absently.
“Beg pardon?”
“Oh . . . nothing.” When Bob raised an eyebrow at him, he explained. “Apparently Kelley’s recently got something of a handle on transformation—glamoured herself into the shape of a fine kestrel, Maddox told me.”
“Talented wee thing, she is. So much potential. More’s the pity.”
“I’m sorry, Bob. I truly am. I still don’t understand the way Kelley’s been acting. The lies, the betrayal . . . I cannot fathom it.”
“You can’t?”
“No. Why didn’t she come to me? Why didn’t she just tell me what was going on? All this deception . . .” Sonny raked a hand through his hair in frustration. “Perhaps her mother’s influence is too strong for her to fight against.”
Bob snorted in grim amusement. “Oh, Mabh’s not blameless, certainly. She rarely is. But if you ask me, I’d say it’s really mostly your fault.”
Sonny opened and closed his mouth. How could this possibly be his fault?
“Don’t look at me like that,” Bob said. “Weren’t you the one who conjured a vision for Kelley of the night Mabh went bonkers and transformed Herne and his followers into the Wild Hunt?”
“Yes, but—”
“But what?” Bob pegged Sonny with his keen stare. “But you didn’t think that sort of image might make an impression on the girl? Might make her think twice about the consequences of too much power mixed with too much love? What? Never occurred?”
“Not at the time. No.” Sonny ground his teeth together. At the time, he hadn’t even known that he was in love with Kelley. It had certainly never occurred to him that she felt that way about him.
Bob sniffed in faint disgust. “Mortals have absolutely no sense of prescience.”
“No, Bob,” Sonny snapped. “We don’t. We’re mortal. We can’t see into the future.”
The boucca waved a hand dismissively. “It’s not so much that you can’t as that you choose not to. Everyone can extrapolate possibilities, you know. Ach—never mind. Done’s done and, at the end of the long day, none of this is Kelley’s fault. Not really.”
Sonny looked at him, waiting for an explanation of that statement.
Bob gave him one, but it didn’t make him feel any better. “For one thing, she thinks she’s your weakness. That if you were able to access the Green Magick, and someone wanted to turn you into a weapon, all they would have to do to get to you would be to go through her. And while she may have overreacted, she also has a point. You were a sight to behold, back at the theater, Sonny Flannery,” the boucca said gravely. “You must have scared the hell out of that poor girl. You certainly scared the hell out of me.”
Chapter XVIII
When Kelley’s parents—when the Winslows, that is—had been alive, Emmaline Flannery had trained under Dr. Winslow to work as his assistant in his medical practice. She’d learned enough that, after the Winslows had died in a car accident, she’d gone to work part-time for the local veterinarian.
It wasn’t Faerie medicine, Kelley thought, but it was something at least. She hoped she was doing the right thing. The Catskill Mountains seemed awfully far away . . . but that, she soon realized, was only because she was used to taking the bus.
In front of the carriage, Belrix had turned to smoke and mist in front of Kelley’s eyes.
As the carriage slowed and Kelley could make out familiar landmarks, she began to have grave misgivings. Especially about how Em would react.
You shouldn’t be doing this, she told herself. This is cruel. You should have called first.
Of course, she’d lost her cell phone in a river in the Otherworld, and it wasn’t like there were any phone booths along the kinds of roads they were traveling.
The sun had disappeared behind the hills by the time they reached their destination. The yard in front of the house where Kelley had grown up was neatly manicured and illuminated by a thin wash of light that spilled down from the screened porch. Kelley was somehow unsurprised to see her aunt standing silhouetted in the doorway, almost as if she was expecting someone. The forgotten tea cup in her hand spilled chamomile dregs onto her slippers as she watched the gleaming white coach pull up in front of the little house, shooing a rolling cloud of ground mist before it.
Kelley leaped from the carriage before it had come to a full stop and ran to hug her astonished aunt, trying to explain in a rush of words that were vastly unqualified for the task. When, really, all Emma needed to understand things was to see the unconscious form of Herne carried up her front steps in the arms of the carriage driver.
Emma looked the same as when Kelley had seen her last—sweater; skirt; her beautiful black hair, just starting to silver in streaks, piled high at the back of her head—except the blue-gray eyes that, of course, reminded Kelley so strongly of Sonny were star-bright with sudden, unshed tears.
“Acushla,” she said softly, her voice breaking a little on the Irish endearment—“oh, my heart . . .”
Olrun nodded to Kelley’s aunt and then brushed past, moving into the house and looking for somewhere to lay the wounded man-god down.
“The guest bedroom,” Emma said, recovering her wits more quickly than Kelley would have thought possible. “The second door on the right. Kelley, fetch water into the big pot to boil and bring clean cloths from the linen cupboard and a few of the old sheets to tear for bandages. And the first aid kit—the big one from your father’s study.”
Emma raised her head high and followed briskly in Olrun’s wake, already pushing up the sleeves on her sweater, her expression closed—like a window shuttered tight against a storm. The lone arrow left still protruding from Herne’s chest quivered with every pulse and breath.
Questions could wait.
Kelley woke with a start, her head snapping up from the cushion of her forearms on the oak table. Panic crowded her throat for a brief instant before she recognized her surroundings. Home. Emma had sent her out of the room as she and Olrun went about the work of tending to Herne’s wounds. Exhausted, Kelley had fallen into a doze sitting in the kitchen—and straight into the same wrenching nightmare as always, or, at least, a variation of it . . . the city, overgrown with rampant vegetation, the black carriage, the white stag.
Sonny dying on the sidewalk.
Only this time, it wasn’t bullet holes in his chest that leaked his precious blood onto the sidewalk. This time it was scores and scores of thin, deep cuts, crisscrossing his bare arms and the naked flesh of his torso. As though he’d run at speed through a barbed-wire fence. Blood trickled out onto the ground all around him, and roses of the same brilliantly crimson hue sprouted up in a circle around his body, blooming on twisted canes thick with wicked-sharp thorns. A heavy, sick-sweet floral scent assaulted Kelley’s nostrils in the dream. Not the smell of roses, but of something else. Something familiar, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
It had turned her stomach in the dream, and she’d awoken with the urge to retch. Kelley grimaced and swallowed a few times, trying to clear the vague queasiness that crept up the back of her throat. In the darkness, she gazed around at the familiar silhouetted shapes of the furniture. Light from the risen moon filtered through lace curtains that hung over the sink, just below the bunched sheaves of dried herbs and wildflowers pinned to the upper sill with rusty iron horseshoe nails. Kelley knew the names and properties of some of them:
sage for clarity of thought and vision, Saint-John’s-wort for restfulness and peace, marigold and primrose—those two were for protection, and they hung from every windowsill and door lintel in the place. Protection from the Fae, Kelley knew, and she wondered again what it must have been like for Emma.
All those years, sheltering a Faerie princess under her roof. Wondering what had happened to her own child. It had been a wondrous thing for Emma, the night she and Sonny met. In the theater, on the opening night of Kelley’s play. He’d held Emma’s hand throughout the entire performance and, before he left to return to the Otherworld, he’d promised Emma that he’d be back. For her, and for Kelley.
He’d come as promised, and Kelley had driven him away.
Kelley went to get a glass of water. Glancing out the kitchen window, she saw that Belrix and the carriage still stood in the little gravel drive. The immense horse had one leg bent, and his head was down, nodding in sleep. Kelley noticed a thin drift of fog clinging to horse and carriage and figured that there was probably a concealing veil cast around them to keep passing motorists from noticing the oddity.
Kelley saw that Emma had cut down some of the herbs from over the window and crushed them with the marble pestle and mortar that she had always used to make homemade poultices and tisanes when Kelley was a little girl. A whiff of odor from a sheaf of dried purple blooms assaulted Kelley’s nostrils. It brought back a wave of nausea—that was the same pungent smell from her dream. She suddenly remembered the last time she had smelled such a thing and, frowning, she turned on her heel and went to the study.
She sat down at Dr. Winslow’s old mahogany desk. It took what felt like forever for the dusty PC to boot up, and then all Kelley could do was glare violently at it as she waited for the painfully slow dial-up connection to pull up a search engine. She had made Emma buy the thing when she decided that she was moving to New York to pursue her acting dreams—so that they could keep in touch. Kelley should have known better. The fact that her “aunt” had been born in rural Ireland well before the turn of the last century and was only now living in modern-day North America because she’d stolen a Faerie king’s child—after he’d stolen hers—and had tumbled through time and space was not something Kelley’d had knowledge of when she made the equipment purchase. At the time she’d just thought her aunt was being typically quaint. Her insight into Em’s character had grown by leaps and bounds since then. As had her respect and admiration for her strength of will.