Ronnie squirmed uncomfortably. “Uh, I think I’ll go tell Sean about dinner.”
I shot Ronnie an angry look. I didn’t want to be alone with Sara. He hunched his shoulders and mouthed, “What?”
“No, Ronnie. I’ll do it. I doubt he would answer the door for you—or agree to come over,” Sara said. “He won’t refuse me.”
When Sara walked away, Ronnie swirled his index finger in front of him and whispered, “Air.” I wrapped us up and the outside world went quiet.
“What’s up with you and Sara?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well that’s going to do us a lot of good,” he snorted.
“It complicated.”
“Um, there’s no TV, no Internet, Candace is busy destroying three bags of groceries, and our hosts aren’t much for conversation, so you know what that means?”
I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’ve got plenty of time and you have some explaining to do.”
I started to respond but he cut me off. “Maggie O’Shea, I swear on the holiest of possessions, my unread copy of Vogue, if you dodge this again, I’m going to get rough with you.”
I belted out a laugh. “Okay, Okay. I haven’t told either one of you this—”
“Come on out, girl, you’ll feel better.”
I laughed again. “Would you stop?”
“Never. Get on with it.”
“I found out two days ago that Sara, under Ozara’s orders, made sure my parents met. She compelled them to fall in love…”
His nose crinkled. “Oh.”
“She also made sure Gavin would be my Treorai—she knew I would stay in Arkansas.”
Ronnie smiled, “So, let’s review. She ensured you’d be born. Hmm, damn her. She introduced you to the most beautiful guy who has ever lived—and he fell in love with you. That wench! Because of her, you’re the most powerful human who has ever lived, and because of that you’re pissed at her? That makes sense to me.”
I fought with a smile. “That’s not the point.”
“Maggie, that is exactly the point. Ozara is a homicidal psychopath—she’d be one regardless of whether you existed or not. Without you, we’d all be dead by now. Because of you, we have a chance.”
“I’m the product of selective breeding—and Sara had a hand in it.”
“Like Justice? He’s the product of selective breeding. Poodles, pit bulls, labs—they didn’t evolve on their own.”
“I get it, but they’re pets. We’re different. We don’t fetch—we don’t retrieve. We don’t jump through hoops for the amusement of Fae. Humans are not some science fair project.”
“Aren’t we?” he said. “Your perspective is a little different than mine. I can’t create Aether, I can’t do any of the cool shit you can do, and I can’t resist them when they compel me to do something. The rest of us…they can make us do things we don’t want to do—hell, they can make us want to do them. They can change our appearance with a touch…call me crazy, but when I’m around them, I feel an awful lot like a science project. When I sleep each night I wonder whether it’s my idea or one they implanted.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. It’s totally messed with my head. I used to think we were at the top of the food chain. You know, masters of our domain and all that. We’re not—well, maybe you are, but the rest of us?”
“Honestly, Mags, I feel exactly the same way,” Candace said, still hovering in the doorway. “Around the Fae, we have free will only because they allow it.”
I’d forgotten feeling that way, but they were right. I recalled feeling exactly like them when Chalen attacked Candace. More to the point, I had also lived under the fear that Ozara could erase my memories anytime she wanted. Until recently, when I learned I had some natural kind of immunity to them, I’d felt exactly the same way. “Okay,” I acquiesced. “But you have to understand how upset I am that someone that I thought I could trust—Sara—turned out to be manipulating my parents before I was born.”
“I get that,” Ronnie said, “But in my heart, I’m glad she did. If she is responsible for bringing you into my life, by whatever means, then I’m grateful. Grateful, Maggie. I don’t say it, but I love you like my sister—both of you. The situation totally sucks, but Ozara was going to go all bat shit crazy anyway. At least we have a fighting chance. I hate seeing what this is doing to my girl,” he said, staring at Candace, “and I’d do anything to make your family safe—”
“I know you would,” she said through trembling lips.
“—but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world…nowhere but right here with the two of you.” He faced me, mint green eyes on fire. “I also believe that Sara loves you—that’s why she left the Weald when you went to Florida. Everything she’s done since she got to know you has been to help you. I honestly believe that. Now don’t blow me through the wall or set me on fire…” He grinned until I chuckled. “But I think you really want to forgive her. You need her. Like Rachel would say, you need to suck it up and stop being so damned stubborn.”
Tears began to well up in my eyes. He was right—in my gut, I knew he was absolutely right. “No fair, invoking Rachel.” Gone was the smartass expression he usually wore. In its place, just the warm smile of a trusted friend. I hugged him and whispered, “How did you get so smart?”
Candace groaned through a smile, “Oh no, now you’ve done it, Mags. You know he’ll be impossible for a week.”
Ronnie held his hand out and pulled Candace into a group hug. “Her,” he said, exchanging a squeeze with Candace. “I’m smart because of her—I think she’s rubbed off on me.”
She kissed his cheek and then playfully pushed his head away. “Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?” With that, she turned and went back to the tiny kitchen.
I held onto him for a few more seconds. “So, you going to keep giving her a hard time over Sean?” I asked.
He wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, duh.”
EIGHTEEN
BEARING NEWS
Before I finished telling him about Tse-xo-be, Wakinyan’s square jaw flexed, muscles like steel cables clamping his long teeth together. “Zarkus?” he growled.
Yes, he’s an Aetherfae.
The appalling sound of snapping and crunching echoed in my mind when his teeth could no longer withstand the force. Even though he’d healed before he spoke again, it was hideous to witness. The cave walls emerged from behind the dissipating projection of a comfortable farmhouse.
“The clan needs you,” Tadewi said in a shallow, tinny voice.
“You know what to do. Do not linger here—the Alliance will come after them.”
Tadewi crossed the short distance between them, taking his massive forearm in her hands. She looked up at him with her warm, inhumanly large brown eyes. “I know the plan—it is sound. Do not worry about us,” she said.
Mom, Mitch, and my grandparents gathered under the low ceiling. One arm clenched around Mitch’s shoulders, the other cradling her stomach, Mom was beginning to show now.
“Billy, Faye.” Wakinyan’s deep voice reverberated off the cave walls.
“Yes,” they said in unison. Justice lowered his head, growled, and curled up at Mitch’s feet. The tension was taking a toll on him, too.
“Can you manage this?” Wakinyan said.
“Yes, I believe so,” Faye said. She created Clóca and began pressing it out to the boundary of the cave. As she spread the energy out, I caught her biting her lower lip as gaps formed. She was struggling to expand it. Faye? Clóca? Wakinyan’s been busy.
“Remember,” Wakinyan said, “just relax, Clóca is most effective when you keep Water and Air perfectly balanced. Concentrate on the balance, the rest will take care of itself. Tadewi can help—if the need arises.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. The holes disappeared. Tadewi let go of Wakinyan’s arms and allowed her hands to glide to her sto
mach. She turned to Faye and offered telepathic encouragement.
“Can you maintain until I return?” Wakinyan asked.
Without opening her eyes, Faye said, “Yes…yes, I can.”
“Very well…Billy, you?”
Billy nodded. I felt him conjure the essence of Fire immediately, followed by the smallest strand of Earth. Normally hooded, his gray eyes were opened wide as the energies combined into Quint.
“Keep working until you can form it at will—if any Fae enters this place, strike them down.” Wakinyan commanded. “As you strengthen your connection to Terra, the power you wield will grow.”
“I will practice, brother.”
“Drevek, have you progressed?”
Drevek’s ice blue eyes darted between his outstretched hands. Small lines formed above the bridge of his nose and his chest expanded with air. A ball of Fire swirled between his palms—his narrow, bow-shaped mouth stretched into a grin. The flames turned into the bluish energy of St. Elmo’s fire and then to pure electricity, the light of it flashing off his prominent features. Those were the basic elements any Fire-aligned Fae could create, but Drevek was very young and was just learning to master the element. If any Alliance Fae came, they’d destroy him in seconds and that made me sad. Though powerful compared to a human, asking him to stand against older Fae, even one just a thousand years old, was asking Drevek to commit suicide.
“You have improved,” Wakinyan said.
Drevek’s mouth twisted into a grin.
Wakinyan turned to Faye. “Are you ready?”
She nodded. “May good fortune be your constant companion…and ours.”
Wakinyan collapsed his cloak and disappeared from my senses.
“He is gone,” Faye said.
“Billy, are you going to stay here?”
“No, Maggie, we’re moving your family—and we’re going to keep moving them.”
If Chloe Fontaine wants to, she can find you anywhere, I projected.
Billy gave me a sad smile. “Honestly, I don’t know why she has waited this long. She undoubtedly knows where we are.”
I had no idea why Ozara had waited either, unless she was nervous about challenging Wakinyan. Even though he didn’t know Aether, he was only slightly younger than Tse-xo-be, and pretty much the reigning bad ass in the Fae world. Even Zeus respected him.
“Yes, she probably does know we are here. We need to leave now, Maggie,” Tadewi said.
Okay, but can I talk to them first?
Tadewi’s doe eyes looked very warm, but there was urgency in her reply. “Yes, but we must not linger for very long.”
Tadewi took my form and repeated my words. “Mom, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, baby.”
“Are you okay to move?”
She laughed. “I’m fine. I don’t want to run any marathons, but I’m not exactly bedridden. I’ll be fine…” she rubbed her stomach in a slow circle, “We’ll be fine. Do you see an end to this?”
“I’m not sure.” The answer was honest—she deserved that.
She nodded, her eyes grew wet as she took several deep breaths. “I’m sorry about Tse-xo-be, and please tell Candace I’ve been praying for her parents and brother.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“How soon before you come back? You are coming back, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m coming back. I’m coming back soon.” Tadewi down played the emotion I felt, but Mom reacted.
“Piñata…” she paused and appeared to be choosing her words carefully. “…this may sound a little ridiculous under the circumstances, but don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
“I’ll try not to, Mom. So far, Ozara seems to be avoiding me.”
“If only that would hold true. I just wish you could come get your brother…and take the baby…just disappear using all those things you can do. I don’t care what happens to me as long as you’re safe.” Grandma and Grandpa nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, like I’d actually leave you unprotected. I’ve got to figure out a way for all of us…I wish hiding were possible, but there is no place they can’t reach—and there is something else I need to tell you.”
Her elegant eyebrows slid together, pressing the smooth olive skin above her nose into small folds. She nodded. Grandpa Vic leaned in and put his hand on her shoulder.
“You read my journals, right?”
“Yes,” she said in a slow and deliberate way.
“Then you remember my speculation that Dad was the direct descendent of Áedán, the second Maebown?”
She nodded.
“Bastien—he’s the oldest Fae in existence—he confirmed it.”
“So that’s why they’re after us, too. Mitch…the baby.”
“Yes, that’s part of it…he also confirmed that you—you and Grandpa—are the direct descendants of Surero, the first Maebown…”
Grandpa Vic’s mouth went slack. He just stood there blinking. Like Mom had just been given a shot of Botox, the muscles in her forehead relaxed and she stared at a spot on the cave floor a few feet from us. It was Billy who spoke first.
“Ozara knows this, doesn’t she?”
“She suspects as much, because…”
“…yes, because Sara…” he dropped the façade of acting like Tadewi was me standing in the room, and focused on the place where my consciousness hovered. “…and…”
“Yes,” the voice floated out of my changeling. I projected several words to Tadewi, but she stopped speaking. “Maggie, are you sure you want your mother to hear this.”
She deserves to know.
With my face, Tadewi turned back to my mother and finally repeated what I’d been telling her. “Yes, Sara knew…”
Mom smiled. “They arranged for me to meet your father, didn’t they?”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I thought you should know.”
Mom’s eyes watered, but rather than the intense angry reaction I expected, she chuckled once before settling into a smile.
“Mom, what is it?”
A few tears meandered down her face. “I always thought it was magic when I met your father—how it happened. He was the single most handsome man I’d ever seen, and when he turned out to be beautiful all the way to the core, I just knew it was someone smiling down on me. Turns out I was right—it wasn’t simply providence.” Her lips trembled.
“Are you mad?”
Mom didn’t answer for a few moments. She seemed to drift off somewhere else, somewhere far away. “I remember when it happened—when Sara compelled me. I was driving past a bowling alley in Miami—the old one on Kendall—back in 1991. I was on my way to work…and I was late. It was summer and I was about to head off to Tallahassee for college. I remember feeling the strangest desire to go in—which didn’t make sense, because I’d never even bowled before. I don’t know why I stopped, but I did, and that is where I saw your father,” she said to Mitch and me. “When he looked at me, I felt my heart flutter.”
Hearing Mom, seeing the pleasure on her face from the memory brought me some peace.
“You met in a bowling alley?” Mitch complained.
“I know,” she laughed, “of all the places in Miami to fall in love, a bowling alley wasn’t at the top of my list. We never went back, but it did bring a tear to my eye when they tore it down years ago.
“You asked if I was mad. No, I’m not mad. If I get the chance, I’ll thank Sara, and despite what Ozara has done, I’d thank her for making Sara do it. I’ve often thought about why I stopped that day—how things would have been so different, so much worse had I not. The idea of not stopping, not meeting your father…it makes me feel a little panicked. I made so many silly decisions back then. The thought of driving on to work that day, of not watching him throw balls in the gutter to make me feel better, of not having the both of you…somehow it brings me peace to know that the Fae had a hand in our meeting, that there was no way I could mess it up. I have no regrets. No, tell Sara I said thank you,” she s
aid, pulling Mitch and Tadewi close.
“We really need to get moving,” Tadewi said, shifting back into her preferred usual shape. I lingered in the cavern a few minutes after they disappeared behind Clóca and headed to the surface. This is pointless. I needed to get back to Ireland and find out what impact Wakinyan was having on the Ohanzee.
NINETEEN
GOING HOME
Almost immediately, I sensed a difference in the Fae. Bastien was the oldest, and Tse-xo-be, before he died, was next, but neither had the impact of Wakinyan. Physical size didn’t matter much to the Fae, but Wakinyan wasn’t just massive—he was that, standing a head taller that the next tallest Fae on the Senate—his personality and fierce nature dwarfed those around him. His dark eyes flashed as he challenged the Coalition plan to lure the Alliance to a location where I would be waiting.
“That may not happen. If I were Ozara—I would wait until you were in Africa, or Asia, and start another human conflict elsewhere. You’d be forced to confront them on Ozara’s terms immediately—without the Maebown—or just let the pieces fall where they may. My goal would be division. I would threaten the destruction of Greece or Italy—and then wait.”
Ostara nodded. “And if we engaged them en masse, without Maggie, our casualties would be unbearable—we know that.”
“Ah, but she knows you would never agree to that. The Alfar and the Kobold, would you risk your existence to save the territory of the Olympians? Or vice versa? No. She knows that. If it was Italy, the Olympians would return.” Wakinyan said.
Zeus nodded. “And all would die.”
“Then what would you have us do?” Volimar asked.
“Ozara’s power is based on fear and intimidation. Draw Ozara and Zarkus to a place, and into a situation, where they must respond, but a situation where only the most loyal Alliance would follow. Maggie O’Shea is correct—Ozara values the Weald more than any place in the physical world.”
“Then why has she left it unguarded?” Volimar asked.
“She wants it preserved,” Wakinyan said.