Despite the late hour, people milled outside the ring. Two Danann security agents roamed the perimeter, not actively preventing anyone from going near the ring but sending the message to behave. They ensured the mushrooms didn’t get damaged. Every year the city asked the Guild for security backup since it was better equipped to deal with drunk fey people who might, for instance, accidentally set things on fire with their minds. The Guild beefed up security on Samhain especially. Fey groups arrived with competing claims to the spot, fought over space, and trampled the ring as they attempted to perform their ceremonial rituals. The veil between worlds wouldn’t open, just as it had never opened since Convergence; people would be disappointed; everyone would go home grumpy. Except the here-born like me.

The here-born were fey who never knew Faerie or the ability to travel the Ways across realms. The Samhain celebrations have the odor of nostalgia for something we don’t remember or believe. Older generations may talk of speaking with the dead and seeing long-lost loved ones, but to the here-born, they’re all just stories like those of Santa Claus. Nice to know growing up, hard to swallow as an adult. We went through the prayers and the ceremonial fire-lightings, then hightailed it out on the town for Halloween parties with the human normals.

“Woolgathering?” Dylan asked as he came up behind me. He swung his long legs over the concrete bench.

I shrugged. “A little. I was just wondering if rituals mean anything to me.”

Dylan gazed across the fairy ring. “Everyone has rituals that mean something to them. You’re asking a larger question.”

I eyeballed him. “Do tell, O, psychic one.”

He kept his gaze ahead, but smiled. “You’re wondering if anything means enough to you to have a ritual for it.”

Dylan always seemed to understand what I was thinking before I did. Apparently, he still had the knack.

“True enough. I’ve been ripped down to the point where everything I thought I wanted is kinda meaningless.”

Dylan swayed his feet in small arcs. “We used to want the same things. You’re not as sure of yourself as you used to be.”

I smiled ruefully. “Maybe not all the same things. Lots of things have changed about me. I’m going to go with ‘that’s a good thing’ for now.”

He seemed about to say something, but changed his mind and chuckled. “Yeah. I guess you have to. We have to. Everyone has to get through the day.”

I glanced at him. That sounded a little world-weary for Dylan, but I didn’t detect any hint of melancholy about him. He was happy with where and who he was. It showed in the set of his jaw and the relaxed way he held his shoulders. He may recognize flaws in himself, maybe even admit to them, but they didn’t bother him. They never had, for as long as I could remember. He was comfortable in his own skin in a way I didn’t know if I could be anymore.

We sat in companionable silence. “Why did you leave like that, Connor? After everything that happened, you up and moved to Boston without even discussing it.”

The question was ten years in the making. I tried to brave it out, so I didn’t look at him and tried to sound indifferent. “It was my career, my decision.”

He snorted. “I didn’t say you needed my permission. We were a team. A good one. After the Pride Wind , we could have written our own orders. I thought you’d at least ask my advice. Danu’s blood, you left a message on my answering machine and didn’t take my calls for a year before I gave up.”

I rubbed my face. “I didn’t want the responsibility.”

He frowned. “For what?”

I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see the hurt. “You. I didn’t want to be responsible for you. That day on the ferry, when our essences merged, I felt what you felt. I didn’t want the responsibility of not hurting you. So I left.”

He shook his head. “Uh . . . thanks?”

My chest tightened with anger. I never wanted to have this conversation. Whether I was angry at myself for causing the situation or Dylan for pressing it, it meant facing up to yet another example of my bad behavior. I knew I had to if I wanted to get on with my life. I didn’t have to like it.

“What did you want to happen, Dylan? Have me tell you I didn’t feel the same way? Did you want to hear that? Could we have worked together after that? What would have happened if you took too many risks for me and died because of it? What kind of position is that to put me in?”

He shrugged and smiled. “The same one you’d be in anyway. When our essences merged, I felt what you felt, too, you know. The difference between us was that it confirmed what I already knew. I’m not stupid, Connor. I knew the score. The one thing I knew was that regardless, we would still do the right thing at the right time. That’s why we worked so well together. When that knife hit my chest, you threw yourself in front of that essence-bolt to protect me, and it had nothing to do with how you felt about me personally and everything to do with the man you are. Above everything else, I knew I could always respect and trust you. I thought you would do the same.”

I frowned. “What essence-bolt?”

He looked at me in disbelief. “The essence-bolt on the Pride Wind that hit you in the head. I thought it killed you.”

“Dylan, I don’t remember getting hit with an essence-bolt.”

His face turned pensive. “I’ll never forget it. You fell next to me. Everything but you faded to white. All I could see was you. The next thing I knew, you merged our essences and saved my life.”

I stared at my feet. I didn’t remember. My stomach felt sick. All this time, and Bergin Vize wasn’t the first time I’d lost my memory. Maybe the Pride Wind wasn’t the first time either. How the hell was I supposed to figure out the first time I didn’t remember something?

“Con?”

I shook myself out of my reverie. “I’m sorry, Dyl. That’s all I think I can say, and it doesn’t cover it. I should have trusted that you would have been okay about it.”

“You did, but, maybe not in the right way. I got over it. You. I would have either way. But, thanks. I needed to hear that,” he said.

“I’m an idiot. We could have been friends all this time.”

He shrugged. “We’re druids. Ten years is nothing.”

I didn’t want to get into my mortality fears, so I tried to lighten the mood. “Now that that’s out of the way, want to go get a beer?”

He hesitated, and I felt a smidge of guilt that he was thinking I was trampling on his feelings again.

“Actually, I asked you here for your input on my current job.” He nodded to the fairy ring. “I was hoping with that hopped-up ability of yours, you could tell me what’s there.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable request. My essence-sensing ability focused on the surrounding essence, and an alternate vision of the landscape materialized. For those who can see, essence manifested as light in an infinite array of colors and intensities. Why it did that was anyone’s guess, but the effects of the various kinds and levels defined what it meant to be fey. Some of us could see it acutely, while others had a vague sense that it was there. Some fey had the ability to manipulate it with fine precision, and some did it with blunt force. Human normals can’t see or use it at all, one of the many reasons they fear the fey. I can’t say I blamed them.

The fairy ring emitted a spectrum of yellow hues, the ring of mushrooms a deep gold, the ground within and without it a deeper bronze. Above the ring, the air shimmered a faint yellow-white in an inverted cone that twisted off into the night sky. The Taint surrounded the cone in a mottled green-and-black vapor. It made my stomach queasy when I looked.

“Except for the Taint, it looks how a fairy ring looks around Samhain—a bright spot of focused air essence, the kind fairies love. They don’t call them fairy rings for nothing.”

Dylan squinted. By the way he focused, he was using his own ability to look at the ring. “Exactly the same?”

The colors were unusually bright considering Samhain was still a few days away. “Stronger. I think. I’ve never been this sensitive to essence before, but it looks stronger than it usually does this early. The Taint amplifies essence, Dyl. That’s what we’re seeing—the natural increase of essence during Samhain, enhanced by the Taint.”

He considered before responding. “I think it’s more than that. Essence has been building for days, especially here in Boston. Fey portals are glowing more intensely everywhere, but nowhere as strongly as here. A lot of smart people think the veil between worlds may finally be thinning again.”

I stared at the thickening yellow essence. Convergence closed all the realms—Faerie, TirNaNog, Valhalla, Avalon, Caer Wydyr, Asgard—all sealed off from this land where I was born and raised in Boston. Some people thought the realms weren’t sealed but were simply gone, destroyed by a cataclysm no one remembers. What we saw every year, when the so-called veil thinned, was a residual memory on this side of the veil, the only side that existed anymore. Every Samhain, the fey gathered about their fairy rings and hoped that maybe this time they’d find a way back to Faerie. “It’s an illusion, Dylan. The Taint is raising false hope.”

“Bergin Vize is certainly curious about it,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Spill it.”

“He’s been spotted around Externsteine.”

If Tara was the Irish heartland of the Celtic fey, Externsteine in Germany served the same purpose for the Teutonic fey. Ancient rock formations formed a line of spires that the Teutonic Consortium claimed they had inhabited eons ago. It was outside the Teutonic Consortium’s homeland, but Donor Elfenkonig, the Elven King, was granted sovereign status over it.

“Celts haven’t been there in centuries. There’s no fairy ring at Externsteine,” I said. Dylan leaned back on his hands. “I said fey portals are flaring—fairy rings, stone circles, standing stones—anything positioned at traditional sacred sites.”

My memory clicked. The ancient German tribes used stone pillars carved like trees to commune with the realms of their gods. The most famous, some say the only true one, was near Externsteine. It vanished in the Middle Ages. My Middle Ages. Who knows whether it still existed in the Teutonic regions of Faerie. Almost the first thing the Teutonic fey did after Convergence was restore the pillar at Externsteine and give it the original’s name. “The Irminsul,” I said.

Dylan nodded. “Reports say it’s alive with essence like this fairy ring. We know most every associate of Bergin Vize has gone deep underground. The pattern to their last sightings indicated they’re moving to join him at Externsteine.”

“Then the Elven King is supporting him?” I asked. It would explain why the Teutonic Consortium was no help with arresting him.

“If he is, he’s covering his tracks. We can’t make a connection,” said Dylan. I stared at the fairy ring. “So Vize gets into TirNaNog. He’ll get the safe fey world he wants and stop trying to blow up this one. We’d be rid of him.”

Dylan perched one foot on the wall and rested his chin on his knee. “I’m not sure. If he wanted to get to TirNaNog, he could have someone kill him. He’d die and wake up there.”

“Not if he wasn’t sure it existed. Maybe he wants proof.”

He sighed, more in thought than exasperation. “According to the legends, the portals connect this world to the other realms. There’s no rule that says when you enter through one portal you can’t exit through another.”

“You think he’s going to go in through the Irminsul to come here? Is that why you’re worried about the Taint?”

Dylan let out a low chuckle. “Not here, Con. There’ve been Teutonic spies at Tara. I told you, we’re seeing evidence that a major assault is being planned. Three major portals are showing signs of opening to TirNaNog—here, the Irminsul, and the fairy ring at Tara. The Seelie Court wants to shut the portals down as a defense measure.”

I tried to wrap my head around that. “Shut them down? After all these years of trying to find a way back to Faerie, they want to shut down a possible way in?”

Dylan leaned back. “TirNaNog is only part of Faerie. If—and it’s a big if—TirNaNog opens, it doesn’t mean that it will lead to all of Faerie. If TirNaNog opens in Germany and here, it will probably open in Tara. Vize could use it as a path to attack the Seelie Court. If the Elven King is supporting Bergin Vize, Maeve could fall and the Celts with her.”

I shrugged. “Maeve has an army, Dylan. She won’t roll over for them.”

He nodded. “And her army is spread all over Europe. She can’t afford to pull troops back to Ireland on a ‘maybe.’ If Tara is attacked, Maeve will never be able to gather reinforcements in time. It’s a win-win situation for Donor Elfenkonig. By letting Vize do his dirty work, he either finds a way back to Faerie through TirNaNog and decimates the Celtic fey on his way or he stands aside while Vize attacks Tara through TirNaNog and ends up the dominant fey leader here. Either way, Maeve loses.”

Things shifted into place—the hearings, the pressure on me and Meryl, Ceridwen’s anger about the spear. “That’s why Ceridwen wants to know what happened at Forest Hills. They want to use the Taint.”

Dylan looked at me speculatively. “Boston is the wild card because it’s not an ancient fey site. Whatever’s happening in that fairy ring must be related to the Taint. If the Seelie Court can understand what happened that opened the portals, they might be able to control access to all of them. They need you and Meryl to cooperate.”

I hopped off the stone. “What the hell, Dylan? Is that why you asked me here? Make me feel all guilty about the past and get me to spill my guts about Forest Hills?”

“No. You’re misinterpreting my intention,” he said.

“Really? The Guild didn’t figure Connor Grey’s old pal would persuade him to help Maeve find a weapon she can use against the Elven King?”

He rocked forward and grabbed the edge of the seat. “Back off, Connor. I’m trying to manage a mess you helped create.”

I threw my hands out. “I didn’t create any mess. I didn’t make that control spell. Meryl and I told you guys everything. She almost died, and I can’t remember a damned thing.”

He shook his head. “That’s not good enough. You have to remember something. I’m not supposed to tell you all this, you know. Ceridwen would blow a fit if she knew the secrecy I’m breaching here. She’s been speculating that you are involved. Your feelings about the Seelie Court are hardly a secret. There are bigger issues here than you and me.”

I wanted to hit him. “That’s what Ceridwen said to me. You’re not helping your case.”

He set his jaw. “We need to know what you and Meryl know.”

An angry surge of adrenaline reached out to my abilities. The black mass in my mind was having none of it. Daggers of pain blocked the connection before it could form. “Go to hell, Dylan.”

I stalked away. In my anger, I didn’t pay attention to where I was walking. I stepped through the circle of mushrooms and entered the fairy ring. Red pain flashed across my eyes as the darkness in my mind convulsed. The essence of the ring resonated with a strange sensation of otherness, something slick and clinging as it touched my skin. My vision blurred, and the ground shifted beneath my feet. Everything went dark, and I had the impression of huge towering stones. In a flash, the familiar Victorian buildings around the Common reasserted themselves as I stumbled out of the ring. People lingering nearby stared at me like I was some kind of ghost.

Dylan stood to my left, far from the stone block I had left him sitting on. Panicked, he rushed to my side.

“Are you all right?”

I shook my head to clear it. “I saw . . .” I stopped. I wasn’t sure what it was. He held my arm. “What happened? You froze and then fell forward.”

I pushed him away. “Nothing. Get away from me.”

He reached for me again. “Con, let’s go somewhere and talk . . .”

I didn’t answer. I made my way down the hill toward the Downtown Crossing retail district. Dylan called my name a few times but didn’t follow me. I mingled in among shoppers, envious of their obliviousness. No one paid me any attention. People went about their business, catching a store still open or rushing home late from work. They didn’t look like they knew or cared about fairy rings or Faerie queens or strange essence portals. Good for them. They didn’t know how lucky they were. I was tired. Tired of the unknown. Tired of the suspicions. Tired of getting sucked into Guild politics. I didn’t care about the fairy ring or Maeve or Donor Elfenkonig. I just wanted my life back. But every day it seemed the more I tried to heal myself, the more things changed for the worse. My mind was damaged. My abilities gone, my memory screwed. The constant pain in my head. I didn’t know if my memories were buried or just not there at all. And now I was hearing strange whispering voices and seeing people no one else saw. It was starting to scare me. After everything that had happened, maybe I was losing it. The worst part was trying to figure out if I would know I was losing it or if I would become too demented to know the difference.

Dylan was right about one thing. I might not like the Teutonic Consortium, but that didn’t mean I was willing to hand Maeve the means to stomp all over Europe through mysterious fairy portals, even if I could. As far as I was concerned, the Seelie Court was only slightly less dangerous. Playing mind games with me by using my friends was a strange way to treat someone Maeve wanted for an ally. She had never done anything to make me think she cared about me, or even that she knew I existed. Why should I care about her? If that was how they all wanted to play, they deserved whatever Bergin Vize and Donor Elfenkonig threw at them, and it wasn’t my problem. I had my own hell to deal with. 18

Someone was singing in my apartment. I stood to the side as I opened the door, in case it wasn’t who I thought it was. You can never be too sure of anything in my line of work. My building had security wards everywhere. Still, it had taken a year for me not to freak out when I heard noise when there should be no noise. I had keyed the wards to allow certain people past them without setting them off. It’s a short list. Joe sat on the counter. He was on my list because otherwise he would keep setting the wards off whenever he had an urge to eat whatever I had handy in the cabinets. With his cheeks engorged, he waved half an Oreo at me. “Milk.”

I took a shot glass out of the cabinet, poured the milk, and placed it next to him. He put the cookie down and gulped from the glass. And belched. “I can’t believe you still haven’t bought a nice flit-size glass for me.”

I crossed my arms. “I can’t believe you steal my food.”

He feigned innocence. “Steal? It’s still here. Sort of.”

Popping the remains of the Oreo in his mouth, he swigged some milk and made a face. “You don’t happen to have a bit of the whiskey to go with this?”

I pulled a pint of Jameson’s from the cabinet. He held the shot glass up as I topped it off. “This is disgusting,” I said.

He sipped and sighed. “Ah, but it reminds me of my childhood. Any mother will tell you, whiskey is the best way to wean a wee one off milk.”

“Flit mothers work it a bit differently.” I resisted the urge to use a patronizing tone. Who was I to criticize what makes sense for a flit mother?

He toasted me and finished the glass. “Ah. You are a most excellent host.”

I leaned against the back of the armchair facing the kitchen counter. “Joe, let me ask you something. You’ve killed people, right?”

He fluttered up from the counter. “Only the ones I’ve wanted dead.”

“How many?”

He swayed in the air, humming. I think someone had had a little Jameson’s before he got to my place.

“I’m not sure. Enough to make the complaints annoying.”

Having a conversation with Joe was an art form. I was used to his out-of-the-blue comments, but this was a new one. I’ve known him all my life, but he sometimes forgot that I haven’t known him all his life. He makes strange references and non sequiturs that assume I know what the hell he’s talking about.

“Complaints?”

He screwed up his face. “ ’Course. I’m not mind-deaf like some people.”

Not the direction I wanted the conversation to go, but with an opening like that, I had to ask. “Who complains, Joe?”

With a loop in the air, he flew to the window and did a handstand on the sill. I wasn’t impressed. He cheated by using his wings to hold steady. “The ones I’ve killed with their singing all the time. Can you see the queen naked from here?”

I joined him at the window. “No, she pulls the blinds. What singing people did you kill?”

He huffed and looked at me with concern. “Are you daft? Why would I kill singing people? You’re acting strange. Are you okay?”

Said the drunk flit.

“I’m fine, Joe. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately,” I said.

He swooped back to the kitchen for another cookie. “You think too much. Think, think, think, all the time, thinking.”

He flew back to the window. Actually, he flew into the window, banged his head, and fell on his back.

“You have a crack in your ceiling,” he said.

“You made it when you flew into it last month.”

“Is that a crack?” he asked.

“Drink, drink, drink, all the time, drinking,” I said.

He rolled with laughter. Laughing myself, I went to the kitchen counter to get a beer. When I turned back to the living room, I froze. Joe lay on the floor chuckling. Above him, the view outside the window was filled with Guild security agents in flight, sweeping across the harbor. “What the hell?” I said. Joe sat up, his laughter fading when he saw the agents. Without a word, he vanished. I grabbed my coat and ran down to the street. Sirens wailed as I hit the sidewalk. At the corner of Old Northern, at least a dozen police cars swept by. The officer at the security barricade near the bridge pointed at me. “Inside!

That’s an order!” he shouted.

I didn’t argue. It wasn’t worth the delay, and he had the badge. When you’re on your own turf, you don’t need to use the main streets. I backtracked around my building to the dockside, across the rotting loading dock to the next street, and cut through an empty warehouse. Two blocks farther, and I was back on Old Northern. Several more blocks down, flashing police lights joined flares of essence-fire. Joe popped in next to me. “It’s a fight. Dylan’s tearing it up with some gang, and Keeva’s got tin-heads with her.”

Sudden winds buffeted me from every side as I ran toward the commotion. Empty police cars clogged the street. The officers were not in the fight. They stationed themselves in secure positions on the side streets and alleys to keep pedestrians away. The dark mass in my head vibrated, like it was trying to decide whether to stab me in the brain. My essence-sensing ability kicked in on its own. A cloud of Taint filled the sky, tendrils of it dangling into a cluster of people in the street, mostly dwarves and elves, facing outward in a circle. The dwarves were shielding the elves, who were taking shots at the airborne Guild agents.

Calmly facing them, Dylan was wrapped in a dense body shield, white bolts of essence leaping from his hands. He moved forward, his fire intercepting his attacker’s shots, the two streams of essence sparking and dissipating as they tangled. What he missed warped around his shield. The mass of Taint moved like a balloon made from mist, shuddering and bouncing in the wind as it floated above the fight, the tendrils hanging down fluttering and swaying, leaping from one person to the next. The elves and dwarves were trapped, but not going down without a fight. The Taint would goad them to fight as long as it remained stabilized. Keeva held her agents above the fray to avoid losing control of them to the Taint. She had learned her lessen at Forest Hills. Dylan could hold his own, but the Taint made it all a stalemate.

“Joe, can you get in there and avoid the Taint?” I asked.

He hovered higher, his eyes shifting as he scanned the street. “I think so. Want me to go kill them all?”

I whipped my head around. “What?”

He snickered. “I know they’re not singing, but I’ll kill them if you want. I still don’t know why you hate singing people.”

I shook my head. “No, Joe. No killing unless you have to. I need you to do two sendings. Tell Keeva to circle around behind Dylan and do some weathering to blow the Taint off. Tell Dylan to be ready to hit the fighters. Tell them both to do it the moment you distract them.”

“Me? What am I supposed to do?”

“Give those guys an essence flash in the face and jump out as fast as possible,” I said.

“Ohhhh. Tricksy,” he said. The tickle of a sending brushed against my senses as Joe leaned forward, then frowned. “Ha! Keeva called me a little pest, which is really quite rude, isn’t it?”

“She’s called you worse.” Regardless of what she thought, Keeva complied. She circled down and landed next to Dylan. The air around her vibrated with particles of blue and white as she prepared her spell-casting. I gave her time to build up a charge.

“Now, Joe! Get in and get out!”

He vanished. A fraction of a second later, he appeared in a tangle of Tainted essence strands in front of the fighters, and a fraction after that, released a bright burst of pink essence that spotted my vision. The frontline fighters swung their faces away, disoriented by the flare. Keeva released her spell. A blast of cold air rushed down the street, and the Taint collapsed into itself, then shredded off. A tightly focused bolt of essence shot from Dylan’s hand and knocked the line of fighters off their feet. The elves and dwarves scattered in confusion as Guild agents moved in. I lost sense of what was happening as everyone rushed forward.

Police shouted at me as I ran through the scattered cars. In the aftermath, Guild agents and police officers chased down the fighters who had run off while the rest were immobilized in spellbindings. I joined Keeva and Dylan standing over several inert bodies that agents were binding in cocoons of white essence.

“You’ve still got your fight coordination down. Good work,” Dylan said when he saw me. Nice words, but he didn’t look at me.

Keeva scowled, but the tension between me and Dylan seemed to lighten her mood. “Yeah, thanks,”

she said.

Dylan watched Keeva escort her agents to a nearby van as they carried several elves away. “Your friend Carmine was attacked. The primary attacker got away. These were her support team.”

“You were protecting Carmine?”

Dylan kept a professional detachment. Still didn’t look at me. “Not really. Some people were taking an odd interest in him. When you showed up to talk to him at the Fish Pier, Ceridwen was convinced you were part of some conspiracy, so she increased surveillance on him. Lucky for him.”

“Is he okay?” I asked.

Dylan nodded. “Pretty banged up, but he probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer if we weren’t there. I can’t figure what it’s about.”

“Carmine told me some Teutonic guys were looking for a Red Man. What was the attacker wearing?”

By his expression, Dylan thought the question was weird. “Mismatched clothes. She looked like a homeless woman. Why?”

“That sounds like the druidess who visited Carmine a few days ago. She said she was looking for one of the victims in the murder case I’m working on with Murdock, but Carmine said he saw her with these guys and was worried about himself.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I just did. How was I supposed to know you were tracking these guys?” I hesitated, uncertain whether to continue. I hadn’t told anyone but Meryl about my dreams. Given what Carmine told me—and what he looked like—I decided to put my personal feelings aside and act like a professional. “I dreamed of a red figure fighting a black figure. It looks like someone took out the Red Man.”

Dylan gave me a considering look. “But who is the man in black?”

I was wearing my jeans and leather jacket, both black. “I helped stop the fight. Maybe it’s me.”

Forgetting we were angry with each other, Dylan laughed. “Danu’s blood, Con. Now you’re a Dreamer? Is there no end to this supposed loss of abilities you have?”

I didn’t respond. If I knew the answer to that question, well, I’d know the answer to that question. He watched the rest of the street fighters being led to a police van. “Our cases have crossed. I guess this means we’re working together,” he said.

Dylan’s offer to go to New York was sincere. I knew it was. If I could make being at the Guild again work, going to New York could be the way to make that happen. Maybe this was a sign I was wrong, that maybe everything that had happened to me in Boston didn’t need to be resolved in Boston. Maybe I needed to put everything that had happened at the Boston Guild behind me and stop being so angry. Move on instead of eking out a bare existence. Maybe I needed to trust Dylan’s motives, too. Playing out the case together, seeing how we worked together, might answer some of those questions for me. We made a good team. We always had. As long as I knew I could trust him. After our argument at the fairy ring, I didn’t know what to think, but not trusting him didn’t sit well.

“Yeah, I guess we need to work together,” I said.

Dylan stretched his arm out. “Damn, you don’t happen to know a good reweaver in town, do you?”

His coat sleeve had caught some essence flashback. A slash of blackened material marred the rich maroon fabric. As we stood there, me in my black jacket and Dylan in his deep red coat, the imagery in my dream floated through my mind again. A cold feeling crept into my gut that had nothing to do with the wind off the harbor.

19

Like all hospitals, Avalon Memorial had an odor that told you immediately where you were. In addition to physical ailments, it specialized in fey-related illness and issues. As you walked the corridors, the usual antiseptic odors mingled with mists and vapors that were uniquely fey. It smelled like an herbalist shop set up in an operating room. Dylan had left a message that Keeva had been admitted. He thought I would want to know. That was it. No mention of why. No mention of our argument. Two voices drifted up the hallway before I reached the room at the end of the fifth floor. Over the years, I had gotten more than familiar with both voices in their raised, annoyed versions.

“Dammit, Gillen, enough’s enough,” I heard Keeva say.

“Shut up and stick your wings out,” he replied. My eyes met those of a nurse at the station desk, and she gave me a little conspiratorial smile. Gillen Yor was High Healer of Avalon Memorial. Irrascible was his middle name, sometimes his first. Usually a workforce despised his type, but Gillen was refreshingly equal-opportunity impatient and rarely arbitrary. It meant a lot to a nurse when he tore a new one into a famous fey regardless of who was around.

The door to Keeva’s room was open. She faced the hallway, arms crossed tightly across her chest. Her wings were, in fact, flexed out as far as they could go. Through the gossamer membranes, Gillen’s silhouette moved as he sent short pulses of yellow essence into her wings. Keeva glared. “You have to leave now, Gillen. I have Guild business.”

Gillen didn’t even bother looking up. “Sit down, Grey, and if I hear one word out of you, I’ll give you a headache.”

I shot a sympathetic shrug at Keeva and sat in the chair by the bed. It would be an exaggeration to call Gillen my personal healer. Since my accident, he had taken my case more for the challenge than out of empathy. Patients did not pick Gillen; he picked them. I kept quiet as he finished examining her, barking questions at Keeva while she barked answers back.

He moved in front of her. I pulled my feet back before he had a chance to give me a hint by stomping on them. I suppressed a smile at the juxtaposition of him and Keeva. Even with her seated, he had to look up at her. He must have been having a frustrating day since the ring of hair around his bald spot was pulled in several directions. By the way he peered at her, he was assessing Keeva with his druid sensing-ability. While the two of them stared at each other, I took a look myself. Keeva was a Danann fairy related to an old royal line. Dananns have potent levels of essence. It was part of the reason they won the Seelie Court. Any history book will tell you, people and families who lead—rule—did so because some kind of physical advantage lurked in their past. The Dananns may keep their dominance through money and politics these days, but it was founded with a conquering army. Even someone with weak ability could read Keeva’s body essence. She glowed with Power. To her credit, something I always hated to give, she used the threat of that Power more than its expression. The threat was enough. Only a crazy person would go after her using essence as a weapon. Keeva would not hesitate to respond in kind.

And yet, someone had been crazy enough to go after her. In the midst of all her flaring white-and-golden essence swirls, her head and her chest glimmered with faint orange light. That’s essence damage. A larger anomaly glowed deeper within her essence but resisted the damage. She was healing, but the injury was considerable.

“You need rest and healing. Two weeks in bed, no work,” Gillen said. Her essence flared bright with emotion. “First I’m confined to my desk; now I’m confined to bed? What is this, a conspiracy?”

“A conspiracy? At the Guild? What is the world coming to?” I said. I couldn’t help myself. Keeva liked to pretend the Guild was an office with management glitches. I preferred to think of it as a fetid swamp of intrigue and backstabbing.

They frowned at me. Gillen’s long eyebrows moved like cat’s whiskers as I became the subject of his scrutiny. “Your essence gets odder all the time,” he said.

Without asking, he grabbed my hand and examined it like it wasn’t attached to the rest of me. Bedside manner was not Gillen’s strong point. He hummed and grunted a few times, but whether he was chanting or thinking was hard to tell. He dropped my hand. “The troll essence has bonded. You’re not reading pure druid.”

I flexed my fingers. A troll had saved my life by infusing me with his essence. Most of it had dissipated, but somehow I had retained the ability to manipulate inorganic matter. I couldn’t burrow through rock like a troll, but inorganic particles clung to me if I touched them too long. “Is that bad?”

Gillen shrugged. “Can’t tell. Maybe if someone would make time in his busy unemployment schedule, I could run some decent tests.”

He pointed a bony finger at Keeva. “Bed!” he said and left.

“You look like you’ve had better days,” I said.

Keeva slid off the bed and rummaged in her designer leather handbag. “I’ve had worse.”

“What happened?”

She pulled makeup out of the bag. Leaning toward the mirror on the wall next to the bed, she applied eye shadow. When a woman puts on makeup in front of a man, she’s not putting it on for him. “I was attacked in my bedroom.”

“Oh? How is Ryan, by the way?” Ryan macGoren was Keeva’s current lover. The stomach-churning rumor had it that the feelings were real and mutual.

She didn’t bat an eyelash. “Funny man. Funny, funny man.”

“Seriously, what happened?”

She sorted through lipsticks and picked one. “I was asleep. Someone entered my suite and set off the proximity wards.”

“Suite? You weren’t home?”

Her eyes flicked toward me in the mirror and back to her lips. “In case you haven’t noticed, Connor, it’s been a little busy since the fey no-go zones went up. I was working late, so I stayed at the Four Seasons.”

“How long have you been doing that?”

She brushed her hair. “A week or so.”

“That sounds like a lot of work,” I said.

She paused, then turned toward me. “I’ve been getting threats. I killed a few people at Forest Hills, Connor. There are people who aren’t happy about that.”

Keeva had been manipulated into attacking people—poisoned, actually. Joe had stopped her with a head shock of essence. He didn’t want her to know he did it. “I was there, Keeva. You didn’t know what you were doing.”

She resumed fixing her hair. “But it happened, and I have to deal with it. Including dodging angry people on the street.”

“So, someone could have been following you for days,” I said.

She gathered her cosmetics and tossed them in her bag. “Right. Probably a thousand people saw me go back and forth from the Guild to the hotel.”

“So give me details. What happened?”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “I woke up. The alarms were going off. Someone rushed in firing essence-bolts at me. I was already on the move. We exchanged fire. He got a lucky shot in. By the time I got up, security had arrived, and he was gone.”

“He?”

Keeva considered. “Actually, it could have been a woman. It was dark. I don’t even know what kind of fey it was.”

I thought about it for a moment. “You were definitely followed. It sounds like security and escape routes were scoped out. The timing was off for the kill.”

Her face relaxed with a smile as something occurred to her. “The wards. With all the threats, I set up extra wards. Whoever knew my routine wasn’t expecting that.”

I nodded. “You were lucky. Whoever it was knew how to get past your basic security. You should probably have a security detail for a while.”

She arched an eyebrow. “I am security detail, remember?” She gathered her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “And speaking of which, I have to get back to work.”

I followed her to the elevator. “Gillen said rest, Keeva. He’s right. Between the head shock at Forest Hills and whatever happened to you last night, you need to rest.”

She punched the DOWN button. “I think I can handle myself, thank you.”

We rode the elevator down. “Fine. Then who knows enough about your security warding to get all the way into your bedroom?”

Keeva didn’t slow down as we walked through the main lobby. “Whoever it was got lucky, Connor. Leave me alone.”

I grabbed her arm. “Okay, then what about me? You set up the security in my apartment. Are you confident I’m protected?”

A sneer curled on her lips as she looked at my hand. “Is the great Connor Grey afraid?”

I let her go and threw my hand in the air. “Play it your way, Keeva. You get overconfident, you get killed. Sorry I was concerned for both of us.”

“This isn’t your problem,” she said. She pushed through the revolving door and jumped in a cab. By the time I hit the curb, the yellow car had pulled away. Murdock’s car rolled up from the fire lane, where he had been waiting for me. I slouched in the passenger seat without bothering to toss the newspapers. He edged into traffic.

“She didn’t look bad. I’m glad I didn’t bring flowers,” he said.

I snorted. “She’s in denial. All the damage is on the inside.”

“How’d it go down?”

I briefed him on her attack.

“We should put protection on Ardman and Meryl,” he said.

“You think it’s related to Viten?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Just covering the bases. That’s four attacks related to the case.”

“I count only three, assuming Keeva’s is related.”

He gave me his oh-so-patient look. “Did you read the Guild file on Ardman?”

“Of course,” I said. He looked doubtful. “Okay, I read most of it.” He gave me the look again. “Okay, okay, I skimmed. I was bored. It was financial crap.”

He sighed. “Josef Kaspar needed independent verification that Viten was fey; otherwise, the Guild would have dismissed his complaint. He tracked Viten for a few days and made a connection. Your buddy Belgor.”

My mouth dropped open. “Belgor ratted Viten out to the Guild?”

“Hard to believe from such a paragon of virtue,” he said.

I let the comment go. Murdock used snitches as much as I did, but Belgor annoyed him. Since the elf didn’t traffic in the kind of stolen goods the human-normal judicial system cares about, it was a waste of time for Murdock to charge him with anything, assuming he had something. Belgor knew it and didn’t deal him any dirt. “He’s been working on something for me. This sounds like a good time for a visit.”

Murdock made the quick turn onto the elevated highway that would loop us back to the Weird. We pulled onto Calvin Place. The plate-glass windows of Belgor’s shopfront had been replaced. Fingerprints and streaks covered them and would probably never be cleaned if Belgor kept his usual standards. I was surprised he didn’t spray dust on them to fit the rest of the décor. The little bell above the door rang when we entered. To all outward appearances, the shop seemed the same room full of oddities. While a certain amount of ambient essence filled the space—the echoes of times past in used wands or ward stones, the vibrant hint from a sealed jar of strange herbs used in potions—none approached the level of potency that normally lurked in Belgor’s merchandise. The old elf stood behind the counter at the rear, leaning meaty hands palm down on the countertop. He didn’t look happy to see me. He never did. The feeling was mutual. We weren’t friends and never would be. Despite helping each other on occasion, our entire interaction was based on friendly opposition.

“You’ve cleaned out the place,” I said.

He worried his thick lips. “I cleaned up , Mr. Grey.” So his recent slip-up with the museum goods was forcing Belgor to be careful. He was immortal. He could afford to lose money for a while. That should mollify Murdock.

He hit me with a sending. They are listening. His eyes shifted to the curtained door to the back room. My sensing ability got an immediate hit of a Danann fairy signature, a Guild security agent judging by the strength. I caught Murdock’s eye and nodded toward the door.

I leaned against the counter. “We thought we’d stop by and see if you remembered anything more about your attacker.”

His neck wattles gave a little shimmy as he shook his head. “Unfortunately, no, Mr. Grey. My mind has been quite occupied with repairing the damage.”

I have learned that the gentleman who acquired the museum merchandise and the courier who brought it here were both paid by an Inverni fairy.

I trailed my finger through the dust on the counter. “Maybe you screwed her out of a deal?”

Belgor glowered. “Occasionally, my needs do not coincide with my clients’ needs, Mr. Grey. But I do not believe I’ve ever done anything to provoke anyone to kill me.”

Murdock snorted at that. If he hadn’t been a cop, he probably would have taken a shot at Belgor himself. I wrote “Viten” in the dust. “Maybe you ratted on someone, and a little revenge came into play?”

His ears flexed down, long, pointy hairs sticking out the ends. He looked at the name for a long moment before wiping it away. “A much more likely scenario, though I prefer to use the term

‘information-sharing.’ ”

Interesting. I did not find a name, but perhaps you have, he sent. There weren’t many Inverni fairies in Boston, and Rosavear Ardman was the only one related to the Viten case. The idea that she was involved in attacking a slovenly stolen goods dealer in the Weird made my head whirl. “Maybe I have.”

I realized I had responded to his sending by Belgor’s nervous glance at the curtained doorway. I mouthed, “Sorry.” “I assure you, Mr. Grey, as soon as I remember anything more, I will contact you or the Guild.”

I dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter. “Thanks, Belgor. Sorry to bother you. We only stopped in because Detective Murdock wanted a lottery ticket.”

Belgor waved a hand toward the thick roll of scratch tickets for the state lottery. “What would you like, Detective?”

Murdock shot me an annoyed look. He’s not a fan of gambling, even if it is state-sponsored. He pointed at one of the numbered rolls. Belgor tore off a ticket and slid it across the counter. “Good luck, sir.”

We returned to Murdock’s car. He tossed the ticket at me. “The Guild’s got a babysitter on him?”

“Danann security agent,” I said. “Belgor came through with some interesting information, though. He said an Inverni fairy paid for the museum heist.”

Murdock pushed his lower lip out. “Ha. I knew something was up with that Ardman woman. After we interviewed her, I double-checked the Viten files. Viten used a different alias and glamour to hide his identity in New York. The Guild made the connection through financial records.”

I thumbnail-scratched at the silver patches on the ticket. “So?”

A sly look came over him, the one he gets when something clicks. “According to the file, Ardman didn’t know about the affair with Powell, but the other day she said she did. I thought it was odd but didn’t have a reason to follow it up.”

“Huh. I’m still not seeing a motive for the murders. What’s Ardman get out of it?”

“Maybe we need another visit with her, too.”

“I hope we have better luck with her,” I said. I held the scratch ticket up. We didn’t win the lottery. 20

A surprised Sophie Wells answered the door when we rang the bell on Pinckney Street. “Is Lady Ardman expecting you?”

“She should be,” said Murdock.

Wells looked like she was trying to decide whether that answered her question, but she did let us in. She led us into the parlor, then knocked on one of the pocket doors at the back. At a muffled reply, she slid a door open and leaned her head into the next room. I couldn’t hear the exchange, but Wells turned to us with a professional smile and pulled the door open all the way. In the next room, Lady Ardman rose from her desk.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

I kept my tone neutral. “We’ve received some new information we’d like to talk to you about.”

Ardman glanced at the secretary, who nodded and left the room. “What can I do to help, gentlemen?”

“It concerns the Met robbery in New York. We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on the situation,” I said.

The pleasant cooperative expression slipped off her face. “I thought you were here about Lionel. What would I know about a robbery in New York?”

I slid my hands into my pockets to look relaxed. Keeva was right about one thing when it came to dealing with fairy royalty—an aggressive stance rarely worked well. “The two seem to be connected. Some of the stolen items turned up here. The information we have is that the thieves were working for someone else. That someone paid a large sum of money for the job, and we have a strong lead on the source.”

Ardman sat on the couch. Turning away and not meeting the eyes is always a good sign I’m on the right track. “I don’t see how this involves me, Mr. Grey.”

I pursed my lips a moment. “Lady Ardman, two people are dead. A murder attempt was made last night on Keeva macNeve. You don’t seem the type to let people die who are only trying to help you. If you know something, you have to tell us.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know anything.”

Murdock stepped closer. “Why didn’t you mention you knew about Viten’s affair with Rhonda Powell?”

Ardman looked at him in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Last time we spoke, you said the affair was a private pain for years,” he said. “According to the case file, the Guild uncovered the affair through financial records. You told the Guild back then you didn’t know about the affair until after Viten was arrested.”

Ardman’s hesitation confirmed that Murdock had hit on something. The Inverni woman stared at her hands. “This is extremely embarrassing, but I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. I discovered the affair and confronted him. He told me he would break it off. I never met that woman, but I knew her name.”

She didn’t look embarrassed. She looked nervous.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked.

Tears welled up in her eyes. “Fear, Mr. Grey. I suspected Lionel was having an affair. I’m embarrassed to say I went through his things. I found a soul stone that wasn’t mine. Lionel had a protection charm on it, because he knew I touched it. We argued, and his lies poured out. He told me he would take care of the situation. That’s how he put it. ‘Take care of the situation.’ I didn’t think anything about it at the time. But that phrase came back to me when I read that Rhonda Powell had been murdered. I feared for my life if I were to say anything after that.”

I could buy that. Finding out a husband’s mistress was shot dead right after an affair was discovered would spook anyone. “Do you know if he had accomplices other than Powell?”

She paled. “I didn’t think so. Lionel trusted no one. Not even his mistress as it turns out.”

Her voice was soft. I crouched in front of her. “Lady Ardman, who did you pay for the Met robbery?”

The tears began to fall. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I put my hand on hers. “Lady Ardman, financial transactions can be tracked. If you tell us what happened, we may be able to stop more murders. Please tell us before it’s too late.”

She sobbed and fumbled with a handkerchief. “I don’t know who she is, Mr. Grey, but she knows everything about me. She has my soul stone and would give it to me if I gave her money. She said if I didn’t give her the money, she would destroy the stone.”

“Did she give it back?”

Ardman shook her head. “She said she’s not ready yet.”

“Ready for what?”

“I don’t know! All I wanted was the stone. I didn’t know anything about murders,” said Ardman.

“Why is this stone so important?” Murdock asked.

I shook my head at him to let it go for now. I dropped my voice. Meryl told me once that I lose sight of the human emotion of a situation when I’m investigating. “Rosavear, she’s killing people connected to Viten. You’re more connected than any of them. I don’t think she’s going to give your stone back.”

She hit her knee with a clenched fist. “I knew it. I knew it wasn’t over.”

“We need you to help us catch whoever this is. Can you do that?”

She nodded vigorously. I gestured for Murdock to join me in the foyer.

“We have to bring the Guild into this,” I said, when we were out of earshot.

“I’m not going to argue,” he said. “What the hell is a soul stone?”

“It’s an old custom between fey lovers. They give their souls to each other. It takes a lot of ability. You branch off the soul and infuse a ward stone with it.”

Disbelief swept Murdock’s face. “The fey have detachable souls ?”

I kept my eye on Ardman. “I doubt it. If I understand the theory behind the spell, it’s not really a soul like you think. It’s more their basic life spark, the core of their essence.”

“And Viten made one for Powell and Ardman,” he said.

I nodded. “Right. Only lovers do it because it’s an enormous trust issue. If you crush a soul stone, it’s like physically crushing someone’s heart. The person dies.”

If anything, Murdock looked even more stunned. “Are you kidding me?”

I held my hands up. “That’s what I’ve heard. It may or not be the soul, but it’s one helluva powerful spell.”

He shook his head with an odd look of anger. “That’s bullshit. Souls don’t work that way.”

I was about to say something flip but stopped. Murdock’s Catholic. Talk of using a soul in a spell was treading way too hard on his theology. “Think of it as essence, then. Here’s the key part, though. Whether it’s the soul or essence or whatever, if you fatally injure the body of someone who has a soul stone, the soul stone can revive the body.”

Murdock shook his head several times before speaking. “God, I can’t believe this.”

I nodded. “Viten shot Rhonda Powell in New York while her soul stone was in Boston. She’s not dead.”

21

Things moved quickly once Ardman agreed to cooperate. Given her history with the case, the Guild allowed Keeva’s participation in the investigation. I suspected it was to keep her out of the way with a crime the Guild thought was unimportant. Ceridwen had bigger issues to worry about. Sitting in Keeva’s office and planning a Guild surveillance operation after so much time was surreal, yet oddly comfortable. Keeva had been surprisingly compassionate in debriefing Ardman. Caring on her part made red flags go up for me, but then the cynic in me found a reason for her kindly attitude. When all else fails, royalty closes ranks, even if they’re not of the same line.

“It’s a huge leap to think it’s Rhonda Powell,” Keeva said.

“It fits,” I said. “No one else is alive. No one else knows what she knows.”

“Correction. No one is alive. Powell is dead,” she said.

“I guess we’ll have to see who’s right,” I said.

She smiled. “I guess we will.”

Ardman had a prearranged signal with her blackmailer for setting up meetings. We had her send the signal. The idea was to stage a meeting, keep Ardman protected, and trap Powell—or as Keeva would have it, whoever—before she had a chance to escape. After going over the security plan for the umpteenth time, I stretched in my chair and exhaled loudly. “You still haven’t told me where you are going to be in all this.”

She compressed her thin lips into an even thinner smile. “Monitoring everything. That’s all you need to know.”

I shrugged. “Be that way. Just remember what Gillen Yor told you.”

“I can take care of myself, Connor.”

Dylan stuck his head in the doorway. “Can I steal Connor for a minute?”

Keeva shooed me out the door with a flutter of her hands. If anything confirmed why I’d rather jump off a bridge than work for her, that gesture did. I joined Dylan in the corridor.

“Follow me,” he said. He kept his head down as we made our way across the department. When we reached his office, he checked the hallway, then closed the door and leaned against it. “Meryl’s been arrested.”

I pinned him against the door. “What are you pulling, Dylan?”

He tried to push me off, activating his body shield, but I clung to his jacket. I shook him. “What did you do?”

He released his shield and raised his hands to the sides. “We’re not going to get in a fistfight, Connor. I didn’t do anything.”

We stared at each other. I knew him like I knew few people, the way he looked when he lied, when he was afraid, and when he was telling the truth. I dropped my hands. “What the hell is going on?”

He straightened his jacket. “I’m not sure. Remember that knife we found at Belgor’s?”

“The Breton dagger?”

He nodded. “It wasn’t the mate to one here like you thought. It was the one here.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

He held his hand up to silence me as he tilted his head to the door. He waited a moment, then continued.

“I asked Meryl to bring me the other dagger you saw in the storeroom. When she released the essence field on it, we discovered it was a counterfeit. The dagger from Belgor’s was the original.”

“So why is Meryl under arrest?”

Guilt crept over his face. “She says someone else switched the daggers. I had the logs checked, but Meryl is the only one who entered that storeroom. When Keeva and I were called down to the Weird because of Carmine’s attack, someone entered my office and took the knife.”

“And what has any of that got to do with Meryl?”

He compressed his lips a moment. “Meryl’s the only person who had high enough clearance for the storeroom and access to the department floor. She was seen on the floor that afternoon. I was debating what to do when Ceridwen caught wind of what was going on. She’s charging Meryl with theft, tampering with evidence, and assaulting Belgor.”

Hot anger gripped my chest. “This is bull, Dylan. Meryl comes up here for work all the time, and you know it. You and Ceridwen want her to answer questions about Forest Hills that she doesn’t know the answers to.”

Dylan shook his head. “Don’t throw me in that pile, Connor. You know this is Ceridwen.”

Frustrated, I spun away to keep from hitting him. It would have been dumb. It would have been striking out at the nearest thing, and he just happened to be it. Besides, Dylan could hold his own against me, even without his shields. “I want to talk to Meryl.”

His worried look was genuine. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You’re on Ceridwen’s list, too.”

I rubbed my hands across the stubble on my head. “I don’t answer to Ceridwen. I want to talk to Meryl, Dylan, and I want to do it now.”

We didn’t speak as he tried to decide what to do. Finally, he opened the door. “Let’s go.”

We took the elevator to a subbasement deeper than Meryl’s office. I knew the place. It didn’t get used much. Not unless the Guild wanted someone to disappear. The doors opened on a dim hallway, burning torches casting sooty light against walls of granite blocks. It should have had a sign that said: HINT: DUNGEON.

Halfway down in the gloom, two Danann security agents guarded an oaken door with a cast-iron dead bolt. They didn’t move when we reached them. I felt sendings passing between them and Dylan. One of the agents opened the door.

“Make it quick,” said Dylan.

I squinted against the harsh light from the small room. A cot and commode took up opposite corners. A plain wooden table stood in the middle. In the lone chair, Meryl relaxed with her hands behind her head and her feet up on the table. The door closed. I listened for a lock to slide into place, but none did. Meryl dropped her feet to the floor. “I hope you brought some C-4. I really want to blow something up.”

Just seeing her made my anxiety ease. As I came around the table, she stood, and I wrapped my arms around her. That meant I lifted her off the floor since I have a least a foot in height on her.

“Are you okay?” I said into her ear.

She giggled. “This is so lame, Grey.”

I released her and kissed her on the top of the head. She hates that. I love that she hates that. “Meryl, Ceridwen can ruin you.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Blah, blah, blah.”

I scanned the room and tapped my ear. “Can we talk?” I mouthed to her. She pointed to a broken cup on the sink. “Yeah, we’re fine. They left a listening ward. If that’s the level of sophistication I’m dealing with, I’ll be out of here tomorrow.”

“What happened?”

She dropped back in the chair and jabbed her finger at the table. “Winny ap Hwyl happened. When I find that bitch, I’m going to kill her.”

“Who the hell is she?”

“Rhonwen ap Hwyl. An old friend. Former old friend. She used to be chief archivist here. I hadn’t seen her in years. She asked me to lunch and oh-gee-can-I-see-the-old-place. She stole the dagger the day she came to visit three weeks ago. I really am going to kill her,” she said.

“Why didn’t you just tell them that?”

She had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t sign her in.”

“The receptionists have been warning you about that for years.”

She slumped in her chair. “It wouldn’t matter anyway. I didn’t steal the damned dagger, and I sure as hell didn’t attack Belgor. Ceridwen isn’t going to let a little thing like the truth stop her.”

A thrill of realization went through me. “Your friend attacked Belgor. Anglicize the name Rhonwen ap Hwyl.”

She let out an impressed whistle. “Rhonda Powell. Winny ap Hwyl was Viten’s girlfriend. But how the hell did she survive a bullet to the head?”

“He made her a soul stone.”

“I’ll be damned. I didn’t think those really worked.” She paced behind the table, her face flush with excitement. “Holy crap! That’s why Viten was down here. I never understood why he didn’t just go to the lobby and run out the front door when he escaped his guards. Now I do. He came down to the archives to get his personal effects. He was going after Winny’s soul stone.”

The evidence tag from the Ardman file floated up from my memory. I rummaged in my jacket and found an ATM receipt with a pathetically low balance. I drew the ogham runes from the Viten evidence tag from memory. “This is where Viten’s personal effects were stored. Is it the same room where the Breton dagger was?”

Meryl shook her head. “No, that’s the one next to it. Now that I think of it, Winny asked to see the dagger’s storeroom specifically. Maybe she had the wrong location.”

“Could she have gotten in when you were distracted?”

She shook her head firmly. “The doors are keyed to my essence. Best security I know.”

I tapped the receipt. “How do I get into that storeroom?”

“No problem.” She placed her palm flat on the paper and chanted. Little shots of blue light dripped off her fingertips and faded into the paper. When she handed me the receipt, the paper was infused with her body essence. “Put this flat against the door and push.”

I stood. “I’ll get you out of here, Meryl.”

She glanced at the door and winked. “I mapped this place, Grey. Don’t be surprised if I send you a postcard from the Caribbean.”

22

Dylan looked relieved when I left the cell alone, like he half expected Meryl and me to come out with guns blazing to make a getaway. We didn’t speak until we were in the elevator, out of earshot of the guards. “I need to know whose side you’re on,” I said.

He met my eyes, straightforward with no hesitation. “Connor, I know you’ve been through a lot, so I’m not going to be insulted by that question. I wouldn’t have told you anything if I wasn’t on your side.”

I hit the button for Meryl’s office floor. “I need to check something. I don’t want to ask you to lie if someone asks you about it. Do you want to wait here?”

He shook his head. “Before I answer that, I have to ask you something. If Meryl’s really involved in something, will you do the right thing?”

I clenched my jaw. “I am doing the right thing. She’s not involved.”

He glanced up at the elevator lights. “Then let’s go.”

I led the way past Meryl’s office to the maze of corridors where the storerooms were. Months ago, Meryl showed me the elegance of her ogham filing system since I never bothered to learn it when I was on staff. Because of the potent stuff in the archives, she had layers of security that ranged from baseline electronics to full-spell locks that only senior staff knew. She’s explained it to me several times, but I still don’t get it. A few wrong turns finally brought us to the room where the dagger had been stored. The first symbol on the ATM receipt matched the one above the next storeroom down. I pressed the receipt against the door, and Meryl’s essence seeped into the wood. The lock clicked open. Inside, file cabinets and storage boxes spread out in orderly ranks in an uncluttered room. We found the proper aisle and cabinet. I placed my hand on the handle of a drawer, looked at Dylan, and pulled. I closed my eyes in disappointment. The drawer was empty.

I leaned against the opposite filing cabinet. Dylan withdrew a slip of paper from the drawer. “Evidence from the Ardman case?”

I took the paper. “The woman who stole the dagger is named Rhonwen ap Hwyl, a.k.a. Rhonda Powell. There’s no record she was here. To make it more fun, she’s a former Guild employee.”

Dylan pursed his lips. “And now you’re going to tell me that this drawer shouldn’t be empty.”

I gave him a half smile. “Now do you wish you had waited by the elevator?”

He shook his head. “Nothing is ever simple.”

I closed the drawer. “I want to see the entry log. Meryl says they never came in here.”

We wound our way to Meryl’s office. The Guild’s logging systems were open to inspection by security staff, and you couldn’t get a higher-level security staff than Dylan was. I rebooted Meryl’s computer and slid the keyboard to Dylan. “You have access to the log.”

He logged in, and the main Guildhouse menus came up. I accessed the archives’ logs. The dagger’s storeroom hadn’t been entered except the past week when I found Meryl replacing the missing essence amplifier. I spotted the likely date of her friend’s visit listed a few weeks earlier. Cross-checking it against the storeroom where the Ardman evidence was stored, the log showed the room had been accessed the same day. Meryl’s security signature had activated the lock.

Dylan pointed out the access-code identifier. “That’s a problem.”

I rested my fingers on the keys without typing. “If it wasn’t Meryl, how did she get in?”

Dylan walked to the opposite of the desk. “Powell must have somehow replicated Meryl’s essence to gain access. A glamour could work, but I doubt a security lock could be fooled by it like people are.”

We heard the metallic slide of the elevator, then voices in the hall. Dylan leaned out to look, and a professional smile sprang across his face. “Your Highness, I’m surprised to see you down here.”

Ceridwen. Not the person I needed to see. The hallway had a straight view from the elevator. I couldn’t slip into the storeroom area without her seeing me. The ATM receipt still had some of Meryl’s essence on it. I pressed the slip of paper against the space between a credenza and a filing cabinet. A barrier spell feathered like cobwebs against my face as I walked through the wall. On the other side of the illusion, a tunnel led to the subway. Meryl had let me use it once. She hadn’t keyed it for me. I wouldn’t have made it through without her essence on the ATM receipt. The light from the office cast a bare illumination into the hidden space. Dylan’s voice trickled through the spell, but I couldn’t make out what was being said. He glanced into the office and indicated no surprise when he didn’t see me.

The dark mass in my head fluttered with a burst of pain at the same time a mental image of Ceridwen’s spear popped into my head. It shone like a bright sliver of essence in my mind. Dylan backed into the office, with Ceridwen following him. She had the spear.

“I’m sorry you had to look for me, Your Highness,” he said.

Ceridwen spoke to someone in the outer hall before closing the office door. With a confident smile, she tilted the spear toward Dylan, rolling the tip across his cheek in a caress. “The truth this spear seeks takes many forms, Druid macBain. We had only to ask it to guide us to you.”

Dylan looked uncomfortable. Ceridwen cradled the spear in the crook of one arm and glanced down at the desk. “Have you found anything?”

He shifted some papers. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve only begun looking.”

Ceridwen scanned the routine chaos of Meryl’s desk. She nudged a stack of books and picked up something small. As she toyed with it between her thumb and index finger, it caught the light with a metallic sheen. She dropped it back on the desk. “We want to know if you find anything remotely interesting.”

Dylan kept smiling. “These are the archives, Your Highness. Much of it is interesting. Can you offer me some guidance?”

Ceridwen considered him with a measuring look. “Neither of us is from here, Druid macBain. We were sent in the best interests of the Seelie Court. We trust you have no conflicts in your loyalties.”

“None,” Dylan said.

Ceridwen nodded once. “Good. We need to keep Meryl Dian confined until we acquire the answers the High Queen seeks. Find us the means to keep her so or the answers we need, and we shall be very appreciative.”

Dylan bowed. “I will do my best to serve the needs of the Guild and Court, Your Highness.”

She leaned forward, half-closing her eyes and smiling seductively. “I want you to know that I shall personally be very”—the smile widened—“appreciative.”

Dylan blushed from his neck to his hairline. “Thank you, Your Highness.”

Ceridwen straightened and became businesslike again. “You may call us at any time.”

She left. Dylan picked up a sheet of paper and wandered to the door as he read. Pausing at the threshold, his eyes shifted down the hallway for a fraction of a second. He dropped the paper on the desk and faced the wall I hid behind.

I suppressed a chuckle as he peered at me from inches away. He pressed his hand against the wall. From my side of the spell, the hand flattened as he encountered what he perceived as a hard surface. “I can sense the residue of your essence here, Connor. Are you there?”

I stepped forward, letting my chest replace the wall beneath his hand. “I see you can still blush on cue.”

He dropped his hand. “I don’t think she suspected you were here, do you?”

I shrugged. “You know Dananns are not very good at sensing essence, and there’s a lot of it in here.”

He nodded at the wall. “Care to explain that?”

“It’s a hidey-hole Meryl showed me. She uses it when she doesn’t want to talk to people. She keyed it to my essence.” If I revealed it was actually a full-blown exit, Meryl would be less understanding than Dylan would be if he knew I didn’t tell him the whole truth. I felt guilty not telling him, but he would appreciate the nature of confidences.

A small earring lay on the desk where Ceridwen had dropped it. Something felt naggingly familiar about it. Ceridwen’s brief contact with it had left her essence, but beneath it was Meryl’s. Dylan leaned against the desk. “Con, I know there are things you’re not telling me, and I’m letting you. At some point, I expect you to tell me. Am I fooling myself by thinking that?”

That stung. He had every reason to say it, but coming from Dylan, it was tough to hear. I pretended to be interested in a pile of reports on Meryl’s desk. “I hope not.”

He bowed his head in thought. “Good. Because I would question my instincts if you walked away without a better explanation. I don’t want that to happen again.”

I lowered my head, too. “I know. I’ll say I’m sorry now, but I promise this time we’ll talk.”

He lifted his head. “I’ll take your word for it. Now, give me five minutes to settle in my office, then get out of here without attracting attention.”

He pushed away from the desk. I waited to make sure he left the floor. I picked up the earring again. It was a triskele, the druidic symbol of three spirals made with one continuous line. The symbol was generic, but something about the earring felt familiar. I stared at it and stared at it. I shivered as I recalled where I had seen it, or rather, its mate. It was bent and broken, but the piece of metal I found at the Kaspar murder scene was the mate to the one I held.

I stared and stared. The druidess essence I felt at the murder scenes was familiar. Familiar like Meryl. It wasn’t the same, but close. She was angry with the Guild, angry with the way she was being treated. Maybe something happened to her at Forest Hills, something I didn’t know about or understand. I was worried about myself. Maybe I should be worried about both of us.

I shook my head. Something was wrong. I was missing something. I refused to believe Meryl would kill two people for revenge of some kind. I put the earring back on the desk. She didn’t do it. I trusted my instincts.

I walked back through the wall. The spell resisted a little this time. I groped my way down the dark passage until I came to a staircase. Keeping my hands on the walls, I climbed the long flight of stairs. At the top, pushing hard against the spell blocking the exit felt like sliding through molasses. The receipt essence was almost drained.

I exhaled when I made it through. The dim lighting of the subway tunnel blinded me after the total darkness of the stairs. The wall behind me appeared to be a solid concrete slab when I pressed it. I pulled out the receipt. Meryl’s essence had faded to nothing. I would have stuck in the wall like a fly in amber if it had dissipated any sooner.

The platform at Boylston Street Station sat level with the train tracks. An old wire security fence prevented passengers from wandering into the tunnel. It worked more as a visual deterrent since you could walk around it. If you didn’t want to be seen doing that, a gap near a wall worked just as well. I mingled with passengers coming down the stairs on the inbound side. Concrete arches separated the two halves of the station with wrought-iron fencing preventing anyone from crossing the tracks. An outbound train must have just come through because the opposite platform was empty. A lone man walked down the outbound side. He stared at me. I hate when people stare for no reason, playing their dominance games with strangers.

I stared back. The guy moved to the edge of the tracks, not taking his eyes from me. He seemed angry or annoyed. Three more steps, and he stopped on the tracks. I don’t know if anyone else had noticed him because I didn’t want to lose the staring game. The echoing station picked up the rumble of an approaching train. I moved closer to the iron fencing. He broke our gaze and looked up the tunnel. Headlights appeared in the tunnel on his side. He turned back to me.

“Train’s coming,” I said.

Light illuminated the tracks, throwing his solemn face into a white relief.

“Buddy, step back,” I said.

He didn’t move. I shouted as the train pulled in, my voice lost in the screaming of its wheels against the steel tracks. I rushed to the fence. The train stopped with a set of windowed doors opposite me. The man was inside the train. Almost. The floor of the car was several feet higher than the ground, cutting through him at the waist. He hadn’t changed his expression. You’re going to die soon, he sent. The train pulled away in a rush of color, leaving behind an empty track. I backed away as several people cast anxious looks at me. They probably thought I was nuts. I would have. I was already thinking maybe I was. Really. As in, hallucinating and losing it.

My mind reeled as I rode the next train to Park Street Station. Maybe I couldn’t handle stress anymore. Maybe the thing in my head was causing brain damage. Maybe I was letting everything get to me like I never did before. Keeva was pushing herself beyond her limits; Meryl became more entangled in murder the more I tried to prove otherwise; Dylan was playing both friend and foe. And Joe had been too drunk lately to have a coherent conversation. Murdock might be a good sounding board, but he didn’t appreciate what it was like to deal with Guild messes, never mind the possibility that I was losing my mind. I hit a speed dial on my cell.

“It’s about time you called. Come on up,” Briallen answered. She hung up before I could whine like a scared child.

23

The door to Briallen’s house was always unlocked to me, allowing me to pass through her protective wards. I did a lot of growing up in her house, spent years learning things I never imagined possible when I was just a little kid. I trusted her with my life.

As I stood in the foyer, I sensed Briallen’s essence trailing upstairs. I found her in the parlor by the fire. She stared into the flames, unmoving, though I knew she had sensed me the moment I’d entered the house.

“Ceridwen had Meryl arrested,” I said.

Briallen didn’t respond immediately. “Sooner than I thought.”

I slumped into the opposite chair. “You knew?”

She pulled her legs up on the seat and adjusted her robes around them. “It was only a matter of time. Ceridwen is afraid of failing. High Queen Maeve doesn’t take disappointment well.”

“But Meryl doesn’t know anything.”

Briallen smiled as she sipped from a large mug. “I’m sure she would dispute that.”

“You know what I mean. She’s told them everything. We both have.”

She leaned her head back in the nook of the chair, her eyes half-closed. “Have you?”

Her tone made me blush, caught out like a ten-year-old telling a fib. It’s the tone she uses on me when she knows something that I think she doesn’t know. “Okay, everything they need to know.”

Briallen tweaked an eyebrow. “Deciding who needs to know what and who gets to decide that is the seed of most arguments in the world.”

I sighed. “I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t remember anything but what I’ve told them. Ceridwen essentially threatened me to get me to talk, and even Dylan doesn’t seem to believe me.”

“He mentioned you argued,” she said.

A little anger flared up. “You see? Ceridwen thinks arresting Meryl will put pressure on me to talk, and now Dylan thinks running to you will do it.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “I think it’s only fair to point out that you’re doing a little running to me right now.”

“That’s not true.”

She scoffed at me. “Sure you are. You think Meryl’s been arrested to put pressure on you, and you want me to confirm it. Did it ever occur to you that after you spoke to Dylan, he believed you? Has it occurred to you that Meryl doesn’t exactly make any attempt to inspire confidence in her veracity?”

“She’s telling the truth,” I said.

Briallen thrust her index finger at me. “ You believe that. You do. Not the Guild. Just like you don’t want the Guild telling you what to do, the Guild doesn’t want you telling it what to think. Meryl’s a big girl. She’ll decide what to do.”

“If there is something she’s hiding—and I don’t think there is—she won’t say it, just to spite Ceridwen for treating her like this. She’s stubborn,” I said.

Briallen shrugged. “Then she’ll have to live with the consequences. Connor, you know Meryl well enough to know she won’t do anything she doesn’t want to. She’s a druidess. She takes that seriously. Let her decide how to respond. Sometimes the Grove and the Guild do not have the same agenda.”

“Don’t let Ceridwen hear you say that, or you might end up in a cell yourself.” I couldn’t help the dig. Briallen grinned. “I’d like to see her try. At the bottom of all this, she knows the Grove and the Guild want essentially the same things. It’s just a matter of whose means to the end get used. Now, can we put this aside and discuss why you came to see me?”

Getting slapped down by Briallen didn’t exactly put me in the mood to make myself vulnerable. I feigned innocence. “I came about Meryl.”

Briallen laughed. “Oh, bull. You know I knew Meryl was under arrest ten minutes after she did. Something else is bothering you.”

I bit my lower lip. “Okay, you’re right. I came to ask you about something odd. Lately, I’ve been . . .” I didn’t realize until that moment how strange and embarrassing this was going to sound. “. . . well, I guess you can say I’ve been hearing things. Like, things no one else does. And I’m seeing people who aren’t there.

She didn’t laugh or look at me like I was crazy. “What are they saying?”

I slid deeper in the chair. “I’m not sure. It started a little over a week ago. I kept hearing whispering. Then the whispers got louder, and I began to see people, too. At first, I thought it was some kind of spell, but it’s happened too many times in too many places. They’re angry. One of them attacked me, and, just now, on the subway, one of them told me I’m going to die.”

Briallen leaned forward. “You’re a druid. You’ll live a long time, Connor.”

“Yeah, as long as nobody kills me first. And we don’t know how long a life I have anymore, Briallen. Whatever Bergin Vize did to destroy my abilities might have wrecked my chances for a long lifetime, too,” I said.

Her eyes shifted to me. “I used to worry that you weren’t going to live long. Do you know I never see you in my visions? The only way I know you’re involved in something I see is because of reactions around you.”

I exhaled sharply. “A dwarf said that to me not too long ago. You can’t see my future, and I can’t see my past.”

“It’s all connected, Connor. We are all connected. You know I believe that. Maybe whatever you are hearing and seeing is sending you a message that you haven’t figured out yet. Maybe the Wheel of the World is trying to teach you something about yourself,” she said.

I frowned. “By making me feel crazy?”

She smiled. “Maybe, Connor, maybe you’re supposed to do things based on who you are and not what you know.”

“But if I don’t know anything, who does that make me?”

She shrugged. “A child who sees ghosts and runs to an adult for help.”

I closed my eyes. “I hope you mean that metaphorically.” She giggled. Briallen giggles sometimes. It annoys the hell out of me. “Connor, I’m not going to say you’re not hallucinating. You are a druid with damaged abilities. Things are happening to you that never happened to you before your accident. But what you just told me is exactly what’s been plaguing you for two years: You can’t remember, and you’re afraid of the future. Maybe you’re manifesting your own fears.”

“What if my fears are real enough to kill me?”

She sighed. “All fears are real. It’s what you do about them that matters.”

I stared into the fire, letting the flickering light mesmerize me, the warmth soothe my skin. “You’re saying I should let go of the past.”

She shook her head. “If you think that will help, then do it and see what happens. I can’t give you answers to questions only you can answer.”

I dropped my head back against the chair. “You kick me in the balls every time I come here, and I still come back for more.”

She laughed. That laugh, that lovely Briallen laugh. “And then you leave with tougher balls.”

24

From our parking spot on Charles Street, Murdock and I had a good view of the Ardman townhouse. At least four Danann security agents monitored the area, two along the roofline across the street from the townhouse and two more nearby posing as shopkeepers. The Flat had enough fey living in it that Powell wasn’t likely to notice anything unusual. As a concession to me and Murdock, Keeva agreed to use wireless headsets instead of sendings. As security agents cycled through a check-in every fifteen minutes, I heard at least one voice I didn’t recognize. If I knew Keeva, she had more agents squirreled away along the street than she had told me about.

Murdock sipped his coffee. “She hasn’t shown in two days.”

“She’ll show. Ardman is on her hit list,” I said.

“Maybe Ardman signaled her it’s a trap,” he said.

I rocked my head against the headrest. “I doubt it. She’s too scared Powell will crush the soul stone.”

“So why doesn’t Powell just do it?”

I crooked my neck toward him. “You know, that’s an interesting question. She got the money and museum stuff, too. What’s the delay?”

“The whole soul-stone thing bothers me,” he said.

“Let it go, Murdock. Just because tradition says it’s the soul doesn’t mean it is. It’s just a powerful spell,” I said.

He sipped his coffee again. “Said the man who didn’t believe in a drys until he met one.”

He had a point. Meeting an actual incarnation of essence gave me pause on the whole faith issue. “I said it was possible the drys was a demigoddess. She could just as easily have been a powerful species of fey I’d never met before.”

“Meryl believes in them.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “When did you talk to Meryl?”

He kept his eyes on the townhouse. “I ran into her on Oh No the night you had dinner with Dylan. She was shopping for something I couldn’t pronounce.”

The night I had dinner with Dylan. The same night Belgor was attacked. Meryl was in the Weird. I pushed the thought away. I was not going to go there. “And you talked about the drys,” I said.

“Just briefly. She was asking about my body shield. She said she had a dream about me. Said I was riding a flying horse on fire.”

Meryl has a geasa on her about her dreaming. It’s an obligation—deeper than a command, really—to do a certain thing or suffer dire consequences. Meryl’s geasa is that if she has a dream and knows someone in it, she has a duty to tell that person. “Stay away from carousels. Her dreams come true,” I said.

He took another sip of coffee. “Will do.”

Something rustled within the pile of discarded fast-food bags in the backseat. I knew the cause because I sensed the essence. Murdock didn’t react, which I thought was kind of curious. People hear something mucking around in their car, they tend to react a little. Then again, Murdock’s car is such a sty, he’s probably used to all kinds of critters roaming around in it. The rustling sound came again.

“There’s no food back there, Joe,” Murdock said nonchalantly.

“Who says I’m looking for food?” Joe’s muffled voice came from beneath several layers of paper. I chuckled. “How’d you know?” I said to Murdock.

Murdock kept his eyes on the street, but amusement played on his lips. “The first time I thought it was a rat. I whomped him with the billy club.”

Joe crawled out of the paper wreckage. “And I gave him a nice zap back.”

Murdock shifted his coffee to the side away from Joe. “It didn’t hurt.”

“Did, too,” said Joe.

Murdock sipped his coffee. “Did not.”

“Liar.”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I hearing this?” I asked. Murdock laughed silently. Since we’d first met, I had been teaching him about the fey and how to react to them like a fey person would. Flits were a hurdle because he had a hard time not acting surprised when they teleported. Not flinching at Joe’s arrival was a definite improvement. Engaging in Joe’s penchant for squabbling wasn’t. It was bad enough I did it. Joe poked a finger in his ear, then scratched his head vigorously. “Still hearing singing?” I asked.

“At least a week now,” Joe said.

Murdock kept his eyes on the street. “What singing?”

Joe made a face at me that implied Murdock was clueless. “Dead folks. It’s Samhain, Murdock. You hear things.”

I whipped my head around. “What did you say?”

Joe started to say something, then snapped his mouth closed. His eyes opened wide and broke open a huge grin. “I hear dead people!”

“Oh. That clears things up,” said Murdock.

Joe wobbled in the air and poked him in the shoulder. “Yes! Yes! Yes! The veil’s thinning! I haven’t heard the voices since home.”

I twisted in my seat. “Wait, wait, wait. Back up, Joe. Dead people? Is that what you meant by singing the other night? You hear dead people?”

Joe fluttered back. “Of course. It’s just the haunts trying to make me regret what I did to them, soften me up for when they come calling on Samhain and try and scare me to death. That never works.”

I slumped back in my seat in relief, too stunned to say anything. I wasn’t going mad. I wasn’t hearing voices that weren’t there. I was hearing voices that were there. I wasn’t going mad, if not going mad meant I was perfectly willing to believe that instead of having brain damage, I was being haunted by dead people. Not mad at all. “Can they attack you?”

He stopped looping. “Nah. Maybe on Samhain itself. The really angry ones can make you think they’re doing it before that, though. I hate those kind. Stupid mind tricks. This is great. I haven’t heard anyone in Anwwn since I was in Faerie.”

“What’s Anwwn?” Murdock asked.

“It’s an hour after eleven,” Joe and I said simultaneously. Joe screamed a laugh and slapped me on the shoulder. It was a favorite bad pun when I was a kid. Apparently, it still worked for Joe.

“Anwwn is what the Welsh folk called TirNaNog,” I said.

Joe fluttered to the dashboard and faced the street. “The Wheel of the World turns, and the realms align. I hope I can get through. It’ll be great to see some old friends,” he said.

“Can you sit somewhere else, Joe? We’re trying to be inconspicuous here,” said Murdock. Joe stuck his tongue out and hopped down to the console between the seats.

“Fairies can come and go to . . .” Murdock paused. “. . . to the afterlife anytime they want?” The thought that the Celts didn’t have a separate heaven and hell wasn’t sitting well with Murdock. Joe puffed his chest out. “No, just flits. We can get in anywhere.”

“The traditional stories don’t quite say that,” I said.

He shrugged. “Well, of course they don’t. They’re about the kings and queens, aren’t they? They always do what they want. That’s why they’re kings and queens, bringing people in and out with their branch charms and such. But the flits can come and go ’cause we’re flits.”

He jumped up and down. I hadn’t seen him so excited in a long time. “This is the greatest! I have to go check the Ways and see if it’s true.”

He vanished. Murdock didn’t react. He was getting better at it.

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am right now,” I said.

“Yeah, he’s a bit much when he’s drunk,” said Murdock.

“No, I mean I’m not crazy. I thought I was hallucinating and going crazy. All this time, I’ve just been hearing people I killed,” I said.

Murdock slowly turned his head and stared at me. “Uh-huh,” he said.

“No, well, what I mean is . . . Wait a sec, there goes the secretary again,” I said. I was watching Ardman’s secretary, Sophie Wells, but my mind was reeling with the idea of the dead haunting me. After so many days of anxiety, the things that had been happening to me had a rational explanation. Rational, of course, being a relative thing in my life. Wells stepped off the threshold of the Ardman house, her movement snapping me back to attention. I’d told her twice to stop that because it made her look suspicious and might tip Powell. At least she had varied the time of her coffee run. She adjusted her scarf against the cold. The scarf was the all-clear signal that Powell had set up with Ardman, and she had worn it every day at the same time. Wells passed the car without looking at us this time, another thing I had had to explain to her. She wasn’t stupid, just inexperienced.

Less than a minute later, she quick-stepped across the street from the opposite direction. I knew I didn’t see her pass us and loop around. She turned the corner onto Pinckney, and her coat fluttered open to reveal her white blouse. No scarf. Suspicious, I did a flash sensing on her and grabbed the door handle.

“It’s her.”

Murdock didn’t waste time debating and followed. Wells had entered the Ardman townhouse by the time we reached the front door. I tapped on my earpiece. “Keeva, Wells is the target. She’s glamoured.”

Keeva’s voice spoke calmly in my ear. “We’ve got Ardman in her office.”

I nodded to Murdock. “The office off the parlor. You first, then me.”

Murdock pulled his gun and opened the door. He led with his gun, and we strode through the foyer. Both pocket doors were open to the back office. Wells stood in the arch. Lady Ardman rose from her desk as Wells turned toward us with a confused look.

“Police. Hands out,” Murdock said.

“What . . .” said Wells. She raised her hands in front of her.

Murdock rushed her and pointed the gun to the side of her head. “I said hands out, not up.”

Panicked, Wells froze. “I don’t understand, Officer.”

Murdock pressed the gun against her temple. “Hands out or I put a bullet through your head. You know what that feels like, don’t you, Powell?”

The fear slipped from Wells’s face and became anger. “Lady Ardman, please! What’s going on?”

Ardman smiled. “Let’s all drop the masquerade, shall we?”

She slid her hands behind her neck and removed her necklace. Her face rippled, the colors blurring and shifting, and a glamour fell away. Impressed, I nodded as Keeva dropped the necklace on the desk.

“Rhonwen ap Hwyl, a.k.a. Rhonda Powell, you are under arrest.”

Wells moved nothing but her eyes, looking first at Keeva, then Murdock, then me. With a shrug, she stretched her hands out to the side as essence rippled over her. There have been moments in my life when I’ve seen things I couldn’t believe, times when my eyes denied the reality in front of them. None of those times prepared me for the woman who stood in front of us. She shrank a few inches in height, her blond hair darkening to a pumpkin orange. I was wrong. I had been wrong. I was wrong, and I couldn’t believe I was wrong.

“I can explain everything,” Meryl said.

Keeva didn’t miss a beat. “We can talk about that at the Guildhouse.”

With a stricken look, Murdock relaxed his stance.

I struggled to find my voice. “Meryl, I don’t understand.”

A sad smile softened her face. “You will, honey.”

Essence surged around her. Murdock’s body shield flashed behind Meryl, filling the room with an angry red glow. In a blur of motion, he coldcocked her with his fist. She crumpled to the floor as Keeva deflected a ball of white essence that shot across the desk. It arced over her head and shattered a window.

Security agents rushed in, their hands primed with white light. Keeva came around the desk and stood over Meryl’s body. “You’re a little rough on the ladies, Detective,” she said. Speechless, I sank to my knees and checked for a pulse. Relieved, I found it strong and regular. I pulled her against my chest. Even though she seemed fine physically, her essence wavered in my vision in an odd cycle of white and blue. Something was wrong.

Looking deeper, Meryl’s essence shone with a green haze but with an unnatural geometric shape burning blue in the middle of it, as if she had two different body signatures. I opened her coat. Something heavy shifted in the fabric. I slipped my hand into the inside pocket and found a brick of granite shot through with yellow crystal. Exactly like the ward stones Meryl used at the Guildhouse to amplify essence. Without the ward stone, the woman in my arms blurred and changed shape. Her hair lightened to an ashen blond, and her features relaxed into the blunt face of someone I didn’t know. Repulsed, I pushed her away.

“Rhonda Powell. You were right, Connor,” said Keeva.

I looked up at Murdock. “How the hell did you know?”

He shrugged. “She called you honey. Meryl never calls you honey.”

I shot to my feet. “Are you kidding me?”

He backed away as he holstered his gun. “I’d be lying if I said I knew it wasn’t her, Connor. You were looking at her face. I keep my eyes on hands until they’re in cuffs. Hers turned white. I’ve seen that enough around you guys to know what comes next. I hit her when I saw that essence shot about to release. I’d do it again even if I was sure it was Meryl.”

Two responses warred within me. I wanted to thank him. I did. With Keeva’s physical condition weakened, he’d probably saved her life. Without her, Murdock would have his body shield, but I would have had no protection. But hearing the truth of the matter, that at the right moment, he put his personal feelings aside and hurt someone he thought a friend, struck a very deep chord. It was exactly what I feared I would do to Dylan. No matter how justified, it didn’t make me feel any better. Keeva saved me from speaking. “Impressive reflexes, Murdock. I guess I owe you my thanks.”

He inclined his head to her. “You’re welcome.”

Keeva gestured to the Danann agents. “Make sure she’s properly secured. If she tries to escape, you are authorized to use any means necessary to take her down.” The agents wove a binding spell around Powell’s inert body, strands of fierce light winding about her body like rope. With practiced ease, they chanted a levitation spell to carry her out of the room.

“You could have told us you were here,” I said.

Keeva gathered up her necklace glamour. “I don’t believe in using civilians as bait.”

Murdock and I exchanged glances. It was a dig at us. We had used a young human as bait not too long ago. It hadn’t ended well.

“She should be in police custody,” said Murdock.

Keeva sighed. “You’re never happy, Murdock. You complain about the Guild not taking cases, and now you’re complaining that we are.”

“You’re not taking the murder cases. You’re taking a blackmail case,” he said. Keeva walked to the front door. “Have your father call me. I’m sure the commissioner and I can work something out.”

Murdock’s strange essence surged again, a crimson flickering that enveloped him like a shroud. “Let it go, Murdock. She’s baiting you.”

He nodded without speaking, and his essence settled. “I want to be there for the interrogation.”

I hefted the ward stone Powell had used to create the Meryl glamour. “I think we’re all going to enjoy this one.”

25

Another day, another visit to the Guildhouse holding cells. Keeva had locked Rhonda Powell in the deepest subbasement the Guild had to offer. The only furniture in the granite-block cell room was the chair that Powell occupied. Five-foot-high quartz obelisks tipped with silver surrounded her to form a triangular essence barrier—standard protection wards. They suppressed most fey abilities. Protocol called for an added calming spell in case the suspect became agitated and tried to use essence anyway. Not that Powell needed it. For someone in as much trouble as she was, she acted like she was bored waiting for a doctor’s appointment.

Against the chill in the room, Powell wore the brown plaid coat that matched Wells’s. Glamours can change clothing, but it makes them harder to maintain over time. Without the glamour, Powell had the kind of bland, round face that’s easily overlooked in a crowd. Like her lover Viten, that plainness was an advantage when using glamours. It’s a heckuva lot easier to maintain strong facial features over slight ones than vice versa.

Keeva leaned against the wall near the door with her hands in the pockets of her black jumpsuit. To anyone who didn’t know her well, she maintained an air of calm. I knew her, though. The set of her jaw and the steady stare meant she was in no mood for games. I couldn’t blame her. The downside of being one of the good guys was you didn’t get to kill someone who tried to kill you. At least not so you would get caught.

Dylan stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He glanced at Murdock and me when we walked in. “We know you arranged the Met robbery with money you extorted from Ardman. We have video surveillance of you at the Met,” he said.

She shrugged. “Lots of people go to the Met.”

“Dead people?” Murdock said.

She sneered at him. “Obviously you’ve mistaken me for someone else. I demand to be released.”

Keeva cleared her throat. “I’ve heard that before. A little over ten years ago, someone else sat in that chair. Someone you know.”

Scorn filled Powell’s face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Keeva strolled closer to the barrier. “We know you were Liddell Viten’s partner, Powell. Viten shot you in the head, yet here you are. I’m wondering if Viten’s not dead either.”

Powell’s gaze fell away. “He’s dead.”

“Then why kill people who could identify him?” I asked.

She looked at me with an impatient arrogance. “I killed no one.”

“I can identify your essence at the murder scenes,” I said.

A crooked smile broke across her face. “I doubt it. You would have to testify to what you truly sensed, and what you truly sensed was not me. I believe you already have the murderer in custody.”

I kept my voice even. I didn’t want her to have the satisfaction of knowing how angry I was. “Meryl Dian killed no one. You had the means and motive.”

Powell feigned surprise. “Meryl Dian? I never mentioned her. But now that you bring her up, I had lunch with poor Meryl not too long ago. She’s very troubled, you know. Something terrible happened to her a few weeks ago, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s become unbalanced. And bitter. Very bitter. She intimated that she would get what was coming to her from the Guild. In fact, she hinted about an old case she knew about with lots of money lying dormant. I have to wonder if there’s some improprieties in her financial situation. Poor thing probably thought she didn’t get enough recognition and decided to take matters into her own hands. I’d look into that if I were you.”

I didn’t exactly count to ten, but I did stop myself from saying anything. Powell was a con artist and, like all con artists, knew how to push people’s buttons. I didn’t let her. Instead, I looked at Murdock.

“Meryl’s going to love this story.”

Keeva moved from the barrier and leaned against the wall again. “Nice theory, but it doesn’t quite explain why you showed up at Rosavear Ardman’s disguised as Meryl Dian. That, my friend, will throw more than enough doubt on your story.”

Powell pursed her lips. “Did Lady Ardman ever mention her love of antique jewelry to you? She asked Meryl to arrange something for her, a purchase I believe. Meryl told me she was overworked and feared she wouldn’t have time to complete the transaction with Ardman, so when we had lunch, she asked me to help her. She told me Ardman was a little paranoid so it would be better to glamour myself. I was under the impression it was a legitimate transaction. An old friend involved me in murder and robbery. I feel used.”

Keeva withdrew a dull stone from her pocket. She held high it enough for Powell to see. “This stone was found in your possession. You threatened to crush Ardman’s soul stone unless she cooperated.”

Powell emitted a small surge of essence, the kind that reflects a change in emotion. She shook her head, but her eyes were riveted to the stone. “Soul stones are a myth. Meryl gave me that ward stone for safekeeping.”

Keeva withdrew another stone from a different pocket and looked at it reflectively as she rolled it around in the palm of her hand. “Do you recognize this stone?”

Powell affected boredom.

“It’s an interesting story how I came into possession of this particular stone,” said Keeva. “A long time ago, I had a small case that turned into something much bigger. A con artist was implicated in a murder in New York. I handled the extradition, packed up the evidence we had collected, and sent it to the Guildhouse down there. Things didn’t work out as planned, though, and the murderer ended up dead before trial. Months later, the unopened evidence was returned to me. I sent everything to the archives but kept this stone in my office as a reminder that I should be more vigilant in the future.”

Keeva lifted her gaze to Powell. “It occurred to me recently that it could be a soul stone. Why else would Liddell Viten risk going down to the archives instead of escaping? But, you know what, Powell? I agree with you. The idea is absurd.”

Keeva’s hand glowed white with essence. She clenched her fist, and the stone crumbled. Powell blanched, clutching her chest in panic. Keeva brushed dust from her hands as Powell regained her composure. Keeva took yet another stone out of her pocket. “What an interesting reaction, Powell. That stone was a fake. Lady Ardman told me that you asked her for your soul stone, and you didn’t believe her when she said she gave it to the Guild. Lady Ardman identified it for me. This one’s yours, Powell, the very one you tried to steal out of the archives a couple of weeks ago and were sorely disappointed to find missing.”

Powell finally showed a break in her demeanor. She struggled to remain unimpressed, but real fear crept into her eyes. Keeva placed a hand on the obelisk nearest her and shot a bolt of essence into it. The essence barrier collapsed. She stepped up to Powell. “I’m no fan of Meryl Dian, but I know a setup when I see one. Where are the artifacts you stole from the museum?”

“I told you I didn’t . . .” Powell didn’t get to finish. Keeva’s essence pulsed to life, her wings flaring huge and white. With one hand, she grabbed Powell by the throat, lifted her from the chair, and thrust her against the back wall.

Dylan moved forward. “Director macNeve . . .” he said.

I grabbed his arm, and he stopped. I had never seen her lose her control when she was angry. Her methods could be aggressive sometimes, but she never crossed the line too far. Besides, I liked the look of terror in Powell’s face. She was getting a taste of what her victims must have felt. Keeva’s eyes blazed white-hot as she leaned in toward Powell’s terrified face. “Listen to me, Powell. You’re legally dead. Know what that means? If I kill you, there’s no crime. If you don’t start answering questions, I’ll keep killing you until I get them.”

Powell’s eyes bulged as she clutched at the hand at her throat. Keeva let out a burst of essence that made the druidess convulse. Powell dropped to the floor. “Start talking,” Keeva said. Tears poured down Powell’s face as she coughed. “I demand an advocate,” she said. Keeva tangled her fingers in Powell’s hair. Dylan pulled away from me with enough force to send the message he wasn’t going to be stopped this time. “Enough,” he said. Keeva ignored him. She yanked Powell’s head up. “I’ll see if we have to allow an advocate in for a dead person. In the meantime, think about your soul stone.”

She released Powell’s hair, turned on her heel, and tossed the ward stone to Dylan. He caught it one-handed.

“You’re welcome,” she said to him as she walked out.

26

“I demand the return of my soul stone,” Powell said.

Dylan reactivated the protection barrier around Powell. “You’re not in a position to demand anything.”

She stared for so long, I could almost see her evaluating her options. “I have information to trade that the Guild will want to know.”

Dylan held the soul stone between his thumb and index finger. Its pale blue surface had an intricate series of depressions that looked like ripples in the sand on a beach. “So talk,” he said.

“I want a promise in writing to turn over the stone before I will say anything,” she said. Dylan shrugged. “I’ll need more than that before I agree, assuming I do. Make it worth it.”

Powell adjusted her clothing and resumed her seat. “A terrorist attack on the Seelie Court is imminent. Is that enough for you?”

Dylan twitched a small smile at me. “I already know that. I also know the sun rises every day, the sky is blue, and you’re not telling me anything. The Seelie Court is under constant threat of attack.”

Powell kept her expression calm, but she couldn’t hide her annoyance. “Bergin Vize is going to launch an assault against High Queen Maeve.”

Dylan moved toward the door. “Bergin Vize, Powell? Are you sure? Next you’ll be telling me the Elven King hates Maeve and fairies have wings. You don’t have anything to trade.”

He gestured for Murdock and me to leave.

“He’s found a way into TirNaNog,” Powell said.

Dylan opened the door. “And now we move into fantasy.”

Powell jumped to her feet. “You have less than hours before it happens. Give me the stone, and I will give you the names of all the Boston operatives I know that you didn’t arrest when the pimp was attacked.”

Dylan paused. “Now that’s out of left field. Why should I care about them?”

Powell let a little confidence slide into her posture when she saw Dylan’s hesitation. “Because they’re part of it. Get me that signed promise. Now. And I will tell you what you need to know.”

“How do you know this?” he asked.

She smiled. “You will get what I know in exchange for the written guarantee and the stone. How I know the information will be a point of discussion if you bring charges against me.”

Smooth and confident. She was already negotiating the next phase before we had even agreed to the first. If Viten was her mentor, lovelorn widows didn’t have a chance against him. Dylan appeared to consider what she said. He left the room without another word, and we followed. Keeva was nowhere in sight outside the holding cell. If I had to guess, she was talking to the legal department about a hypothetical situation of an officially dead person’s rights. The legal guys would smile, not ask real questions, and try to come up with a convoluted strategy to justify what Keeva wanted. Hypothetically, of course. I would win a bet that Rhonda Powell was not officially in the building. Yet. I knew how it worked. I had played that game myself when I was an agent. It didn’t occur to me at the time that it was a bit fascist. I guess it never does when you’re in charge of it. Dylan raked his hand through his hair. “She’s good. And she does know something. She connected the attack on the pimp with Vize’s operatives. That’s not public knowledge.”

Murdock stared at him. “What about the murder charges?”

Dylan shrugged. “One thing at a time, Detective.”

Murdock breathed out sharply through his nose. “If you have time, right? After the Guild takes care of its robbery and extortion charges, and some story about a terrorist attack, then maybe you’ll look at making her accountable for non-fey murders.”

Dylan threw me an irritated look. Like I was responsible for Murdock’s annoyance and not the Guild status quo. “Some people would at least be satisfied that she’s in custody,” he said. Murdock shook his head. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard that one. I’m not some people. Some people would consider that two humans wouldn’t be dead today if the Guild had focused first on Viten’s fraud charges against a human woman ten years ago instead of his fey murder charges in New York. I’ll send our files over. Nice working with you.”

He gave me a twisted smile and walked to the elevator.

“Someone’s annoyed,” Dylan said.

“Just because he knows how things work doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it.”

“Like it’s my fault,” Dylan said.

“If you’re not part of the solution . . .” I left the rest of it hanging. I didn’t want to get into it with him. Dylan had a Guild mind-set, one I knew well. We’d argue about it at some point, but right then I had only one thing on my mind. “When are you going to release Meryl?”

“You shouldn’t be here without Detective Murdock. Let me show you out.” By the tone of his voice, he was talking for the guards’ benefit. Which meant he didn’t trust them. He pulled me away from the agents. “I need to play that carefully, Con. It’s going to take us a while to discredit Powell’s story about Meryl. Ceridwen won’t let her go easily.”

A wave of anger made me feel hot. “You have an innocent person locked up, Dyl, and you want me to wait while you play politics?”

He squeezed my arm. “Don’t be dense, Connor. If we don’t clear Meryl the right way, Ceridwen will find another excuse to hold her.”

I steadied my breathing to calm myself. “What can you do, then?”

He dropped his hand. “We’re missing something. I think it’s time we went back to square one.”

“The Met robbery,” I said.

“It happened before both the murders and the Guild robbery. It was the start of whatever her plan is. Let’s look at the file again.”

The elevator doors opened on an empty Community Liaisons floor. Sundown was the traditional time for Samhain dinner, so the staff left early. Even so, Dylan closed the door to his office. Files and evidence bags covered the desk. Dylan flipped open a folder and removed the insurance photos of the stolen Met items: the three fibulae, the torc, and the ring. With his usual tidiness, he lined them up by age of item. “They span centuries. The ring is fourth-century Saxon, and the torc is sixth-century Norse. The three brooches are all fairy circa fifth century, but from three different clans.”

I leaned over the desk for a closer look. “There’s no connection over that time period. They could be purposely random to hide the one item she really wanted.”

Dylan slid the ring photo out of the line. “Okay, let’s pull the Saxon ring. Its value is in its antiquity. The Teutonic Consortium would never let a true ring of power sit in a museum without making some claim to it.”

I had already dismissed the torc and ring as irrelevant. They were used to entice Belgor, which Dylan didn’t know. Powell was smart. She wouldn’t have risked losing them if her plans went wrong. The fact that she did lose the torc and hadn’t tried to retrieve it was proof enough. I wondered about the ring, though. Belgor mentioned it was part of his payment yet not where it ended up the night he was attacked. He probably still had it, a nice antique that would be easier to off-load than the torc. Of course, I couldn’t tell Dylan all that. Not yet. Old partner and former Guild agent I may be, but at the moment I had the torc in my kitchen. Ceridwen would relish charging me with obstructing a Guild investigation and possession of stolen property.

I pushed the photo aside. “Let’s pull the torc for the same reason.”

That left the three fibulae—an apple tree, a mistletoe branch, and a horned serpent. Mystic symbols of life and the afterlife. A thrill of realization swept over me. “Put them back, Dylan. Put all of them back.”

He lined up the photos again.

I tapped each photo in turn as I talked. “They are all connected. The ring is an ouroboros—a guardian of eternal life—and it matches up with the horned-serpent brooch, which is a symbol of Cernunnos, the lord of the life cycle. The torc is another Cernunnos symbol—the sign of rule over the life cycle. The mistletoe and the apple tree are talismans to the land of the dead, which is also the land of the ever-living. It’s all circular. She’s trying to make some connection between life and death.”

I crossed my arms in triumph. “I don’t believe a word she says, but I think she was telling the truth about Viten. She misses her boyfriend. She was trying to get into TirNaNog through any means she could except killing herself.”

Dylan nodded slowly and pointed. “The apple-tree brooch. It must be a real silver branch that will grant her passage if the veil thins.”

“That’s the obvious one. The mistletoe and the serpent could be genuine, too.”

Dylan leaned back in his chair. “What about the dagger from the Guild storeroom? She stole it—twice.”

“That, my friend, she specifically wanted for some reason. It’s not connected to the museum pieces in any way I know. Powell knows something about it we don’t.”

He looked skeptical. “She’s not going to tell us.”

Dylan was using the ward stone from Powell’s jacket as a paperweight on a pile of notes. I hefted it in my hand and put as much evil in my grin as I could. “I know someone who knows more about ancient artifacts than the two of us combined. You have her locked up.”

Dylan closed his eyes melodramatically. “Why do I have the feeling this is going to be trouble?”

Amused, I shrugged. “Trouble’s Meryl’s other main forte.”

27

The door to the cell room opened with a groan. On the bed, Meryl lounged, reading a book propped against her knees. Without looking up, she held out her index finger and continued reading. Dylan and I waited until she closed the book and dropped it on the bed. “Hey, guys, what’s up?”

“It’s a breakout,” I said.

She swung her feet to the floor. “Can we wait until after dinner? I ordered the lobster.”

Dylan shook his head. “You are an odd person.”

She grinned at him. “That never gets old.”

I showed her the quartz warding stone. “Look familiar?”

She grabbed it. “My amplifier! Where the hell did you find it?”

“Rhonda Powell. She was using it to impersonate you.”

Meryl passed the stone back and forth between her hands. “I can’t believe I bought that bitch lunch.”

“It has your essence all over it. Powell used it to get into the Viten evidence room. That’s why it looked like you opened the door.”

“We have her in custody,” Dylan said.

Meryl scrunched up her face and closed one eye. “Does this mean I can’t have the lobster?”

I took the chair nearest the bed. “The Guild insists on it. Dylan thinks he should wait to release you until Powell’s discredited.”

She pursed her lips, then blinked a few times. “Okay.”

That threw me. “Okay? Meryl, it’s ridiculous.”

Indifferent, she stretched back on the bed. “I’m getting paid while I sit here and read, Grey. It’s even better than jury duty because they feed me and the food is good. Did I mention I ordered lobster for dinner?”

“Odd, odd person,” Dylan muttered

While Dylan spread the museum photos on the table, I explained the setup at the Ardman townhouse that had led to Powell’s capture.

“I hate to say it, but Keeva does know her shit,” said Meryl.

I laughed. “You should have seen Powell’s face when Keeva crushed the fake soul stone.”

Despite his discomfort with the way Keeva handled Powell, amusement crept onto Dylan’s face. “I did get a little satisfaction at that. But it was more satisfying seeing the look on Ardman’s face when I gave her soul back.”

Meryl looked impressed. “You know how soul stones work?”

He shrugged modestly. “It’s an old interest.”

I pulled a chair to the table. “Anyway, Meryl, since you are being paid as you say, maybe you can earn some of it and get yourself out of here.”

I ran down my theory regarding the Met items. Meryl examined each photograph and played with their layout. She likes to pretend she doesn’t care, but a good puzzle is red meat to her. Finally, she nodded.

“I think you’re right about her getting into TirNaNog. If the veil opens, it’s an opportunity she wouldn’t want to miss. But she’s not going for a visit.”

She slid on the bed to lean against the wall. “You’re missing the obvious question: Why kill everyone related to the Viten case if Viten is dead?”

“Revenge,” said Dylan.

Unconvinced, Meryl rocked her head from side to side. “Think it through. She’s had ten years to do that, but she didn’t.

Now she has a chance to visit her dead lover. Why risk getting caught by taking revenge on the people who brought him down? The only reason that makes sense is if Viten is alive.”

“It’s Samhain,” I said. “If the veil opens, he can come here.”

“Right. But he would only be able to stay for the night until sunrise. That’s when the veil closes,” she said. “Why not use a soul dagger and accomplish something bigger?”

Dylan arched an eyebrow at her. “The Breton knife is a soul dagger?”

Meryl grinned. “It seeks living essence. That’s why I had it warded the way I did—to keep it from stabbing anyone who walked in the room.”

I looked from Dylan to Meryl. “I’m lost.”

Dylan shook his head in amazement. “It works like a ward stone. It absorbs essence—life essence especially. I didn’t make the connection because the knife is so old. I had no idea those kinds of blades were used that long ago. Powell captured the life essence of her victims.”

Meryl stretched out on her side. “She essence-shocked them, then trapped their life essence in the Breton dagger.”

“I get it. I don’t get why,” I said.

Meryl leaned forward with an avid look. “Winny wasn’t going to visit Viten. She was mounting a rescue. She was going to try to pull him out of TirNaNog. With everyone involved in the case dead, they could live happily ever after.”