Dylan gathered the photos and put them back in the folder. “The living can enter TirNaNog with a silver branch, but the dead can leave if they acquire enough soul essence. All Viten had to do was kill a living person with the dagger. The feedback from the souls in the blade would revitalize his own soul enough to win release from TirNaNog.”

My head bopped between them like a Ping-Pong ball. “Okay, I guess I’m the class dunce. I never heard of any of this.”

Dylan stood by the door. “Some people actually read a book or two after training, Con, and not just when they have a specific need of the moment.”

Meryl cocked her head. “Really? He did things in the need of a moment? No long-term investment?”

Dylan shifted his eyes back and forth between us. “Uh . . . I don’t think I’m touching that one. I’m going downstairs to talk to Powell again.”

Meryl pulled herself to the edge of the bed. “Downstairs? You have her downstairs? Where downstairs?”

Dylan paused in thought. “This side, fourth cell down.”

Meryl leaped to her feet. “Idiots!”

She knocked Dylan aside, tore open the door, and ran past the startled guard. The guard hesitated, uncertain whether to pursue her.

“We got it,” I said. Meryl was already down the hall and going through the stairwell door. Dylan and I jostled each other chasing after her. “She’s going to beat the hell out of her, you know,” I said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time that happened today, would it?” he asked. We hit the lower level in time to catch Meryl struggling with the guards outside Powell’s cell. The two Dananns had her arms pinned to her sides. I knew that determined look on her face. She glowed with a rich green light and released a burst of essence. The guards fell, stunned. Meryl kicked open the door and rushed inside. We reached the cell. Hands on her hips, Meryl stared at the empty space within the essence barrier. Powell was gone.

“How did she get out?” Dylan said.

Meryl pointed down. “Trapdoor in the floor.”

Dylan gaped. “How the hell would she know that? How did you?”

Meryl rolled her eyes. “She was chief archivist before me. Winny showed me half the secret doors in this place.”

Dylan released the barrier. Meryl crouched and pressed five floor pavers in sequence. Essence flared around the edges and vanished. A dark hole appeared. She sat down and swung her feet into the opening.

Dylan grabbed her shoulder. “Whoa! Where do you think you’re going?”

The glare Meryl threw at his hand could have shriveled it. He judiciously removed it. “After her,” she said.

“We’ll go. You’re under house detention,” he said.

Meryl glowered at him. I’ve seen that look, too. “I know these tunnels. You don’t. You either come with me, and I let you pretend I’m still in your custody, or get the hell out of my way.”

Dylan stared at her dumbstruck. It’s not every day that a high-ranking Guild department director has it thrown in his face that his rank doesn’t matter one bit to the person in front of him. Of course, most directors don’t work with Meryl either. She waited a good five seconds before she jumped. 28

I tried not to laugh at Dylan’s dazed expression. “Make a decision, partner. She moves pretty fast.”

He jumped. There was no question whether I would follow. The drop wasn’t long, but I flubbed the landing in the dark. Meryl lit a small ball of blue light above her palm. “Took you long enough. She went this way.”

Dylan and I followed as she jogged into the darkness. The tunnel was like the one off Meryl’s office, a low and narrow corridor of granite. We moved without speaking, passing openings that breathed air over us, sometimes cool, sometimes warm. I opened my sensing ability, the dark mass in my head not objecting. Not long ago, I would get headaches and nosebleeds when I did a trail scenting. Ever since Forest Hills, the ability had expanded, and the dark mass left me alone. Which was great, but it left me anxious, like waiting for a hammer to fall on my brain.

Powell’s essence permeated the tunnel. By the strength of the trail, she didn’t have much of a head start. After we left, she must have waited in the cell only long enough to make sure we weren’t coming back in immediately. “Where’s this lead?” I asked.

Meryl didn’t pause when she answered. “A nexus. From there she can go into the subway, the sewer, or a couple of other places.”

Within minutes, we reached the nexus. Our corridor fanned open, and the path split left and right. Directly ahead, stairs led up and another flight went down. Powell’s essence went to both side directions and down the stairs. Meryl cursed under her breath.

“How the hell did she do that?” I asked.

She tilted her head, trying to gauge the right direction. “This nexus loops back on itself several times. She ran in a few circles to confuse us.”

“Her essence trail has been getting thicker. We’re getting closer,” I said. Meryl nodded. “I hate to say this, but we either split up or flip a coin.”

“We have more than two choices,” said Dylan.

Meryl couldn’t help twisting the corner of her mouth. “Yeah, well, I didn’t bring my poly-dice. I’ll go left; Dylan goes right. You stay here, Grey, and watch the stairs. I don’t want her coming up behind us.”

“I’m not going to stand here and wait. I’ll check down the stairs,” I said. In the blue glow of her light, Meryl looked spectral. “And if she’s down there, what are you going to do, annoy her to a standstill?”

“Ouch,” I said.

Meryl muttered, and a point of yellow light danced in the air above her other hand. She flicked her fingers, and the light sailed down the stairs. “That’ll pop if she passes it. If it pops, I suggest you run like hell and call us, in that order. Winny is no slouch in the essence department.”

“Fine,” I said, annoyed and embarrassed. Dylan sparked his own light, and the two of them moved in opposite directions. My regular vision faded as their lights receded. My ability showed three ghostly essence signatures. Nothing lived in these tunnels to give off a sign of life. The darkness was so complete, I felt an overwhelming sensation of dizziness. I closed my eyes to stave off vertigo. The sound of their footsteps died away. Time dragged as I listened for the faintest popping sound from the stairs. I focused on the essence around me, alert for the slightest change. A gleeful sending from Meryl burst in my head. Got her!

I moved in an instant, chasing after Meryl’s essence down the left-hand corridor. In the dark, I misjudged the floor and hit the wall when the path curved away, rounding upward. Watch it. She set binding traps, Meryl sent. The essence signatures appeared to end ahead. I slowed my pace and ran into a wall again. The corridor bent sharply to the left. I swore loudly and kept going. I can see her.

“We’re here,” I shouted. My voice rang hollow in the dark. The floor dipped abruptly, and I grabbed the granite wall to keep my balance. A burst of light ahead blinded me. I squeezed my eyes shut, using only my sensing ability to see where I was going. Another flash made my eyelids glow red, and essence-fire crackled loudly in the stone passage.

My body shields triggered against a binding spell that slithered from the ceiling. A streamer of hot light grabbed me. The shields stopped the binding from burrowing into my neck. Bindings come in two flavors: whole field, which feel like a numbing blanket thrown over your head, or ribbons, which feel like burning rope. Powell favored the latter. The binding looped on my neck pulled me against the wall. More ribbons snaked out of the wall, wrapping my arms and legs. I fought the urge to struggle. Resistance signals the ribbons to send fiery pain through the nerve endings.

I need . . . Meryl’s sending broke off so quickly it stung.

“Meryl!” I yelled. The binding against my neck burned. I ignored it and yelled again. “Meryl!”

No answer. “Dylan!” I didn’t think I was that far ahead of him.

I was close enough to hear fighting. Sendings don’t take long to make or send, unless you’re me. The dark mass in my head clawed at my brain whenever I tried. I didn’t care. Taking a deep breath, I wrapped my memory of Meryl’s essence with the desire to talk to her. I pushed the thought out, one word calling Meryl’s name. I gasped at the finger of pain that hit the bridge of my nose. The sending drifted away, a lazy tendril with none of the speed and power it should have had. This close, it should have reached her instantly. She didn’t respond. I didn’t know if it meant she didn’t receive it or couldn’t.

“Dammit, Meryl! Answer me!” Nothing.

A cool breeze fluttered across my face, cloying and unnatural. Dull green phosphorescence oozed out of the wall opposite me. It dripped down and pooled on the floor. Another glob appeared next to it, and another farther down. A moan quivered on the breeze, low and steady, then a sibilant whisper began to build. Another spot blossomed, then two more. More bubbled up from the floor and one on the ceiling. The whispering grew louder, breaking into voices tripping over one another. The phosphorescence bulged from the walls. The ceiling spot sagged, grew thick and bulbous, and dropped to the floor in a gelatinous ball. The whispering became ragged and gasping as the sour green essence took on more substance. Blunt appendages sprouted from them, stretching out to test the air like the night of my alley run.

The essence emitted a strange vibration. The various masses gathered, spun, and swirled, shaping themselves into bodies. A face appeared in one, long and haughty, pressing toward me. It shook and sharp wings swept up out of the gelatinous mass. More coalesced, bodies shaping into human form, druid and human and fairy.

This was no time to be helplessly bound to a wall. “Dylan! I could use your help here!”

More than a dozen figures ranged around me, laughing at the feeble sound of my voice. I had met some of them before—the Inverni from the night of my alley run, the druid from the subway tracks, and the vanished man on the bridge on the night of my meeting with Ceridwen.

“Are you remembering?” a Danann fairy said, his voice echoing among the others. A woman stepped closer, blond, angry, white sparks in her eyes. Her hand burned on my cheek. “Do you remember the pain you’ve given?”

A druid pressed an index finger into my side, sending a shock through me. “Do you fear it?”

They moved in, their faces livid, eyes malevolent. Their essences electrified my skin. My heart raced, the binding spell tightening as I tried to pull away. Hands thrust forward, plunging into my body, and I screamed.

“Do you repent?” said the Inverni. He pushed his hand into my face. It seared pain into my skin. I knew him then, his essence familiar as it violated mine. He was from the ferry. They all were. I knew them all, remembered them, their body signatures stamped on my memory. The attack on the Pride Wind , the group that almost killed me and Dylan. My dead had come calling.

“I regret nothing,” I shouted through the pain. “Nothing!”

“Then suffer our pain through the night,” a druid said.

The Inverni pressed harder. I screamed as his hand sank into my head. They closed around him, all of them, hands clawing at my flesh, burrowing into muscle and bone and sending my body into convulsions. The dark mass in my mind spiked and somehow I screamed louder than I already was doing. Their expressions changed, became perplexed, then fearful.

The Inverni screamed, too. The others tried to pull away, but something dark trailed out of my skin, like a thick, curling mist. They screamed, all of them at once, a howling of rage and horror. The binding spell seared my flesh, but darkness wrapped the ribbons, and they sloughed off like char. Darkness filled my vision, blotting out everything.

I slumped to my knees, hearing screams, feeling essence pour into me as the mist snared the remaining figures. They died again. But this time, they didn’t just die. This time their essences disintegrated, the dark mist tearing them to shreds, rending them to shards of light that had no integrity, no hope of incorporating into whoever they were. The mist absorbed it, sucking in the light, pulling the essence into my body. I fell forward, gagging, chaotic images flooding my brain, places and faces I knew I’d never seen. I blacked out. At least I think I did. My body hung suspended in a nothingness, not the dark mist, but a blackness, silent and deep. Dying screams echoed in the nothingness, ringing hollowly in my ears. Someone called my name from far off. The screams faded away. I drifted in the blackness, numb with the silence. I heard my name again, louder. White light filled my mind, flooding me in a wash of soothing essence. I opened my eyes. Dylan knelt over me, his face frightened even as he radiated healing essence over me. “Connor? Can you hear me?”

The mist dissipated. I found my voice. “I’m okay.”

He gave a ragged sigh as he pulled me to his chest. “Danu, you don’t look okay. What the hell happened? Where’s Meryl?”

His warmth enveloped me, his essence wrapping me in a cocoon of relief. The fog lifted from my mind. I sat forward, breaking his embrace. “We have to find her.”

Blood rushed to my head as Dylan helped me up. I leaned against the wall to steady myself, feeling the stone flow onto my fingers. My skin felt alive, every nerve ending firing. I breathed deeply.

“You were screaming,” he said.

Dylan’s essence illuminated the corridor. No evidence of my attackers remained. “I killed them again, Dylan. The ones from that day. They came for me, and I killed them again.”

He brought his hand to my chin, tilting my face from side to side. “You had smoke coming out of your eyes. Dark smoke like nothing I’ve ever seen. It had no essence, like it wasn’t even there.”

My face felt the memory of it, something I recognized but didn’t understand. “The thing in my head came out. It’s still in me, though. I can feel it more than ever. It feels bigger. I think it’s growing.”

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and guided me back the way we had come. “We have to get you to Gillen Yor.”

I pulled away. “No! Powell’s going to kill her, Dylan. I can’t let that happen.”

He looked about to argue, then nodded with a sad smile. “I know. Whatever’s happening to you, Con, you’re still who you are. Let’s go.”

We passed a section of hallway with high concentrations of essence. Burn marks scorched the walls. An intricate web of binding spells hung in tatters, already fading. “They fought here.”

Anxiety settled over me as I sensed the essence trail. They moved together, but Meryl’s signature was faint while Powell’s blazed.

“This was part of her plan somehow,” Dylan said behind me. “There are too many binding spells. She must have set them a while ago.”

The hallway ended at a spiral staircase of stone. “Powell waited ten years for this. She’s a contingency planner. She saved Meryl for last so Viten could kill his killer,” I said over my shoulder. I took out my cell phone. No signal. We were too deep underground. The stair wound about its central axis, turning over and over, progress that felt like a standstill. A signal bar flickered into view on my screen. I called Murdock, but the connection broke. The steps vibrated under our feet with the dull rumble of a subway train. We reached the top, an incongruous metal door with a modern spring bar. It popped open into the decrepit remains of an ancient bathroom.

A glamour spell snapped in place behind us as we left the room, hiding the door behind a wall of dirty tiles. I recognized the narrow platform of Arlington Street Station, two blocks away from the Guildhouse. My cell signal stabilized, and I called Murdock again.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m on the Common. The place is a zoo,” he said.

“Powell’s escaped. She’s got Meryl, and I think they’re headed for the fairy ring. Can you get up there?”

“I’m not far. We have a command post at the monument.”

“Meet you there.” I disconnected.

A train arrived as we reached the stairs. A throng of fey disembarked, pushing to the exits with the excitement of children. Dylan and I shoved our way up the steps, fighting elbows and wings and nasty glares. We exited to the corner of Arlington and Boylston.

Police guarded the entrance gates of the Public Garden, blocking everyone from entering. The streets were mobbed. We joined the crowd heading for the Common, hundreds of people of every conceivable species of fey imaginable.

At the end of the block, the Common glowed with more radiant essence. The light burned brightest through the bare limbs of the trees where the land sloped up to the towering Civil War monument and the fairy hill beyond it. Fairies of all kinds filled the sky, their wings flaming with essence as they swooped and swirled in dance. As we ran down the lane that passed the bandstand, the crowd swelled, slowing down as more people flooded into the park. Everyone wanted to be on the hill. I stopped, amazed. An inverted funnel of misty gray light twisted into the sky, long wisps of the Taint revolving around it.

Dylan spoke in my ear with awe and wonder in his voice. “It’s really opening, Connor. The veil is opening.”

I pushed ahead. “That thing better be exit only.”

29

Thousands of laughing and shouting people packed the blocked-off streets around the Common. Groups gathered and merged with a confusion of harps and lutes, drums, horns, and electric guitars on portable amps. Anything that could make a noise, someone banged, blew, or strummed—elven death dirges clashing with Irish bands playing tympani punk, dwarven horns blasting against Gaelic windpipes against police whistles and megaphones—even a mariachi band on the baseball diamond. Fey and human alike danced and cheered, humans in Halloween costumes, fey in the traditional garb of their clans. On the lower end of the Common, police manned barricades separating the open field from the rise of the hill where the Civil War monument and fairy ring stood. Dylan showed his Guild badge to an officer to get us into a cordoned-off emergency path that wound its way through the crowds. Another security perimeter was set up around the monument at the top of the hill. Police, fire, and EMT communications units ranged in the rough circle, creating an island of relative calm in a sea of chaos. Marble statues representing war and peace stared down from the war monument’s pedestal in mute testament to the fact that things hardly ever truly change.

The essence within the fairy ring churned, a concentration more dense than the night Dylan and I argued. It was so intense, the unaided eye could see it. I didn’t need a sensing ability to see it. No one did. Murdock waited near a temporary fence that was yet another barricade to the fairy ring. His body shield shimmered over his long camel-hair overcoat, the hardened crimson essence providing a level of safety I could only dream about. With all the colliding essence on the hill, any fey who noticed a body shield on a human probably dismissed it as a trick of the light. I didn’t like the grim look on his face. “They went in about ten minutes ago,” he said without waiting to be asked.

My chest tightened at the word “they.” I gripped the metal fencing and stared into the fairy ring. “Was Meryl all right?”

He cocked his head to listen to something on his radio before answering. “I didn’t see her myself. I’m told she was mobile but dazed-looking. Powell had a doctored Guild badge that got them into the inner perimeter. With all the Guild types in there, no one thought anything was wrong. They were last seen near the edge of that column of light. There was a bright flash, and they vanished.”

“I want to get in there,” I said. Murdock didn’t hesitate. Dylan and I followed him to a break in the barricade, and between their two official passes, no one tried to stop us. Researchers and politicians roamed the restricted area around the fairy ring. The politicians were there for the photo op and the privilege of saying they could get in because someone thought they were someone important. The researchers were primarily fey, primarily from the Guild. Briallen and Nigel worked in separate groups, which was no surprise. Any other time, I would have loved to hear them argue back and forth about what was happening.

Flits flew around the thick essence like multicolored moths to a flame. Higher up in the air, fairies from the larger clans pressed closer. Fairies were air folk. Airborne essence attracted them and fed their essence-manipulating abilities. Drawn by the concentration of essence, the Taint had gravitated to the funnel, ambient wisps of the control spell that deepened in color as they collided and weaved together. A pressure headache sprang up behind my eyes. If the dark mass in my head didn’t like concentrated essence or the Taint, it definitely didn’t like the two of them together. Murdock pointed to a spot that looked no different from the rest of the funnel. “This is where they went in.”

Shapes moved within the fog, faint impressions of bodies and faces. The funnel essence radiated a distinctive resonance unlike any I knew. I touched it and found not a misty vapor but a slightly repulsive texture like cool, pliant skin. I pushed, and it dimpled in under the pressure, not separating or tearing. Briallen broke away from her group. She wore a wireless headset, an incongruity for her that I could not stop staring at. Briallen rejected most technotoys. She could. Lots of technology replicates what she can do with her own innate abilities. “It’s happening, Connor. The veil between worlds is thinning. Tara is secure, but there’s rioting at Stonehenge and Carnac.”

“There’s always rioting at Stonehenge,” Dylan muttered. He trailed along the ring, sparking little cantrips into the mist, fascination gleaming in his eyes.

“Did you see what happened with Meryl?” I asked.

Briallen stared up at the mist. “She had a binding spell on her. I was too far away to do anything. What I want to know is how the hell they went through.”

“A silver branch,” I said. “At least one of the items from the Met robbery was the real deal.”

Briallen had a bemused expression. “Before Convergence, we used to take things like that for granted. If the conditions were right, you could even pass through a portal into Faerie or TirNaNog or the Glass Isle without a silver branch. Part of me is thrilled the veil has thinned, and part of me is terrified.”

Dozens of flits popped into view, chattering excitedly as they swarmed around the fog. Briallen pause to listen in on her headset. “Word has spread. We’ll probably see more flits.”

Dylan returned from his circuit of the ring. “The Taint’s amplifying the veil.”

Briallen nodded. “That’s what I thought. What I don’t know is if people go through the veil, what effect the Taint will have on them. In the old days, people with unfinished business came back from TirNaNog, and they weren’t very nice about it.”

Something high up within the veil pressed outward and formed a dull gray lump on the swirling surface. The swelling receded, bulged again, and took on shape. The veil stretched as someone pushed against from the other side, the surface lightening from expansion until it was transparent enough to see a Danann fairy in an old-style court tunic. He struggled against the gray essence, pushing farther out, tendrils of mist elongating until they snapped with a silent flicker of light. He tumbled and caught air on long, translucent wings, hovering in confusion above our upturned faces. Shock registered on his face at the sight of the surrounding buildings. If the dated-ness of his clothes meant anything, he had never seen structures so tall. He muttered something in Old Irish that translated roughly as “Where the hell am I?”

He flew toward downtown.

“That was a dead guy?” Murdock asked.

“It depends on your definition of dead,” Dylan said.

I reached for the spot where the fairy had exited, but the surface closed before I could touch it. Another bulge formed and dissipated near my head, and I imagined someone on the other side trying the same thing I was. A hand rested on my shoulder. Briallen looking at me with shared concern. “She knows how to handle herself.”

“This is my fault,” I said.

“Don’t start that again.” Briallen brushed her hand along the side of my head. I jerked away. “Stop that.”

Annoyance flickered across her face, but she didn’t remove her hand. “I was only going to check if you were all right.”

“Don’t change the subject to the thing in my head,” I said.

“I will if you stop ignoring that something’s not right. I can feel it.”

I met her gaze. “Something happened, Briallen, and it changed. I don’t need you to tell me it’s growing.”

She dropped the hand. “You’re right. And you shouldn’t be here. Between the Taint and this veil opening, I’m worried.”

I stepped away from her. “I’m sorry, Briallen. I got Meryl into this. I can’t leave.”

“I don’t know whether to be proud to hear you say that or throw you over my knee,” she said. Her expression changed abruptly, and she held a hand against her earpiece. She glanced up at me as she listened intently. “A mist has formed at the grove.”

She didn’t have to tell me what grove. Boston druids and druidesses met in an oak grove on Telegraph Hill down in Southie. “I’m not surprised, I guess. There’s a lot of residual Taint down there.”

She peered into the distance as if she were looking through the surrounding city to the ring of oak trees.

“We stationed people there, in case, but . . .” Her voice trailed away.

“No one very powerful, right?”

She surveyed the remaining fey. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid?”

I grinned. “Do you really have to ask?”

Her hand found my cheek again, only this time in a warm caress. “She’ll be fine. If there’s one thing Meryl does, it’s the unexpected.”

Without another word, she hurried down the hill to a nearby black car. Dylan’s gaze went up over my shoulder. “We’ve got company.”

“Looks more like incoming,” Murdock said.

Above the crowd on the Common, airborne fey scattered from a growing cloud of light. The light resolved into rank upon rank of Danann security agents, several hundred, all in black, their chrome helmets reflecting their innate essence. Front and center, a figure burned with hot golden essence.

“That’s Ceridwen,” I said. She was the last person I wanted to see. If she hadn’t been so paranoid, Meryl would have been at her desk and made sure Powell was in a secure room. As if to draw even more attention to herself, she had the spear with her. I had a lightbulb moment. “Dylan, give me Powell’s soul stone.”

He hesitated. “Why?”

I didn’t want to tell him. If he didn’t like the idea, it wouldn’t work without the stone. “I need it for leverage.”

He looked suspicious. “Leverage with whom?”

Ceridwen would arrive in a moment. I didn’t have time to argue. “Dylan, you wanted me to trust you. I’m asking you to do the same. If you don’t want Ceridwen to know you gave it to me, you need to give me Powell’s soul stone right now.”

Dylan pulled the stone from his coat pocket, rolled it between his fingers, then tossed it to me.

“Whatever you’re going to do, make it good.”

Ceridwen landed at the communications area near the monument. Several security agents swept in after her, but the rest remained in the air. She ordered the park cleared, her voice amplified by a spell. Angry murmurs ran through the crowd, but stopped as soon as the security agents spread out. They didn’t fire on anyone, but their reputation for hair-trigger tempers prompted people to head for the streets. Ceridwen carried the spear like a scepter as a contingent of agents escorted her to the fairy ring. She played the role of command leader for all it was worth.

“What’s with the getup?” Murdock said.

Ceridwen wore classic fey warrior armor, a torso-fitting corselet of stamped red leather and a matching helm with a short nose guard. The fey used as little metal as possible in their fighting gear because it had a tendency to warp essence. The Dananns didn’t mind adding some for effect to send the message that they were powerful enough to overcome the warping.

“Let’s just say she’s not subtle when it comes to asserting her authority.”

She stopped a dozen feet away. “Move away from the ring.”

Dylan bowed and did as he was told like a good Guildsman. From a cautious point of view, I didn’t have a problem with it. Even if he had never sworn fealty to the High Queen, he was her employee. It wouldn’t look good at his performance review if he had “defied an order from an underQueen” in his file. Murdock, true to form, did not move, which I liked even more.

Ceridwen stepped closer. “We said move away from the ring. You are interfering with Guild business.”

Murdock didn’t flinch. “We’re investigating an abduction, ma’am.”

With a gleam of gold, she let some essence show in her eyes. “We are declaring this area under our jurisdiction. Move or face the consequences.”

Murdock frowned. “With all due respect, ma’am, I don’t believe you have any authority over me.”

She gestured with the spear to her bodyguards. “Take them into custody.”

As they moved, Murdock muttered into his radio and stepped in front of me. He pulled out his gun. “I am giving you a lawful order to lay down your weapon.”

The shock on Ceridwen’s face was priceless. She raised her spear. “I said take them into custody!”

The lead agents raised their hands, essence sparking in electric arcs as they powered up. Murdock’s body shield bloomed like a ruby flame. Whether he planned it or not, it had the nice effect of covering me in its field. Dozens of police officers materialized around us, guns drawn and pointed at Ceridwen. That’s what happens when you give orders without coordinating with the local force. The agents hesitated, their urgent sendings tickling at my mind as they refrained from firing. At least they hesitated. Left to her own devices, Ceridwen looked ready to beat anyone who came near her.

I felt Nigel Martin coming before I saw him. The Taint accentuated everyone’s essence, but I would have sensed my old mentor without it. He pressed between two agents and stopped between Murdock and Ceridwen. He looked at Murdock, but he addressed Ceridwen. “What is the meaning of this, Your Highness?”

Ceridwen lowered the spear. “Druid Martin, you know the peril here. These people must be removed.”

Ever calm, Nigel clasped his hands behind his back and tried to stare me down. I shrugged. “I’m deferring to the local authorities, Nigel. Talk to the guy with the gun.”

Nigel glanced at Murdock. “Detective, you are risking an international incident.”

“I don’t take orders from the Guild,” said Murdock. “Unless I get orders from someone I do report to, this woman is going to be arrested for threatening a police officer.”

“We have diplomatic immunity,” Ceridwen said, barely containing her outrage.

“You’ll get a phone call,” said Murdock. How he kept a straight face when he said that, I’ll never know. His brothers in blue didn’t even try. I heard more than a few chuckles.

“Get her to back off, Nigel,” I said.

He glared. “Connor, you continue on this pointless course of defiance. Lives are at stake here. Move aside, or I will move you personally.”

“The only life at stake here is Meryl Dian’s. I don’t answer to you, and I sure as hell don’t answer to Ceridwen,” I said.

She pushed forward and raised the spear like a club. “I will not stand for any more insolence from you and that traitorous bitch!”

That did it. She went a word too far. “I’ve had it,” I snapped. My mind opened to the spot where the spear burned so brightly, tasted the essence that lay there, felt the power that called to me even as I called to it. “Ithbar.”

The spear jerked in Ceridwen’s grip. Her eyes widened, but she refused to let go. Amazingly, it dragged her toward me. She turned golden bright as she called up essence to resist my command.

“Stop!” Nigel shouted.

Nigel thrust his hand forward and a ball of white light shot out of his palm. I ducked as it broke into a tangled net shooting right for me. Murdock’s body shield flared and absorbed the hit. I couldn’t believe it. The bastard had really tried to hit me with it.

Ceridwen gripped the spear with both hands, but she could not restrain it. Inexorably, it pulled away from her. When it came within reach, I grabbed it. A fierce cold Power raced up my arm. Inches away from each other, Ceridwen and I locked gazes. Her eyes vanished within featureless orbs of gold as she fought for control, trying to batter my mind into submission. The spear shuddered between us, our arms jerking with its struggle. I refused to relent, demanding it come to me. The silver filigree on the spear reacted to the sudden influx of so many different energies around it. It rippled on the shaft of the spear, coming alive like dancing drops of mercury. Icy strands of it oozed around my fingers and raced up my forearm.

An angry, animal growl came from deep within Ceridwen’s throat as she called more essence to bear. The dark mass in my head surged through me. Darkness flowed out of my hand and touched the spear. Essence exploded between us. Ceridwen screamed in rage and frustration as the power of the spear flung her into her bodyguards.

Meryl had told me the spear was a true silver branch. I had to hope she was right and see if it would grant passage into another realm. I spun toward the fairy ring and thrust the spearhead into the veil. A tear ripped the haze, liquid yellow light bursting out and sluicing down on me. My head blistered as the dark mass jumped. The spear responded to my will again, and the hole wrenched wider at my thought. Tainted essence slithered and flapped around the opening. It dove for the white line of power in my hand, the darkness mass and the spear both convulsing at its touch. I threw myself into the rip, and my head exploded in a thousand knives of pain. A raging torrent of ebony and emerald, white and gold smeared across my mind.

I fell into the veil between worlds.

30

I staggered under an assault of searing pain. Essence whipped around me in a kaleidoscope of burning colored light. Wind raged through the air, a high-pitched wailing that tore at my mind. I propelled myself blindly through the radiant bands of power, desperate to get away. The darkness in my head and the brightness in my hand warred with each other and the air, flinging me in one direction after another. The maelstrom stripped me down to impulse and instinct until the desire to escape the pain ripping through me was all I knew.

The onslaught receded, slowly, grudgingly. The ground stabilized, and I stumbled into an empty space, an eye of calm within the storm. Around me, a dense, smoky haze rustled and shifted, a barrier that flashed with sparks of essence. Exhausted, I leaned on the spear. All the joints in my body ached like they had been pulled apart and snapped back together. A constricting pressure throbbed along my left arm. I pulled off my jacket. The silver filigree from the spear had replicated itself around my forearm. The wind died. In a milky gray sky, bands of darker gray essence scudded like ragged clouds after a storm. Light flashed, visible light, not the colored manifestations of essence. A booming sounded in the haze, vibrating the ground in a rhythm that grew stronger with each increase in volume. The dark mass in my head shifted one way, then another, as if trying to avoid a trap. Something moved through the mist, something huge, with an essence signature more intense than any I knew. The presence drew nearer, becoming brighter and brighter in the vision of my sensing ability. A dark shadow figure formed within the shadows of the haze, the shape of a man wrapped in a vast aura of light. The haze drew away from him like the parting of curtains. Shards of essence encircled his head like a crown. Over a long red tunic, he wore a cloak that shifted through hues of yellow. He had the look of the Danann about him, if it were possible for the Danann to look more radiant than they did. He furrowed his brow when he saw me. “Such a small dark thing ripples the Ways.”

He had an enormous intensity, more than the tree spirit I had met, more than anything I had ever met. I didn’t have much experience with kobolds, but he didn’t feel like one or any other fey I knew. I held the spear defensively. “Viten?”

Surprise etched across his face when he saw the spear, and a shudder ran through him. His cloak came alive with motion and melted into his body. He grew larger, and sank cross-legged to the ground, his hair turning dark, his eyes showing the threat of a wild animal. Essence flowed from his temples and branched from his head with a burnished light. “Do you come to mend the Ways or to bend them?”

His voice sent shivers through me, resonant and deep. “I’m looking for someone,” I said. The giant swelled, his color fading, then he settled back. “A woman.”

“Her name is Meryl Dian.”

He shuddered as he flowed into a standing position. Thick hair sprouted from his head into long tangles above deep-set eyes that glittered in hues of storm and shadow. A blue robe flared out of his back and across his shoulders. I stepped back.

“What is this?” I asked.

His entire body spasmed. “Naming is a deep matter.”

“Dammit, where am I?” I asked.

Yellow essence swirled, and the first incarnation reappeared, wrapping his golden cloak about him with a smug smile. “You’ve danced on my borders many times, but never crossed. How come you now with a sliver of the Wheel?”

“What borders? What do you mean?”

The figure moved nearer, essence rising like a shadow. “You warp the Ways. You are not worthy to wield such Power. Surrender it to me.”

I held the spear across my chest. “No.”

He shivered, his body fragmented, then pulled back together. He extended a jeweled hand. “Surrender it.”

The gesture felt oddly indifferent, as if he had merely asked me for some small token. He didn’t look happy. I sought his eyes, but their shifting colors made it difficult. He made no move to take the spear. Despite his enormous essence, whatever he was, he seemed unable to act. Feeling more confident, I hefted the spear. “You can’t take it from me, can you? You’d have done that by now.”

The unsettling eyes remained fixed on me as his skin blurred and shifted, swelling as he fleshed into the burly giant. He sat before me again, looking down at me with a feral gleam. “What value has this woman that you dare the Ways?”

Talking about the value of anything would be a dangerous question from a normal fey. I had no doubt a mistaken answer could be dangerous. “What value should be placed on a life?”

The giant grunted, as if confirming something in his own mind. “You would wager your life for something that you cannot assign value?”

“It’s not my place to wager.”

The giant laughed, a deep rumble that I felt in my own chest. He swept into the form of the blue-robed man. The spear tugged at my hand, and I tightened my grip. “Sorry. I’m keeping it.”

His body undulated and the roar of crashing waves broke through the mist. “You do not know what you risk.”

I had to crane my neck to see his face. “I never do, buddy. Are we done? Because I don’t have time for this.”

His enormous hand reached for me. I instinctively held up the spear. He paused, shuddered, and the wild man was back. “You dare much. The living disturb this place to no good end.”

I tilted the tip of the spear away from him. He was enormous. No need to provoke him any more than I had. “I’m here to take the living back with me.”

Again, the disconcerting shudder, and the blue-robed man reappeared. “In this, then, we are aligned. I will be obliged to you if you succeed.”

“Can you point me in the right direction?” I asked.

The golden-cloaked king shuddered into view. “The Wheel of the World turns as It will. It is not mine to lead even a sliver of It.”

The wild man returned. “The wielder wheels and is wheeled but chooses his own path. We are the Wheel and Its instrument.”

The robed man towered up. “The Ways seal and unseal. A needle binds even as it pierces.”

A great wind rose. The figure pulsated as its forms sought to dominate each other, then spun outward in a flash of white. It vanished. He vanished. They. Whatever the hell it was. The mist wall wavered and dissipated.

The dagger in my right boot twisted in its sheath, digging into my ankle. A spell maintained it as a short fighting knife most of the time, but it changed shape through some means I didn’t understand. Heat emanated from the hilt as I withdrew it. It squirmed in my hand and stretched into the full length of a sword. The last time it did that, I was in a fight for my life.

I faced an opening in a wall of standing stones. A brief glimpse of Nigel leaning over Ceridwen flashed by. The scene slid to a vision of the Civil War monument on the Common, then another of the townhouses on Beacon Hill. The perspective never remained for long, as if the opening itself was in constant motion. My stomach did a little flip. I was looking at Boston through the perspective of the fairy ring. I was in the hazy column of essence, really and truly beyond the veil. I had entered TirNaNog. 31

An enormous circle of standing stones surrounded me, enclosing several acres of beaten grass. Granite lintels ran along the tops of the standing stones except for a single break in the circle opposite my position. In the center, nine trilithons stood, arches formed of two standing stones with a lintel across their tops. They made a crescent around a towering pillar stone tapering to a height of several meters. I had seen paintings of such places, fantasies I thought, of what an active stone circle would look like. It was Stonehenge on steroids.

A woman in an ancient druidic robe brushed past me and approached the portal to Boston. When she stepped between the standing stones, gray spots of essence materialized like a barrier. She pressed forward, muttering, and melted through to the other side. A perplexed look came over her face as she stared at a Boston police officer, and her body shield activated as the scene swept away from me. However she made it through, it looked a lot less painful than when I had done it. Around the circle, the other portals between the standing stones showed a steep grass embankment outside the circle. A few standing stones framed an opalescent haze of essence that resonated the same way as the fairy ring back on Boston Common. Across the inner field, the Dead of TirNaNog moved from portal to portal, attempting to walk through, but except for a few with powerful body essences, they met the same resistance I had earlier. Two portals framed visions of rioting on the other side, and another showed a huge bonfire. Around me, fey of all kinds gravitated to the portals, pushing at them like the druidess had done.

I paused by a trilithon in the center. The lone breach in the outer circle of lintel stones aligned with the back of the crescent-shaped arrangement of center stones. A long line of standing stones marched off into the wide field beyond the stone circle. Stone circles have a causeway approach and an entry portal, and this one was no different. Bigger by a factor of ten, but classic. The place resonated essence in a pale shadow of what I knew, except for two things. The pillar stone at the center shone stark blue-white, an intense concentration of Power. And a trailing streak of two body signatures—Powell’s and Meryl’s. Their trail led from the Boston portal, around the center of the henge, and out the entrance portal. Powell had come to find one of the Dead and taken Meryl with her outside the circle. I followed them to the gap in the circle.

Beyond the two large stones that flanked the entrance, an earthen embankment surrounded the entire stone circle, rising higher than my head. A ditch lay beyond that, then another embankment, not as high as the first, but still taller than I was. And another ditch beyond it, and another embankment, and on and on with each embankment becoming progressively smaller, while each ditch became shallower. The causeway itself ran straight and flat, lined with paired standing stones for nearly a quarter mile. As the embankments to either side became low enough to see over, a green field came into view and spread for miles outside the standing stones of the avenue. A breeze danced over the grass, sending flowing waves over the surface that caught afternoon sunlight and tossed it back. At the end of the causeway, the hope that I would find Meryl and leave quickly faded. A few scattered people roamed the field. They had essence signatures with the distinct edge of TirNaNog about them like the Dead within the circle. On the edge of sight, a forest line crouched in several places, dark and motionless. Except for the Dead moving toward me, the only other movement was a dark smudge on the horizon. It was too far off to make out details, but the essence within it shone brighter than everything around it. Whoever was out there was alive.

I hesitated. It would take me hours to reach them. If it was Powell, I could wait until she returned to the circle. One of the few things I knew about the land of the Dead was that time moved at a different pace, sometimes slower, sometimes faster. I had no idea how much time had passed there between Meryl and Powell going in and my arrival. In Boston, it was late evening and still was when scenes from the Common flashed by the portal. In TirNaNog, it felt like late afternoon. Maybe Meryl didn’t have hours. Maybe she didn’t have minutes. My chest hurt at the thought that I might be too late. The spear flickered with essence. The landscape blurred, and I had a strange falling sensation. The feeling passed as quickly as it came. I didn’t know what caused it, unless the mass in my head had started causing physical damage to my brain. A faint sound of thunder rolled toward me. I didn’t have time to worry about it. I started jogging, keeping my eyes on the movement along the horizon. Essence lit up the spear again, and the landscape blurred roughly. I stumbled, uncertain where my feet were landing, feeling light-headed. Recovering my balance, I started running again. I wasn’t going to let the thing in my head stop me, even if it meant hurting myself more. The dark line on the horizon became a distant group of riders on horseback. I stopped. They were impossibly closer. Behind me, the stone circle was farther away than I could have run in so short a time.

Somehow I was jumping through the landscape. I froze. Disappearing from one spot and appearing in another wasn’t just jumping. It was teleporting. I was teleporting. The spear vibrated in my hand as I stared down at it.

Joe once told me that when he teleported, he looked for the thing he wanted until he found it, thought about going to it, then he just went. It was a typical Joe explanation. It sounded too simple, so I dismissed it as pointless. When I was standing at the end of the entrance avenue, the spear had flashed when I thought of reaching the horizon. When it did, I was closer to my destination. Taking a deep breath, I pointed the spear and concentrated on the dark line of travelers. The spear spiked with essence. My sensing ability opened like it never had, my inner vision telescoping to the horizon. The body essences of the riders shimmered like candle flames as clearly as if they were next to me. They materialized in my mind with an incredible clarity—elves and dwarves and solitaries. They all resonated as living beings, not the odd essence of the Dead.

The spear bucked in my hand. Like that first time it had come to me in the hearing room, it reacted to my thoughts, responding to what I was thinking and feeling. Essence channeled up my arm, electrifying the silver mesh with cold pain. The dark mass in my head seethed, as if angry or threatened. I wasn’t calling the essence; the spear was. It touched me, felt my desire. It was the same process as doing a sending, only instead of sending my thoughts, I sent myself. The spear’s essence leaped into my head, forcing its way in. The dark mass stabbed with hot pain. Dizzy, I swayed as the land shifted beneath my feet and blurred.

I gasped for breath. The plain became clear again. The riders were closer, riding massive horses. To the left, a lone rider, one of the Dead, rode hard away. The lead rider broke from the pack and came toward me. His essence solidified in my vision, a cool bright blue, not like the Dead, but like home. A plain black helm obscured his face. I held my sword at the ready.

The rider closed in on me, his strange horse lit with its own eerie essence, not truly of TirNaNog, but not of home either. It moved oddly, somehow higher above the plain than it should have been. It wasn’t touching the ground. It was only riding in the smoke around it. Only one animal looked like that, a dream mare, a creature out of legend, the Teutonic talisman for riding the Ways. The rider pulled the reins, and the horse shied sideways. He held his hand up, and the line of riders behind him stopped. As he removed his helm, long dark hair fell to his shoulders. My gut felt like it had filled with ice water.

Bergen Vize.

He stared with amusement and surprise. The dream mare danced on its feet in a smoke cloud that billowed like steam, thick, rippling vapors that dissolved in the air a few feet from its hooves. “This is unexpected,” he said.

“Nice little army you have there, Vize.”

He twisted in his saddle, looking back at his companions. “It’s a start.”

“Where’s Meryl Dian?” I asked.

Vize pursed his lips, appraising the company. “No one by that name is with me.”

I gripped the spear tighter, feeling it go cold with my anger. The dream mare neighed, its fear vibrating in my gut. “A druidess. Your friend ap Hwyl brought her here.”

Vize considered, his eyes on the retreating rider. “My business with ap Hwyl is nearly concluded, but I know nothing of this Meryl Dian.”

I scanned the several hundred riders behind him. The spear amplified my sensing ability, allowing me to pick out the nuances of individual essence signatures. Some I vaguely recognized, associates of Vize whom I knew from the days I was tracking him. The one essence signature I cared about wasn’t there. I relaxed into a fighting stance. “Then we have other business to settle.”

He arched his eyebrows as if the idea amused him. His gaze went to the spear. Recognition flickered. He knew what it was. Meryl said it had traveled to Alfheim. Vize obviously knew the spear. “I have other plans today,” he said.

“I know. So does the Guild. They’re going to stop you if I don’t.”

“They may. Someone else will accomplish my goals instead.”

“You accomplish nothing but destruction and murder.”

His amusement shifted to impatience. “How simply you view the world, Grey. Sometimes you have to destroy one thing to save another. The fey destroyed Faerie. They’re going to destroy their new world. It may cost some lives, but it will be worth it if I can stop them.”

I shook my head. “The only one destroying the world we live in is you, Vize.”

He saluted me with his sword. “Spoken like a true slave.”

I held my sword level with the ground. “Where’s the ring?”

He rotated his sword to show me the hand that gripped the hilt. On the index finger was a thick, wide ring. Last time I saw it, it had been gold. It was black now, dull and pulsing with a darkness that made my skin crawl. The dark mass in my head shot pain through my forehead.

“I’m afraid it won’t come off,” he said.

I smiled grimly. “I can think of a way.”

He chuckled. “Yes, well, I’ve considered that option, but the ring had other ideas.”

I trembled with anger. He was right there. After more than two years, he was right there in front of me. The spear reacted to my emotion, hungering to be free, wanting to fly at Vize. The distance between us wasn’t much. I could take him out. I’d have only one chance, assuming he didn’t parry the throw, or I missed. I had a feeling this spear didn’t miss. The moment I threw it, though, his army would be on me. I wouldn’t be able to cut the ring from his hand, retrieve the spear, and get away with my life. I didn’t care. Dying to stop Vize didn’t seem inevitable. I leveled the spear at my shoulder. The dream mare reared, and Vize flashed on his body shields. Several riders behind him broke toward us. The horse wheeled as Vize fought to control it. I caught a full view of Vize. His body shield was in fragments, patches along his back and up one side of his head, useless patches on his legs. His right side, the side he wore the ring on, had no shield at all. The damaged body shields told me all I needed to know. I lowered the spear.

The dream mare calmed, though her eyes rolled in fear. Vize held his hand up to the oncoming riders, and they checked their advance. Curious, he looked down at me.

“You didn’t attack me,” I said.

His face went neutral. “Perhaps I am not the murderer you think I am.”

“Bull. I’ve screwed your plans twice now, and you’re not even trying to take revenge here. I don’t think you can. You’ve lost your abilities, haven’t you? You lost them that day we fought.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I see now. You’re Powerless. I have wasted enough time, then.” He thrust his hand up in a fist, then swung it forward. The riders behind him burst into motion, bearing down on us. On me.

“This isn’t over, Vize,” I said.

He goaded the horse closer, but not close enough for my sword. “Give me the spear, druid, and I will guarantee your life.”

“No deal,” I said. I closed my eyes as the first rank of oncoming riders reached Vize. I thought of Meryl. She was why I was there, she alone. A tunnel formed in my inner vision and a brilliant core of green essence blossomed in my mind. It wasn’t a memory. It was real. The spear had opened my vision to Meryl’s essence signature. I let the spear feel my desire to be there, be with her, wherever that mote of green essence was. My gut and brain twisted as the spear responded. The dark thing in my head pushed like razor blades, and I let the pain in. Everything fell away until only the green point of essence remained. Weightless, I soared through an inky darkness, the spear burning the way before me. The mass in my head strained against it, trying to pull me away, but I fought back, drawing energy from the spear. The darkness clawed at my mind, resisting the white flow of essence. I fell into nothingness. Again. 32

Ancient trees surrounded me, great gnarled beasts with trunks twenty feet across and deep violet moss swaying lethargically from enormous branches. As dim light filtered greenly down from high above, dark birds winged through the leaf canopy with muted calls. Brief bursts of essence flashed here and there in the deep shadows of the underbrush and faded away like spent glow bees. The air was thick with an eerie stillness broken by the occasional snap of a branch or soft insect whirr. I leaned on the spear. Having a sturdy stick of wood was coming in handy. Sweat ran freely along my lip and down my cheek, and I wiped my hand across my mouth. It came away red. Not sweat, blood. Blood seeped from my nose and my ears. A tickle in my throat turned into a cough, and I spat more blood on the ground.

I picked through twisted roots and dense foliage toward a brightness winding through the trees that indicated a trail. Someone had walked it recently, kicking up a staggered path, like something had been pulled along behind. Or someone. Meryl’s essence hung thickly in the air. I followed it down the path, all my senses on alert. Not far off, sunlight shone more brightly where the trail broke through the trees. I slowed my pace to soften my footsteps. At the trail break, the trees pulled back to form a shallow clearing. In its center rose a lone standing stone. Sharp ribbon lines of a binding spell held Meryl against it. I released the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. She was alive. Even better, she was awake and alert. Powell paced nearby, muttering under her breath.

They wore the brooches from the Met, Powell the apple tree and Meryl the horned serpent. Powell had scored not one, but two true silver branches out of the robbery. My sensing ability picked up the fluttering of numerous sendings. Little spots of essence shot from Powell’s fingers as she made glow bees on the fly. I thought of the lone rider I saw racing away from Vize’s people. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know who it was. I had no idea how far I had traveled, but I doubted I had much time before Viten showed. I poked my head into the trailhead to attract Meryl’s attention. About time, she sent immediately. I ducked. A cranky mood instead of a bad one was a good sign. I crept along the edge of the clearing until the standing stone was between me and Powell. When she faced away, I carefully broke cover from the trees and scrambled to the stone, pressing my back against it. Ribbons of essence around the stone held Meryl in place. They tingled against my back and came alive as they shifted position to loop over me. The dark mass in my head pressed pain against the backs of my eyes.

Powell stopped her sendings. “What are you doing?”

I froze. She had sensed the disruption in the bindings.

“Falling asleep from boredom,” said Meryl.

“You won’t be soon,” she replied. The sendings began again.

I faced the standing stone. My sword felt warm in my hand as I lifted the blade to one of the ribbons. Bindings are directed essence with no will of their own. Sharp metal can disrupt them. The first ribbon literally melted as I brought the blade near. One of the rune charms glowed on the sword. The remaining bands shifted and tightened, and Meryl sucked in a breath. The damned things may be mindless, but they still hurt like hell. Cutting each successive band would cause the remaining ones to tighten. I swept the sword across the stone, the blade making a metallic shriek as it scraped. The ribbons parted, waving in the air as they lost purchase, then snuffed out.

Sword up, I jumped from behind the stone. Meryl was free. A flash of green filled the clearing with the ozone odor of an essence strike. Powell spun, tripping back on her heels, and fell flat on her back. Meryl extended two fingers like a gun barrel and blew on them. “That’ll teach her to turn her back on me.”

I wrapped my arms around her. “Sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”

She hugged me back, her orange mop of hair pressing into my shoulder. “You need to work on your sprinting.”

I kissed the top of her head.

Powell was out cold. Meryl chanted lines of essence in the air that dropped on Powell and twined around her. Meryl nodded as she examined her work. “One good binding deserves another.”

Powell’s eyes fluttered open. She sat up and screamed as the binding spell cinched, sending shock waves through her.

“Oh, shut up, Winny,” Meryl said. She gathered the ribbons of the spell in her fingers and twisted them into a knot, tugged at them to make sure the spell held.

A sharp point pierced the skin at the base of my skull. I froze.

“Do not move, please. I can easily sever your spinal cord before you even realize it.” Viten. We had run out of time. He was close, his breath on my ear, a smooth honey voice that did not sound the least bit nervous. I never heard him coming.

Powell struggled into a seated position, letting out growls of pain. “Liddell!”

“Surprised and happy to see you, m’love,” he said. “Will someone do the honors and release her?”

I had my sword and the spear. Viten made the mistake of closing the distance between us, which made me more dangerous to him. He probably had sensed he had two druids to deal with, not knowing one of them had no abilities.

“Do it,” I said. As long as they didn’t bind Meryl again, I wasn’t worried. Yet. Meryl looked like she was going to argue. With a shake of her head, she released the spell. Powell jumped up and locked her arm around Meryl’s neck, pressing a knife to her neck. It was the Breton dagger from the Guildhouse. The real one.

“Let us go, and no one gets hurt,” I said.

“I don’t think I can do that,” Viten said.

He scratched the tip of his sword along my neck as he circled around me, and I met Liddell Viten—con artist and murderer—face-to-face. He stood a foot shorter than me with the pale complexion all kobolds had. His features were smoother than average, which made glamours that much easier to use. For a dead guy, he didn’t look any the worse for wear. He wore fine clothing, archaic in a vaguely Teutonic court style, but made from an expensive-looking material. Being Dead seemed to agree with him. He compressed his already-thin lips together until they disappeared. “Drop your weapons, please.”

At least he was polite. “No,” I said.

Laughter danced in Meryl’s eyes, and she tossed me a sending. Go for his sword when I move. She didn’t give me a chance to think about it. She activated her body shield at full strength. Its sudden appearance tipped the dagger away from her neck. With impressive speed, Meryl dropped back on her hands and let loose with a flying round kick, knocking Powell off her feet. Distracted, Viten turned toward them, and I parried his sword out of his hand with the spear. Meryl stomped on Powell’s arm and grabbed the dagger. It was over in seconds.

With smooth grace, Viten leaped out of reach. He brought his own body shield on, weak in comparison to Meryl’s, but his fingers were charged with the unnatural essence of TirNaNog. Meryl prodded Powell. “Tell him why I knew you weren’t going to stab me with the dagger.”

Powell glared up at her. “It’s a soul blade, Liddell.”

Meryl kept her eye on Powell. “If you used it to kill me, the souls would have released and wrecked your little plan to get him out of here. You always assumed that you knew more than I did, Winny. You were a lousy boss, by the way.”

The strange mix of surprise and tenderness that crossed Viten’s face fascinated me in a revolting kind of way. He met Powell’s eyes with an intensity that could only be interpreted as love. The realization that this woman had killed two people to create a soul blade for him so that he could kill yet another person to get out of TirNaNog touched him just as if she had just told him she made his favorite dinner. Powell flashed a fervent smile. “Kill her, Liddell. She can’t hurt me.”

“Oh, I don’t have to kill you to hurt you, Winny,” said Meryl. She shoved Powell toward Viten. I don’t know who was more surprised, me or Powell. Meryl twirled the knife and smiled. “I’ve already killed you once, Viten. Let’s make a wager. I bet that I can kill you with this knife before you can get a shot off. Consider this before you decide: I will only die, but you, my friend, will be obliterated by the souls in the knife. That’s how this thing works against the Dead.”

“She’s lying,” Powell snarled.

Meryl arched an eyebrow. “You think? I’m willing to stake my life on it.”

Powell drew herself, haughty and assured. “Then I will kill you, Meryl.”

“You took me by surprise, Winny. I will win one-on-one with you,” she said. Powell looked smug. “I’ve already died once for Liddell. I’ll do it again. The Guild will protect my soul stone as long as it thinks it can arrest me. I’ll come back here next Samhain and destroy you.”

I pulled Powell’s soul stone from my pocket. “Would that be this stone?”

Powell let out a growl of anger from deep in her throat. Viten lifted his hands, charging them with the pale essence of TirNaNog.

“It’s over, Viten. Step away.”

Viten set his jaw with smug assurance. “Kill her,” he said.

Meryl and I exchanged glances. “What?” I asked.

“I said kill her.” Viten pulled Powell into a tight embrace, nuzzling the side of her head and murmuring in her ear. “I have missed you every day, m’love, dreamed of you every night. Not having you at my side has been a torment. Every minute spent here is a minute I wished you could see this place.”

Meryl rolled her eyes. “I think I’m going to be ill.”

She looked stunned when I tossed the stone to Viten. “We don’t have time for this. The fairy ring is surrounded by cops and Guild agents. She’ll be detained as soon as she crosses the veil.”

Powell clutched at Viten’s coat. “The knife, love, get the knife.”

He smiled down at her and caressed her face. “We have no need of it. I appreciate what you’ve done, m’love. I do. I truly do. But you’ve accomplished more than you realized. I have some power here. Here is where I wish to stay. It’s beautiful, Rhonwen. It’s glorious. I don’t want to go back. You mean everything to me. I want you to stay. Here. Always. With me.”

She stared up at him, tears in her eyes. “Yes, love. Yes.”

They kissed with the pent-up passion of ten years apart. White essence burst in Viten’s hand followed by a loud crackling. With a sharp gasp, Powell pulled her lips away from his. She struggled for breath, her chest heaving as the dust of her soul stone poured through Viten’s fingers. Her mouth broke into an ecstatic smile, then her eyes rolled in her head. Viten caught her as she went limp and lowered her to the ground. He cradled her across his chest, smoothing her hair back from her face, a repulsive, satisfied smile on his lips. He kissed her again. “Tomorrow, m’love, tomorrow you will wake up here, and we will spend eternity together.”

Meryl’s jaw dropped. “Wow. Was that the most romantic and sick thing you’ve ever seen or what?”

33

Viten rocked Powell’s body. I leaned down and ripped the silver-branch brooch from her coat. The colors leached out of her skin and clothes as she lost her physical substance, then she faded out into the air. Stricken, Viten clutched at her disappearing form until his empty hands groped at nothing. Somewhere in Boston, her dead body would turn up. He lifted red-rimmed eyes toward me. “You could have given me a few more moments.”

I slipped the brooch into my back pocket. “You’ve got eternity, right? Get out of my sight before I shove this spear through your chest.”

He rose with an imperious look and stooped for his sword. I stepped on it. “You won’t be needing that.”

Viten tried to stare me down. Like I said, that doesn’t work much with me. “Someday, sir, you will find yourself here. I will be waiting.”

“Thanks. Be sure to tell your funeral director I like Guinness,” I said. Viten sauntered down the trail.

I picked up the sword and made a few swipes with it. It had a fine edge, the grip a little small, but a decent balance. I held the pommel toward Meryl. “For those times when an essence shock to the head is not enough.”

She tested its balance, then batted her eyes at me. “How thoughtful of you. Too bad you didn’t take his sword belt, too.”

I slid my belt off. “You’re just trying to get my pants off again.”

She snorted. “Trying? You’re a guy. A simple ‘take your pants off’ works.” She coiled the belt around her hips, looping it around the steel buckle to form a frog to slide the sword through. She tested the draw a couple of times, then rested her hand on the pommel. “I’m good.”

I don’t know what it is, but a woman with a sword works for me. Always. Granted, the pumpkin orange hair is unusual, but with Meryl, it completes the package. And the boots. The boots work, too. Meryl walked to the opposite side of the clearing, where the path took up again.

“This is the way to the henge?” I asked.

“You didn’t come in this way?”

I shook my head. “I sort of teleported.”

She chuckled. “ ‘Sort of’? Okay.”

Pink essence burst in my face. I was so on edge, I fell back with the spear up and my sword ready. Joe hovered away in outright panic. “What the hell is going on?”

I’d been trying to get Murdock not to overreact when Joe shows up, and here I was startling like a newbie in the Weird. I relaxed like nothing happened. “Hey, buddy. Fancy meeting you here.”

“Me? You’re in Anwwn, then I felt you teleport, and you’re surprised?” I couldn’t even begin to pronounce the Cornish word he used for teleport.

We made our way up the path. “Long story, Joe. How the hell did you get here?”

He flew a random pattern beside us that he used when he was on guard. His hand clutched the empty air at his side, which meant he was ready to pull his glamoured sword. “Flits always get into Anwwn on Samhain. Well, not always, but before, when the world made sense, and we could visit our dead friends proper every year. Except the Way finally opens and everybody’s running this way and that trying to get out and people not where they’re supposed to be. I almost wish I stayed home tonight and went to a bar. Hi, Meryl.”

“Hey, Joe.” She grinned, like they had some mild secret they weren’t sharing. I haven’t figured out what she thinks of Joe. He doesn’t come around much when she’s with me, but they each seemed amused at the other’s existence.

He twirled in front of us. “Are you guys Dead?”

“No, dead tired, though. You never mentioned teleporting is tiring,” I said. Joe shook his finger. “And that’s another thing. What the hell is that? All of sudden, I felt you in this horrible rush of nothing, then I go and look and here you are.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re really not Dead, right?”

I shook my head. I held the spear out to look at it. “I have it on good authority that this buppy is called a sliver of the Wheel.”

Joe’s eyes bulged. “Where did you get that ?”

I shrugged. “A fairy queen. It’s the traditional method if I remember correctly.”

Joe pounded his fists against his forehead. “I’m either too drunk or not drunk enough.”

“Story of my life lately,” Meryl said.

The sunlight dimmed as we hurried down the trail. A bank of clouds moved in, charcoal and thick, materializing in the sky with an unnatural speed. “I thought it didn’t rain here,” I said. Joe checked the sky. “Sure it does. Usually at night, though, and it always smells like fresh.”

“Fresh what?” asked Meryl.

He dropped his eyebrows at her. “Fresh like fresh. It’s not a difficult concept.”

“Well, it wasn’t night a minute ago, and those clouds don’t look happy,” I said. Joe fluttered up to get a closer look through the break in the tree canopy. “Something’s not right.” He flew higher until we couldn’t see him above the trees. When he popped back in our faces, his face was troubled. “I don’t like it. I can’t see behind us. There’s a nothing like nothing. It’s just . . . nothing.” He looked over at me, his eyebrows shooting up. “Oh! It’s like the nothing in . . .”

“I got it, Joe. Let’s just get out of here,” I interrupted. I knew what he was going to say. Joe had talked about nothing like that once before with me. It was what he called the darkness in my head. We moved faster, concentrating on the path. After several tense minutes in the unchanging forest, the trail ended at the broad expanse of the grassy plain. Joe stopped so abruptly, I bumped him into an aerial stumble.

In the gray twilight of the overcast sky, clouds of blue and mauve did a slow churn, heavy with the threat of rain. Miles distant, a smudge of gray essence marked the position of the stone circle. A mass of people pressed toward it from every direction, hundreds, maybe thousands, of the Dead. The air vibrated with a riot of species signatures. The Dead moved in a vast ring that contracted as they advanced on the stone circle. In the gap between their front line and the end of the portal entrance, a company of riders burned with a brighter essence. They weren’t locals. I recognized the essences of living people. “That’s got to be Bergin Vize down there.”

Meryl shaded her eyes to see what I was talking about. “What the hell is he doing here?”

“He’s going after Tara,” I said.

Joe snickered. “Not if they get caught.”

At a glance, the massive crowd looked like it was making for the stone circle. Joe had pointed out what wasn’t immediately obvious. The crowd was closing in on Vize, not the henge. “The Dead are chasing them.”

Joe flew slow arcs in front of us. “Yep. Lots of people like it here, but lots don’t. If a Dead person kills a live person in Anwwn, they get to change places.”

Meryl looked intently across the plain. “Yeah. I was supposed to be Viten’s Get Out of Jail Free card.”

A mile off, the edge of the crowd nearest us shifted and broke from the rest. It was pretty clear where they were heading. I stopped. “How do they know if someone’s alive, Joe?”

He laughed and looped in the air. “Living essence lights up like a Beltane fire here. The chase is fun.”

Meryl stopped, too, realization sweeping over her face. “Everyone’s essence?”

Joe hovered between us with a puzzled look. “Of course. They never catch flits, though. Well, almost never.”

“But you can get away, right?” I asked.

Joe fluttered to the ground and shrugged. “Depends on how good you are at fighting and running. They ignore you only if you have the blessing of Anwwn to be here.”

Meryl and I looked at each other again. “I missed the queue for a blessing, did you?” she asked. The frayed edge of the crowd had become a wedge pointed right at us. “We’ve been spotted.”

“What do you . . . Oh!” Joe said, jumping back into the air. He finally got it. Meryl unpinned the serpent brooch from her jacket. “Let’s dump the silver branches, Grey. We’ll fade back.”

I gestured with the spear. “I don’t think leaving this lying around is the smartest idea.”

Joe peered at the spear. “I’ll take it back if it will let me.”

“That only solves one problem.” I held my arm up. The silver filigree from the spear wound around it in a branching vine pattern. I pushed at it with my body shield. It became colder but didn’t move. “It’s bonded to me.”

Meryl blanched. “Your entire arm is a silver branch?”

Smiling weakly, I held my arm up. “Technically, I think just the forearm, but it’s all kind of connected.”

Meryl whirled toward the open plain. The crowd was within a half mile. I came up behind her and hugged her close against my chest. “Go, Meryl. I’ll avoid them as long as I can and make my way to the henge.”

Joe flew toward us, his face upset. “You won’t have much time if you don’t go back direct-like. Samhain is almost over. I can feel the portals closing.”

Meryl broke my embrace and reattached the serpent brooch to her jacket. “Come on. I’ll shield you, and we’ll run for it.”

I shook my head. “It’s got to be five miles to the henge, Meryl. I know you’re strong, but even you can’t maintain a shield for both of us that long. Besides, the moment we set foot in it, that mob is going to turn into a mosh pit with us in the center. I came to get you out, and you’re getting out. Go. Please. I’ll be fine.”

She had that look in her eyes, the one that says she won’t take no for an answer. “I’ll believe that when I hear a better plan.”

“I’ve never seen such a storm here. It’s almost like Anwwn itself is angry,” said Joe. The forest behind us had gone dark. The clouds deepened from dark gray to black, streaks of rain rippling like curtains in the distance. A strange darkness was behind it, a negation of space that felt devoid of essence. I shivered at the familiarity of it. It felt like nothing. Joe was right. It felt like the thing in my head. Lightning flickered, followed by a long roll of thunder.

I pursed my lips. “Great. Now I’ve managed to piss off an entire otherworld dimension.”

“Teleport!” Meryl exclaimed.

“What?”

She grabbed me by the arms and shook me. “You said you teleported. Teleport us back to Boston.”

Joe shook his head so vigorously, his hair splayed out. “You can’t. You have to use a portal.”

“You lost me,” I said.

“Teleporting is one of the Ways. It’s a place, not a portal.”

“Then teleport us to the henge. We can skip over the plain,” said Meryl. Joe grinned. “Now you get it.”

I looked inside myself, testing my inner vision, letting the spear feel my desire. It vibrated in my hand, and the misty tunnel opened in my mind. Far off, a gray light smoldered, vague and indistinct. “I think I can do it.”

Meryl glared. “What do you mean ‘think’?”

I shrugged. “I missed you by a few hundred yards when I did it last time.” I gazed at the Dead, estimating the distance between their front line and the entrance to the henge. “That’ll be close enough. I can outrun them.”

“That’s not good enough. Take me with you. I can shield us if you come up short,” she said. I looked at Joe. “Can I do that?”

He shrugged. “She’s too big for me, but she’s small enough for you.”

I compressed my lips as I thought. “Let’s do it.”

“Meet you at the henge,” Joe said. He saluted and popped out.

Meryl hugged me with a fierce grip.

“Ready?” She didn’t speak but nodded into my chest.

I closed my eyes. The misty tunnel spiraled off in my inner vision, a streak of pink vanishing through it. The spear trembled as it felt my desire for the gray essence of the standing stones. The dark mass in my head shifted, as if trying to avoid the light. It hurt. The damned thing always hurt. I ignored it and visualized moving through the tunnel toward the gray smudge. The spear reacted by pulsing with a violent white light. I tightened my grip on Meryl as my head spun with dizziness. The dark mass sliced sharply in my head, and the spear pumped white light into me. I screamed. My body wrenched forward, harder and more painfully than before. Everything twisted to a smear of color, light and sound merging into something new and its own, as a dark fire clawed at my mind.

The pain subsided. My eyes burned, and I couldn’t see. I stumbled on firm ground, sinking to my knees. The pungent odor of grass filled my nose. Everything hurt. Everything. Hands grasped my shoulders, pulling me back. I lay against something warm and soft. Black spots flashed as consciousness threatened to leave.

“Dammit, Connor. You’re hemorrhaging.” Meryl sounded far off.

Something pressed down on my chest. A hand. My body shields fluctuated on and off as essence flowed into me. A warm tide of light spread from my chest, up my neck, and into my head. The dark mass spiked against the essence. Pain pierced my head as the light and dark grappled. The light winked out. I came to, nestled in Meryl’s arms. I felt damp. It didn’t smell like sweat. It was the raw tang of blood. I was saturated with my own blood. “I want a shower.”

She tracked a finger on my cheek and showed it to me. “Your face is a mask of blood.”

Blinking more blood out of my eyes, I tried to smile up at Meryl’s concerned face. “I hope this gets easier with practice.”

She laughed. “You’re stable. I hit you with a healing spell, but I had to use essence from the henge. It might not be enough.”

Joe flew position over our heads, his sword out as he stood guard. I took the fact that he was concentrating on something instead of talking to mean we weren’t out of the woods yet, so to speak. I pushed myself up.

We had hit in the center of the stone circle like a bull’s-eye and landed beneath the pillar stone. On one side, several Dead clustered, calculating looks in their eyes as they observed us from across the circle. More Dead trailed in from the avenue entrance.

Two portals in the circle showed clear night skies crisscrossed by searchlights. People were rioting around standing stones. Stonehenge in England was unmistakable, and the other had to be Carnac in France. In both portals, panicked Dead faced us from the living side, pressing against the openings. They had crossed and couldn’t get back. The veil was closing as the sun rose. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. When Samhain ends, the Dead go back to TirNaNog. Apparently, though, not tonight.

Another portal showed a place I recognized. I had been there once a long time ago. A bonfire burned high into the sky. Druids in court attire and Danann fairies in battle armor moved in smoky torchlight. To either side, ranks of Celtic warriors faced the portal, swords drawn and shields up, guarding Tara. Only one other portal showed through to the living side. Boston Common was empty of everyone except the police and Guild security. In front of the portal, on the TirNaNog side, Ceridwen stood. She no longer hid behind a glamour, revealing golden wings in their full brilliance. Her eyes glowed with a wild white light as she guarded the Boston portal, the prone bodies of the Dead at her feet. 34

Ceridwen’s face hardened with anger when she saw me. She walked over the bodies around her. The Dead standing near backed away. A Dead elf tried to slip to the Boston portal behind her. She casually shot an essence-bolt at him. She didn’t hold back, but hit him with a full blaze meant to kill. He fell in silence, and his essence winked out. Tomorrow, he would wake up somewhere in TirNaNog as if death were only an inconvenience.

“Nice shot,” said Meryl.

“You have doomed Tara over the life of one person,” she said to me, not bothering to acknowledge Meryl.

“Nice to see you, too,” I said.

She held her hand out. “Return the spear. I need to bring my warriors into TirNaNog to protect the Tara portal.”

I handed it over. “All you had to do was ask nicely.”

Ceridwen examined it, glancing once at me before throwing it at one of the Dead standing nearby. The spear left her hand at speed, stopped in midair, then dropped like a stone. As she crouched to retrieve it, it faded from sight and reappeared several feet away.

Ceridwen looked devastated. “It no longer responds to me.”

“I noticed,” I said. The spear shone in my mind, a line of white essence, as if it were an extension of me, bonding to my essence beyond any words of command. I held my hand out. The spear lifted and returned.

Ceridwen’s eyes flashed brighter. Fearfully, she looked to the dark portal with the bonfire. Figures moved in and out of the frame, soldiers in silhouette against the flames. “That’s Tara, isn’t?” I asked. Ceridwen nodded.

“They don’t look unprepared,” I said.

“They are not, but they are underdefended,” she said. “I was to bring the New York and Boston warriors here to act as a first line of defense. I needed the spear to activate the spell to bring them here.”

“You got yourself in all right,” I said.

She drew herself up, doing the imperial monarchy pose. “We are a queen of Faerie, druid. We need no talisman to walk the Ways. You command the spear. I will give you a spell for you to bring my warriors in.”

“I know you read my file, Ceridwen. It’s no lie that my abilities are blocked,” I said.

“The spear responds to your command. You must put aside your petty anger and do as I say.”

I held the spear up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ceridwen. You think you commanded the spear? You’re wrong. The spear doesn’t do whatever I want. It reacts when what I want serves its purpose. I can feel when I’m doing something it wants me to do.”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. We could hear riders approaching, the pounding hooves like rolling thunder, growing louder and louder. I looked around the stone circle. The Dead that remained moved toward the entrance portal, probably deciding Ceridwen was difficult enough alone and now that she had friends, they might have better luck with Vize’s people. At least they would slow Vize down. Once he reached the inside of the circle, either Tara or Boston would be easy pickings. Neither alone could hold his riders off. “Tell Maeve there’s been a change of plans. She’s the front line now. If she wants to survive, she needs to bring her own warriors in. I bet she knows how to do it without the spear.”

Ceridwen’s wings rippled in agitation. “You do not tell the High Queen to do anything.”

I shrugged. “Okay. I’m sure Vize will be happy to give her a heads-up.”

Her nostrils flared. She spun on her heel and stalked toward the Tara portal. As she stood on the threshold, her golden essence interacted with the veil in a static prickling. On the other side, people shifted in a flurry of activity. The warrior ranks parted, and a tall, slim woman appeared. As she drew closer to the portal, firelight reflected off her armor, white leather with a crowned helm of silver. She kept her distance, but her pale features glowed, her cheeks long and chiseled and the line of her jaw firm. Blue highlights shone in long ebony hair that framed dark eyes. Even at this distance, the fathomless eyes of an Old One, a fey that had seen centuries of life, glittered with the deep experience of time. I had my first direct look at Maeve, High Queen of the Seelie Court at Tara. Neither queen spoke aloud as they faced each other across the veil. Intense sendings vibrated over the competing essence of the stone circle. Their speed increased, the flutterings getting stronger as the exchange became heated. Ceridwen bowed her head just a bit and stepped back, allowing the High Queen a view into the circle.

Maeve’s eyes flared with an eerie pale light as they locked on me. A palpable presence reached out through the portal, a gripping pressure against my skin. Her face swam closer, filling my sight, her eyes boring into mine. It was an illusion—she hadn’t moved. I felt like I was being examined like a bug under a microscope. I couldn’t tear my gaze away, mesmerized by the way her own eyes glittered, her face shockingly beautiful, a cold, untouchable beauty that had as much to do with a woman who knew her own mind as it did a woman who knew her own attraction. I shivered under the scrutiny, oddly shy and, dammit, insignificant. The pressure released, and Maeve was where she had been all along on the opposite side of the portal.

Another brief exchange occurred between the queens. Ceridwen’s body stiffened in response to something as their conversation broke off sharply. She stumbled from the portal. A blossom of light flared as essence flashed in a noiseless explosion. It filled the space between the standing stones framing Maeve until she could not be seen through boiling clouds of essence. It solidified into a solid wall of white, hiding the view of Tara. A moment later, it rippled and imploded. Nothing remained. The portal to Tara was gone, replaced by a view of the grassy embankment outside the standing stones. Ceridwen rejoined us, struggling to keep her shock under control. “Maeve does not have the power to enter. She destroyed the fairy ring to protect Tara. We’re on our own.”

“Okay, that’s a problem,” I said.

A thin haze sprang up in the portals to Stonehenge and Carnac. Samhain was ending with the rising sun a continent away. The veil was closing. With Tara gone, only the Boston portal remained open. At the far end of the entrance avenue, Vize and his riders were close enough to distinguish individuals. The lead company rode dream mares wrapped in a mist lit by an amber gleam from the horses’ eyes. Ceridwen moved up next to me. “Our sources told us Vize planned to enter Tara to attack Maeve. He was then going to return here and escape through a Teutonic portal hidden somewhere in TirNaNog. I was expecting him sooner, but something seems to have delayed him.”

I watched them coming on. “Vize was working a deal with a woman named Rhonwen ap Hwyl. He must have been looking for her, but she had her own agenda and is a little dead at the moment.”

Ceridwen looked back at the Boston portal. “Samhain is almost over. I don’t think Vize will be able to get back to his own portal before the veil descends for another year. That leaves Boston his only escape now. I will not let him through.”

“Let’s get out of here and destroy the Boston fairy ring like Maeve did,” I said. Ceridwen shook her head. “After you entered TirNaNog, the Taint bound itself to the veil. We don’t know how to break it, thanks to you two.”

Meryl whirled on her. “For the last time, Ceridwen, there is no damned druid conspiracy. We don’t know how to stop the Taint. You want to point fingers at traitors, take a look at Tara. Maeve destroyed her own portal and left us high and dry. Nobody made her do that.”

Ceridwen drew herself up, towering over Meryl. “You may not address me in such a familiar tone.”

“After being thrown in a cell because of your stupidity, I’ll address you any way I damned well please,”

Meryl said. Ceridwen clawed her hand full of essence. Meryl triggered her body shield and pulled her sword.

Joe swung himself upside down between them. “Uh, ladies? I’m pretty sure we should be pointing our stuff at the bad guys.”

Meryl glowered and gave Ceridwen a cold shoulder. Ceridwen hesitated, and I thought she might shoot Meryl in the back. Joe gave her the big grin, and she tossed the charged essence at one of the nearby Dead. If she kept killing them off like that, we’d probably have enough to block the portal. She adjusted her helm as she faced the riders. “Aim for the dream mares. If the riders touch the ground, they will fade back into the world of the living. This far from their own portal, they may not get back at all.”

“I’m not killing horses,” said Meryl.

Ceridwen shrugged. “Then die.”

Meryl threw her a look with all the warning signs of a small nuclear device. Vize’s riders bunched together within the entrance. The avenue could hold no more than two or three of them abreast. Screams carried on the wind. Some of the Dead attacked as the riders jockeyed for room in the narrow lane.

“We need to delay them as long as we can.” I pulled Powell’s brooch from my pocket and tossed it to Joe. “Get Dylan, Joe. Tell him ASAP.” Joe plucked the silver branch from the air with a smooth catch and vanished. He flashed into sight in front of the Boston portal and flew through.

“What’s the plan?” Meryl said.

“Ceridwen said defend. So, we defend as long as possible.”

Dylan stepped through the door wearing the silver branch. He paused at the threshold, intense curiosity on his face as he took in the scene. He jogged the distance between us, but I pointed him to the entrance of the stone circle. “No time to explain, Dyl. We need an airbe druad right there as strong as you can make it.”

He didn’t pause, but kept going to the entrance stones. The air trembled in his wake as he pulled essence from the ground. Before he reached the entrance, his barrier spell was executing, lines of essence curling around the standing stones, knotting and weaving to form a shield. Ceridwen surveyed the work, unimpressed. “Teutonic warriors know how to counter an airbe druad ,”

said Ceridwen.

I nodded, assessing the approaching riders. They had killed the Dead from the circle, but more were catching up behind them. From the rear, essence-fire and swordplay echoed off the standing stones. “It’ll take them some time. Ceridwen, do a sending to Keeva and make sure she has the Guild agents ready for anything that comes through that portal.”

“I do not take orders from you,” she said.

I stared at her. “Look, I’m going to say this once: Either do what I say, or get the hell out of my way.”

She made a pinched face, and the sending shot off her head like an arrow. Keeva was going to have a headache when she got it.

“Now. You and Meryl back up Dylan as long as you can. Let Vize through. Take down anyone else who tries to follow. Watch your time. Dylan and Meryl can drop their silver branches, but you and I need to run for the portal before it closes.”

The air crackled with streaks of golden light as Ceridwen followed Dylan across the field. “This is madness.”

“Welcome to my world,” I said to her back.

Meryl looked up at me. “I am not going to let you kill yourself.”

“I don’t intend to,” I said.

Her face became set. “Don’t think I’m stupid, Grey. Dylan and I only have to drop our silver branches to get out of here, but you can’t shake that silver off on your arm. Ceridwen can reach the door before those horses. You can’t outrun them. You are not dying here.”

I shook my head. “I have no intention of dying here.”

She poked me hard in the chest, but her eyes were glistening. “You owe me a lobster.”

I reached for her. She backed away. “Uh-uh,” she said. “You don’t intend to die; I’m not giving any good-bye hugs.”

“How about a good-luck one?”

She pursed her lips, dropped her chin to her shoulder, and held her arms out. “Okay.”

We hugged. I kissed the top of her head, then tilted her face up for another. She pulled away. “No. You get your good-luck hug, but I am not going to kiss you. Besides, you’re face is a sheet of blood, and it would be icky.”

She danced away from me, then ran after Dylan and Ceridwen. Joe circled in front of me, facing toward the henge entrance. He held his sword ready for swinging.

“Is my face that bad?” I asked.

Joe considered me for a little too long. “Well, you have that little scar by your eye from when you fell in the bathtub when you were five.”

I frowned at him. “I meant the blood.”

He smiled as if it just occurred to him I didn’t normally walk around with blood on my face. “Oh! No, the blood’s cool. You should keep it.”

“Thanks.” I looked at the little guy, hovering all tough and mean in his loincloth. “Joe, promise me you’ll bug out if this falls apart.”

He didn’t look at me. “Nope.”

“Joe . . .”

He kept his eye on the entrance. “Connor, I’ve stood by your family for generations during some very dark times. Dark, dark times. Even Seamus Ogden macGrey, who was a huge prick. I think he was your great-great-great-great-grandfather. The only reason I stayed with him was his wife made a most excellent mead and was a long-suffering waif. And a looker. Boy, was she a looker. She’s where your brother Cal gets his red hair, if you ask me. I remember this one time . . .”

“Joe . . .”

He shook his head. “I ain’t leaving.”

“Fine. No more cookies for you.”

“I left a reminder for you to pick up more.”

“You mean you left the empty bag on my pillow.”

He laughed his maniacal laugh. “Yep.”

“Here they come,” I said.

35

Vize led the charge. Long black hair streamed from under his helm as he bore down on the entrance. He rose in his stirrups, holding the reins with one hand as he raised a spear with the other. My heart skipped a beat. I flashed open my sensing ability. Relieved, I read nothing more than oakwood charged with elf-shot. It wasn’t a match to my spear. I knew damned well I didn’t want a splinter of the Wheel in his hands.

He launched the spear. He knew how to use one. It sailed straight and true, piercing Dylan’s airbe druad with a burst of emerald essence. That was all it was meant to do, punch a hole to test what they were up against. Dylan patched it without effort. The spear peaked and dropped toward the center of the circle. It had no more charged essence, so it was a simple wooden spear again. One aiming for my chest, but still pretty simple. I lifted my sword. A streak of pink whirred by, and Joe knocked the spear to the ground.

“Thanks,” I said.

“De nada,” he said, returning to his aerial perch.

A stunning assortment of fey rode behind Vize. I hadn’t realized that the animosity to the Seelie Court was so widespread. Things had become much worse since I had left the Guild. Elves in the same black leather tunic Vize wore, unemblemed. Dwarves rode with him, too, surprisingly. Their loyalty to the Elven King was moderate at best, but aligned with Donor Elfenkonig’s henchmen was the last place I’d expect them. If the Elven King wasn’t supporting Vize, they had much to lose. Plenty of solitaries joined him, all shapes and shades, malevolent and wild looks in their eyes. The scary part was the Celts. He had Celtic fey with him, mostly subclans of the major races, but more Danann than I would have guessed flew air cover. I had no idea what that was about.

Vize rode far ahead of his comrades. He might be as damaged as I was, but he wasn’t going to let his followers see him cower in the rear guard. The Teutonic fey put a lot of stock in crazy bravery. Even so, Vize had to be nuts to put himself in that much danger. As he neared, a heavy-duty body shield on him confused me. He didn’t have one earlier. A blue-skinned solitary clung to his back like a climbing animal, all sharp teeth and claws and tangled white hair. A nixie. The shield was hers. Vize checked the dream mare at the barrier. He cocked his head up, staring transfixed at Ceridwen. He shouted something to his lead riders, but I couldn’t hear what he called. Dylan sliced a hand through the air, rending a space in the airbe druad between the entrance stones. He made it look like a tactical error and frantically threw useless bindings at the gap to repair it. Vize waited for his company to catch up, then spurred his horse forward. He lunged through the opening, the dream mare lifting in an impressive leap, smoke trailing after it like exhaust. Dylan yanked his fist down, and the barrier snapped closed. Meryl moved in and amplified the charge on the entrance before anyone else could get through. Vize’s immediate followers slammed into the barrier, and the ranks behind them crashed into them in a satisfying knot of confusion.

Vize was nicely surprised when he realized he was alone. He pulled forcefully on the reins, his solitary friend dangling precariously from his back. He managed to bring the horse to a halt, and the great beast danced in a circle as Vize looked back. His followers had stopped tripping onto each other, spacing themselves as best they could to make room. As they reorganized, they threw lightning strikes of essence against the airbe druad .

Ceridwen soared overhead in a pulsating golden aura. Single-handedly, she fended off dozens of the airborne fairies and winged solitaries who tried to fly over the barrier. Her power amazed me. UnderQueens packed more of a wallop than I would have ever guessed. The narrow space of the entrance avenue worked in Dylan’s favor. No more than three or four fey could attack the shield without hitting one another. Between the extra charge Meryl gave him and his own considerable skill, the barrier held the riders off. Bergin turned the dream mare toward the Boston portal

“Vize needs some prodding in this direction, Joe,” I said.

Joe grinned deep dimples into his cheeks. He flashed out and reappeared with burst of pink essence in Vize’s face. He slapped Vize on the nose and disappeared. The frustrating thing about fighting with a flit is that they’re too small to target a hit well, too fast to chase, and too unconventional to anticipate. A slap on the nose is the last thing you expect anyone to do. And it hurts, to say nothing of humiliating. Vize wheeled the horse. Joe appeared and hit him on the back of the head. The dream mare shied sideways, confused by Vize’s shifting and turning in the saddle. Joe flashed in and jabbed the beast in the haunch. The mare reared with an angry neigh and bolted across the stone ring. Joe popped in next to me. “Careful, he’s got a nixie with him.”

Reining in the horse, Vize realized I was there and cantered toward me.

“You’re too late. Maeve destroyed the Tara portal,” I said.

His eyes shifted among the portals. “That’s better than I hoped.”

Dylan’s calm voice filled my head. We can’t hold this much longer. The Boston portal started to mist like the other doors had when Samhain ended. I pointed at it with the spear. “You’re trapped, Vize. Order your people to stand down. Surrender to the Guild authorities, and no one gets hurt.”

Vize leaned forward on his saddle, chuckling. “I appreciate your intent, but, unfortunately, that would be inconvenient.”

“They follow you. If you die, they’ll get the message where this is heading for them,” I said. He looked down at the sword, then at me. “Since when does the Guild act as executioner?”

“I’m not Guild anymore, thanks to you. My perspective has changed.”

I brought the spear to my shoulder. I meant to use it for what it was—a spear—but something happened. Something I didn’t do. The spear shuddered in my hand, drawing in essence on its own. The air thickened with pressure, and the spear glowed white. Vize’s dream mare screamed and backed away. Vize grappled with the reins as the ground trembled. A wave of dizziness hit me, and my vision narrowed. Pain stabbed behind my eyes, the dark mass scuttling like a crab across my brain. Shouting, Vize clutched at his temples. A roaring filled my ears, a howling of wind. The light of the spear faltered, and the pain in my head subsided. The darkness swelled in my head, a dark blot driving away the light. Vize looked dazed. Fear etched across the nixie’s face as she clutched his back. She pointed over my head. Outside the stone circle, a blank wall of darkness hung above the horizon. The nothingness from the forest had grown, stretching across the sky in a silent curtain of deepest black. It had no depth or dimension, stretching in all directions beyond sight.

They’re breaking through.

Dylan’s sending drew my attention back to the portal entrance. More winged solitaries filled the air, the Dead joining Vize’s companions. Excitement built among the fighters as Dylan’s shield barrier collapsed. Riders on horseback and the Dead on strange beasts spilled through the entrance and flooded into the field.

Fall back! Fall back! Ceridwen sent. She retreated from the entrance stones, a host of solitaries and Danann fairies pressing her back. A continuous discharge of essence-fire exploded from her hands as she drew strength from the air. I had no idea how long she could keep that up. Even Faerie queens had to have their limits.

I ducked away from a flash of movement in my peripheral vision. Too late. The nixie sailed through the air and dug her claws into my shoulder. I dropped my sword and spun in place, trying to pull her off. I yelled as she sank her teeth into the back of my neck. Joe dove in, sparks flying from his sword when it slammed against her body shield. I jabbed at her with the spear, but the angle was wrong. I stretched my arm out as far as I could for another stab when the spear yanked out of my hand. The nixie’s claws dug deeper, and she leaped away.

Joe chased her as she spun over a knot of fighters battling the Dead. With a squeal of manic joy, she caught the mane of Vize’s horse and swung herself onto its neck. The Dead and Vize’s riders swirled between us in a confusion of fighting. I lost sight of them. The air became thick with essence and war cries from across time. Strange dark animals scurried across the grass or launched themselves into the air, horned and scaled things I didn’t recognize. I grabbed my sword from the ground. Frantic, I searched for the spear.

The fight churned, the heads of the mounted riders rising and falling in the melee. Dream mares screamed as the Dead pressed the advantage of close quarters. The darkness in my head recoiled enough for me to sense essence again. I felt the spear nearby. The mob shifted, and Vize appeared lunging his way through the battle. In a raised fist, he had the spear. He had taken it from me. I opened my mind for the spear. I pictured it in my hand, let it feel my desire for it. I had a strange double vision, the spear in my mind flaring and the one in Vize’s hand twirling away from him. But it didn’t come to me. The image in my head slipped away, its burning white essence fading. Vize had the spear, or the spear had him. The bright light in my vision dwindled while the dark mass pulsed with renewed strength. The spear was no longer bonded to me.

A shaft of essence tore through the throng. Meryl charged through in its wake, her eyes blazing yellow. She cut a path forward, swinging the sword with one hand and firing essence with the other. When she reached me, she pressed her back against mine and kept fighting. Joe returned in a whirling frenzy, the blue flame of his sword burning in the air.

Move toward the portal, Meryl sent.

“I can’t. Vize has the spear,” I shouted. There was no way I was leaving it with him. I tried not to laugh at the string of cursing Meryl let fly. Swords flailing, we pushed across the field, moving closer to Vize. He reined in the horse, managing to keep it still. Standing in the stirrups, he leaned well back. He threw the spear.

The sounds of battle faded from my awareness as I watched the spear rise, unable to stop it. It seared a streak of flaming orange essence across the air, not toward me, but up. With a concussive blast, the spear struck Ceridwen between the shoulder blades. She heaved upward with the force of the blow, and the spearhead erupted from her chest. A golden halo flared around her, bursting outward in a shock wave. The wave front knocked her airborne adversaries out of the sky and threw everyone to the ground. As we fell in a tangle, Meryl instinctively hardened her body shield around us. Heat scorched the air, and I screamed as the thing in my mind spiked.

Ceridwen fell. Her essence wave collapsed with a sonic boom, and she fell with a sickening slowness, her lifeless wings flapping and ballooning like limp sails as she twirled down on currents of essence. She hit the ground near the pillar stone in the center of the field. The circle’s essence flickered, and the ground rippled like water.

I struggled to my feet and helped Meryl up. Bodies lay around us in a blasted circle of scorched earth, the Dead as well as Vize’s own fighters. His own fighters. He didn’t care about his own people.

“Good Mother,” Meryl whispered.

Across the field, Vize’s mount churned in a mass of panicked fighters, the nixie’s body shield a shimmering halo of blue light around them. The dark thing in my head jumped, spiking again. Incredible pain fanned the rage within me. A muddy red blurred my vision as I swung my sword. Everyone and everything fell back from me, the Dead and riders alike. My sword grew hot, its plating darkening, and my arm throbbed with the heat.

As people scrambled away, Dylan appeared out of the confusion on the field. He was closer to Vize, close enough to reach him first, and he hit him with essence-fire. It crackled across the nixie’s shield. The mare shied and bucked from the scattered overflow fire. He hit them again, but the nixie deflected. Dylan gathered white-hot essence in his hands and ran at them. With an amazing leap, he became airborne for a moment, hands burning through the nixie’s shield. When his fingers tangled in her hair, he ripped her from Vize’s back. They fell grappling, arms and legs in a frenzy. He shook her off and flung her away. As she landed, she rolled hard on the ground and vanished.

Unprotected, Vize charged through the fighters, the dream mare knocking people aside as he pressed toward the Boston portal. I cut across the field into their path and faced them head-on. The startled mare reared over me, her hooves flailing at my head. I dodged as she came down and bucked. Vize lost his helm. His hair whipped around him as he fought to control the horse. I darted in and grabbed the harness. The mare jerked her head back, lifting me off my feet. I swung my sword as the momentum brought me within range of Vize’s exposed face. His sword came up under mine and parried me away.

A shock jolted us both when our blades met. Black vapor burst into the air between us. I fell, screaming, as the dark thing in my head writhed. I landed on my feet, fighting for balance and pivoting on my heel. Vize dangled from the saddle with his ankle caught in the stirrup. The horse lunged forward, and Vize slipped farther, his head and shoulders hitting the ground. My vision turned dark, pain bleeding from my eyes. The dream mare screamed again and reared. As his leg pulled free, Vize flipped into the air. He landed on his back at my feet, and I raised the sword over my head, blade down. I flinched as a white streak of essence blossomed in my mind. The spear had returned to me, bonding to my essence and driving back the dark mass. I looked down at Vize, his eyes wide with the knowledge I was going to kill him.

“Your face!” he said.

I plunged the blade down. It struck barren earth as Vize faded away. I staggered back, my breath ragged as the sword shuddered in the ground. I inhaled and pulled it free. Beside me, Dylan had the dream mare by the reins. She stamped in place, but didn’t pull away. He stared at me with a look of horror. “Connor?”

I heard him. I heard him, but couldn’t speak. It took every ounce of energy to fight the pain in my head. My left arm shook as I focused on the darkness, refusing to give in to it. The mesh on my arm burned with cold, the essence of TirNaNog pouring into it, the essence of the Dead. The darkness receded.

“Connor?” Dylan said again.

I didn’t get a chance to answer him. Screams went up across the field. The Dead fled from the center crescent of stones as fierce bolts of golden essence scoured the ground.

“She’s alive,” I said in disbelief. I didn’t recognize my own voice. “Ceridwen’s alive, Dyl. Get me over there.”

Whatever he saw in my face, he seemed relieved to hear me speak. He mounted the dream mare and pulled me up. We rode back to the center. Vize’s remaining riders clustered on the opposite side of the trilithons, fighting off the Dead.

My gut twisted when I saw red armor. Flanked by Meryl and Joe, Ceridwen lay faceup, the point of the spear protruding from her chest above her heart. The length of the spear held her twisted off the ground. Her body essence shone with a pale light, cycling dimmer and dimmer with each breath. I jumped and sank beside her. “Ceridwen? Can you hear me?”

Her eyelids fluttered open. “What happened?”

“Vize tried to kill you.”

She inhaled with a wet sucking sound. “He may yet succeed.”

“Hang on, Ceridwen. We’re going to get you out of here.”

“Don’t leave my body here, macGrey.”

“I won’t. And I told you, my name is Grey.”

Ceridwen grabbed my shirt. “Listen to me, Grey.”

“Ceridwen, don’t move.”

Her eyes became brighter. “I lied, Grey. Maeve betrayed us. She refused to lead her warriors in and leave them with me. She could have done it and left unscathed, but she refused, Grey.”

I stared down at her in shock. “She refused?”

Ceridwen grimaced as she nodded. “She said your city’s sacrifice would serve Tara’s security. She doesn’t care if Vize gets through to Boston.”

The dark mass roiled within me, anxious to be released again. I kept it back by sheer willpower, letting the light of the spear in my mind keep it from growing again. I grabbed Ceridwen’s hand and leaned in close. “Stay with me, Ceridwen. I’m going to get you out of this, and then we are going to kick some serious Seelie Court ass. Deal?”

She tried to laugh. Blood speckled her lips when the laugh turned into a cough. Not a good sign. “Deal, macGrey.”

If I had never had reason to despise Maeve, I had one now. I marked the distance to the Boston portal. Vize’s remaining riders and some of the Dead pushed toward it. A long way to go through more fighting. The haze in the portal had deepened. I could make out city lights on the other side, but morning was coming to Boston. Samhain was ending, and the portal would close with the dawn. I lifted Ceridwen gently. “Take her out, Dyl. Find Gillen or Briallen. We need her alive.”

Dylan generated a levitation spell to lift her. We positioned her sideways in front of him, the spear jutting out to either side. A small hope rose in my chest when Ceridwen lifted a hand to hold Dylan’s collar. It slipped off. Her head slumped against his shoulder, her essence sputtering.

“Get on!” Dylan yelled down to us.

“No, you need speed. Get out of here.” I slapped the mare hard on the rump with my sword. She bucked forward before Dylan had any more say in the matter. The fighters fell back at his approach, frightened by the wave of essence he fired in front of him. They swirled into the wake of his passing. Meryl leaned against the pillar stone watching Dylan ride off. “We’re never going to get through that,”

she said.

He reached the portal. The dream mare’s hooves lit with fire as they lifted from her smoky essence. They dove through the haze. A boiling rush of green flame erupted from the door as the Taint from the other side seared through the riders and the Dead. A wind filled with screams roared into the circle. Meryl and I clung to each other as the pillar stone shifted.

“Get out of here,” I shouted.

She tilted her head up to me and smiled. No one should die alone. I searched her face, traced every curve and line of it with my eyes. I stared down at this person who had done everything I ever asked of her. And more. I saw something, something beyond physical attraction, this brilliant glow of uncommon beauty I couldn’t begin to put words to. My chest ached as I closed my eyes and kissed her, feeling her lips against mine, not with the hunger of sex but the essence beyond it. I broke the kiss. Meryl smiled from under her bangs. I leaned down and kissed the top of her head, then ripped the silver branch from her jacket. Even with the storm of sound around us, the brooch made a metallic ping as I flung it among the trilithons. Meryl’s eyes went huge with realization. She lunged for me, trying to use me as her anchor in TirNaNog, but I stepped out of her reach.

“Connor!” Meryl screamed as she felt whatever the sensation was that dropped her out of TirNaNog. She vanished. Somewhere on the other side of the Boston portal, the true side where Boston was and my life had been, a supremely angry druidess was reappearing. I didn’t care. No matter how pissed she was at that moment, she was damned well alive, too.

Joe hovered by my shoulder and spoke very quietly in my ear. “I hope you realize I can’t shield you like she could.”

I nodded. Another gust of Taint blew from the door. The force of it sent Joe into a spiraling tumble as a sliver of intense white light pierced the mottled green. It shot hard and true at me, burning in my mind, the bond solidifying with a brilliant spasm in my head. I caught the spear one-handed, and it pulled me off my feet. It burned in my hand, not with the intense cold it once had, but with a white-hot fire. It stabbed the ground at the foot of the pillar stone, twisting and writhing as it sucked essence from the ring itself, great waves rippling through the stone circle. The Taint channeled into me, coursing down my arm and into the spear.

Standing stones cracked. The entire circle warped and swayed. The stones on the sides of the entrance avenue caved inward, pulling down the standing stones and lintels to either side. The adjacent stones fell next, pulling the next set with them. Standing stone after standing stone after standing stone buckled and fell.

Joe tugged at my ear. “Come on! The Way is closing!”

It was more than closing. It was collapsing. As the standing stones tumbled into the circle, they released torrential waves of essence. The circle was half-gone, a tangled heap of crumbling stone. A boulder came flying through the air. Joe screamed as his body shredded into ribbons of pink. The boulder tore through him, and the shreds scattered outward. Joe was still screaming when he snapped back. “I can’t teleport. The Way is closed!”

“The portal! Get out of here, Joe!” I yelled.

He buzzed into my face. I had never seen him so angry and so afraid. He trembled as he turned this way and that, as if looking for an answer to the destruction around us. He flew off, essence waves knocking him about like a leaf on the wind. He dove at the ground and looped back up. He reached the Boston portal as cracks bled up the standing stones to either side of it. Our eyes met one more time as he paused in front of the haze. He flew through to Boston.

Everyone was safe. I was alone.

36

I might have made everyone leave me to die, but that didn’t mean I was going to accept my own end sitting down. I’d never get to the portal in time, but simply watching it close felt too much like passive suicide. I had to at least pretend I could reach it, click my heels, make a wish, drop the silver branch, and be transported home sweet home. If I wasn’t going to die in my sleep, I’d be damned if I leaned back, tapping my foot to the ol’ ding-dong of doom. Sometimes delusional thinking has the nice side effect of letting you feel better about yourself. I pulled the spear from the ground. Essence whipped the air. The standing stones toppled as the ground undulated like viscous liquid. I staggered and stumbled across it, even crawled at one point when the earth welled up in my face. The fallen stones became elastic, oozing into each other in a sludge of moldering essence. The henge outside was a gray-green smear, no discernible features or landmarks. Even the Dead were gone, their body essence absorbed by the maelstrom.

Everything disintegrated, but the spear became more real than ever, a firm purity that drank in waves of released essence. I no longer felt pain from it, not in the physical sense. It radiated through me, a force of light, neither hot nor cold, but a thing of energy, eating up whatever passed for substance inside me. Even the dark mass in my head retreated, not disappearing but shrinking to a mote of nothingness. The forgotten pathways to my abilities unfolded like a lost flower, but the spear’s light rushed in, blocking my ability to manipulate essence as completely as the darkness had. At least I didn’t have a headache anymore.

The earth groaned. The ground heaved, raising me on a hill high enough to see the last portal standing. It glowed a molten blue-white, essence pulsing and flickering as the haze thickened. The groaning deepened to a rumble that rose in volume. A higher-pitched sound sliced through the rumbling, louder and more variable, oddly familiar, but elusive. With a rush of power, it pierced through all the other noise around me until there was no mistaking the distinct sound of an engine.

Crimson essence exploded from the portal. The whine of the engine broke free, no longer muffled, and a police motorcycle soared through the portal. It hurtled upward in an aura of flame, trailing a streak of burning essence. The bike came down fast, landing in front of me, its rear wheel skidding out sideways. Essence billowed over me.

“Don’t just stand there. Get the hell on!” Murdock shouted.

He spun the bike toward the portal. A wave propagated through the ground, and the hill became a gully. Murdock revved the throttle in the face of a growing peak of earth. I barely swung my leg behind him before he let out the clutch. The engine sang as the front tire lifted, and we tore up the hill. We rode the ground swell like a boat riding a wave. At the crest, we went airborne. The engine screamed as the tires spun free.

The portal twisted toward us, the lintel stone cracking and throwing fist-sized chunks of stone. The last of the circle collapsed, and the portal heaved over. Brilliant essence sprang from the spear and tore open the veil.

Images cascaded across my vision, buildings and trees and people, as the bike flew out of the fairy ring. We hit the ground, and the bike skidded from under us. Murdock’s body shield took the brunt of the initial impact, but I rolled free, falling down an embankment until a tree stopped me. I winced as I propped myself up to catch my breath. Several somethings felt broken inside. The air vibrated with essence, a steady, bass throb against my skin. The wind carried the rich, flinty odor of essence-fire. Flames burned everywhere, and the damaged landscape showed evidence of major exchanges of essence-fire. The great oaks at the top of the hill lay broken and uprooted. So many people on the Common earlier had set off my riot radar in my old security muscles. The destruction around me confirmed it hadn’t been wrong. The entire Common was in lockdown, empty of the crowd that had streamed to the fairy ring. The only people remaining were fey from the Guild or human police. Even at this distance, Keeva’s essence signature was identifiable up near the statehouse dome. Danann security agents flew in line formations along the surrounding streets, more than I had seen even in the Weird, which was saying something. They weren’t too circumspect about using essence either.

The fairy ring had changed. What had been a hazy funnel of essence had become a soaring column of light, a rich yellow shot with white. The Taint burned along its edges, green and black. Essence trembled the air, radiating from the column with an intense heat. The pillar of the war monument warped under the pressure, the bronze statue of a female warrior at the top leaning forward as though she was going to jump. Municipal emergency vehicles—police cars and motorcycles, EMT vans, fire trucks, and ambulances—raced from beneath its impending fall. Two communications vans had become too deformed to go anywhere.

Murdock picked himself up, looking no worse for wear. Of course, he had the body shield, not me.

“Thanks for the save,” I said.

He shook his head at me like we had done something amusing and embarrassing. “It’s not like I could just leave you with a bunch of dead people.”

I smiled, too tired to argue with him. “No, only a jerk would do that.”

He gestured at my hand. “Does that hurt?”

Essence radiated out of the spear, too powerful for a simple wooden shaft to maintain. I didn’t think the spear was even there anymore, not in any physical sense I could understand, white fire taking on the spear’s shape as it bled through from wherever the light was coming from. The essence coiled up my forearm, igniting the silver mesh like a tattoo of light. I couldn’t see or feel my hand. I didn’t know if I still had a hand. “Surprisingly, no, but it probably will as soon as I remember to feel.”

The ground shook. The column of light soared higher, its bottom edge expanding across the remains of the fairy ring. “Is that supposed to happen?” Murdock asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said.

If I wasn’t sure of my hand, the dark mass in my head decided to remind me it still existed. It shifted, probing into the essence of the spear, both essences pushing for dominance. I closed my eyes, encouraging the spear to feel my desire. It was not like ability control—I didn’t even think it was an ability, at least not one I understood. It didn’t hear me during Vize’s throw; otherwise, it would not have injured Ceridwen. No, the spear had its own agenda, responding to me only if it chose. Whatever it was doing, it caused a hell of a lot less pain than the dark mass, and I welcomed it.

“I failed,” a voice said.

Startled, Murdock and I moved together but saw no one. The air rippled and Vize appeared in a relaxed posture, his sword in his hand but down at his side. The nixie squatted on the ground chuckling, her hand clutching the hem of Vize’s tunic. Chalk up cloaking as another of her abilities. Murdock called up his shield. My sensing ability detected no metal on him at all. He had lost his gun somewhere.

I pointed my blade at Vize. “Drop the sword.”

“Do I have your word you won’t run me through?” he asked.

“You mean like you did Ceridwen?”

He held both hands up, the sword high in his right. “What needed doing is done. I did what was demanded.”

I gestured. “Drop it.”

He relaxed his knees, keeping his eyes on me as he crouched, lowering the sword parallel to the ground and placing it on the grass.

The nixie grabbed at it, and I focused my blade on her.

“No! No! Keep it, Berg! He has two teeth, and you have none,” she said in an old variant of German. Vize straightened, stroking the nixie’s matted hair. “Hush, Gretan. We have more to achieve here than our lives,” he replied in the same language. Loathing filled her eyes as she glared at me. She released the sword and clutched Vize’s leg again.

“The Wheel could have dropped me anywhere, Grey. It chose here,” Vize said.

“The fact that you want the spear might have something to do with that,” I said. He shrugged. “Perhaps. But I didn’t cause this, Grey. You did.”

“I have a different interpretation of who caused this, Vize,” I said. He gave me his back, watching the column in the sky grow wider. “Yes, well, I’m sure you will take great solace in that as we all die. Can you read the runes on the spear?”

The runes. They were there, faint, almost lost in the white essence in my hand. Way Seeker. Way Maker. Way Keeper. I pressed the spearhead against Vize’s neck. He didn’t flinch. “What do you know about them?”

He tilted his head to see me over his shoulder. “What they say. The holder of the spear seeks the Way of the Wheel, makes it and keeps it. And the spear seeks whoever the Wheel decides will make and keep the Ways. It seeks someone to execute the will of the Wheel, like it did when it came to me in TirNaNog.”

I exchanged glances with Murdock. I didn’t believe Vize. “The Wheel of the World wanted you to try to kill Ceridwen?”

Vize returned his gaze to the column. “I dreamed a figure in red would destroy everything I sought to achieve. I tried to eliminate that threat, and the spear seemed to will it. I tried three times and picked the wrong person each time. I misunderstand the metaphor. You are the red figure, Grey, you with the spear in your hand and a bloodstained face.”

“Then I’ve stopped you. I’ve won.”

He gestured at the sky. “Have you? Congratulations.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care. The spear left me, and the Wheel turns, Grey. Some say we do things that change Its direction. Some say we can’t. Doing nothing is the same as doing something. We always choose. In the end, the Wheel turns. I can accept the choices I’ve made. Can you?”

A sending fluttered through the air. The nixie grinned up at me, and Vize bowed his head. They vanished. I swung my sword through empty air. “Dammit.”

“What happened?” asked Murdock.

I shook my head. “I’m stupid, that’s what happened. He told the nixie to cloak them. I assumed he couldn’t do sendings because I couldn’t.” I stared up at the column. “I don’t believe that religious crap.”

Murdock frowned, looking down at his feet. “I do.”

“What?”

The column glowed as Murdock stared up at the sky. “I don’t know what that place was I just pulled you out of, Connor, but it was real. I don’t know what that means, but I do know I have to have more reason to wake up every day than to watch shit happen.”

“What the hell do you expect me to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I just don’t think we can do nothing,” he said.

The column was growing. If I didn’t believe anything else Vize said, he was right that whatever had happened in TirNaNog was spreading. “I have to go back up there,” I said. Murdock nodded grimly. “Don’t fall in. We don’t have another bike.”

I started up the hill.

“Connor,” Murdock called out. I looked back. He nodded once. I saluted him with my sword. I approached the damaged fairy ring, the spear vibrating in my hand. Scattered about the remains of the hill, gargoyles faced the column. Some slumped in the face of all the essence that had spilled over them. Their unintelligible, dry voices hummed in my head, several at once in tones that could only be described as both hope and sadness. I stepped over crushed mushrooms, their broken flesh pungent in the air. The spear pulsed, the runes visible, a dark burning blue. Essence streamed over me, my hair bristling with static charge. The column stretched above, pulling at me while the dark mass in my head clung with tenacious claws to my body essence. The column was a roiling mass, mostly white, with shades of indigo, amber, and emerald. It reminded me of standing in the veil. Maybe it was the veil, unleashed. A flash of pink spiraled down, and Joe landed smoothly on my shoulder.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Thought I bugged out, didn’t you?”

I jostled him as I shrugged. “Not really. I don’t always get what you’re up to.”

He chortled with an incredibly smug look on his face. “Somebody had to take Murdock the silver branch you threw away.”

“Oh. That explains it.” I hadn’t thought to ask.

“What are you doing?” Joe asked.

“Thinking about the consequences of nothing.”

“Ah, it’s come to that. I was afraid that thing would kill you eventually,” he said. So Joe. I wasn’t sure we were even having the same conversation. He was fascinated and repelled by the thing in my head, the thing he called the nothing. I shivered.

“That’s the choice,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing. That’s what you called it when I asked you how you found me when you teleported. You said you looked for the spot with the nothing in the middle of it.”

He craned his face around to look at me. “Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about?”

I answered him with a laugh. He really was crazy. Brilliant crazy, but still crazy. Whether Vize intended it or not, his final words made sense to me. If I did nothing, the column would keep growing. But if I used nothing, it might stop. Or it might turn everything to nothing. Between the known nothing and the unknown nothing, I took the unknown.

When I held out the spear, electrostatic sparks arced between it and the column. Power surged within, and my body shook as the dark mass flared in response. After fighting against it for three years, I embraced the darkness, filled my mind with the desire for it to grow. It responded like the spear, only painfully. Taint seeped down the spear toward my arm, no longer pulling the column wider, but spiraling down into a nexus that was forming between the light and the dark. My mind screamed as I pushed at the dark mass within. The nothingness of it seared through the mesh on my forearm. A dark streak oozed down my arm, a fierce course of nothing, a complete absence of essence. The light and the dark met where my hand clutched the spear. I pressed harder, the thing in my head crushing against the inside of my skull. The column wavered and paused its motion. I forced myself to continue, willing the essence through the conduit that formed within my arm. After a faint hush, the essence in the column brushed against my face, pulling back to form the veil. The black nothingness crept along the spear. It bucked in my hand, spitting the Taint out. The flow of essence from the column diminished, surged, then diminished again. I forced the darkness against it. It receded and returned. Each time I pushed, it gave back weaker until, finally, it changed course. It turned, folding in on itself, reversing its momentum. Joe yelled in my ear as he pounded my shoulder in excitement.

Elated, I opened my eyes. Darkness consumed my arm and permeated the spear. It reached for the column with a gnawing hunger. Above, the victory monument swayed violently and rebounded. Essence and darkness twisted it into a sinuous line of granite dancing in the air. With an ear-piercing screech, it pulled from its foundation, and the column of light sucked it in.

The column shrank. Enough. It was enough. I took a deep breath and willed the darkness to withdraw. It raged up my arm, swelling into a restless mass in my head again. It slammed against the back of my skull, and I went airborne. I landed on my back and gazed up at the sky. With a loud screech, the column contracted, stretched into the shape of a pillar, and collapsed. Joe floated above me, the rising sun glistening gold on the edges of his wings. He circled, a reflective expression on his face. “I think I need to change my loincloth,” he said. Things shifted in my body. More cracked ribs, probably a broken one or two; aching joints; a soreness in my lower back, probably was a damaged kidney; and every square inch of my skin felt abraded. My forearm throbbed with heat. Vapor wisped over the silver filigree. The metal darkened and sank into my arm, leaving behind a faint indigo ghost image of the swirling pattern. I flexed my fingers, my skin tight on a smooth pink hand.

At the bottom of the hill near Beacon Street, the inert body of a dream mare lay on its side, the light gone out of it. Next to it, unmoving Danann security agents stood in a circle facing outward. Between them, I caught glimpses of a red figure on the ground. My sense of elation fell. Only a Danann honor guard stood like that. Ceridwen hadn’t made it.

“They died coming through the veil,” Joe said softly in my ear.

Sadness and small guilt swept through me. If I had not been so cocky years ago, Vize would have been in custody, and Ceridwen would not have died. She had fought to protect a place she had no reason to protect, people she didn’t know, following orders from a High Queen who had betrayed her. At least she knew she had been duped. I would make sure everyone heard what she told me at the end. We might not have liked each other, but Ceridwen deserved to be honored. I walked down the hill to pay my respects.

Except for a lack of essence, the dream mare appeared asleep, crouched on her haunches with her long neck stretched out on the ground. One of her eyes was open, a milky white glaze. She had had some kind of essence reaction. The veil or the Taint, or probably both, killed her. As I came around the horse’s body, Ceridwen became visible. The honor guard kept a distance of several feet. Her body had been arranged on the ground to await transport. She lay on her back with her armor and helm on. Someone had placed a sword on her, blade down, and wrapped her hands on the hilt.

I stopped. Beyond the honor guard, more people gathered, Danann security agents, and several Guild personnel. A small group surrounded Briallen, her body rigid with emotion. She must have sensed me because she turned and held out her hand. My stomach lurched at the look on her face. I forced myself to move, denial warring with realization as I approached. I took Briallen’s hand and folded my arms around her. She wasn’t crying, but the grief radiating off her was palpable. I held her tightly against my chest as I stared down at Dylan’s dead body. 37

I leaned against the door of the room high in an isolated tower of the Guildhouse. The domed chamber had a complex truss design reminiscent of Renaissance architecture applied with druidic sensibilities. Thick oak beams crisscrossed the ceiling and reached to the floor. A Palladian window filled an entire wall with an expansive view to the east. The stained glass along the frame of the window was done in multicolored geometric shapes, some clean, clear colors, some rich opalescents. The center pane had a stunning image of an oak grove in bloom, complete with representations of mistletoe hanging among the leaves. Louis Comfort Tiffany had made the window himself under a direct commission of the Seelie Court. I couldn’t image what its value was.

I rolled the sphere in my hands, admiring the craftsmanship. The knotwork of the outer shell patterned with meticulous fine lines to resemble a flat, braided rope. The interior orb moved freely with a faint sound as I spun it with my finger. The precise incisions of ogham script on the orb appeared and disappeared beneath the knots as it moved, the light catching the various aphorisms and poetic triads. I used to think the words were sentimental, in a derisive sense. It’s funny how a charged emotional state can transform something maudlin into something profound.

Dylan’s body lay shrouded on the funeral bier draped in a ceremonial robe, the indigo and gold Celtic weave of its hem pooling on the floor. The brilliant white cloth was placed so that three vibrant yellow suns with flaming red borders rested on his chest. His face looked handsome in repose, no indication of what he might have felt when he died. Leaving a good-looking corpse fit his style. I waited in the dim predawn silence. A small fluctuation of essence in my chest prompted me to look up from the sphere. The window brightened as dawn arrived, the sun’s essence seeping into the sky in feathery touches. In the clear space above the grove image, the sun appeared in full, perched on the horizon. Light bathed the room, Dylan’s shroud a sudden field of colors reflected from the stained glass.

“It would serve you right if I walked out the door right now,” I said. I didn’t mean it. Not really. I moved to the bier and held the sphere over Dylan’s face. The sun warmed the sphere, and it awakened. I lowered it gently to his forehead as the inner orb began to spin on its own. Faster and faster it turned, glowing with a soft white light. Essence welled out of the spaces of the knotwork and overflowed onto my hand, spilling out warm and soothing, running down Dylan’s face. The shroud glowed as essence ran under it, the shape of his body burning under the cloth. The orb slowed as the light faded, then stopped. I stepped back.

The cocoon of light faded as Dylan’s body absorbed the phosphorescent glow. Shafts of sunlight crisscrossed the room, a hushed, reverent silence of light. The shroud moved, a subtle shift across the sun emblems.

Dylan gasped, lurching into a seated position. I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and lowered him back down. With his eyes focused on the ceiling, he took deep, ragged breaths, filling his body with air and essence. His breathing slowed, becoming controlled and normal. He closed his eyes. I crossed my arms and waited. He opened his eyes again and smiled. As angry as I was, I couldn’t help smiling back. It’s something uncontrollable after you think someone is dead.

“You’re an asshole,” I said.

His smiled broadened. He started laughing, which led to coughing, and he sat up to clear his throat. Eyes tearing from the effort, he shook his head, still smiling. “That’s not the welcome back I was expecting,”

he said.

I tossed him the sphere. “I am so angry with you right now. We thought you were dead. I thought you were dead. Then I get home and that thing is glowing in my study.”

He looked sheepish. “I was going to tell you, but things got complicated.”

I snorted. “Complicated? More complicated than ‘oh, by the way, hang on to my soul for me, I might need it?’ That’s crazy, Dylan. I could have thrown that thing out.”

He tilted his head down. “But you didn’t. I had faith you wouldn’t, or I would have come back for it.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re lucky I called Briallen instead of using it for a night-light.”

He spun the orb and held it straight out so I could read an ogham script: Life is a series of trust moments.

“Danu’s blood, as you like to say, Dyl. That’s some freakin’ trust.”

“And not misplaced, obviously,” he said.

“You have a very angry Auntie Bree, by the way.”

He nodded, working the stiffness out of his jaw. “She’ll understand. She never stays mad at me for long.”

“Lucky you.”

He stretched and yawned. “Wow. Being dead really knots up the muscles.”

“You should get as much rest as you can. The Guild is in an uproar. They’re going to be all over you about what happened.”

He grimaced. “Actually, Con, I don’t want anyone to know I’m alive.”

That took me off guard. “Why not?”

He gave me a sly look. “Believe it or not, I was planning on dying in a couple of weeks. This whole scenario saves me the trouble.”

Realization dawned. “The Black Ops job.”

“Yep. Dead’s always the perfect cover.”

“Please tell me I don’t have to keep that a secret from Briallen,” I said.

“Oh, no. She knew my plans. She’ll agree this is perfect. I mean, after she stops being mad at me for dying for real. Sort of,” he said.

I shook my head, laughing softly. “Gods, Dyl, we lead crazy-ass lives, you know that?”

He nodded, amused, too. “Yeah, we do. You should go before anyone else comes in. I don’t have much time to slip out of here.”

I held my hand out. “Good luck.” We shook. On impulse, I pulled him up and gave him a hug. “Don’t do that again.”

“I’ll try not to,” he said in my ear.

I left him sitting on his funeral bier, head tilted back to catch the warmth of the sun. Outside the room, Meryl waited on a bench in the corridor, empty except for two Danann agents standing honor guard. She looked curious as she hugged me. “You’re oddly happy for someone visiting a deceased friend.”

I wrapped her under my arm as we walked to the elevator. “I can’t believe what a jerk I used to be.”

“You could have just asked me,” she said.

“But I’ve gotten better, right?”

She rocked her head from side to side. “Well, let’s say things look promising.”

“But I’m much better, right?”

She looked at me from under a head of ice blue hair. “Buy me the lobster you owe me, and we’ll talk.”

* * * *

I huddled in my jacket against the late-night cold. Winter was coming on strong. I burped lobster as I crossed the Old Northern Avenue bridge into the Weird. The lone police car at the checkpoint had turned into three. After what happened on the Common, the city dropped all pretense of calling it a safety measure for everyone. The entire neighborhood was closed off. Jersey barriers were thrown down everywhere to control traffic in and out, not just on the bridges. It wasn’t martial law, but it was only a matter of time before they figured out the legal niceties.

I turned onto Sleeper Street. The thing I liked about my street was that it wasn’t filled with late-night partiers unless something was going on in my own building. The thing I didn’t like was that it wasn’t filled with late-night partiers and was creepy and desolate late at night. A flutter of essence washed over me, and my fragmented body shield kicked on. Someone casting a sensing spell. It wasn’t nasty or threatening. I stopped. If whoever had cast it didn’t know exactly where I lived, I didn’t need them to see me enter my building. I scanned the street. The warehouse across from my building had garage doors that spent a lot of time closed. At the far end of the block, someone lingered in the darkness of a recessed loading bay. I opened my sensing ability again to do my own scouting and got the surprise of the day. The essence wasn’t normal, as if anything in the Weird was normal. Between the seething anger of the people who lived down here and the damned Taint, the last thing we needed was the Dead of TirNaNog roaming around.

A tall, cloaked woman stepped into view under a street-light. Neither of us moved, but stared at each other for a long moment. She beckoned me closer. I joined her under the pool of light, her essence resonating with the feel of TirNaNog.

“You aren’t surprised to see me,” she said.

I shrugged. “You have no idea how much nothing surprises me anymore, Ceridwen.”

She laughed, low and comfortable. “I’m Dead.”

I nodded. “I can feel that. Why are you here?”

“The Way was closed,” she said.

“Ah. At least you said closed and not gone. I’m not sure if TirNaNog was destroyed.”

She nodded. “A fair concern. I choose not to believe it is gone. I think I would feel it. As I did not believe Faerie was gone when I lived, I do not believe TirNaNog is gone now that I’m Dead.”

“You Dead people are so optimistic.”

She laughed, an oddly pleasant sound under the circumstances. “Under different circumstances, I think I might have liked you, Druid macGrey.”

I nodded in courtesy. “I think we would have found something to talk about.”

She worried her hands together and removed a ring. “I want you to have this.”

I tilted it toward the light. It was an ornate gold band set with a large carnelian. “This isn’t necessary.”

She smiled, turned slowly on her heel, and walked away. “It will be. Tell no one I gave it to you. Remember we have a deal.”

She disappeared into the darkness. I tossed the ring in the air and caught it overhand. As I slipped it in my pocket, I hoped I didn’t regret words said in anger.

I backtracked to my apartment. The Dead who had made it into Boston through the veil found themselves in the same dilemma as Ceridwen. They couldn’t get back and had no place to go. Naturally, they were gravitating to the Weird.

A darkness was gathering around me. I felt it as palpably as I felt Ceridwen’s ring in my pocket. The dark mass in my head had an awareness or at least something very close to it. I didn’t know anymore if I was responding to it or it was responding to me. Like the spear. For one brief moment, it became a fierce white thing in my head, but it felt like something more, something important, yet mutable. I could believe it was a sliver of the Wheel, or at least Its instrument. And I, in turn, had been the spear’s instrument before it vanished in the collapse of the veil.

And so was Bergin Vize. Like I was bonded, so he had been for a brief time. All this time, I’d thought he had done something to destroy my abilities, but now it seemed that whatever happened had destroyed his, too. Whether he’d caused it or not was still a question, but the fact remained that our paths kept crossing. Whether that was his doing or the Wheel’s didn’t matter. It just was. And would be again. Especially now that he was loose in Boston.

I wake up every day thinking about the past, the things I remember and the things I don’t. Everything is there, just on the edge of my thoughts, things I’ve said or done. People I’ve loved or killed. Actions and events reach out to the present and change the future. All there, waiting their turn on the Wheel. Memories lurk in dark recesses. Old friends become new again. Dead things are reborn, marching forward out of the past into the future, standing tall and sure, refusing to lie down and rest, unfallen dead things that claim a piece of the Wheel for themselves, claim a piece of me. Where they lead, only the Wheel knows, and It reveals Itself with grudging hints, confusing metaphors, and inevitability. And the dark mass in my head complicated everything. It kept me out of the Guild. It kept me from remembering. I thought it was killing me. Which might be true, but what also was true was that without it, I would have died a few times recently. What happened in TirNaNog changed it. I felt it. It was time to try again to figure out what the hell it was. I had exhausted my resources. Neither Briallen, Nigel, nor Gillen Yor had been able to figure it out. Maybe it was time to start looking for answers in unlikely places.

Joe popped in, humming with a particularly proud and smug look on his face.

“I take it the mission was a success?” I asked.

He snapped his fingers. “It was a cinch.”

“And no one saw you?”

He thumped his chest. “No one sees a flit when he doesn’t want to be seen.”

I’d worked with Keeva long enough to fake her handwriting to the casual eye. I couldn’t wait to see what happened when her boyfriend showed up at the Guildhouse board of directors meeting tomorrow wearing the good-luck gift “she” had left in his office. The only downside was I wouldn’t see Ryan macGoren’s face when he realized he was proudly wearing an expensive gold torc that had been stolen from the New York Met.

I smirked. “Good man. I’d say this calls for a drink.”

He grinned back. “No port.”

It’s been a century since the peoples and magic of the Faerie realms mysteriously appeared in our world, an event known historically as Convergence. Humanity has learned to coexist with fairies and elves, but sometimes it seems Convergence has only brought new breeds of criminals—and new ways to fight them.

MEET LAURA

BLACKSTONE

In Washington, D.C., Laura Blackstone is the public relations director for the Fey Guild. Janice Crawford is a druid who helps out when the D.C. SWAT team needs magical backup. Mariel Tate is a lead investigator for an international intelligence agency. But what most people don’t know is that they are all the same woman.

Laura has been juggling different identities for years, using her ability to disguise herself with magical glamours to gather intelligence. Now, as “Laura” puts together publicity for a special fey exhibition at the National Archives, “Janice” is almost killed in a drug bust gone bad . . . and “Mariel” discovers a possible connection between the drug raid and threats against the opening of the exhibition. Laura’s different worlds are about to collide, and if she can’t keep it together, she’ll have more to worry about than having to retire an identity. She may lose her life.

Look for the first Laura Blackstone novel

SKIN DEEP by Mark Del Franco

Coming in August 2009 from Ace Books

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