“So is this go-between guy a Fae, or a human? Or... a demon?”
“Human,” said Leonides. “Apparently the Fae keep some of the locals bound to them, and use them to act as lookouts and to help control what tourists see around the area. But Nigellus managed to get to this particular lookout somehow, and layered his own influence across the Fae’s.”
A frown drew my brows together. “So... how does that square with the ‘no interference in the human realm’ thing, exactly?”
Leonides’ lips twisted down. “It doesn’t.”
I finally put words to something that had been bothering me for a while now. “Is it just me, or does Nigellus seem genuinely freaked out by these missing children?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not like I know him at all. But he seems like a pretty inscrutable dude in the normal course of things, and he’s really been pounding this thing home to us again and again.”
“It’s not just you,” Leonides admitted. “Dangling carrot or no, believe me when I say, I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” He turned onto what looked like a private drive, past stone pillars with wrought iron gates standing open between them. “This is the place.”
A wooden sign proclaimed the property to be ‘Wensington Cottage,’ though the building seemed way too huge to fit the cutesy name. It had a large circle drive in front with a rustic stone fountain sitting in the middle, and painstakingly maintained hedges flanking the main entrance on both sides. Only one other car sat in the driveway—a stubby little two-seater that looked more like a toy to me than a real automobile.
“This place looks even older than you are,” I joked weakly, taking in the ancient stone and woodwork.
“This place probably predates the voyage of the Mayflower,” Leonides shot back. “At least on the outside. With what they’re charging per night, I sincerely hope the inside has been updated a bit more recently than that.”
He parked the rented Audi and got out. I followed, grabbing my bag from the trunk. We headed inside, the carved wooden door creaking on its hinges. The interior had definitely seen some TLC in the time since the pilgrims had set sail for Plymouth. It was pleasant and modern, with white paint and elegant furniture.
A bell sat on the little table in the entryway. Leonides rang it, and a matronly woman wearing an apron over her sober pantsuit bustled in a few moments later.
“Hello, my dears,” she greeted in a pronounced Irish accent. “Come in, come in! I was hoping you’d arrive in time for dinner. Let me show you where you can put your things.”
“Thank you,” said Leonides. “Is Cillian here? I assume that’s his car outside. Also, there should be a package waiting for me.”
“Yes to both,” the woman replied, fingering a metal crucifix around her neck. “Mr. Gallagher arrived about an hour ago. Once I’ve shown you to your rooms, I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Something about her nervous reaction prickled at me, but I kept my mouth shut and followed our hostess to a pair of rooms off the upstairs landing. They were clean and cozy, with a spectacular view across the countryside, overlooking a valley divided into irregular geometric shapes by low stone fences. I could make out cattle grazing in the distance beneath the fading light of evening.
“Breakfast is served between seven and nine,” said the woman. “The password for the internet is printed in the little booklet on the bedside table, but I’m afraid it’s slow as molasses out here. The lavatory is at the end of the hall. I’ll let you both get freshened up—come down to the dining room whenever you’re ready.”
“Thank you,” I said, aware that I hadn’t eaten anything except airline peanuts since three o’clock in the morning in Atlantic City, when I’d had some toast and eggs provided by Edward. My stomach was still in lunch mode rather than supper mode thanks to jetlag, but food was food.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on dinner, myself,” Leonides told her. “I already grabbed a bite at the airport.”
Instantly, I flashed back to his brief disappearance to the restrooms after we arrived, and barely managed to stifle an undignified choking noise. Only when the owner finished clucking around us and headed off to put food on the table did I turn to him in disbelief.
“You grabbed a bite at the airport?” I demanded. “Oh, my god. If I ever hear you complaining about bad vampire jokes again...”
“What else would you like me to call it?” he asked in a sour tone.
A niggling worry nagged at the edges of my thoughts. “He’s... okay though, right? Your fast food?”
I still found it impressive, the way he could convey the sense of rolling his eyes without actually breaking expression.
“No, Vonnie,” he said. “I murdered an innocent man in an airport bathroom and left him lying there exsanguinated, with twin puncture wounds on his neck for the Irish Gardí to find.”
I threw up my hands. “Sorry! Sorry, just checking.”
He scowled at me.
“I’ll just go get washed up for dinner,” I said quickly, before pausing. “Only... did something about our hostess seem a bit, I dunno—off, to you, just now? When she was talking about this Gallagher guy.”
“Possibly,” he allowed. “I’m withholding judgment until we meet him ourselves. You never know—he could just be a creepy asshole.”
NINETEEN
CILLIAN GALLAGHER was definitely a creepy asshole. Physically, he was thin to the point of being emaciated, with nervous fingers and blue eyes that never seemed to stay fixed in one direction for more than a second at a time. He also swung repeatedly back and forth from being smarmy to being edgy and nervous.
His jumpiness made me feel jumpy before five minutes had passed. Whether it was a matter of specifically avoiding him or just her normal way of doing things, Mrs. O’Murtagh, our hostess, did not join us for the meal. I... couldn’t really blame her. The guy reminded me of the meth addict who’d lived a few doors down from my apartment for a couple of months before she got evicted.
Dinner was an awkward affair. I ate the hearty food that was just different enough from what I was used to that it drove home how far away I was from everything I’d ever known. Leonides pretended to nurse a snifter of brandy. Cillian poked and prodded at his food, dissecting it. He seemed to take forever to chew and swallow each tiny mouthful.
As soon as he could do so decently, Leonides caught Mrs. O’Murtagh’s attention when she slipped in to check if they needed anything. I saw the vampiric glow emanating from his eyes an instant before my pendant warmed against my chest.
“We’d like to talk privately in the sitting room,” he told her, holding her in place with an unblinking gaze. “You should go to your room and stay there for an hour.”
The woman’s hand flew to her crucifix, her eyes going wide for a moment before narrowing in irritation. The necklace was an odd color, I noticed—dark, like aged iron.
“I’ll have none of that nonsense under my roof, night creature,” she snapped. “I’ve run this house, less than a kilometer from the Hill of Tara, ever since me mam passed thirty years ago and left it to me. You think I don’t recognize the Fae-touched and their ilk? If you want me to leave, tell me straight and don’t try to bend my mind.”
She has magic, I realized. The necklace was a focusing object, just like Mabel’s pendant.
Leonides barely stumbled. The glow left his eyes as though it had never been there. “My apologies,” he said. “We need to speak of some things, and it would be better if you didn’t hear. Could we have some privacy, please?”
She continued to watch him warily for a moment before turning to me.
“Depends,” she said. “Are you here of your own free will, child?”
I nodded, tugging my own necklace out of my sweater and showing it to her. “I am. My son was taken. I’m trying to find him.”
Her expression softened.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She tipped her chin toward Cillian with a sharp jerk. “Watch out for that one, though. He’s pulled in t
wo directions, and only hanging together in the middle by a thread.”
I shivered and nodded, though Cillian didn’t even look up from the pea he was chasing around his plate half-heartedly.
“Thank you,” I told her.
Afterward, we did, in fact, retire to the sitting room to talk. It was every bit as awkward as dinner had been.
“Someone... told me you wanted to speak to the Court,” Cillian said nervously.
I wondered how much of his twitchiness was a result of a tug-of-war in his brain between Fae influence and Nigellus’ influence. The Fae-controlled cops I’d seen in St. Louis had been vacant, rather than edgy—single-mindedly focused on whatever task they’d been given, with no room for much of anything else. To have a second force pulling you in the opposite direction of what you’d already been ordered to do...
Yeah. Maybe Cillian’s jumpiness was kind of understandable after all.
“That’s right,” Leonides agreed. “We need to discuss something with the Seelie leaders.”
“They won’t agree to see you,” Cillian said immediately.
But Guthrie only shook his head. “They will, when you tell them who I am.”
Cillian frowned. “Who are you?”
“I’m the vampire who removed a demon from the chessboard. Ask whoever you speak with whether anyone has heard news about the demon Myrial in the past six months.”
Cillian’s ever-shifting eyes flickered to me before darting away. “What about her?”
“She’s the most powerful human practitioner of magic to be seen on Earth in the last five hundred years,” he said smoothly.
Which... couldn’t possibly be right... but when Leonides flickered an eyebrow at me, I gamely glanced around until I saw a glass vase of flowers on a side table. Playing it up as much as I could, I waved a careless hand in the direction of the bouquet and boiled all the water out of the vase in a cloud of steam. The flowers wilted in the resulting heat, making me feel immediately guilty.
“And you don’t even want to know what she can do with fire,” Leonides added, as I struggled valiantly not to react.
Cillian still appeared uncertain, though. “Humans can’t go through the gate. Not unless they’re babies. You’ll break her mind in no time.”
But Leonides only leaned back in his chair, casual as a relaxed panther sunning itself. “Not her. She’s a modern-day druid. Druids and Fae were allies, once upon a time. She’s not like other humans—Dhuinne won’t touch her.”
He was good at bluffing; I had to give him that. Not that it was a surprise, really. God knew I’d never been able to read him properly.
Our go-between picked at a loose thread on his sleeve, not looking at either of us. “I’ll tell them what you said,” he muttered.
“Good,” Leonides replied. “How soon until we hear back with their decision?”
“Tomorrow, maybe.”
My brain couldn’t seem to decide whether to freak out over the idea that we might be doing this within the next twenty-four hours, or the idea that I had the next twenty-four hours to kill before anything exciting happened. Helpfully, it ended up deciding to freak out over both things at once.
“The sooner, the better,” I managed.
“I’ll leave now,” Cillian said. “You still shouldn’t go, though. If they agree, I mean. Let the vampire do it.”
I didn’t reply.
When Cillian left, it felt like the atmosphere in the room settled. I took a deep breath and let it out, trying to let some of the tension in my body flow out at the same time. The weight of Leonides’ gaze on me was unmistakable.
“Why aren’t you fighting this harder?” I asked him. “Everyone except Nigellus and maybe Edward seems to think I’m signing up for a one-way ticket to the loony bin. I expected to have to fight you tooth and nail about it.”
He was quiet for a moment, as though considering his words.
“Because I’ll have more control over the situation if you’re with me, than if you go off half-cocked on your own,” he said eventually. “This way, I can at least make an attempt to be prepared, in case the situation goes tits-up.”
I digested that. “Makes sense,” I allowed. “Is the package you mentioned earlier part of those preparations?”
“Partly,” he said. “Also some simple logistics stuff—local prepaid burner phones, cash in Euros, that kind of thing.”
“You’ve had a lot of practice at this, haven’t you?” I asked.
“What, you mean bluffing my way into a parallel realm inhabited by ancient beings with a grudge against vampires, that also happens to drive humans mad? Not really, no. International travel on short notice? Yes.”
I huffed out a disgusted breath. “Whereas I feel like the world’s least prepared international and inter-dimensional traveler.”
He gestured toward the stairs leading up to our rooms. “Come on. We should go up now, and try to sleep. That way you can at least be a well-rested unprepared inter-dimensional traveler.”
The clock on the mantel claimed it was almost nine o’clock, local time. Unfortunately, my body was convinced it was still mid-afternoon. I was, however, more than a little tired and headachy, so maybe sleep wouldn’t be a complete non-starter.
“Yes, okay,” I agreed, levering myself out of the comfortable leather chair I’d been sitting in, and preceding him up the stairs. When we reached his room, though, I paused, remembering something kind of important. “Erm... this is a bit awkward, but can I have some more of your blood?”
He froze with his hand on the door. “Oh. Right. There’s, uh, no wine to mix it with.”
I took a breath. “Not sure how much that was really helping anyway. And... well... I wouldn’t even ask, but—”
“No. Come on in,” he said. “Let me just find something to put it in.”
Evidently, I wasn’t the only one with reservations about getting a drink straight from the keg, as it were. I coughed uncomfortably and sidled into the room, which was set up as a mirror image of mine. A quick look around the place didn’t turn up any handy cups or glasses.
“Stay here a minute,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
I did, hovering uncomfortably near the door—aware that there really wasn’t a social framework that could make drinking your former boss’s blood not be weird. As promised, he was back in almost no time, holding a plastic cup with a couple inches of red liquid in the bottom.
“There are cups in the bathroom,” he explained, holding it out to me with a level of awkwardness approaching my own.
I took it. “Just so you didn’t splatter blood in the sink. That could be a bit hard to explain if there are any other guests using it.”
“There won’t be,” he said, “since I rented out the entire place for the week so we’d have privacy.”
It was just as well I hadn’t started chugging yet, since doing a spit-take while swallowing vampire blood wasn’t high on my bucket list of things to do before I die.
“Jesus tap-dancing Christ. What is it even like to be that fucking rich?” The words flew out before my brain-to-mouth filter could catch them. Oops.
“Solves some problems; creates others,” he replied without hesitation. “Generally more of the former than the latter.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said.
And... it wasn’t like the fact that Leonides was loaded should really hit me like this anymore. He’d just sold an eight-story mixed-use building as a jab at a guy who was pissing him off. But there were plenty of people who had businesses and real estate and fast cars and nice apartments, but were also mortgaged to the eyeballs. Whereas Leonides genuinely appeared to have an endless supply of actual money—pockets deep enough that things like international plane tickets and renting an entire bed and breakfast for a week to ensure he’d have the place to himself simply didn’t register as a big deal.
He left me standing there stupidly, holding a plastic tumbler of blood in one hand, while he moved to the generously sized c
ardboard box resting in the corner of the room. I held my breath and tipped the cup to my lips, trying to pretend that I was one of those food tourism hosts on TV, downing an exotic and vaguely disgusting concoction from some nomadic tribe in Mongolia without gagging, so I wouldn’t offend my host.
I’d been wrong about the wine not helping. It really was worse trying to drink blood on its own.
I had to swallow a couple of times as my stomach protested, willing everything to stay down. Leonides straightened from his package, giving me a wary look.
“All right over there?” he asked.
I swallowed one more time. “Yeah, terrific, never better.”
He looked unconvinced, probably because I didn’t sound very convincing. I glanced at the cup, a film of red still clinging sickeningly to the side where I’d tipped it up to chug it.
“And this really tastes like food to you now?” I asked. “Human blood, I mean?”
“It’s life,” he said. “Life from other people, because I no longer have any of my own. That’s what Rans did to me, because he couldn’t bear to let me go. It’s what I did to Zorah, for the same reason.”
I’m glad, I thought. On both counts.
My throat tightened around the unspoken words. I cleared it, gesturing to the box and changing the subject gracelessly. “So, um, did you get everything you needed?”
He didn’t comment on the conversational about-face. “Most of it. We’ll need to pick up enough food and water to keep you supplied for a few days. I’m afraid it will have to be camping rations—jerky, nuts, dried fruit, that kind of thing. Too bulky to lug around, otherwise. As it is, the bottled water on its own will take up a fair amount of space and weight.”
Again, I was struck by the fact that this was actually happening—becoming a real thing that we really had to plan for. I was leaving Earth, and traveling to the magical faerie realm. Assuming, of course, that Cillian came back with the answer we wanted to hear tomorrow.
It still felt like an elaborate joke someone was playing on me.
“That’s fine,” I assured him. “I expect I’ll have other things to worry about besides the quality of the cuisine.”
Vampire Bound: Book Two Page 14
