The Shadows

by Chance, Megan

  “You see,” Patrick said.

  “No. No. It’s impossible. They’re just a gang—” A gang who fought with efficiency and precision, as if they’d trained for it their entire lives. They’d dispatched twice as many Black Hands in almost no time at all. They’d moved in concert. The ruthlessly deliberate plunge of a knife . . .

  “It’s possible. It’s real. We called them. They’re here!”

  I was caught in a dream. A nightmare. Where Derry carried a spear and the Morrigan howled, and . . . and I had known all this already. I had known all of it, in some place deep inside me. Finn’s Warriors. The Fianna.

  Diarmid Ua Duibhne. The way he’d touched me and I’d felt as if I knew him. A kiss that burned like lightning. Dreams where I ran my fingers down his bare chest. Diarmid and Grainne.

  “No.” I grabbed Patrick’s arm, knocking the box and the horn to the floor. “No, not him.”

  “There’s something else,” Patrick said. “I need to tell you all of it.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “You have to,” he said. “It concerns you, Grace. You have to hear it.”

  “How could it possibly concern me? I didn’t know what the horn was.”

  “Do you remember the story of Finn’s death? How he’s to be called back? The prophecy?”

  “I . . . yes, I suppose.” My grandmother’s voice came to me as she told the story like a song: lilting, rhythmic.

  “Tell me what you know of it.”

  I forced myself to think. “The Fianna had grown arrogant. They were demanding tributes and taking whatever they wanted. Fighting for whoever paid them most. The High King grew angry and warred against them. When Finn died, the Druids put a geis on them. If they were called back, a priestess had to decide if their fight was worthy. If it was not, they would fail and die. But if it was, she could give them the power to win and live again.” I looked up at Patrick expectantly. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. That’s right. They can’t win without the veleda.”

  “The veleda.” I laughed a little. “You realize how silly this sounds, don’t you?”

  “Our fight is a worthy one, don’t you agree? Saving Ireland?”

  Weariness swept me. How could I believe any of this? “Yes. So . . . Derry—Diarmid—asked me about a rowan wand. I suppose you need it to find this veleda.”

  “No, Grace. We’ve already found her. She’s you. You’re the veleda.”

  “What?”

  He gestured to the horn. “The horn was yours. It was only because you’d blooded it that we could call them. The veleda sees; she weighs; she chooses. You’ve already seen all this, Grace. You know you have. Your nightmares—”

  “Only nightmares,” I said uncertainly.

  “More than that. The ogham stick burned you.”

  “It was in the sun.”

  “No.” Now Patrick sounded strangely sad. “Their Druid did a divination. You’re the veleda. There’s no doubt.”

  Their Druid. Cannel. Derry taking me to the tenement. Lies and evasions. His questions, and Finn’s. “Touch her.” The terrible glowing and the pain and . . . I sank back. “That can’t be.”

  But it was, and I knew it. It explained everything. Everything.

  “You’re the one who must decide.”

  “What is there to decide? What am I to say? Your fight is worthy, carry on?”

  His sadness and misery were so palpable I couldn’t look away. “There’s more to it than that. The veleda must give up her power to the side she chooses. There’s a ritual. I don’t know what it is yet, and I hope to find another way. I know there must be. We’ll find it, I promise.”

  “Another way? Why should there be? Whatever power I have—” And here I laughed, because obviously the veleda’s power had faded over the years. “My only power is the ability to have terrible nightmares. I hereby give it up. It’s yours. Take it!”

  “Grace, the veleda has to die.”

  The words were so stark I couldn’t understand them.

  “There must be a sacrifice,” he said.

  I leaped from the chair. “Patrick, this is all insane. Don’t you see it? I’m no veleda. I can’t even . . . I don’t have any power over my own life, and now you’re saying I have to die?”

  He caught me, holding me close; I struggled against him. I was no one, just an ordinary girl who liked to read poetry and tried to take care of her family. I was no veleda, and this was all just another terrible dream. I pinched myself, willing myself to wake up—Wake up, wake up—but I was still there, still being held in Patrick’s arms while he whispered, “Don’t worry; I won’t let you die. Do you think I want this? I love you, Grace. I love you. I won’t let you die.”

  “Then you could end this now, couldn’t you? Take it all back. Send them off. You’ll find another way to save Ireland. You and the Brotherhood—”

  “I would if I could. I didn’t know, Grace. I didn’t know. And now . . . now it’s all been made worse.”

  “How could it be worse?”

  His arms dropped. He stepped away. “We didn’t know the Fianna had come. We thought the call had failed. And we were desperate. We had something else. One more thing to try. We had the ogham stick.”

  Darkness and thunder, blood and fire. The eye of one who slays. As one is bid, so come the rest. The rowan wand and virtue gone. A blood price paid. Now come the Children of Domnu.

  The Children of Domnu.

  Balor of the one venomous eye, who destroyed all he looked upon. Bres, the half Fomori king who’d enslaved the Irish and ravaged the land. Miogach, the son of Lochlann, who’d killed Finn’s son. Lot with the bloated lips in her breasts and four eyes in her back.

  And now I knew it was all real. Everything he said. It was real.

  “You called the Fomori?” I whispered.

  “We’ve made a bargain with them. Their help for a share of the power. They’ve agreed. They’re coming to help us.”

  “They’re coming.” Grandma’s words.

  “Patrick, no!”

  “I never would have done it if I’d known the Fianna were here! How was I to know they’d been brought to some tenement? The heroes of Ireland? Why should they have awakened there? What was the reason?”

  “But—”

  “The Fomori were our only hope, Grace.” His eyes were beseeching. “They’ll be here today. And they’ll find a way, another spell. Something so you don’t have to die.”

  “And the Fianna? Have they agreed to help you too?”

  Patrick glanced away. “They won’t ally with the Fomori. Now the fight is between us and the Fianna. We have to defeat them before we can help Ireland. And if we don’t—if we can’t, how will we save Ireland then?”

  “So I have to choose between you? Patrick, do you know what you’ve done?”

  “What if I told you the Fomori aren’t as the legends say? The Fianna had reason to paint the Fomori as evil. It made them look stronger. But I’ve met Daire Donn. He’s a good man who loves Ireland. And the Fianna have forgotten none of their arrogance. They’ve forced this. They could fight with us, but they won’t. You’ve met him. Diarmid.” He spoke the name like a curse. “Do you think him so noble?”

  How easily he’d killed that Black Hand. And how frightened the gang boys in the street had been of him.

  “He used the lovespot on Lucy. Deliberately. So he could get close to me.”

  The lovespot. I’d forgotten that. The lovespot.

  And suddenly I knew why I’d dreamed of touching him, why I’d been so hungry for his kiss. He’d used the lovespot on me. It explained why I couldn’t get him out of my head when I wanted Patrick there instead. Derry had bespelled me.

  I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or furious.

  “He’s the one who discovered you are the veleda, Grace. And he’s the one who means to kill you.”

  “Kill me . . .?”

  “He has to. Another geis was laid—he’s the one who
must take your life at the sacrifice on Samhain. He means to seduce you into choosing them, and then once you do, he’ll kill you.”

  “N-no. No, that can’t be true.” But it made sense. All of it.

  “It is true. I promise it. He was here. He told me everything. Everything he’s said to you, everything he’s done—it’s all been in service to the prophecy.”

  It was all a trick. A lie.

  “I want to save you. But he doesn’t. He’ll kill you because he has to, Grace, but before that, he’ll do what he must to convince you to choose the Fianna.”

  It was all a plan to kill me.

  “I’ve told him to stay away from you,” Patrick said. “But there’s too much at stake. I don’t trust him. So I want you to stay here, where I can protect you.”

  “I can’t stay here. What will people say? And my mother . . . my grandmother . . .”

  “Marry me,” Patrick said.

  Everything I’d waited for. Everything I’d wanted. I just stared at him.

  “I love you. And he’ll try to take you from me. But I’ll fix all of this, and you’ll choose the Brotherhood and me, and we’ll beat the Fianna. We’ll be married. You’ll live and you’ll be my wife and then we can set Ireland free. Please, Grace. Please. Tell me you will.”

  I thought of my mother’s anxious waiting. The doctor’s coming lawsuit and my grandmother’s growing insanity and Aidan sauntering off in search of laudanum and a card game. I thought of being pressed against the wall of my own house, Derry’s heart beating against mine, and the pure thrill of his kiss.

  “He means to seduce you . . . and he’ll kill you.”

  Patrick wanted to save me. He would save my family.

  But could he really promise these things? Could he change the world?

  I needed to know more. About the lovespot and the geis. About Diarmid and Grainne and the veleda and my dreams. I needed to understand.

  Suddenly the things my grandmother had said made sense: “They are coming.” “That boy.” She’d known what was in my dreams. It wasn’t just madness I’d seen in her eyes, but something else, something more—

  The truth.

  My grandmother knew the truth.

  And it was time I learned it too.

  THIRTY

  Grace

  I saw the hope and fear in Patrick’s eyes when I said, “I’ve a great deal to think about. I need to talk to my mother—”

  “She’ll tell you marrying me is the best thing.”

  “—and my grandmother.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “She’s the one who told me all the stories, Patrick. She knew details I’ve never heard anyone else tell. And I think she might know something about the veleda too. Perhaps she might know a way—”

  “To save you?” If I had ever doubted Patrick’s love for me, his look now told me it was true and real.

  “I hope so.”

  “Then you must go to her. But only her, Grace. And your mother. And then you must come right back here. I’ll have Leonard drive you there. Don’t go anywhere without him. Promise me.”

  “Yes, I—”

  “Right there and right back. I’ll tell Leonard to watch for Diarmid. If you see him”—his voice broke—“don’t look at him, for God’s sake. It would only take a moment.”

  “I won’t.” How could I say to him that it was already too late for that?

  Together we went out of the study. We were nearly to the front door when Mrs. Devlin came rushing out of the parlor. “You aren’t going so soon, Grace? What about tea?”

  Patrick said, “Not now, Mama. We’ll have it later. Grace will be right back.”

  Mrs. Devlin looked distraught. I didn’t think she’d even heard him. “Oh, Grace, Lucy would so love to see you.”

  Which was never true, but Lucy had been sobbing when I’d arrived. Your fault. My guilt barreled back. “Perhaps just a moment—”

  “There’s no time,” Patrick said roughly.

  But Mrs. Devlin had seen my hesitation. “Just have a few words with her. Just to reassure her that the world isn’t falling apart.”

  I couldn’t tell her that it was.

  “All right,” I agreed with a pleading look at Patrick, and he let me go.

  “Don’t take too long, Grace.”

  Lucy was on the settee in the parlor, as bedraggled as I’d ever seen her. Her eyes and her nose were red from weeping. Her hair was falling from its pins. There were no gay flowers at her décolletage, none of her usual jewelry.

  “He was here,” she said as I came in. “He was here yesterday, and he ran out without stopping to say good-bye. I don’t know what’s wrong! I haven’t seen him in forever, and I’ve sent notes. . . .”

  I sat down beside her. “Patrick dismissed him. He can’t have received them.”

  “I know. But this was before that. Days ago.”

  “It’s not as if you could have had him, Lucy. He’s a gang boy.” My words were tougher than I meant them to be.

  Her chin jerked up; her eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”

  “Patrick told me.”

  “Why was he talking to you about Derry?”

  “He was worried about you.”

  She sighed and dabbed at her eyes with an already sodden handkerchief. “I don’t care what Derry is. I love him. I think I’ll love him forever. I want him. When he kissed me . . . I’ve never felt that way. Oh, I know you can’t understand. Patrick’s far too much a gentleman to kiss you that way.”

  Again, I felt the rough brick at my back. The way the world had seemed to open with his kiss and devour me.

  The lovespot. It’s all a lie.

  I said, “If he really does love you, Lucy, he’ll come for you. If he doesn’t, it’s better that he’s gone.”

  She went into fresh peals of sobbing. “It’s not b-better.”

  I grabbed her hand, threading my fingers through hers, leaning close to say in a low voice, “You think you can like that life, but you won’t. You’ll be dodging bill collectors and never have enough to eat. You’d hate where he lives now: in a tenement with blood on the walls—”

  “You know where he lives?”

  “It’s . . . it’s what I imagine.”

  Lucy pulled her hand from mine. “I see.”

  “All you have to do is read the papers to know what that life is like there.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Grace, who reads the newspaper? And Derry’s said nothing of it.”

  “Why would he? He’s after a rich girl. Have you thought he might only want your money?”

  “He loves me,” she insisted.

  I wanted to slap her into sense. I wanted to commiserate, to say I know how you feel. I dream of him.

  Instead, I said, “He’s a handsome boy, Lucy, but there are a hundred handsome boys in New York City. You’ll find another one; I know it.”

  “I don’t want another one. I want him.”

  “Grace,” Patrick said from the doorway. “There really is so very little time.”

  I nodded and rose, saying to Lucy, “I must go.”

  She glanced toward the doorway and made a face. “Yes, by all means go with the man you love while I sit here and die of a broken heart.”

  It was all I could do not to tell her that her love for him was only a spell that would wear off eventually—I hoped—and that he had bewitched the both of us but that I was the one who might die from it.

  I had to talk to Grandma. I told Lucy I would see her later and left her to sniff into her handkerchief. Mrs. Devlin gave me a grateful smile. “Thank you so much, my dear. I’m certain she’ll feel better now.”

  Patrick took me to the carriage. When I was seated, he leaned in. “I should go with you.”

  “I need to do this alone.”

  “You’ll come back? You promise you will?”

  “You can tell Leonard to drag me back if I hesitate.”

  Patrick’s grin was small. “If it comes to that,
I will. Grace, you’ll give me an answer when you return? To my proposal?”

  I nodded.

  He let me go with a sad and anxious smile, one I couldn’t get out of my head as the carriage started off.

  When we arrived at my house, Leonard followed me up the stoop with an apologetic “He told me to stand here and wait, miss.”

  There was no point in arguing with him. In fact, it was reassuring to know he was there.

  The house was dim and sweltering. Mama was nowhere to be seen. I headed for the stairs, then stopped when I heard a sound behind me, a footstep. I turned.

  Derry was standing at the kitchen door.

  My heart leaped and then fell, a plunging, sickening drop, and I was against that brick wall again, looking at the glow flaming to life in his eyes before he bent to kiss me.

  No. No! He wasn’t Derry. He was Diarmid. Everything he’d said and done was a lie. He means to kill you on Samhain.

  I turned and ran for the stairs.

  He caught up with me before I made the first step. “Grace. Listen to me. That’s all I ask.”

  That deep voice was as alluring as ever. “Get away from me.”

  “You’ve spoken to Devlin.”

  “He’s told me everything.”

  We both stilled at a noise from upstairs. Derry touched my arm, which brought a little thrill I tried not to feel. “I need to speak with you, lass. Somewhere private.”

  “You’re mad if you think I’ll go anywhere alone with you again.”

  “Just to the kitchen,” he said. “There are a hundred weapons there you could use if you want. You could beat me to death with a wooden spoon.”

  “Don’t tempt me. I’d like nothing more than to bruise your pretty face.”

  “All right. If that’s what it takes to get you to talk to me.” He held out his hand. “You’ve never let me explain.”

  “I gave you plenty of opportunities to explain.”

  He sighed. “’Tis complicated.”

  “Try uncomplicating it.”

  “I will. I will. Just . . . not here.”

  I needed to know the truth, but I didn’t want to be alone with him. It’s a lie. A spell. Remember it.

  “Very well,” I said.

  He gave me a grateful look, those deep-blue, enchanting eyes—which you can barely see through his hair, you idiot. I turned, leading the way to the kitchen.