Bat twisted. Dub and Ailis stood there, Ailis with a grin and a pillow clutched in her arms, Dub with a frown and two bags. Bat had teased once that she was beginning to understand his frowns. This one wasn’t angry. It was more… speculative.
Ailis wagged her brows. “So, am I getting yer room all to myself tonight? I was afraid I’d have to share but doesn’t look like I’m the one to be doing the sharing.”
Bat pushed away from Shar. “No.” This was the conversation she wasn’t yet ready to have, about thoughts and urges she had barely acknowledged even to herself. She was in the midst of redefining herself. She would not take a miss-step with these men and risk becoming like the woman they hunted, concerned with only her own wants and desires. “No, Ailis, I am afraid you will need to share with me this night. I will try not to hog the covers.” She grinned, in part at Ailis’s overly disappointed expression but also at the image conjured, of a pig swathed in blankets, rolling on the floor.
Dub’s eyes narrowed but he didn’t speak, and moments later he and Ailis headed up the narrow stairs to the level above.
Shar nudged her. “I apologize, goddess. I would not want to make unwelcome advances.” The flush was back on his cheeks, and his tone held disappointment and a little shame.
She laid a hand on his muscled forearm. “It is my place to apologize in this. I should not have teased. Not after that kiss with your brother.” And especially after my own protests against upsetting the balance of your lives.
“Is it Dub ya want then?” He looked down at the pint he’d just pulled, staring as though the dark liquid would hold the answers of the stars above. Or the answers to her.
It was still not a time to discuss such things. “Ask me again after we have caught Grainne and recovered the blade.” She looked up at him, and her chest tightened. Had she just made a mess of things? Done the exact thing she’d promised herself she would not?
He pulled in a breath, stretching the sweater so it outlined the muscled bulk of his chest, then released it in a rushed exhalation. He nodded. “I want you. I will not hide that. I want to pull you in, to sink into you and revel in the sheer beauty of your form and your very being. The gods of Egypt must be fools to have let you go, to have let you become so diminished.” The gaze of his lapis eye captured her. “And I still want you here, to stay with us. We will care for you as they never did. But, you are also correct, now is not the time to speak of such things. We cannot be distracted in the coming days, and that is what my brothers and I will be if we go down this path. I will speak with them.”
Bat looked down. “Thank you.” Then she peeked up at him. “Is it true ‘thank you’ is considered an insult? I read it in my guide, and I don’t want to keep insulting everyone, but it slips out sometimes.”
Shar’s chest shook with suppressed laughter. “It is not an insult,” he finally managed. “But it does imply a debt. If you keep thanking everyone, you’ll be owing more favors than you can grant.”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh.” Her mind scrambled, trying to remember everyone she’d said “thank you” to since she’d arrived. Was it for all Irish or just the immortals? If it was for all Irish, she most likely owed that first bus driver the equivalent of a first-born.
“Eh, ya should be safe enough in general, but I wouldn’t go making any promises to the sluagh. They’ve stuck to the old ways, and would demand blood, or worse, most likely.” With a lift of his shoulders, he stretched his neck. “Now, back to what I wanted to teach you in the first place.” He waved at the tap. “You try.”
She picked up a pint glass. “Will you tell me of the different immortals? I will admit there are so many names thrown out, I am having trouble keeping track of them.”
And in this way, her education of this land continued, as she practiced the pulling of a pint and learned the intricacies of Irish immortals.
It was almost as confusing as the hierarchy of the Egyptian deities. There were Fir Bolg and sluagh, who were almost the same thing, except Fir Bolg could also simply mean the ancient humans who had lived on the green isle before the coming of the Tuatha. The sluagh were said to be the restless and lost souls of those humans, and stuck to the dark, preferring the bogs and deep forests. They rode with the wild hunt and claimed the souls of others lost to ride with them forever. Even the Fomoiri and Tuatha didn’t know their true nature, for they had been the true original inhabitants of the land. They had their own social structure and could be dealt with, but even the deities tended to leave them alone.
Then came the Tuatha and the Fomoiri and the fae. Trooping fairies and solitary fae and all manner of things wicked in the night as well as beautiful in the sun. Oh, and the Celts and the Druids. The peoples had become so mixed over the centuries that the labels themselves were more to distinguish family lines or allegiances more often than not. Many of the more wild and solitary fae, such as the pooka she had met, or leprechauns like Dano, were still identified by their powers.
“The Fomoiri, now, we’re a little different. Most tend to stick to the seas, and traveled long until finally settling around the north and west of Ireland.” Shar watched as she topped off her fifth pint. This one looked much closer to his original one. They were all lined up on the bar. Some cloudy all the way through, one with the sharp line of foam and beer though Shar said there was not enough of the foam for a balance of taste, and others with gradients from dark to light.
She set this one at the end of the line and admired the neat divide of dark and light and how the liquid rounded just slightly above the lip of the pint glass.
“Good,” he said. “You’ll get it yet.”
Bat smiled up at him, and only then noticed Mell and Dub, hovering at the edge of the bar. She gestured to the pint glasses, her movements radiating challenge.
“I get that last one,” Mell said, and moved to claim a stool at the bar.
Bat swept it up. “No. Shar gets this one because he’s been teaching me while you argue over things with the guardi.”
“Is that all I am?” Finn, followed by Ailis, stepped in from the hall.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she brought them back to topic. “Have you fierce warriors decided where we will hunt next?” Yes, she was needling the guardi, but something about him, an inherent arrogance, got her back up.
Shar picked up the original pint he’d pulled and set it in front of Bat, so the only options left to the others were her cloudy first attempts. Dub sighed but picked up the one that was her very first try and took a sip, only grimacing a little. She rewarded him with a smile.
Finn picked up a glass but didn’t drink, she noted. “We’ll start near Drumcliffe. It backtracks us, but that was the last place the trace was strong.”
“I still do not understand why we do not simply go to Benbulben.” Bat had been arguing for that since the afternoon, but each time she was overruled.
“Because, as I have said, the only visions you have seen of the area were of the past, or of Ailis fighting the baobhan sith. There were no signs of the blade, or of Grainne.” Finn raised a brow. “Unless there is something you have yet to tell us?”
Did he suspect? If she spoke of her vision of him and Grainne, would that push them in the correct direction? Or would it ensure an outcome that would harm all of them? Instinct continued to hold her words and told her that this particular scene was meant only for her to see, not to tell.
They would end up at Benbulben soon, one way or the other.
DUB
He stood behind the bar in his usual place, keeping an eye on Bat. She had asked to help serve for a while, to get used to her new skill.
It was a good strategy, for more than just learning the art of the pint. It told anyone watching that things were fine, that life was moving on, that he wasn’t worried, and neither was the goddess.
He had debated keeping the pub closed tonight, but that would be sending the wrong message to the fae of the area and might send some of them running to the more fearsome of th
e solitary, out of their own belief that dark times were back.
There would be grumbles from some, of course, that they weren’t doing enough, that the guardi wouldn’t solve this, that they didn’t like how the investigation was being handled, things of that nature. But there were always grumbles. If the O’Loinsigh brothers, who were known to keep out of the machinations of the gods and the various tuath, were seen being drawn in, it could create worse than mere grumblings.
They’d opened late. He’d announced this would be the case for the next week, to allow the goddess and Shar to recover. There had been no keeping either attack quiet, not with this lot.
There was another advantage to remaining open, more important than the other reasons. The gossip.
Mell sat in one of the booths, surrounded by banshee. They’d come in with Meera, nearly buzzing. One leaned in to whisper in his brother’s ear and then giggled. Mell flashed his smile, the one that had drawn more than one sigh from a woman over the years.
A splash of beer hit his hand. He twisted and grasped Bat’s hand where it pulled down the tap. She’d pulled too hard, sending the pint to overflowing and ruining it. She tore her gaze from the banshee booth and blushed, allowing him to take the glass from her and accepting the rag he handed her without protest.
That was another thing that needed to be addressed. He had not missed the way his brothers watched the goddess, the way Shar pulled her to him, sought her with his gaze, or had hovered until Dub sent him off to fetch more whiskey from storage. He’d be back any moment, a self-appointed shadow for Bat.
Dub would have thought it something to do with how she’d healed his brother’s soul, but he’d been doing it even before the incident last night. And Mell, well, he was a little subtler, but he didn’t want to imagine what his middle brother may do when the goddess went home.
What will I do when she leaves? Because she would. His body tightened, every muscle bunching in protest to the idea. He nearly smiled as that tightening moved lower. She did this to him, from the first sight of her star-filled eyes. Mixed him up until he was as lost as a wisp’s victim in the bog.
Carefully, he placed the ruined pint in the sink behind them. Then he handed Bat another glass and gestured to the tap. She bit her lip and nodded.
A dark chuckle came from farther down the bar. The Far Gorta—the hungry man—who had bothered his goddess the night before was back, tracking her with its gaze. Heat, the familiar warmth of fury, filled him. Dub shifted until he stood directly across the bar from the fae. “Something funny?”
Dark eyes focused on him. “Yes. The O’Loinsigh brothers are about to be brought down. I find it very funny.”
Dub didn’t need to ask what he meant. He leaned in. “You stay away from her.”
The Far Gorta twisted his head to gaze at Bat once more as she placed a nearly perfect pint in front of Darrig. She flashed the leprechaun a small smile when he sipped then raised the pint in acknowledgment of a good drink. The patrons had been very patient tonight.
“I mean it, fae. I can’t kill you, but I can certainly make you hurt.” Dub reached out with one finger and pushed, sending the fae tumbling off his stool and into the empty table behind him.
“Dub.” Bat rushed to him, reproach clear in her thinned lips and drawn brows. She looked at the fallen fae. “Are you all right?”
The Far Gorta rose, brushing off and straightening his already soiled clothing. “I am just fine, goddess.” He raised a brow and tilted his head. “I am not the one ya need to be worryin’ about, warrior.”
Shar appeared beside him. “Leave.”
“I thought all were welcome here, giant.”
“Not if they’re going to be stirring up trouble.”
The Far Gorta raised his hands. “Just a bit of teasing never hurt.”
Bat raised a finger and shook it, like a mother at her unruly child. “No, you meant mischief and not the fun kind.”
The fae raised his hands in surrender. “If I promise not ta tease? Can I stay? It’s dark times out there.”
His goddess’s expression eased. “For now. But if you go out of line again, Dub will throw you out.” She demonstrated, pantomiming picking something up and heaving it away. “Just like that.”
“I will be good, goddess, I promise. Will ya be playing tonight?”
Dub held himself back as she narrowed her eyes on the fae. “Are you trying to make another deal? No deals.”
“No deals,” the Far Gorta agreed. “Just a question.” Something that may have been true eagerness flitted across the solitary fae’s expression. “It’s been long since I heard the Uaithne played and played well.”
Shar slid past him and placed his hands on Bat’s waist, lifting her up and out of the way. “Why don’t you take a break and play for a bit?”
Movement near the door caught Dub’s eye, a face he hadn’t seen in nearly six centuries. “No. I’d like her to get a little more practice, and I need to handle something.”
The figure slipped out the door, shadows flowing and helping to obscure him from sight. Dub put on a bit of speed to catch him.
“Scath.” Dub put a bit of his strength behind the summons, though his power did not really work in such a way. But he was his father’s eldest, and Scath must at least recognize that power.
A figure stepped out of the shadows next to the building. Dark hair to match Dub’s own was bound back in a braid, much as Shar preferred to wear his. Scath’s eyes were dark pitch to match the shadows that played around his feet like eager hounds. His father’s best spy and assassin hadn’t changed. “Dub.”
“Why are you here?”
“There have been rumors and whispers, of course. There would be no other reason for me to be any place.”
Dub sighed, reminded once again why he preferred to stay out of things. All the damned cryptic references. Which is just what we have been doing to the goddess. “Why are you here?” he asked again.
Scath shifted, and those shadows swirled. Dub growled a warning. “Your father sent me,” the other man finally said.
Which was also obvious. Scath didn’t do anything which his father did not order. Dub waited.
Scath’s lips thinned. “The brooch.”
And there it was. Shar was right, he and Mell were fools. Damned effing fools that would be better off prancing about the back lanes with bells on their shoes and in their hair, begging to be disemboweled by a bomen. “You know my Da lost it near a millennia ago.” And most of his power along with it. A man’s brooch was his sign, his honor, and his status made real. For Alatrom to have lost his, and he the leader of the clan, had sunk the O’Loinsighs into near obscurity among the Fomoiri.
“And the rumors I’m following tell me it may have surfaced.”
Dub hesitated. This was what they’d wanted, right? To find the brooch and offer it up in return for full freedom from the clan? For true and acknowledged independence, not just the deliberate negligence their father had shown them all these years?
But now there was a new complication. His father was just the type of man to use a nearly powerless goddess to his advantage. Or try to. That she was Egyptian… well, if his father could get some vengeance for his ancestors in the midst of it, all the better.
“Set up a meeting. Three months from now.” Bat would be gone, beyond the reach of his father. “And do not think to try to retrieve it before them. The fact that I now hold that chunk of gold gives me an advantage before the Tribunal, as Da well knows. And more than just I know that I hold it. Make that clear to him as well.”
Scath bowed his head in acknowledgment and then was gone.
Dub stretched his neck and took a moment to gather his composure. It wouldn’t do to enter the pub and strike that Far Gorta again, not after Bat had all but given the thing sanctuary.
He pulled open the door and paused on the threshold. A fire had been lit in the hearth across the room, and Mell had taken up his guitar. Bat leaned against the bar, her eyes closed
in enjoyment of the carefully picked melody flowing from his brother’s fingers, and Shar hovered beside her. The patrons sipped their pints and whiskeys and nibbled on the few snacks the pub had started offering recently. A laugh rang out from the booth of banshees. There were even a few humans at a table near the fire, uncaring that magic surrounded them. Ailis came in from the kitchen, holding a small plate of cheese and sausages, taking them to the banshees. Finn had taken a stool near the door and sipped a slightly cloudy pint, keeping his sharp gaze focused on the patrons.
It was a good scene. And Dub couldn’t imagine it without the dark-haired goddess at the center.
FINN
He watched as Mell ushered the last patron out, a tipsy pixie, and locked the door. Finally, the evening was done and they could get to the business of sorting through what they’d learned tonight. He pulled up a mental map of the area. Benbulben was at most thirty minutes from Sligo. Carney was fifteen and Drumcliffe a mere ten, depending on the traffic. Bat insisted that Benbulben was where they needed to go, but everything she’d told him pointed to her visions being of the past. She’d even admitted at one point to not having a specific vision of Grainne in the present.
Which meant his former love—no, fiancée, she’d never really been his love, he needed to remember that—could be anywhere.
Hopefully, someone had heard something useful tonight. Otherwise, they would return to systematically scanning and tracing. And while they would not need to search the whole of Ireland, Grainne had always been skilled with glamour. It was why it had taken so long to find her and Diarmuid in the first place. The only way he’d been able to trace them in the end was by following the blank spots, the areas where there was nothing to find surrounded by the unease of other fae.
That was what he’d found in Carney. Drumcliffe also had patches of blank. It was quite possible there were other trails to follow, ones that lead in a different direction than Carney. To Benbulben even.
The Forgotten Trilogy Page 17
