I sighed and went into the coffee shop. It never crossed my mind that they had any interest in each other. I guessed I wasn’t good about predicting the future.
13
Late the next morning, a knock at the door startled me out of sleep. I was expecting Meryl for lunch, but it was too early, which meant that Ceridwen’s messengers might be rousting me out of bed for something. I had been avoiding Ceridwen since yesterday because I didn’t want to give her the answer she didn’t want to hear. I didn’t want to go to Ireland, at least not now. As she lay dying, I had promised to help her get revenge against Maeve, but that didn’t mean I had to do it her way.
I opened the door and cringed as my mother grabbed me in a full body hug. “Still an early riser, I see.”
“How did you find me, Ma?” I asked.
She entered the room, eyeing it with suspicious appraisal. “I asked.”
I closed the door behind her. “Mother, I’m in hiding. You didn’t just ask for directions to my apartment.”
She peered down at the seat cushion on the armchair. “Actually, I did. I asked Amos the Apothecary, whom I have known for years. He gave me the general direction and a contact on Ceridwen’s staff, who referred me to that rather disheveled dwarf who keeps the lookout on the water tower next door. He told me.”
I pulled my jeans on and sat on the bed. “And why would he tell you where I lived?”
With a deep breath, she sat in the chair. “I told him I was your mother.”
“And he believed you?” I asked.
She put on an innocent face. “I knew his mother. We played cribbage years ago. She stank at it.”
“You shouldn’t have come down here. It’s dangerous,” I said.
She pulled her chin in. “Is it? It looked rather shabby as I came through. Not like the old days. Do those trolls still live under the channel? They kept things lively down here.”
“There’s only one troll. He pretends to live under the bridge but has a nice underground apartment nearby,” I said.
She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Only one left? No wonder there are so many feral cats around. Do you have any tea?”
I glanced at my empty kitchen. “I haven’t been shopping. Why don’t you give me a sec to wash up, and we can grab lunch?”
She waved her hand. “No need. I have a luncheon date already. I wanted to see you.”
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
She pursed her lips. “Hmm. Yes, of course, everything’s all right. I have spent half an hour sitting on top of a water tower talking to a lonely dwarf because everything’s all right.”
I sighed. It was going to be one of those conversations. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m worried about your father. This business with the Seelie Court has taken the wind out of his sails,” she said.
I was getting more lost by the second. “I thought the entire court was sent home.”
She brushed her handkerchief on the arm of the chair, draped it over, and rested her hand on it. “Yes, that was after he was shut out. Oh, he didn’t think I knew, but I’m no fool. He’s had a hard year. It started with him being dropped from the missions to the Continent. Then Maeve put him on desk work entirely. You know your father loves travel.”
I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. “So, um, what exactly do you want me to do?”
She waved her hand in the air. “I don’t know. Guy stuff. Get Callin to join you. He’d like that. All you boys together.”
I stared at my stocking feet. “Mother, I am never, ever going camping with Callin and Da again.”
“Well, what about bowling? You used to be quite good,” she said.
I hid my disbelief beneath an amused smile. Sometimes mothers forget that their children outgrow their childhoods. “I’ll see if I can find Cal. Maybe he might have some ideas,” I said.
“Oh, I already went to see him. He said he would love to do something. Now that you mention it, he did say to suggest camping to you. He said he has fond memories of the two of you in the woods.”
He would. He spent all our camping trips making my life miserable as only older brothers can do. I have had enough of bugs in my bedroll to last a lifetime. “You went to see Callin? Where?”
“His apartment. He’s not much better at decorating than you, but the view is lovely,” she said.
I had no idea where my brother lived. No one ever seemed to know. “Mother, have you been walking around the Weird looking for us? Do you have any idea how bad an idea that is right now?”
She huffed and fell back in the armchair, then bolted forward, eyeing the cushions for dirt. “I’m desperate, Connie. If I don’t get your father out of that hotel, I’m going to scream. He needs something to do.”
I didn’t laugh, but I did smile. My parents loved each other but tended to get on each other’s nerves. “Okay. I’ll think of something.”
In a bright flash of pink, Joe burst into the air. He held a take-out cup half as tall as he was. A tag on a string dangled from the lid. He held the cup out to my mother. “I thought you might be here and like some tea, Momma Grey.”
My mother popped the lid on the cup and inhaled. “You are such a dear, Joey. Earl Grey is my favorite.”
Joe threw me a smug look over her head. “Is it? I had no idea. Great minds drink alike.”
My mother giggled. “You are so naughty. Where were you last night? I thought you might drop by.”
Joe fluttered over by the window. “I was helping some children with their lessons.”
I shook my head. “Children? Really, Joe? You were with children?”
Joe shrugged. “Everyone is someone’s child. I didn’t say how old they were.”
My mother bubbled with laughter.
“Suddenly, I remember something I didn’t miss when you moved to Ireland, Ma,” I said.
She drank her tea, the amusement fading from her eyes. “Speaking of Ireland, I’ve been trying to contact Nigel. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you?”
I feigned nonchalance. “I haven’t seen him. We’re not on the best of terms anymore.”
She hummed. “I heard. I’m not going to interfere in whatever is going on between you, but I’d like to speak to him.”
“Why?”
“Because Nigel has insight into Maeve’s thinking. She is rushing headlong into war, and that’s never a good thing. If there’s a way to avert it, Nigel will know.”
“I don’t know, Ma. I don’t think Nigel would be interested in stopping Maeve. He’s always done her dirty work,” I said.
She gestured with her mug. “Exactly. If he’s around, she doesn’t have to do it herself. Nigel has a way of making things happen behind the scenes. We don’t need war. Maeve needs her advisor.”
I was impressed. I never talked politics with my mother. I had no idea she had that much interest. “That’s…. shrewd,” I said.
“I am not a diplomat’s wife for nothing, dear. The trick to avoiding war is to find something more enticing. Maeve might be a bit of a hothead, but she’s still a ruler. She wants something more than defeating the Consortium. If we can understand that, we might be able to end this nonsense.”
I loved the way my mother referred to war as nonsense. I might not have thought of her as a politician, but she always was sensible. Half her silliness was contrived, I knew, but now I saw her in a different light.
Another knock came at the door, and my glance shot to the clock over the kitchen sink. I groaned inwardly as I answered the door. When I opened it, Meryl kissed me, then stopped short when she saw I had company. “Oh! Am I early?” she asked.
Meryl was wearing a black bustier with a short jacket and jeans that might have been painted on. Oh, and she wore her knee-high boots with all the buckles. My mother put on her most diplomatic smile. “Not at all, dear. We were just discussing lunch.”
Meryl turned a confused smile toward me. “I didn’t realize it was a group lunch. My bad.
”
“Meryl, I’d like to introduce you to Regula Grey. Mom, this is Meryl Dian,” I said.
Meryl batted her eyes in stunned silence. My mother held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
Meryl shook hands, staring at me over her shoulder. “You’re his mother.”
“And your his…. ?” My mother said.
Joe swooped closer to my mother’s ear. “That’s his hootchie.”
Meryl held her hand in the air. “Connor, can you hand me the fly swatter?”
My mother smiled. “It’s okay, dear. I was someone’s hootchie once.”
“Mother!” I said.
She stood up. “I must be going. I’d love to have you for dinner, Meryl. You can meet Mr. Grey.”
“Um…. sure,” Meryl said.
“This isn’t happening to me,” I muttered.
My mother hugged me and kissed my cheek. “Get some food in you, Con. Call me later.”
“I will,” I said.
She paused on the threshold and looked at Meryl. “Oh, by the way, you look lovely, and I understand the desire not to feel constricted, but, trust me, in a pinch, a bra makes a great sling weapon.”
“I did not hear that,” I said.
Meryl tugged at the bottom of her jacket. It didn’t cover anything. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She patted my chest. “Just girl talk. See you soon.”
I closed the door behind her and turned toward Meryl. “Do not say a word,” I said.
She grinned like I’d never seen her do. “What? I liked her.”
14
Meryl and Joe pretended to talk to each other while I jumped in the shower. They tolerated each other at best, suspected each other’s motives at worst. Flits had a history of innocent spying, which no one liked, and Meryl had a history of strict privacy, which she made no exceptions for. Joe had a habit of annoying whomever I dated. I thought of it as hazing the new person in my social life, but my dates tended to think he was a pain in the ass. He was, but he was part of the package when someone hung out with me.
I came out of the bathroom, towel-drying my hair and wondering if I had clean socks. For such an empty room, I had a hard time keeping track of stuff. I opened the top drawer of the small dresser and found Joe sleeping in my underwear. Without waking him, I managed to find two socks that looked the same color. Joe looked comfortable, so I closed the drawer again.
I overlooked Joe’s less-than-mature antics—didn’t even notice them most of the time. I grew up with him. Joe was who he was. His bad side was irritating, but at least that was the extent of it. Lots of people had bad sides that were worse, Meryl among them. She was grumpy, quick to anger, and an intellectual snob. I wouldn’t have either of them any other way because when they flew, they soared.
Across the room, Meryl stood in front of the blank canvas, intense concentration on her face. I had pulled it out of the closet and shown her the protection wards Ceridwen had placed. Meryl had stripped them off and let the scrying essence free again. I activated my body shield to keep the more intense radiations from bothering the dark mass.
The visible surface of the canvas remained white, the dried paint lumped and swirled in random directions. Meryl had slopped the paint on with her hands, evidenced by furrows with obvious finger marks. With sensing ability, though, the canvas came alive, a kaleidoscopic array of moving colored essence that separated and re-formed into shapes and images. It made my head hurt, the darkness pulse in the same way it reacted when someone was scrying.
“I did this,” Meryl said.
“Yep.”
When I first found the stone ward bowl, I asked Shay to take it for safekeeping. He had hidden it at his place, which no one but I knew. A few months earlier, I thought someone was hunting for the bowl, so I went to warn Shay that it was time to hide it somewhere else. I wanted him to move it to the abandoned squat—which he did—but that didn’t happen until after. I had taken Meryl with me to Shay’s studio that day. She was in a mindless trance, then. The next thing I knew, the stone bowl was reacting to her presence and shooting essence into her body. Meryl had grabbed at Shay’s paints and attacked the canvas as if possessed. The result was the scrying-infused artwork in the middle of my room.
Meryl held her hand close to the surface of the canvas. The essence reacted, the images sharpening into more recognizable shapes. A sword danced into view, then something like flames. “Did I say anything?”
“No.” She had painted in a trance, fueled by the energies of the stone bowl.
Meryl stepped back with her hands on her hips. “It’s my dream. I painted my dream from the trance.”
I pulled on a black T-shirt and tucked it into my jeans. The living room had no mirror, so I fumbled fingers through my hair. It’s what I would have done in the bathroom mirror anyway, to worse results. “The one you couldn’t remember?” I asked.
She withdrew her hand, and the essence shapes disintegrated and swirled again. “You know how when you’re trying to remember something and you have this vague idea of what it is and then it comes to you and you’re, like, yeah, that’s it? That’s what looking at this is like. It’s like a blurry memory coming into focus.”
I came up behind her and leaned my chin on her head. “You said you didn’t remember doing this. Do you know how you did it now?”
She walked to one side of the canvas, then the other. “The paint’s infused with essence. Can you feel it?”
“I can see it,” I said.
She whipped her head toward me. “You can see it? My dream?”
I gestured at the canvas. “Well, I don’t know if it’s your dream, but, yeah, I can see the essence with my sensing ability. That’s why I brought you up here.”
She moved away again. “Huh. What do you see?”
“Right now? Mostly nothing but smears of essence light.”
She pointed at a space near the center. “What about here?”
“A patch of silvery essence,” I said.
She pursed her lips. “I see a war helm.”
I moved closer. The silvery essence changed and sharpened. “I see a pair of eyes.”
“And now I see a silvery patch,” she said. She put her hand against my chest and pushed me away gently. “And now, the helm’s back.”
Banging sounded from inside the dresser, followed by creative swearing in Gaelic. Joe flashed in over our heads. “What’s all the freakin’ noise out here?”
Meryl and I exchanged glances. “We weren’t making noise, Joe.”
He shook his head like a dog coming out water. “There’s shouting and screaming and banging and booming.”
I craned my neck up, as Joe became more agitated. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Joe. Calm down.”
Meryl tugged at my sleeve. “Hold on a sec. Joe, take a look at this painting, and tell me what you see.”
Joe swept up to the canvas, tilting his head back and forth. From where I stood, the essence swirled and shifted in shades of blue and white, but nothing resolved into focus. “I see beer and tiny breasts,” he said.
“What do you see in the painting, Joe, not wherever you were last night,” I said.
His spun his head toward me in surprise. “Yggy’s serves quail?”
“What?”
He pointed. “There’s a lovely quail on a plate next to a pint of beer. Who painted this? It looks delicious.”
“I did, sort of,” Meryl said.
He crossed his arms and nodded, impressed. “I had no idea. Very good.”
“That’s it? You see food?” I asked.
Joe went back to the canvas. “Well, there’s a few burning buildings and something that looks like a tornado. Oh! And roasted potatoes!”
Meryl glowered at me. I shrugged. “You asked him, not me,” I said.
Joe frowned. “She doesn’t like potatoes?”
Meryl ignored him. “We’re all seeing something different.”
“Our own futures?” I a
sked.
“That would seem logical,” she said.
Joe whirled in a circle. “Oh, good. I hope it’s tonight. That blueberry sauce looks amazing.” He hovered closer to the canvas. “Or are they currants?”
“Can we focus on the fire-and-disaster images, Joe?” I asked.
He sighed heavily. “Fine. But you shouldn’t let them get in the way of a fine meal. I mean, the world ends all the time, but it’s a terrible thing to waste a good quail.”
“Glad he has his priorities straight,” Meryl muttered.
Joe turned his back to her and faced me. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue as he pointed at Meryl. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the coma.”
Meryl glared but didn’t respond. I moved closer. A line of silver bled down the center, sprouted two branches, and became a sword. “So, it seems to be working like some kind of mirror, a future for whoever stands in front of it.”
Meryl paced behind me. “And I haven’t had a dream or vision since I woke up.”
“Maybe you still haven’t recovered fully.”
She watched from a distance as the essence continued to morph. “It’s bigger than that. No one is seeing the future. It’s like the visions have been turned off…. except for that thing.”
The sword that had appeared reconfigured itself into a crescent, then a heart. “The Guildhouse’s falling wasn’t the blockage.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” she said.
Over the last year, one disaster after another had struck Boston. I had been a focal point. I almost died. Meryl almost died. And Eorla and Joe and Murdock. Lots of people did die. Each time, scryers and dreamers in the city had lost their ability to see the future. That happened when cataclysmic events were unfolding and the outcome was uncertain. The future became so muddied on such a grand scale, no one could predict it.
“Well, nobody’s admitting that the Elven King is dead. Maybe that’s it,” I said.
Meryl moved to the same distance from the painting as I was. My vision hazed back to kaleidoscope swirls. “Now I’m seeing Joe’s tornado. I don’t get it.”
Undone Deeds cg-6 Page 8
