“That’s possible, but the color is so strange. My database isn’t that extensive for this type of thing, though. I was hoping you might have seen someone with skin like that,” she said.
I handed it back. “Doesn’t ring any bells. What about the Danann? Any trace evidence on him?”
She shook her head. “No, but he didn’t die in a fall. The organ damage isn’t consistent with a fall. He was crushed under something.”
“That would explain the alcohol. Dananns are strong. It wouldn’t be the first time someone thought to get a Danann drunk before killing one.”
Murdock gave me a significant look. The first major case we worked on together had had Danann fairy victims. The first few had been drunk when they died. Gethin macLoren, the murderer, had been captured and executed. “He’s dead, Leo.”
“He wouldn’t be the first Dead person I’ve met,” he said.
I shook my head. “No, this is something else. Ceridwen would know if macLoren came back. She has the Dead under control.”
“Which brings us back to someone who does know: Keeva,” he said.
A cool fluttering touched my mind, then a sending from my mother hit me like a ton of bricks. “I need to get to AvMem.”
“What happened?” Murdock asked.
“My brother Cal’s in the hospital.”
26
The previous twenty-four hours didn’t feel tethered to reality anymore. The nonstop bombardment of events left me with nothing but the need to react, with no time to think or feel or consider. I was running on adrenaline. My body slipped into automatic, running down the hall, going out the door, rushing to the hospital.
I strode into the emergency room at AvMem without any recollection of the trip. Arriving had been my only focus. I left the car in the drop-off lane with the keys in it. At that point, I didn’t care what happened to it.
In the waiting room, news cycled on a crooked flat screen TV, the volume turned to a whisper. An aerial shot of Eagan’s house appeared. Smoke trickled from the side of the house, but it didn’t look serious. The greenhouse windows were shattered. Dark uniformed figures were scattered about the lawn in an obvious police search grid.
As I approached the desk, Keeva came out the door that led to the treatment bays. She hesitated, surprised to see me. Don’t talk, she sent.
She spoke to the desk nurse and flashed her badge. The woman looked from the badge to Keeva, then nodded. She glanced at me, curious, yet with an attitude of not wanting to draw attention. Keeva waved me around the desk to the door
The emergency room at Avalon Memorial was much like one in any other hospital—professional staff moving quickly, people moaning, bad odors, and blood. An injured fey person brought an extra layer of free-flowing essence that needed to be contained. I peered into the bays as we passed, hoping and dreading to see Callin.
“What was that about?” I asked, as she led me in back.
“Your name is flagged for security. I told the desk you were with me, so you didn’t have to identify yourself,” she said.
“Wow. Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” she said.
“Now tell me why you did it,” I said.
She frowned. “You always have to push, don’t you? Callin’s your brother. While it would please me to see you in handcuffs, you shouldn’t get arrested for visiting your brother in the hospital.”
We walked through the unit to a door at the back. Away from the doctors and patients, I caught the faint scent of ozone coming off Keeva, the telltale trace of essence-fire. “You’re in the field?”
She glanced at me with impatience. “In case you haven’t heard, Connor, the Guild lost hundreds of agents. Everyone’s in the field.”
I took her gently by the arm, and, as usual, she pulled away in anger. “I was going to ask you about the baby,” I said.
Her expression didn’t change. “He’s fine. Thank you for asking.”
“And you?”
She sighed and opened the door. “Take the back elevator to the seventh floor. Callin’s in ICU. Go. Now. Before I change my mind.”
She walked away. Keeva and I had always had a prickly relationship. Since she returned from Tara, she had avoided me like the plague. I wanted to talk to her about what had happened between us, about the night in the leanansidhe’s cave. I wasn’t sure if she had been aware of everything that had happened that night. I had almost killed her. I had drained her life essence. The guilt weighed on me enough that I needed to confess it to her. I needed her to know how sorry I was.
I wondered if hanging around with Murdock and his Catholicism was starting to rub off. I didn’t know if confession was good for the soul so much, but it definitely would have put my mind at ease. Keeva would probably hate me. Hell, she barely spoke to me as it was. She might already know, which would explain her attitude. At the same time, I was bothered by Murdock’s suspicions about her role in the deaths of the double agents. Now my brother turned up in the hospital, and she was there to meet me. Her presence could mean more than compassion about a bad day for the Grey family.
The elevator doors opened onto the seventh floor. Keeva would have to wait. I walked down the hall, peering into rooms. Hospital staff eyed me. Intensive Care Units were not welcoming to visitors. I passed a waiting room and heard my mother call my name.
We met in a hug at the door. She pulled back, touching my cheek, her face pale with worry. “Clure is in with him. He’s allowed one visitor at a time.”
Behind her, Gillen stood watching a nurse lean over my father, who sat in a chair. Blood drained through a tube in his arm to a bag next to the chair. I hurried to his side. “Da, what’s wrong?” I asked.
He gazed at the blood flowing out his arm, wiggling his fingers. “It’s a blood donation. Nothing to worry about.”
My mother came up behind me and slipped her arm around my waist. “Callin lost a lot of blood.”
I unrolled my sleeve. “Hook me up. I’m the same type, too.”
Gillen glanced at my father, then away. “Callin was fighting when he was injured. His blood is saturated with essence. It’s not a normal transfusion. We need a close essence match, too.”
I frowned. “Then all the more reason I should do it. Sibling essence factors are more similar than a parent’s.”
“In this case, Thomas is a better match,” said Gillen.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
My father flexed his fingers. “Connor, let’s get through this crisis without argument. If Gillen says I am a better match, then let’s defer to his judgment.”
I frowned, confused. “You were a field agent, Da. You know this stuff. We stockpiled our own blood, and Callin was my backup.”
“Did you ever need his blood?” Gillen asked.
In my career, I had had two serious injuries that required emergency surgery, one of them serious enough to use the blood on hand. “No. We had enough of my own.”
My mother twined her arm in mine. “Connor, sweetheart, you’re upsetting me. Let Gillen do his job.”
I pulled away from her. “What? No! He isn’t making sense. I don’t understand why I’m not a better match.”
“The dark mass….” Gillen said.
I cut him off. “In three years, Gillen, you haven’t said a word about the dark mass affecting my blood.”
Angry light glinted in Gillen’s eye. I was pushing his patience, but I didn’t care. “Look, Grey. I will do what I think is best for my own damned patients. Is that clear?”
“No, I want….” I said.
“Connor,” my father said, low and sharp. It was that tone, that particular parental tone, that reminded me that I was once ten years old and my father knew how to stop me dead in my tracks with the mere mention of my name. I didn’t shudder, but the memory of shuddering crossed my mind. I composed myself. “Da….” I said.
“Let Gillen do his job. We have complete faith in him,” he said.
My father stared at
me with his implacable gaze, while my mother hovered between us. She had spent a lifetime—my lifetime, anyway—breaking up arguments. With my father and Gillen in agreement, it was futile to argue. “What happened to him?” I asked.
“He was in a fight, of course,” my father said.
“Where?”
“We don’t have the details yet,” he said.
“What was Keeva macNeve doing here?” I asked.
My father tilted his head toward Gillen. “I didn’t know she was here.”
Gillen shrugged. “It’s a big hospital, Grey. Your brother’s not the only one prone to getting beat up.”
“Can I see him?” I asked.
“Send the Clure out. One maniac in the room at a time,” Gillen said.
Controlling my anger, I left them in the waiting room. I didn’t understand, but I wasn’t a healer, and now was not the time to argue. My brother was injured.
In Callin’s room, the blue-green glow of monitors and a small spotlight near the bed provided dim illumination. The humid air was heavy with lavender and dill and bitter green herbs. Callin lay in a stone crèche, an oblong slab of quartz charged with essence. Bandages wrapped his chest and left shoulder, and a thin layer of essence hovered over his body like a mist.
The Clure had pulled a chair close to the crèche and slumped over its edge. With his face somber beneath his mop of curls, he traced his fingers along Callin’s brow. I cleared my throat. The Clure stood and wrapped his arms around me, burying his face into the side of my neck. He smelled of whiskey and tears.
“I wasn’t there,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re here now,” I said.
He pulled away, his eyes watery. “It can’t happen like this. It can’t end like this.”
I rubbed his shoulder. “Callin’s tough. You know that. It’s not over.”
We spent a few moments staring at my brother, the Clure hugging himself against the hurt. I slid into the chair, staring at the bandages, trying to guess at the injuries.
“I’ll be outside,” said the Clure.
Tubes ran into Callin’s nose and mouth. His battered face showed signs that he had been in a fight that had turned up-close and physical. One eye was swollen shut, and the bridge of his nose was broken. Typical. Cal got himself in over his head and got knocked on his ass for it.
“What the hell did you do this time, Cal?” I asked.
I held his hand. I couldn’t remember the last time I had touched him like that. We never were all that affectionate, but holding his hand reminded that we were brothers, that family mattered. I might not like a lot of the things Cal did with his life or to himself, but I cared.
He hadn’t come to the hospital when our roles had been reversed. I woke up alone, with no family except Joe and Briallen. My parents had visited after my accident, but after weeks of no change in my condition, they were called away to a diplomatic mission. Cal had been nowhere in sight.
He’s down. Is he okay?
It had been so long since Cal and I had exchanged sendings, I almost didn’t recognize his voice in my head. “Clure’s fine, Cal. He’ll be right back.”
I didn’t know if he could hear me. I was surprised he was aware enough under the sedation to talk. Too many. Clure’s on the way.
Irritated, I checked to see if the Clure was coming back to boot me out already, but the hallway was empty. “It’s okay, Cal. They’re letting only one of us in at a time,” I said.
Dammit, Keeva.
The force of the sending startled me, the equivalent of shouting in my head. Cal knew Keeva through me. She had been my Guild partner for ten years. We occasionally bumped into Cal, but not often. In those days, I didn’t care much about the Weird other than as a place to party, and I never did that with Keeva. Why she would be on his mind now puzzled me.
My memory flashed to the essence-fire residue I smelled on Keeva. She had more than once saved my butt in the nick of time. As much as we bickered, she had a sense for being in the right place at the right time, and I wasn’t going to complain if she had intervened with Cal somehow.
Cal wasn’t talking to me. He was sending in a delirium state. “Everything’s fine, Cal. You need to rest.”
Connor.
“Yeah, it’s me, Cal. We’re all here. Don’t worry about anything,” I said.
Too many. Clure’s on the way.
I didn’t understand my brother in the best of times, never mind delirious from pain and medication. We had spent the better part of our adult life arguing, mostly about his drinking. We had drifted apart the last decade, and he fell in with a rough-and-tumble crowd I wanted no part of. Despite the Clure’s propensity for chaos, hooking up with him was probably the most stable thing Callin had done. Now he lay in a crèche, and I wasn’t able to do a damned thing about all that. I wanted the chance to fix things between us.
Gillen entered with his surgical team. His cranky manner had disappeared behind the focus on what was to come. Almost as an afterthought, he dismissed me. “We’re ready in the operating room. I’ll have someone keep you updated.”
Back in the waiting room, Joe had arrived. He sat on the arm of a sofa, talking with my mother. They stopped when I entered, guilt-stricken looks on their faces. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“Has he gone into surgery?” Joe asked.
“Yes, and that’s not what I’m talking about,” I said.
“Connor, our focus should be on your brother right now,” my father said.
I took a seat opposite my father. He looked tired. “I’m not letting this drop, Da. I should be the best candidate for an essence blood match. What are you not telling me?”
He unrolled his sleeve. “It’s not important.”
“My brother’s on the verge of death, and I’m not being allowed to help. I deserve an explanation,” I said.
He kept his attention on readjusting his clothing. “Watch your tone.”
“I’ll take whatever tone I want,” I said.
He glared. I knew that look. I was about to be put in my place. My mother stood. “Enough, Thomas. We knew this day would come.”
A thick silence filled the room. “Okay, now I’m more worried,” I said.
Joe fluttered around my mother, his expression fluctuating between confusion and boredom. “I don’t understand why it’s a big deal, Mama Grey. Flits foster everyone.”
“Joe!” my mother said. His eyes gone wide, Joe slapped his hands over his lips.
I heard the word. I stared at my parents, searching their faces, looking for, well, me. Cal resembled my father enough to be his clone—red hair, stocky muscle, and blunt features. I always assumed I took after my mother’s side of the family. We had the same dark hair and similar features, but no particular characteristics marked us as mother and son. She looked Irish. I looked Irish. I assumed my blue eyes were a genetic throwback to an ancestor no one recalled. “I was fostered,” I said.
My mother dropped her gaze and took my hand. “We always meant to tell you.”
It wasn’t sinking in, at least not on an emotional level. I heard what she said, but I felt a distinct objectivity, as if we were discussing the weather. I was fostered. Thomas and Regula Gray were not my biological parents. As Joe said, it wasn’t unheard of in the fey world. What made it different was that I hadn’t known. Everyone always knew. It was an old tradition, without controversy. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
My mother squeezed my hands. “Nigel asked us not to.”
“Nigel? What does….” I closed my eyes, dread slicing across my gut. “Danu’s blood, please don’t tell me Nigel Martin is my father.”
“He’s not,” my father said.
Utter relief swept over me. With everything that had gone sour between me and Nigel, the last thing I wanted to hear was that he was my father. I steeled myself for the next logical question. “Who are my parents?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Thomas said.
Not telling me I
was fostered was at least plausible. Human parents kept the knowledge of adoption secret all the time, but fostering didn’t work like that. Someone had a child and placed it with another family to raise for a variety of reasons—all of them open knowledge. “How can you not know?” I asked.
My mother squeezed my hand. “Nigel said he didn’t know. You were a foundling.”
I couldn’t help the derision in my voice, but it was directed toward the absent Nigel. “Foundling? Not likely. Nigel didn’t find a baby and hand it over to the nearest couple. He knew more than he was telling.”
“Indeed. I pressed him on the issue repeatedly. I did my own discreet investigation but found no one with a missing child,” my father said. “In the end, I accepted his word.”
My mother sat in silence, staring off to the side. I moved off the chair and sat beside her. “I didn’t want it to come out this way,” she said.
I put my arm around her and kissed her temple. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“We wanted another child so badly. I had just lost one when Nigel came to us,” she said.
I kissed her again. “It’s okay. You’re my mom. Nothing will ever change that.”
I stood. “I need a moment. I’ll be right back.”
I passed Callin’s room. The Clure stood at the window. I don’t know if he saw me, but I continued down the hall to another waiting room that was empty. I leaned my hands against the windowsill and breathed deeply. I had no idea what this meant to me. I had spent my entire life thinking one thing, taking it for granted actually, to find it was untrue. The people I thought I knew were not the people I thought they were. I was not the person I thought I was.
Joe appeared behind me, his essence flashing pink in the window. He fluttered up, trying to see through his reflection. He hovered close to the glass, intent on a smudge.
“You never said anything,” I said.
He licked the window and frowned in disgust. Unlike him, I wasn’t surprised. “Your mum asked me not to,” he said.
Joe had been around my family for generations. He was an Old One, one of the few confirmed people I knew who had come from Faerie. He didn’t remember much, mostly people he had known, but larger events escaped him. Not that memory loss bothered him. Flits remembered what they cared about, and what they cared about didn’t always make sense. He was around when Nigel showed up with a mysterious baby. He knew my mother hadn’t been pregnant with me. He had been my companion, from birth I thought.
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