The others looked at him blankly, and I replied, “I don’t think anyone’s ever tried to quantify magic with a unit.”
“Then we’ll have to experiment and figure it out,” he countered, “because if you make me guess at it, you’ll probably end up flat or crispy or what have you.”
“Timeframe?”
“At least a few days. I’ll work as fast as I can, Coileán, but this is new to me…”
I looked over my shoulder at Meggy, who waited beside the tea chest. She nodded in acquiescence, but her arms were tightly crossed, and her jaw had clenched. “All right,” I sighed. “Do what you can, as quickly as you can. I’ll give you whatever assistance you require.”
Aiden rose to leave, but before he could slip out, Doran said, “That’s all? You’re going to leave the girl to languish in the Gray Lands until the mongrel thinks the time is right?”
At that, Aiden stopped and fixed Doran with a withering look. “First, the name’s Aiden, not ‘the mongrel.’ You’re old, not senile. Secondly, there’s no point in starting a firefight without a loaded gun. Everything I’ve heard so far has suggested that going over there would be suicidal. Third, we don’t even know that Olive’s in the Gray Lands. She could be anywhere.”
“And whoever took her surely had a reason,” Meggy added. “There’s bound to be a ransom note coming, right?”
“Exactly,” said Aiden. “And finally, I don’t see you leaping into action,” he told Doran. “You’re not too busy to rescue your niece, are you? Got any plans this weekend?”
The room fell silent, and I watched my siblings’ eyes swivel to catch Doran’s reaction. After a tense moment, he blinked slowly and murmured, “You presume, mongrel.”
“And maybe I’m imagining things, but it sounds to me like you’re trying to get Coileán killed.”
It was subtle, but I caught the flash of something shifting in Doran’s eyes. “Why would I want to kill Coileán?” he retorted. “And leave Moyna with the throne? A mere child? The girl amuses me,” he said, pushing himself off the sofa, “but not so greatly that I would venture into the Gray Lands on her behalf. Then again,” he added, giving me a pointed look, “I’m neither her father nor her king, am I?”
“No, you’re not,” Meggy interrupted, “so I suggest you get out of here and let these two get to work.”
He smirked back at her. “Moyna’s mother, did you say? Your concern for her welfare is overwhelming.”
She stepped away from the desk but held herself in check. “No one wants her back more than I do. As soon as we’ve got a location and a power source, I’ll be the first one through the gate. But I’m not pushing him into a suicide mission,” she continued, pointing at me, “and if he doesn’t think it’s even remotely safe to jump into the Gray Lands right now, I’ll trust him.”
“I’d expect nothing less from his whore,” Doran replied with a smile. Before he had time to make his exit, however, an invisible blow struck him full in the chest, and he reeled and collapsed onto the couch.
I jumped up in the sudden tumult and spotted Valerius, who still stood by the door, silent and scowling—but his nod, almost imperceptible, told me what I needed to know. With Doran incapacitated and wheezing, I was able to shoo my siblings out, leaving me once more alone with my captain, Meggy, and Aiden, who seemed wary of further attack. “Nicely timed,” I told Val, running my hands through my hair in hopes of staving off the headache that threatened.
He grunted, then inclined his head toward Meggy. “Toula speaks well of you, my lady. It was my pleasure.”
CHAPTER 14
* * *
Although I am, admittedly, a man of considerable talent, very little of that talent extends to the sciences. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate discoveries like microwave ovens and the heliocentric model as much as the next fellow, but I’ve no patience for the process of trial and error that leads to progress. Some enjoy poking at things to figure out how they work and how to improve them, but I’d rather wait and be handed the best possible product, preferably with a thin instruction manual and a tech support number.
Aiden, however, was a poker, a fiddler, a builder, and a taker of copious notes, which drove me to the brink of madness that weekend. How much magic did it take to power a low-level enchantment? How much to construct a glamour? A shield? How was something unitless to be quantified? How well did magic compress? Like a liquid? Like a gas? How did its density affect its usability? Did magic behave differently under pressure? Did it have mass? And what about my fighting style? On average, how many shots would I take per minute? Per incident? With what sort of shielding? What was he overlooking?
I sat in a chair beside Aiden’s long desk, well out of the way of the metallic litter of his robotics projects, and tried to respond to his peppering of questions. When he reached a point of satisfaction, he would pause, experiment, take more notes, and then resume the interview. Once Aiden reached his preliminary conclusions about me, he dragged Meggy in for comparison, then Valerius, all the while oscillating between a notepad and his laptop. He fell asleep the first night over his desk, pen in hand, muttering about flow regulation, and Meggy covered him with a quilt and kicked everyone out. The next morning, she roused him at dawn, forced cereal and black coffee down his throat, and took my vacated chair as his first guinea pig of the day.
At least she was staying busy. Meggy tried to project serenity, but I could feel the nervous energy radiating off of her, and I knew from her constant shifting beside me the night before that she hadn’t slept. I could do nothing to speed along Olive’s rescue, but I kept the coffee warm.
Aiden continued to crunch his numbers long into Sunday night, while I slipped back and forth to Meggy’s apartment, looking for any indication that Olive’s captor was trying to make contact. The house remained dark and untouched, however, as did the school and the football field. Aside from the police tape that still fluttered around the trees behind the end zone, there was no sign that anything unusual had happened at all. Slim reported a quiet radar, as did Vivian, who loitered in his bar that weekend, watching the windows while she played with her glasses. The administration, she informed me, was treating Olive as a runway, not an abductee—pyrotechnic work to create a distraction, a quick getaway through the woods with her boyfriend, and no blame at all on the Rigby board members’ heads.
And then, as I was beginning to wonder whether I’d ever see a list of demands, my phone rang early Monday morning.
I’d been in my office, poring over the few texts I’d found in Mother’s library that offered guidance to the Gray Lands, when I heard my homemade cell phone break into its familiar tinny fugue. To my surprise, the little readout stated UNKNOWN NUMBER, and I tapped the line open, thoroughly perplexed. “Hello?”
“You’re awake. Good,” said a voice I recognized an instant later as Oberon’s. “There seems to be a large sea serpent menacing my island.”
“Shit,” I muttered, pressing my eyes closed. “I meant to tell you about that. The merrow have been here since September—”
“I don’t give a damn about the merrow. There’s a sea serpent sitting twenty yards offshore. What do you want to do about it?”
“Me?” I asked, more confused than ever. “I thought that was your turf. And this really isn’t a good time, my daughter’s been kidnapped—”
“Well, she’s riding the goddamned snake,” he retorted, “and she’s demanding that you show yourself. So I thought I’d do you a favor and let you give me a hand with this before I blow them both to dust. Interested?”
“On my way,” I said, ripping open a gate to Aiden’s room. “Five minutes. And how the hell did you get this number?”
“Magic.”
“Seriously.”
He sighed deeply. “The realm still likes me, so yes, magic. Now hurry up before I change my mind. If she comes ashore, she’s fair game.”
The connection broke, and I ran into the middle of what appeared to be a shielding experimen
t with Valerius and Meggy. “Olive’s outside of Oberon’s bar on top of a sea monster, let’s go,” I said, closing the gate. “Meggy, if you’re coming, you’ll want shoes. Val, are you in?”
“Of course,” he replied, hastily retrieving his sword from the corner.
“Excellent. I want you in the van with me if this turns physical. Meggy—”
“Give me two minutes,” said Joey, who popped out of the shadows with a plate of eggs and toast, “and I’ll have Georgie saddled and ready.”
“Joey,” I protested, “you’re not bringing a dragon to Florida.”
“It’s East Rock! And you said there’s a monster. What’s Georgie going to hurt, huh?”
“What about you?”
“What about me?” he echoed. “Val?”
The captain glanced up from buckling his sword belt. “I’ll shield him as I can, Coileán. This is the beast that was harrying the merrow?”
“I think so,” I muttered.
“Then the more hands, the better the odds. If we’re lucky, Georgie will figure out fire breathing while we’re there.”
“If we’re lucky?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” said Joey, putting the remains of his breakfast on the desk. “Meet you out back,” he added, and dashed out the door.
When his footsteps died away, Valerius straightened his tunic and quietly said, “The boy has something of the warrior in him. I’d counsel you to employ it.”
“Against a sea serpent?” I replied, waiting as Meggy tied her sneakers.
“Fighting dragonback? Why not? The aerial advantage—”
“Ready,” Meggy interrupted, heading for the door. “Argue later. Daylight’s burning.”
We were halfway down the hall when I noticed that Aiden was jogging after us. “Oh no, not you,” I said, catching him before he could reach the staircase. “You stay here, kid.”
“But I can help!” he said as Meggy and Val came to a halt. “Maybe you’ll need some magic pushed around.”
“Not in that realm, I won’t.”
“Iron stuff?”
“Unlikely,” I said, taking hold of his shoulders. “Stay here, be safe. I can’t promise you protection if things go upside-down over there.”
But Aiden’s chin rose in defiance. “I want to come.”
“You’re in no way prepared for a situation like this, and you’re running on caffeine. No.” I looked at the others, but found similarly odd expressions on their faces. “Come on, you’re not serious,” I said. “He’s fifteen.”
“I was armed at fifteen,” Valerius replied. “The boy’s growing up. If he’ll bear the risk, let him.”
“An unprotected witch-blood?” I shot back. “He’s a liability—”
“Catch,” Val interrupted, pulling his sword from his belt and tossing it past me. Aiden fumbled as he grabbed the hilt, but he quickly righted his grip. “Joey’s not been my only pupil,” the captain explained, producing an identical sword for himself. “Give him a chance.”
I looked back and forth between armed and hopeful Aiden, stoic Valerius, and Meggy, who tapped her foot and cocked her head toward the door. “Please don’t get yourself eaten,” I muttered, then followed Meggy down the stairs and out to rendezvous with my would-be dragon rider.
We made a motley crew when we landed outside Red’s in the cool dawn. Valerius, immediately tense, assessed our surroundings, while Meggy hung back, gawked at the water, and muttered, “Oh, my God, what is that?”
Joey, who had led leery Georgie through the gate, dropped the reins and scrambled onto her back. “Trouble,” he replied, stroking the dragon’s neck to calm her.
I caught a flash of the maille he’d thrown on under his jacket and felt marginally better about his chances. “Stay back until we know what we’re up against,” I ordered, then spotted Oberon strolling down the beach to meet us. “And keep her well in hand, yes?”
I don’t like it.
The psychic intrusion caught me off-guard for a second, and Meggy nearly jumped, but the others, who had spent considerable time at the barn in recent weeks, remained unfazed. “It’s all right,” Aiden soothed, patting Georgie’s flank. “We don’t like it, either.”
Her red eyes narrowed to slits as she contemplated the brown-scaled neck rising fifty feet out of the sea. It smells wrong. Bad. Everything smells wrong…
“Different realm, sweetie, nothing to worry about,” said Joey. “Just smells a little different—”
No. She bobbed her head slowly side to side, sensing something I couldn’t detect, then declared, Feels different.
“Less magic here,” Joey explained.
And something…else. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the breeze. Can’t name it.
“Worry about that later,” I said, then left the huddle to meet Oberon on the beach. “Any casualties?” I called to him as I approached.
“Nah, I dropped them all in a bar on Key West when that thing came up to play,” he called back, casually shoving his hands into the pockets of his board shorts. “Dead customers are bad for business. Nice lizard you have there. Overgrown iguana?”
I glanced over my shoulder at the distressed Georgie, who had sunk to the sand and curled her tail around her nose. “She’s young.”
“Obviously. That isn’t,” he said, pointing to the serpent in the shallows. “Want to tell me how your little darling acquired that particular pet?”
“Wasn’t our doing. Like I said, she was kidnapped last Friday—”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he interrupted. “Either the ‘kidnapping’ was staged or the girl’s deep in the throes of Stockholm syndrome by now. Ah,” he said, looking past me, “and this must be Meggy. Couldn’t keep one little girl under control, dear?”
She stopped beside me, gave him a sneering once-over, then snorted. “Ed Hardy? That’s the best you could do?”
“Fashion is a fickle thing,” he replied with a little shrug. “Your mother didn’t seem to mind, but then again, she didn’t keep her own clothes on for very long.”
“Son of a bitch…”
I grabbed Meggy around the waist before she could lunge at him, and Oberon stepped back a pace, grinning as she cursed him with every profane syllable in her vocabulary. “Feisty, isn’t she?” he said to me, raising his voice to be heard over her outburst. “Good luck, Coileán. Poor choice with that one. The girl’s no better,” he continued, cutting his eyes to the snake. “There’s a fair bit of Titania in her, I’d wager. What was your plan, again?”
I waited until Meggy, red-faced and nearly crying, ran out of steam, then muttered, “It’s been a long weekend. Don’t provoke her.”
“And miss the entertainment?” he replied. “Besides, how better to get acquainted with my daughter than to learn what drives her to madness?”
Meggy spat in the sand, then shook me off and brushed her curls from her face. “You’re disgusting,” she told him, “you raped my mother, and you have the audacity to call me your daughter?”
Oberon remained unflappable. “I wouldn’t call it rape, little one. She was more than willing.”
“I’m not stupid, and I know how enchantment works,” she retorted. “She still blames herself for getting drunk that night. Mom wouldn’t have cheated on Dad.”
“Wouldn’t she?” His unreadable smile broadened as Meggy’s face shifted ever closer to purple. “A little alcohol, a little suggestion…child, she did nothing against her will. I didn’t have to force her.”
Meggy’s blue eyes blazed. “A married, Catholic, mother of two? You didn’t force her?”
At that, he actually laughed. “I’ve had Catholics, single, married, and sworn to celibacy. As did your mother, boy,” he added, smirking at me. “Religion-driven declarations of chastity seldom overcome lust, but that’s a conversation for another day.” He cocked his thumb at the serpent and said, “Get your child under control and off my island, or she’s dead.”
“Gee, thanks, that’s big of you,”
said Meggy, stomping past him toward the water. “Either make yourself useful or get lost, asshole. Olive!” she shouted into the wind. “Olive, for the love of God, get off that thing!”
Oberon’s face slowly swiveled toward mine. “You know,” he said softly, “I could kill her right now for that insolence. I probably should. But then I recall that you have to put up with that, every single day, and I feel all warm and tingly inside.”
I stood there, watching Meggy’s hair bounce as she picked up speed, then wheeled on Oberon, grabbed him by the T-shirt, and employed the two inches I had on him to their full advantage. “Touch one of mine,” I said, pulling him close enough to smell the beer on his breath, “and I will destroy you. If I have to lead an army onto this damn island, I’ll do it. And by the time I get to you, if you’re not already dead, I’ll drag you off, bleeding and begging for mercy, lock you in an iron box, and wall you up so your screams don’t disturb me. Got it?”
He smiled in the face of my fury. “Big words.”
“Try me.”
He yanked himself free of my grip and smoothed his shirt against his tanned chest. “Perhaps I will. Perhaps someday, when you’re ready—”
“Damn it, Colin,” Meggy yelled from the high-tide line, “get over here and help me!”
Oberon practically beamed. “That’s my girl!” he crowed, and his cackling laughter followed me as I ran to see what had become of Olive.
I can state with confidence that staring up at a dripping sea serpent whose RV-sized skull is rearing roughly four stories above yours doesn’t rank highly on anyone’s bucket list.
Our party, joined by Oberon—out of curiosity, I can only imagine—gathered at the water’s edge and waited while the beast swam closer. Even from a distance, I could pick out the little figure sitting cross-legged on its flat head, which gradually resolved into my daughter, now wearing a black catsuit of the type one might find in a collection of better dominatrix attire. When the snake had closed to within ten yards, she stood and spread her hands, which burst into green flame. “You thought you could chain me?” she bellowed down at us in Fae. “I am the Lady Moyna, daughter of the queen, and I will not be bound!”
The Faerie King Page 24
