“Want coffee?” I asked.
He nodded.
I poured him a cup and set it on the bar. “Okay, this is backwards,” I said. “We’re on the wrong sides of the bar.”
He nodded again, and we switched positions. I sat on my usual barstool. He poured a second mug of coffee and slid it in front of me, where it sat untouched. I didn’t want coffee. I wanted Juliet to be okay.
Axel sipped his coffee and waited.
“Juliet’s bad,” I said. “I think she’s dying. Mab’s trying to save her.”
A large hand appeared on the bar, millimeters from my own. It was a strong hand, with square nails and long fingers. Axel wasn’t the touchy-feely type, but I knew what he was trying to say.
He finished his coffee, and I helped get the bar ready to open, carrying in trays of washed glasses and setting them on shelves, scrubbing some of the customary stickiness from the tables. As we worked, I strained to listen for any sign of what Mab was doing, but the only sound was the clinking of barware. Axel didn’t scrimp on soundproofing.
Time dragged its feet through half an hour. I could almost hear the minutes shuffling slowly along—until I looked up and saw Mab in the hallway, leaning against the wall. The shuffling footsteps were hers. She looked exhausted.
I ran to her side. Axel was right behind me. Together, we helped her into the main room and made our way to a table. Axel tested a chair to make sure it didn’t wobble, and we got Mab settled in it. I pulled around another chair and sat next to her. She slumped, one hand over her heart as if checking to make sure it still beat. Her face drooped; her skin was ashen and papery. Whatever she’d done downstairs, it had taken a lot out of her.
I clasped her hand. “Are you all right? How’s Juliet?”
“Juliet’s alive. Or undead—whichever’s appropriate to say about vampires. At any rate, she hasn’t dissolved into a pile of dust.” She took a long, shaky breath and attempted a small smile. “Although that’s rather an apt description of how I feel at the moment.”
Axel looked inquiringly toward the coffeemaker.
“Do you have tea?” I asked. “She doesn’t drink coffee.”
“Downstairs,” Axel said. He went to get it.
Mab closed her eyes and inhaled a long, slow breath. She raised a hand to pat her hair into place. It scared me, seeing how badly her hand shook.
“How about some of that aquavit?” I tried to make my voice bright. “Water of life, right? Sounds like just what you need.”
Mab shook her head. “A sip of tap water, perhaps.” Her tongue darted across parched lips.
“Coming right up.” I squeezed her hand and went behind the bar. As I took down a glass and filled it at the sink, I wondered what saving Juliet’s life had cost Mab. Despite her age, my aunt was a strong, vital woman. I’d never seen her so weak.
Mab accepted the water glass in both hands. She gulped down a couple of swallows and set it on the table. She licked her lips again. “Better.”
“Mab, what did you do down there? What’s the bloodstone?”
She fingered the chain around her neck and pulled out the pendant. The bloodstone looked different, duller and shrunken in its setting. The green and red coloring had faded to a drab, flat gray.
“This stone,” Mab said, “is my talisman. My object of power. It binds me to the land, and the land to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The bloodstone possesses three qualities: it’s sacred, it’s powerful, and it’s personal. Centuries ago, the stone was chiseled from an ancient altar—that’s the sacred part. It was buried deep in the soil, where it absorbed power from the land. And it’s personal to me, infused with my blood—the blood of numerous lifetimes.”
Was she kidding? I knew the ancient druids believed in reincarnation, but I thought that particular belief had been put away in the filing cabinet of wacky ideas, somewhere between Fairy, Tooth and Santa Claus. Yet Mab’s eyes were dull with exhaustion, not twinkling with a joke.
“The bloodstone is what gives me longevity,” she said. “You might say it’s the source of my power.” The corners of her tired mouth twitched upward. “And I used that power to heal a vampire. You have some second cousins in Carmarthenshire who’d argue I should have staked her instead.”
It was good to see Mab smile a little, because her appearance frightened me. Her skin was dull and sallow. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. The creases in her face had sharpened, and her jawline sagged almost into jowls. The past half hour had aged her twenty years.
“Can the bloodstone’s power be renewed?” I asked.
“When I return to Wales, yes. I’ve drawn on it too much recently. First there was the injury to my heart”—Pryce had nearly killed her a month ago in a swordfight in a Welsh slate mine—“and then I used the stone to find you. And now this. I’m tired. The stone has dispensed much of its power without replenishment. When I get home, I’ll bury it deep in good Welsh soil for a few weeks, give it time to regenerate. And we’ll both be good as new.”
“We could find a place to bury it here.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid that won’t work, child. The bloodstone’s power, and my own, is tied to the land of Wales.”
“Then you’ve got to go back.” Mab’s passport had arrived in the mail. Carlos could forge an entry stamp, and everything would be in order for her to leave. If being away from Wales weakened Mab, she needed to go home, and as soon as possible.
“I have business to finish here. With Myrddin. The bad blood between us goes way back.”
Way back. Myrddin was a fifteen-hundred-year-old demi-demon. “Have you really lived multiple—” I began, but Axel’s heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. Mab stuffed the bloodstone back inside her shirt and shot me a look that warned me not to talk about it now.
Axel reappeared, bearing a tray. He’d gone all out. Tea steeped in a delicate porcelain pot decorated with pink and white roses; a matching cup and saucer waited beside it. He’d put out cream, sugar, sliced lemon, and even honey in a plastic, bear-shaped squeeze bottle. I tried to picture Axel sitting downstairs in his lair, sipping tea from that cup. I failed.
As he set down the tray, Axel must have noticed me gaping at him. His face turned two shades redder and he disappeared behind the bar.
I poured a cup of tea, stirred in some honey, and handed it to Mab. She raised it, trembling, to her lips. She drained the cup and returned it to me for a refill. When she handed me the empty cup a second time, her hands were steadier.
“Ah, much better.” She did look better. Some of the color had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes had reclaimed some of their sparkle. But she still looked much older and more frail than the woman who’d entered Creature Comforts with me an hour ago.
How much of Mab’s vitality came from the bloodstone—and how much was left?
She stood, putting a hand on her back as though it pained her. “Now,” she said, “there’s no time to lose. We must speak with your roommate. Lives depend on it.”
She set off toward the storeroom, moving with the awkward gait of someone trying to hide a limp. Axel came out from behind the bar, said something in his troll language, and offered his arm. Mab accepted it, and together they went down the hall.
JULIET HAD BEEN SO CLOSE TO DEATH THAT I EXPECTED TO find her limp in bed, awake but weak. So I wasn’t prepared for the bundle of energy that paced the room like a tornado trapped in a box.
I was on the bottom step when Juliet ran over and threw her arms around me. She saw Mab behind me and cried, “‘O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you’!” And then she hugged Mab, too. My aunt stiffened, her face an almost comical picture of consternation. It was a pretty safe bet that Mab had never been hugged by a vampire before.
“That’s Shakespeare,” Juliet explained. Mab nodded and didn’t reply, although she knew the Bard’s plays as well as Juliet. “There’s more to it, of course. The line is from my play, from a speech by Mercutio. I
’m afraid he’s not very complimentary of your namesake overall. But he calls you ‘the fairies’ midwife,’ and I do feel like you’ve helped birth me.”
Juliet kissed Mab on the cheek. Mab’s eyes went wide, and I had to turn away to hide my smile.
“Glad to see you’re feeling better,” I said. I’d never seen Juliet such a bundle of energy. “How’s your leg?”
“Oh, it’s fine.” She held it out, her arms positioned like a ballerina’s. Her skin was smooth and pale, as normal. Not even a scar. She spun in a pirouette. “All better. Thanks to good Queen Mab. You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?” She flashed a toothy grin at Mab, who was leaning heavily on the arms of a chair as she lowered herself into it. Axel went back upstairs to get her another cup of tea.
“So, when are we going to attack the Old Ones?” Juliet leapt around, shadowboxing. “Now that I know how vulnerable those bastards are to silver, I’ll kill them all. I don’t care if I burn myself to cinders doing it.”
I stared at her. This wasn’t just a surge of energy. This was like a whole new Juliet. And there was Mab, so drained. I hoped she hadn’t given away too much. “Did Mab tell you what made you so sick?” I asked Juliet.
“Plague virus. But I feel fine now. And I didn’t even turn into a zombie.” She scrutinized herself in the mirror over the dresser, checking for gray-green skin or red eyes. But there wasn’t a trace of zombie in her; she looked like Juliet. Pale skin, glossy hair. Even her curves had filled out again. “I feel better than I have in decades. Like I’ve started a whole new life.” She laughed. “Does that make me un-undead?”
Axel returned, carefully balancing a teacup in its saucer, and sat next to Mab. She took tea and tried to sip it, but her hands were shaking again, almost as badly as before. She rested the cup and saucer in her lap. How much of Juliet’s newfound vitality came from the bloodstone, I wondered, and how much from the Old Ones’ eternity virus?
“Did you know the Old Ones caused the zombie plague?” I asked her.
“Not until Queen Mab told me I’d been infected with a similar virus. Then I realized the original plague must have been the ‘failed experiment’ the Old Ones were always going on about.” She turned to Mab. “The Old Ones communicate psychically. I could hear their thoughts, but they didn’t know I was eavesdropping. Anyway.” She spun on her heel to address me again. “That was why they needed the wizard, because their experiment had failed and they were running out of time.”
“We know now who the wizard is. Myrddin Wyllt. He’s the father of Pryce, the one they call ‘the sleeper.’”
Mab managed to lift the teacup to her lips. When she set it down, her eyes had brightened. “Colwyn believes that Myrddin possesses the secret to immortality,” she said. “It took Colwyn centuries to find Myrddin and then centuries more to figure out how to undo the spell that held the wizard where he was. But the two of them are old enemies. I’m sure Colwyn would have greatly preferred to leave Myrddin there for all eternity.”
“And where was that?” Juliet asked. She’d finally stopped pacing and spinning and dancing and perched on the edge of the bed.
“A hawthorn tree,” I said. “He was imprisoned there by my ancestor Nimuë.”
“Actually, it was a yew tree. And . . . well, the literature gets many of the details wrong. But that’s not our concern now.” She turned to Juliet. “Colwyn released Myrddin but put a time limit on his freedom: ten days. If Myrddin doesn’t deliver the secret of immortality in that time, back he goes to the yew tree. In the meantime, they’re assisting Myrddin in his attempts to revive Pryce. That’s what’s behind the Reaper murders.” She gave a brief account of how Myrddin had attempted to transfer my life force to Pryce. “So, you see, we need to find where they’re hiding ‘the sleeper.’”
“I don’t know.” Juliet rubbed her chin. “The Old Ones have several bases in Boston. The one where I met with them is on Stanhope Street.” She jumped up and began pacing again, gesturing as she spoke. “There’s an empty lot there, across from that big parking garage, that’s supposed to be a construction site. But the construction trailer is fake. The lair is under it, underground. It’s set up like a big laboratory.”
“We know that one,” I said. “That’s where they took me. It’s abandoned now.”
“Drat. That’s the only one I visited. I know there are at least two more. They mentioned a safe house and also a headquarters, but not their locations.” She stopped moving and closed her eyes. “They communicated in images. Let me see what I can recall. The safe house was in a brick town house, in the basement. But there’s millions of town houses in Boston. The headquarters . . .” She scrunched her eyes more tightly. “Dark. Underground. Concrete walls.” She shook her head. “Not helpful, I know, but it’s all I can see.”
“The murders follow a pattern,” I said, thinking out loud. “They happen every forty-eight hours. The timing must have ritual significance for Myrddin. When he didn’t manage to kill me, he sent the Reaper out to kill someone else that night, at that location. Could there be a pattern to the murder sites, too?” Since one murder site had also been the site of a known base of the Old Ones, if we could identify the pattern, maybe we’d flush them out of hiding.
“A pattern . . .” Juliet closed her eyes again. “There was a symbol that dominated their conversations. I don’t know what it means, but it always came with the number five.”
Mab and I exchanged glances. “Myrddin said there had to be five victims,” I said, “that Pryce would open his eyes when he received the life force of the fifth. Maybe the symbol is related. What did it look like?”
Juliet’s eyes popped open. “Give me something to write with and I’ll draw it for you.”
Axel fished a pencil from his shirt pocket, and Mab handed Juliet the napkin from her saucer. A few splashes of tea had sloshed onto it, but most of it was dry.
Juliet sat on the bed and smoothed the napkin flat on the nightstand. Her tongue poked out from one side of her mouth as she concentrated on her drawing. She held it out so we could see. It was a simple figure, a vertical line with diagonal branches forming a point at each end:
“Eihwaz,” said Axel.
“Yes.” Mab nodded. “I believe you’re correct.”
I stared at the symbol. I didn’t care what it was called. I felt it burning in my chest: a long, vertical line along my breastbone, with a diagonal cut at each end. The Reaper had carved that symbol into me as I’d lain strapped to the table.
“Child, are you all right? You’ve gone deathly pale.”
I put a hand to my chest. “That symbol—the Reaper carved it into my chest.”
Mab peered at me, her eyes dark with concern. In a moment, the burning sensation faded. I reminded myself that the symbol wasn’t there now, not even as a scar. “Tell me about the symbol,” I said.
Mab watched me for several seconds before she answered. “It’s a rune. It represents the yew tree, symbol of triumph over death.” She took the napkin and smoothed it on her lap. I wondered if it was a coincidence that Myrddin had been imprisoned in a yew tree. “The Old Ones’ focus on this rune may simply show their preoccupation with defeating death.”
“But the number five. Five victims, five points on the rune.” I glanced around the room. There was no computer. “Is there any way I can get online right now?” I asked Axel. “I need to see a map of Boston.”
Axel scratched his chin through his shaggy beard. Then he trundled over to the bed’s nightstand and opened a drawer. He pulled out a neatly folded paper map. “This okay? I keep it for guests.”
“Perfect.” I unfolded the map and spread it open on the bed. “Juliet, give me that pencil. Now, the body of the first Reaper victim was discovered here, in the South End near Rutland Square.” I drew a circle on the site and filled it in. “The second body was also in the South End, at the intersection of Harrison and East Newton.” I squinted at the map until I found the place, and drew another dot. “If a third mu
rder happened at the site of the Stanhope Street base, that would be just about here, more toward the Back Bay.” Dot number three appeared on the map.
“Now, if we connect the dots . . .” I drew a line from the first murder site to the second, and then from the second to the third, the place that could have been the site of my own death. A chill hit me. I was still worried what it meant that Pryce had absorbed some of my life force. But I couldn’t afford to dwell on that now.
A lopsided V appeared on the map, with one branch longer than the other. It looked like the bottom half of the eihwaz rune.
“Extend the vertical line northward,” Mab said. “Make it the same length as from the Harrison Avenue site to Stanhope Street.”
I sketched the line upward, then folded the map at Stanhope Street to make sure I located the end point correctly. From there, I drew a diagonal line, branching off to the southeast, and folded the map at an angle to verify that it mirrored the bottom branch. A corner of Boston Common at Boylston Street. The eihwaz rune stood out on the map, connecting five separate sites.
“If they’re using this rune as a pattern, the next murder will happen here,” I said, pointing to the dot at the top of the map. It was on Back Street, a sort of alleyway between Beacon Street and Storrow Drive, near where the Back Bay becomes Beacon Hill.
Mab stood. Axel jumped up to assist her, but she was much steadier on her feet. “We must go there at once. It’s our best chance to ambush Myrddin.”
“And stop the Reaper,” I added.
Juliet grinned. “And kick the Old Ones’ bony asses straight to hell.”
23
JULIET SAID SHE NEEDED TO HUNT AND WOULD MEET US AT Back Street. I wasn’t sure joining us was such a great idea. Right now, she was the Amazing Perpetual Motion Vampire, but two hours ago, she’d been dying. The surge of vitality she’d gotten from the bloodstone wouldn’t last forever—Mab warned it would wear off. And who knew what the longerterm effects of the virus might be? Besides, Juliet was unarmed and I couldn’t spare any weapons.
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