A Gilded Cage (Chronicles of an Urban Druid Book 1)

by Auburn Tempest

  Kyle raises his black, leathery nose to the air and lets out a throaty growl. Then he paws the empty roasting pan beside him, and his nails click against the enamel. “Barmaid, how about ye show yer appreciation in liquid form?”

  I snort and thumb the nozzle of the keg Dillan set up for him earlier. Tipping the pan to eliminate a foam head, I let the ale flow.

  Sloan chuffs. “Ye can’t let yer spirit totem get liquored up every time he asks. It’s not good.”

  “Mind yer business, wayfarer,” Kyle grunts.

  “Learn yer place, Bear,” he snaps back. “Yer bound to serve her, not the other way around. What good are ye in a battle if yer soused and can’t lift yer big, fat head? This isn’t how it’s done.”

  “And exactly how many greater spirits have ye known in yer lifetime ye tight-assed dullard? None? Och, that’s what I thought.”

  “Okay.” I compromise and only give him a few inches at the bottom of the pan. “Can we get to the main event before there’s a donnybrook in the basement?”

  “Hells, ya,” Dillan exclaims while chewing his fourth piece of Hawaiian. “Start dishing out the magical powers.”

  Da shoots him a disapproving look. “If yer taking on the power, yer taking on the trainin’, the mindset, and all that comes with it. I’ll not have ye thinkin’ a fae gift is a joyride. It’s a tool and a weapon, like yer gun and yer baton. Ye need to learn how to wield it and respect it.”

  Dillan straightens. “Geez, Da, I was kidding.”

  He dips his chin. “Fer the next hour, I want ye all to smarten up and take this seriously. I mean it. Fiona made her choice, largely to save yer Granda’s life. There’s no need to change yer lives if yer not sure.”

  My brothers, to their credit, don’t bat an eye.

  Da nods. “All right then. Sloan, have ye got the laurels? We’ll start with Aiden and work our way down. Fi will keep Brendan’s spark to add to her powers. I want her to have as much power as she can, and think he would’ve liked that.”

  “He would’ve,” Aiden says.

  “Yeah,” Dillan, Calum, and Emmet agree.

  Sloan hands me one of the two metal crowns, and I place it on my head as I had at Granda’s bedside a few months ago. Da’s right. I did make my decision under duress to save Granda. I don’t regret it.

  Being locked into a life of servitude in Ireland would have been insufferable, but here and now, with my family and my bear and being home in Toronto…I can’t imagine not having this life unfurling before us.

  I sit in one of the two folding chairs Da sets out. Aiden takes the one opposite me. He winks as he sets the other laurel on his head. “What do you think? I make this crown look good, right?”

  “You’re killing it.” I lean forward and take his hands in mine. “I guess this means Jackson and Meggie are our next-gen additions to being urban druids.”

  Da chuffs. “Don’t get ahead of yerself, Fi. We don’t know the power can survive in the city. There are too many unknowns to start dreamin’ up romantic notions of a new world order fer druids.”

  Whatevs. A girl can dream.

  I squeeze Aiden’s fingers and look serious. “You ready, tough guy? This is gonna hurt like hell.”

  Sloan arches a dark brow but doesn’t give me away. “You ready, Cumhaill?”

  “I was born ready.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The loss of my brothers’ powers was negligible. The loss of my father’s didn’t happen. When Sloan finished the spark transfers for the boys and called Da to the chair, he declined. He said he wouldn’t take power from me when there was danger afoot. We argued, but, as usual, Da proved himself the most stubborn Cumhaill.

  The next few days are busy with training and buzzing with excitement. I hate to admit it, but Granda was right about the level of ambient power not being as readily available in the city as it was in Ireland. There, it tingled over my skin like a warm summer breeze. It filled me with a sense of potential energy waiting to be called to action.

  Here, I get spits and spurts.

  Sloan says that I’ll recharge in time and that I shouldn’t worry. It’s frustrating. It’s like I was ready for high school and find myself back in the third grade. I remember my spells. They simply don’t amplify my intentions the way they did on the Emerald Isle.

  The most worrisome part of the sudden decline in my druidness is my bear—or lack of. Since the night of the transfer, I haven’t been able to cast him out to physical form.

  I can hear him in my head. I can feel him fluttering restlessly in my chest. I can’t release him.

  Kyle says I’m subconsciously punishing him for staying out all night poppin’ bottles and bangin’ models—note to self, limit my bear’s time with my brothers—but that’s not it. I’m not trying to control him. I don’t have the juice.

  It’s concerning, to say the least.

  Still, grade three power levels are better than nothing, and since my brothers are in the kindergarten stage of learning, we’re good to work on the basics. Emmet set out a buffet of nuts and seeds and is working on inviting the locals. Apparently, he’s okay with the community squirrels organizing as long as he’s their pied piper.

  “Would you look at that.” Kady shifts her attention from Kevin’s sketch to watch Emmet commune with his fluffy-tailed minions. “He’s got them eating out of his hand. Isn’t he worried they’ll bite? What if he gets rabies? My cousin’s friend got bit by a raccoon in the forest and had to get a whack of needles.”

  “He’ll be okay.” I hope I’m right. “Cumhaills have a way with animals.

  “Well, it’s certainly cool.”

  It is. It’s really cool.

  Kady and Kevin don’t know about the druid part of things—Da told us all we’re not to speak of it outside of the family—but I’m so proud of how enthused my brothers are.

  We’ve always been a tight-knit family, but sharing this secret brings us closer in a difficult time. It’s not a bad thing that our training distracts everyone from the ache of missing Brendan. It’s also not a bad thing that in time, if things go sideways in the streets, they might have another resource to keep them from being killed.

  Sadly, we hadn’t seen Brendan for months and were already sort of accustomed to his absence. Now, it’s a matter of adjusting to that absence being permanent.

  Easier said than done.

  I press a hand over my chest and connect with the fledgling spark inside me that never got the chance to grow. I’m honored to be the one who gets to hold Brenny’s spark. I’ll commit myself to be as brave and dedicated to justice as he always was.

  His sacrifice will be paid forward.

  “How’s this, Fi?” Kevin taps his pencil on his sketch pad. Kevin is a hazel-eyed hottie with spikey blond hair, a crooked smile, and ruggedness that both women and men find irresistible. Not that it matters. He and Calum have been together for years, and we’re all anticipating they’ll make it permanent sometime soon.

  I check out his sketch and nod. “Can you shade his eyes a little more to make them look more sunken in?”

  “Sure.” He puts his head down and gets back to work.

  Dillan saunters over to us with a wide grin on his face and a little terracotta pot in his hand. “For you, milady.” He sets the greenery in front of Kady. “Fresh cilantro, grown with you in mind.”

  I hold up my knuckles for a bump. “Great job, D.”

  “Thank you.” He hands me Da’s malachite casting stone.

  I leave the lovebirds to chat and take the stone inside to slip it back into the velvet bag.

  Sloan and Calum are sitting at the kitchen table in the final stages of magical healing 101.

  “How’s the hand?” I lean over my brother’s shoulder to check out the damage.

  Calum shows me his palm and flexes his fingers in and out. “Good as new. Thanks, Doc.”

  Sloan wets a cloth to clean up the herb and honey mixture off the table, but Calum claims the cleanup and tak
es over. “In this house, you don’t do the dishes if you did the cooking. The same goes for healing magical booboos.”

  I slide into a chair and look at Sloan’s casting stones, and his spellbook laid open on the table. “May I?”

  “The book, ye may. Not the stones. Ye never touch another man’s stones.”

  Calum and I both snort at the same time.

  “Och, that’s why you’re wound so tight,” I say with my thick accent impression of Da. “Ye’ve been missing out.”

  Calum laughs at Sloan’s scowl. “Hell, Doc, you walked right into that one.”

  I ignore the grunt of derision from Sloan and fasten the silk tie on Da’s marble bag. “Hey, you and Gran touched my stone from Patty.”

  “Ye hadn’t started working with it yet. Ye build a relationship with yer casting stones over time the same way ye do with an animal companion and environment. My stones work as a conduit to amplify my power signature. They know and respond to me. Everyone’s energy runs on a different frequency. Cross-contact muddies the magical water.”

  “Don’t cross streams,” Calum agrees. “I get that. So where do we get ours? We’re all sharing Da’s. That must leave our waters pretty murky.”

  “Fer now, ye can cleanse the stones with the vibration of a singing bowl and setting them out fer time in full sunlight. But yes, ye’ll all need to get yer own at some point soon.”

  I pull out my phone and add that to the Urban Druid to-do list. Find casting stones goes under, find ink-magic artist, enchanted ink, more spells, sacred grove, and singing bowl. Whatever the heck that is.

  “Can I make one of my cereal bowls sing with a spell?” I scan the upper cabinets.

  “No, ye’ll find singing bowls at reputable spiritual shops. Mine is authentic from Tibet and gives off the most remarkable harmonics.”

  “Do you cleanse your stones? I thought you said you want to build your energy into them.”

  Sloan sits heavily in his seat and scrubs his hands over his shaggy, black hair. “This is why ye should be in Ireland trainin’ with Lugh. Ye have no clue how much there is to this life. Yer a wee sea turtle flappin’ yer fins on the sand. Yer miles from the ocean and the gulls are descendin’.”

  I blink at him. “Harsh. Well, this little sea turtle has hutzpah. I can flap and flop my way to the shore like nobody’s business. It might take me a little longer, but I’m a survivor. I’ll get there.”

  I can’t stand the frustration and disbelief in his mint-green gaze. Dropping my focus, I glance at the healing spell he used to fix Calum’s hand. It’s set on a page near the front of the book under the heading—Healing. I flip forward and skim Battle Magic and Creatures, then go the other way and see Mockers, Potions, and Protection.

  This tome is thick and filled with ten times the number of spells in Da’s binder, which makes sense. Sloan is an obsessively driven guy and so are both of his parents.

  “I don’t suppose you’d lend me this, would you?”

  He studies me for a long moment, then sighs. “Ye don’t ask fer much, do ye?”

  “Is it a big ask?”

  “In our world, it is.”

  There’s an edge to his voice like I’ve put him on the spot and I’m caught between feeling bad and embarrassed. “Never mind. I didn’t know it’s a cultural faux pas. Forget I asked.”

  After a long minute and a heavy exhale, he raps his knuckles on the table. “Ye can’t have my book, but I won’t leave ye empty-handed either. Get me a business directory, and I’ll get ye sorted. Have ye got money to burn? We’re gonna need quite a bit.”

  Calum pulls a card out of his wallet. “My line of credit is empty. Have at it. Fi, you know the password.”

  Sloan stands, tucks his spellbook under his arm, and his casting stones into his pocket.

  “Road trip!” I bound to my feet.

  Sloan casts a locator spell, and Calum and Emmet watch wide-eyed as the pages of our phone book flip themselves. When the thin, onion paper pages fall still, he makes a few calls, and we head out. “What the hell is that racket?” he asks when I start up my car in the back lane.

  “Molly is a little under the weather at the moment, but she’s a good car. Jettas have long lives and great safety ratings.”

  He arches a haughty brow and looks exactly like the kind of guy who was raised in a castle. “This is not the kind of rumble ye want coming from yer car, Cumhaill. Do ye have noise ordinances here?”

  I check the cross-traffic and wait until there’s an opening. Merging with the mid-day flow can be tricky. “It’s not half as bad as before Dillan duct-taped the hole in the exhaust.”

  “Yer not supposed to tape it. Yer supposed to fix it.”

  “Oh, is that where I went wrong? Thanks so much for clearing that up.”

  “I’m serious. Ye need to maintain yer vehicle better.”

  “Are you volunteering to be my sugar daddy?”

  He reaches to the controls and fiddles with the A/C. “Does this work?”

  “Nope. Didn’t you know retro is cool? Use the window.”

  “Nothing about this car is cool. It’s a sweatbox.”

  I click my indicator and turn west onto Queen Street. “We don’t all have the powers of apparition, wayfarer. Some of us need to use more modern modes of transportation.”

  “Let me know when we get to the modern part. This chunk of moving scrap metal need not apply.”

  I pat my dash, giving my old girl some love. “Weren’t you the man extolling the virtues of the aged and weathered, telling me I’d do well to start appreciating the mold and decay of your castle as character? Well, Molly has character.”

  He chuckles. “If ye say so.”

  We chug along Queen at a walking pace—because of traffic, not any deficiency of my car—until he points for me to pull into one of the street parking spots after we cross Spadina.

  I turn off the engine, lock up my Jetta, and push a loonie and a toonie into the slots for our meter. “Three bucks gets us an hour.”

  “That should be fine.”

  We walk to the crosswalk at the corner of Queen and Spadina and stop for the light. I thumb the pedestrian button to activate the crosswalk and loop my purse strap over my head.

  While we wait for the lights to change, I glance across the street and read the sign a few units up the block. “Geologic Gallery Boutique.”

  Outside the storefront, I read the welcome. “Celebrate the beauty of nature and create your oasis of peace with our world-class collection of high-quality mineral specimens, fossils, and spiritual items. Adorn yourself, your home, and your sacred space with a gift from the Earth.”

  Sloan shrugs. “The locator spell said this is where we need to be to find quality stones.”

  “Okeydokey. Let’s spend Calum’s money.”

  Forty minutes later, we stash our bags in the trunk and drop onto the faux-leather seats of my car, which are now—without exaggeration—hot enough to melt the backs of my thighs off my legs.

  “Jaysus fuck.” I arch onto my feet and flail into the back seat for the tea towel I use on such occasions.

  Sloan shakes his head, circles his finger in the air, and blows down the length of his Peter pointer. A refreshing breeze cools my seat and puts out the fire singing my legs. “How many times do I have to say it? Ye need to start—”

  “I know. I know. Thinking like a druid. It’s not that easy. I’ve been a normal girl for twenty-three years and a druid for two and a half months—seven weeks of which don’t count because I was in a dragon lair fast-forward. Gimme a break.”

  He snorts. “I doubt ye’ve ever been normal.”

  “Point to you. That might be true.” I start up the car, and we head out to the next address on the list. It’s still on Queen Street West, but not close enough to walk. “Now that we have the stones, what’s next on our list? Where are we headed?”

  “A fae bookshop.”

  I laugh and peg him with a look. “Seriously? There’s a fae books
hop in Downtown Toronto? What happened to Granda’s big, ‘ye can’t do magic in the city’ speech?”

  “If ye recall, Lugh said there aren’t druids in the city because our magic can’t flourish here. There are many other members of the fae who do fine in urban settings.”

  Huh. Many other fae in my city.

  “Are there leprechauns?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Fairies?”

  “Sure.”

  “Witches?”

  “Many.”

  “Vampires?”

  “Not fae but possibly. Demons, monsters, and the undead are an entirely different caste of magic. Druids and fae don’t usually intersect with them if we can help it.”

  Hubba-wha? How am I ever going to get a handle on all this on my own? Sure, Da will know lots, but he’s been outta the loop for four decades. He also isn’t accessible all day and night to me like Granda and Sloan have been.

  “Thanks for your help. I’m seriously impressed at how much you know about this stuff and am thankful you helped this noob as much as you have. I won’t let you record me saying it, but you’re one helluva talented druid.”

  Sloan chuffs. “Being a druid isn’t just who I am. It’s the only thing I’ve got. Where yer family has water fights, dance lessons, and barbeques, my parents took me to pagan ritual events and meteor sites. I don’t pretend to understand how yer father walked away and gave it up. I do, however, respect what he did fer his kids. Yer life is filled with joy and appreciation fer one another. I’d trade knowing the gemstone indexes fer that any day of the week.”

  I track the rising building numbers, studiously not looking at Sloan. That sucks ass. Who would I have been without my brothers and Da? Even having Ma love me for eleven years affected so much about who I am.

  “There it is.” He points to a shop as we pull up in front of it. “Myra’s Mystical Emporium.”

  Out of the car for our second stop, I lock things up, and we set off. A stiff breeze hits my back and swings the painted shingle hanging perpendicular to the building.

  Suspended over the concrete sidewalk, the sign pivots on the old-fashioned iron rod. It squeaks and creaks like something from a horror novel and my gift tingles to the fore. I ignore the prickle of hair standing up on the nape of my neck and read the lit sign in the green-tinted window.