He made a face. “Nothing big.”
I nodded again, watching the moon rise. “I accept.”
My father died three days later. I never saw him again.
Chapter 15
I was grateful for the little car’s heater against the wet chill as I passed endless fields and modest houses around Benbulbin and Truskmore, drove down streets I’d never seen, and eventually gave up and headed for the coast in an effort to orient myself with the Atlantic to my back. After spending half an hour on the side of the road with my jacket hood up, triangulating points on my now water-spotted map, I managed to zero in on the old monastery’s location and turned my car back toward the interior.
An hour, a cup of coffee, and half a dozen wrong turns later, I idled on a dirt road that abutted a large farm and tried to find the ruins in the mist. Halfway up a hill, I spotted a pile of stone that seemed only vaguely familiar, but when I stepped out of the car for a better look, I sniffed the air and caught the faintest scent of magic.
I had protected the sphere with water and crystal and stone, making it blend into the background magic of the area. With that magic gone, however, I could pick the sphere’s signature out of the air—I could have followed the smell in a beeline to the stone pile—and I glanced about, looking for interlopers similarly drawn by the only hint of magic for miles. We had to move in quickly and grab the sphere, but I couldn’t do it by daylight—not with a farmer lurking nearby, and not with the sturdy wire fence separating his property from the road.
I glared at the ruin and tried to formulate a plan. We would come by night, but we’d need wire cutters—and if the fence had an alarm, we’d certainly trigger it. And once we were on the property, could we safely use flashlights without attracting attention? What about dogs, didn’t farmers always have those skulking about? And I still needed a tool to get the sphere out of its hiding place in the wall . . .
As I mulled over my options, a lone ewe wandered close, looked up sharply at me, and ran for the safety of the flock.
In this ever mutable world, it’s nice to see that some things never change.
I returned to the hotel around six with takeaway curry and found Joey still tinkering at the room’s table, which was littered with bits of metal and discarded plastic clamshells. He had procured a pair of safety goggles, I noticed, and with his hair and clothing in disarray from travel, he looked rather like the sort of scientist who should only be trusted with safety scissors.
“Find it?” he asked, watching me through a thick layer of plastic.
“Yeah. Food?” I lifted the plastic bag in offering, and he cleared half the table with the sweep of his arm.
Joey pushed his goggles up on his forehead, squinted at the green sauce in the first foam box he opened, then shrugged and started unwrapping a fork. “Almost finished here,” he said between bites. “Seems to be working, but I can’t really test it, you know?”
“So how do you know it’s working?”
He pointed to the curtained window. “Alley out back. I might have shot a few nails into the hotel’s dumpster for range-gauging purposes.”
“I know nothing,” I replied, opening another container of rice. “How are you with fences?”
Joey leaned back in his thinly padded chair and cracked his knuckles. “What kind of fence are we talking about?”
“Wire. The property owner has sheep.”
His mouth twitched. “Sheepdog?”
“I didn’t see one, but—”
“But that doesn’t mean anything,” he finished, taking his turn with the rice. “Okay, so a multi-strand wire fence, right? Barbed wire?”
“No barbs. It might be electric.”
“Might?”
“I didn’t exactly test it,” I mumbled into my dinner.
“Right . . .” He pushed his curry around for a moment, frowning, then nodded. “So, the first problem to get around is the fence. They all have control boxes, but I’m betting the owner keeps his protected. We’ll just go over.” My eyebrow rose, and Joey grinned. “Yet another boring summer, this one with a tempting pond in a field inside an electric wire. A bunch of us kids used to sneak in at night until the owner caught us, and then I spent the rest of the summer in my parents’ RV. Lesson learned, eh?”
“How?” I asked skeptically.
His grin widened. “Rubber gloves and galoshes. If you’re careful, you can make it over without shocking yourself.” He glanced at our luggage, then said, “I suppose we’d better go find some before the stores close.”
“The ones near us already have,” I muttered. “We’ll be halfway back to Dublin before we find something open.”
Joey put down his fork, grabbed his nail gun, stuffed his tools into his paper bag, and headed for the door. “Let’s move, then. You can fill me in on the rest on the way.”
It was nearly two thirty on Saturday morning before we made it back to the dirt road and the ruins. I parked the car in the weeds half a mile away and led Joey back up the road, feeling slightly foolish to be out in rain boots after the rain had ceased. He had picked out a hammer and chisel at the store as well, plus black gloves that reached to our elbows. “Heading north tomorrow,” he told the weary clerk. “Far north. Little fishing trip with an old friend—he warned us that ice is still a problem this time of year.”
“Very far north,” the clerk had mumbled, but took my bank card without protest.
Now appropriately suited and armed—Joey had fashioned a quick holster for his nail gun out of duct tape on the way—we approached the fence and surveyed the dark field. “See anything?” he whispered.
I shook my head and tapped the penlight in my pocket. “No lights. Farmer’s probably asleep.”
“How close are we?”
“The ruin’s halfway up the hill,” I replied, then gingerly reached out for the top wire. When I didn’t receive a shock, I slowly let out my breath. “Okay, so how do we do this?”
“Watch and learn,” Joey whispered, then pulled on the top wire just enough to give himself room to maneuver. In a matter of seconds, he had vaulted the fence without electrocution, and he flipped on his flashlight to show me the shaking wires. “Want help?”
Though embarrassed to ask, I let him guide me over into the field, and I shifted my tool pack when I was clear of the fence. “I thought you were supposed to be a priest,” I muttered. “Since when has breaking and entering been part of the job?”
He chuckled. “Technically, I’m still on vacation. Where’s the doohickey hiding?”
I clicked on my light for a moment and showed him the ruins in the distance. “Hike’s not bad. I’d watch for sheep droppings.”
“Mm. What’s that?” he asked, quickly flicking his light toward a modest outbuilding near the ruins.
“Storage shed?” I guessed. “I have no idea.”
Joey grunted, then cut his light and began to trudge up the hill. I followed a pace behind, keeping an eye out for unfriendly lights, but the night was still and quiet. “It’s in there,” I murmured. “I can smell it.”
“Do you have any idea how weird that sounds?” he replied.
“Not really,” I admitted. “Paul’s grown accustomed to it.”
“He’s got a head start on me, you know?” Joey’s breathing had begun to grow more labored, but he marched on. “I mean, this week has kind of been a crash introduction to weirdness. No offense.”
“You’re handling it well,” I said, grateful for the rubber boots with each squelching step.
Joey paused, then took a long sniff. “Horses. Definitely horses.”
“You can tell that from here? Do you have any idea how weird that sounds?” I couldn’t resist mocking him.
“I was on a horse before I could walk,” he replied, pointing to the outbuilding. “Must be a barn. I spent enough summers mucking out stables to know what horse shit smells like,” he explained.
“I wouldn’t really know. Don’t do well with animals,” I said. “Avoid th
em when I can.”
“Bad encounter?”
“It’s a faerie thing. I freak them out.” I glanced over my shoulder at the dark bulk of the barn and hoped whatever was in there kept on sleeping. “I bought one of the first Fords. You have no idea how nice it is to get into a vehicle and not worry that your propulsion system is going to bolt on you.” My boot hit the first fallen stone. “Ah. Light, please.”
Joey turned on his flashlight again, and I surveyed the few remaining walls, trying to orient myself in a building I’d seen exactly once. That proved futile, however, and so I resorted to walking the perimeter and sniffing. In a few moments, I centered in on the strongest smell, and I pulled the hammer and chisel from my pack. “Here goes,” I muttered, and began my work. “Keep watch, yeah?”
He disappeared around the corner, taking the light with him, and I worked by touch, feeling the edges of the loosened stone through my thick gloves. Ten minutes later, I had chipped the mortar free and pulled the stone from the wall, revealing the hiding place I had casually created centuries before. I reached into the hole and pulled the crystal box out, then flipped on my light to examine my prize.
Before I could try to get the cube open, footsteps ran down the former hall, and Joey panted, “Someone’s coming!”
“What?” I hissed, wheeling away from the hole.
His head bobbed in my flashlight’s beam. “Six guys. There’s a couple down by our car—I saw them from the top of the wall,” he said, glancing toward the missing ceiling, “and the other four are heading this way. What do we do?”
“You stay here,” I ordered, pushing him against the wall before darting out of the ruins. Joey was right, I noted with a tightening stomach; four lights bobbed through the wet grass, heading our way. “Who’s there?” I called, scrambling to think up a plausible lie if the newcomers were the farmer’s family.
The nearest of the lights flashed into my eyes and back to the ground. “Just a friend, my lord,” its owner called back in Fae, and I slipped behind the wall once more.
I found Joey waiting where I had left him, and I thrust my pack in his face. “Doohickey’s in there. Get out of here, now.”
“But I—”
“Go. I’ll be along shortly. Just keep it safe.”
“Who’s coming?” he pressed, slipping my bag over his shoulders.
“Friends of Robin’s. Don’t let them get the sphere,” I said, and headed back to meet them as Joey ran the other way.
The lights were still coming as I hoisted myself onto the wall, and I spotted the two down at our rental car, blocking our escape. An ambush, then, I decided, trying to judge my attackers’ positions by their lights. “How did you find me?” I called, hoping their voices might provide me with insight as to their identities.
The lead light called back, “Lord Robin told us where to look!”
Shit. If Robin had planned this, then his goons knew what I was after. “I warn you, I’m armed!” I yelled—but that, I realized as soon as I had let it slip, was a lie. The hammer and chisel were in the pack I had given Joey, and I had exactly one small, plastic flashlight with which to defend myself. Still, bluffing seemed like the best option. “You know what I’m capable of!”
“We do,” said another light. “But this is a contest of muscle now, isn’t it? The magic’s gone.”
“There are four of us,” the third added. “And . . . two of you?”
They were right, of course, but I had to stall and give Joey time to flee. “My associate’s stronger than he looks. You won’t like him when he’s angry.”
“Is that so?” the leader asked. “Shall we test him and prove you a liar and a coward, Ironhand?”
I ground my teeth but forced myself to remain still. There was nothing to be gained by engaging them sooner. “My brother put you up to this, you said?”
The leader hesitated. “Not in so many words.”
“But he said you’d be here,” the fourth chimed in.
“And we have affairs to settle,” the leader continued, back on firm footing. “Now, what brings the likes of you here—”
His words were cut off by a shrill neighing, and then a giant blur came thundering around the mountain. The lingering clouds broke for just a moment, and I caught a glimpse in the moonlight of Joey astride an enormous black horse, his head bare, his pack bouncing on his back, his dirty rubber boots clinging to the beast’s sides. The horse sensed what was around him and reared, but Joey held on and coaxed it back to the ground. “Freeze, motherfuckers,” he snapped, aiming his flashlight at the approaching faeries.
Something seemed odd about the flashlight’s position, and then I saw what Joey had quickly taped it to.
The leader began to run at him, but fell an instant later, shrieking at the nail embedded in his thigh. The others stopped in their tracks, giving Joey time to turn around and reach for me on the wall. “Get on!” he shouted. “What are you waiting for?”
The horse was barely in check, and I couldn’t see this ending well. “I can’t! Without enchantment, I can’t control—”
“Damn it, don’t be difficult!” he snapped, then grabbed my wrist and yanked me forward. Even with the horse’s back nearly level with the broken wall, mounting the terrified beast was still a tricky proposition without the aid of a saddle, and I only kept my seat by clinging to Joey like a barnacle. The beast reared again as I swung my legs into place, and Joey kicked it back to earth as he sighted down the remaining three faeries. “We’re getting out of here. Hang on, Blücher,” he muttered.
The horse screamed and reared once more, but Joey drove it onward down the mountain, firing nails at every shadow. The cries told me when he fired true, but soon we were past the faeries and racing for the road. “They’re in our car!” I yelled, holding on to Joey for dear life.
“And theirs is blocking the road!” he yelled back, pointing his gun at the dark van I had missed. Without slowing, he took aim at the rental car and fired, driving nails through the windows and into the tires. The van received the same treatment, and then Joey kicked the horse into high gear and cleared the electric fence. We raced away through the night, the sphere safe between us and half a dozen angry faeries at our back.
Joey finally slowed several miles away, then pulled the lathered horse to a halt and slid down. As soon as I was off its back, the frantic creature bolted, and Joey sighed. “Well, I honestly didn’t think I’d be adding horse theft to my spring break plans,” he muttered, “but I’m sure he’ll find his way home.”
I breathed deeply, trying to steady my nerves, then leaned against an ancient stone wall and closed my eyes.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Adrenaline,” I mumbled, willing myself not to be sick, then reached into my pocket and found the car keys, which I dropped into the tall grass. “Car was stolen at knifepoint. We went out to a club and got jacked. Got it?”
“Works for me.”
“Good.” I stood up slowly, testing myself for vertigo, then opened my eyes. “Kid?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“Sure,” he grunted, and then we started our long walk home.
Ten steps up the road, I asked, “So, how many Hail Marys does horse theft earn these days?”
Joey sighed. “This little escapade is between you, me, and the Almighty, right?”
I patted his shoulder. “Was there a minibar in the hotel room, by chance? Felonies make me thirsty.”
“I think there might have been a bar in the lobby,” he replied. “Hey, does this mean Robin’s dead?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “I’ll think about it in the morning.”
Chapter 16
We ditched our rubber gloves and boots in separate bins. Though he was loath to part with it, I insisted that Joey dump his nail gun as well, and he tossed it into the Garvoge in pieces. The makeshift holster went into a public can several blocks away, tucked under a greasy pizza box for extra safety, and then, divested of any
thing incriminating, we made our way to the police station on aching feet to report our rental stolen.
“We were on our way back from Dublin,” Joey lied, putting on his best choirboy face. “Met up with some friends for a few hours. We stopped for gas and got carjacked by two guys. They had these big knives . . .”
The officer’s face was weary with the hour. “What was the name of the petrol station?”
He consulted the ceiling. “I think it was a Topaz . . . some sort of gemstone . . .”
The scribbling intensified, but the officer was nodding. “Remember where?”
“No, I’m sorry, it’s all kind of a blur . . .” Joey swallowed hard, then mumbled, “We’d been out clubbing, see, and it was late . . .”
The officer held up his empty hand. “Say no more. Get a good look at them?”
“Maybe six feet tall, little less. Skinny. Black track suits, black ski masks.”
“We were at the far end of the pumps, too,” I added. “I didn’t see a security camera . . .”
“Clever bastards,” the officer muttered, and snapped his notebook closed. I couldn’t see his thoughts without magic, but something told me we were off the hook for the time being.
We left Joey’s cell phone number and our hotel address, promised to stay in town through the weekend in case the police collared anyone, and shook the officer’s hand as he assured us that he’d straighten everything out with the rental company. With that, we walked home to the hotel through the dawn’s first light, both of us stiff after sitting at the station and blistered from our night’s exertion. “Made up your mind yet?” Joey asked as we turned onto the final stretch of sidewalk.
I glanced at him, but he had shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and was staring straight ahead, giving me no indication of his thoughts on the matter. “I suppose I should call Robin before putting a bounty on his head, shouldn’t I?”
“Seems wise.”
“Fine,” I sighed. “But once I get answers out of him, I’m having a drink or three. Think we’ve earned it, don’t you?”
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