They'd been too late to save Nika's realm from the Matrarchaí, but she was one of their first refugees. They'd saved her and the scores of sídhe she was defending and brought them back here to this world full of enchanted trees where the magic was strong. Her gratitude toward Trása for rescuing her people was perhaps only outmatched by her love for Pete, who still couldn't quite figure out what she saw in him.
The Matrarchaí's plans in this realm, at least, had - for the time being - been foiled.
At least, Pete hoped they'd been foiled. They all watched Isleen like a hawk when they were around her, looking for some hint she was about to turn nasty. Ren claimed he'd locked away the Comhroinn Delphine had performed on the girls when they were children and they could never become the monsters she had planned for, but Pete wasn't so sure. If the Matrarchaí had Teagan, it was certain they had now unlocked Delphine's memories in her. Although nobody ever said it out loud, he knew everyone but Isleen thought the same as him - Teagan had probably turned into the psychopathic Faerie-killer the Matrarchaí had bred her and her sister to be.
Pete might be mostly sídhe and able to wield magic, but he also had a Masters Degree in Criminal Psychology and he knew what the Matrarchaí were breeding better than most.
But that was a problem for another time. Right now, they had a very pissed off merman to deal with.
"I see you brought us a guest, Nika," Trása said, stopping just outside the stone circle to study their captive.
Abbán made some muffled noises but could not produce any intelligible sounds as Nika had covered his mouth with her magical bonds as well as his limbs and torso.
"A guest would not be so rude, my lady," Nika said as she bowed to Trása, her thick red braid almost touching the ground she bent so low. "Are you really a cousin to this creature?"
"So the story goes," Trása replied. "Release his mouth. I want to talk to him."
"You can talk to him, my lady," Nika said, tossing the braid over her shoulder, out of the way. "I haven't covered his ears."
Trása smiled. "Please, Nika, if you wouldn't mind."
Nika muttered something under her breath - in her reality all magic wielded by humans was via hand gestures and incantation - and Pete felt her unravel the magical bonds covering the merman's mouth.
Once he was free, Abbán didn't immediately launch into a diatribe. If anything, he seemed to be speechless. His eyes were fixed on Trása and full of suspicion.
Trása stepped into the circle, eyeing her cousin up and down for a moment, and then smiled. "Well, I'll bet this isn't how you planned on things turning out."
"You said you wanted to make amends." The merman was wide-eyed with anger. Pete feared he was about to burst something. "You told me you were ready to come home."
"I've been ready to come home for years," Trása agreed airily. "Not my fault if you thought I meant today."
"When Marcroy finds out you've broken through his curse -"
"He'll be very angry with me," Trása said. "Yes, I know that. What's he going to say to you, I wonder, Abbán, when he learns you opened an unauthroized rift so foreign rift runners could step into his realm and kidnap a merman and one of his Leipreachán?"
"You claimed Marcroy would reward me for aiding you! That I'd be a hero when I took you back to him in chains."
"I don't doubt it," Trása agreed. She glanced at Pete who got the feeling she was enjoying this immensely. "And just how are you planning to do that?"
"I know where you are now, Trása. I can come back to this realm anytime I want. I have Marcroy's jewel."
"Actually, merman, you don't," Nika announced, holding up a pigeon egg-sized ruby for them to see. "I have it."
Trása's eyes widened and Pete realized this was the prize.
In this reality, the Youkai and the humans who could wield magic opened rifts using ori mahou - folding magic. The flaw with this method was that not only was the paper exceedingly rare, it was a single-use item, as it was destroyed in the process of opening the rift. Pete had heard many tales of the jewels used in Trása and Ren's reality, but never seen one before. Curious to see the ruby, he held out his hand and Nika smiled and dropped it into his palm for his inspection. The gem was still warm and he could feel the magic pulsing inside it. On closer inspection, he noticed the center of the jewel was etched with a symbol that presumably was some magical rune written in the script of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
He closed his hand over it for a moment, and realized this jewel was his gateway home.
All this time, they'd had a different plan - search every reality they could find in the hope of capturing an agent of the Matrarchaí and forcing the location from them. The backup plan was to wait until the new stone circle commissioned by the Matrarchaí was functioning and return through there, a plan that had seemed the only logical choice.
Until now. Until Trása decided to change the rules.
This was the jewel Marcroy had used to open the first rift to their world so he could toss the infant Rónán through. This jewel - or at least the magic contained within it - knew the location of the reality where he'd been raised. The reality where he and his brother had worked in jobs they loved and had careers and nice apartments.
A reality where he was a nobody, really. Not like here.
It took Pete a moment to realize a return to that world was in his grasp. He met Nika's eye for a moment. It occurred to him that he might have to consider carefully whether or not he wanted to reach for it.
In the center of the rifuto, Abbán gamely tried to struggle against his bonds, but he was held fast, and Trása seemed to be getting a lot of satisfaction from the merman's predicament. Pete supposed, given they were related, there was some history between them; perhaps Trása was thrilled by his humiliation because she finally had the upper hand.
But gloating over this merman was an indulgence they really didn't have time for.
"What are we going to do with him, my lady?" Nika asked, before Pete had a chance to voice the same question.
"I can think of any number of things," Trása said, with a little too much relish.
"Pick one," Pete said.
"Well, we can't send him home," Trása mused, staring at the merman for a moment before turning to Pete and Nika. "He'll run straight to Marcroy if we do."
"Perhaps something you should have considered before you called him up on the puddle phone and asked him to open a rift back to Marcroy's realm," Pete suggested, pocketing the jewel for safekeeping.
Trása glanced over her shoulder and with anything but regal poise, pulled a face at him. Then she turned back to her cousin and pondered the problem for a moment before announcing her solution. "We'll release him into the ocean here," she said. She turned to them again. "I mean, without a jewel he can't go home, can he? And by the time he's figured out how the Youkai in this reality use folding magic, it won't matter. At least, not in time to do us any damage."
Pete rolled his eye at her naivety. "You think wielding magic is the only harm this guy can do?"
Trása threw her hands up impatiently. "Well, what am I supposed to do with him? We don't exactly have a sídhe jail to lock him in."
"I'll tell you what you do with him. You talk to Ren and get him to wipe this guy's memory and then send him home with some story about how he lost the jewel in a bog. That way he's not our problem, the jewel remains here, we can come and go as we please to your realm and, through that, to my home realm as well, and we won't have to sleep with one eye open for fear of some crazy, pissed-off merman trying to slit our throats in the middle of the night."
"I fear Pete speaks truly, my lady."
Trása shook her head with determination. "No. Rónán is not to know about this until I'm ready to tell him."
"As you wish," Nika replied with a small bow.
Pete wasn't nearly so willing to comply with Trása's every whim. "And your mer-cousin stays here, champing at the bit? This place drips magic, Trása. You don't think the moment you
r back is turned he isn't going to dial up your reality on the puddle phone and tell Marcroy where he is? And even if he doesn't know precisely where he is, just exactly how long are you going to be able to keep the fact that you have Marcroy's jewel a secret from Ren? Assuming, of course, Ren doesn't spot the Leipreachán you had us kidnap, and let loose in Tír Na nÓg, as soon as he gets back from wherever he is."
Trása chewed her bottom lip for a moment, something she did quite unconsciously when she was feeling pressured. Pete was certain she didn't know she did it and he chose not to mention it, because he found it a useful gauge of her mood. The Faerie refugees in this realm were - for the most part - absurdly loyal to their adopted queen, particularly the lesser sídhe who considered her akin to a goddess. It wasn't a good idea to do anything they might think would be upsetting to their precious Trása. The lesser sídhe had limited power compared to Pete, Logan, Trása and even Nika - and none at all compared to Ren - but they were like a swarm of angry wasps when they were annoyed. Had they been standing in Tír Na nÓg having this discussion and not just outside it, he probably wouldn't have spoken nearly so bluntly, either.
Before she could respond, however, the hairs on Pete's forearms stood on end and the air about them began to tingle.
"Get back! Someone's opening a rift," he called urgently, although he had no need to tell the others. They could feel the magic building just as well as he could. He grabbed Trása by the arm and pulled her clear of the stone circle as Nika shoved Abbán magically, and none too gently, away from the circle.
The merman landed on the rocks outside the circle with a thud and a loud, indignant cry as the circle stones arced with lightning. "Expecting visitors?" Pete asked Trása as he caught her to stop her tripping.
Trása regained her balance and turned to watch the rift opening inside the circle, her expression concerned. "You don't suppose Marcroy figured out how to follow you back here, do you?"
He shook his head. "The lightning is white. This is coming from someone belonging to this reality. Whoever is opening the rift is using ori mahou."
And wasting precious washi paper doing it, Pete thought, wondering who - of the limited number of people, human and Faerie, in this realm with the ability to fold a rift-opening spell - would chance an unauthorized rift for anything other than the direst need.
Magic was plentiful in this realm, but rifts took more than just magic. They needed a talisman: some tangible focus for the rift, hence the stone circles in every reality and objects like Marcroy Tarth's precious engraved ruby. Nika's reality had used human bones marked with Celtic runes, and she still carried her talisman - a grotesque, mummified baby's foot tattooed with woad - tied to a leather thong around her neck, which he insisted she remove when they were in bed.
Here, magicians used folding magic, but not the ordinary kind that used kozo trees for wielding spells using origami. A dimensional rift needed a spell folded with washi paper and there were so few washi trees left in this reality, the paper was more precious than Faerie Lord sweat - something Pete was convinced was impossibly rare because he'd never met a Tuatha Dé Danann among Trása's refugees prepared to do even a lick of honest hard work.
The rift opened to reveal a picture perfect courtyard, a cloudless blue sky and a garden complete with cherry blossoms and quaint, upturned eaves on the corner of the slate-tiled roofs. Standing on the other side, waiting for the rift to stabilize, was a blond, middle-aged woman dressed in a gorgeous kimono. Beside her was a much younger man. Pete took a deep breath to brace himself. Wakiko wouldn't be coming here unannounced - and, significantly, without Isleen - to do anything other than deliver bad news.
A few moments later they stepped through the rift. With his right hand, the young man crushed the small hexagon he'd folded from washi paper and the rift flickered out of existence behind him.
"What's happened?" Pete asked, stepping forward before anybody could start in on the elaborate greeting ceremonies of which these people were so fond.
"It's Isleen," Wakiko said, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, Pete noticed, now he was close enough to see.
"Is she all right?" Nika demanded, a little impatiently.
Wakiko glanced over her shoulder at Nika and shook her head, her eyes welling up with fresh tears as she turned back to face Trása and Pete. "She's broken through the Comhroinn," the young woman said.
Pete looked to Trása for an explanation. She had gone quite pale.
"How bad is it?" Trása asked.
"Bad," her mother Wakiko said. "She remembers it all."
"Everything?" Trása gasped.
Wakiko nodded. "Everything Delphine imprinted her with. All the dreadful secrets Renkavana locked away in her mind to protect her. She remembers them all."
Pete swore under his breath before asking, "Where is she now?"
Wakiko shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. She opened a rift and left, claiming she was going to look for Teagan and her true family."
"Her true family?" Nika asked. "Are you not her mother?"
"She means the Matrarchaí," Pete explained, afraid to even guess how much trouble this turn of events was about to unleash. "Jesus Christ, she knows everything there is to know about us and this reality and now she's gone looking for the Matrarchaí."
Chapter 16
After years of having no visitors at all, Darragh received two in as many days. The day after Eunice Ravenel came to see him the Gardaí psychologist, Dr Annad Semaj, came to visit.
The doctor had aged somewhat since Darragh saw him last. His temples were grey and there were a few more lines on his face. Seeing him after so many years drove home to Darragh how long he'd been here in this reality. Annad Semaj's face was a billboard advertising how abandoned Darragh was starting to feel.
He took his seat in the glass cubicle and picked up the telephone handset. Dr Semaj did the same on the other side of the glass.
"Hello, Darragh."
"Doctor."
"You're looking well."
Darragh spared the doctor a wry smile. "It's all the fresh air, good food and exercise I get in here."
Annad smiled. "Well, you are looking well. You've hardly changed at all."
"To look at perhaps," he agreed with a shrug. "I am not so sure I remain mentally unaffected by this lengthy incarceration."
"Did you want to talk about it?"
Darragh shook his head. What would be the point? Nobody here but Ciarán believes what I have to tell them. "I'm fine, thank you. But you must have something you wish to discuss with me or you'd not have made the journey here."
Annad nodded and shifted in his seat. "I heard Hayley's family are going to have her declared legally dead."
"I know. I received a visit from the family's lawyer yesterday. She wants me to confess to the crime."
"Are you going to?" Annad asked the question like he knew what the answer would be, but he felt the need to ask it anyway.
"Of course not. I didn't kill her."
"Do you think Ren killed her?"
"No."
"She's not been seen or heard of in ten years."
"Because she's not here," Darragh reminded the psychologist. "She's in another-"
"Reality," Annad finished for him with a resigned smile. "Still sticking with that? I'm impressed by your recall, lad. Thought you might have forgotten about that story by now."
"There is a very wise judge I like watching on television," Darragh explained. "She says that if one tells the truth, one doesn't need a good memory."
"Fair comment," Annad agreed, "but do you realize what declaring Hayley dead would mean to you, Darragh?"
Darragh glanced around with a shrug. "I am incarcerated in a maximum security prison for allegedly kidnapping Hayley and for conspiring to murder Warren Maher. This country does not condone capital punishment. What more can be done to me in this realm that has not already been done?"
"If Hayley is declared dead, they can go ahead and charge you with her murder," Anna
d explained. "That's another mandatory life sentence and the judge can rule your sentences be served consecutively, rather than concurrently, if you're found guilty and still showing no sign of remorse. You could be in here until you're fifty, lad."
Darragh shook his head, refusing to believe it. "Rónán will come for me."
"You've been saying that for ten years, Darragh," the psychologist reminded him gently. "Don't you think it's time to consider the possibility your twin brother might not be coming from another reality to magically whisk you away from this one?"
"No."
"I see." Annad studied him closely for a moment in silence, cradling the handset loosely. "How are you coping in here?"
"Well enough."
"Do you have many visitors?"
"One a day, lately."
"And your cellmate? Does he give you any trouble?"
"Not since I dislocated his shoulder when he tried to make me his girlfriend."
It was true. Before Ciarán had been assigned to his cell, he'd had some trouble, but he'd taken care of it and nobody had bothered him much since then. If he tried to explain that his current cellmate was from his own realm and was also waiting to be rescued, he'd just bring Ciarán unwanted attention.
A brief smile flicked over Annad's face. "You've learned to look after yourself in here, then?"
"I knew how to look after myself before I got here," Darragh reminded him with a shrug. "It has been necessary to show a few of my fellow inmates that I am not interested in their ... activities, but the message gets through after a few ... effective demonstrations."
"Ah. Well, that explains what you're still doing here in Portlaoise and why they haven't remitted any part of your sentence for good behavior."
That option, Darragh knew, was one he had forfeited years ago. But it had been worth it. "I have learned, doctor, that in prison, as in great literature, it is much more effective to show than tell."
"I don't see any tattoos," Annad remarked, looking at Darragh's hands and the open neck of his prison-issue shirt. "Does that mean you're not still affiliated with any of the prison gangs?"
That was a harder question to answer. Darragh had been able to avoid the hard-core gangs because of his connection to Jack, but his position here wasn't so cut and dried as to whether or not he belonged to a gang. "I have ... friends, I suppose you could call them," he conceded, "who look out for me when I need someone to watch my back."
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