“This isn’t going to make a whole lot of sense to you, Jimmy,” I said, resting my forearms on my thighs, trying to preserve some personal space. “When we first met, I was a lonely teenager outside of a bookstore at a strip-mall looking to make some friends. Y’all probably thought of me as a snooty, little rich kid looking to go slummin’.” He shrugged in a ‘Yeah, sort of’ way. “You didn’t think anything odd until the night in Bankhead when you saw me tossing invisible firecrackers. At that time, that was all I could do. Literally, that was all the magic I knew, bright light and loud noise. Kieran found me that night in the middle of Bankhead Forest. Your life didn’t get half as freaky as mine did on that night. Not even by a tenth.
“Without getting into all of the story right now, though,” I continued, “there is an important aspect that you need to know and understand, or at least, understand to some degree. You need to know who and what I am. Other than being a wizard—”
“A powerful wizard,” Peter added, coming up with Richard behind us.
“Very powerful,” Richard said, nodding.
“Not helping,” I muttered, turning back to Jimmy. “Other than being a very powerful wizard, I have taken the role and power of a Faery Lord.”
“Something that should be positively impossible,” Peter said emphatically, sitting on the trunk beside me. For some reason, Jimmy liked that idea, that I did something supposedly impossible. He was proud of me for it. That was weird.
“The reason I’m telling you this is that the most obvious facet of a Fae Lord is his people, or more usually, her people,” I explained. “Until very recently, the only Faery Lords we knew about were the two Queens, named Winter and Summer. Their people are bound to them by geas. The Fae are a magically-bound people. If they aren’t tied to the land, they’ll die just because they can’t use the magic there. Their geas is passed from mother to child at birth. It also ties their loyalty directly to their Queen.”
“Okay. So you’re a Queen now?” he asked, a ghost of a grin on his lips. It was nice that much could happen so soon.
“No, and not a king either,” I said lightly. “I am Lord Daybreak, Liege of Gilán. When we go there, I’ll have the Fae say it so you can hear the words in their language. It will be more similar to the sound you’re hearing in your head.”
Furrowing his brows, he asked, “You can’t say it?”
“Well, yes, but I don’t think you can hear it when I say it,” I said.
“Try me,” he challenged.
So I told Jimmy and Richard my Fae name in all its voices, then I told them Gilán’s name in all of its voices.
Jimmy stood stock-still and not breathing, staring at me with wide eyes, totally enthralled.
“I didn’t think humans could do that,” Richard said mildly. It was enough to jump start Jimmy’s breathing.
“It takes practice,” Peter said. “We need to get moving soon, Seth.”
“I’m a part of that now, aren’t I?” Jimmy asked me. “Gilán. I’m a part of Gilán now. I can feel it.” I nodded slowly. He was starting to understand. “What did you do?”
“I only had a second to figure out how to break the sympathy,” I said, trying to explain, and probably put off explaining, too. “The only way I could think to do that was to force a previous claim to the spell, a stronger claim. Unfortunately, the only way I had to do that was through Daybreak and the geas I’d put on you earlier today. That was my mistake, my biggest one anyway. As Richard pointed out, I am a very powerful wizard and Daybreak is a very powerful Lord. And I’m very, very new at this. When I claimed you as mine, I did it with everything I had.”
“What does that mean, ‘claimed’ me?” he asked, tilting his head and quirking a slight smile.
“Brought you into my Faery world, made you part of Gilán,” I answered, making him meet my gaze. There it was, almost written across his face. I didn’t know if this was Jimmy’s psyche, working in hyperdrive to replace his family with purpose, or some part of the Fae magic. “Made you mine,” I told him, in front of witnesses that he knew I respected and wouldn’t deny.
“We should be going,” I said, jumping off the trunk. “Get ready, guys.” I opened a slit in space above the parking lot of the hotel in Atlanta where I’d not actually stayed the night, but certainly my most memorable stay. “Get Set.” I sent out several different perspectives and didn’t see anything dangerous. “And there.”
Wrapping the four of us in portals, I moved us to the sidewalk of the parking lot of the hotel, at the end nearest the dog walk. The Stone provided a thick dome of protection around us, strobing a gentle fluorescent green on the astral as I requested. That didn’t help Jimmy, but he seemed to be staying close to me and between Peter and Richard. Of the four of us, Jimmy was the most relaxed.
Looking over at Richard pacing nervously, I said, “Go ahead and ask. At least that way, if I haven’t thought of the question, I’ll have to think about it now. And it looks like we have a few minutes.”
“I presume this is not for public consumption?” Richard asked.
“Preferably,” I said.
“How do you expect this to work?” he asked.
“What to work?”
Richard snorted. “You’re being difficult. What is Jimmy to you? What relationship does he hold?”
I shrugged and said, “That I do not know, other than to say he is within my influence.”
“Jimmy, what is Seth to you?” Richard asked him.
“Lord Daybreak of Gilán,” Jimmy said quietly and proudly.
“No, not who is Seth, what is Seth?” Richard repeated his question.
“I don’t see the difference,” Jimmy said, obviously confused.
“That is a very Fae answer, Richard,” I said, grinning tiredly. “I suspect he’ll be this way until I can jumpstart his personality back into gear again.”
Two sedans pulled into the parking lot, one right after the other, and both painted black with darkly tinted windows. The two cars pulled up side-to-side a few hundred feet out. I heard the electric windows roll down, so I opened a hole in space nearby to hear what was said. Apparently, Marshal Harris was on a speakerphone in one of the cars, his voice tinny and pitted.
“…be very careful what you say around them!” I heard Harris’ voice say. “He may look like a kid, but he’s extremely powerful and he takes offense easily.”
“I think I can handle myself, Marshal,” said the man in the right hand car passenger seat. “Thank you for your assistance. You’ll have a copy of my report in the morning.” Then he disconnected the call. “What the hell does he think these kids are going to do? Chant up a Fae Wylde way to Alabama? We should turn around and drive now.”
I glanced over at Peter, sharing my annoyance with him, then spoke through the hole, glaring across the parking lot at them. “Agent Messner, we’ve had a long day already. Please listen to Marshal Harris and strive to not annoy me.”
Both carloads of FBI agents bolted upright, startled at my voice and surprised that I’d overheard their conversation. And more surprised that I spoke to them so obviously over such a distance. The portal was invisible to them. Heh-heh.
Messner signaled the driver to pull forward, deciding that speaking wasn’t such a good idea right then. The second car followed more slowly. I dropped the dome as Messner and his driver got out and moved to us, buttoning their jackets and smoothing wrinkles subconsciously, nervously.
“Mr. McClure, Misters Borland,” Messner said, reaching into his breast pocket and pulling out his identification with a practiced flip. “I’m Special Agent Ashton Messner. This is my partner, Special Agent Earl Springer. We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Special Arts division. We understand you found a triple homicide of particularly nasty description?”
Looking at his aura, he was magically active in a minor way, much like the Inspector from London a few weeks ago, Mercer. His partner, Springer, was likewise talented. They saw Richard as a reasonably powerful
mage and Jimmy as a normal human, probably a little tainted with magic at the moment, but still normal. Peter and I were mannequins to them, though, or incredibly well veiled. Right now, he was asking leading questions, trying to get answers to questions he already knew out of us.
“Yeah,” I said, throwing a portal up in the parking lot beside us. We could see the house from our angle. “In the Master bedroom to the right.” We filed through the hole-in-the-world, leaving the gawking FBI agents to stare and call their team to follow. Glancing up at the sun, we had about two, maybe two and a half hours of daylight left. “Can we move this along, Agent Messner? My brothers will be home from New York soon.”
“Oh, um, yes, sir,” Springer managed to say, staring at the squared edges of the rectangular portal. Messner studied the lines of the portal carefully without a word, mouth agape. He stepped away from the hole and out of our line of sight, wheeling his arm at something. The nose of a large, black step van appeared slowly through the portal, tires scraping the road and shocks groaning as the van crept over the uneven terrain of the rutted dirt road.
The second van pulled through the hole just as we got to the car and the first van pulled up to the house. I started to relax a little. We would be done with this place soon. Kieran, Ethan, and Mike would be coming home and we could get dinner and I could work on the keys and call it a night. I was tired and did not want to keep thinking and dealing with this.
I’m young, though, and really don’t understand about bureaucracies.
Chapter 11
We were still there four hours later. My attitude had traveled decidedly downhill in that time, from tired and aggravated to simmering anger. At least it was directed anger. Messner and Springer gave that to us, to all of us. I called a halt to their procedures when they told me to tell them what happened a third time. A slight push into their memories told me that they would prod and push through the same events five and six times, changing the questions very little each time, as part of their “SOP.”
I told them both in front of Peter that every time they asked us the same question that they’d be climbing down from the roof. They didn’t understand the threat, but Peter grinned. By the third time one of them had to jump off the house, I thought they had it, but no, it took twice more, and they tried to argue the last one.
It wasn’t a total waste of time, though. The guys brought take-out from New York back when they came over. Ethan shot through the anchor, appearing out of nowhere in front of Messner as he approached to annoy me again. I’d barely felt his presence before he introduced himself to the FBI Agent.
“Hi, I’m Ethan,” I heard, turning to see Ethan blocking Messner’s path as he skidded slightly in the road. “We’re having dinner now, so come back in an hour or so.” Whatever Ethan put into that, I needed to bottle and sell, because Messner turned around and went back to the house without a word. He turned around and grinned at me. The portal back to my house formed like a wake in the air behind him as he walked into the grass to us.
Ian was perched on the chair backward eagerly watching the wall for the connection to take. “He’s ready now!” Ian yelled off to his left to someone, then waved to us through the portal, grinning.
“Make yourself useful,” Mike said, appearing in front of the chair. “Grab some cartons and help out, now.” Mike walked through the portal and dropped a load of boxes down beside the road and headed back through. Ian came through a second later carrying several bags of food that promised heavy amounts of garlic, basil, and oregano. Kieran popped up carrying a cooler with more food on top. Someone I didn’t know followed him with a load of folded chairs with Mike right behind him. “That’s it, Ethan,” Mike called out and the portal slipped away behind them like ripples on the water. Ethan was being dramatic.
“Introductions are in order,” Ethan said, raising his hand to the unknown man carrying the folding chairs.
“Helping is in order,” Kieran said. “Introductions can wait or happen simultaneously. You’re not getting out of work, little man.”
Peter and I snickered a bit, knowing Kieran was messing with him. Ethan ignored him. As the newcomer walked by with chairs, Ethan stopped him.
“This is David Henry,” Ethan said. “He rather stupidly said yes when we asked if he’d like to be our assistant for a while.”
From that point we swarmed him for the chairs, having sat on the ground for a while, then moved on to general helter-skelter while our moods bettered with the promises delivered of civility, good food, and family. David was introduced to everyone and vice versa. He was a nice guy, about five-eleven, light brown hair and dark blue eyes. His face was round and open, honest and out-going. He’d been a physics major at UC-Berkeley until he couldn’t progress any further. That machinery was far too sensitive for our particular group of people. I’d definitely have to delve further into my previous experiences in atom smashing—I shouldn’t have been able to be there either, but I didn’t bring that up now.
There were only two downsides to our picnic. The location and the recounting of the day’s experiences. Peter and Richard told the majority of it, but there were parts that were all mine, like the apartment building and the blood spells. And then there was Jimmy. When I explained what happened with Jimmy, I used very bald terms, not sugar-coating anything. The curious part of it all was that I seemed to be having the harder row to till there. The closest to me was David and even he wasn’t having that much difficulty dealing with it, the concept of it.
“Why am I the only one here having a hard time with this?” I asked, incredulous. “I’ve basically enslaved him and no one’s objecting.”
“What’s to worry about, Seth?” Peter said. “We know you. What are you going to make him do? Whatever he wants? Ooh, you slave driver, bad, mean, slave driver. You’ve got a million more on Gilán and what did you have them do? Go, live, play nice. Oh, yeah, you’re evil.”
Ethan laughed. “Give’m a year. He might implement a time-out system for those that seriously misbehave…”
“It’s very calming,” Jimmy said quietly. I may have been the only person to hear.
“Besides,” Kieran said, “We don’t know if it’s a permanent state yet. Let’s just give it some time.”
After dinner and cleanup, we worked with the diamonds as keys to my kingdom. Ian was enchanted with the images he found inside the key I’d made for him. Once I keyed it to him, he said the images felt like they suddenly had space and his excitement increased. I reached out gently to his mind and placed the phrase that would activate the passage to Gilán in his mind. It had to be a gentle push, though, as Ian’s mind was a candle flicker of light compared to my daylight sun. That scared me slightly, until I realized he was in a valley of his power, readying for the climb of puberty. He’d be a searchlight of strength soon. Mike would have his hands full then.
Ian was ecstatic the first few times he shifted through the diamond. Even more interesting for me was that while he touched it, I could sense that contact and communicate with him. Physical contact wasn’t necessary for the shifts, though. As long as his aura could connect, he could trigger the shift. That meant as long as it was on his person, he had an escape route. I keyed Mike into his diamond, then he and Ian went off by themselves and practiced shifting between the various points together and separately, talking and making plans.
I keyed another diamond to Richard and one to David, stamping only a few locations on either side until they’d decided on more. Pretty soon half of our group was randomly popping in and out of existence as the sun sank, shining its last hazy light of the day through the pasture. The diamonds were laid out on top of the pouch I’d kept them in all day in one hand. Jimmy squatted at my knee, watching the proceeding, keenly interested. I handed David his key and set the password in his mind, sending him to practice with Mike and Ian. Jimmy interrupted me before I could put the diamonds away.
“May I?” he asked with a hand poised above the collection to pick one up.
> “Sure,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he couldn’t activate the keys, even knowing it was only moments away.
Jimmy picked the largest stone of the set, the one I’d been avoiding just for that reason. The instant he touched it, though, we all got a surprise: just for that instant, I heard the call of Gilán and Jimmy disappeared.
Kieran and Ethan jumped up, surrounding me. “What just happened?” Kieran demanded to know. “Did you do that?”
I stared dumbly at the space Jimmy just vacated, shaking my head no slowly. I hadn’t felt a shift, either, and I hadn’t keyed the diamond to any place so I had no clue as to where to search on Gilán, but I started at the lake. Then I went to the door to the castle, the bridge over the river, the over-look, the front door, the Throne room, the family wing entrance, the Borland’s entrance, Peter’s entrance, I went every place I could think to go.
“Jimmy Morgan, where are you?” I said and push the thoughts out over Gilán. There was no sense that something bad happened, even with Kieran and Ethan’s panic and worry spiking around me.
Here, Lord Daybreak. At Gilán, I heard Jimmy say, but not vocally and not in English. That presented quite a few puzzles. Not “on Gilán,” but “At Gilán”? He had only called me Daybreak once before when Richard asked him who I was to him. But the absolute weirdest part was the language. Jimmy only knew one language, that peculiar redneck English he used. But I couldn’t exactly tell what language it was. The ideas were just there. And right along with those ideas was Jimmy.
“Huhn. Wonder how he did that?” I said, seeming to stare out into space on one world but looking into Gilán, into the heart of my Palace. Jimmy stood before the dark pool of glittering blue energy. He was watching the globe above the pool turn slowly. “Well, I found him. I just don’t know how he got there or why he’s there or what he’s doing. But if y’all excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
Sons (Book 2) Page 18
