The Dark Divide

by Jennifer Fallon

  ‘You’re fecking serious,’ he responded, looking alarmed.

  ‘Of course I’m serious,’ she said. ‘So listen carefully. It’s important to keep the fire going. It will dry out my body so there is no smell and any risk of disease will be eliminated. After that, I’d like to be buried in the woods. Somewhere I’m not likely to be disturbed.’ She turned back to check the woad again. ‘I have a few things I’d like to have buried with me, too, which will make my journey into the Otherworld easier.’

  Jack studied her for a moment, muttered something under his breath and left the room without answering her. Sorcha glanced up in time to see him leave and then turned back to her pot of woad. She had much to do if she were to die properly. She would have to trust that Jack, when the time came, would do as she asked and ensure her journey into the Otherworld was as safe and comfortable as possible.

  CHAPTER 48

  Pete Doherty and his twin brother Logan had made a pact, when they were younger, to meet every Friday for a drink. They’d promised — somewhat optimistically — to never break this sacred pact sworn over a large jug of Guinness on their eighteenth birthday and promised each other that nothing would ever be allowed to interfere: not studying, not work, not girls. Nothing.

  The pact had lasted less than a year. At first it was their different schedules and workload at university that got in the way. Then they both found part-time jobs — Logan working for a local paper covering community events like suburban cat shows and weddings on Saturdays, while Pete got a job pulling pints in a pub near the campus where they shared a student crib with three French girls their mother represented at her agency. They both had jobs that made it harder to get together these days. Even now, Pete always felt bad on a Friday when another slipped by and they didn’t get a chance to catch up.

  This week Logan made a special point of arranging a time to meet, even reminding Pete of their pact, although it was a Saturday and not a Friday, as their drunken oath stipulated. Pete assumed it was because of the news about their mother. Logan was concerned enough about her to forgo a date with the lovely Tiffany, who was — in Pete’s opinion — the reason they hadn’t kept the Friday pact much in the past few weeks.

  They met at the Foggy Dew next to the Central Bank on Dame Street. It was more Logan’s taste than Pete’s. The pub favoured live alternate music and was licensed to serve until two in the morning, so it was usually packed until the wee hours, especially on a weekend. Pete thought it a bit pricey and far too noisy, but he was willing to put up with it for a chance to talk to Logan.

  He arrived just after seven and found Logan tucked away in one of the odd assortment of nooks and crannies that characterised the cosy little pub. Over by the polished bar was a cluster of students from the nearby Trinity College, starting early with the birthday celebration of one of their number. Other than that, the pub was still reasonably quiet, the noisy Saturday crowd not yet arrived. The band was still setting up and most of the late night patrons were probably at home, getting ready for the evening.

  There was a pint on the table waiting for him. Pete slid into the booth. ‘Sláinte!’ he said, raising the glass to his brother.

  ‘Sláinte!’ Logan replied with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, his glass clinking against Pete’s. Even without the morose expression, Pete would have known something was wrong.

  He took a good swig of his beer and then stared at his brother, hoping he looked reassuring.

  ‘Mum says she’s okay, Logan,’ Pete told him, as he wiped the foam from his lips with the back of his hand. ‘She’s getting the best care and she’s not hurt.’

  ‘Gave us a scare, though,’ Logan said. ‘Why didn’t she ring sooner?’

  ‘Not sure. She says it’s crazy over there at the moment.’

  ‘It’s crazy everywhere these days,’ Logan said with a sigh. ‘How did Kelly take it when you told her?’

  ‘She yelled at me a lot to start with, but Xavier calmed her down.’ Pete grinned. ‘He offered to take the kids to his mother’s place up in Belfast, if she wanted to fly to the States to be with her favourite aunt.’

  Even Logan managed a smile at that. Kelly hated her mother-in-law and the feeling was mutual, as the family discovered during Kelly and Xavier’s very tense and awkward wedding a few years ago. There was no way Kelly was going to let that Evil Bloodsucking Protestant Bitch — as she fondly referred to her husband’s mother — a chance to corrupt her children, even for a few days.

  ‘Did Mum sound okay?’ Logan asked.

  ‘She sounded fine. I told you that on the phone. What’s really bothering you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Logan lied. ‘Had any luck with the Kavanaugh kid?’

  ‘You mean not the Kavanaugh kid,’ Pete corrected. ‘He says his name is Darragh and he’s sitting in remand awaiting a trial date, offering to tell us anything we want to know about the alternate reality he claims he comes from. Annad Semaj is having a ball talking to him. I think he wants to write a whole thesis on the kid. The guy whose Audi he stole has turned up dead in his backyard with his throat cut. There’s no sign of the woman, Sorcha, who was with them. Jack O’Righin has an airtight alibi, even though I’m damn sure the old bastard knows something. Hayley Boyle is still missing, her father is still cursing himself six ways from Sunday for listening to a word Darragh said and not turning him over to us the moment he spotted him in that tree at the golf course. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of Ren Kavanagh since he disappeared in a flash of bright light and a hail of bullets a couple of weeks ago. How’s your day been?’

  Logan smiled. ‘Way to go, detective. You’ve really got a handle on this one, haven’t you?’

  ‘Dublin’s finest,’ Pete agreed. ‘That’s me. What’s up with you? And don’t tell me you wanted to find out about Mum. You could have phoned her yourself if you were really worried.’

  ‘I think I’m about to make all her dreams come true,’ Logan confessed, although he said it with such a glum expression, it hardly seemed something worth celebrating.

  ‘Good for you,’ Pete said, puzzled by his glum demeanour. ‘How?’

  ‘Tiffany’s late.’

  Pete wasn’t sure why that was relevant. ‘I didn’t think she was joining us.’

  ‘Not that sort of late, idiot.’

  ‘Oh!’ Pete said, as it occurred to him what Logan was saying. ‘Jesus. Are you sure?’

  ‘I found three of those home pregnancy tests when I was taking out the trash last night. They all say yes.’

  Pete wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Christ, what are you going to do?’

  ‘That very much depends on what Tiffany wants to do.’

  He didn’t like the sound of that. ‘You do know abortion is illegal in this country,’ Pete reminded him in a low voice, the cop in him never far from the surface. He wasn’t trying to take the moral high ground, but the law was the law, even when it was inconvenient, and sometimes just plain unfair.

  ‘No,’ Logan said with mock surprise. ‘Really? Thanks for that, officer.’

  Pete could feel Logan’s despair, and was sorry he brought the subject up, but he knew his brother, and he knew a lot of women travelled to Britain each year to have things like this taken care of. ‘What does Tiffany think?’

  ‘I haven’t told her I know.’ Logan swirled the beer around in his glass with a morose expression. ‘She’ll probably curse me and accuse me of ruining her career.’

  Pete couldn’t help but smile a little. ‘I gotta say, Logan, does she have much of a career to ruin? I saw her on TV in some ad for tampons or something the other night. She’s drop-dead gorgeous, I’ll grant you, but she’s a shite actress.’

  Logan returned his smile briefly. ‘I wasn’t dating her for her acting skills.’

  ‘Still … you’re a big boy. Haven’t you heard of condoms?’

  A flicker of remorse crossed Logan’s face. ‘Haven’t you heard of alcohol?’

  Pete took another swig of his Guinness. ‘That’ll be a
grand thing to tell your firstborn when he asks you about how he came to be. Yes, son, I got pissed one night with this really hot bimbo, ignored common sense and then next thing I knew, I was a daddy.’

  ‘You know, you’re really not being very helpful, Pete.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he meant it. He had no wish to add to his twin’s despair. ‘What do you think she’ll do?’

  Logan shrugged. ‘I have no idea. I just have to hope Mum never finds out, unless Tiffany plans to keep it. Can you imagine our beloved mother’s reaction if she ever discovered the mother of her precious grandchild hopped on a plane and disposed of it?’

  ‘How will you feel if she hops on a plane to dispose of it?’ he asked, watching Logan closely.

  Logan shrugged, his conflict obvious. ‘I don’t know. A part of me will be relieved, I think. Another part of me will probably spend the rest of my life wondering what he might have been like.’

  ‘It might be a girl,’ Pete said. ‘Hell, given the family history, Tiffany is having twins.’

  ‘Don’t even go there,’ Logan groaned, downing the last of his pint.

  ‘You gonna marry her if she decides to keep it … or them?’ Pete asked, not sure what he’d do in the same situation.

  Logan tilted his head sideways for a moment, staring at his brother. ‘I’m sorry, have you checked the date recently? It’s September twenty-second, isn’t it? Two thousand and one. Not eighteen oh-one.’

  Pete downed the last of his pint and grinned at Logan. ‘Maybe Tiffany’s an old-fashioned kind of girl.’

  ‘She’s not, trust me,’ Logan assured him. ‘She’s more the prenup and how-much-am-I-going-to-get-in-alimony sort. Christ, I only started dating her in the first place because Mum insisted we’d take a good photo at a red carpet event Tiff was invited to.’ He placed his glass on the counter. ‘The irony of this fateful event being the London premiere of Rain Over Tuscany is not lost on me either,’ he added.

  ‘Ah …’ Pete sighed, a tiny part of him thinking Logan only had himself to blame for his predicament and when he got used to the idea, Pete was going to have a high old time giving his brother hell over this. ‘Is there anything more romantic than true love? You want another round?’

  ‘Sure,’ Logan said, pushing his empty glass across the table.

  Before Pete could stand, however, his beeper went off. Logan smiled, reaching for the empty glasses as Pete retrieved the beeper from his belt and checked the message.

  ‘Damn. I have to go.’

  ‘You sure you just didn’t time that thing to go off when it was your round?’ Logan asked.

  ‘It’s nice you think I’m that clever, Logan. You gonna be okay?’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, forcing a smile. ‘There is a tiny bit of me that thinks I’d make a great dad, you know.’

  ‘It was the tiny bit of you that got you into this predicament,’ Pete chuckled, rising to his feet. ‘You need a lift somewhere?’ He glanced around the pub. There were a lot more patrons crowding the bar and he could hear the band tuning up.

  ‘I’ve got the Porsche,’ Logan said. ‘You’ll call me if you hear from Mum again, yeah?’

  ‘Of course,’ he promised. ‘You’ll call me and tell me what’s happening?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Logan promised. ‘You’ll be the first to know.’

  When he called it in, the page turned out to be from Annad Semaj.

  The message was to get to St Vincent’s University Hospital on the double. Darragh had collapsed during an interview, the dispatcher informed him.

  Pete arrived at the hospital sometime after eight o’clock. Annad met him at the entrance to the ICU looking very worried.

  ‘What happened?’ Pete asked, looking around, but he couldn’t see Darragh anywhere. The dispatcher had only told him that Darragh had been admitted to St Vincent’s, not the reason why. He’d been alarmed to realise the young man was here, and not sitting in a cubicle in the Emergency Department, complaining there was nothing wrong because he’d just fainted, that’s all.

  ‘I was just talking to him,’ Annad explained. The shrink had spent quite a bit of time talking with Darragh, fascinated by the elaborate fantasy world he’d built for himself, and hoping to document as much as possible of it before Darragh officially went to trial. ‘He was telling me how it was Lughnasadh, and in his realm, the magic would be taken from him and given to another. One minute he was speaking, the next he dropped to the floor unconscious. To be honest, at first I thought he was faking.’

  ‘I’m guessing he wasn’t, given he’s in here,’ Pete said. ‘Where have they put him?’

  ‘In the isolation ward,’ Annad told him. ‘They’re worried it might be something infectious. I’m not allowed in there because of this wretched cold. They wanted to know where he’d been prior to his arrest. I thought maybe you could speak to the doctor. All I can tell them about is the alternate reality he thinks he comes from.’

  ‘I bet that was a big help.’

  Pete followed Annad through the ward to the isolation room, where a uniformed prison guard sat on a chair just outside, leafing though an old copy of a magazine with Kiva Kavanagh on the cover. Pete stopped at the observation window and looked in with concern. Darragh was lying on a bed, his arms by his side, palms up, wearing only a loose-fitting hospital gown. He was covered in electrodes monitoring his every breath and heartbeat. He appeared to be breathing through a ventilator. A drip was feeding him fluids in one arm, a motorised cuff on his right arm tracked his blood pressure and a clip on his right index finger was taking his pulse and his temperature. A doctor and a nurse were fussing over him, taking readings, checking his vitals. Pete watched them, growing more concerned by the minute.

  ‘Is it possible he took something?’ Pete asked, wondering if perhaps the boy had attempted suicide. He wouldn’t be the first teenager to find himself unable to cope with being imprisoned.

  ‘Unlikely,’ Annad said. ‘I was with him for nearly three hours before he collapsed. He was fine. Admittedly he was somewhat fatalistic and spoke a lot about his impending death, but he had no opportunity to take anything while he was with me, and he is not manifesting any of the symptoms of being poisoned by any chemical compound he could have gotten his hands on in the prison.’

  Pete looked at Annad with a frown. ‘It’s Saturday, Annad. Don’t you have a life?’

  The shrink shrugged. ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  The ICU doctor must have noticed them waiting outside. She said something to the male nurse and headed for the door. When she emerged she lowered her mask. The doctor turned out to be younger than Pete was expecting, but she was all business and had an air of competence about her that spoke much about her skill and the reason she worked in this particular unit of the hospital. ‘I’m Bernadette Regan, the ICU Registrar. You’re the officer who arrested this boy, is that right?’

  ‘Pete Doherty,’ he said. ‘Do you know what’s wrong with him?’

  ‘I can tell you what’s wrong with him, Mr Doherty,’ she said. ‘He’s in a coma. His breathing is erratic, his brain function readings are impossible, his heart is beating so fast I’m half expecting it to explode out of his chest, he has a fever that ought to have him in convulsions, his white blood count is through the roof … but they’re just symptoms. What I don’t know is why he has the symptoms.’

  ‘He dropped like a sack of potatoes,’ Annad said, shaking his head with a puzzled look.

  Bernadette smiled briefly. ‘Is that your medical opinion, Doctor Semaj?’

  He nodded, looking a little sheepish. ‘It’s a clinical term we use in psychology.’

  She smiled a little wider. ‘I picked the wrong speciality, I think.’ Then she turned to Pete, all business again. ‘What can you tell me about where he’s travelled recently? Other than the fact that he is obviously dangerously ill, we can’t find a reason for any of it. I’m inclined to rule out poison and he has no sign of drugs in his system.’

>   ‘You think it’s some kind of infection?’

  ‘It may well be,’ she said, but she didn’t look convinced.

  ‘I’ve been in close proximity with the boy for days and I have the worst head cold,’ Annad told her. ‘Is it possible he’s caught that?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said, frowning. ‘His lungs are clear. To be honest, I can’t tell what he’s fighting. His blood work is bizarre.’

  ‘Bizarre how?’ Pete asked, glancing through the glass at Darragh. He looked like death.

  ‘His antibodies are all wrong. It’s hard to explain. He has no immunity for things we vaccinate babies against, and antibodies for diseases nobody has seen in a first world country in decades.’ She sighed and shrugged helplessly, which was a very bad thing for an ICU doctor to do. ‘Right now we’re leaning toward some exotic disease,’ she said. ‘But to narrow it down, we need to know where he’s been.’

  Pete shrugged, wishing he knew more. ‘I really can’t say, Doctor. He’s been insisting he comes from another reality. And on the face of it, he might as well be telling the truth because we’ve had no luck tracking his movements in this one.’ He turned to study the lad, wondering what had brought down such a healthy young man so quickly.

  And then he noticed something odd. He turned to Annad. ‘Hey, Annad. Look at Darragh and tell me what’s different about him,’ he said.

  Annad glanced at Pete oddly, but stepped up to the observation window and did as he asked. ‘Um … he seems paler than usual …’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Am I looking for something specific?’

  ‘Look at his hands.’

  Darragh was lying with his palms up, the right hand closest to the observation window. Annad studied the lad curiously for a moment, and then he turned to Pete, his eyes wide.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Pete,’ he exclaimed. ‘The tattoo. On his right hand. It’s gone.’