I swayed with a touch of vertigo as the burning sensation in my right arm tightened and stretched. Druse gasped as her darkness touched the silvered essence from the bowl. The essence vanished, enveloped in darkness, no intermediate mingling or change. Just gone.
I clenched my jaw in pain as a sharp blade of darkness pierced my palm. The blade had no substance, a solid shadow that snaked and twined itself around Druse’s fingers. The sharp tip cut through her body signature, and a hot pleasure ran through me as I sensed her essence like a flavor in my mind. Druse slumped against the pedestal with a groan. The thing from my hand moved deeper, and the darkness within her rose to meet it. The two modes of darkness touched in a burst of black shadow. I shouted and wrenched my arm away, my silvered tattoo blazing through my jacket as the dark thing whipped back into my hand. I tripped backwards and fell, red and white lights flashing in my eyes.
Druse leaned over me. “My brother?” she whispered, her voice a raspy tremble.
She reached for my face. I shoved her away. “Don’t touch me.”
She cowered back, an uncertain smile flickering on and off her lips. “It is fine, my brother. The Wheel’s touch burns with ignorance at first, but in time it cuts with joy. You are strong, my brother. Druse slept many days after her first touch.”
I grabbed the edge of the pedestal and pulled myself up. “What did you do to me?”
Druse yanked at her hair. “Nothing, my brother! You asked to see. We are akin. We touch the light and bring the lack. It is the Way of the Wheel.”
I rubbed my arms. They were sore with the pain of heat and cold. “Can it be controlled?”
Druse crawled behind the pedestal and raised her head above the bowl. “The solitaires seek Druse, and Druse must answer. Enough for today, my brother. Return again and learn.”
She cloaked herself and vanished. Her essence trail faded into the far end of the chamber where the light didn’t reach. She was gone. I examined my hands and found smooth unbroken skin. My sensing ability traced a faded area in the middle of my right hand that wasn’t there before. Tiny flashes of silver essence winked here and there along my fingers. Bits of jasper from the bowl had attached themselves to me. In spite of the pain, I pushed my body essence against them, and they sifted to the floor like fine dust.
I backed away, not turning until I reached the room’s exit. My chest constricted as I strode away from Druse’s room. I wasn’t going to be stomach sick this time. As I wound through the tunnels to the exit above, my face burned with a feverish warmth. Yearning desire raced through me, my skin tingling with an almost carnal hunger for more of what happened—to savor and, yes, devour essence as if it were the only thing I needed for sustenance. The sensation of that moment had a kick like a chemical high, only deeper and more profound, as if nothing else would matter if I could have it again. It felt wrong, corrupt. In the cold slap of the winter air outside, I refused to release the shocked emotion hovering inside me. What had happened felt wrong.
I wanted to go back even as I staggered away.
26
All the next morning I nursed the mother of hangovers, the combined effects of alcohol and the flood of essence I had absorbed in Druse’s chamber. The pounding in my head left little room to think of much else for hours. As the cloud of pain lifted, I debated calling Murdock, trying to decide if it would be pushing him to talk when he obviously didn’t want to, or if he wasn’t talking because he wanted me to push. It’s hard to read him sometimes. As I sat on the subway train, I checked my cell, scrolling through the caller ID in case I had missed his call. I hadn’t.
The train stopped at Boylston Street, and I got out with several students. I lingered behind them as we neared the stairs. When I was sure no one was paying attention, I slipped into the train tunnel. About fifty feet in, the barrier between inbound and outbound tracks ended, and I crossed over to the opposite side. Hopping onto the narrow concrete ledge, I listened to the distant, hollow sound of a train. I had plenty of time before it arrived. At regular intervals, shallow niches opened in the concrete walls, safety spots for transit workers to stand if they were caught on the tracks when a train approached. I reached one shallower than the others and walked into the concrete wall.
The wall let me through, a static resistance running over my body as I slipped to the other side. Feeling along the edge of the first step leading down, I found the small flashlight Meryl had promised to leave for me. I turned the light on and descended the stone stairs. At the bottom, I turned right into a long, narrow tunnel. Sometimes it was lined with bricks or granite blocks, sometimes with bedrock. Few people knew that an entire network of tunnels existed under the streets of Boston. Meryl made sure no one knew about this one, her secret way out of the Guildhouse.
Light appeared ahead, and I turned off the flashlight. The end of the tunnel gave a transparent view into Meryl’s office. An archway framed the desk area where she was working, seemingly oblivious to my approach. I knew better. No one sneaks up on Meryl Dian. We’re clear. Come on through, she sent.
I slipped through another field of static into her office. From her perspective, it looked like I had emerged from a solid wall. I sat in the messy guest chair as she finished reading something on her computer. She swiveled toward me. “Sorry. Minor catastrophe with the network.”
“Anything I can help with?” I understood a big chunk of the Guildhouse’s computer network from my days helping the IT department build security. Meryl, on the other hand, apparently spent her free time shredding through it with ease.
She shook her head. “It’s resolved. We’ve been getting a lot of intrusion attempts for the last month. MacGoren thinks it’s the Consortium, of course. I’m pretty sure it’s a bunch of college kids from BU.”
With a self-satisfied smile, she turned her monitor so I could see the screen. “Check this out.”
I leaned over the desk and skimmed through an agent briefing notice. “Sekka was a Consortium agent?”
She nodded. “I found that in an archived alert file from two months ago. All references to her were wiped from the system the day after you found Jark.”
I stared at the screen. “The day Jark killed Sekka. And now you’re going to tell me who deleted the files.”
Meryl’s eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “Keeva.”
Keeva followed the rules. She bent them occasionally, but only when she felt a situation forced it. Or her. Wiping internal files didn’t sound like something she would do unless it was so serious, she needed to cover her own ass. Or she was ordered to do it. “They’re trying to bury something, and it isn’t dead bodies.”
Meryl leaned forward. “Here’s the juicy part. Keeva hasn’t had any assignments related to the Weird. MacGoren has a contained group of agents working down there under confidential directive. Rumor has it that Keeva and macGoren have been arguing behind closed doors.”
“I told Keeva about the leanansidhe. That could be what they’re working on.”
Meryl shook her head. “MacGoren’s boys have been down there since before you found the leanansidhe.”
I looked down at my hand. The spot where my essence had faded last night was normal again, my body signature intact. I scratched my palm. “Meryl, I have to ask you something. What do you know about leanansidhes’ abilities?”
She bobbed her head slowly from side to side. “You mean besides the whole soul-sucking thing?” I nodded. She shrugged. “Not much. They’re rare. I don’t think anyone’s studied them much.”
“What do you know about the other side of the Wheel?” I asked.
She pursed her lips. “The Wheel is what is, Grey. It’s all there is. There is no other side.”
“What about beneath the Wheel?”
She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it in thought. “There is no beneath. It’s not a wheel like a ribbon. It’s a Wheel like a movement.”
“You’re changing the metaphor,” I said.
She shrugged. “O
nly sorta kinda. There are no sides. There are relative relationships—that’s what we mean when we talk about paths—but talking about sides is taking the metaphor too literally.”
I shifted in my chair. “Okay, let me put it this way. What’s not the Wheel?”
She shrugged slowly. “Nothing. Chaos. The Void. Utter Meaninglessness. Something we cannot define because we can only define things in terms of the known, and what’s not the Wheel is so inconceivable we can’t begin to describe it.”
“You sound like you’re quoting something.”
She smirked. “You sound like you made a deep knowledge leap.”
I nodded. “Which is why it makes sense to me, Meryl. I think the thing in my head is outside the Wheel. That’s why no one understands it.”
She tilted her head. The moment lengthened while a cryptic expression passed over her face. “What does this have to do with the leanansidhe?”
“It was something she said.”
Meryl licked her lips. “You didn’t mention this before.”
I shrugged and failed to look casual about it. “I didn’t think of it.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You found her again, didn’t you?”
We had grown close in the past few months, closer than I would have guessed. Despite her insistence that we weren’t a couple or seeing each other or friends with benefits or whatever I wanted to call it, we had made connections that friends without didn’t have. I could lie. She might believe me. But if I lied, and she knew it, I would damage whatever the hell it was that we did have. I took a deep breath. “Yeah. I had to know what she meant when she called me ‘brother.’ ”
Meryl frowned. “It’s a leanansidhe, Grey. If there’s one thing I do know, it’s that they’re liars. They have to be to survive. She’s playing with your mind. The thing in your head has an explanation, and the answer is within the Wheel of the World. It has to be, by definition. If it’s within the Wheel of the World, it’s part of the Wheel of the World, not outside It.”
I closed my eyes and rubbed them. Even as I did it, I knew it was to hide the fact that I was embarrassed. “She made the dark mass in my head move, Meryl. She showed me how to let it free and it felt wrong and it felt amazing. I used to be afraid it would kill me.” I opened my eyes. “Now I’m just afraid of it. I’m afraid of what it makes me want to do. I’m afraid it’s not really making me feel that way and is just exposing something wrong inside me.”
Meryl came around the desk and sat on my lap. She wrapped her arms around my head and pulled me to her chest. My stomach did a little flip as the dark mass pulsed from being near her strong body essence. She tilted my head up by the chin. “Listen to me, Connor. You were one of the biggest assholes I’ve ever worked worth. That was then. If you were in danger of some weird-ass darkness in you coming out, it was before this thing happened to you, not now. Not from what I’ve seen. You might be caught up in some shit lately, but if I thought for one moment there was something seriously whacked about you, you wouldn’t be here.”
I leaned my head against her shoulder. “I hope you’re right.”
She scrubbed her fingernails through my hair and hopped to her feet. “I am. Besides, in any given personal relationship, I have to be the crazier one. It’s a rule. Now, let’s go have lunch.”
I stood. “I want to go talk to Keeva and see if I can find out what’s going on.”
Meryl rolled her eyes. “Yeah, she loves to confide in you.”
I pushed playfully at her shoulder. “Hey, don’t underestimate me. I know someone who never thought she’d confide in me.”
She looked at her watch. “Okay. Go. If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m getting takeout.”
I took her hands, leaned down, and kissed her. She kissed me back with no games. I tousled her hair. She punched me.
Since I wasn’t officially in the building, I used the freight elevator, which was accessible in the basement but the call buttons on the upper floors were disabled. Which meant no guards riding them for routine security. The added benefit was it opened near Keeva’s office, so I could bypass the floor receptionist as well.
Keeva looked up from her desk when I knocked, and I immediately got her narrow-eyed, compressed-lipped suspicious look. “I don’t remember guards locking down the building. How’d you get in?”
I sat in her guest chair. “Nice to see you, too. How are things going?”
She didn’t change her expression. “Busy.”
I nodded. “Good, good. How’s Ryan?”
Her frown deepened. “Busy.”
I looked around the office, then brought my gaze back to Keeva. “You’re still wearing a glamour.”
She leaned back. “Why are you here, Connor?”
“I have a proposal for you. I have a piece of information you might find helpful. In exchange, I need a favor.”
She smiled. “It would have to be some very good information.”
I smiled back. “Is it a deal?”
She shook her head. “You know better than that. I’m not going to obligate myself without hearing the whole story.”
I nodded. “True. That’s smart, of course. How about this, if you use the information, you don’t have to do the favor if you think it isn’t equitable.”
She grinned. “This should be interesting.”
“I know what Sekka was hiding.”
As Community Liaison Director, Keeva saw all open case reports from the Boston P.D. She twisted her lip in dismissal. “Why should I care about a routine murder case?”
“Because it wasn’t routine, and I know you know that. Sekka was a Consortium agent, and macGoren has people trying to find what she had.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“I know where it is.”
She swiveled her chair in a small arc. “Assuming this is accurate, and I’m interested, what’s the favor?”
“I want you to capture the leanansidhe,” I said.
Her suspicious look returned. “You’re not telling me everything. Assuming what you say is true about the Guild’s interest in Sekka, capturing the leanansidhe pales in comparison. Why are you offering something so important for something so not important?”
“Honestly?” I asked.
“Honestly,” she said.
I took a deep breath. “Because the leanansidhe scares the hell out of me, and I don’t have the power or ability to bring her in. I’m afraid of what will happen to me if she’s left running free.”
Keeva’s jaw dropped in surprise. “Whoa! When you said ‘honestly,’ I wasn’t expecting . . . honesty.”
I laughed. “Yeah, well, that’s how much I need you to do this, Keeva. In fact, to make it even easier for you, the leanansidhe has what Sekka was hiding. It’s in her cave.” I picked up a pen from her desk and pulled a sheet of note-paper toward me. “This is where she’s hiding.”
I handed Keeva a rough map of the tunnel route from the abandoned warehouse. She stared down at the scribble, then at me. “Do you want to tell me why you’re so scared?”
I smiled. “Do you want to talk about your glamour?”
She tossed the map on her desk. “Assuming your theory is correct—and I’m not saying it is—I’ll take your request under advisement. You need to leave now. I don’t want anyone seeing you in here if you’re not officially in the building.”
Keeva and I had a long history, not all of it good. We both had egos, and we had clashed often when we were partners. But at the end of the day, I thought we believed the other would do the right thing. Not necessarily what both of us thought was the right thing, but the right thing in some respect. Now, though, this gulf existed between us that I didn’t think we could bridge anymore. She worked for an organization I no longer believed in. I worked outside the chain of command in a way she couldn’t condone. And that was okay with me. She had a career to think about. If I didn’t think someday we’d see eye to eye, I wouldn’t have bothered talking to her. I gave her a wink
and left without argument.
As I rode the freight elevator back to the basement, relief and regret fought in my stomach. The urge to make another visit to the leanansidhe bordered on overwhelming. Asking Keeva to do something to take that option off the table was the right thing to do. I didn’t like how the leanansidhe made me feel precisely because I liked how she made me feel. Keeva could get the leanansidhe into the Guildhouse, a controlled environment. Maybe then Briallen or Gillen Yor would have something to work with. If the leanansidhe held the key to the dark mass in my head, I would rather that someone other than her turned it.
27
The ring of my cell phone startled me out of a dreamless sleep. After leaving the Guildhouse the previous afternoon, I had gathered my resource materials and holed up in my living room in a fruitless quest to figure out a way to get rid of Uno. Squinting against the light in my living room, I pushed aside the nest of books that surrounded me as I groped for the phone. Uno rose from the floor at the foot of the bed, a physical reminder that my research had gone nowhere, the dry, academic prose of many of the books lulling me into a bored stupor. The dog vanished as my hand closed on the phone, probably fading off to Shay’s apartment again.
“I need you,” Murdock had said.
The man didn’t return my calls all day and night, then rang me at five o’clock in the morning like it was a perfectly normal time for either of us to be awake. Granted, I spent more of my waking hours in the middle of the night than most people, but I was surprised Murdock was up that early—so early that I had to take a cab down to the morgue to meet him because the subway wasn’t open.
I went around the back to the back of the OCME. The building was open twenty-four hours, but the main door was locked before 6:00 A.M. The loading dock, though, remained open for business twenty-four/seven. Dead bodies didn’t much care about regular office hours.
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