He zipped ahead of me on the sidewalk. Sometimes, having Joe as a friend was worth doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
5
In a booth halfway to the back of the Rose Rose the next day, I nursed a mug of coffee. Somehow, despite all the riot mess that had happened right around the corner on Old Northern Avenue, the old bar and grill hadn’t been damaged. Having one thing in my life remain the same was small comfort, but I took it where I could.
Midday in the Weird was the start of the day in the neighborhood. The only people showing energy were the waitstaff as they hustled late breakfast specials to customers making a grudging attempt to face the day. I sensed Murdock enter behind me, his body signature an unmistakable combination of druid and human. He hung his coat on a peg and slid into the booth. “Is it bright in here?”
I took my sunglasses off. “I had a long night.”
Murdock sipped a soda I had ordered for him. “Were you looking into those essence surges?”
“For a while. I met up with Joe later, had a few beers.”
Murdock seemed off, distracted, as he skimmed the menu. “I wanted to talk to you about something. Bernard is going to run for city council in the fall.”
Bernard was the second oldest Murdock sibling and a police officer who wanted to make a transition into civilian life, if politics could be called civilian. I didn’t know him well since he worked down in Dorchester, the large Boston neighborhood to the south. “His wife must be happy he’s getting out.”
A waitress refilled my coffee and took our food order.
“She is, but you might not be,” he said.
I leaned away from a sunbeam that was playing havoc with my headache. “Meaning?”
Murdock met my eyes. “Meaning he’s not going to be a fey advocate. He’s going to be saying things you’re not going to like. I wanted you to hear it from me before you get all why-didn’t-you-tell-me on me.”
The coffee tasted bitter, but I drank it. “You make me sound whiny.”
With practiced indifference, Murdock checked out the bar. “You are sometimes.”
I let the comment slide. I was whiny sometimes, like when I got bad news when I have a hangover headache and the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet. “Isn’t that going to be a problem for him?”
“It’ll probably be a plus in the current situation,” he said.
The waitress reappeared and landed a burger the size of my head on the table with a plate of fries. They smelled like heaven. “So what happens when people find out Bern’s halfdruid?” I asked.
For years, the Murdock family believed that their mother, Amy, died in a car accident after Kevin, her youngest, was born. She didn’t, and she wasn’t a human named Amy. Through my natural tendency to rip people’s guts out, I had exposed the whole sorry tale.
A druidess named Moira Cashel had glamoured herself as Amy Sullivan, met and married Scott Murdock, and bore him children—five sons and two daughters, all cops except Kevin, who became a firefighter. When Scott Murdock found out who—and what—she was, he disowned Amy and threatened to kill her if she ever again set foot in Boston. The commissioner was a Catholic of the old school who believed the fey were demons. You weren’t supposed to marry them, but threatening to kill them was okay.
Twenty-plus years later, Amy returned in her true identity of Moira Cashel. She seduced Scott Murdock—again—and brought about his downfall. Scott tried to kill her, but the Guildmaster, Manus ap Eagan, killed him in what I hoped was an accident.
Murdock rearranged his grilled chicken sandwich on his plate. I had a twinge of guilt at all the fat and oil in front of me, but my stomach demanded that a night of beer be salved with salt and fried food.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said.
He became intent on his sandwich and avoided making eye contact. “Damn, Leo. You haven’t told them, have you?”
He dropped his sandwich on the plate and slumped in his seat. “What am I supposed to say? Mom was a lying druid who abandoned her kids, then came back to cause Da’s death? And, oh, by the way, Gerry, that was her you shot in the face?”
In the confusion of the riot, Gerry Murdock had fired on Cashel and killed her. It wasn’t quite cold blood—she was breaking the law—but it wasn’t the cleanest police shooting. I didn’t think Gerry murdered her like I had taunted him the other night. It was an accident, an impulsive act that shouldn’t have happened. I dropped my gaze. “Danu’s blood, Leo, I didn’t mean it like that.”
He picked at his fingernails. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I don’t know what to say or do. They already think you had something to do with my father’s death. What are they going to think when they find about . . . the other thing?”
The other thing was a big thing. I had had an affair with Moira when I was much younger and, unbeknownst to me, was the catalyst for the breakup of the Murdock marriage. I didn’t know Amy was married. I was too dumb to suspect it. I was blinded by my emotions, too young to understand the difference between hormones and love.
Once Scott Murdock found out about the affair, the rest of Amy’s—Moira’s—secrets came out. I wasn’t privy to all the details of that because I didn’t believe Moira was who she said she was until too late. “Leo, I can’t begin to know what you or your family are going through, but don’t hide this from them. Your father lied all those years about your mother and became a bitter man. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
A pained smile flickered on his face. “I don’t want to make a choice between family and friends.”
I faked throwing a fry at him, but they tasted too good to waste. “There is no choice, Leo. Besides, I’m used to a Murdock or two hating me. It’s my shit, not yours. I’ll deal with it.”
“Right now it’s easier to blame you than my dad. Maybe they’ll come around,” he said. Maybe, but I doubted it. I wasn’t a particularly close friend of the family to begin with and had made more than one faux pas around them. Being involved in the deaths of both their parents was not high on anyone’s list of friendship criteria. It was a miracle in my book that Leo still talked to me. He told me he didn’t blame me and that it was more important to forgive my involvement. It was a matter of faith for him. I didn’t want to let that friendship go, but I didn’t want it to cause more pain in his life either.
When I had first met Murdock, he asked me to help him with some minor fey-related crime cases, giving advice and pointing him in the right direction. His body signature read straight-up human, no doubt about it. We partnered on what came to be known as the Castle Island case. Murdock got hit with a spell backlash. His body signature started reading druid, and he also began to exhibit fey abilities like a body shield and physical strength. For almost a year, I had beaten myself up thinking I had caused the problem and that somehow his health might be at risk.
Since Moira Cashel died, Murdock’s body signature had become more druidlike. I wasn’t an essence expert, but the logical conclusion was that the stronger signature was somehow related to her death. I had sensed something fey around Gerry the other night, too, but other fey were around then, and I hadn’t thought to probe. For a lot of reasons, I hadn’t been around his other siblings. I had no idea if their signatures had changed, too.
“Has anyone else shown fey abilities?” I asked.
He frowned. “My brothers and sisters? Why would they?”
I finished the last of my fries. “Leo, since Cashel died, your body signature has been more intense. I thought maybe I was getting a more precise reading on you because of my own ability issues, but now I think I’m sensing your true essence for the first time. And if your abilities have increased, then maybe something might show up in the rest of your family, too.”
He became still, staring at the table as the thought sunk in. “I didn’t consider that. Damn.”
“I’m no expert, but Cashel might have used a masking spell on her children that failed when she died. It wouldn’t surprise me
given your father’s feelings about the fey. I think we should talk to Briallen. She’s the essence expert.”
Upset, he rubbed at his mouth. “This isn’t a sneaky way of getting me to see a fey doctor again?”
On more than one occasion, I had tried to get Murdock to see a fey healer. He refused, content that the fey essence he exhibited wasn’t a problem. He was right in one respect. The essence hadn’t affected his health except to make it better. What had worried me were potential long-term effects. Now that we knew his mother was fey, I was more concerned about his use of ability than his health. “I am suggesting you talk to someone who has experience as a druidic mentor, Leo. Briallen taught me more about understanding my abilities than anyone.”
He didn’t look happy. “All right, I’ll talk to her.”
“I’ll make the arrangements. In the meantime, I’d keep an eye on your brothers and sisters. If they manifest essence abilities, it could be dangerous without training.”
We didn’t speak for several moments. Murdock wiped a napkin around the table, then crumpled it on his plate. “My parents were married before you met Moira, Connor.”
“I know that,” I said.
He leaned forward, staring in my eyes. “I’m saying it happened before you came along, Connor. She lied to him before you were even part of the picture. Do you understand what I’m saying? This would be happening to me if you and I had never met. It’s not your fault no matter how much you want it to be.”
Uncomfortable and uncertain, I shifted in my seat. “I never said I wanted it to be.”
“You didn’t have to. Stop trying to fix things all the time. You have to know when to let things work out on their own.”
Joe had said as much the night before. “I’ll try. You know it’s not my nature.”
He slid out of the booth and put his coat on. “Yeah, well, I’m planning on not letting nature control how I live my life. You should give it a try.”
6
The angry drone of my apartment intercom sliced through my brain like a buzz saw. Hangovers and unexpected visitors made a bad combination, especially when the visitor announced himself as a messenger from the Guild. I took my time getting down to the front door. Guild messengers were notorious for their imperiousness, so rushing wasn’t going to make the encounter any better. He handed me a request for my presence at a meeting with Acting Guildmaster Ryan macGoren. True to form, the messenger didn’t wait for a response before spinning on his heel and leaving.
By the time I returned upstairs, Briallen verch Gwyll ab Gwyll had left a message that she was sending a car for me. She had been a member of the Boston Guild almost since its founding, so it was no surprise she had received an invitation to the meeting.
A little more than an hour later, the two of us sat in a black car inching its way down Tremont Street. I missed having driver service. The Guild disability checks didn’t cover it, and neither did the retirement benefits.
Briallen had been prickly from the moment she got in the car. On the opposite side of the seat, she cocked an eye at me. “Stop fidgeting.”
“I am not,” I said.
“You’re picking at a scab. That’s fidgeting,” she said.
I chuckled. I was picking at a scab. A small cut on my hand that I didn’t remember getting had healed over, but a sliver remained behind the skin. “You need to relax.”
“I am relaxed,” she said.
She was lying, of course. Briallen verch Gwyll ab Gwyll did not like to be taken by surprise, and being asked to the Guildhouse on short notice by Ryan macGoren was loaded with the potential for surprise, especially when she found out I was on his dance card, too. I was suspicious of whatever he had in store, but I had nothing else planned for the afternoon. “I’m only going because you said I should,” I said.
“Since when have you ever done anything you’re told?” she said.
Briallen had been my mentor during my teenage years. I had lived at her house a good portion of those years, under her rules. I had been on my own for a long time now, but sometimes she forgot I wasn’t a teenager anymore. I would never admit that I enjoyed it, like when it allowed me to tease her as if she were a cranky nanny. “Maybe if you told me the right thing to do, I would do it.”
She hit me with a playful slap on the arm. “Fine. Don’t talk until we’re leaving.”
“What if someone asks me a question?”
She sighed. “Do you see? Do you see how you don’t listen?”
Stress showed in the tautness of her face. Druids weren’t immortal, but they lived a long time. Briallen was close to a century in age, maybe older if she had lived in Faerie. Many of the Old Ones claimed not to remember Faerie. Briallen would never answer the question about herself, preferring to keep people guessing. She was ageless to me. She didn’t look a day over fifty, her rich chestnut hair worn short, not a touch of gray in its waves.
The Guildhouse rose into view as we entered Park Square. The building had started out life in the eighteen hundreds as an armory, a solid granite fortress for an army cadet group that preceded the National Guard in pre-Convergence Boston. When the group fell on hard financial times after Convergence, the Guild bought the place for its Boston headquarters.
Manus ap Eagan had overseen the reconstruction in those early years. He had expanded the concept of druid hedges—essence barriers—into the formidable shield dome. When activated to the extreme, it was visible as a wall of thickened air, impenetrable to everything short of bunker-buster-level bombs. The fey knew how to protect themselves. The dome acted like a body shield for the building, a transparent layer of essence that protected the Guildhouse from attack. Rumor had it that even a nuke would only dent it. High Queen Maeve loved the idea, particularly early on, when humans were more antagonistic to the arrival of the fey.
In time, floors were added, and the building grew over the Boston skyline, flouting the laws of nature and local zoning. Towers, sky bridges, and random wings joined together in a mishmash of Victorian, Gothic, and fairy architecture. Essence defied the forces of physics, allowing for tall towers to be anchored by slender buttresses or steep-gabled additions to hang off the building with little physical support. Beautiful in a surreal, amusing way, the building had become one part monolith and one part confection. I shuddered to think what a pretender like macGoren would do to the place if given the chance.
The car engine coughed and recovered as we passed through the shield dome. Engines didn’t work well around essence. Brownie security guards in dark maroon uniforms that offset their pale hair and tawny skin gathered along the sidewalk in front of the lobby. Their security role included community relations, which meant making it clear to the local community that if it didn’t comply with their directions, the guard could go boggie. A brownie in its boggart aspect was a fearsome thing, all tooth and claw.
Today, the guards remained attentive and at ease. They worked the street level since the people they encountered were human and solitaries, not powerful in the essence department. They might take Briallen down if there were enough of them, but few were powerful contenders. They had nothing to fear from me, of course, provided the black mass in my head stayed put.
I helped Briallen from the car out of courtesy. She was no invalid. As we walked under the portico to the main entrance, something tickled against me, and my body shield shimmered. It wasn’t a full shield anymore, small patches here and there, and malfunctioned by triggering on its own.
I paused in the archway beneath the great dragon head carved above the lintel. Gargoyles once clustered on the ceiling and columns of the portico. They were fey in the sense they were sentient stone, even the ones that didn’t look human or animal. They appeared after Convergence, moving without being seen, speaking to people on rare occasions. No one ever sensed essence from them, though, which made them an interesting puzzle. They were attracted to essence and sought it out. Every Guildhouse had them anchored to the walls and ceilings. The Boston gargoyles were a
ll gone now. They had moved to Boston Common and taken up residence around a giant stone pillar there that generated enormous amounts of essence.
Briallen glanced at me, but I shook my head. Whatever I was sensing must have been a new security measure. “This isn’t a trap. Tell me again this isn’t a trap,” I said.
“It’s not a trap,” Briallen said. Her expression held a touch of uncertainty, which didn’t make me comfortable. She had nothing to fear, but over the last months, the Guild had been trying to arrest me for one bogus reason or another. Why I was such a threat to them baffled me. I had been involved in more than one major disaster in the city, but I hadn’t caused them and had always been on the side that ended them. Yet the Guild acted like I was the primary reason for all its troubles. I was more than happy to blame myself for stuff. I didn’t try to imprison myself as punishment for it.
We rode the elevator to the seventeenth floor. Guild security agents, powerful Danann fairies in black uniforms and chromed helmets, their diaphanous wings undulating, waited for us when the doors opened. Security agents were the mobile powerhouses of protection for the Guild. They were strict, forceful, and aggressive in their jobs. Conversation wasn’t their strong suit.
“Please follow me to the Receiving Hall,” one of them said.
Surprised, I murmured to Briallen, “The Receiving Hall? We’re meeting in the Receiving Hall?”
Briallen licked her lips in distaste. “This is so Ryan. You know he needs his ego stroked even if he’s the one doing it.”
The Receiving Hall of the Guildhouse served as the room of state for official duties of the Seelie Court. When the Guildmaster sat in the hall, for all intents and purposes, he or she was the voice of the Court and spoke with Maeve’s authority, a privilege with a double-edged sword. No one wanted to speak for Maeve and get it wrong. To my knowledge, Manus ap Eagan, the current Guildmaster, didn’t like to use it. Since he was in a coma and had left no one to act in his stead, no one was around to stop macGoren.
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