by Lisa Cardiff
“We can talk again tomorrow afternoon. I’m sure you want to get acquainted with the city.”
“I’ll see you around two tomorrow. Goodbye.”
Avery hung up the phone and lay on the bed to rest her eyes for a few minutes. After endless hours of traveling, she felt weary and slightly queasy from multiple airplane meals, several helpings of trail mix, and an entire package of licorice. At the moment, she wanted to sleep, but she knew if she gave into the temptation, she’d wake up ravenous in the middle of the night with absolutely no hope of curbing her hunger except by digging into her bag of trail mix again. The thought of making another meal of snack food was enough to motivate her to move. Besides, she needed to force her body to acclimate to the time change. She splashed cold water on her face, ran a brush through her tangled hair, put on lipstick, and left her hotel room.
Walking briskly, she quickly reached Tigh Neachtains Pub, located in the center of the medieval portion of Galway. It was one of the pubs highlighted on the map provided by the desk clerk, and she recognized the name from the guidebook she read on the plane. She spotted the electric blue exterior of Tigh Neachtains, and she heard traditional Irish music wafting out of the pub only to be carried away by the Atlantic breeze. The interior didn’t look as though it had changed in decades—it had bright yellow and burnt orange walls with dark wood paneling. She wedged herself onto a stool at the bar. Stacked bottles of alcohol and framed pictures advertising present and past local festivals lined the wall behind the cash register. Two bartenders poured beer and blended mixed drinks.
When Avery caught the bartender’s eye, he smiled and asked in lilting accent, “What would you like?”
“For now, a menu would be great.”
The bartender slid a laminated menu in front of her. Avery nodded her thanks and glanced at the menu. She ordered seafood chowder and a pint. While she ate her food, she studied the eclectic mix of customers—artists, musicians, university students, and tourists. She picked up bits of the conversations around her and listened to the music. Several shouts of sláinte, a Gaelic phrase meaning to your health, followed by the clink of glass added to the cheerful mood. Lost in the comforting energy of the pub, she felt her tension slide away like an old layer of skin.
So absorbed in conversations around her, she made no effort to look when someone sat in the barstool next to her. After a few minutes, the person next to her shifted so that a knee brushed Avery’s thigh. Avery looked up to acknowledge the person, but the words died on her tongue when she made eye contact. The stranger was a tall and lithe woman with glowing silver eyes; iridescent skin and silky blond hair that looked like it was spun from gold. The woman focused all her attention on Avery with some sort of eerie hypnotic power that chilled her to her bones. She was too glamorous to be real. She had an indescribable air of cold, otherworldliness that gave Avery the goose bumps and made the fine hairs at the nape of her neck lift in icy fear. The bar, once surging with life and laughter, now faded into in the background, nothing more than a distant shadow. All previous feelings of happiness disintegrated, falling to the floor in a pile of ash.
With an unholy foreboding racing down her spine, she instinctively knew that she needed to flee. Avery tossed some Euros on top of her bill and reached for her purse. Willing her eyes to look away and break the hypnotic spell cast on her, she jumped from her chair. The woman’s cold hand grabbed her wrist, biting into her flesh with enough force to gain her immediate attention and drive Avery back into her seat. The woman casually rubbed her fingers against Avery’s wrist, grazing her birthmark.
As she twisted her wrist free, Avery’s eyes widened. “Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing?”
The woman studied Avery for a moment, raking her from head to foot with a suspicious look. “Despite popular opinion and all that obviously fabricated evidence to the contrary, I always suspected you weren’t dead. The idea was too good to be true.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Avery said, her lips trembling and her heart pounding wildly.
The woman shook her head disdainfully. “So, she never bothered to explain anything to you. I bet she changed your name, and she forced you to move constantly. What is your name these days anyway?” The woman questioned, her angelic lips curving into an inhuman smile.
“I don’t know whom this she is that you’re referring to. Whoever you think I am, you’re wrong. I don’t recognize you and I’ve never been to Galway before today,” Avery responded, cringing inwardly at the vulnerability and uncertainty in her voice.
The woman stared at her with cold eyes and let out a melodic laugh that made her tremble. “Oh, you’ve been to Galway before. Given your age when you left, you may think you don’t remember anything, but you’ve been gifted with superior memories among other things. It wouldn’t take much digging to bring them into sharp focus.”
Images swirled through Avery’s mind, nothing distinct. Feelings of belonging and betrayal surfaced, dancing just outside of Avery’s conscious grasp; all things Avery had previously dismissed as fantasy. She refused to think about this. Not now. If she let her mind dwell on phantom memories, she wouldn’t be able to stop.
“Ah, I can see you do remember something,” the woman said, searching Avery’s face.
Avery shuttered her eyes, attempting to hide her thoughts. “I’ve had a long day, and I need to go. Like I said, I’m sure you have mistaken me for someone else. Good luck to you,” Avery said with as much authority as she could muster attempting to end to the conversation.
She started to leave again, bracing for another confrontation. She wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of this pub, sprint back to the hotel, and return to the silence of her tiny room. This had to be some sort of sleep-deprived hallucination.
“You’re not ready to talk.” The woman shrugged nonchalantly. She reached into her purse, pulled out a card, and shoved it into Avery’s hand. “Call this number when you think you’re ready. I’ll give you a few days to sort through things, but if I don’t hear from you by then, I will find you. We will not give up as easily this time, so don’t try to hide. Oh, and tell your mom faking death won’t work this time.”
Avery used her hands to slide her chair back from the bar. She flung her purse over she shoulder and grabbed her jacket, not bothering to put it on.
The woman called out as Avery reached the door. “It was a pleasure seeing you again, Ashling.”
In her rush to get out of the pub and away from that woman, Avery barely registered the name. She hastily stuffed the card into the pocket of her faded blue jeans and stormed out of the door into the street. Trying to control her accelerated heartbeat, she visualized herself in the shower rinsing off the memory of her encounter and downing some alcohol from the hotel mini bar before blissfully falling into an alcohol induced sleep. So focused on her escape, she didn’t notice the man shadowing her flight from the pub to her hotel.
Chapter 3
Kalen stood at the entrance to the room, carefully observing Queen Donagh and the rest of the Seelie Court, including Cian, before entering the room. Queen Donagh sat at the scarred wooden table that had seen centuries of service to the Seelie Court. She was cloaked in a silver colored, diaphanous robe encrusted with tiny diamonds giving the illusion that she was draped in liquid stardust. Catching fragments of the conversations as they waited for his arrival, Kalen noticed her studying the otherworldly faces of the each of the Court members with their ancient phosphorescent eyes and carefully schooled expressions honed from a virtually immortal existence.
Yet again, she deliberately didn’t sit in the ornately carved chair at the head of the table, leaving it notably vacant. She was so transparent in her attempts to manipulate the Court. By not sitting in the chair at the head of the table, she clearly wanted to give the six members of her court the impression that all of their voices were valued and would be given equal weight because she erroneously believed that giving the illu
sion of democracy made them more likely to follow her lead without question. While this subtle manipulation might make one or two members of Court feel as though all decisions were a collaboration of all their suggestions rather than a unilateral decree, most were already plotting her downfall, and where she did or didn’t sit wouldn’t make any difference to them. Her reign was in a downward spiral that could only end in her being deposed.
Satisfied that he’d seen enough, Kalen knocked at the door of the cavernous room. Everyone turned to look at him, and all conversations halted. Queen Donagh shifted her gaze to him and tapped her fingers lightly on the table in an odd cadence, giving the large cavernous room a hollow, haunted feeling. “You’re late.” The ominous tone of her voice reverberated through the room.
Kalen paused to remove the black cashmere jacket covering his gold-dusted skin. “Good to see you too, my Queen,” Kalen replied, undaunted as he sauntered toward an open seat with a long-legged, confident gait.
Aerin, his partner on this mission, who had been standing in the back of the room alone, followed him to the table, gracefully slipping into the remaining seat.
“Sorry, I had a few things come up that couldn’t be avoided,” Kalen responded nonchalantly.
After a few moments of silence, the Queen snapped from across the table, “What are you waiting for—a formal invitation to speak? Was it her?”
Kalen paused before answering, scrutinizing the Queen. “I think Aerin should address that question. After all, you gave her the lead on this mission. I’m merely her humble assistant.” He smiled as he shifted sideways in his seat to face Aerin.
The Queen fixed her eyes on Aerin and raised one eyebrow.
“She’s Ashling. I’m certain,” Aerin responded impetuously.
“Please, do us the favor of explaining what makes you so certain of this? I’m sure there was more than one women getting off that flight from New York. We don’t have room for error. We can’t drag a random mortal back to the Faerie Realm.”
Aerin chewed on her fingernail. “While there might have been many women getting off that plane, few were the right age and even fewer were alone.”
“I hope you have more to go on than that,” the Queen replied as she rose from her chair and pinned Aerin with her eyes. “We don’t know that she planned to take this trip alone.”
Aerin raised her chin defiantly to meet Queen Donagh’s stare making it painfully apparent that the Queen’s tone had rattled her. “Of course I have more evidence. If you want details, I can offer you details. As you asked we followed her from the airport to the hotel and later to a pub.” Aerin paused to clear her throat and shifted in her seat. “At the pub, I approached her and during the course of our conversation, I felt the marking on her wrist, the mark of destiny. It was exactly where Cian said it would be,” Aerin said. Her silver eyes briefly flashed to Cian’s, making contact, and then immediately shifted back to focus on the Queen.
“Did you see the marking?” Cian asked. “It could have been a scar or just a coincidence. The mark of destiny is distinct.”
She released a pained sigh. “No, I didn’t see the marking, but I felt it, and it was just as you described, three raised interlocking circles. Even without the marking, anyone can tell she is your daughter.” It was almost an accusation.
Kalen hid his smirk behind his hand. Aerin was her own worst enemy. She effectively announced to the entire Court that she still hadn’t forgiven Cian for his affair with Dierdre. While she repeatedly told anyone who would listen that she didn’t have any hard feelings, and she understood that the mission was vital to ensure the survival of the Tuatha Dé and maintain the balance of power between the races, Kalen knew they were empty words meant to salvage her pride.
When they were friends, Aerin had confided in him that she felt as though Cian volunteered for the mission as away to escape her. After all, Cian was the one who submitted Dierdre as a potential candidate. The debacle after the affair ended softened the blow to Aerin’s ego, but Kalen could still sense Aerin’s festering anger. Cian always exhibited the upmost respect for her over the last few years, but Kalen could tell Cian’s concern for Aerin was manufactured as a way to placate or neutralize her anger and disappointment. At times, Cian’s attitude toward her bordered on pity and Aerin despised being pitied. In fact his pity probably fueled Aerin’s anger.
Noticing her discomfort, Cian tried to redirect everyone’s attention from Aerin to Kalen. “Kalen, do you agree that she’s Ashling?”
“I haven’t seen her since she was barely a year old and I only saw her from the back. Besides, we agreed it was unwise to overwhelm the girl or make her suspicious, so I stayed in the background. The point was to make contact with her in a non-threatening manner, so she comes with us willingly. Unfortunately, the role I played as a shadow limited my ability to get a good look at the girl.” Kalen paused, tapping his fingers on the table, unwilling to explain that every fiber of his being told him the girl was Ashling without even seeing her face. Since the moment she was born, he’d always been hyperaware of her presence, wanting to protect her. “I do believe she is Ashling,” he said, sliding a glossy photograph across the table to Cian. “Aerin managed to take a picture of the girl on her phone when she retrieved her luggage. It’s not very good, and her face is shadowed, but I think it’s useful.”
Cian studied the picture, stroking a finger over the glossy photo. He nodded then passed it to Queen Donagh. “It very well could be her. I see the resemblance.”
“If it indeed is her, do you think you achieved the goal of getting her to come to us willingly? Did you make contact?” The Queen asked as she slowly circled the table with her hands clasped behind her back.
“Yes. She will call me by the end of the week. From the look on her face, I definitely stirred her memories and her curiosity,” Aerin responded, looking at the Queen expectantly.
“Kalen, do you agree?” The Queen asked.
Sitting up from his slouched position, Kalen’s emerald eyes flickered toward Aerin, briefly making contact, and then he returned his gaze to the Queen. “I’m not as confident as Aerin. With due respect to Aerin, I don’t agree with her assessment. I think it’s unlikely Ashling will contact Aerin. Hitting the girl over the head with a rock might have been less threatening. Aerin stared at the girl and then grabbed her arm without any pretext of conversation. After making a few cryptic remarks to the girl, she made some ominous threat to find her if she didn’t call within the next few days. The girl practically ran out of the pub. I wouldn’t be surprised if she called the airline as soon as she got to her hotel, trying to book the first flight back to New York. That said, I do respect Aerin’s professionalism and perhaps she has a better read on the girl than I did from afar. She performed the majority of the research on the girl, and she might know things I don’t that explain her methodology and interaction.”
Aerin cringed at Kalen’s recital of events. “Perhaps I wasn’t as subtle as I could have been, but I got the information we needed. She is Ashling.”
“Yes, it looks as though you may have located her but that wasn’t the sole purpose of making contact with her, was it?” The Queen paused, pushing her blond hair behind her ear. “We need her to come to us, and I would prefer she did so of her own accord. It will be infinitely less messy if we don’t have to coerce her. Based on Kalen’s description of the days’ events, acquiescence is unlikely to be her first reaction to your request. I don’t want her to disappear into thin air again because of your abrasive behavior.”
Kalen could tell Aerin was valiantly trying to ignore the Queen’s condescending tone, but it was clear she was loosing the battle to maintain her composure. “After careful consideration and research, I thought the most effective and expedient method to bring her to us would be to pique her curiosity. Her mother kept her in the dark about who she is, and I sensed from her defensive tone that she understands she’s different. We don’t need to perform some extreme cour
ting ritual.”
Cian interrupted the conversation. “I think you’re right in some respects. I don’t think Dierdre listened to or processed my explanations sufficiently to understand what was going to happen with Ashling. Taking into account Dierdre’s lack of receptiveness, it would be highly unlikely that she explained anything to Ashling. I think it would be safe to assume she is completely in the dark, so piquing her curiosity might be more difficult than you think.” Cian ran his fingers through his golden-blond hair. “Given the scant information we have about the way she was raised, it’s doubtful it would cross her mind that she is not what she appears to be. Any kind of realization to that effect is too far-fetched to hope for at this point.”
“Initially, she may be unwilling to recognize the differences and I may have scared her,” Aerin conceded. “But I still think her curiosity will get the best of her, and if that doesn’t work, we could always pick her up and bring her here without her consent.” Aerin raised both of her perfectly arched eyebrows. “I don’t think she is capable of putting up much resistance. It was clear from our conversation she has no clue how to use any of her abilities. She is really just another powerless human. We could mold her to suit our needs.”
The Queen regarded her critically. “Kidnapping is drastic, don’t you think? If we brought her in against her will, has it crossed your mind that she might refuse to work with us? I know we all agreed if she were a Foundation operative, we would forcibly bring her in or terminate her if we deemed it necessary, but I don’t want to go there yet. Aerin, when I made the decision to let you lead this mission, I thought you were the best candidate. Given your previous relationship with Cian, I thought you would have some insight on how to reach her and befriend her. However, your apparent insensitivity to goals of the project makes me uncertain you are capable of the finesse needed to handle this delicate matter. I think your personal feelings about Dierdre and Ashling are getting in the way of the mission.”
