Visions

by Kelley Armstrong

  More drumming before he pulled his hand away, forcibly stopping himself and looking up, expression resolute, as if having decided to share something difficult. I braced myself.

  "There are gargoyles in Cainsville," he said.

  "Um, yes. I've noticed."

  "There's a game children play . . ."

  "The May Day contest. I've heard of it."

  From the wary look he gave me, you would have thought I'd just announced having uncovered a dark secret through very underhanded means.

  "Some of them are . . . hidden," he said finally.

  "I know. There are those you can't see at first, but I found one--on the bank--that I can't see at all during the day. It's not there. Veronica called it a night gargoyle."

  "There are others. Ones you can only see from certain angles. Or if the moon or the sun strikes it. There's one that appears in rain. One in fog. One only under the winter solstice moon. There's no rational explanation for that. There just isn't."

  "I know. But I tell myself there is--there must be. I don't question. I . . . I don't want to."

  "Exactly. That is the contradiction that I cannot wrap my head around. I have no hesitation seeking answers. I make my living doing that. Except when it comes to Cainsville." He straightened. "I was a boy when I learned about the hidden gargoyles. I went to Rose for answers. She told me it was magic. I was angry. It felt as if she was treating me like a child. So I wanted to ask others. But I couldn't. The more I thought about it, the more I simply wanted to accept it."

  "Maybe if we talk to Rose again? You're not a kid anymore. If we ask her--seriously ask her--"

  "When it comes to Cainsville, she refuses to question or to answer. She has a good life there. The town is safe and welcoming, and it's as if . . ." He seemed unable to find the right words. "I remember when I was eleven or so, I was talking to . . . I can't remember exactly. I always want to say it was Patrick, but it couldn't have been--he's not old enough. Perhaps a brother or relative? I'd spoken to this man before. He even gave me a hint on the last hidden gargoyle. We were talking that day, and Seanna caught us. She didn't usually come to Cainsville--Rose would pick me up in the city. This time, Seanna brought me in a friend's car and stayed to visit. I'm guessing she needed money. She must have gotten it from Rose and wanted to leave quickly to buy her fix. When she found me with this man, she was furious. Dragged me away. She asked me if I'd ever spoken to him before. I lied and said no. She said I was never to talk to him. I asked why not, and she hit me."

  I must have winced, because he said, "That was unusual. She'd cuff me when I was younger, but by that age I was big enough that she'd likely started to worry I might hit back. So when she struck me, I knew it was serious. She made me swear never to speak to him again. I asked Rose, later, why Seanna was so upset. She said she didn't know, but she told me I could speak to him. In fact, if he talked to me, I should never refuse to answer. I was to be polite and respectful to all the adults in Cainsville. And not ask questions. Above all, don't ask questions."

  "So you still don't," I said. "I don't, either. That means something. It has to." I paused. "Chandler was the first to mention a Cainsville connection. Do you remember what Patrick said about mind control? That it was beyond the realm of science but prevalent in folklore and magic."

  "If you're saying that we're magically blocked from asking questions . . ."

  He trailed off. I knew he wanted to finish the sentence with that's preposterous. So did I. But neither of us did.

  "Let's call it preternatural," I said. "If you say magic, I think of Disney witches and fairies and pixie dust, and my brain won't go there. But I see omens, and that's definitely not natural. Same with giant hounds and the Wild Hunt and hallucinations and visions and second sight."

  Gabriel shook his head. "But to say that I'm being prevented from asking questions by powers beyond my control feels like an excuse."

  "Now you know why I kept denying I could see omens. It feels like hearing voices and thinking, 'I don't have schizophrenia; I can speak to the dead.' There's something preternatural happening, and we know it. So let's make a list of everything we want answers on, especially connected to Cainsville. We'll put it in writing so we can't shove it under the rug."

  As I pulled over a legal pad and pen, he pushed back from the desk and shook his head. "I don't think that's necessary. We certainly will look into this, but there's hardly any need for a list. We have things to do--"

  "So urgent that we don't have ten minutes for this?"

  He checked his watch.

  "You don't have any appointments, Gabriel. You already said that."

  "Yes, but I have work--"

  "You came in early. It's barely eight." I looked at him. "Fine. Go on. I'll make this list and--"

  "You don't need to--" He paused. "This is it. This is exactly it. There's no good reason for me to stop you from making that list. So why am I arguing?"

  "It's magic."

  He glowered at me then rolled his shoulders, scowling as he did, as if he could frighten the compulsion away. That's what it felt like: something compelling us not to ask questions.

  "Write it," he said.

  --

  Ten minutes later, Gabriel got a call. A client in trouble. Urgent "I'm sitting in the precinct awaiting interrogation" trouble. He left. I stayed behind to investigate any link between Macy and Ciara, and spent two hours delving into Macy's life and Ciara's life, trying to fit the two together in a puzzle that wouldn't quite work.

  Macy could have been the Conways' daughter, in both her coloring and her features. As for Macy's family, that was harder to trace. No family pics on Facebook for them. I did get an older sister, though. When I pulled up the photo, it could have been Ciara in ten years . . . except she was only four years older. Prematurely hard and old. I'd seen that same look in the photos of Seanna Walsh. Macy's sister was an addict.

  With help from Lydia, I tracked down the brother, too--or his record, at least. At twenty-seven, he already had almost a dozen arrests for drugs, assault, and petty larceny. Macy, though? She was clean. A nursing school student with no arrest record.

  I thought of Ciara. Of her home in the suburbs. Of her parents, so confused over the path their daughter had stumbled on, how far she'd fallen, how little they'd been able to help. There's a genetic component to addiction. I knew that from my volunteer work at a women's shelter. Gabriel obviously knew it, too--I had only to glance across his office and see the expensive bottles on his fireplace mantel, unopened gifts coated in a fine layer of dust.

  I looked at the photos and the evidence of addiction. Circumstantial evidence. It wasn't enough.

  The girls had been born nine days apart. But at different hospitals. So how could they have been swapped? At the doctor's office? You take your newborn in and put her down and--whoops--pick up the wrong one? Wouldn't you know what your child was wearing? By nine days, wouldn't you know what she looked like?

  Crimbils.

  The word sprang to mind, unbidden, and scratched there, at the front of consciousness. When I started to ignore it, my gaze moved to that list on Gabriel's desk.

  Tristan said I had some kind of hereditary memory. That was what kept prompting me with words and visions. With answers. Yet I pushed them aside.

  I looked up crimbils. I wasn't sure of the spelling, but I figured it was Welsh, so I added that to the search and ran through a few possibilities before I hit the one I knew was right.

  Crimbils. The Welsh word for changelings. As in the usual folklore, fairies would put their own child in the cradle of a human baby, to be foster raised. Through magic, the child would initially resemble the missing infant, but over time would revert to his or her own appearance, so it would seem that the child's looks were just changing naturally.

  Clearly, either Ciara or Macy was a fairy child who'd been secreted into a human family. Which would make perfect sense . . . if you lived in the Middle Ages and believed in fairies.

  I kep
t digging, but it soon became apparent there was only one way to prove my switched-at-birth theory: get Macy's DNA.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  As promised, the Gallaghers' auto shops had my car fixed and waiting for me by noon. An hour later, I was headed back to Cainsville for my diner shift.

  Patrick arrived around four, and the moment he walked through the door I was at his table, filling the mug. When Larry made banana nut muffins for the evening crowd, I brought Patrick one straight from the oven. Yes, I was not subtle about courting his favor. But Patrick doesn't need subtle. He practically purred under the attention.

  The elders noticed, and they were not nearly so pleased. Some game was in play, and they were stuck on the sidelines.

  At eight, as Patrick was preparing to leave, I sidled over to his table and pulled out a chair, leaning in to speak to him privately, while making sure everyone else saw me speaking to him privately.

  "I need to talk to you," I whispered.

  A satisfied smile. "I thought you might. Why don't I come back and walk you home after your shift?"

  "Thank you."

  As I moved away, I felt Ida's gaze on me. She sat with Walter and two of the other elders I knew less well--Minnie and Roger. When I headed for the kitchen, she waved me over, ostensibly for pie.

  "How are things, Olivia?" she asked. "We really haven't had time to chat lately. You've been so busy."

  "I have."

  "Anything interesting?" Walter asked.

  "Not really." I refilled their teapot with fresh hot water. "I met a girl with a connection to Ciara Conway that I'm trying to puzzle out. Someone mentioned she might have lived in Cainsville. Macy Shaw?"

  "Doesn't sound familiar," Walter mused. "We may have had a family by that surname, but it's been years."

  "Many years," said Ida.

  The others nodded.

  "I'll keep digging, then," I said.

  "You'll let us know if you find anything?" Ida asked.

  "Of course."

  --

  At eleven, Patrick was waiting outside the diner.

  "I presume this chat will take longer than the five-minute walk to your apartment?" he said as I joined him.

  "It will."

  We headed for the park.

  "The elders aren't happy with me," I said. "Seems I was paying a little too much attention to you."

  He smiled. "Their old egos are so fragile."

  "And you do love to see them dented."

  The smile grew. "Perhaps."

  "Then I've done you a favor, haven't I?"

  "You have." He slanted a look my way as he held the gate open. "For credit, I presume. Which you intend to call on now."

  "I do."

  Normally, people don't like to think you're only being nice to them because you want something. Patrick didn't seem to mind at all. Quite the contrary--from the look on his face, he was pleased with me. I understood the game and played it fairly.

  "How old are you?" I asked as we sat on the bench.

  His dark eyes gleamed. "How old do you want me to be?"

  "Gabriel remembers you when he came back before college. You were older than him then."

  "Then presumably I still am."

  "Presumably. He told me a story today," I said. "When he was young, a man in Cainsville used to speak to him. He'd give him hints about the hidden gargoyles. One day, Gabriel's mother--Seanna--caught him talking to this man, and she was furious. Made Gabriel swear never to speak to him again."

  "How rude."

  "It is, isn't it? The man didn't try to lure him off with candy or any such thing. They just talked. Gabriel never understood why Seanna was so angry."

  "I don't blame him."

  "Here's the thing. When Gabriel remembers the man, he seems to think it was you, though he knows it couldn't be. Clearly you're not old enough."

  "Clearly."

  "But in his memory, he associates the man with you. Do you know why?"

  Patrick shrugged. "Memory is a mystery we cannot hope to solve. I grew up in Cainsville. I have family here."

  "Then would you know why his mother told him not to speak to this man?"

  "She must have had some reason for disliking him."

  "Because Seanna herself was from Cainsville originally."

  "So I've heard."

  "And you don't know what she'd have against this man, who was obviously not you."

  Patrick looked at me, and I waited for him to say he had no idea. Instead, he smiled. "Perhaps he gave her a gift she did not want. It happens, between men and women."

  I went quiet for a moment. Then I said, "If I ask you what's going on in Cainsville, will you tell me?"

  Again, there was an easy answer: play dumb. What's going on? Do you mean local news? Events? But that was one game Patrick didn't play. He said only, "No."

  "Can I earn the answers?"

  "By currying favor with me? No. I like my life here, Olivia. It's very comfortable. You need to find your own answers. Or get close enough to them that I can help."

  "Will you help?"

  "If it's in my best interests. Currying favor goes both ways."

  "Let's change the subject, then. Mind control."

  "Ah."

  "We discussed it right before Gabriel and I solved the mystery of my parents' last crimes. You've never asked if that solution had anything to do with mind control. Because you know it did, don't you?"

  "Or I'm simply not interested in knowing. As a possibility, mind control is intriguing. In reality? I have no interest in making people do anything they don't want to. Far too much effort." He paused. "Unless it could compel them to buy my books . . ."

  "Compel. That's an interesting word."

  "Is it?"

  "You said I need to find my own answers. But what if I was somehow being compelled not to ask the questions? Mentally influenced to avoid even posing those questions?"

  "Brainwashed, you mean? Compelled to accept the unbelievable based on faith alone?" He peered at me. "You aren't going to church, are you?"

  I gave him a look.

  "Religion exists to instill false security and blind faith," he continued. "Yet it is imperfect. To accept the message, you must hear the message. You must 'drink the Kool-Aid,' so to speak. But how would that work on a practical level? Disseminate something in the air or water to keep people from asking questions about Cainsville? That's science. Otherwise, if there is a message--or charm or compulsion--it would need to be delivered in person, repeatedly, to be maintained. Completely impractical."

  "So you're saying it couldn't happen."

  That maddening curve of his lips. I was clearly frustrated, and that amused him. What did he see when he looked at me? A child. I was sure of that. Like the Huntsman. Like Tristan.

  They were one thing and we were another, and to them we were children. Adorable and entertaining toddlers, fumbling in the dark. Like Macy, when she'd gotten angry at the hospital. I bared my teeth and I hissed and I flashed my claws, and Patrick saw not a wildcat but a kitten. Adorable in her infinitely tiny fury.

  "For the purposes of transmission, consider it a disease," he said. "A condition. How does it pass from source to recipient?"

  I shifted, not wanting to play his game but not wanting to walk away, either. "Methods of transmission . . . Air. Water. Direct contact. Consuming infected material."

  "None of the above."

  "Heredity?" I said. "Passed through the genes?"

  "That would be a convenient method for an isolated little town."

  I opened my mouth to argue that I wasn't from Cainsville. Neither was Gabriel. Except both of our families came from here.

  He pushed to his feet. "And there ends tonight's conversation. When you have more, ask me more. Until then, have a pleasant night, Olivia."

  He started to walk away.

  "You lied about the hound," I called after him.

  He turned, brows arching, and a memory twitched, telling me--

&nbs
p; I inhaled. I knew what it was telling me. And I pushed it aside. For now.

  "The hound. I asked you about big black hounds, and you said the only folklore you knew of was the Black Shuck. You forgot Cwn Annwn."

  He tensed. I saw a flicker and . . . nothing. I saw nothing. But I sensed a reaction.

  "The hounds of the Otherworld," I said. "That's what it means, literally. But not necessarily what it is, right? Cwn Annwn is the Wild Hunt. The hounds are only part of it. Like the horses. The real Cwn Annwn are the hunters."

  Patrick's gaze bored into me, and again that look tweaked my memory. Again I knew why and ignored it for now.

  "I met one," I said. "A Huntsman, I think they're called. He gave me this." I opened my hand to show the boar's tusk. "I don't suppose there's any chance you can decipher what it says?"

  After a long moment of silence, Patrick said, "I suppose this has to do with the boy."

  "Boy?"

  "Young Mr. Gallagher."

  I fought to hide my confusion. "No. I was at dinner with James. The Huntsman lured me into the back hall."

  "James? Ah, yes, the former fiance." The grim intensity fell from Patrick's face, the old amusement bouncing back. "So many men hovering about you, Liv. It's hard to keep them straight. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Variety is the spice of life, they say. As for that"--he pointed to the tusk--"it's a pretty bauble. Keep it with you, for now. Just don't get too attached to it. Or to Mr. Gallagher."

  He turned to go.

  "What does Ricky have to do with this?" I said, walking after him.

  Again, he turned. "Nothing. Everything. It depends on the perspective. From his? Nothing, I'm sure. He knows nothing."

  "Like me," I said, remembering Tristan's words. "Like Gabriel. We're pawns."

  "Only if you allow yourselves to be," he said, and walked into the night.

  --

  I had the next day off at the diner, which meant a full day working for Gabriel. I was expected in by nine. Before I left, I got an e-mail from Howard asking me to call.

  He had two items of business.

  "Your mother is coming home," he said.

  "Great. Have her call me when she gets settled."

  "She'd like you to pick her up at the airport."

  "No."

  Silence. Apparently not the response he'd expected. "Your mother is looking forward to seeing you, Olivia, and you should make an effort to mend fences--"