The Druid sighed. “I have not even begun on him. Just as with the pain spells, once the memory wipe was triggered with the sluagh, so was it set off with the other prisoner. However, since it was not a direct wipe, I may be able to uncover some of the memories.” She held up a small hand. “And no, I do not know how long it will take me. I will be doing this as carefully as I can, and careful, when dealing with the unknown, takes time. Best to assume you will not be getting any information from this quarter.”
“Well, that’s shit on a monkey’s arse,” Sean muttered.
Finn did not disagree. He’d been counting on finding out what the sluagh knew to begin getting an idea of Balor’s forces. “Where in Londonderry did he go?” If he knew where on the docks, he could narrow it down. There were only two Fomoiri clans who sailed out of that harbor.
And one of them was the O’Loinsighs.
The Druid shook her head. “All he remembers is that he was headed there.”
“And why was he trying to go back to Connaught?”
To woman’s eyes tightened. “Family. Said he had family he was trying to see.” She shrugged. “Or that’s what he now believes. But to imagine the sluagh concerned about family…”
Finn held in a sigh. And there was the arrogance that made it impossible for most of the solitary fae to have any faith in the guardi or the gods of their own land. Fear, yes, but not faith. It was no wonder Balor had no trouble in finding allies, if the kinds of whisperings Bat had reported from her dream were anything to go by.
He glanced at the sluagh. His shadows and glamours had been stripped, and his wings were half-wrapped around his shoulders. He clutched at his belly, fangs flashing as it muttered.
It looked as though justice had already been served in this instance. “When his sentence is served, ensure he makes it back to that family he’d been trying to find,” Finn instructed Sean.
The Druid opened her mouth, no doubt to protest, and Finn jerked his hand up, cutting her off. “Please see what you can get from the Fir Bolg. Report it directly to Criedne, and I will take it from there.” He inclined his head. “Thank you for your service.”
Then he was gone. He had no time to waste on useless pursuits.
“I didn’t see a report on my desk,” he said to Sean as they headed back toward the main room.
“Criedne got a lead from one of the woodland fae on unusual goblin activity,” Sean said. “The goblins are usually neutral in these kinds of conflicts, but because so many of the neutrals seem to be choosing sides, she wanted to follow up on it. Everything from the pub is sorted and catalogued. We closed it up tight. No one, human or fae, is getting into the place until the O’Loinsighs are ready to open again.”
Sean kept close on his heels as Finn changed direction once they hit the main floor and headed up the stairs to the library. He’d give his lieutenant another two hours to complete that portion of the investigation. “Keep talking. What else do you have?”
“Cu Chulainn’s team has been compiling the Fomoiri’s movements, as they have better information sources from their time up north and work in Galway. You know Sligo’s not a big port town.”
Finn nodded. He did know, it was why the brothers had settled here all those centuries ago. Close enough to the water that they could still feel connected to their heritage, but far enough away to avoid the rest of the Fomoiri—and their father.
“Okay then. Let’s go see if Oisin has made any progress on the invitation. And then I need him with me. Someone’s been corrupting through dreams, and we need guardians. I have Mell and a boman working on it, but I want Oisin’s input.”
Finn pushed open the library door only to find it empty. “Well, shit then.” He turned to Sean. “Any idea where our wayward librarian would be?”
Chapter Twenty
OISIN
Oisin crouched over the pocked and worn wooden research table. He liked to do most of his fiddling here, in this hidden room. The library was his home, but this was his haven. A lab at the back of a small network of rooms off the library, he retreated here when he needed absolute silence.
He studied the cream and gold invitation spread before him. A stretch of fresh black leather—treated to repel the residual magics of any enchantments—lay underneath. He wanted to isolate the exact elements that went into the scrying spell. There was something off about the spell. He hadn’t caught it in his first examination, but he could sense it now—a second spell just below the first.
He’d been looking in the wrong place for the connections he should be tracking.
Tracing one of the more advanced Sight runes, he closed his eyes. Sometimes his mortal vision interfered with his ability to trace the weavings of a magical working.
There. Just under the main spell was an additional rune. One of Sight, but tacked onto the main scrying connection. It spun a second connecting thread off of the main one, and sent it off to…
The main scrying spell activated, setting off the trace he’d laid. Shit. That wasn’t the one he’d needed, but it would at least give him a clue as to who could have laid in the secondary spell.
He scrambled for a recorder–stones they modified to hold the images from scrying spells—and activated it just as the trace connected with the other end.
A darker room, a round porthole behind a shadowed figure. “Let’s see what these whelps of mine are up to.” A bright blue eye in a weathered and bearded face moved closer. “Think they can split from the clan. You don’t leave the clan.” The eye squinted. “Scath! Get in here.”
The figure moved away as another, this one half-shrouded in shadow, moved into view.
“Something’s blocking the scry. Would that Egyptian bitch have been able to do this?”
“Doubtful. There’s not much to her.” The darker figure leaned over, eyes narrowed.
Oisin tracked the direction of the connection in live time. North. North and a little east. Then the tracker split…
The second caster must be in the room. That meant…
His tracing spell hit the end of the connection. One piece attached itself to the bearded and blue-eyed man, the other to the shadowed man, and then anchored itself back into the invitation.
He knew who had cast both spells.
And he could now find them.
Sealing the recording stone, he tucked it away in his pocket. Then he plucked up the invitation. Time to find Finn and the others.
Chapter Twenty-One
AILIS
“Ciara. It’s Ailis. Ready to get to work?”
After returning a clean Killer to Bat, the Egyptian goddess had told Ailis what she wanted—as many of the misfit fae as they could get ready to do what they could to stop Balor. Those who were willing to fight should be at the cottage by morning and ready to roll. Everyone else, well, they just needed to be ready. They needed to know to be on the lookout for seductive whispers, and misleading hope.
It wouldn’t be easy. Those who had already met the strange Egyptian goddess would be the easiest. Word had been spreading, and it helped that the pixies had already made a decision on the point. But there were plenty of the forgotten and forsaken among the immortals, those the sidhe called “neutral” that had probably already been tricked over to the dark side.
“Tell me.”
“Those who remember the truth of Balor, and are willing to fight, need to be at the cottage by dawn. And everyone needs to be on the lookout, there’s shadows in the woods that don’t belong there.” Ailis herself could sense them, drawing closer, and they were running out of time.
It happened sometimes, these little flashes of intuition, as she liked to call them. For the most part, she was a normal fae. A touch of emotional manipulation, a dash of nature-speaking, and a whole heaping handful of glamour. And then sometimes, at the crucial moments, she knew what needed to happen.
Like her little outburst in the guardi library. Though, she hadn’t needed timely intuition to tell her that Bat had made a mess of her feel
ings for the O’Loinsigh brothers, or that the brothers would need more than a kick in the ass to straighten things out. Throw Finn into the mix and… well, she’d been tempted to run out and fetch some popcorn.
“I’ll call the leprechauns, and spread the word to the other Bigs,” Ciara said, referring to the pixies who lived their lives in their larger forms. “And—” a pause and a drawn breath. “I’ll be there, with Fina and two other pups who still haven’t found homes. I remember Balor.”
Those last three words held a wealth of meaning, and Ailis knew Ciara wouldn’t rest until she’d reached—and convinced—as many as she could.
“Good.”
The line went dead. Ciara was on it.
Who to call next? Con. The old coot had his fingers in everything, even more so than Ailis—it’s what the trooping fae did, after all.
The line rang for a solid minute before being picked up. “If ya need to speak, speak.”
“Ya’ old coot, spread the word. We’re fightin’ in this one.”
“Ailis. Well, now, I don’t know about that. Not too keen to be losing me head for the sake of deities I haven’t seen in ages.”
“What about for one Egyptian goddess who likes to play a tune at night?”
“If ye’re after thinking that’ll sway me, ye’d be wrong, even as sweet as she is.”
“What about if I told ya the cauldron’s back, and Nuada’s sword and Lugh’s spear are missing?”
“Well, if ye’re talking like that, I may have to reevaluate.”
It must have been information Con didn’t have yet. And it also must have told him just how serious the situation was. “I’m after thinking you should.”
“And the pub, I saw it was boarded up.”
“Sluagh and at least one Fir Bolg.”
“So they’re stirring the ancients, are they?” A cluck of the tongue. “Can’t be having that, now can we?” A sigh. “I’ll put it out there, but don’t be expecting too many to trouble themselves. Ye know the fae ain’t what they once were, too set in our new human ways, we are.”
“Ye’re a good man, Con. A good man.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be going that far.” A heavy breath sounded over the line. “Don’t be getting yerself killed, Ailis. I like ya, and I don’t want ta have ta mourn ya.”
“Don’t fash yerself about that, old man,” Ailis said with a grin. She had no intentions of dying any time soon. Her intuition tugged at her, telling her she still had one more grand adventure after this.
This time she was the one to hang up first.
Who next?
Ah, the banshees…
Chapter Twenty-Two
BAT
They would need to get the shard back to Dub soon, but she wanted to make one more attempt to contact the main piece of the vessel of creation via the shard.
What was the saying? Third time is the charm?
There had been the attempt back in the library at the guardi headquarters, and then again right after Finn and Cuchi had given their blood.
Dub had insisted on getting the shard back, and she had given it, but Daire had just zipped in and informed her that the Smith was working on the socket, and would not need the shard for an hour or so.
Ari had sent Nour, one of the other ba men, to fetch it, and here they were, trying one more time.
“Now,” she said, wanting to make things clear. “I am not trying to find the exact current location of the vessel, but I want to have an… assurance that we will be able to locate it precisely once it is time. Finding the island is fine, and the first step, of course, but we must be able to locate the vessel on the island.” If Balor decided to hide it in a cave somewhere, she wanted to know where that cave was, how deep into the hills or under the ground.
“Yes, this would be good.” Ari nodded.
“And we will need to break through glamours,” Adom said. Smaller in stature than the others, he sat to her right, his legs swinging back and forth. Odiom, the last man of ba, remained silent, staring at the shard on the table. Then he sighed.
Bat reached out, with both her power and her hands. “Join me?” The invitation was a formality, but she noticed the men of ba did better when there were clear directions from her.
Ari laid two fingers along the length of the shard, careful to avoid her flesh with his claws. The other three men of ba matched him, their razor claws crossing in a careful tapestry. A shaft of sunlight filtered through the thin curtain over the kitchen window and flashed off the edge of the shard. Static and ozone, the scent of restrained power—and of Seth holding his temper—filled the room as each of them funneled power into the small piece of creation.
Please, she sent to the shard.
?
Where is the larger part of you?
Vague impression reached her, of a dark place filled with damp and salt.
Mother, where are you? The thought had the flavor of Ari.
A consciousness stirred in that dark place.
Mother, we are looking for you. It was another of the men of ba.
The shard pulsed under her fingers. This piece of the vessel, restored, had become its own small consciousness. It knew there was a new purpose for it, and had assured itself it was among its children. The greater part of the vessel had no such surety. Someone had taken it, and while some were familiar, they were not giving it what it needed.
She was… scared.
But the voices of the men of ba had provided some comfort.
Bat could understand this.
“Continue to call to her, she is listening,” she told Ari. “I will lend you what power I can.”
Ari nodded and closed his eyes. Bat followed suit, allowing the call of the vessel to guide her. She thought of comfort, and home, and love—all the things she had found since coming to Ireland, since coming across Dub, Mell, Shar, and Finn. Since finding a friend in Ailis, since being given Killer. She filtered out the lingering traces of frustration and anger, concentrating on now and the future she wanted. Bundling those feelings together, she channeled it to Ari, Nour, Adom, and Odion, asking all four of them to use it in their calls to the vessel.
Gathering the last of what she had built up the night before, scraping the power from the corners of her soul, she sent one last push, and felt the men of ba do the same.
Just when she thought they’d failed, there was an almost audible click, and the vessel reached out. Bypassing the shard completely, it wrapped tendrils of mixed need and assurance around each of the men of ba. It touched upon Bat, skimming over her with a faint recognition, then passed on.
That was fine. They had accomplished what needed to be done.
Bat opened her eyes to find the shard glowing faintly, and the four men of ba staring in wonder, their eyes shedding a red cast upon the table.
She laughed, relief and hope pouring through her. “We did it,” she breathed out.
They had done it. They really had.
“Yes,” Ari whispered as he slid his fingers from the shard. “Yes, we did it.” He focused on her. “Thank you.”
Bat shook her head. “No. This is not something that required thanks.”
“Nevertheless,” Ari said, falling into ancient Egyptian. “I must thank you, goddess. You remind me of Nut in the early days, you have the same warmth. I am glad to have known you.”
Why did that sound like a farewell? “Ari?”
He smiled, careful not to reveal his needle teeth, but didn’t say anything else. The other men of ba remained silent.
Chapter Twenty-Three
MELL
Mell swept a hand over the seat of a dust-covered chair, and joined Femi at the low table they’d set in the middle of the small staging room connected to the forge. Sharp pings sounded through the walls as Dub worked.
“Need more hawthorn,” Femi said.
The man of ba had been working steadily for the last hour, twining leather scraps to hawthorn and iron nails. He had twenty small bundles prepared.
The weaving was done in a precise pattern. Occasionally, Mell could just make out the impression of a rune in that pattern, but it was none that he knew.
He rose, going to the small pile of twigs and leaves the pixies had helped him gather. It had dwindled to a handful of scraps. He gathered what was left and placed it next to the pile of nails in front of Femi. “How many more will you make?”
“As many as I can until the guardi magician arrives. Then I will show him the way of the casting, and he will help me finish them.”
Femi must have meant Oisin. Impatience built in Mell. He wanted to be doing something, not babysitting a man of ba while it wove amulets. “Can you show me?”
A bright red gaze met his through the haze of old dust that hung in the air. “Do you recognize the runes?”
Mell’s lips tightened. “No.”
Femi shook his head. “It would take too long to show you. Better to show once. The magician can then teach you later, after the Evil Eye is once more defeated.” He returned to his weaving, using his claws to twist the leather and hawthorn around the nails.
Mell sat once more, watching as Femi’s fingers flew in an intricate dance. If he could just learn those movements, he could help instead of being an errand boy…
“I’ll need more hawthorn, Fomoiri.”
Tamping down on his frustration, Mell rose and went in search of the pixies.
Relegated to an errand boy…
Chapter Twenty-Four
DUB
He took the shard from Ari and gave the ba man a short nod. The timing was perfect. Turning back to his forge, he didn’t bother to see the other immortal out.
He’d prepared the socket and the casing of metal that he would need to coax into enveloping the shard. He’d practiced the runes, the order he would need to speak them in, and the pattern he would need to beat into the metal. Smithing with runes was tricky, unless you were etching them directly into the metal.
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