## The Undivided  
Sampler

### JJ Fallon

#### Published by Snapping Turtle Books at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 JJ Fallon

## Prologue

_It shouldn't be so easy to take a life._

The assassin pondered that thought as he approached the cradle rocking gently in the center of the warm, candle-lit chamber. Their mother would have set the cradle in motion to soothe the twins before she left the room, trusting their visitor so profoundly that it would never occur to her the children might be in danger.

He reached the cradle and stopped to study it for a moment. The oak crib was carved with elaborate Celtic knot-work, inlaid with softly glowing mother-of-pearl brought up from the very depths of the ocean by the magical Walrus People, the _marra-warra_. It had been a gift from Queen Orlagh, centuries ago, and had rocked generations of twins to sleep since then.

Generations that would end now. Tonight. By his hand.

He glanced down at the blade he carried. The _airgead sídhe_ caught the candlelight in odd places, illuminating the engraving on the blade. He hefted the razor-sharp weapon in his hand. Faerie silver was useless in battle, but for this task, nothing else would suffice.

Warmed by the fire crackling in the fire pit in the center of the large round chamber, the twins slept peacefully, curled together like soft, precious petals, the left one sucking her thumb, the other making soft suckling motions with her mouth, unconsciously mirroring her sister. The girls were sated and content, blissfully ignorant of their approaching death. Even if they had been awake, it was unlikely they would recognise the danger that hovered over them. The man wielding the blade above their cradle - the man who had come to take their lives - was a friend, a dependable presence they trusted to keep them safe.

"You can't seriously mean to do this."

He glanced over his shoulder. A figure stood in the shadows by the door, a presence that was both alien and familiar. A presence so like himself it may have been nothing more than a corporeal manifestation of his own conscience.

"It has to be done. You know that."

The figure by the door shook his head and took a step further into the room. The assassin found himself staring at a mirror image of himself, except the face of his reflection was filled with doubt and anguish, while his own was calm and resigned to what must be done.

"They are innocent," the anguished manifestation of his guilt announced.

"They are our death."

"If preventing our death requires the death of innocent children, then perhaps we deserve to die."

The assassin didn't answer, turning back to stare down at the twin girls he had come to murder. It wasn't _who_ they were, but _what_ , that made their deaths so necessary.

_Why am I the only one who sees that clearly?_

His conscience took another step closer. "I won't let you do it."

"How will you stop me?" he asked as he raised the blade. One of the girls was stirring - they were too alike to tell which was which. She opened her eyes to smile up at him, her face framed by soft dark curls. Her sister remained asleep, still peacefully sucking her thumb.

_Which will be harder?_ he wondered idly. _Killing the one who is asleep and ignorant of her fate, or the one staring up at me with that sleepy, contented smile?_

"I'll kill _you_ if I have to, to stop this."

The assassin smiled down at the twins, dismissing the empty threat. "Even if you could get across this room before the deed is done, you can't kill me without killing yourself, which would achieve precisely what I am here to prevent."

He moved the blade a little, repositioning his grip. The candlelight danced across its engraved surface, mesmerizing the baby. He was happy to entertain her with the pretty lights for a few moments. His mission was to kill her and her sister, after all, not to make her suffer.

There was a drawn-out silence as he played the light across the blade. Behind him, the presence that was both his conscience and his other half remained motionless. There was no point in his trying to attack. They were two sides of the same coin. Neither man could so much as form the intent to attack without the other knowing about it.

The girls would be dead before anybody could reach the cradle to stop him.

"There must be another way." There was a note of defeat in the statement, a glimmer of acceptance.

"I wouldn't be here if there was," the assassin replied, still staring down at the baby he had come to kill. "You know that," he added, glancing over his shoulder. "You're just not willing to accept the truth of it."

The other man held out his hand, as if he expected the blade to be handed over, and for this night to be somehow forgotten. Put behind them like a foolish disagreement they'd been wise enough to settle like men. "They're just babies..."

"They are our death and the death of much more besides."

"But they're innocents..."

The assassin shook his head. "Only because they lack the capacity yet to act on what they were bred to manifest. Once they are grown..."

"Dammit... they're your own flesh and blood!"

The assassin gripped the blade tighter and turned back to the cradle, steeling his resolve with a conscious act of will. It didn't matter who they were. It's _what_ they were. That was the important thing.

It was the reason they had to die.

"They are abominations, bred to cause chaos and strife."

"What we've seen in other realms may not come to pass."

"Of course it will," he said, growing impatient with an argument he considered long resolved. He reached into the cradle with his left hand to pull back the furs covering the children. The twin who was awake grabbed his finger. Her blue eyes smiling, she squeezed it gently. Behind him, his other half watched, too appalled to allow this, too afraid to stop it.

"Help me, or leave," the assassin said, feeling the accusing eyes of his companion boring into his back. "Just don't stand there feigning disgust, as if you had no part in bringing us to this pass."

His nemesis wasn't ready to give up just yet. "Perhaps what we've seen won't happen here..."

"I'm not prepared to take that risk."

"But you're prepared to have the blood of innocents on your hands?"

"Better the blood of two children than the blood of the thousands who don't deserve to die." The assassin was still a little amazed he felt so calm. It was as if all the anguish, all the guilt, all the fear and remorse, all the normal human emotions a man should be battling at a time like this were a burden carried by someone else, leaving him free to act, unhindered by doubt.

If that wasn't a sign of the rightness of this deed, he couldn't think of anything else that might be.

He extracted his finger from the soft, determined grip of the baby girl, her skin so supple and warm, her gaze so trusting and serene it was heartbreaking.

But not heartbreaking enough to stay his hand. He raised the blade, transfixed by the guileless blue eyes staring up at him. And then he brought it down sharply, slicing through the swaddling and her fragile ribs into her tiny heart without remorse or regret.

He was quick and, he hoped, merciful, but the link between the sisters was quicker.

Before he could extract the blade from one tiny heart and plunge it into another, her twin sister jerked with pain and began to scream.

## Chapter 1

"If we had to take our clothes off, couldn't we have done this indoors?"

Brydie glanced down around the circle of her sisters, cousins and friends, wondering who was brave enough to voice such a sacrilegious thought aloud. It might have been Anwen. Since her betrothal to the queen's only son, Torcán, last _Imbolc_ , she'd become full of her own opinions, and with the security of her position of a soon-to-be princess, wasn't afraid of sharing them. Not that Brydie disagreed with her distant cousin, shivering as she stepped out of her shift, leaving it in a puddle of pale linen on the grass behind her, but she would never have dared to say so.

Hugging her arms across her naked body against the chill, Brydie glanced up at the sun, barely visible through the trees. The sun lacked warmth, and what little there was the tall trees stole with their shadows. She shivered again and turned to her companions, noting with concern that the queen seemed to have only called the unmarried women of her court to this gathering in the sacred grove. Looking around at the dozen or so girls undressing around her, Brydie wondered what it meant. Was there a treaty to be sealed with a wedding?

More importantly, would the bride be ordered to the altar by her queen or permitted to volunteer?

Brydie chewed her bottom lip with concern. Queen Álmhath had been talking with quite a few border lords of late, even a couple from across _Muir Éireann_. The man visiting from Albion wasn't anything to boast about, but he seemed a decent enough fellow, the few times Brydie was called to wait on his table these past few weeks. The other man, the Gaul... he was a pig. Brydie fervently hoped if this gathering had been called to select a treaty bride, it wasn't because the queen of the Celts wanted something out of the Gauls.

"Don't slouch!"

Brydie straightened her shoulders, dropped her arms and lifted her chin, despite the bitter wind. One didn't defy Lady Malvina unless one was feeling particularly in need of trouble.

The Druidess stopped beside Brydie but, fortunately, she fixed her attention on the girl beside her. Ethna was a year older than Brydie, but much thinner, her long brown hair tied back in a tight braid. At least Brydie had thought to let her own hair down as she undressed, figuring she might glean a little warmth from the thickness of it. Poor Ethna seemed to be feeling the cold a great deal more than the other girls, and a thin line of blood was trickling down her inner thigh. It was her _mìosach_ time. Brydie felt sorry for Ethna and was relieved hers had finished a couple of weeks ago. Poor girl. Brydie might be teased constantly by the men of Álmhath's court about her child-bearing hips, but at least she didn't look as if she was going to snap in the first strong breeze like her companion did. The unfortunate girl was turning blue.

"By _Danú_ ," the old Druidess sighed, shaking her head. "You're a sorry specimen, Ethna Ni'Connell. Did your father never feed you at home?"

Ethna's eyes began to well with unshed tears. Brydie wasn't sure if that was because she was upset or just cold. Her pale, freckled skin was prickled with gooseflesh, and her teeth were actually chattering.

"I... I..."

"It's not her fault, _an Bhantiarna_ ," Brydie said, taking pity on the girl. They weren't exactly friends, but nobody deserved Malvina's heartless scorn for such an insignificant thing as not having enough meat on their bones. "Ethna's just naturally thin." Malvina turned her pale, watery eyes on Brydie, eyeing her up and down like a farmer calculating the net worth of a freshly slaughtered carcass. "And what's your excuse for the way you stand there, Brydie Ni'Seanan? You're just naturally built for sin, are you?"

A few of the other girls sniggered. Brydie refused to react to the taunt. It was a tired one, coined a few months ago by some _Ráith_ lord, who'd drunkenly tried to petition the queen for a night with her, in honor of _Imbolc_. The queen had refused, of course, loudly telling the lord - and the other three hundred or so inebriated guests in her hall - that her court maidens weren't put on this Earth by the goddess to sate the drunken lust of a man with ten children, and he'd be better served going home to his own wife to make number eleven.

It had all been a bit of good-natured fun, until then. Anwen and Torcán had just announced their betrothal, spirits were high, everyone was drunk and it was part of the sport to try coaxing a court maiden into your bed. It was just as much a part of the fun of being a court maiden to avoid a tryst until the queen gave her permission, and even Álmhath had laughed while she delivered her rebuke. As Brydie walked away from the table, however, the lord had called out to the queen in a plaintive voice that reached every corner of the hall. "Really? Not even a kiss, my lady? But look at her! She's built for naught _but_ sin!"

That had set the revelers rolling in the aisles and Brydie had not been able to shake the description ever since.

Failing to get a rise out of Brydie, Malvina moved on. Ethna smiled timorously at Brydie as the Druidess moved around th circle. "Thanks, but you didn't have to say anything. It's not that cold."

"You look like a freshly hooked fish, Ethna," Brydie said, smiling.

Ethna rubbed her arms for a moment and glanced toward the entrance to the grove. There was no sign of the queen yet. "Do you think Álmhath is looking for a treaty bride?"

"Probably."

"Will you stand forth?"

Brydie shook her head. "With my luck she's done a deal with that Gaulish pig, and he'd beat me every day, feed me nothing but snails and expect me to bear him ten sons who all have manners just as bad as his."

"I'd go if I was asked," Ethna said, lowering her voice. "I'm sick of this place. Sick of Temair." She glanced down the line at Malvina's back. The Druidess had stopped to chastise another girl for taking too long to get undressed. "Sick of the Druids."

"Then I hope for your sake Álmhath asks for volunteers," Brydie said. "You can be sure I won't be fighting you for a seat on any boat crossing _Muir Éireann_."

They fell silent after that, each girl wrapped in her own thoughts while they waited for the queen, all of them thinking much the same as she and Ethna were thinking, Brydie supposed. Álmhath needed a bride to seal a treaty and, as was the custom, the bride would come from among her court maidens. She cast a furtive glance across the circle at Anwen, wondering what she was doing here. With her betrothal to Torcán, she should be off the market. Had she angered the queen in some way? Had Torcán wearied of her already?

"Kneel for your queen!"

Each of the twelve girls knelt on one knee as Álmhath swept into the grove, wearing a long white cloak. A handsome woman in late middle age, she had an air of timelessness about her that Brydie envied. She hoped she would be as commanding some day.

"You have been called to discharge your sacred duty," the queen announced with no preamble, as she pushed back the hood of her robe to reveal her thick, braided auburn hair, flecked with more and more silver each year. "As daughters of _Danú_ , you are honored to do her work, and there is no greater honor than to bring forth the next generation. We are women, blessed by _Danú_ with the means to nurture our race and ensure its continuation. As court maidens, you are further blessed with the means to keep our borders safe. To that end, I will be selecting two of you..."

Brydie bit her lip. The queen had said "selecting". There was no chance of avoiding a marriage now, if she was one of the chosen.

It wasn't that Brydie was averse to the idea of an arranged marriage, in principle. She just didn't like what was on offer. Brydie wasn't naive enough to believe in dashing princes and happy-ever-afters, the way the bards went on and on when they told their romances. She clung to the hope, however, that the accident of birth that gave her enough noble blood to secure her place as a court maiden also meant she'd eventually marry someone with a modicum of good manners, at the very least.

"... to take up this blessed duty for your queen, your country and your race. Rise now, so that Danú and I may see you as you truly are."

All of the girls stood a little taller as the queen approached them. Unlike Malvina, Álmhath seemed aware it was cold and knew the girls must be suffering. She made her rounds quickly, examining each girl critically for a moment, asking her when her most recent mìosach had finished, before smiling at them briefly and moving on. Every girl got the same attention and the same brief smile, unless like Ethna, there was clear evidence of their menstrual cycle, and the queen had no need to ask. It was impossible to tell what the queen was thinking. Malvina stood at the entrance to the grove, as if to block any girl foolish enough to attempt an escape.

Finally, the queen finished her circle and turned to face them. "Those blessed by _Danú_ this day are Ethna and Morann."

Beside her, Ethna let out a little squeak of glee. Sighing with relief, Brydie hoped the young woman still felt that way after six months in a Gaulish court. Whatever plans the queen was making, apparently they didn't involve her. Perhaps she'd chosen girls with clear evidence of their fertility, which would make sense if the queen of the Celts was promising these border lords fine healthy sons out of their new brides. Brydie waited, head down, for the queen to leave the grove so she and the others could get dressed and out of this persistent, bitter wind, relieved her cycle had apparently excluded her.

"Brydie Ni'Seanan?"

" _An Bhantiarna_." She dropped to one knee, her heart in her mouth. _What have I done now?_

"Come with me," the queen commanded. " _Danú_ has work for you, too, my dear."

## Chapter 2

"You're wounded, _Leath tiarna_."

Darragh pulled his linen shirt down over his head, covering the fresh cut on his left side.

"It's nothing. Just a scratch. Alessandro got the better of me." Colmán nodded, frowning, but asked for no further details.

Darragh was counting on that. After all, he regularly practiced swordcraft with the _Ráith's_ Roman swordmaster, Alessandro, down in the yards. The true reason for his injury was something he intended to share with no one - a good thing too, as his experiment had apparently achieved nothing more than a nasty slice across his ribs.

"You probably should have healed it magically as soon as it occurred," the Vate scolded, "rather than risk an infection that might take you from us."

"I'm lucky like that, Colmán," Darragh told the Vate with a shrug, as he tucked the linen shirt into his leather trousers and then pulled his hair out from under the collar, so he could tie it back with a strip of leather. "I rarely suffer infection." He was glad that was all Colmán was asking. It had not occurred to the Vate - thank _Danú_ \- to question why it was he was training with Alessandro and not his Druid bodyguard and mentor, Ciarán. It would be difficult and awkward to explain away Ciarán's absence. And how Alessandro had managed to wound him using a blade forged from _airgead sídhe_ when they should have been practicing with wooden blades, or blunted iron at the very least _._

Nor had he asked why Darragh hadn't healed the cut even now. That was also a relief, because his reason was one he didn't want to share with anybody. It sounded too insane if he said it aloud.

" _Danú_ smiles upon thee, _Leath tiarna_ ," the Vate agreed with a low bow. "We should offer her our gratitude." He closed his eyes for a moment, clasping his hands in the deep sleeves of his robe. " _Danú_ smiles upon Darragh of the Undivided," he intoned, committing the statement to memory.

Unable to read Latin or any other written language, but able to recall the entire oral history of the Undivided at will, Colmán took his job as court bard and chief custodian of Druid history very seriously. Colmán was a stickler for detail, too. Darragh sometimes feared he might start chronicling what he ate for breakfast each morning, believing such minutiae should be preserved for posterity. Unfortunately, Colmán had a habit of composing his epics as events unfolded around him, rather than waiting until he had the whole story, as Amergin had. The old Vate always found a way to make his chronicles interesting, leaving audiences hanging off his every word, fighting for space at the table when news got about that he was ready to relate another tale.

Darragh finished tying back his hair and studied the new Vate. The Vate opened his eyes and was looking at Darragh expectantly. In the flickering candlelight of his large underground bedchamber, it wasn't easy to tell if the old man was waiting for him to do something worthy of being chronicled, or was simply there to act as an advisor. His role as Vate required him to be both.

Not that Darragh trusted Colmán's advice.

After Amergin's betrayal it was hard to trust anybody.

Even with the ability to see glimpses of the future, Darragh was still not certain his new Vate was really on his side. Not that his gift of prescience was much of a gift, he often mused. His dreams had given him no warning of Amergin's betrayal. These days his dreams focused on future events involving his long-lost brother - a mixed blessing, given they indicated he would eventually find Rónán - but that they would fall out over the fate of another set of twins Darragh had never been able to identify.

Darragh missed Amergin. The old Druid might have been able to shed some light on his disturbing visions of the future. Odd that he felt that way, given how comprehensively his most trusted advisor had betrayed him, but he was still a lot more fun to be around than Amergin's dour, overly formal replacement. In his whole life, Amergin had not called Darragh " _Leath tiarna_ " more than a handful of times. Colmán managed to work it into every other sentence.

"I'm sure the goddess appreciates your devotion, Vate," Darragh told him, bracing himself for the coming day. He glanced around the stone-walled underground chamber and realized with some relief that it wasn't the one in his dream. Last night had been the clearest vision yet. The chamber of his dreams might not even be in the vast network of Druid halls here in _Sí an Bhrú._ "Are they on their way yet?"

"The lookouts have not reported any sightings, _Leath tiarna_."

"That might be because they don't _want_ us to see them, Colmán."

"Aye, _Leath tiarna_ ," the Vate agreed, nodding his balding head as he stroked the greased ends of his grey-flecked, forked beard. To Darragh's immense relief, the fashion these days among younger men was to remain clean-shaven. But Colmán was old-fashioned. He didn't just _dislike_ change. He actively discouraged it, believing even minor alterations to the way they lived were a direct path to the loss of all their magic. "The deceitfulness of the _Tuatha_ knows no bounds."

"Probably not wise to mention that while we're dining with them," Darragh pointed out with a wry smile. It wasn't that he disagreed with the Vate. The _Daoine sídhe_ were notoriously untrustworthy and nobody knew that better than Darragh. It was Colmán's intense, implacable hatred of the Faerie that amazed Darragh. Or rather, his suspicion that this most recent Vate of All Eire had been chosen for that quality alone.

There would be no epic poems composed by this bard, repeated with reverence and awe by future generations. No songs, no plays, no grand tales of derring-do. Colmán was unsmiling, unlikable and uninspiring.

But Colmán would never - as Amergin had - allow himself to be seduced by the _Daoine sídhe_.

The Druids had learnt their lesson. There would be no more talk of closer ties with the _Tuatha Dé Danann_. No Vate would ever again stand at his right hand with a _leanan sídhe_ for a wife. The music, the songs, the epics and the laughter that came with a bard magically inspired by his Faerie muse were gone from _Sí an Bhrú_ and the place felt poorer for it.

On the other hand, there was a chance that someday soon - assuming today's meeting wasn't a plan to unseat him - for the first time in fifteen years, the Undivided might be reunited. Darragh forced that thought away. It was too easy to get excited at the prospect, which more than likely would end in nothing but bitter disappointment once more. The chance of finding one soul among hundreds of millions in an unfamiliar reality... well, Darragh was many things, but a foolish optimist wasn't one of them.

Guilt and impending death had forced the confession from Amergin about the fate of Darragh's brother. His life force finally drained by his _leanan sídhe_ wife, Amergin had gasped the belated admission of his role in Rónán's disappearance with his very last breath.

The revelation had shaken the Druids to their core. Even Darragh - with months to get used to the idea - still wasn't sure how he was supposed to deal with the news that the man he'd considered both a father and a friend - a man he'd trusted with his very life - was the one responsible for taking half of it away.

Amergin's co-conspirator was on his way here now. Marcroy Tarth. The most seductive, the most deceitful of all the _Daoine sídhe._ Darragh knew it was going to be hard to keep a level head. Hard to listen to Marcroy's silver-tongued flattery and not accuse the _sídhe_ to his face of being a lying, cheating ghoul with no interest in anything but his own amusement.

Even harder not to ask for news of Trása.

Darragh had tried looking into the future a number of times since they'd sent Trása away, to see if there was any sign of her, but his dreams of her were blurred and unsettled, never stopping long enough for him to form a clear picture of her destiny. Whatever the future held for Trása Ni'Amergin, it was not fixed. That gave Darragh cause for hope. And sometimes despair.

"Did the _Tuatha_ indicate how many of them we should expect?" Darragh asked, as he fell into step with Colmán. They headed into the torch-lit passage leading to the cross-shaped chamber where the Undivided usually held court.

Built several thousand years earlier, _Sí an Bhrú_ was originally intended as a place to prepare the _Tuatha_ dead for their journey to the underworld. The rise of the Druids and the need for a secure home for the Undivided had caused the kidney-shaped stone fort, which covered more than an acre of the rich farmland of the Boyne Valley, to be turned into a thriving community of Druids, bards, magicians, and their families. They'd occupied the site since Boadicea ruled the Celts in Britain, extending it and repairing the quartz-covered exterior walls, so it looked today exactly as it had years ago, when it was first constructed.

As they left the long passage carved with the tri-spiral triskalion similar to the one magically tattooed on Darragh's right hand, they entered a large round chamber with a steeply corbelled roof rising to an opening some twenty feet above them, which served as a chimney and provided the only source of natural light. Around the walls recesses containing large stone basins - once meant to hold the cremated remains of those being laid to rest - blazed with fires kept burning to provide both light and heat. The hall was filled with servants setting up tables for the evening's feast and the enticing aroma of roasting meat. Darragh's stomach rumbled, reminding him he hadn't broken his fast yet this morning.

"The _sídhe_ gave no indication of the size of their party, _Leath tiarna_ ," Colmán said. He looked at Darragh anxiously. "They simply asked to meet with you and Queen Álmhath. Did you hope to limit their numbers for some purpose?"

"Not really," Darragh said with a shrug, thinking it would pay to eat something before the cooks became so engrossed in the preparations for tonight's feast they forgot to see to any other meals for the residents of _Sí an Bhrú_. "I just wouldn't put it past Marcroy Tarth to turn up with the entire _Daoine sídhe_ host so he can pretend to be wounded by our inhospitable rudeness when we can't accommodate them all."

"He'd not dare!"

"He'd dare it... and before you know it, we'd find ourselves in his debt for not smiting us where we stand for breaking some long-forgotten clause in the Treaty of _Tír Na nÓg_."

Colmán looked alarmed, not aware, apparently, that Darragh wasn't serious.

"I shall have the lookouts report on their numbers as soon as the _Daoine sídhe_ are in sight, _Leath tiarna_ , so we may make the appropriate preparations."

Darragh nodded, thinking Amergin would have known he was joking. And he'd have issued such an order without being asked, too. Just in case.

"Is there anything else I should know before our guests arrive?" Darragh asked, as he glanced around the hall. Like the rest of _Sí an Bhrú_ , the stone walls were carved and painted with brightly cultured emblems depicting the Druid castes - the scales of the _Brithem_ , the sword of the Warriors, the herbal wreath of the _Deoghbaire_ and _Liaig_ among the most colorful, and the tri- spiral of the Undivided. Dried flowers and herbs festooned the ceiling corbels, sweetening the air by combating the lingering smell of smoke from the peat fires that warmed the hall in the stone recesses. Wooden tables were being laid out for the occasion, with additional benches brought in to accommodate the expected influx of guests. A special head table had been set up on a raised dais at the far side of the hall, overseeing the rest of the tables, for Darragh and Marcroy, Álmhath, and her son Prince Torcán and his betrothed, Anwen, Colmán, whatever escort Marcroy chose to accompany him, and an empty seat, as always, for Darragh's missing brother, Rónán.

"I wish to renew my objection to this meeting, _Leath tiarna_." Colmán's whole stance reeked of disapproval. "Particularly with Ciarán away."

That made Darragh smile. "You think they're going to try and murder me over dinner?"

Colmán tugged on his beard again, a sure sign he was worried. "I'm just saying, _Leath tiarna_ , no good will come of letting those unnatural creatures believe they are entitled to be treated like men."

"Not a lot of good has come of treating them any other way," Darragh pointed out. "And you must admit that, without them, the Druids would have faded into oblivion a thousand years ago." Darragh wasn't trying to pick an argument with his Vate. He had no radical reformist agenda, and certainly no time nor sympathy for the growing Partitionist movement who didn't understand the role of the Undivided in maintaining the Druids' magic and wanted the rule of the Undivided - and him along with it - brought down. But there was a certain amount of amusement to be had watching Colmán's face turn purple as he contemplated the idea that Darragh might actually be entertaining a modicum of compassion for the Faerie race. "Do we know when our beloved queen and her not-so-beloved son will arrive?"

Colmán shook his head. "We've received no word from her majesty either, _Leath tiarna_."

"The respect for our order is overwhelming," Darragh remarked. "Did the queen of the Celts even bother to let us know if she is planning to attend this summit?"

"She sent a message saying she would try, _Leath tiarna_."

_She'll try_. Darragh shook his head. There was a time when the mere prospect of meeting with the Undivided struck fear into the hearts of rulers across the length and breadth of the land. Across the whole world, even. And into the Otherworld, besides. There was a time when oriental emperors, Egyptian pharaohs, Roman consuls and Indian maharajas made the long trek to these emerald shores to pay their respects.

No longer. Not since the Undivided were, well... divided. These days, despite the lip service they paid to his rank, Darragh was painfully aware the leaders who once deferred to his position now considered him weak and powerless.

He was Darragh the Divided. They thought him an annoying young man whom tradition forced them to acknowledge, but one increasingly easy to ignore.

They thought of him as nothing but an ineffectual figurehead at the mercy of men like Amergin who - at the behest of a _leanan sídhe_ whore - had betrayed his own people in return for his need to be immortalized as a poet.

That would change, of course, if the Undivided were ever reunited.

_When we're reunited_ , Darragh corrected himself silently. Rónán was alive. Darragh knew that. He simply wouldn't be breathing if his brother wasn't - the psychic link between them was too strong to let a small thing like being separated by different realities get in the way.

But finding his twin in that other reality and bringing him home was an entirely different matter.

And something he didn't have time to dwell on now. Darragh closed his eyes for a moment, hoping to glimpse the reason the _Tuatha_ had asked for this meeting, but the future was dim. He would just have to trust Ciarán, Brógán and Niamh. His disturbing dreams of infanticide notwithstanding - which came to him unbidden - when Darragh consciously tried to see the future, all he saw were boring, mundane things like snippets of the upcoming feast, even a glimpse of a servant accidentally spilling an amphora of apple wine on one of Álmhath's men-at- arms.

Nothing he could use. No idea what this meeting was about.

No comforting vision of Brógán or Niamh rushing into the hall to inform the entire gathering that Darragh's long-lost brother had been found...

Nothing but a minor fistfight, Marcroy's untrustworthy smile and Torcán's contemptuously curled lip as he sat beside his equally disdainful fiancée, Anwen, on the raised dais, looking down his nose at the other occupants of the Druid hall.

Darragh shook his head to clear the image, certain the last one hadn't been a vision so much as an educated guess that came from knowing the Celtic prince so well.

"Is something the matter, _Leath tiarna_?" Colmán asked anxiously, recognizing Darragh's vague expression. "Have you Seen something? Something we can use?"

"Álmhath will be here by sunset," he told the Vate. "And she's bringing Torcán with her."

The Vate ventured a cautious smile. "That should please you,

_Leath tiarna_?"

"I'm thrilled," Darragh murmured to himself, knowing if he said it any louder, he'd have to explain his sour tone to Colmán. Amergin would have understood. He had thought Torcán a royal pain, too.

_Damn you, Amergin, for being so selfish..._

"Pardon, _Leath tiarna_?"

"Nothing, Colmán," Darragh sighed, wondering if he could escape _Sí an Bhrú_ long enough to go for a ride alone to clear his head - and his Sight - before their guests arrived. Unlikely, he knew. Colmán hated to let Darragh out of his sight for more than a few moments for fear the young man would do something worthy of being recorded for posterity. "Just... carry on..."

"As you wish, _Leath tiarna_ ," the Vate said, bowing low. And then he closed his eyes, crossed his hands in his sleeves once more and began to intone his next composition.

"Darragh, the Undivided, waits to meet the Queen of the Celts. _Sí an Bhrú_ rings with the sound of many busy... belts..." Darragh sighed _. Amergin, your greatest crime against the Druids wasn't betraying the Undivided_ , he lamented silently, as he turned and headed for the long passage leading outside, unable to bear another word of Colmán's recital. _It was naming this fool as your successor..._

## Chapter 3

"How long have you been here at Temair now, Brydie?" the queen asked, slipping her arm through Brydie's as they walked back toward _Ráith Righ._ Even with the crisp breeze, it was much warmer out in the bright sunlight, walking the graveled path that led up the hill toward the castle. The sky was glorious; a pale, cloudless blue canopy. The distant clashes and shouts of men-at-arms training over on the practice field reached them faintly, but the men were out of sight of the path they were taking back to the _Ráith_.

Malvina had hurried on ahead, probably to get ready for her departure later in the day. The whole _Ráith_ was in an uproar as the queen prepared to leave, which made this morning's choosing in the sacred grove all the more unusual. These matters were rarely settled so hastily.

The queen's familiarity worried Brydie a little, too. Until that incident in the hall a few months ago, when she acquired the unwanted description of _built for sin_ , Brydie had barely spoken ten words to Álmhath since she'd arrived from her father's court in the west. She'd thought she'd remained hidden and anonymous among the scores of court maidens at Temair, some married, some single, and most of them working - as Brydie was - as servants.

"Almost eight months," she said, wondering why her length of time here was significant.

"Your mother was Mogue Ni'Farrell, was she not?"

"Yes, my lady."

The queen nodded and smiled. "I remember her. She too, was built for sin."

Brydie was beginning to tire of this. "My lady..."

Álmhath laughed softly and squeezed her arm tighter, cutting off her objection. "Forgive me, my dear. I am teasing you. Your mother was an extraordinary beauty and a loyal sister. As are you."

"Thank you, _an Bhantiarna_ ," Brydie said, a little warily. Álmhath didn't hand out compliments like that on a whim.

"Do you remember her?" Álmhath asked, her tone softening a little.

"Not really," Brydie said with a shrug. "Just what my father has told me about her. I was very little when she died."

"She was a great loss to us," Álmhath said, smiling sympathetically. "Her line was very precious."

The comment intrigued Brydie. She'd never heard her father claim her mother had any special connection to the queen. "Was she a court maiden, too?"

"A very special one."

"Did you arrange her marriage to my father?"

"Of course."

"Did you _make_ her marry him, or did she volunteer?" Brydie had never been sure about that. Her father spoke well enough of her dead mother whenever Brydie had asked about her, but he didn't seem too broken-hearted by her demise. And he'd replaced Mogue within a year of her death with a new wife, but that could have been practicality, rather than a sign of disregard for Brydie's mother.

The queen stopped walking and turned to look at Brydie, her eyes squinting a little as the rising sun was directly behind Brydie now. "Do I detect a note of disapproval in your tone, young lady?"

"No, _an Bhantiarna_. Of course not."

Álmhath raised one eyebrow as she studied Brydie curiously. "Are you in love?"

"No," Brydie replied, puzzled by the question. "Why would you ask that?"

"Because, in my experience, court maidens only question the marriages I arrange for them when they've already gone and done the choosing for themselves."

Brydie shook her head. "I swear, _an Bhantiarna_ , I have been true to my oath. I will do as you command. Happily. Provided..." Her voice trailed off, as she realized she may have overstepped the mark.

The older woman smiled knowingly at her. "I don't normally permit my court maidens to put qualifiers on their oaths, Brydie. I'm in the mood to indulge you, however. Provided _what_?"

Brydie hesitated, and then decided she might as well have her say now. The queen seemed in a remarkably congenial mood. It might be the only chance she was ever offered to have her opinion noted. "Provided it's not that Gaulish brute you've been entertaining all month."

Álmhath laughed. "By _Danú_ , as if I'd waste someone of your pedigree on a penniless pretender like Atilis. Rest easy, young Brydie, I have much bigger plans for the daughter of Mogue Ni'Farrell."

Brydie wasn't sure that sounded any better. What did she mean by _bigger plans_?

_Is that what she was talking about when she said_ Danú _had work for me?_

"Have you been to many formal banquets since you arrived?" Álmhath asked, before Brydie had a chance to inquire.

"I've served at most of them," Brydie said, frowning. _That's what I get for being assigned to the low tables. The queen doesn't even know I was there._

"I'm leaving this morning for a meeting at _Sí an Bhrú_ ," the queen said, which was no news to Brydie. The meeting had been planned for days. The queen, her son, Torcán, and her large entourage were planning to leave as soon as they got back to the _Ráith_. "There will be quite a feast in _Sí an Bhrú_ tonight."

Brydie nodded, not sure if the remark required her to respond. "Have you ever been to _Sí an Bhrú_?"

"No, my lady," she replied.

"You've never met the Undivided, then?"

_Well, that would be a bit of a chore_ , Brydie was tempted to respond _. One of them is missing._ But she restrained herself and shook her head. "No, my lady."

"You've met Marcroy Tarth, though, haven't you?"

She nodded. "Only recently, my lady. When the _Tuatha_ visited last." Just before riders headed out to _Sí an Bhrú_ to arrange today's meeting. She remembered that visit well. Although she had no idea what it was about, the queen had been in a foul temper for days after the _sídhe_ lord left Temair. Brydie didn't warm to Marcroy, thinking he looked far too young to be lord of the _Tuatha_. He certainly didn't look thousands of years old. With his fair, flawless skin, his far-too-pretty-to-be-masculine features and his delicately pointed ears, he looked like a youth in the first flush of manhood.

"Did Marcroy say anything to you?"

"He said I reminded him of his niece."

Álmhath frowned. "He has thousands of them. Did he say which one?"

"I believe I remind him of Trása." Brydie remembered the name well because, even in the west, in the relative isolation of her family home on the coast far from court, they'd heard of the traitor Amergin's half- _Beansídhe_ daughter.

That made the queen smile, which worried Brydie a great deal, because it was a sly, secretive little smile she had never before seen Álmhath display. "Did he now? Isn't that interesting?"

"Is it? I thought it was an insult. She's a mongrel."

"A very enticing mongrel," the queen informed her, apparently amused by Brydie's indignation. "Which is why we had her removed from _Sí an Bhrú._ "

"Oh... I didn't know that."

"No reason you should, dear." The queen glanced around. They were still stopped on the path, standing in the open amid a field of emerald clover, kept close-cropped by the sheep herds belonging to the _Ráith_ , far from the shadows of the earth abutments that circled the keep.

Brydie realized then why they were talking out here. Only in an open space such as this could Álmhath be certain there were no _Tuatha_ spies about trying to listen in on their conversation. She glanced around, wondering what Álmhath feared the Faerie might overhear.

The queen turned back to study Brydie thoughtfully for a moment. "Are you truly your mother's daughter, Brydie Ni'Seanan?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by that, _an Bhantiarna_ ," Brydie said, certain it was a loaded question.

"If I ask you to do something, to make a sacrifice for me, for your people, would you do it?"

Brydie nodded. "Of course..."

"Provided it doesn't involve that Gaulish pig?" Álmhath asked, with a raised brow.

"Even if it involved that," Brydie replied with a sigh, realizing now that Álmhath wasn't being friendly, she'd been toying with her. "I'm sorry, my lady. What you want of me, I will do. I'll marry whoever... or _whatever_... you tell me I must."

Álmhath studied her closely for a moment, as if trying to determine her sincerity, and then nodded. "Then return to your rooms and pack, my dear. You'll be coming to _Sí an Bhrú_ with us. I'll explain what I want of you on the way."

## Chapter 4

With a final and eminently satisfying shake of his thick white fur, Marcroy Tarth relinquished his wolven form and changed back into a more human-like appearance as he topped the rise overlooking _Sí an Bhrú_.

The Faerie lord stared across the valley at the sprawling human settlement with mixed feelings. The huge stone complex sat atop an elongated ridge within a large bend in the Boyne River about five miles west of the town of Drogheda, bathed in the setting sun. It was a sacred place, defiled by humans as part of a deal that had gone horribly wrong. Now sheep grazed on its slopes, the trees surrounding it had been murdered for firewood, and smoke curled out of the roofs of the roundhouses clustered at the foot of the hill, and was quickly snatched away by the chilly breeze almost as soon as it escaped confinement.

_Sí an Bhrú_ hadn't always belonged to the Druids. This place had been built by his people, the _Tuatha Dé Danann_. But that was long ago. Now the sacred halls were filled with drunken men-at- arms, talentless bards and sorcerers wielding stolen magic, who plotted and schemed the way humans do, uncaring of the long and hallowed history of the place they now called home.

"It must pain you to see _Sí an Bhrú_ still occupied by men," his companion remarked.

Marcroy turned to the _djinni_ , scowling, as he materialized beside him in a wisp of blue flame that defied the wind by barely moving. "It would pain me less if you didn't gloat about it, Jamaspa."

The _Marid_ shrugged as his upper body formed a human shape similar to Marcroy's, shimmering a little as he moved. "If you recall, Marcroy Tarth, I advised against this foolish bargain. Am I not entitled to remind you, now and then, that you should have listened to me? To the Brethren? Had you heeded our advice, we would not be in the position we are in now."

"You couldn't have known," Marcroy pointed out, folding his arms across his body. He would have to wait here until the _Leipreachán_ charged with bringing his clothes arrived. It would not do to arrive in _Sí an Bhrú_ naked.

Jamaspa shrugged, wavering a little in the crisp, cool breeze. "It should have been obvious, cousin," he said. "No matter how you justify the reason, you willingly gave humans access to your magic. You didn't expect them to relinquish it without a fight, did you?"

Marcroy scowled again, not wanting to get into an argument with the _Marid_ , a _djinni_ so old and powerful he made Orlagh look like a newling. He was tempted to point out that it had seemed an exceedingly reasonable proposition at the time. The _Tuatha_ were under attack and the deal with the Druids had been contingent on finding a set of ludicrously rare psychically linked twins to channel Faerie magic to human sorcerers. There'd only been a handful of such twins ever found. It didn't seem a lingering threat. Who could have anticipated that the humans would keep finding such rare, gifted twins, again and again, for the next sixty generations?

"The harm is done, Jamaspa," Marcroy said with a shrug. "All we can do now is mitigate the damage." Although he couldn't resist adding, "Assuming your rift runners are not mistaken about the future that awaits us if we do nothing."

The _djinni_ shook his head, making his whole ephemeral body bob up and down in the air. "They are not mistaken. The Undivided twins, RónánDarragh, will destroy us - _Tuatha_ , Djinni and all the others of our kind. We have seen it in the other realities where they were allowed to rule united. For the sake of all the Faerie races of this realm, we must destroy them first."

Marcroy wished he was able to voice such a definitive sentiment so readily, but he couldn't. The Treaty of _Tír Na nÓg_ was inviolable. He was Faerie and so bound by Faerie law he could barely contemplate endangering the treaty his queen had made on behalf of the _Tuatha_ , let alone breaking it. Yet the warning the Brethren had brought him all those years ago - the warning that had prompted him to subvert Amergin and sunder the Undivided - called to another, even more profound oath he was sworn to uphold. The protection of his people.

Marcroy had never before been so conflicted; never had to deal with two binding oaths so at odds with one another.

"I have rift runners combing the other reality," he assured the _djinni_. "They will ensure Rónán stays out of reach until the new Undivided are invested. Once that happens - once the power is transferred - Darragh will be dead and he'll take Rónán with him, wherever he may be. The threat will be gone."

"But not this cursed treaty of yours."

Marcroy shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. The Treaty of _Tír Na nÓg_ will remain intact. But then, it must. I have no choice in the matter."

"Orlagh has much to answer for, binding us to that cursed treaty," Jamaspa said, his form darkening with anger. "She had no right to make such a promise. No right to swear a treaty that binds all Faerie into this absurdity. Would it not cause the breaking of the treaty, and the oath she took on our behalf, the Brethren would remove her themselves."

Although Marcroy had always known of the resentment among the elders of the Faerie races over the arrangement the _Tuatha_ queen had made to save her people, he'd never realized just how angry they were.

Perhaps he should warn his queen?

_All in good time._ After all, if anything happened to Orlagh, he would become king of the _Daoine sídhe_.

"How will they find him?"

"Pardon?" Marcroy had become lost, for a moment, in the enticing prospect of kingship.

"The realm Amergin sent the child to? It's populated by millions, I'm told."

"Billions," Marcroy corrected, although the concept was just as hard for him to grasp as it was for Jamaspa. No full-blooded _Tuatha_ or Djinni could travel to a world without magic. They were forced to rely on the reports of the half-human rift runners they sent in their stead, for news of what was happening in the other realms.

"How will they find him among billions?"

"I sent someone who knows Darragh by sight. She'll know Rónán when she finds him."

"Who did you send?"

"My niece, Trása."

Jamaspa smiled. "Amergin's mongrel daughter?" Marcroy nodded.

"You have a wonderful sense of irony, cousin."

Before he could respond, Guinness McGee, the _Leipreachán_ he'd arranged to manage his wardrobe for this all-important meeting in _Sí an Bhrú_ , popped into existence a few feet below him, on the steep slope of the hill. With a squawk, the _Leipreachán_ and the bundle of clothes tumbled backward for a short distance, until they came to a halt, tangled in the branches of a small shrub, several yards from where Marcroy and the _djinni_ waited.

Guinness scrambled back up the slope toward them, struggling to keep his hat on, his pipe upright and the bundle off the ground, muttering to himself. Jamaspa shook his head, frowning, and turned to Marcroy. "Your lesser _sídhe_ make the _síla_ seem graceful and intelligent by comparison."

Watching Guinness stumbling over his own feet as he tried to drag the bundle of Marcroy's precious clothing up the damp, grassy slope, Marcroy was tempted to agree, but he'd had enough of Jamaspa's smug superiority for one day. "Do you think so, cousin?" he asked curiously. "I've always considered a lesser _sídhe_ who can be trained to fetch and carry, far more useful than one who prefers to inhabit rocks and trees with no other purpose than to leap out and kill things when the mood takes it." He gave Jamaspa no chance to reply, turning to Guinness. "You're late, McGee. I said sunset."

"The sun not be set yet, me lord, so I be here, when and where ye asked me," the _Leipreachán_ exclaimed, looking wounded as he handed the bundle over to Marcroy. "It not be me fault that ye big blue friend here threw me off course."

"The bug speaks," Jamaspa remarked, glaring down at th _Leipreachán_. "Shall I squash it for you, cousin?"

"If you wish."

Guinness squawked with fear and took a step backward, which sent him tumbling back down the hill. Marcroy smiled at the sight and then turned to Jamaspa, offering the jeweled brooch holding the bundle together, intended to secure his cloak once he was dressed. "Here," he said. "I'll carry you in this."

Jamaspa frowned. "It's very small."

Marcroy examined the gold filigree and amethyst brooch for a moment and then shrugged. "I'm sorry, cousin, I assumed a _Marid_ of your power could possess any item, no matter how small. a thousand pardons for overestimating your skill."

The _djinni_ couldn't ignore such a blatant challenge. He glared at Marcroy for a moment and then abruptly turned into a narrow plume of blue smoke, which quickly disappeared into the brooch, darkening the stone to a purple so deep it was almost black.

Marcroy held the brooch up in front of his face to address the jewel's occupant. "I'll tell you when it's safe to come out, but it won't be until we've left _Sí an Bhrú_. The humans can have no hint of the presence of a _djinni_ in their stronghold, and you know as well as I that, unrestrained, Darragh and probably more than a few Druid sorcerers in _Sí an Bhrú_ , will feel your presence. Be patient, cousin."

The jewel flared in acknowledgement of Marcroy's warning. Satisfied that he would be able to carry his _djinni_ companion into the very heart of the Druid stronghold without them being any the wiser, Marcroy tossed it onto his cloak and began to get dressed. The sun was almost set. They would be waiting for him in the main hall, expecting him to arrive with a huge entourage. Appearing alone would confuse the Druids no end.

As he pulled the silk embroidered shirt over his head, he caught sight of a plume of dust on the road below, heading toward _Sí an Bhrú._

_So Álmhath has arrived_ , he thought, as he spied her canopied wagon in the center of the line of armored, pike-carrying riders. Her response to his news - and the reason for this meeting - had been enthusiastic, but forced. One would think, given she had been living in the shadow of the splintered Undivided for so long, his news would have pleased her. And after she recovered from her initial shock, she seemed keen enough to call this meeting and set the wheels of change in motion. But she wasn't. And that puzzled Marcroy.

Still, it didn't really matter now. The trap was closing. Very soon, the Undivided would be replaced with twins far less dangerous than the divided RónánDarragh. The treaty would remain intact. The fate the Brethren had seen in other realms would not befall them here in this one.

All it needed now was a little time, and for Marcroy's half- human niece, Trása, to prove worthy of his trust by ensuring Rónán of the Undivided never found his way home to this realm.

## Chapter 5

The only thing that made losing one's magic bearable, Trása thought, as she picked up the remote control, was television. Even after six months in this strange realm with its huge cities, its countless people and its incomprehensible array of gadgets for every purpose - no matter how trivial or inane - the real magic in this world, Trása decided, was television.

She could watch it for hours, and often did, using it as a visual instruction manual on how to exist in this reality. Nothing she'd been told before she left her own realm had prepared her for the sheer enormity of this one.

It was overwhelming, and to make matters worse, her search wasn't so much looking for a needle in a haystack as searching for a single grain of sand on an endless, sparkling beach.

"Can we watch _The Simpsons_?"

Trása started at the unexpected voice and turned to her newly arrived companion with a puzzled look. He had materialized out of thin air and stretched out across the bedspread, his red coat unbuttoned to reveal an orange and green tartan waistcoat underneath. His matching red hat sat at a jaunty angle on his head, forced there by the fact that he was resting his pointy little chin on his left hand.

"How long have _you_ been there?" she asked the _Leipreachán_ ,

flicking past the news channels as she turned back to the TV. Trása found television news boring beyond words. The programs - and there seemed to be thousands of them - just repeated the same thing, over and over, never actually adding anything useful to the discussion, more often than not on subjects that made no sense to her at all. She preferred programs that showed real human dramas, true glimpses of life in this strange reality, like _Coronation Street_ and _The Bold and the Beautiful_.

"Long enough," the _Leipreachán_ said. "Ye're up early."

"So are you," she replied, stopping when she came to a channel dedicated to her other favorite topic - celebrity gossip. She was fascinated by these golden creatures called celebrities, even though - after nearly six months - she still hadn't figured out what made one human a celebrity over another. "You haven't been out causing trouble again, have you, Plunkett?"

"Of course I have," the _Leipreachán_ said, looking at her as if it was the most foolish question ever posed. "This is London."

"It's nothing like the London I know," Trása said with a frown, stopping on a channel showing scenes from a movie premiere the night before. Trása had no interest in the film, but she did love the pretty dresses parading down the red carpet. There were so many colors, so many gorgeous fabrics, so many wonderful jewels, all worn by beautiful, elegant women who didn't seem quite real.

"Ye think this place is strange? Wait 'til ye see New York." Plunkett pulled his pipe from his pocket - already alight - and began to puff on it contentedly, despite the "no smoking" sign prominently displayed on top of the TV. "Did ye know New York has a big parade every year for us? On St Patrick's Day?"

"Who's St Patrick?" she asked, only half listening to the little man. His daily escapades were of little concern to Trása. He was here to aid her search for the missing Undivided twin. It was an almost impossible task, made worse because there was so little magic left in this realm, only the smallest of the _Daoine sídhe_ could still tap into it. Trouble was, the smaller the Faerie, the more easily they were distracted. The _Leipreachán_ were about the only _sídhe_ still able to use magic - limited though it was - in this reality, who could be relied upon to do as they were told.

Well, most of the time anyway.

Not that Plunkett O'Bannon was very reliable. His idea of entertainment was appearing to drunks and drug addicts in alleys late at night and coaxing them into handing over their valuables in return for vague promises of good fortune, wealth and even the odd pot of gold. They'd been living on stolen credit cards since they arrived, procured magically by Trása's larcenous little companion. She didn't think he'd given that up just because - at this very moment in time - their hotel bill wasn't due.

"Patrick be the patron saint of Ireland."

"What's a saint?"

"Not sure, t'be honest."

"Then who made him one?"

"The Christians, I think."

Trása shook her head and picked up the room service menu, the part of her not listening to Plunkett debating whether to have breakfast sent up or to brave the restaurant. "I will never understand how a ragtag bunch of Hebrew outcasts managed to end up in control of half this realm," she remarked. The various religions of this reality were even more confusing than the rules of celebrity. Surely the deities of her reality had existed here at some point? Had they not resisted the notion that one of their number was more powerful, more worthy of worship, than all the others? Or had the gods faded here - like the magic - leaving only their human worshippers with their human delusions of grandeur to carry on in their names?

"Ye should watch the History Channel more often," th _Leipreachán_ advised. "Ye'll find Christians ruling the world is no more strange a thing than a score of other odd occurrences that have happened in this realm."

"I suppose."

"If ye can't find _The Simpsons_ , _Road Runner_ will do."

Although they both regularly viewed the History Channel with something approaching awe as they watched documentary after documentary detailing the bizarre past of this realm, Plunkett was almost as fond of cartoons as Trása was of soap operas and the E! Channel. Fortunately, she controlled the remote. For some reason - possibly the magic that infused every cell of the _Leipreachán_ \- when Plunkett tried to use anything battery operated, it shorted out. As a consequence, Plunkett watched what she wanted, and if Plunkett wanted to watch cartoons, he had to earn it.

One did what they must, to control a creature as fickle as a _Leipreachán_.

"What do you want for breakfast?" she asked, tossing the remote on the bed as she reached for the phone. With a _Leipreachán_ for company, a public dining room was a bad idea.

"Bacon," Plunkett announced. "Mounds of it."

Trása wondered why she'd even bothered to ask. In some things, Plunkett was as predictable as a rainy summer in _Tír Chonaill_. She muted the TV with its breathless descriptions of the designer dresses worn by the celebrities attending last night's star-studded movie premiere and dialed room service.

"Room service. How can I help you?"

"This is room five-fourteen," she said, pleased she was now able to do this as if it was the most natural thing in the world. It had taken her months to gain the confidence to use a telephone with ease, something Plunkett took a certain degree of malicious glee in reminding her. "I wish to order breakfast."

"Of course, madam," the oddly accented male voice on the other end replied. "What would you like?"

"Um... two American breakfasts," she said, even though she considered it a silly description. If every American ate bacon, eggs, hash browns, tomato and beans for breakfast every day, they'd all be as fat as those little Chinese Buddha statues, and all the Americans she'd seen on TV were quite thin. Some of them seemed to be actually starving. "One with extra -"

"Holy Jaysus, Mary and Harry!" Plunkett suddenly exclaimed. He'd been experimenting with the curses of this reality ever since they arrived. This was his latest favorite, having heard it a couple of weeks ago on TV. Unfortunately, he could never remember the last name that belonged in the phrase so he usually added whatever he thought of first. Trása thought the right name might have been John or Jerry. She was quite certain it wasn't "Harry".

"Do you mind!" she hissed, putting her hand over the receiver. "I'm on the phone!"

The _Leipreachán_ didn't answer her. He was jumping up and down on the bed, red coat-tails flapping, pointing at the TV, his little eyes fairly bulging out of his head. He was nigh on apoplectic with excitement.

"Extra bacon," she said to the room service man on the other end of the phone.

"Certainly, madam," he replied. "That will be -"

Trása hung up the phone. "Plunkett! You stupid little _sídhe_! How many times have I told you," she said sternly, turning to look at whatever it was that had the little _Leipreachán_ so excited, "that when I'm talking to real people in this world, you need to keep qui- Oh, by the Goddess _Danú_!"

Trása grabbed the remote, unmuted the sound and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the screen, almost as apoplectic as the _Leipreachán_. On the TV, wearing an expensive, beautifully tailored tuxedo, his dark hair falling across his achingly familiar sapphire eyes, and on the arm of a stunning older woman, was the young man she'd come here looking for.

Darragh of the Undivided.

Or, rather, Darragh's twin brother, Rónán. Darragh was back home where he belonged. In her own realm.

Her heart pounding, Trása turned up the volume. "... _and here comes the star of_ Rain over Tuscany _herself_ ," the female presenter was gushing. " _The fabulous Kiva Kavanaugh, escorted this evening by her son, Ren_."

"His name be Rónán, not Ren," Plunkett told the reporter on the screen, a little miffed they got it wrong.

"Shhh... I'm trying to listen." Trása wasn't really surprised - or concerned - to learn Rónán had a different name in this realm. It would have surprised her more if he'd had the same name. And it was easy to guess where the diminutive came from. After all, the twins' Druid mother, Sybille, was from Gaul. Although Trása had never known her, Sybille probably called Rónán by the French version of his name - Renan. Perhaps that's all Rónán remembered about who he really was.

" _My, hasn't he grown into the handsomest young man_ ," the presenter's male counterpart sighed.

" _That's right, Clive. But it's rare to see Ren in public._ " Sally smiled and winked at her unseen audience. " _Well, I'm sure he's thrilled to be here, sharing this moment with his mother._ "

Trása thought that highly unlikely. The young man in question seemed anything but happy. In fact, he looked as if he'd rather be _anywhere_ but standing next to the star of the night, blinded by a hailstorm of flashbulbs, fending off his mother's screaming fans.

"The triskalion! The triskalion! Can ye see the triskalion?"

"Not unless he waves at the camera, idiot," Trása pointed out, her gaze glued to the TV.

Reporter Clive nodded enthusiastically to his co-host. _"You're right, Sally. If you remember, this is the boy Kiva rescued from drowning in that terrible boating accident while she was filming Fire on the Water up in Northern Ireland_."

"It's him!" Plunkett shouted, jumping up and down on the bed even harder. "It's him! It's him! It's him!"

"Shut up! I told you... I'm trying to listen!"

" _... Seems hard to credit that was... what?_ " Clive was saying. " _Fifteen, maybe sixteen years ago, now?_ " He gave his co-presenter no time to answer. " _And here she is! The star of tonight's premiere, the fabulous and beautiful Miss Kiva Kavanaugh! How are you this evening, Kiva?_ "

The actress was dressed in flowing red with a train that billowed behind her like a cloud of warm blood. A matching cascade of rubies - that in Trása's reality would have marked her as a sorceress of unthinkable power - graced her earlobes, and a diamond and ruby bracelet, worth more than Trása could calculate, sparkled at her slender wrist. Kiva Kavanaugh turned to the camera, her eyes bright, and smiled with practiced ease. " _I'm thrilled to be here, Clive._ "

" _Fabulous dress, Kiva. Who's the designer?_ "

" _Dior by Hedi Slimane, of course._ "

" _You look fantastic! And how are you feeling about the movie? There's already talk of an Oscar..._ "

Kiva Kavanaugh lifted her shoulders in an elegant, self-deprecating shrug. " _I never listen to gossip, Clive. But I do think Xavier Hannigan is the best director of his generation._ "

" _Do you expect he'll get an Oscar nod for_ Rain Over Tuscany _?_ " Sally asked, thrusting her mike at the actress. She seemed a little peeved Clive was hogging all the questions.

" _He certainly should_ ," Kiva agreed. " _He's so talented._ "

Not to be outdone, Clive thrust his mike in front of Rónán. " _And what about you, Ren? Are you looking forward to seeing your mother's performance tonight?_ "

" _Not particularly_ ," the boy replied in a flat, emotionless tone.

Trása shivered. His voice, even in those two words, was so like Darragh's it was frightening.

"See! I told ye!" Plunkett shouted again. "It's him! It's him! It's him!"

"I heard you the first three hundred times, you fool. Now shut up and let me listen!"

" _Really?_ " Clive was saying, somewhat taken aback by Rónán's answer. " _Why not?_ "

Rónán leaned into the mike. " _She's playing a drug-addicted hooker, dude. Would you want to watch_ your _mother shooting up and fucking complete strangers on a forty-foot screen?_ "

Clive laughed uncomfortably. " _Oh, well... if you put it like that..._ "

Rónán wasn't afforded a chance to make any further embarrassing remarks. His mother's expression hadn't wavered, but she abruptly took his arm, smiled stiffly, waved to the camera, and dragged Rónán away from the reporters toward the theatre.

Chilled and thrilled all at once, Trása muted the TV again, and sat staring at the screen without seeing it.

"I be right!" Plunkett said in a singsong voice. "We found him, we found him."

"Plunkett, shut up."

He dropped himself down beside her on the bed and nudged her with his elbow, grinning broadly. "I thought ye'd be happy. We found him. We be heroes!"

Trása shook her head. "We won't be heroes, Plunkett," she reminded him grimly, "until Rónán of the Undivided is no longer in a position to destroy us."

## Chapter 6

" _Better the blood of two innocents, than the blood of twenty thousand..._ "

Ren woke to a sharp, horribly familiar pain, feeling sick as he realized he'd had The Dream again. He hadn't dreamed The Dream for weeks. He'd even dared to hope, for a fleeting moment, that it might be gone for good.

That had proved a futile wish.

The Dream was back, more vivid and real and disturbing than it had ever been.

The Dream had plagued Ren Kavanaugh for as long as he could remember. It was so pervasive that he capitalized it, even in his thoughts, to differentiate it from other, more ordinary dreams. Sometimes he dreamed it so often he was afraid to go to sleep. He'd woken in a cold sweat from it more times than he cared to count. It had earned him scores of sleepless nights, his very own shrink and a whole lot of medications he lied about taking more often than not.

The pills never worked anyway, so he didn't see the point in them.

Lately, though, The Dream had faded somewhat. Or he didn't remember dreaming it, which amounted to the same thing.

He remembered this one, though. And he would have given a great deal not to.

Ren grunted and doubled over, feeling something soaking his T-shirt, as he struggled to sit up. It was blood. That was new. Although he was accustomed to discovering injuries he couldn't explain, they had never come with The Dream before. Ren tossed back the covers and forced himself to sit up. It was important he not bleed all over the sheets. A T-shirt he could toss away. Bloody sheets meant questions, lectures and another visit to the shrink, where he would have to talk about The Dream again. Above all else, Ren didn't want to talk about The Dream.

Even if he confessed to his nightmares returning, after last night and his unforgivable quip to the reporter on the red carpet, there was no chance his mother would believe this latest episode was anything other than Ren trying to wriggle out of the inevitable shit-storm he'd unleashed, by responding off-script to that idiot reporter from the E! Channel.

Ren staggered into the bathroom, biting his bottom lip to ward off the scream he could feel building in his diaphragm. He grabbed the edge of the basin, took a couple of deep breaths and gingerly raised his T-shirt to examine the wound. Sure enough, a long, shallow cut had opened up across his ribs on the left side of his body. The wound was bleeding profusely.

On the upside, it didn't seem life threatening.

Life _style_ threatening, perhaps, if he was caught with another injury like this.

Ren knew nothing he said - no protestations of innocence, no swearing of a sacred oath on Kiva's wretched Oscars that he wasn't responsible - would convince his mother he hadn't done this to himself.

Ren squinted in the sudden brightness as he flicked the lights on, leaving a smear of blood on the switch. Noting he'd need to clean that off before the housekeeper spotted it, he grabbed a fluffy white towel from the pile by the marble vanity, ran it under the tap and then pressed the damp cloth to the wound, wondering if it would need stitches. He didn't think it would, but these mystery injuries, that appeared with alarming regularity of late, had a nasty habit of turning septic.

" _Christ!_ " he muttered through clenched teeth as he applied pressure to the wound, which stung as if someone had poured vinegar into it. His eyes watering with the pain, Ren glanced out of the bathroom window. It was just after dawn, the low- hanging clouds still pink with the promise of the oncoming day.

Dawn meant Kiva wouldn't be up yet, particularly after last night's premiere and their late-night flight home from London. But dawn meant it was only an hour or so before Kerry Boyle arrived for work. Ren might get away with convincing his mother all was well, but nothing got past his mother's cousin and housekeeper.

There was really only one place to go for help. Only one place he was guaranteed assistance that wouldn't be reported to his mother... or the tabloids. Wincing, with the damp towel pressed to his side, Ren headed back to his bedroom. He threw open the wardrobe, pulled out his Nikes and tracksuit, a clean pair of socks and a clean T-shirt, and shoved them in his gym bag. Still pressing the towel to his side, Ren tiptoed out of his room, down the hall to the staircase, past the priceless antiques of his mother's Georgian mansion, and out through the kitchen to the garden.

The grass was damp, the dew icy on his bare feet. Ren didn't care. It was more important he get across the lawn to the high hedge bordering the property on the eastern side of the estate.

As with many of the estates in this part of town, there were gates in the fences of adjacent properties that allowed the residents to call on their closest neighbors without the inconvenience of having to trek up and down the pavement or the long graveled driveways that protected the residents from the riff-raff who used the public streets. Ren reached the small, arched gateway in the high brick wall separating their property from the estate next door, grunting with the effort to force the wooden door open as it pulled on his wound and set it bleeding afresh. He left the gate open, certain nobody would notice. Patrick Boyle, Kerry's husband and the family's chauffeur-cum- gardener, had mowed the lawns only two days ago. There was no reason for him to be out this early. Besides, Kiva's manager was arriving today from the US. Patrick would be leaving for the airport first thing to pick him up. He'd be more interested in making certain the Bentley was spotless than weeding the perimeter of the property.

The house next door was barely visible through the trees, the grounds not nearly as well kept, or manicured, as the Kavanaugh estate. Running toward the main house, Ren noticed a light coming from the glasshouse at the back of the garden. Knowing Jack had no live-in household help, it meant only one thing. The old man was up and about already, pottering about with... what?

Ren wasn't sure. The old bloke was pretty cagey, as a rule, about what he was up to. Ren didn't know if it was because he really _was_ up to something, or he just liked to foster an air of mystery to help his book sales.

"Jayzus!" Jack exclaimed with his back to Ren, as he opened the glasshouse door. "Shut the effing door! You're letting all the heat out, boy."

Ren hurriedly closed the glasshouse door, letting out an involuntary grunt of pain.

Jack looked up, examined Ren oddly for a moment and then shook his head. "So, there's likely going to be a grand tale behind the reason you're paying me a visit at the crack of dawn, bleeding like a stuck pig."

"It happened again," Ren said, limping a little as he made his way between the rows of hothouse flowers toward the back of the glasshouse where Jack seemed to be re-potting a rather forlorn looking coleus. In addition to the pain from his side, Ren's feet were freezing and the sudden, aromatic warmth of the glasshouse set off pins and needles in his toes.

"How bad?" the old man asked, wiping his hands on a dirty towel he kept on the bench beside the potting mix that probably made his hands dirtier than they were before he wiped them. He was shorter than Ren, compact and wiry, with white hair and the weight of seventy years of pain and secrets etched onto his weathered face.

"It's not fatal," Ren assured him. "But it hurts like hell."

Jack sighed and beckoned the boy closer. "Better give us a look then."

Ren dropped the gym bag, lifted his T-shirt and moved the towel. The bleeding had slowed to a welling of beaded crimson along the cut. Jack leant in to examine the wound, his lips pursed.

"Looks like you've been stabbed," the old man remarked, as he straightened with an obvious effort. He spoke with an odd, clinical detachment. "Or grazed in a knife fight. What were you doing?"

"Sleeping."

"If you're going to have dreams that turn real, me boy," Jack advised, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "you should try to concentrate on getting laid."

Ren tried to smile, but given the pain he was in, he suspected it looked more like a grimace. "Yeah... I'll do that next time."

Jack looked at him oddly. "Is there something you're leaving out here, lad?"

"No. Why?"

"I can spot a liar blindfolded at fifty paces, Ren."

Ren shrugged, not sure how much it mattered. "I was dreaming when it happened."

"About what?"

He shrugged. "You know... the usual stuff."

"I know what _my_ usual stuff is. What's yours?"

"Nothing exciting. Does it need stitches?"

Jack shook his head. "I don't think so. It's a clean cut, and fairly shallow. But it'll need to be dressed. And kept clean. Does your mam know about this one?"

He shook his head. "She's not awake yet, Kerry doesn't start work for another hour, and it's still the holidays, so no school for another couple of weeks, either."

"So, we have time to patch you up and get you home again before they decide you're a complete loon, then."

Although he'd never doubted Jack would help him, Ren couldn't help but feel relieved. "Thanks, dude."

"You don't have to thank me, lad," Jack said, tossing his dirty towel back onto the bench. "And you certainly don't have to keep calling me _dude_." The kitchen was a mess, the marble floors sticky, the sink piled with dishes, even though there was a perfectly functioning dishwasher under the counter. Jack flicked on the lights and began looking through the kitchen cupboards until he located a large metal toolbox, which Ren knew from experience contained Jack's alarmingly well-provisioned first-aid kit.

Ren shoved a pile of empty pizza boxes aside and made room on the counter near the sink. As he sat himself up on the counter, Jack opened the box, took out the antiseptic, swabs, sterile strips and wound dressings, laying them out on the counter beside Ren.

"Would it be easier if we do this at the table?" Ren asked, grateful Jack hadn't questioned him further. The old man was washing his hands in the sink, and taking his time to be thorough, too, Ren noted with relief.

Jack shook his head. "No room."

Ren glanced through the door to the dining room. Sure enough, the elegant antique table he could just make out in the gloom, seemed piled high with boxes. "You moving?"

"Nah... gotta autograph a whole bunch of books for the publisher. Going on tour in the US come September. Take off your shirt."

Ren lifted the T-shirt gingerly over his head, tossed it on the counter, exposing several faint scars across his chest and arms from similar inexplicable injuries. He raised his left arm to let Jack get to work. "Do you like America?"

"Hate the place," Jack said without looking up. "But they love me. So I do fifteen cities in ten days. Book signings, lectures to political science and criminology students trying to pretend they're cool, and the occasional police department. And I get to smile and pose with snooty-nosed, Irish–American society ladies who've never known a moment's want in their entire fecking lives, who want to be able to tell their friends they've met a real terrorist."

"But you served your time, didn't you?" Ren said, glad Jack was in such a garrulous mood. It helped keep his mind off the pain. And the residual uneasiness from his dreams. "You're not with the IRA these days. So technically, you're not a terrorist anymore."

"Jayzus, lad, don't say that too loud," Jack said. "You'll give me publicist a coronary!"

Ren smiled and then hissed at the sting of the antiseptic as Jack dabbed it on the cut. "You know what I mean."

"Aye. And the truth is, I much prefer kissing society ladies to being a guest of Her Majesty, but... well, you know..."

Actually, Ren had no idea, but he nodded sympathetically. Old Jack might be a bit odd, but he was one of only two people in the world who believed Ren when he claimed he wasn't carving himself up for fun and attention.

And - thanks to Jack's shady past - the old man had enough medical knowledge to render aid when Ren didn't want to draw attention to his injuries. Even so, it was hard to credit that Jack O'Righin had once been counted among the most dangerous men in Europe. Even harder to believe he'd spent thirty years in prison, quite a few of them in the infamous H Blocks.

When Jack was released in - along with a whole lot of other prisoners as part of the Good Friday Accord (or so it claimed on the dustcover of his book) - he moved south to Dublin. There he sat down and wrote about his experiences as a poor, disenfranchised child, as a prisoner in The Maze, and as an active member of the Provisional IRA. A year or so later, the only slightly repentant terrorist found himself with a _New York Times_ bestseller on his hands and a whole new career on the speaking circuit where he commanded a six-figure fee. He had more money now than he ever imagined he would see in one lifetime, let alone every six months in a check from his agent in London.

He'd bought the house next door to the Kavanaughs' place last year, upsetting the neighbors who considered the old ex- convict and self-promoting terrorist a blight on their once perfect neighborhood.

Ren liked him almost as much as the rest of the residents of Blackrock despised him. The old man was interesting. And he could whip up a damn fine field dressing, something Ren seemed to be more and more in need of lately.

Reaching for the sterile strips to bind the skin closed, Jack glanced up at Ren's pain-etched face. "Saw you on TV last night."

"I thought you don't have cable?"

"This wasn't on cable, laddie. This was the evening news on the RTÉ. They must have shown you mouthing off to that reporter a half-dozen times before I went to bed. Did your old lady give you much stick for dropping the F-word on national television?"

Ren grimaced, only this time it wasn't from the pain. He'd known as he uttered the words that he would pay for them, but it had been worth it. The tantrum Kiva threw in the car on the way to the airport was monumental. It ended with her declaring he would never, _ever_ , set foot on another red carpet as long as she lived, which was just fine by Ren. "The words _military school_ and _Utah brat camp_ were bandied about during the discussion."

Jack looked surprised. "Seriously? Don't those brat camps make you live on mung beans and dog shite until you've seen the error of your ways?"

Ren nodded. "If I had to choose, I'd opt for military school, myself, but I'm guessing that won't happen. My mother doesn't like the idea of me being armed. Even under controlled conditions."

"You know they're gonna hound you, now, don't you?" Jack warned. "The press, I mean. Waiting for you to open that potty mouth of yours and change feet."

Ren nodded, as the old man began to tape a long, narrow piece of gauze over Ren's stab wound. "They'll get sick of me, soon enough," he said. "I'm not all that interesting."

"Well, you weren't until last night, lad," Jack said, tearing off another piece of tape with his teeth. "Still, if you stay out of the way for a few days, they'll find someone else to bother, I suppose."

"That's what I'm hoping."

Jack finished off the dressing and stood back to admire his handiwork. It was completely light outside now, a slight mist rising off the damp grass.

"You'll need to come over tomorrow so I can change the dressing and check there's no infection," he said. "Unless of course you're planning to tell your mam about this and she's taken you to a real hospital by then."

"Not likely." Ren picked up his discarded T-shirt and tossed it to the old man. "Can you ditch that for me? I brought my tracksuit and joggers with me. If Kerry catches me sneaking back in, I'll tell her I've been out running."

It wasn't such an outrageous plan. Jogging was an acceptable way for him to escape the house. Staying fit was an admirable goal, after all. As Kiva Kavanaugh lived on a permanent diet - only the endorsement deal varied - Ren's announcement that he was following her example had proved a very popular move, even though he'd declined his mother's offer of his own personal trainer.

"You gonna be okay?"

Ren nodded. "Yeah. Thanks. When's your housekeeper due?"

"Not until next Friday. I gave her the school holidays off. Something to do with her grandkids." Jack tossed the T-shirt onto the pile of empty pizza boxes. "You know... there's got to be a reason this keeps happening, laddie."

"Bring it on," Ren said with heartfelt sincerity. "And then let's make it stop." As soon as he was in sight of his own house, Ren jogged from the garden into the kitchen, glad the codeine tablets Jack had given him were taking the edge off his pain. The sun was fully up now, the mist vanishing from the damp lawn almost as quickly as it had formed. He was still sweating with the pain, but that worked in his favor. It made it look like he really had been out jogging.

Kerry Boyle looked up and glanced over her shoulder as the door opened. She was cooking toast. The smell of it made Ren's stomach rumble. As he walked into the kitchen, he discovered why she was cooking toast. It certainly wasn't for Kiva. His mother had been carb-free for weeks now, in preparation for the various movie premieres she had to attend and the insanely expensive designer dresses into which she intended to squeeze.

Kerry's two children were with her: Neil, her red-haired, freckle-faced twelve-year-old son, and Hayley, her seventeen- year-old stepdaughter. Hayley looked more like her father than her brother, dark-haired and green-eyed. She also happened to be the only other person besides Jack O'Righin who believed Ren when he claimed he wasn't slicing himself up for attention.

"Ah, here he is," the housekeeper said with a smile, as she placed a plate piled with buttered toast in front of Neil who was sitting at the granite-topped kitchen island next to his sister. "The red carpet terror with the filthy mouth. I'm surprised you're up early. Didn't your flight not arrive until the wee small hours?"

_No need to ask, then, whether Kerry had seen the news._

"We got in about two," Ren confirmed. "Kiva said not to wake her until Jon gets here."

Neil grinned at him, shaking his head. "Man, I cannot _believe_

you said that in front of your mother."

"And on national television," Hayley added through a mouthful of toast.

"She'll never let you attend another premiere," Kerry warned, placing a plate of freshly buttered toast in front of an empty stool for Ren.

He pulled out the seat and sat down with relief. "Then my work here is done," he said, reaching for the marmalade.

Neil was appalled. "You said that on _purpose_?" He shook his red curls, pretending to be horrified, probably to mask the burning hero worship he'd developed for his older cousin in the last few months, which Ren studiously ignored to save embarrassing them both. "You are so _bad_ , Ren."

Kerry put her hand on Ren's shoulder, a gesture that was both comforting and sympathetic. "Foolish, rather than bad, I think,

Neil. But it wasn't a wise thing to do, Ren. In fact, after this, I'll be surprised if your poor mother doesn't finally act on her threat to send you to that camp in Utah she's always going on about."

Ren shrugged. "I told her I didn't want to be paraded down the red carpet like her newest handbag."

"And you don't think you could have found a more subtle way of making your point?" Kerry asked, turning to lift the kettle off the range as it began to sing. His mother's cousin was the complete opposite of Kiva - plump and dark-haired, calm and comforting where Kiva was blonde, angular and nervy. If Ren had grown up in any way normal, it wasn't thanks to Kiva's well-meaning but erratic parenting, it was because of the stability and down-to-earth practicality of Kerry Boyle.

But it was time to get off the topic of last night's premiere. He glanced at Neil and Hayley. "How come you two are here?"

It wasn't unusual for Kerry to bring her kids to work but, as a rule, she didn't let them hang around all day during school vacations - particularly not on a day like today when Kiva had just returned from her latest travels and likely to be a little fractious.

"Neil needs new shoes before school goes back," Hayley explained, as her brother devoured his toast as if he'd not been fed for a month. "Mom figured we could go across to the Blackrock Shopping Center while she's working today, or find something over the road at the Frascati mall."

"Cool," Ren said, spying a perfect opportunity to be gone for the day. "Can I come?"

" _You_ want to help Hayley shop for shoes?" Kerry asked, making no attempt to hide the skepticism in her tone.

"Actually, I want to be far, far away from here when my mother wakes up," Ren told her honestly. "Neil's endlessly expanding feet seem as good an excuse as any for being elsewhere."

"Hey!" Neil exclaimed, looking wounded.

Hayley grinned at him. Kerry studied Ren for a moment, her eyes filled with a mixture of sympathy and concern. "All right, then," she said. "But if she asks me, I'll tell Kiva where you are, Ren. I won't lie to her."

"You don't need to lie for me, Kerry," he said, relieved beyond words he had managed to delay the inevitable confrontation over his behavior. "I just need to give her time to calm down."

"I'm not sure there is such a time," Kerry said. "But at least with you there, Neil won't be able to bully his sister into buying him anything with _Lord of the Rings_ characters on them." She turned to open the cupboard where the coffee mugs were stored. "Now who wants a cup of tea with their toast, and who wants hot chocolate?"

## Chapter 7

"There are things you need to know, Brydie," the queen said, straightening the folds of her white cloak as the wagon trundled through the ring of earthworks surrounding _Ráith Righ_ , "before we get to _Sí an Bhrú._ "

Brydie nodded, expecting some sort of explanation before they arrived at the Druid stronghold. She hadn't expected the size of the escort, however. It was only seventeen miles or so to _Sí an Bhrú_ through friendly territory _._ If you stood on top of the _Ráith's_ tower, on a clear day like today, you could actually see the white quartz stones of its entrance glistening in the sunlight. It hardly seemed necessary for the queen to have an escort of enough men-at-arms to defend them against a small army.

Álmhath's son, Torcán, wasn't riding with his mother in the wagon. The tall, dour prince rode at the head of the column, his future bride, Anwen, at his side, leading their progress.

_Anwen will be loving that_ , Brydie thought, _unless she's peeved that I'm in here with the queen._ Brydie couldn't imagine why she'd rather be in the wagon. Álmhath was a daunting figure at the best of times. Much better to be riding at the head of the column in a place of honor with your future husband, than sitting here suffering the unrelenting scrutiny of your future mother-in-law.

"Do you know why we're headed to _Sí an Bhrú_?"

Brydie shook her head. She had a few suspicions, but really didn't know anything. As she was dressing for this journey, in her best kirtle and the fine linen shift her stepmother had given her before she left home, Brydie had racked her brains for some hint of the reason for this summons, but could think of none. She had no special gifts, no unique talents; she had nothing she could imagine the goddess couldn't find in a score of other girls at Álmhath's court. "I assume it has something to do with the recent visit of Lord Tarth of the _Daoine sídhe_."

"It has everything to do with it," Álmhath agreed, scowling. "The _Tuatha_ have found something they weren't meant to find. We are now in somewhat of a bind, because of it."

"What did they find?" Brydie asked, as the wagon clattered over the wooden road that connected Temair to _Sí an Bhrú_ , winding through the low hills as it followed the natural contours of the landscape. It was a glorious day, warm and clear, but sunset was approaching and the chilly wind was back. Had it not been for the breeze carrying the faintest hint of winter on its breath, it would be hard to credit it was only a few weeks until _Lughnasadh_.

"That is something you don't need to know, just now," the queen told her. "In fact, it's rather important you don't know. But it is directly related to the honor _Danú_ has chosen for you." For a sacrilegious moment, Brydie wondered if it really was the goddess who'd marked her, or if this honor simply suited the queen. In Brydie's experience, when the goddess spoke, she usually did so on a grand scale, sending things like floods, famines and plagues to make her will known - a will that required Druids with years of mystical training to interpret.

_Danú_ wasn't in the habit, as far as Brydie was aware, of handing out specific instructions to individuals.

She knew better than to point this out to her queen, however.

"What must I do, _an Bhantiarna_?" she asked. And then she added, almost as an apology to the goddess for her blasphemous thoughts, "Whatever honor the goddess has chosen for me, if it is in my power to do it, I will do it willingly."

The queen nodded her approval and then glanced around, as if making certain they could not be overheard, either by their escort or - Brydie was certain - by any agent of the _Tuatha_ lurking in the shadows in animal or bird form. Then she turned to Brydie and met her gaze evenly. "She wants you to bear a child of Darragh of the Undivided."

For a long moment, Brydie didn't answer, mostly because she couldn't think of anything to say.

Her silence apparently frustrated the queen. "Is that all you're going to do, girl? Sit there and gawp at me?"

"I... I don't _know_ what to say, my lady," Brydie told her honestly. She truly didn't. She'd known ever since coming to court that she was destined to bear the sons of the next generation of rulers, but she'd expected a husband, and a little more fanfare. The blunt announcement caught her by surprise.

"Gods... you're not still a virgin are you?"

"Of course not." Brydie had happily surrendered her innocence at last year's _Lughnasadh_ , almost a year ago.

"Well, that's a start, I suppose," the queen remarked, a little sourly. "Are you going to ask me why?"

"If it's the will of the goddess..."

"Oh, don't give me that," the queen scoffed. "I saw the look you gave me this morning in the grove, when I suggested Ethna and Morann were blessed by _Danú_. You didn't believe it for a moment."

"Do you believe, _an Bhantiarna_?" Brydie felt compelled to ask, a little bothered to learn the queen could read her so easily.

"I believe _Danú_ gave our people a gift, Brydie," the queen told her, lowering her voice as she leant forward. "It's a gift wrapped in a package we might not have chosen for ourselves, but it is a gift nonetheless. A precious gift, but one that can all too easily be taken from us, if we loosen our grip on it. We believe it is _Danú_ 's will that we use the wit she gave us, to hold onto it."

Brydie wished she understood what the queen was telling her, but Álmhath really wasn't making much sense.

"I'm not sure I understand of which gift you speak, _an Bhantiarna._ "

"I speak of the gift of _Tuatha_ magic," the queen said, leaning back in her seat.

Brydie frowned. "But that is a gift bestowed on the Druids through the Undivided, my lady. Not mere mortals like you and I."

Álmhath's brow furrowed with irritation. "The Druids _are_ us, you foolish girl," she said. "As I say, the gift comes in a package I would not have chosen, but the Undivided are human, just like you and me, as are the Druids who channel the magic because of their link to the twins. If we lose their bloodline, we lose the magic. You may not think that would make much difference to you, but consider for a moment what our world would be like if we lost the ability to travel instantly through the stone circles, from one place to another. If rift runners couldn't visit other realms to warn of dangers facing this one. Think of the famines we would have suffered, if we hadn't been warned in advance and known to stockpile food? The lives that might have been lost in a flood, had we not seen it coming in another realm so we could evacuate people and livestock to higher ground. Imagine if our healers were forced to heal people with nothing but herbs and dubious surgical tools rather than with magic." She shook her head, sighing. "If you've ever seen the aftermath of a battle where there was no magically gifted _Liaig_ to heal men's wounds, Brydie Ni'Seanan, you'd not so lightly dismiss _Danú_ 's gift to us." Brydie had truly never thought of the Undivided in that way before. Or the Druids. But one thing puzzled her about the queen's impassioned speech. "You said the bloodline needed to be preserved, my lady. I didn't think the Undivided were related to their predecessors. I thought psychic twins were something random that happened at _Danú_ 's whim?"

" _Danú_ 's whim and the will of the _Matrarchaí_ ," the queen said, frowning.

"The _Matrarchaí_?" Brydie asked, puzzled by the queen's comment.

"The _Matrarchaí_ are the reason the line has never been broken, Brydie. The reason why, after sixty-six generations, humans still occupy _Sí an Bhrú._ "

Brydie stared at the queen as she realized what Álmhath was telling her. "The _Matrarchaí_ know the secret of producing the psychic twins needed to preserve the Treaty of _Tír Na nÓg_."

The queen nodded, smiling grimly. "Your father said you were a bright girl."

"That's what you meant about my mother's line."

"There is more than one bloodline," Álmhath told her. "There has to be, or those who have a vested interest in there not being a new set of twins to take over channeling the power would have wiped out the line a thousand years ago. Yours happens to be one of the stronger ones. Fortunate indeed that your last bleed was near a fortnight past," the queen added. "We may not have much time, so it's important you conceive as soon as possible."

"Why is time suddenly a problem?" Brydie asked. She couldn't see what the rush was. Darragh of the Undivided had been living a mere seventeen miles away all his life. Surely, if it was so critical to preserve his line, Álmhath could have slipped a fertile woman into his bed anytime in the last four years, or so.

"The _Tuatha_ have forced our hand," the queen told her, frowning. "If we don't act soon, there may not be a line to preserve."

Brydie's eyes widened with surprise. "Is Darragh in some sort of danger?"

"He's always in some sort of danger. He is one of the Undivided," Álmhath said, glancing around as the canopied wagon slowed. She turned to look over her shoulder. "Why are we stopping?"

Brydie rose to her feet to find out if she could see past the forest of pikes carried by their mounted escort. "I think there is something blocking the road."

It was hard to tell, and she didn't think it was a dire threat, because the mounted guards still had their pikes pointed at the sky, rather than lowering them, as they would if they thought the queen was under attack.

By the time she sat down, the wagon had come to a complete stop.

"Did you want me to find out what's going on?" she asked.

Álmhath didn't answer. Instead, she leant over the side of the wagon. "Seamus! What's going on! Why have we stopped!"

"The fault is mine, I fear, _an Bhantiarna_."

Brydie yelped in fright. On the other side of the wagon, the _sídhe_ lord, Marcroy Tarth, had suddenly appeared. He was dressed in a fine embroidered linen shirt and a dark emerald cloak held together at his throat by a deep purple amethyst and gold filigree brooch.

"I was on my way to _Sí an Bhrú_ when I saw your party approaching and thought I might prevail upon your hospitality for a ride _._ "

"How convenient for you," Álmhath remarked with a scowl. There was no way, Brydie realized, the queen would be able to refuse Marcroy's request for a lift to _Sí an Bhrú_ , which effectively put an end to the discussion they were having. Brydie was destined to remain in the dark about her queen's sudden need for a child from the Undivided for some time yet, it seemed.

"Do you travel alone, my lord?" the queen inquired, looking about for any other of the _Tuatha_ that might accompany the Faerie lord.

"I thought it better under the circumstances," Marcroy said, smiling. "I didn't want to alarm anybody at _Sí an Bhrú_." He turned his attention to Brydie. "Well met, Lady Brydie. You are honored indeed to ride with the queen this fine day. You will not object to me joining you, I hope?"

It was phrased as a question, but there really wasn't any polite way for Brydie to answer, except in the affirmative. She glanced at Álmhath for help. The queen let out an exasperated sigh and offered Marcroy a seat with a wave of her hand.

With a smile and a nimble leap, the _sídhe_ jumped into the wagon, barely making it rock as he took his place beside Brydie. The guards relaxed and Seamus headed back to the head of the column to ride with Torcán and Anwen.

"So, what are we discussing?" Marcroy asked the silent and decidedly peeved women with a pleasant smile. "The weather? The latest fashions at court? How long it will be before Atilis is run through by one of his neighbors?"

"We speak of nothing that would interest you, Marcroy," Álmhath told him, settling back in her seat. Brydie judged that to be a monumental lie, but she took her cue from the queen and made no attempt to resume their earlier discussion.

"Oh, but you judge me too harshly, _an Bhantiarna_ ," he said, his hand on his heart. "I am always fascinated by what humans find interesting." He turned to Brydie. "What is it that _you_ find interesting, my lady?"

Brydie wasn't sure how to answer him, or even if she should. In the end, she shrugged. "I don't know... lots of things."

"What sort of things?" Marcroy insisted. He was enjoying her discomfort. She could tell.

"Just... things..."

Marcroy's smile widened. Although she'd seen many a _sídhe_ since coming to Álmhath's court, she still couldn't look at their cat-like eyes without feeling a little awkward. She glanced away, fixing her gaze on the Faerie lord's brooch, which seemed the safest place to look. The wagon bumped over the wooden road at a steady pace, but it was going to be a long journey in this company.

"My brooch seems to fascinate you," Marcroy remarked, as if he knew what she was thinking.

"It's lovely," she agreed, wishing she could just curl up and not look at the Faerie at all.

Marcroy reached up and unclasped the brooch. "Then you shall have it, my dear."

He held the brooch out to her on the palm of his hand.

Brydie didn't know what to do. She looked at the queen for help. Álmhath seemed a little suspicious, but after a moment, she shrugged. "You should thank Lord Tarth for such a valuable gift."

Taking the brooch gingerly from his hand, Brydie smiled uncomfortably. "Thank you, _tiarna_."

"It is my pleasure, Lady Brydie," Marcroy said, looking inordinately pleased with himself. "I hope my gift will bring you many hours of happiness."

"I'm sure it will, my lord," she said, closing her hand over the jewel, wondering why, in this crisp breeze, the stone felt so remarkably warm.

## Chapter 8

By the time breakfast was almost done, the plans for Ren and Hayley's shopping trip were well under way, with one unfortunate complication. When Hayley's father came into the kitchen, shrugging on the grey, double-breasted jacket he always wore when he was playing chauffeur, he kissed her mother's cheek, waved to her and Neil and then turned to Ren. "Hope you're not planning any excursions today, Rennie, me boy."

"Why not?" he asked.

"The vultures are already starting to gather at the gate," he warned, stealing a piece of Neil's toast as he sat down beside her.

Seeing them side by side, it always struck Hayley as amusing that the older they got, the more her father and her stepmother seemed alike: stocky, dark-haired and solid. Her father, a former stunt man, had worked for Kiva since marrying Kerry some fourteen years ago, not long after he fished a drowning child out of a lake on the set of Kiva's first film. That movie was Kiva's big break, after a Hollywood director, visiting Ireland to scout locations, discovered her on local television and cast her as his leading lady.

"They're out there already?" she asked, glancing sympathetically at Ren, even if he had brought this on himself with his foolish outburst last night. Still, Hayley wasn't surprised to learn th paparazzi were waiting at the gate. For the next few days, they would not leave anything remotely connected to Ren Kavanaugh alone. Even her father would be quizzed for his opinion as he left for the airport later this morning. There was probably another clutch of them waiting at the airport, too. "Don't those people ever sleep?"

"They're like vampires, love," her stepmother sighed. "They only come out at night to suck the life out of you."

"If they're vampires, how come they're down there this morning and the sunlight isn't setting them on fire?" Neil asked as he chewed his toast.

"Dunno," Ren said, winking at Neil. "Let's go down to the gate with a can of kerosene and some matches and find out if they're flammable."

"Ren Kavanaugh," Kerry scolded, shaking her head. "It's idiotic comments like that one that gets the vultures gathering at the gate in the first place. Didn't you learn anything from last night?"

"That's a lesson Kiva's going to deliver as soon as she wakes up," Hayley predicted. She didn't envy Ren the lesson either.

Her father laughed and ruffled her hair. "You've got the fey gift of the Faerie, Hayley," he said. "It's a well-known trait in our family."

"Fey, my arse," Kerry scoffed, putting a fresh mug of tea on the counter in front of Patrick. "Blind Freddy could have worked that one out."

"Still," he said, picking up the tea and taking an appreciative sip, "the Boyles are known for their gift with the Sight."

"You and your brothers getting pissed at Christmas and bragging about being fey doesn't make it a fact, Patrick Boyle," Kerry said. She winked at Hayley, who was well used to her father's insistence - usually when he'd had a few pints - that they were descended from Celtic seers from back in some distant time when that might have actually meant something.

But her stepmother had delivered her pronouncement on the matter, and clearly wasn't planning to discuss it further. She turned to Ren. "Is your mam still asleep?"

Ren nodded. "I suppose. She took something when we got home from the airport last night. You could probably detonate a nuke in the next room, and she'd sleep through it."

"If you detonated a nuke in the next room," Hayley pointed out, reasonably enough, "she wouldn't wake up at all, Ren."

Ren pulled a face at her. "Nobody likes a smart-arse, smart- arse."

Hayley grinned at him and then turned to her father. "Ren and I are taking Neil shopping, today. To buy shoes."

"Dear God, woman!" Patrick exclaimed to his wife in horror. "Have you no respect for the manhood of these boys? _Shoe_ shopping?"

"I'm sure the experience will turn both of them gayer than Kiva's stylist," Kerry replied calmly, as she started to clear away the breakfast dishes. "Maybe when they get back you can take these poor emasculated lads out to the garage, smear them in grease and have them dance naked around the Bentley. Just to even things up." Hayley burst out laughing at the mental image _that_ conjured up, spitting out a mouthful of hot chocolate which splattered all over the counter. Kerry hurried over with a cloth to wipe up the mess. Neil and her father were laughing, too. Then she noticed Ren's grimace.

Ren looked as if he would have laughed only it might hurt too much, which made Hayley instantly suspicious. Or maybe he was just feeling a little left out. Hayley thought there must be a special sort of loneliness that came from living on the fringes of someone else's family, especially one as warm and close as hers. Although the Boyles treated him like one of their own, she knew Ren felt as if he didn't belong in their tight-knit unit, just as she knew he felt he didn't belong with Kiva, either.

Ren belonged to some unnamed and never identified couple who considered it cool to tattoo the palm of a toddler's hand, and who had presumably perished in a boating accident when he was three years old.

Maybe.

Nobody knew Ren's age for certain, either. It was the doctors who examined him after Patrick dragged him hypothermic and half drowned from the lake, who had assigned him his age. And his date of birth.

December tenth, . That was the day they found him, backdated by three years. It was now, so that meant in a couple of months, he'd turn eighteen. Legally, at any rate. Ren might be older, or even younger, but nobody would ever really know for certain.

"Ah, well..." her dad was saying, as Hayley dragged her attention back from Ren's misty age and origins to the conversation. "If you insist on ruining these boys, I suppose the least I can do is help them run the gauntlet." Patrick pushed up his sleeve to check his watch. "I have to leave for the airport in a few minutes to pick up Jon. If you kids are ready to go, I'll drop you off at Frascati Road on the way."

"What about the paps?" Ren asked.

"You can hide in the Bentley's trunk. It's big enough to hold a party in there. We'll just sail on past 'em, waving to the ravening whores on the way out. They'll never even know you're in the car."

"Don't you mean the ravening hordes?" Kerry asked.

"Clearly, my love," Patrick replied with a perfectly straight face, drinking down the last of his tea, "you've not seen what's waiting outside the gate this morning." Neil's shoes, as it turned out, were not a problem. They found a pair at Clarks, the first store they visited, which fitted the bill of being functional, school-appropriate, and not having any _Lord of the Rings_ characters emblazoned on them. After Hayley paid for them with the credit card her mother had entrusted her with, the three of them window-shopped for a couple of hours around the Blackrock Shopping Center to kill time until lunch. At least Hayley window-shopped. Ren and Neil dutifully tagged along, munching on hot cinnamon donuts, making rude comments about girls and shopping, which Hayley loftily ignored.

They ran into a clutch of girls from school at around eleven o'clock, who zeroed in on Ren like heat-seeking missiles. He wasn't the only celebrity offspring at their school, but after last night, was probably the most notorious. Even more annoying for Hayley was that Ren should have run like hell at the very sight of them, but he didn't. He stopped and chatted to them, smiling self-deprecatingly, brushing off his now apparently world-wide TV appearance with a shrug, and - in Hayley's opinion - taking entirely too much pleasure in being swarmed by a clutch of bimbos. She stood there, tapping her foot, glaring at the ringleader - future beauty therapist Shangrila McGill - until the girl got the hint, gathered up her faithful followers and headed off down the mall in search of something new to obsess over.

"You could have signed autographs," Hayley said, watching them leave. "I have a pen."

Ren turned to stare at her. "What's up with you?"

"Nothing."

"Yeah... right."

"Okay... I just think that for someone who complains how much it sucks being harassed by your mother's fans, you're pretty quick to flirt with your own."

"I don't have fans. I go to school with those girls."

"I go to school with them, too, Ren. They didn't even acknowledge I was here."

"That's 'cause you scare them," Neil chimed in. Ren grinned. "You know, I think he's right."

Hayley grinned suddenly, her anger evaporating at the idea she intimidated Shangrila McGill and her posse. That actually felt pretty good.

They decided to head across the road after that - in part to avoid running into the bimbo brigade again.

"I'm hungry," Neil announced. He was walking between Ren and Hayley, heading for the travelator down to the car park, so they could cross the road at the pedestrian lights to the Frascati Shopping Center.

"You're always hungry," Hayley observed. "And you just finished a donut. How come you're skinny as a bean pole?"

"Because he burns off all his excess calories talking so much," Ren suggested with a grimace that might have been meant as a smile. He'd been smiling less and less and growing progressively quieter as the morning wore on, which was probably why the bimbos annoyed her so much. For them he'd managed a smile.

"I do not!" Neil exclaimed, elbowing Ren in the side as hard as he could.

Ren grunted and doubled over with pain. Neil laughed. "You are such a big baby, Ren."

The pain of Neil's elbowing apparently buckled Ren's knees. Ren dropped hard onto the tiled floor, trying to catch his breath. He nodded wordlessly, his eyes watering.

"He can act better than his mother, too," Neil added, obviously assuming Ren was faking.

When Ren still didn't answer but remained doubled over on his knees, as the crowds of shoppers flowed around them, Hayley squatted down beside him, filled with concern. "Hey... you okay?"

"I... will... be..."

"Oh, my God!" she hissed, as she noticed blood seeping into Ren's T-shirt. She looked up, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed them. "We have to get you out of here."

"What's the matter?" Neil asked, worried, now, that neither Ren nor his sister seemed to be fooling around any longer. "Is Ren okay?"

"Where are the restrooms?" Hayley asked her little brother, putting her arm around Ren's shoulder to help him up.

"Back the way we came," he said, sounding worried and a little puzzled. "What's wrong with Ren?"

"Nothing," she said, as Ren climbed unsteadily to his feet. "He just needs a bathroom."

Neil seemed to understand he'd get nothing more from his sister, so he turned back the way they'd come, cutting a path ahead of them. When they finally reached the passage leading to the public toilets, Hayley turned to her brother. "Stay here. We'll be back in a bit."

"What's the matter with Ren?"

"I'll explain later," Ren gasped. He managed to smile at Neil, which helped. Sometimes a twelve-year-old's hero worship was a useful thing, Hayley decided.

When they reached the men's room, which proved blessedly empty, Ren collapsed against the basin as Hayley turned to find some paper towels.

"Shit!"

"What?" Ren asked.

"They've only got hand dryers here."

"It'll be okay, Hayley," Ren assured her. He gingerly pushed back his tracksuit jacket and raised his T-shirt. "Christ Almighty, your little brother has elbows like a ninja."

"A ninja elbow didn't do that," she said as she bent down to take a closer look at Ren's field dressing. She'd seen them before and knew the reason without asking. "Did it happen again?"

Ren nodded, gently lifting the edge of the dressing to see how bad the damage was. Hayley winced at the sight of it. The cut was long and shallow and looked like Ren had been knifed in the ribs.

"This morning," he explained. "Not a fun way to greet the day, let me tell you."

"Who dressed it for you?"

"I went next door to Jack."

Hayley didn't share Ren's enthusiasm for his neighbor, but she knew Jack was good at keeping secrets. Still, this looked serious and she wasn't sure it was a good idea to hide it. "Your mother's going to go ballistic when she sees that."

"The plan was to not let her see it." Ren frowned. Two of the sterile strips holding the wound closed had lifted. The wound was bleeding, but not profusely. He pressed them back down, and then lowered the T-shirt.

Hayley hoped the small amount of pressure he was applying would be enough to stem the blood flow. But that wasn't their immediate problem. If Ren wanted to keep this a secret, they were going to have to come up with a plausible cover story.

"What are we going to tell Neil?"

"That he has ninja elbows," Ren suggested with a faint smile.

She didn't return his smile, wishing he'd take this a little more seriously. "What are you going to tell Kiva?"

"Nothing. I figure she's so pissed off by what I said at the premiere, she won't even think to worry if I've been slicing myself up again."

And that was the rub. No matter what he said, everyone would think Ren had done this to himself.

"You didn't, did you?" she asked. "I mean... slice yourself up?" Ren turned to wash his hands.

"I'm sorry... but... well... you know... I had to ask..."

"No, Hayley. You didn't."

Hayley wasn't sure how to answer that. She worried about Ren's mysterious injuries, and believed that _he believed_ he wasn't cutting himself, but sometimes she really did wonder...

The look on his face prevented her from probing the matter further. She knew he was about to shut her out completely, and Hayley didn't want that. "I'd better go check on Neil. You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah. Just give me a minute."

"Take a few deep breaths," she advised.

The door opened before Ren could answer and a young man came in, wearing a Superquinn shirt from the center's supermarket that brought in most of the mall's customers. He stared at Hayley in surprise, glanced at Ren, and then stepped up to the urinal at the far end of the restroom and waited, looking at them impatiently.

Hayley glared back at him. "Don't let me stop you."

"This is the men's room," the lad pointed out.

"So what are you doing here?"

"Hayley... please..." Ren said, taking another painful deep breath. He straightened slowly, wincing. Then he closed his jacket, zipping it up far enough to cover the bloodstain on his T-shirt. "We're leaving."

Hayley looked at Ren with concern. "Do you need a hand?"

He shook his head. "I'll be okay. Do you think Neil will believe he just bruised my ribs when he elbowed me?"

Hayley shrugged, holding the door open for him. "It's probably better than telling him the truth," she said.

## Chapter 9

Normally, Trása loved to fly. Or rather, she loved to fly when she was the one doing the flying.

Climbing into a human-built metal tube that relied on some obscure scientific principle to do with lift and power ratios, driven by a machine constructed by flawed and easily distracted humans that could, she reasoned, fail at any time, was quite another story.

Trása hated airplanes with a passion and every moment she spent trapped inside one was a special sort of claustrophobic hell.

She had no choice, however.

In this realm she was more human than Faerie.

In this realm, she could only fly to Dublin from London with the assistance of an international airline.

The flight attendants sensed her unease. After she refused breakfast, determined to sit still, white knuckles gripping the armrest, one of them approached her, smiling sympathetically.

"Don't like to fly?" the perfectly groomed, redheaded woman asked, sounding genuinely concerned, which surprised Trása a little. Her nametag said "Anthea". She looked more like a Kathleen or a Mary.

"Not like this," Trása said. "How much longer?"

"We should begin our descent into Dublin in the next ten minutes or so."

Trása nodded, not the least reassured. Most plane crashes, they claimed on _Air Crash Investigation_ , happened when a plane was either taking off or landing.

"Can I get you anything?"

Trása shook her head mutely. _Just go away and leave me alone._

"You'll have to stow the _Leipreachán_ ," Anthea added with an even wider smile.

"What?"

The flight attendant pointed to the seat beside Trása where Plunkett was slumped. He'd cast a glamour over himself to give his skin the texture of woven cloth. By remaining inert and letting Trása carry him around like a stuffed toy, he was able to travel with her openly, a very useful thing for someone who didn't have a proper passport.

"Your doll," Anthea said. "You'll have to stow him under the seat. Or I could put him in the overhead locker for you, if you like."

_Oh, that's a grand idea. Lock the little devil in a small dark place and expect him to lie there quietly..._

"No... it's okay," Trása said, snatching him up. "I'll stow him under the seat."

"He's quite fabulous, isn't he?" the woman said. "Can I have a closer look?"

Trása wasn't sure if she could reasonably refuse such a politely worded request. She nodded and, with some trepidation, handed over the _Leipreachán_.

"The workmanship is amazing," Anthea said, as she admired the little man, turning him back and forth and upside down, even peeking under his waistcoat. "He looks so real."

"How could he be real?" Trása asked with a nervous laugh. "He's a _Leipreachán_."

"That's true," Anthea laughed. "Still, he's beautifully made. Where did you get him?"

"From my uncle," Trása replied, quite truthfully. It was Marcroy Tarth, after all, who'd assigned Plunkett to aid her.

"You're a very lucky young lady," Anthea said, handing him back to Trása. "Is your uncle meeting you in Dublin?"

Trása shook her head. "No. He lives... quite a way from Dublin. I'm going to visit... the brother of a friend."

"Well, I'm sure you'll have a grand time," Anthea said. "You've still got a few weeks before school goes back, haven't you?"

"Can't wait," Trása agreed, wishing the woman would go away.

"Do you go to school in -" Anthea stopped abruptly at the sound of a call button further down the aisle. "Sorry... duty calls. Don't forget to stow your little friend when the seatbelt light comes on."

The flight attendant moved off to see to her other passengers. Trása sat Plunkett's limp form on her lap and stared at him. There was no sign of life coming from the _Leipreachán_ although she knew he could see and hear everything that was going on about him.

"Did you make the call button go off?" she whispered.

The inanimate Plunkett, of course, did nothing but sit there, staring at her blankly through his shiny, apparently glass eyes.

"Good job," she added with a conspiratorial smile.

Just then, Trása became aware that someone was watching her. She glanced sideways to find a small boy in the seat on the other side of the aisle staring intently at her and Plunkett. Hastily, she shoved the _Leipreachán_ under the seat in front of her, ignoring his grunt as she kicked him firmly into place.

Then she checked her seatbelt, leaned back, gripped the armrests again and closed her eyes. She hoped the pilot knew what he was doing, and that she was not about to plummet to a fiery death when he tried to land this unwieldy beast and discovered it was more than he could handle. The man at the passport counter must have been having a bad day. Given the number of people jostling for a place in the lines at the passport control booths, Trása didn't blame him. Dublin Airport was one of the busiest in the world.

It took nearly half an hour of shuffling along the roped-off lines before it was Trása's turn. Finally, she stepped forward and smiled brightly at the grumpy official. She handed over the passport Plunkett had stolen for her when she first arrived in this realm. Then she set her _Leipreachán_ doll on the counter, so he was facing the Customs man.

"Mr Luigi Mario Berekia?"

"Yes."

The man studied her for a long moment and then shook his head as if he couldn't understand what he was seeing. He hesitated... and then shook his head again. Anybody watching closely might have noticed her toy _Leipreachán_ was sitting a little straighter than a rag doll ought to. Had there been any of the _Daoine sídhe_ nearby, they would have felt the magic he was working.

"Are you here for business or pleasure?"

"Business."

"How long will you be staying in the Republic of Ireland?"

"Only until I've found the person I'm looking for."

The man closed the passport and handed it back to her. " _Fáilte_. Welcome to Dublin, Mr Berekia. Nice _Leipreachán_."

"Thank you," Trása replied brightly. "He likes you too."

With a cheerful smile, Trása picked Plunkett off the counter, slipped her stolen passport back into her bag and headed out toward the carousels to collect her luggage.

* * *

When she finally cleared Customs, using the same trick - or rather, Plunkett's trick - of glamouring the officials, it was almost midday. Trása waited in line outside the terminal, shivering in the afternoon breeze that threatened to bring summer to an early close. After ten minutes or so, she was at the head of the queue. She climbed into the next cab and ordered the driver to take her to a nice hotel. She had quickly learnt that "nice" hotels had cable TV. On the downside, nice hotels usually wanted credit cards and identification details. Still, she had a stash of those in her backpack, and she supposed Plunkett would have no more trouble acquiring credit cards here in Dublin than he had in London.

As they drove toward the city along the M, past car parks on one side of the road and green fields bordered by hedgerows on the other, Trása pondered the dilemma of finding Rónán, now she was here in his home city.

Although the film premiere on TV last night had taken place in London, the same programs that delighted in repeating Rónán's obscenity every hour or so were also quick to report he'd flown home to Dublin with his mother after the event where, they said, it was unlikely he would see the light of day again until he was thirty. Parents in this reality, Trása had gleaned, had a unique punishment for disrespectful children, known as "grounding". Trása had no idea what it entailed, imagining it meant confining their children in some sort of dark, dank underground cavern until they learned the error of their ways.

_If he's buried underground_ , Trása lamented, _that will make him rather more difficult to locate._

A check of the Dublin phone directory at the airport had proved fruitless. There were hundreds, possibly thousands, of Kavanaughs listed, but there was no way of telling which one was the actress who had adopted Rónán. Trása would have to do this another way. She needed to find someone who knew where the famous actress Kiva Kavanaugh lived.

"Have you lived in Dublin long?" she asked the taxi driver, wondering if he might know.

"All me life," the cabbie said, glancing at her in the rear-view mirror.

"Do you know everybody, then?" It was a reasonable question, Trása thought. She knew everyone in _Sí an Bhrú_.

"Jayzus!" the cabbie chuckled. "There's near two million people in the greater Dublin area. I'd be stretched claiming to know more'n a score of them."

"What about someone famous, then?" she asked, a little annoyed he seemed to be laughing at her. "Like people you see on TV. Do you know any of them?"

The cabbie wrenched the wheel, dodging across into the adjacent lane though a break in the traffic only someone with a great imagination could have spotted. It was a constant source of amazement to Trása that the roads of this reality weren't lined with wrecked cars and corpses. It didn't seem possible that so many dangerous vehicles in the hands of so many dangerous people were allowed to occupy the same roads at the same time, and it not result in multiple deaths and bloody chaos.

"Had Bono in me cab once," the cabbie told her, scanning the traffic for another imaginary gap.

Trása was unimpressed, mostly because she had no idea who or what a bone-oh was.

"What about Kiva Kavanaugh?" she asked, growing impatient with her driver and more than a little fearful that she may not survive this trip. "Do you know her?"

"I gotta tell you... I wouldn't mind if I did," the cabbie said with a wink in the rear-view mirror. "Know what I mean?"

"I need to find out where she lives."

"You're not some crazy stalker, are you?" This time he looked over his shoulder.

_Keep your eyes on the road, you maniac!_

"I'm... a friend of her son's."

"Well, you might as well turn around and go home then, girlie," the cabbie said. "If what I heard on the news is right, that foul-mouthed little bugger won't be entertaining company until hell freezes over. Least, he wouldn't if he was my pup."

Trása was tiring of the cabbie's banter. So was Plunkett, she suspected. She didn't want the _Leipreachán_ getting any ideas about glamouring their driver into a stupor while he was wending his way through the streets of Dublin in this sort of traffic. "Do you know where Kiva Kavanaugh lives, or not?"

The driver reached forward, grabbing a brochure from the dash, which he handed back to her.

"What's this?"

"Dublin Guided Limousine Tours," the cabbie explained. "Tell 'em Dennis sent you. They'll take you around, show you all the sights... you know, Kilmainham Jail, Dublin Castle and the Guinness Storehouse... although I suppose you're a bit young for that to be of much interest to you."

"Will these Dublin Guided Limousine Tours people know where Kiva Kavanaugh lives?"

The cabbie shrugged. "Maybe. I suppose."

"Good," she said leaning back in the seat, pulling her jacket a little tighter against the air-conditioned chill of the cab. She glanced at Plunkett, who was staring into space with a blank expression, and added, "Then it won't be long, now, before we can escape this crazy place and go home."

## Chapter 10

To avoid the paparazzi waiting outside the main gate, Ren, Neil and Hayley took a cab home from Frascati Road and had it drop them outside Jack's place. His porch was out of sight of the Kavanaugh front gates, so they were able to slip into the grounds of Ren's house through the adjoining wall without the vultures out on the street catching sight of them.

The disadvantage of Ren's clever plan was that he failed to notice the grey BMW parked outside the front of his house, which meant he was unprepared for the surprise awaiting him when he stepped into the kitchen. Fortunately, Ren's pain had abated somewhat by then, and the wound had stopped bleeding, but he still needed to get upstairs and change his shirt before anybody spotted the bloodstain. That Hayley knew about his injury was bad enough, but at least he trusted her not to say anything.

His plans were foiled, however, by the visitor at the kitchen bench sipping a mug of fragrant coffee, waiting for them.

"Dr Symes!"

The man fixed his gaze on Ren and smiled as they filed into the kitchen. He smiled a lot at his patients, in that patronizing, know-it-all way he had, that made parents feel they were getting their money's worth, and Ren feel like slamming his fist into that smug, pompous face. No amount of argument on Ren's part had ever convinced Kiva that - if she was going to hire a shrink to deal with his "behavioral issues" - she ought to start by hiring a doctor Ren didn't frequently fantasies about murdering after ten minutes in one of his sessions.

Murray Symes was a tall, elegant man, with a slightly receding hairline going grey in all the right places. He looked the part of the understanding and compassionate child psychiatrist, which is why Kiva trusted him, Ren supposed. He was sure it wasn't because he was a brilliant shrink, despite his hourly rate.

"Ah, Ren," Murray said, taking a sip of his coffee. "I thought you might try to sneak past me through the back door."

"I wasn't sneaking anywhere," Ren said, scowling.

He knew why Murray Symes was here. Dropping the F-word on national television definitely came under the heading of "Oppositional Defiant Disorder", which is what Symes had diagnosed Ren as suffering from.

... _With low self-esteem manifested by frequent episodes of self-harm_ , Murray's notes said, _which the patient vehemently denies, claiming he has no knowledge of the origin of his injuries, which range from minor cuts to near lethal doses of homeopathic poisons._

Ren had sneaked a peek at his file once, when Murray left him alone in his office to deal with some ranting parent in the waiting room. Murray Symes was Europe's leading expert on Oppositional Defiance Disorder. _All_ his patients suffered from it.

As far as Ren was concerned, the whole ODD diagnosis was a load of complete horseshit. Since when had a seventeen-year-old arguing with his mother become a disease?

"Hello, Neil, Hayley," Murray said, smiling at them, too. Not that it did him any good. The Boyle children were even less impressed by Dr Symes's efforts to befriend them than Ren was. "Do you know where Mom is?" Neil asked, backing up slightly to stay closer to Ren and his sister, almost as if he felt the need for their protection.

"I believe Kerry is doing the laundry, Neil," Symes said, placing his coffee on the granite countertop. "Why don't you and your sister run along and show her what you bought, while Ren and I talk?"

There was no need to ask Neil twice. He fled the kitchen in the direction of the utility room without any further encouragement. Hayley hesitated, spared Ren a sympathetic glance, and then followed her brother out of the kitchen.

"Have a seat, Ren."

There wasn't much point in refusing. Ren's main job now was to ensure Symes didn't realize he had an eight-inch-long cut on his left side, another injury certain to be attributed to his low self-esteem. He walked over to the island bench, pulled out a stool, and sat down opposite the psychiatrist.

"I think we need to have a little chat, Ren," Murray said, watching Ren closely. "Don't you?"

"Not particularly. Is Kiva up yet?"

"She's been up for hours."

"Ah," Ren concluded. "That's why you're here."

Murray smiled. Ren unconsciously clenched his fists under the counter.

"I'm here, Ren, because you did something very disruptive at your mother's film premiere last night."

Disruptive was code for naughty. Murray Symes would never dream of telling a child he was naughty. That might have a negative effect on his self-esteem.

"I didn't mean to embarrass Kiva by saying fuck on TV," Ren lied. "It just slipped out."

"Why do you call her Kiva?" Murray asked, using his favorite tactic of abruptly changing the subject to keep his patient unbalanced. "You hardly ever refer to her as 'mom' or 'mother'."

"Well, technically, Kiva's not my mother," Ren said.

Murray smiled even wider, as if provoking Ren was the aim of the discussion, rather than finding out what might have caused this latest embarrassing manifestation of Ren's ODD. "Do you resent the fact that Kiva is not your birth mother?"

"Only when she tries to drag me down the red carpet to increase her award chances, by reminding everyone what a fucking great humanitarian she is because she adopted the poor kid who washed up on her film set."

The doctor nodded, not reacting to Ren's obscenity. "I see. So you set out to undermine her chances at professional success because...?" Murray let the sentence hang.

Ren was too wily to fall into the trap of completing it.

"Kiva can have all the professional success she wants," he said with a shrug. "Just don't try to make me a part of it. Are we done? I want a shower before dinner." Actually, he wanted to get up to his room and clean the bloodstain from the light switch before Kerry spotted it and reported it to Kiva. With Patrick's offer to smuggle them out the front gate in the Bentley this morning, he never got a chance to get rid of it before they left.

"Not quite. Take off your jacket."

"What?"

"This house is air-conditioned and climate-controlled, Ren. Winter or summer, it's shirt-sleeve temperature in here and yet there you sit, sweating in a tracksuit jacket."

"I like my jacket."

"And a very nice jacket it is, too. Now take it off."

It occurred to Ren that Kerry may have already found the blood on the light switch, and Murray knew he was hiding something. That, and not last night's _faux pas_ on national television, may even be the reason Kiva had called him. If Kerry decided to do the laundry today, she would have checked every hamper in the house. Ren had ditched the bloodstained T-shirt at Jack's place, but his clothes hamper was in his bathroom and Kerry was meticulous, with a nose like a bloodhound for the minutest speck of dirt. A blood-smeared light switch had no hope of escaping her attention.

Still, there was a remote chance Ren could bluff his way out of this.

"Christ," he said, standing up and taking a step back from the counter. "You're a fucking pervert."

Murray was not impressed. "Don't try that on with me, Ren."

"Is that how you get your kicks, you sick bastard?" he asked, feigning disgust. "By molesting the poor defenseless kids in your care?"

"Ren," Murray warned. "Stop it."

"Stop what? Exposing you for what you really are, you dirty old man?"

Murray maintained an admirable air of serenity in the face of Ren's ludicrous accusation. "This is just your way of acting out. Calm down."

"Calm down!" Ren yelled, getting right into the moment. After all, his mother was an award-winning actress. A lifetime spent on film sets surrounded by the greatest directors of this generation had taught Ren a thing or two about being dramatic. He raised his voice even louder. "I will not calm down! You're disgusting. And I'm not taking my clothes off for you! I don't care what you threaten me with!"

As he'd hoped it would, his yelling brought Kiva running into the kitchen. She wasn't looking nearly so immaculate this afternoon. She was barefoot, wearing a roughly tied blue silk bathrobe over her nightdress. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was mussed and stiff and pointing in several odd directions.

"Ren? What's the matter?" she asked, looking back and forth between him and the psychiatrist. "What are you yelling about?"

"You gotta save me, Mom!" he cried. He hurried around the bench to put Kiva between him and Murray, as if he feared for his safety, even though he stood a head taller than Kiva and had done since he was fourteen. "This depraved bastard is trying to make me take my clothes off."

"Murray?" Kiva asked, looking more perplexed than worried. "Pay no attention to Ren's histrionics, Kiva," Murray said calmly. "He's simply trying to divert attention from the fact that he's cut himself again."

_Bollocks_ , Ren thought. _He knows._

"All I did was ask Ren to remove his jacket," the shrink added, "so I could check his arms for injury."

Kiva turned to Ren, looking mortified. "Is that true, Ren? Did you cut yourself again?"

"No," Ren replied adamantly - and quite honestly. Whatever wounds he was carrying, he hadn't inflicted them on himself. He pushed his sleeves up and held out his bare forearms for examination. "There! You see! Not a mark."

"Kerry found blood on the light switch in your bathroom."

"I cut myself shaving," he said. "It happens. Even to people without low self-esteem."

Murray studied him closely for a moment from across the counter and then shook his head. "You don't appear to have shaved this morning."

"How the fuck would you know?"

"Ren! Stop this!" Kiva exclaimed, her eyes welling up with tears. "Dear God, I don't know where I went wrong with you!"

"How about the day you pulled me out of that lake," Ren said, a little regretful that the comment would cut Kiva to the core. Deep down, he did love Kiva, and he knew that she, in her somewhat quirky way, loved him too. She didn't deserve such cruel words, but he needed a legitimate reason to flee the kitchen before Murray decided he really must take off his jacket, and Ren's greater lie was exposed.

"He doesn't mean that, Kiva," Murray said, calm as a frozen lake. "He's just trying to hurt you to mask his own pain, isn't that right, Ren?"

"If it meant I didn't have to deal with this sort of bullshit," Ren said, mostly to Murray Symes, who was the true focus of his immediate problem. "I reckon I might have been better off if Patrick had left me there to drown!"

With that, Ren turned and stormed out of the room before Murray or Kiva could order him to stay, confident the discussion would no longer be about him. Murray Symes was going to have to spend the next hour or so consoling Kiva, and perhaps reassuring her that twenty thousand US dollars would be a small price to pay for a Utah Brat Camp if it meant Ren could be saved from himself.

Ren took the stairs two at a time, locked the door to his room and headed for his bathroom where the light switch was now free of blood smears. He poured a glass of water from the tap then took out of his pocket the two codeine tables Jack had given him earlier. He swallowed them with a grimace and went back into his room, kicked off his shoes and lay on his bed, wondering how long it would be before the pain in his side abated enough for him to keep up the pretense that nothing was wrong.

## Chapter 11

Somewhat to Trása's amazement, Dublin Guided Limousine Tours had a whole list of celebrity addresses on their tour itinerary, most of which, however, belonged to dead people.

The latest stop had brought the tour to Baggot Street. They were standing on the pavement outside yet another old house. This one was neat and narrow, four stories tall with a bright blue door trimmed with brass fittings.

"Do you only know where dead people _used_ to live?" Trása asked her guide, a plump blonde woman wearing a green uniform with a rather ridiculous four-leaf clover-shaped hat. The woman had introduced herself as Kathleen, which seemed odd to Trása because she looked more like an Anthea. "Or do you know where some _live_ ones can be found?"

Trása had booked the tour with reception at the hotel when she checked in. She'd left Plunkett in her room to amuse himself while she went scouting their quarry. She had been in Dublin for less than three hours. She should have been minutes away from finally laying eyes on Rónán of the Undivided and this foolish woman with her ridiculous hat was wasting time showing her the residence of some pork vendor.

"Francis Bacon is one of Dublin's most famous sons. His paintings have been exhibited in every major gallery in th world, including the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York."

"But he's dead," Trása pointed out impatiently. "So was the last chap, Yeats."

"You asked for the celebrity tour, miss."

"I wanted the _live_ celebrity tour," Trása said.

"I'm sorry," Kathleen replied in a tone that was anything but conciliatory. "People who take this tour have usually some idea of the depth of Ireland's cultural heritage."

Trása smiled, which didn't help matters much. _Stupid cow, you don't know the half of it._ "I want to know where Kiva Kavanaugh lives."

"Blackrock," the woman said with a sigh. She clearly thought Trása a complete philistine. "It's about fifteen minutes from here. Ten, if the traffic's with us."

"Let's go then," Trása ordered, jerking open the car door. She climbed into the back of the limo, wishing she'd brought Plunkett along. He might have been able to glamour some manners into her rather put-upon tour guide.

Still... they were only fifteen minutes from the Kavanaugh house.

Only fifteen minutes from locating Darragh's long-lost twin... She cut the thought off before it could form into something more dangerous. Instead, she concentrated on the good things.

Her time in this reality was almost done. Soon she could go back to her own world where her magic worked. A world where she wasn't constrained by the whim of a fickle _Leipreachán_. A world where everything made sense to her.

_Well, almost everything..._

Trása sank back into the deep leather seat of the limo. It wouldn't be long now, and she could go home.

* * *

"You should have seen it, Plunkett," Trása told the _Leipreachán_ when she arrived back at the hotel a couple of hours later. "It's like a fortress. It has a high fence and locked gates and there's a whole mob of noisy people camped outside with cameras, waiting to get in."

Plunkett shrugged indifferently when he heard Trása's tale of woe. He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the king- sized bed, rifling through the contents of the bar fridge, which he'd emptied while waiting for Trása to return. In addition to mounds of bacon, he was particularly fond of chocolate and potato chips. Outside, the night sky was bright with the lights of the city. That was another thing Trása found disconcerting. In the cities of this realm, it never really got dark and the sky, instead of being a reassuring backdrop sprinkled with familiar constellations, was a washed-out shadow of what it might have been, outdone by gaudy neon lights.

"What did ye expect? A welcome mat?" Plunkett said.

Trása slumped into the armchair by the window, staring despondently over the city. "I thought I'd at least be able to get a look at the house. And maybe Rónán. To make sure we've got the right one."

"Aye," the _Leipreachán_ said, nodding sagely. "Best be sure we got the _right_ Rónán, rescued from drowning at the right age, who's the spitting image of the lad who might be his brother in our realm." He tore the wrapping off a triangular chocolate bar, snapped a piece off, and added, "Wouldn't want to make that sort of mistake, would ye?"

"All right," she conceded. "We have the right Rónán... hopefully."

"What do ye mean, _hopefully_?" he asked through a mouthful of chocolate.

She turned from the window to look at him. "Well, if Marcroy and my father tossed Rónán through a rift to be rid of him, what's to say other versions of my uncle and my father, from other realms -"

"Their _eileféin_ ," Plunkett interrupted, calling the alternative versions of the same people by their proper name.

"All right, their _eileféin_... what's to say they didn't do the same thing? I mean, how can we be sure he's _our_ Rónán, and not a Rónán from somewhere else?"

Plunkett frowned. "Ye're worried this Rónán is our Rónán's _eileféin_?"

"It's possible."

"Then maybe we should lead the Druids to him ourselves," the _Leipreachán_ chuckled. "Can ye imagine the trouble if they brought the wrong Rónán back?"

Trása hadn't considered that. Knowingly bringing someone's _eileféin_ back through the rift was a serious crime among the _Tuatha._ It invariably ended in someone's death, usually the _eileféin_ 's and often that of the rift runner who had brought them through.

She shook her head. It was a nice idea, but it wouldn't really work. "The Druids would only be in trouble if someone brings the right one back. And even if they did, how would anybody tell the right one from the wrong one? The real Rónán from our realm is missing." Trása sighed unhappily. Her enthusiasm for this mission was waning rapidly, a feeling that surprised her, given she was so close to succeeding. She expected, at this point, to have become more excited, not increasingly bothered by the likelihood of success.

Perhaps it was because Rónán looked so much like Darragh. That was a hurt Trása knew would probably never heal. And she knew it was dangerous to think of Rónán as anything other than what he was - a threat that needed to be contained before the others found him.

Or perhaps it was because, although she loved her uncle dearly, she didn't trust Marcroy Tarth much more than she trusted Plunkett.

"Do you think we should send a message back home?" she asked. "Let them know we've found him?"

"And risk the news getting out?" Plunkett asked. "I wouldn't, if I was ye. But then, I'm only a hundred-and-eleven years old. Who am I to argue with a halfling _Beansídhe_?"

_Plunkett must be feeling the pressure too_ , Trása decided, surprised to hear the _Leipreachán_ sounding so snappy. Or he'd eaten too much sugar.

"How do we get to him, then?" she asked. Plunkett might be right about keeping the news of their discovery to themselves, but she still needed to make contact with Rónán. How else was she going to lure him away from the rift? "You can't glamour us past _all_ those people at the gate."

" _I_ could pay him a visit," Plunkett suggested, as he continued to devour the triangular chocolate bar.

Trása shook her head. "He's been raised in a world with no magic. The _Tuatha_ are nothing more than a children's story in this reality. If a _Leipreachán_ suddenly appears to him, telling him he comes from another reality where he's a Druid with a long-lost twin, he'll think he's hallucinating. It sounds crazy even to me, and I _know_ it's true." She sighed. "I'm afraid no one raised in this reality is going to go anywhere with you voluntarily, Plunkett." Still, it wasn't an entirely ridiculous idea. Her forehead creased thoughtfully. "Do you suppose you could glamour him into compliance?"

Plunkett shrugged. "Don't know. Can't glamour any kind of Druid in our world."

"But we're not in our world," she said, leaning forward a little. "Maybe here, you _can_ glamour a Druid, even one of the Undivided."

The _Leipreachán_ frowned, looking very uncertain. "Be taking a big risk if it doesn't work."

"What risk? He doesn't even know what a glamour is, so he won't understand what you're trying to do." She smiled. "I've seen the face you make when you glamour humans, Plunkett. He'll probably just think you're constipated."

"And what's _your_ solution, lassie?" the _Leipreachán_ asked, scrunching the foil wrapper of the chocolate bar and tossing it at her with a scowl. "Ye have no power as a _Beansídhe_ here. What're ye thinking? To lure him with feminine _human_ wiles?"

The _Leipreachán_ had a point. Trása's magic was non-existent in this reality. She couldn't fly, she couldn't shape-shift. She couldn't even tell if someone was dying, although that might have been a good thing. With so many people crammed as closely together as they were in the incomprehensibly large cities she'd visited since she'd been here, she'd have spent _all_ her time wailing and crying, if she could sense the end for _everyone_ about to die. Trása was stuck in her human form, and that meant that here she was just a seventeen-year-old girl with impressively long blonde hair, rather oddly shaped ears and a charming stuffed toy _Leipreachán_ she was fond of carting every place she went.

Rónán wouldn't know what she was. Or who she was. And how was she supposed to explain herself?

What _would_ she say to Darragh's twin if she came face to face with him? _Hello, Rónán, I'm a Faerie - well, half a Faerie, truth be told - from another reality, and I've come to make sure you never get home or meet the twin brother you don't know you have._

"I think we need to try the glamour option first," she decided. She bit down on her bottom lip for a moment and then added, "But I'm not letting you do it alone."

No need to add it was because she didn't trust him. That was a given.

"Which brings ye back to the problem of getting through the front gate." Plunkett ripped the top off the small tube of sour- cream-and-onion-flavored Pringles and began stuffing them into his mouth.

"You're right," she said, something she'd never admitted to a _Leipreachán_ before.

"I am?" the _Leipreachán_ said, shocked by her admission.

"The _front_ gate is out of the question, but I checked out the neighborhood, and according to the postman I spoke to, there's an old man living alone in the house next door. Maybe there's a way onto the Kavanaugh estate from his place."

The _Leipreachán_ thought about that for a moment and then nodded. "He might even know the lad," Plunkett suggested, chip crumbs spilling out of the side of his mouth and catching in his goatee. "Maybe ye can lure him out that way."

"It will solve most of our problems right there, if we can," Trása said, making her decision. She stood up, thinking it was about time she ordered room service. Plunkett's bar-fridge binge reminded her she hadn't eaten all day. "It's settled, then. First thing tomorrow, we're going back to the Kavanaugh house in Blackrock and we'll try to make contact with Rónán using the old man next door." She leaned across and playfully jerked the little _Leipreachán_ 's perky red cap over his eyes. "Time for you to pay your debt to the _Daoine sídhe_ , Plunkett O'Bannon."

The little man shook his head sorrowfully. "Marcroy sending me here with ye was punishment enough, Trása Ni'Amergin," he said, pushing the cap up in annoyance. "Trust me, lassie, I'm paying me debt to the _Daoine sídhe_. Oh, how I'm paying."

## Chapter 12

Every morning, just before dawn, Jack O'Righin climbed out of bed, treated himself to a long, luxurious hot bath to ease the aches and pains that came with old age, and then walked downstairs to the kitchen. There, every day without fail, he ate two pieces of thick white toast with butter and honey, brewed himself a cup of good strong tea, shoveled four heaped teaspoons of sugar into it, and made his way out to his glasshouse.

Jack loved his glasshouse. It was the reason he'd bought this particular house. Not because of the neighbors, the posh location or the fact that - thanks to his runaway bestseller - he could have bought his own island in the Caribbean had he been so inclined. As long as Jack could remember, through a childhood filled with hunger and pain, a youth filled with violence and death, and much of his adult life spent behind bars, he had dreamed of being able to do exactly this. Get up, make a cup of tea, and potter around the garden with nothing more important to worry about than whether or not the _bromeliad_ needed re-potting. It was his idea of heaven, and no matter where he went after he died - and Jack was certain, given some of the things he'd done, he was heading downwards to a very warm place - he would always be grateful that, for a short time at least, he'd known what it meant to be in heaven.

_Well, almost heaven_ , he thought, as he shoveled sugar into his chipped enamel cup, ignoring the mess in his kitchen. He knew he should at least put the dishwasher on, but Carmel, his cleaning lady, would be back next week. She ought to be grateful he'd left her so much to do. After all, he paid her by the hour.

Jack glanced out the kitchen window, looking for the sun, but the day was overcast and it seemed about to rain. _Perhaps a bit of precipitation will drive away those fools hanging around the gate next door_ , he thought.

Living next door to a famous actress had unexpected consequences for a man who liked his solitude and privacy. There were always those wretched photographers lurking in the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

And then there was that poor kid of hers.

Jack liked young Ren, but knew he had problems. He didn't believe for a moment Ren was slicing himself up for attention, or that he had anything else wrong with him other than being a perfectly normal seventeen-year-old boy. That made him a pain in the arse, at times, to be sure, but hardly warranted the attention of that fancy shrink Kiva insisted on sending him to. Jack had spent enough time in The Maze with lads who really _had_ lost their marbles to know Ren wasn't one of them. Someone else was inflicting those strange wounds on the young man.

At first, Jack thought it might be Kiva, but he dismissed that notion the time Ren stumbled through the gate, bleeding from a deep cut on his arm while his mother was on location in Italy.

It wasn't a schoolteacher inflicting the injuries. The kids were on vacation until September.

That left the housekeeper and her husband. But that didn't make any sense, either. The Boyles were the only solid things in Ren's life, and their own kids seemed normal and perfectly well adjusted.

That left Jack with nothing to believe but the inexplicable truth.

Something unseen and unknown had the ability to wound Ren - sometimes seriously enough to threaten his life - and the lad genuinely had no idea what or who it was.

The doorbell interrupted Jack's musings. He glanced at his watch, surprised to see it was not yet seven.

Curious as to who could be calling on him at this hour, Jack left his tea on the counter and shuffled through his echoing mansion to the front door. When he opened it, he was confronted with an unexpected sight.

Standing on his doorstep was a creature out of legend. That was his instinctive reaction, but he knew the girl couldn't possibly be that. Even so, the girl standing at his door was just too ethereally perfect to be real. As tall as he was, she appeared to be only sixteen or seventeen years old, with luscious, wavy blonde hair that flowed down past her waist. She was slender and pale with cat-like almond eyes, wearing jeans and a rainbow-cultured T-shirt, and clutching a toy _Leipreachán_ in her arms.

"Yes?"

"What's your name, old man?" the girl asked, smiling brightly. "Jack O'Righin," he said, never for an instant thinking h should refuse the information. "Do you live alone?"

"Yes... well... the housekeeper comes once a fortnight, but..."

"Excellent," she said, holding up her toy _Leipreachán_. "Say hello to Plunkett."

She held the doll up in front of him. The toy was so well made he almost seemed alive.

"This is yer granddaughter, Trása," the _Leipreachán_ told him - which was an impossibility, Jack knew. It was just a toy. "She's come to visit ye from the north. Ye've asked her to stay as long as she likes and ye're not going to ask any questions about why she's here."

Jack nodded. "Very well."

"Oh, and we like bacon for breakfast. Lots of it. Now, say hello to Trása."

"Hello, Trása."

"Good work, Plunkett," Jack's granddaughter said.

Jack stepped back to let her in. He didn't remember having a granddaughter, or even a son or daughter to provide him with one.

But the _Leipreachán_ had told him the girl was his, so it must be true. Jack's granddaughter followed him around for the rest of the day - then all evening, eventually staying the night - asking him questions about himself, his life and how he came to be living in this particular house, especially as it seemed far too large for one person. Jack found himself telling her everything she wanted to know, even things he normally didn't share with other people.

He was enchanted by Trása, but any time he started to wonder about her, the thought seemed to hit a wall in his mind, vaporizing like a mist and vanishing into a forgotten memory.

She seemed disgusted by the state the house was in, so she ordered her toy _Leipreachán_ to clean up, which Jack considered a bit of wishful thinking, until he came downstairs the next morning to discover a sparkling kitchen with no dirty dishes, old pizza boxes or frozen TV dinner containers lying about.

A part of Jack knew there was something odd about his granddaughter. In fact, deep inside he knew he didn't _have_ a granddaughter, but that hardly seemed to matter. He couldn't articulate the words, and when he did try to say something about it, suddenly that damned _Leipreachán_ was there, staring at him, and he couldn't remember for the life of him what he had been about to say.

But Jack didn't mind. He found himself enjoying the company, in no small part because Trása was hugely impressed by his beloved glasshouse.

Carrying a cup of tea - complete with four sugars like his - she followed him the next morning through the misty summer rain, anxious to see his collection of exotic flora. He showed her around the benches, telling her the Latin names of each specimen, its origin and where he'd acquired it. She admired the plants he'd so carefully nurtured, ooh-ing and ah-ing with genuine awe over each new species, particularly the _bromeliads_. Jack was thrilled because the _bromeliads_ were his favorites.

"They're native to the southern states of the US, like Florida," he explained, delighted to have an attentive audience. Ren visited him in the glasshouse often, but had no interest in anything Jack was growing. "You'll find them all through central America and South America, all the way down to Chile. There's even a very primitive species in Africa, but I don't have one of them to show you. It's survived there since before the two continents separated."

Trása sipped her tea, looking at him oddly. "When did _that_ happen?"

Jack shrugged. "Millions of years ago, I suppose. Don't they teach you that sort of thing in school?"

She shook her head, and took another sip of the overly sweet tea. "Not the schools I've been to. We learnt a lot about plants, though." She pointed to a spiny, pale green plant with a large, rusty yellow seedpod. "What's this one?"

It was Jack's turn to look at Trása oddly. He put down his tea and picked up the pot with a grunt. It was very heavy. "Are you serious? You don't know what that is?"

"Should I?"

"It's _ananus comosus_. My God, girl... it's the most well- known _bromeliad_ of all."

"Oh," she said. "Of course."

Jack laughed, and replaced the _bromeliad_ on the bench. "It's a pineapple, silly! Surely you've seen a pineapple before?"

"No. Should I?"

He shook his head, still laughing, "Jayzus, it's like you're from another planet."

"Isn't it?" she agreed, without missing a beat. "Who lives over there?"

He looked up and followed the direction of her gaze. From the glasshouse, Jack could just make out the lights coming on in the upper story of the Kavanaugh house through the trees.

Jack sighed. He was about to lose his audience. No teenage girl was going to stay interested in _bromeliads_ when there was a celebrity living next door. "Kiva Kavanaugh," he said, with a certain air of resignation. "You know... the actress. I suppose you want to meet her. Get her autograph..."

"No," Trása said. "But I'd like to meet her son. Do you know him?"

Jack smiled. The request made perfect sense to him. Why had he thought a girl Trása's age might want to meet the revered Kiva Kavanaugh? Of course, she'd rather meet Ren. He was much closer to her age, a good-looking lad, and after the other night, a minor celebrity in his own right. "I know him."

"Does he have a triskalion?" she asked, holding out her right hand. "Here. On the palm of his hand?"

"Can't say I've ever paid that much attention to what sort of tattoo he has on his hand."

"How could you miss it?," she asked, impatient with his poor observation skills. "It's a three-pointed symbol in a red circle bordered with orange. It's green with a yellow center and a spiral at the end of each of the three legs."

Jack shrugged. "I really don't recall it, lass."

"Well," she said, with a heavy sigh. "I suppose I could check for myself."

That was one request Jack _could_ grant his newly acquired granddaughter. "He comes here to visit me," he told her. "I'm sure you'll run into him, sooner or later."

"Excellent," she said. "In that case, why don't we have breakfast?"

"We've already had toast," he reminded her.

"I know," she said, "but Plunkett wants his bacon and if you know what's good for you, old man, you'll know it's not wise to get between a _Leipreachán_ and his breakfast."

## Chapter 13

It took Trása more than a day to find the tools she needed to construct a scrying bowl. This close to finally meeting Rónán, and with an assurance that - sooner or later - Rónán would come to visit his neighbor, Trása felt confident it was time to report home for further instructions.

She was under orders to find Rónán, after all. Exactly what she was supposed to do once she found him wasn't all that clear.

The first job was to find a bowl suitable for the task. She couldn't use plastic - scrying with a plastic bowl was about as effective as standing on a street corner and yelling loudly in the hope of being heard in her own reality - so she had to find something else. Something with a trace of lead in it.

After rifling through Jack's cupboards the day before, she had found a crystal bowl that felt right, and carried it outside to collect rain. Trial and error had taught her the need for rainwater, too. The amazingly clean water that flowed from the pipes in this realm came at a price. Treated, chlorinated and often fluoridated as well, it was about as useful as scrying with soup. She'd learnt _that_ inconvenient fact when her first few attempts to call home had failed miserably.

Like everything else in this realm, the magic in the water had been processed away by progress.

Fortunately, it had rained heavily overnight, clearing with the dawn to produce a spectacularly sunny day. After lunch, while Jack was snoozing in his armchair in front of the TV, Trása carried her crystal bowl full of rainwater over to the marble garden seat on the deck outside Jack's dining room.

She removed all her clothes and dropped them on the deck. Trása had learnt about that the hard way, too. Wearing anything made of artificial fibers interfered with scrying in much the same way that power lines interfered with TV reception.

And then carefully, so as not to disturb the water, she straddled the bench to make it easier to look into the bowl.

"What are ye going to tell him?" Plunkett asked, materializing on the other side of the bowl, bumping the rim and making the rainwater tremble and ripple. Trása would have to wait until it calmed completely before she could begin.

"That you're very annoying," she said. "What are you doing out here?"

"Same as ye. Getting me orders."

"Your orders are to do as I say, Plunkett O'Bannon. That's all you need to know. Now go check on Jack. I don't want to be disturbed."

"I already checked on him. He's asleep."

"Then make sure he stays asleep."

The _Leipreachán_ glared at her for a moment, muttered something under his breath and vanished into thin air.

"Stupid _sídhe_ ," she grumbled, turning her attention back to the bowl. The water was almost still again. Trása reached behind her head, pushed her long blonde hair aside and undid the clasp on the only thing she was still wearing - a silver chain and pendant, formed in the shape of a complicated three-pointed Celtic knot. Once she was satisfied the water was completely calm, she dropped the _airgead sídhe_ knot into the water and closed her eyes.

Trása cleared her mind and concentrated on the _Tuatha_ she wanted to contact. Communicating by scrying was usually a one- way affair across realities, unless both worlds were steeped in magic. That was why she had the talisman. It was infused with enough magic to make the link possible from this barren world. Her uncle, on the other hand - with the benefit of being located in a world saturated in magic - had none of her problems. He'd be able to sense her call and could simply turn to the nearest puddle to answer.

It didn't take him long. It was summer, after all, and her home was a damp and rainy place.

"Trása!"

She opened her eyes. Marcroy Tarth's unnaturally young and beautiful face stared back at her from the bowl, pale and translucent.

Trása sighed with relief, a little surprised by how glad she was to see a familiar face. "Well met, _Uncail_."

"You're calling me for good reason, I hope?" He glanced around, frowning. "It had _better_ be important. I'm really not in a position to talk right now."

It was hard to say where her uncle was because the world behind him was dark. That could mean it was night, but, in theory, it should be the same time in both realities. Historical events and the level of magic differed across worlds, but the relentless progress of time remained constant. Perhaps he was indoors. Or underground. Maybe even at _Sí an Bhrú_ , which would explain why he couldn't talk freely.

_Dare I ask? Dare I inquire about Darragh?_

She decided not to, certain Marcroy would not look favorably on her wasting time asking questions she knew he would refuse to answer. "I've found him."

Marcroy's translucent image regarded her warmly. "Then you are to be congratulated, _a thaisce_."

_My treasure_ , he'd called her. That was a rare endearment from her fickle uncle, whose trust and affection was hard to gain and even harder to hold. "I live to serve the _Tuatha Dé Danann_ , _Uncail_."

"Do you understand what you must do next?" Trása hesitated. "I think so."

"You must be certain, Trása," he said, his smile fading. "Since your father betrayed us, we have been battling against time. Chances are high the Druids already have people in that reality, searching for Rónán. It is your job to make certain that even if they find him, they can never get close enough to him to bring him home."

That was the same instruction Marcroy had given her before she left her own reality to step through the rift into this one. He hadn't missed an opportunity to remind her of Amergin's betrayal then, either.

There was just one thing she needed clarified. " _Uncail_ , you don't want me to... kill him, do you?"

Marcroy shook his head impatiently. "Killing Rónán would kill Darragh. Do that and you will have broken the Treaty of _Tír Na nÓg_. If that happens, _a thaisce_ , trust me, I'll see to it you never find your way home."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" she asked.

Marcroy shrugged. "Use your imagination. Just don't fail me. Or the _Daoine sídhe_."

"I won't," she promised, with no idea how she was supposed to contain Rónán in this reality so that, even if the Druids somehow managed to find him, they wouldn't be able to touch him.

_At least, after the fiasco on the red carpet_ , she thought, _he'll not be making any more appearances in public, so the chances of a Druid spotting him on TV the way I did is much less likely. "Tá mo chroí istigh ionat_ , Trása," Marcroy said, as his image faded from the water. _My heart is within you, Trása._

"Hey! Jack! You home?" Trása froze.

He was here. Just as the old man said he would be, sooner or later. The voice calling out to Jack was so achingly familiar she wanted to weep. And she was sitting on the deck, naked as a newborn.

He hadn't seen her yet. The door leading from the kitchen into the garden was around the corner.

Trása pulled her jeans on as she debated calling for Plunkett, but decided not to. This might be the only time she got to see Rónán as he really was. Before Plunkett glamour him into submission - assuming he could. And before she'd worked out a way to keep him out of reach of the Druids.

Before someone told Rónán the truth.

Forcing a happy smile, Trása pulled on her T-shirt and hurried barefoot through the dining room, past the table laden with books and boxes, to the kitchen.

Rónán was standing there, looking around for Jack. He looked exactly like Darragh, except that his hair was shorter. Rónán was as tall as his brother, but not as broad across the shoulders. That was likely a sign of the easy life Rónán led compared to that of his twin, who had been trained to wield a sword since he was old enough to lift a wooden practice blade. It was Rónán's eyes, however, that almost brought Trása undone. They were sapphire blue and piercing, so like Darragh's eyes that, for a moment, she could barely breathe...

And then she managed to get a hold of herself. "Hi, you must be Rónán from next door."

He stared at her, momentarily stuck for words. "My name is Ren... Who are you?"

"I meant Ren," she said, mentally kicking herself for the slip. Then she added by way of explanation with the friendliest smile she could manage, "My name's Trása. Jack's my grandfather."

"Oh," Rónán said, staring at her oddly. "I didn't think he had any family."

His gaze gave her goose bumps. It was curiosity mixed with desire and mistrust. That, in itself, didn't really surprise Trása. She was half- _Beansídhe_ , after all. Even though the last of her kind had died out in this world half a millennia ago, there was still some residual influence here, albeit not the magical powers she enjoyed in her own realm. And her race was not forgotten. She'd found a book, not long after she arrived, that described the _Beansídhe_ as " _extremely beautiful Faeries, with long, flowing hair, red eyes (due to continuous weeping) and light complexions_ ". It also claimed, " _their wailing is a warning of a death in the vicinity, although the_ _Beansídhe_ _never actually causes the death_ ". That was nonsense, of course, along with the red eyes from weeping all the time, and having nothing better to do all day than foreshadow death. Still, the description wasn't entirely inaccurate. No human male in this reality or any other could resist her if she set her mind to enticing him. Or, at least, not if she had been full-grown and a pure _Beansídhe_ planning a life among the _Daoine sídhe_. Even so... Rónán's gaze was like nothing she was used to. He may not have had any magical powers in this realm, either, but she could sense the latent power in him and it frightened her a little. That surprised her. She'd never considered herself afraid of Darragh.

"Did Jack tell you he had no kin?" she asked, hoping to appear nonchalant.

"Actually, it's on the dustcover of his book." Trása stared at him blankly. "What book?"

" _Excuse_ me?" Rónán's expression was starting to change from curious to suspicious, and unless she did something about that soon, there was going to be trouble.

A little panicked, Trása suddenly remembered the boxes of books piled on the table in the dining room. She laughed. "I'm joking, Ren."

"Why has he never mentioned you?"

"Because until yesterday, he didn't know I existed," she said, deciding on a modified version of the truth. "I sort of arrived unannounced."

"How long are you staying?"

"We haven't really decided yet."

Rónán was still suspicious. He looked past her. "Where is Jack? Is he okay?"

She stepped in front of Rónán to distract him. "Of course he's okay. I have a toy _Leipreachán_. Would you like to see him?"

"I'd like to see Jack," Rónán insisted, trying to step past her.

Trása forced a laugh, wondering how she was going to ease his suspicions, when she spotted Plunkett materializing on the counter behind Rónán. Now was as good a time as any, she supposed, to find out if the _Leipreachán_ could glamour a Druid in this reality. She pointed to the counter. "Look, Ren, say hello to Plunkett."

Rónán glanced at the stuffed toy that now sat on the counter, leaning against the toaster. A moment later, Trása felt the _Leipreachán_ projecting the glamour. She watched Rónán carefully, looking for some sign it was working. The young man stared at Plunkett for a moment and then turned back to Trása.

"Cute," he said, apparently unaffected by the _Leipreachán_ 's spell. "He looks real. Where's Jack?"

Trása sighed, and stood back to let Rónán pass. "I think he fell asleep watching _Oprah_. Did you want a cup of tea?"

The request seemed to puzzle him. " _Tea?_ "

"Well, you're obviously going to go in there and wake up poor old Grandad to ascertain I'm not some crazy squatter who's taken over his house. I figure he'll want a cup of tea when he wakes. I might as well make two."

Rónán stared at her for an uncomfortably long time before asking, "What did you say your name was?"

"Trása."

"Milk," he said, still staring at her intently. "And two sugars."

"Jack takes four," she said, in a further attempt to establish her credentials as a member of the family.

"I know." He glanced around the kitchen. "Has Carmel been?"

"Who?"

"Jack's housekeeper?"

"No. We cleaned up."

"We?"

" _I_ cleaned up," she corrected. "Jack tried to help, but you know how he is..."

Rónán said nothing.

On the edge of panic, Trása tried to think of something to say that would allay his suspicions, but could think of nothing that wouldn't make things worse.

The awkward tension lasted a few moments longer, until Rónán broke eye contact and she stepped aside to let him pass. He headed toward the living room where the unsuspecting Jack O'Righin was snoozing peacefully, unaware his home had become the epicenter of the battle between humans and the _Tuatha_ from a different reality, and that the first salvo in that war was about to be fired...

If only Trása had some idea what she was supposed to use for a weapon.

## Chapter 14

Ren hurried through the dining room, down the long polished hall, past a row of oil paintings of people Jack couldn't even name - they'd come with the house - and into the main reception room where the old man liked to watch TV.

He was certain Jack's granddaughter - if that's who she really was - had been able to read every conflicted emotion on his face. Truth was, he couldn't get away from her fast enough. Not because he didn't want to be in her company, but because he didn't know how much longer he could remain focused on those amazing, cat-like, almond eyes, and not let his gaze wander to the rest of that spectacular body - the body that only a few moments before had been sitting outside on the deck, stark naked, straddled across a marble garden bench, apparently having a conversation with a salad bowl.

Ren had escaped his own house only a few minutes earlier while Kiva was meeting, yet again with Murray Symes. He'd tiptoed down the stairs, cut through the kitchen and across the lawn to the back gate before anybody noticed - except for Neil, but he'd shushed him with a finger to his lips as he sneaked out, confident his young cousin would not betray him.

He slipped unobserved through the gate in the garden wall. Not finding Jack in his glasshouse, Ren figured the reluctant celebrity was probably stuck in the dining room, signing books.

Ren's plans didn't extend much beyond escaping his own house. He had a vague plan in the back of his mind to call a cab from Jack's house, although he didn't have a destination in mind. Still pondering the problem, he'd rounded the corner of the house and stopped dead when he spied the strange naked girl on the terrace.

Ren had no idea what to do. He had no inkling who this odd vision of loveliness with her Lady Godiva-esque hair might be, or why she was engaged in such a strange pastime. After a moment of stunned surprise, he backed away quietly, took a few deep breaths and headed for the kitchen door, announcing his presence as loudly as he could manage.

When she'd emerged to greet him a few moments later, Trása - who seemed disturbingly familiar, although he couldn't pinpoint why - was decently dressed, to Ren's intense relief. That didn't lessen the effect she had on him, but it did make it a little easier to concentrate on forming whole words and remotely coherent sentences.

Jack, somewhat to Ren's surprise, was doing exactly what Trása had said he was doing - snoring in his armchair, the credits rolling on the _Oprah_ show. Ren bent over him and shook him awake gently. Jack was an old man, after all. He didn't want to startle him into a heart attack. "Hey, Jack... you okay?"

The old man blinked and glanced around vaguely for a moment. "I must have fallen asleep," he yawned.

"You did," Ren said, squatting beside the big leather recliner. "Your granddaughter let me in."

"Who?" Jack asked blankly.

"Your granddaughter," Ren said. "Trása."

"Oh, Trása," Jack said, shaking his head as if to clear it. "Of course. Trása is my granddaughter."

Something made Ren glance over his shoulder; a feeling of being watched. On the credenza under the window was Trása's toy _Leipreachán_. The one she'd tried to show him in the kitchen. It looked freakishly alive. And he couldn't imagine how it had arrived here before him. Trása hadn't moved it. She was still in the kitchen making tea.

"You never said you had a granddaughter."

"Trása is my granddaughter," Jack repeated. "She's from the north."

"You mean from Belfast?"

"She's from the north," Jack said again. It seemed an odd response and although Jack sounded a little vague, he was quite adamant.

Unable to shake the feeling of being watched, Ren glanced at the toy _Leipreachán_ again. "Don't you find that thing creepy? I mean, it's like its eyes are following you."

"That's Plunkett," Jack said, still sounding a little distant. Maybe it was because he'd just woken up. "Trása's _Leipreachán_."

"Ren!"

He looked up to find Trása standing at the door, looking a little alarmed. "What?"

"There's a very angry-looking woman coming across the back lawn from the direction of your house."

_Shit_ , Ren thought. _Kiva's found me._ Maybe Neil had given him away after all.

"Sorry, Jack. Gotta bolt."

"Why don't you and Trása take off?" Jack suggested. "I'll cover for you."

Ren looked at him doubtfully and then glanced over at Trása. "You've got about thirty seconds," she warned.

"Are you sure, Jack?"

The old man nodded, smiling as if he was looking forward to the confrontation. "Aye, son. Off you go with Trása. I've tangled with the British SAS. I can take care of the Kiva Kavanaughs of this world."

Ren stood up, just as the pounding on the back door started. It was all the encouragement he needed. With a final glance at Jack, he ran for the front door with Trása, closing it behind them as they heard his mother's decidedly angry footsteps on the polished boards of Jack's hallway, as she stormed through the house angrily calling Ren's name. They didn't stop running until they were several houses down the road, in the opposite direction to the photographers camped outside Ren's front gate. Trása was laughing as they ran, as if this was a grand adventure. Ren eventually had to grab her arm to pull her up. The wound on his side was objecting to the exercise and he was afraid of opening it up again.

He collapsed against the tall, ivy-covered wall surrounding the O'Day residence, just out of sight of the paparazzi, breathing hard. Trása turned to look at him, as if she was surprised he'd stopped.

"What's the matter?"

"I... need a minute," he gasped in pain, holding his side.

"You don't have the stamina of your -" she began, and then stopped herself.

"Of my what?" Ren asked, wincing.

"Nothing." She moved a little closer, examining him with a worried expression. "Is something wrong, Ren? You're looking very pale."

Ren lifted his shirt and T-shirt and showed her the bloodstained dressing underneath. "Not pale. In pain."

Trása pulled a face. "Ouch! What happened?"

"I wish I knew," Ren said, lowering his shirt. "I get these weird injuries sometimes. Cuts, bruises... and a couple of times they've had to pump my stomach. I woke up this morning with this beauty."

Trása stared at him for a long moment. She didn't scoff at his words or seem to doubt him. "Do you feel anything else?" she asked. "Or just the wounds?"

"I get the wound, I feel the pain. What else is there?"

"You don't sense anyone else's thoughts, do you? Or anyone else's feelings?"

"What are you?" he said, looking at her oddly. "My shrink now?"

"I'm sorry," Trása said quickly, as if she was afraid she had offended him. "It's just... I don't know... I figured that maybe if you're manifesting someone else's wounds, it would make sense you might be getting their thoughts, too, or maybe their dreams..."

He stopped and stared at her. There was not a hint of condescension or disbelief in her tone. He was stunned. For only the second time in his entire life, someone didn't immediately jump to the conclusion he was disturbed, suicidal or just plain crazy.

This girl he'd known for all of ten minutes believed him.

Even Hayley didn't always do that. The relief Ren felt was indescribable.

"Why do you think they're someone else's wounds?"

Ren had never contemplated the possibility. Could that be the reason for his mysterious injuries? Perhaps even his nightmares? For as long as Ren could remember, he had considered his nightmares simply an expression of his own twisted psyche. It had never occurred to him his recurring dreams, which often woke him in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, wondering what sort of sick monster lurked inside him, might belong to someone else. He wasn't sure he believed it now.

"I... don't know _why_ I think they might be somebody else's wounds," Trása said, so uncertainly that Ren was positive she was lying. "It just seems... likely. I mean, if they're not your injuries, they have to be coming from somewhere, don't they?" Then she added with concern, "Do you need help?"

He shook his head. "I'll be okay once I catch my breath. Provided we don't do any more running."

"We can walk," she said, offering him her hand. "Which brings up an interesting question. Where are we walking to?"

The pain was more manageable now, and he felt able to continue. "Nowhere in particular. I just wanted to get out of the house for a while." He took a cautious breath before he pushed himself off the wall, his mind still swirling with the possibilities Trása had opened up for him. Was it possible he was simply dreaming someone else's dreams; that there wasn't a monster who dreamed of murdering babies lurking inside of him? Was he suffering somebody else's wounds?

"I can understand you wanting to get out," Trása said as they resumed walking. "You people spend far too much time cooped up indoors."

"You people?"

"You celebrity types," she said.

He looked at her askance. "Excuse me? Have you _seen_ what's camped outside my house? Anyway, I'm not a celebrity. My mother's the celebrity." It suddenly occurred to him this strange girl didn't believe his story about his mysterious injuries, she was just playing along because she believed he was famous. Or worse, because his mother was famous.

They headed away from Jack's house, Trása holding his hand as they walked. Ren tried to be cool, but he liked the idea of walking down the street with a pretty girl who didn't think he was crazy.

"I saw you on TV the other night," Trása said, looking at him sideways.

_Of course you did._ "Yeah... you and the rest of the world."

"I thought you were funny."

"You should tell my mother that," he said. "She thinks my 'funny' warrants sending me into the wilds of Utah until I learn the error of my ways."

"What's Utah?"

Ren stared at her for a moment, wondering if she was trying to be funny or if she was simply a dumb blonde. "It's a state in the US where everything even remotely fun is illegal. My mother has been threatening to send me to a camp there for wayward teenagers. Sort of like a cross between Alcatraz and the next season of _Survivor_."

"Is she evil?"

"Who? My mother?" Ren shook his head. "No. Of course not. A bit loopy at times, maybe. Her heart's in the right place. She's just not coping well with being a parent, I think. There's no script she can follow."

"So she's sending you away," Trása said, frowning. "I know how that feels. What will happen to you in the wilds of Utah?"

"I'll be eating nothing but mung beans and dog shite, according to your grandfather," Ren said as they walked. "Completely cut off from the outside world or any semblance of civilization, you know... like phones, the internet, internal plumbing... that sort of thing."

Trása seemed utterly intrigued. " _Completely_ cut off from the outside world?"

"There's no need to sound so thrilled about it."

"I'm not..." she said hastily. "It's just... I mean... you poor thing. That's terrible."

"It's like a prison sentence," he agreed.

"Are people in prisons completely cut off, too?"

"I suppose," he said. "Why not ask your grandfather? He's the expert on doing hard time."

"You know," Trása said, sounding unduly pleased for no reason Ren could fathom, "I think I will."

## Chapter 15

They ended up simply walking around the block, but it was quite a long way and took the better part of an hour and it was almost dusk by the time they got back. Trása was surprised how quickly the time went. She had so many questions for Rónán, and thought he'd be suspicious of them, but he seemed happy to talk and willing to answer pretty much everything she asked him, although he did get a little testy when she asked him about his dreams. In that respect, he was just like his brother. Darragh was just as guarded about his dreams, partly by nature and partly a result of the world he'd grown up in.

It was moot, in any case. Darragh would never have been permitted to spend an afternoon alone with a _Beansídhe_ \- even a half-human one - casually going for a walk. It was unthinkable. Even her own father would not have allowed it when he was alive and still Vate of All Eire. The Druids might turn a blind eye when other men bedded one of the _Daoine sídhe_. They'd not held it against her father, and he'd gone so far as to marry one. The Undivided, however, must never be compromised. The risk of a Druid heir being born with the powers of a _Tuatha_ was too horrifying to contemplate.

That was much of the reason Trása had been sent away from _Sí an Bhrú_ as soon as she turned fifteen. It was why sh wasn't allowed to be there when her father died. By then, she'd reached an age where her innocent childhood friendship with Darragh was no longer indulgently smiled upon as a step toward breaching the gulf between the _Tuatha_ and humanity. By that time it was regarded as dangerous.

She caught a movement in the leaves of one of the oak trees lining the street and realized Plunkett was sitting in the branches, watching them. The Druids would find out soon enough, Trása thought, as she pretended to ignore the _Leipreachán_ , that sending her to Marcroy might prove far more dangerous than leaving her in close proximity to Darragh.

"Will you be in trouble when you get home, Ren?" she asked, as they neared his house and the photographers' cars parked outside the Kavanaugh residence.

"Probably," Rónán replied with a shrug. "But what more can Kiva do? She's probably already booked my ticket to hell."

"Where I come from, you would be considered a man, and nobody would be able to send you anywhere you didn't want to go." Trása figured if she dropped a few hints now, it might make it easier later on, if she had to tell Rónán the truth about who she was.

Rónán slowed and turned to look at her curiously. "And where exactly is it that you come from?"

"North."

"I come from the north, too," he said, as if he expected her to volunteer something further.

She smiled at him, refusing to take the bait. There was dropping hints, after all, and then there was giving the game away completely. She wasn't ready to do that yet.

"That's where they found me," he added, when she didn't answer. "In a lake up in County Donegal."

That wasn't what she'd heard. "They said on TV that you'd been found in Northern Ireland."

"Well, it's north," he said. "They got that much right."

"Did your mother really save you from drowning like they said on TV?" She had no doubt Rónán was Darragh's twin brother, but by clearing this up now, Marcroy could never accuse her of not checking her facts once she returned home.

She even had a vague plan forming in the back of her mind about how she would carry out her orders so she _could_ go home. But it worried her that Plunkett was following them. Things were going well. The last thing she needed was the _Leipreachán_ taking matters into his own hands.

Rónán shook his head at her question. "Actually, it was one of the stunt men."

_By_ Danú _, these people have some strange occupations._

"What's a stunt man?"

"Seriously?" he asked. "It's someone who's paid to dress the same as the actors in a movie and do the dangerous stuff. The insurance companies insist on them."

Only about half of the sentence made sense to Trása, but she got the gist of it. "And it was her stunt man who found you?"

He nodded. "They were filming a scene where Kiva was supposed to be drowning. Needless to say, she wasn't. She was tucked up nice and warm in her cabin on the production barge, having her Tarot cards read, probably."

"What happened to him?"

"Who? The stunt man? He married Kiva's cousin."

"That's... nice." And convenient. Trása had no idea why her father had tossed Rónán through the rift at the exact point that he had, only that Marcroy had made him promise to ensure Rónán survived on the other side. From what she'd seen of Kiva Kavanaugh on TV, she doubted Amergin had intended her to become Rónán's guardian, but it was possible there was something about the stunt man that made him special, a suspicion made even more likely given he was still in Rónán's life. Not for the first time, Trása wished she'd been there when her father died. She would have given much to have questioned Amergin, before he passed on, about what he'd intended for the child he so callously tossed through a rift into an unknown realm.

Rónán shrugged as he walked along slowly, happier to talk about others than himself, it seemed. "Kerry was on set with Mom when Patrick dragged me out of the water. Kiva was certain I'd been sent by God - or whatever deity she was into at the time - so she decided to adopt me. Patrick kinda felt responsible for me, I think, so he started hanging around her trailer. That's how he got to know Kerry. He had a kid the same age as me, that his first wife had just dumped on him, and one thing led to another... you know how it is."

"I see... and is he still a stunt-double man?"

Rónán shook his head. "No. He quit just after he and Kerry got married. Kerry used to worry about him getting hurt, I think, which is why Patrick gave it up. Mom hired him on as her chauffeur."

"That was nice of her."

"Yeah," Rónán said, with a faint smile. "I'm not sure if it was because of all that useful stunt-driver training he had, or because she figured with Patrick on the payroll, Kerry wasn't going to up and leave her alone to fend for herself."

"So you know Patrick well?"

"Closest thing I have to a father," he said. Rónán stopped walking and studied the swarm of cars parked further up the street. He frowned and took her hand again. This time he walked on the other side of her, and the hand holding hers was the hand with the triskalion. Trása could feel the faintest hint of the magic it could channel still lingering in the design, even here in this reality, where there was no magic to speak of. "Let's walk on the other side of the road. With luck we might even get back to Jack's place before anybody notices us."

"Is Patrick the one who named you Ren?" she asked, as they stepped up to the curb. Behind her, she heard leaves rustling in the branches of the leafy oak. Plunkett was still following them, she guessed. _Don't you dare let him see you_ , she warned the _Leipreachán_ silently, knowing he couldn't hear her, but wishing he could. She'd have a lot of explaining to do if Plunkett suddenly dropped out of a tree and landed at their feet.

She dragged her attention back to Rónán, who was shaking his head. "Ren was the only coherent thing I could say after Patrick dragged me out of the water." He glanced both ways and then, hand in hand, they jogged across the street to the path on the other side. Almost without thinking, Rónán moved to Trása's right, placing her between him and the photographers further up the road, adding, "Kiva renamed me when I was officially adopted. My full legal name is Chelan Aquarius Kavanaugh."

Trása wasn't sure how to respond to that.

Rónán sighed at her silence. "I think Chelan is a Native American name meaning deep water, and Aquarius -"

"Is Latin," Trása said. She knew that one. "The water bearer."

"It could have been worse," he said. "She could have named m Evian Perrier Kavanaugh."

Trása waited, thinking there was more to his comment, but the joke went completely over her head. "So how is it everyone calls you Ren, if your name is really Chelan?"

"I refused to answer to anything else. They gave up trying to call me Chelan in the end."

"Do you think Ren's your real name?" she asked, as she caught a flash of red tartan in the branches of the tree just ahead of them. "The one you're supposed to have?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. But at the very least, it's way easier to spell than Chelan Aquarius."

"You don't mind talking about this, do you?" Trása was anxious to keep his attention on her. Plunkett was being very careless.

Rónán seemed unconcerned. He wasn't paying attention to the movement in the trees ahead of them, but to the gauntlet of photographers they would soon have to run. "Not really. It's no big secret, and to be honest, I don't remember anything about it. I only know what I've been told."

"Don't you ever wonder how you came to be in the water?" Trása hoped she sounded curious rather than desperate to know the answer to that very important question. "Did they never find any clue as to how you came to be there?"

Rónán shook his head. "Not a thing. They assume I was on a boat with the rest of my family and it sank without a trace - even though they dredged the lake - because nobody even lodged a missing person complaint afterward, for me or anybody else."

"That's so sad," Trása said, thinking the complete opposite, and a little sorry they were almost home. It had been a very enlightening conversation. She risked a glance at the tree. They were almost under it. She couldn't see Plunkett. With luck he'd tired of them and had returned to the house to keep an eye on the old man.

"My theory is they were crazy hippies who'd dropped out of society - hence the reason nobody reported them missing."

"Why would you think they were hippies?"

Rónán let her hand go and opened his left palm to reveal the triskalion tattoo she'd been able to feel, but not examine closely. There was not the remotest chance this wasn't the Rónán she was looking for.

"Who else would tattoo a baby like this?"

Fortunately, Trása didn't have to pretend she couldn't answer his question. Their walk had brought them past the tree where Plunkett had been lurking and almost opposite the high locked gates of Rónán's house. So far, the photographers weren't paying any attention to them. To the waiting paparazzi - who'd barely glanced at the couple on the other side of road - they probably seemed nothing more than local kids out for a walk on a bright summer afternoon. Their quarry - as far as the paparazzi knew - was still safely holed up inside the house and their long lenses were pointed in that direction, while they talked and joked among themselves, waiting for something to happen.

"Keep your face turned away," Rónán advised, as they drew level with the crowd of photographers gathered around the gates on the other side of the road. They were mostly men, but there were one or two women, as well as a couple of American tourists hoping for an autograph, if their loud shirts and sandals worn over socks were anything to go by. Rónán thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, hunched his shoulders and lowered his head, making himself as inconspicuous as possible.

Across the road, Trása could hear someone's phone ringing. A few moments later, she heard the photographers ribbing the recipient of the call. It was his wife calling, she gathered, demanding he pick up some milk on the way home.

Then two things happened almost simultaneously. The gates of the Kavanaugh house began to swing inwards.

And somebody called Ren's name.

It was like throwing a crust of bread into a flock of seagulls. The photographers began simultaneously pushing and shoving, to see who was coming out of the Kavanaugh estate, and looking around for Rónán.

But it wasn't a paparazzo who'd called Ren's name, Trása realized, it was Plunkett.

_What was he thinking?_

Trása looked around for the _Leipreachán_ but couldn't see him. Across the street, however, was a girl of about sixteen or seventeen with dark hair pulled up into a ponytail and features so familiar that for a moment, Trása was rendered speechless. The girl was standing near Jack's driveway, waving to them, and shouting something Trása couldn't make out. Then a sleek silver BMW appeared behind the opening gates of the Kavanaugh house.

"Oh, crap," Rónán said, with a panicked look. "That's Murray's car. I thought he'd left hours ago."

"Who's that girl?"

"Hayley," he explained. "Shit... Neil must have said something about me leaving. Come on," he added, grabbing Trása's hand. "We're gonna have to run for it."

"There he is!" one of the photographers cried.

At the cry, the paparazzi went into a frenzy. Half of them were determined to get a shot of whoever was in the car, while the rest set off after Rónán. They were tripping over each other, calling out Ren's name, yelling questions about who Trása might be, and where his mother was. They shouted and shoved, flashbulbs exploding with painful light. The driver of the BMW leant on the horn, and gunned the engine threateningly as he forced his way through the pack.

_I am going to kill you, Plunkett_ , Trása promised herself silently. _As slowly and as painfully and as many times as I can manage._ She couldn't see the _Leipreachán_ , but she could feel him nearby.

Trása didn't have time to wonder why Plunkett had alerted the photographers to Rónán's presence. All she could do was hang on to Rónán as they ran, only a few steps ahead of the mob. Unfortunately, they were trapped on the wrong side of the street, making it impossible to return to either Rónán's, or Jack's, house.

Hayley saw their dilemma. Still waving and calling out to Rónán - as if there was anything she could do to rescue him - she ran across the road toward them.

Trása felt it before it happened. Whether or not there was magical power in this realm, she was still half- _Beansídhe_. She knew when someone was about to die.

The dread washed over her and instinctively she stopped, forcing Rónán, who was still holding her hand, back onto the curb just as the BMW suddenly accelerated forward, slamming into Hayley, throwing her in the air like a rag doll.

## Chapter 16

The day dragged for Darragh, made worse by the wound in his side that suddenly seemed to get worse as midday approached, making him double over with the pain. By the time the queen of the Celts and her party arrived at dusk with Marcroy Tarth - who was inexplicably unaccompanied by any other _sídhe_ \- it had subsided, somewhat, and then, miraculously, just as the evening's festivities were getting underway, the pain faded away completely.

Darragh smiled, and not just because of the relief. He knew what the pain meant. The pain he felt wasn't his, he realized. And that filled him with a sense of giddy anticipation.

Unfortunately, his smile coincided with his introduction to one of Álmhath's countless court maidens. Everybody in the hall immediately took his delighted smile to mean he found her pleasing, and without causing the young woman enormous shame and embarrassment by saying otherwise, Darragh had no choice but to play along.

Not that the maiden wasn't lovely to look at. She was his age - perhaps a year or two older - with a mass of thick dark curls that tumbled down to her waist, wide blue eyes framed by long dark lashes, a sprinkling of pale freckles across her creamy skin and a smile that hinted at a sense of mischief. She curtseyed low as th queen introduced them, meeting his eye in a manner suggesting that, far from being awed or frightened of him, she was enchanted. "I don't believe you've met my court maiden, Brydie Ni'Seamus, _Leath tiarna_ ," Álmhath said, watching Darragh closely. "She's Mogue Ni'Farrell's daughter."

Darragh tried to wipe the smile off his face, but it was too late. The damage was done. "I've not had the pleasure, _an Bhantiarna_." He'd heard of Mogue Ni'Farrell, a legendary beauty to whom Amergin, in his day, had composed more than one popular ode celebrating her magnificence.

"She's pretty enough to be one of the _Daoine sídhe_ ," Marcroy remarked from his seat further down the table - a high compliment indeed from the _Tuatha_ lord. "Are you sure your Mogue was faithful to her husband, Álmhath?"

Darragh expected Álmhath to explode at the suggestion but, rather than take offence, the queen of the Celts laughed aloud. "If you knew my prudish little friend Mogue well, _tiarna_ , you'd wonder not that she might have lain with a _sídhe_ , but how she came to lie with any man at all."

_That was an odd thing for Álmhath to say..._

Regrettably, Darragh was still smiling - it was hard not to - so he leant forward and offered Brydie his hand. "Do not listen to them, my lady. Your beauty is all your own."

_That's done it, good and proper_ , Darragh thought, as Brydie rose to her feet, smiling at him with an open invitation. Quoting a line from one of Amergin's epic love poems about her mother - however innocently - would have this girl in his bed by moonrise.

Any other time, that might not be a bad thing, but he had plans for the coming days, and they didn't involve bedding the court maiden of the Celtic queen, no matter how enticing.

"Why don't you ask Brydie to join us, Darragh?" Torcán suggested.

Darragh glanced at Torcán in surprise. The prince was sitting between his mother the queen, and his betrothed, Anwen. On the other side, Marcroy Tarth was leaning back in his seat nursing a cup, looking a little concerned. Torcán sipped his mead, feigning innocence, though not very effectively.

Darragh turned back to Brydie. Even without the Sight, he would have smelt the trap. Brydie was here to entice him and, in all likelihood, Torcán knew about it. He may have even been the one who suggested it.

Among the _Tuatha_ , one never discussed business until the festivities were done, so there'd been no hint, until now, why Marcroy had asked for this meeting nor why Álmhath had agreed to be party to it. There was no good-mannered way for Darragh to inquire about the nature of their business, either, before the partying was finished. Darragh suspected it would be something frivolous. Some trivial matter that could have been handled by far lesser ranks than the lord of the Mounds, the queen of the Celts and the Undivided.

But perhaps this wasn't about treaties. Perhaps this was about getting a pretty girl, who owed her loyalty to someone other than the Druids, into the bed of a young man too blinded by desire to care that she might be a spy.

_What have I ever done to make these people think I'm so stupid?_

"I think that's a wonderful idea," Darragh said. _Two can play this game._ He turned to Colmán. "Have another place set for the Lady Brydie, my lord Vate."

"No need to go to any trouble," Marcroy told the Vate with an oily smile. "There's already an empty place right next to Darragh. Lady Brydie can sit there, can't she?"

Silence descended on the hall as every eye expectantly turned to Darragh. The empty place Marcroy was referring to was Rónán's place; the place that had remained vacant for the past fifteen years, waiting for Darragh's brother to return.

Darragh understood, now, what introducing him to Brydie was about. Forcing Darragh into making this very public gesture was one way of having him admit, in front of his own people, the Celts and the _Tuatha Dé Danann_ , that the power of the Undivided was broken.

If he allowed Brydie to take Rónán's seat, he would be telling the whole world his brother was lost forever. But what would such an acknowledgement achieve? While Rónán lived, even though he wasn't in this realm, the power still flowed to the Druids through the twins, and if they killed Darragh, Rónán - wherever he was - would die too. That would render the Druids powerless...

_Of course._ This wasn't about the Undivided. This was about Álmhath's resentment of the Druids. She was queen of the Celts but it was the Druids who made the laws, recorded history and, in many ways, ruled her kingdom. She was an absolute monarch, but the Druid sorcerers and bards who roamed her kingdom had the power to overrule her, and quite often did.

Not being a Druid, she had no real concept of how the destruction of their magical power would decimate them and their world. Or perhaps she did.

Marcroy Tarth, on the other hand... what would he get out of this? The sacred nature of _Tuatha_ law meant he could never knowingly break the Treaty of _Tír Na nÓg_ , which guaranteed the sharing of _Daoine sídhe_ magic with humans. _But if the treaty became irrelevant because there were no more Undivided to bear the power-sharing burden?_ Yes, Darragh could see Marcroy embracing such a plan with great enthusiasm.

_What must it be like_ , Darragh wondered wearily, _to live in a world with no magic and the politics that went with preserving it?_

Rónán might know. Some said he'd been thrown into a reality where his power meant nothing. What would it be like, to be free of the burden?

_When we find him, will he_ want _the burden of his magical powers thrust upon him?_

Darragh didn't allow the dread fear of not finding his brother take root in his mind. They would find Rónán.

They _had_ to find Rónán.

He glanced at Colmán - who looked paler than a worm found under a freshly turned rock - trying to imagine him doing what Amergin had done.

And then Darragh became aware of the heavy air of silent anticipation focused on him. He forced himself to smile even wider, looking around the hall at the sea of expectant faces. The whole court was holding its breath, waiting for him to stumble.

He was still holding Brydie's hand. With a bow, he indicated Rónán's vacant seat. "The lord of the Mounds is right, my lady. We'll not be needing my brother's seat tonight. Why don't you sit here?"

One immediate benefit of Darragh's decision to put Brydie in his brother's vacant seat was that Colmán was rendered speechless, and the evening progressed very nicely without the constant interruption of the Vate's appallingly bad verse, chronicling the details of their meal. Colmán was, in fact, quite apoplectic, but it was hours before he would be able to get Darragh alone and inform him of his displeasure. In the meantime, Darragh enjoyed a pleasant meal with the delightful Brydie by his side, while the guests muttered ominously about him, and Álmhath, Torcán and Marcroy barely contained their glee.

Neither could Darragh, but for entirely different reasons. The Vate finally cornered Darragh in the hall outside his room as he was heading for bed. Darragh let him rant for a few minutes, knowing the old man would feel better for it, and that while he was ranting, he wasn't likely to throw in another verse. After the third time Colmán called him a mindless fool with his brains in his genitals - so angry he didn't even attempt to make the insult a rhyme - Darragh decided he'd heard enough.

"Stop!" he commanded, putting his hand over Colmán's mouth - an unpleasant sensation, given how much grease the old man used to fork his beard. "I get it. You're angry with me."

He took his hand away. Colmán looked ready to burst something. " _Leath tiarna_ , have you any idea what you've _done_?"

"I know exactly what I've done, Vate, and one day you'll be singing about it. In the meantime, can you get me som _Brionglóid Gorm_?"

Colmán was instantly suspicious. "What do you need that for?" Darragh grinned. "In case she snores."

" _Leath tiarna_!" the Vate gasped in horror. "You can't mean you're...?" He stopped and glanced around to be certain they were alone. "Are you insane? You're planning to render the Celtic queen's court maiden unconscious in order to have your way with her?"

"Quite the opposite, Colmán," Darragh said, lowering his voice. Although he was certain there was nobody listening, there were _Daoine sídhe_ in _Sí an Bhrú_ tonight. One couldn't be too careful. "I want to render the Celtic queen's court maiden unconscious to _stop_ her having her way with me."

The old man took a deep breath. "Darragh," he said, one of the rare times Colmán had ever addressed him by name. "I don't know what game you think you have going here, but I must warn you, it will not work." He threw his hands up in despair. "By _Danú_ , where is Ciarán when I need him?"

"Ciarán would tell you not to worry," Darragh assured the Vate, hoping the old man's concern wouldn't prompt him to go looking for the missing warrior.

Fortunately, Colmán was too distressed to even wonder where Ciarán was. "You have weakened your position tonight," Colmán warned, "all for the sake of a smile from a pretty girl. To compound the error by even allowing that sly little vixen into your bed, let alone thinking you can keep the upper hand by drugging her..." He threw his hands up again helplessly, his voice trailing off as if he didn't have the words to explain how he felt, a cruel situation for a man who lived by his ability to find words for every occasion.

Darragh sighed to cover his frustration. Amergin would not need to have this explained to him. "Lord Vate, what did Amergin tell you about me?"

The old man looked away, unable to meet Darragh's eye. "I don't know what you mean..."

"You were Amergin's apprentice for a decade before he died, Colmán. You discussed my progress with him often. Amergin told me that himself."

The Vate shrugged, unable to deny it.

"And didn't he tell you I'm smarter than I look?" Darragh knew that to be case, because Amergin had joked about it afterward.

"Even so, _Leath tiarna_..."

"All I'm asking is that you give me the benefit of the doubt, Colmán," Darragh begged, wishing this man would take him seriously, as Ciarán did. " _Trust_ me. Trust that I knew exactly what I was doing when I surrendered my brother's seat to Lady Brydie tonight."

Colmán frowned, his eyes filled with doubt.

"And if that isn't enough for you, trust that Ciarán would not have left me here to deal with Álmhath and Marcroy alone, if he didn't believe I knew what I was doing."

It was hard for Colmán to argue with that. He shook his head, still not convinced, but not able, in his confusion, to think of an argument to counter Darragh's logic. " _Leath tiarna_ , it is arrogant in the extreme to think you alone - a mere boy - can outwit the _Daoine sídhe_ , the Celtic queen and even those among our own order who believe that without the other half of the Undivided, you have no right to sit the Twin Throne. Regardless of what Ciarán may have to say on the matter, you gave Álmhath a gift tonight, and all you seem capable of thinking about is your own carnal pleasure."

Darragh smiled, hoping to reassure the old man, but suspecting his smile would only reinforce the Vate's suspicion that he was a young, politically naive - and dangerously lustful - fool. "I can tell you this much, Vate," he said. "If you trust me, all will be well. And of one other thing I can assure you - I won't be alone."

## Chapter 17

When Ren gave his statement to the Gardaí several hours later he was hard-pressed to remember the details of the accident. By then it was night. The ambulance had taken Hayley away in a wail of urgent sirens, the Gardaí cars with their flashing blue lights had dwindled to a lone patrol car parked in the circular driveway outside the house, and the paparazzi had thronged to the hospital. A gentle rain pattered softly onto the street, washing away the last traces of Hayley's blood.

All Ren could remember was the sound of Murray's car hitting Hayley. And her scream - cut short by the crack her head made when it smacked onto the roadway, several yards from where the BMW had skidded to a stop.

"And you're sure that's all you can remember, Ren?" the officer asked, as she closed her notepad.

Ren nodded mutely, not sure what else to say. He was numb - lacking the energy for even the simplest exchange. Across the hospital waiting room a muted wall-mounted TV was previewing the upcoming football season while beneath it, a frazzled mother tried to keep several tired kids, all in their pajamas, under control.

"It all happened so fast," he finally said, because the officer was looking at him so expectantly.

They were sitting in a tucked-away corner of the Emergency Department. They had been brought here to make their statements against a background of whimpering children, belligerent drunks and weary mothers, probably wishing their children's illness were a little more serious so they'd get bumped up the triage list and not have to wait so long in this depressing place.

Ren glanced at Trása sitting beside him. She nodded and squeezed his hand comfortingly.

"What about you, Trása?" she asked. "Can you remember anything else?"

Trása's eyes were red from weeping. Hayley's accident seemed to have wounded her more than it affected Hayley's own cousin, Ren.

Trása shook her head. "It's like Ro... Ren said. It happened so fast. It was very crazy out there. All those excited people. All those bright flashing lights."

The Gardaí officer nodded in agreement. "I can imagine," she said. "Must be awful, living in a fishbowl." She smiled sympathetically. "I'll get your statements typed up and bring them over to the house for you to sign tomorrow. Normally, I'd ask you to come into the station to sign them, but in light of your... special circumstances, it's probably better if I bring them to you." She glanced over her shoulder toward the door. Hospital security were keeping the wolves at bay, so for the time being at least, there were no paparazzi waiting outside.

"What special circumstances?" Trása asked, looking puzzled. "She means not everyone has a rabid mob of hyenas camped outside their front gate waiting to get a saleable shot of the freak show," Ren told her bitterly, and then he turned to the officer. "Thanks, sergeant, we'd appreciate that."

"What will happen to the man driving the car?" Trása asked. "Not up to me." The officer climbed to her feet and straightened her jacket. "I'm guessing not much, though," she added, pocketing the notebook beside the pen. "Dr Symes wasn't drunk, he has a clean driving history and the paparazzi had a lot to do with it." She looked down at Ren sympathetically. "Accidents happen, Ren. Don't go blaming yourself over this. It's not your fault."

"I'm not," he assured her. "Symes floored it." He'd been adamant about that in his statement. Of the few things he did remember, the sound of Murray Symes revving the engine of his BMW to scare the paparazzi away was one of the things that stuck in his mind. "I wouldn't be surprised if he'd been planning to hit one of the photographers."

"Well, unfortunately, he hit your cousin instead," the officer said. "And I'm quite sure he wasn't planning to do that. So be careful making accusations, Ren, unless you are certain you can back them up."

"He still ought to pay," Trása insisted, letting Ren's hand go to wipe her eyes with a scrunched up tissue that was long past its useful life. "An innocent soul should not be snuffed out so carelessly without some recompense to the goddess."

"She's not dead, Trása," the officer repeated, a little impatiently. Trása seemed to be writing off Hayley too easily. "Are you kids going to be okay?" she asked, picking up her car keys from the vinyl waiting-room seat. "It's been a fairly harrowing day for you. Did you want me to call someone?"

Ren shook his head. "We'll go back upstairs to the ICU in a bit. My mother's up there with Hayley's parents."

"Okay then," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll walk you out," Ren offered. "I could do with some fresh air."

The woman thanked him for the offer, said goodbye to Trása, and then walked with Ren toward the Emergency Department entrance. She checked once again if he'd be okay, and then said goodbye. Ren waited as she ran across the driveway in the drizzling rain, and then climbed into her patrol car which was parked in one of the reserved emergency places at the front of the hospital. As she drove away, Ren pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt and headed in the opposite direction, toward the car park. There were a few photographers gathered on the other side of the road, but it was wet and they were sitting in their cars, not paying attention to the lone figure heading away from them. They were waiting for Kiva.

"Is the Gardaí officer gone?"

Ren turned. Trása had followed him. The wretched _Leipreachán_ was tucked under her arm. "Yeah," he said. "What will happen now?"

"We wait," Ren said, glancing up at the multi-story building where Hayley was fighting for her life. The hospital car park was almost deserted. He glanced at his watch. It was past midnight. "You don't have to stay with me. I'll be okay, Trása."

"I'm so sorry about Hayley, Ren."

He adjusted his hood, so he wouldn't have to face her. "She'll be okay, Trása. This is the best hospital in the country, she's under the best doctors, getting the best care." He thrust his hands into his pockets. "Kiva won't skimp on making sure Hayley gets whatever she needs. The Boyles are family."

Trása seemed truly bewildered. "But surely Hayley's injuries are so bad nothing can be done for her now, except make her comfortable until she dies?"

Ren stopped and turned to look at her. "You give up on people pretty easily, don't you?"

"I'm not giving up, Ren," Trása said, as if she was afraid she'd made him angry. "I'm just being realistic. There was so much blood. And Hayley's head was badly injured. The men driving the ambulance said so. You have no magical healing in this world to fix her."

"Yeah, well a few million bucks' worth of hi-tech medical equipment and a hospital full of specialists ought to have th same effect as magic. In _this_ world." Ren turned and continued to walk through the misty rain, wondering why Trása would comment on "this world". As if there was another one out there somewhere.

Trása put her hand on his shoulder. "The officer was right, Ren. It's not your fault."

"Of course it's not my fault," he said, shaking her hand off. "Hayley steps in front of speeding fucking cars trying to get across the road to me all the time. Even when I'm _not_ there." Ren stopped and closed his eyes for a moment.

"Ren, don't blame yourself."

"Then who _should_ I blame?"

"The man driving the car?" Trása suggested. "You said it yourself... he was trying to hit someone. He wielded the weapon. He was aiming for those men who were blocking his path. He is the one who hit her. He is the one who should pay. He is the one we will _make_ pay."

The strident tone of her declaration made Ren open his eyes and stare at her in alarm. "Settle down there, Rambo."

She wasn't smiling. "I don't know what that means, Ren. I just know that where I come from, such an act would not go unpunished."

"And _where_ is that exactly?" She smiled. "North."

Red couldn't help but smile, too. He didn't feel like it, but there was something about Trása, even with her swollen, tear stained eyes, that was hard to resist.

"North, huh?"

"It's a very nice place," she said. "You should visit it sometime."

Her vagueness irritated him a little, but then he frowned, as another thought occurred to him.

"Hey... shouldn't you be getting home? It's past midnight. Jack'll be worried about you."

"He knows where I am," she said. Then she leant across, quite unexpectedly, and kissed him on the lips.

Ren said nothing. His brain seized up like a badly maintained engine, gluing his tongue to the roof of his suddenly dry mouth. She tasted of raindrops and promises.

His silence seemed to confuse Trása. "What's the matter? Did I do something wrong?"

"Um... no... of course not," Ren managed finally. "I was just wondering... you know... why you did that?"

"I like you," she said, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world. "Where I come from, we comfort the people we like when they're in pain."

He smiled wistfully. "Makes me kinda wish I'd broken my leg."

Trása cocked her head sideways. "What?"

"Nothing," he sighed. "I'm just not used to... well, girls I've known for less than a day kissing me out of the blue."

She seemed a little miffed at his reaction. "Look, if it upsets you so much that I kissed you, I'm sorry. I'll know better than to try to comfort you next time. I'll see you later."

"Please, Trása... I'm sorry."

Trása turned to stare at him, frowning. "For what?"

"For snapping at you. I'm not..." He let the sentence hang, uncertain how to explain himself. He had never felt so lost. Or so alone. Everyone was upstairs in the ICU, worried sick about Hayley. As they should be. _It's where I should be._ Ren reached out and grabbed Trása's arm.

She debated his apology for a moment in silence, her dark almond eyes giving away nothing, making him wait a few moments longer, before asking, "Can I hang out here with you?"

He shrugged. "If you want."

Trása reached up to gently touch his face. "I know someone just like you," she said softly. "When he gets upset, he does the same thing."

"What thing?" he asked, with no clue who she might be referring to. A boyfriend, perhaps? Her hand was unnaturally warm against his skin.

"He disappears outside, saying he wants to be alone."

"Do you follow him and randomly kiss him too?" Ren asked. He wished he hadn't said it, almost as soon as the words were out, but her hand was burning his cheek where it touched and he really wasn't thinking straight.

But Trása didn't seem offended. She stepped a little closer to him, rose up on her toes and kissed him again, squashing her creepy _Leipreachán_ doll between them. Ren slipped his arms around her, pulling her closer. As he tightened the embrace, part of him thought the damned toy had grunted in pain.

## Chapter 18

Brydie came to Darragh's room later that night. She let herself in, padded barefoot to the end of the bed where she stood and waited for him to notice her. He turned over at the sound of the door closing and waved his hand to magically light the oil lamp beside the bed. He silently studied his guest for a time.

Ciarán had taught him that trick. When you weren't sure of the right thing to say, it looked wiser to say nothing at all.

His silence worked. After a few awkward moments, Brydie tried to fill the silence.

"What happened to your legendary protector?"

"Excuse me?"

"The great warrior, Ciarán. Legend has it he sleeps on the floor outside your door."

"Ciarán makes up those rumors to scare off people who want to sneak into my room in the dead of night," Darragh said, pushing himself up on his elbows. Brydie was standing at the foot of the bed in a nightgown made of gossamer, her rich auburn hair down. She unclasped the amethyst-and-gold filigree brooch at her throat, dropping her cloak to the floor to reveal her comely body clearly outlined through the thin fabric. Anybody who had seen Brydie traversing the halls of _Sí an Bhrú_ dressed like that would have no doubt she had a lover's assignation in mind.

"Apparently, the legend's not working as well as it should," Darragh said.

"Are you going to send me away?" she asked with a slight tremble in her voice. She seemed much less certain of herself now than she had been in the hall earlier.

Darragh clasped his hands behind his head because it made him look more in control of the situation than he felt, and was the best way to ensure she couldn't see them trembling. "That depends."

"On what?"

"On whether you're here because you _want_ to be here, or because Álmhath's threatened you with something you dislike even more than the idea of sleeping with me."

Instead of answering him, Brydie tugged at the laces on her nightgown, letting it fall to her feet. Her body was flawless, pale and enticing. Her breasts were round and full, the dark bush between her thighs a sure sign that the rich dark tone of her hair was natural and not the result of being dyed, the way the Greeks and Romans dyed their hair.

"I volunteered," she said with a small smile.

Darragh swallowed hard, trying to give the appearance of nonchalance. "Call the Vate."

"Pardon?"

"Go to the door," he said. "Call for Colmán. He'll be hovering around out there somewhere. He's very annoying like that."

"You're sending me away?"

Darragh shook his head. "Not at all. I want you to give the old fool a message."

"What message?"

"Tell him we're going to be busy."

"Until morning?" she suggested, with a smile that promised so much Darragh could feel himself growing hard at the mere thought of what this girl might want to do to him.

"For the next few days," he corrected with a grin. "Tell him to bring food, later, too. And that only he is to deliver it."

"That's a harsh thing to ask a man in Colmán's position."

"What do you care?"

"Well, now you mention it..."

Brydie went to the door, called for Colmán, took great delight in telling the mortified Vate of All Eire she and Darragh would be busy for the next few days and that he was now charged with serving them. Then she shut the door in the old man's face, and turned to lean on it with a laugh.

"I enjoyed that." She sauntered back to his side of the bed and stood there looking down at him, hands on her hips, her breasts pushed forward provocatively. After a moment, she ran her tongue over her full, pink lips with the faintest hint of a smile. "You're not what I was expecting."

Danú _give me strength..._ "What... were you expecting?"

"I'm not sure, really," Brydie said, studying him curiously.

"You're more... human than I was expecting, I suppose." Darragh laughed at that. "Human? What made you think I wouldn't be?"

Brydie shrugged. "I don't know. It's probably because you're one of the Undivided. You have to admit, you're not really like the rest of us."

"You don't know that. You don't know me at all."

"I'd like to," she said, holding out her hand.

Danú, _but she's gorgeous_.

Darragh leant forward and took the offered hand, pulling her down on top of him. He let her kiss him, open mouthed, relishing the taste of her, delighting in the feel of her firm body as he ran his hands over her creamy skin, wishing it was going to end the way she seemed to intend. For a time he gave in to her caresses, telling himself he had to act as if he really intended to make love to her, otherwise she'd be suspicious. After a few moments of increasingly frantic kissing and urgent groping, they rolled over in a tangle of furs so that he was on top of her. Her legs were open, wide and inviting, silently begging him to enter.

He sat astride her, breathing hard, with no need to fake the desire he felt. A part of him marveled at his own self-control for stopping now; another part of him - the part of him ruled by his little brain, not the big one, as Ciarán was fond of saying - was whispering, _what's a few more minutes... why not?... after all, she volunteered..._

"Close your eyes," he ordered.

It was time to get this done. He didn't have _that_ much self-control.

Brydie smiled up at him languorously. "Why?"

"Humor me."

"Nobody warned me you were the type who likes to play games," she said. Brydie closed her eyes, however, still smiling. "Do you have a surprise for me?"

"Oh, yes," Darragh told her, as he reached for the small pouch of blue powder sitting on the side table beside the lamp. "I most certainly do."

"Will I like it? Is it fun?"

"I don't know," Darragh said. He poured the powder into his hand and blew the _Brionglóid Gorm_ into her face, and watched as she fell into a deep sleep. He sat back on his heels and smiled at her. "But I'm pretty sure _I'm_ going to be smiling about this for some time to come."

The _Brionglóid Gorm_ did its job. Brydie was out cold. Darragh had a few hours before she stirred. He stayed still, astride her for a moment. What a waste... still, he had things to do, and only a few hours to do them. With a regretful sigh he climbed off her, walked around the bed and kicked aside her cloak with its amethyst brooch into the corner by his trunk.

Time. He had only a short window of opportunity to contact Ciarán with the scrying bowl.

A few hours to find out if there was any news.

A few hours to find out if Ciarán had received word from the rift runners searching for Rónán, that they had found him and were bringing his brother home.

## Chapter 19

"What the hell is going on here?"

The flash of headlights and a shout tore Trása back to reality. For a moment there, she'd been lost in a delightful fantasy... a fantasy in which Darragh was kissing her, the way she'd tried to get him to kiss her before... before they'd banished her from _Sí an Bhrú_. She pulled away from Rónán and blinked in the bright light of the headlights of a car which had stopped in front of them. The driver's door was open, the driver standing beside the car, wearing a suit with a loosened tie, yelling at them.

"Jesus Christ!" the man exclaimed. "You are un-fucking- believable, Ren! Your cousin is lying in intensive care - thanks in no small part to your stupidity - and you decide the best way to deal with it is to party with some random skank you probably found roaming the streets!"

Trása didn't know what a skank was, but she gathered it wasn't meant as a compliment. Rónán pushed Trása aside and walked around the car to confront the man, standing almost nose to nose with the driver. Rónán was the taller of the two. Trása didn't know who the angry man was, but he clearly felt he had the right to chastise Rónán. Was it Patrick? The stunt man who rescued Rónán as a baby?

"Fuck off, Murray," he said.

_Not Patrick then. Murray Symes_ , Trása realized. _The man who ran Hayley down._ Trása hurriedly tossed Plunkett - who'd been mashed between her and Rónán during their embrace - into the darkness beyond the circle of light from the car's headlights.

"I'm warning you..." the man began. His face was red with fury.

"You're warning me?" Rónán taunted. "Of what? What are you going to do? Run me down, too? Beat some sense into me, maybe? How's that going to look? Go on, tough guy. I dare you." They glared at each other for a long, tense moment; long enough for Trása to look around for Plunkett, thinking she shouldn't have rid herself of him quite so hastily. He may yet need to intervene. The _Leipreachán_ had no luck glamouring Rónán, but this Murray Symes shouldn't prove any trouble. After all, Plunkett had already seen him once. And the confrontation between Ren and Murray Symes might get ugly. She'd seen Darragh toe-to-toe with an enemy like this, and it invariably ended in bloodshed. Rónán's similarity to Darragh in that moment was frightening.

But just as she was expecting them to come to blows, Symes backed down.

"I wouldn't give you the satisfaction, you arrogant little bastard," he said in a tone that indicated he knew Rónán was baiting him. "I'll not sink to your level. Go on, be an arsehole. Party with your girlfriend. You'll get what's coming to you, soon enough."

"She's not my girlfriend," Rónán said. "This is Trása, Jack O'Righin's granddaughter." He glanced at Trása apologetically. "Trása, this is Murray Symes. The guy who runs down girls who step in front of his car."

Murray turned to Trása, seeing her properly for the first time. He studied her for a moment with suspicion and disdain. "Th ungodly spawn of your friendly neighborhood terrorist, eh?" He shook his head and turned back to Rónán. "Didn't take you long, did it?"

With that, Murray turned on his heel and headed back to his car.

"How's Hayley?" Rónán asked Symes's retreating back.

The doctor stopped and turned to look at him. "Oh, so _now_ you're worried about Hayley?"

"How is she?" Rónán repeated. It seemed he could contain himself too, when the occasion called for it.

"She's still critical," Murray said. "Your mother's in the ICU with Kerry and Patrick. I imagine they'll be there for a good while, yet."

"Is she going to be okay?"

"I don't know, Ren. I'm not her doctor."

"Didn't they tell you _anything_?"

"I'm not her physician," Symes repeated with a shrug. "I've no right to be told her prognosis."

"But you know," Rónán said with utter certainty.

Murray sighed, as if suddenly weary of the conversation. "And if I thought for a moment that you cared about anybody else but yourself, Ren, I'd probably tell you. Clearly, however," he added, fixing his contemptuous gaze on Trása, "you have other priorities. How old are you, young lady?"

Trása was a little taken aback by the question, unsure what her age had to do with anything. "Old enough."

Murray looked at Rónán. "Have sex with that girl and I'll personally see to it that you are charged with, and convicted of, unlawful carnal knowledge of a minor. To hell with what your mother thinks it'll do to her career."

Rónán rolled his eyes, clearly not believing the threat. "Jesus, Murray, we were just kissing. Get your mind out of the gutter."

The man didn't appreciate Rónán's easy dismissal of his threat. "Laugh all you want, wise guy. Because after I've had you charged, I'll pull every string I have to make certain your case isn't heard until you've turned eighteen so I can be _absolutely_ positive they'll send you to an adult prison. A couple of years as some axe-murderer's bitch may even cure your ODD." Then Murray glanced at Trása and added, "What you do in your grandfather's house is his concern. Don't bring his violent politics or your questionable morals into other people's homes."

"You can't tell her what to do," Rónán said, sounding just like Darragh.

"Pity," Murray said. He turned away, not interested in any further conversation. As he climbed back into his car, he added, "At least show your mother some respect by finding somewhere less public to make out with your girlfriend. There are still photographers around. You've caused Kiva enough problems for one day."

Rónán watched him leave, his fists clenched at his sides. Trása felt sorry for Rónán, but it was time, she decided,

for her to make a strategic withdrawal. "He's right, you know, Rónán. Perhaps I should go home." Plunkett could glamour away human memories, after all, but he couldn't erase photographs.

She saw Rónán force himself to relax. He unclenched his fists and managed a thin smile. "I'm sorry he called you a skank. Why do you keep calling me 'Rónán'?"

"I don't know. Maybe you remind me of someone." She hoped she sounded as if the slip meant nothing and covered it by walking over to Plunkett. "You don't need to walk me back to the hospital. I can catch a cab home."

Ren frowned at the _Leipreachán_ sitting on the curb as if it were watching them. "You really are attached to that horrid thing, aren't you?"

Trása didn't answer. Instead, she rose up on her toes and kissed him, lingeringly this time, leaving Rónán speechless.

Before he could recover his wits or do anything that would spoil the moment, she fled, tucking Plunkett under her arm, not waiting to find out if Rónán was following. "What were you thinking, you stupid, _stupid_ little _sídhe_?" Trása finally demanded of the _Leipreachán_ , once they were settled into the back of the cab and heading back to Jack's place. "You could have killed someone!"

Plunkett crossed his arms defiantly and glared up at Trása.

The cab driver gave them an indifferent glance and kept his eyes on the road. Trása didn't really care. Plunkett could glamour away his memory of their ride - and the fare they owed - once they got home.

"At least I be doing something," Plunkett muttered, "other than moonin' over some lad I can't ever have."

Trása looked away angrily. "You could have killed her! For that matter, if I hadn't stopped Rónán from stepping onto the road, you might have killed him!"

"Well, that would have solved our problem right there, wouldn't it?"

Trása was so frustrated she wanted to strangle him. "Marcroy said we're not to kill him. He was very clear about that. If we kill him, we'll have broken the treaty. We're just supposed to contain him. Find a way to stop the Druids bringing him home, that's all. You almost ruined everything by interfering!"

"I didn't do nothin' wrong," the _Leipreachán_ insisted. "Really? What about making that car speed up? No way could you have done that without Murray seeing you." Plunkett shrugged. "What if he did?"

"You wouldn't have had time to glamour away his memory of you."

"So what?" the _Leipreachán_ said with a shrug. "He ain't going to say anything 'bout it."

"You don't know that."

Plunkett rolled his eyes impatiently. "The man just ran down an innocent lass, and now he has to convince everyone the whole fiasco be an accident. He won't go announcing to all and sundry that a _Leipreachán_ made him do it, now, will he?"

The little man probably had a point, but that didn't make Trása feel any more kindly disposed toward him. "You've ruined all my plans."

"Plans? What plans?" Plunkett scoffed. "Ye've not a clue how to contain the lad, and I doubt ye're even looking for one. Ye're just trying to find a way to become his sweetheart, 'cause ye're not allowed to have his brother in yer own realm."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Then why did ye kiss him just now?"

Trása hesitated, and then shrugged, not sure how to answer in a way that wouldn't confirm the _Leipreachán_ 's suspicions. "I'm _Beansídhe_. I'm _supposed_ to lure men to their doom."

"It's ye luring me to mine I worry about. What's yer plan, then?"

"I'm not going to sit here in a cab discussing it," Trása said, turning to look forward. The rain was gentle but it had been relentless and she was soaked through and chilled to the bone, from standing in the car park kissing Rónán. "You shouldn't be here, anyway. You need to go find that Gardaí lady and the doctor and glamour away their memory of me. And the memory of the statement I gave the Gardaí. And destroy her notes."

"Ye've nothing to discuss, is what ye really mean," the _Leipreachán_ accused. "Ye can distract me with other things, but I'll be telling ye _uncail_ as much next time he contacts me to check on ye."

Trása turned to look at him. She knew the _Leipreachán_ was more than capable of carrying out his threat. The consequences would be dire if Marcroy thought she had failed him, particularly after bragging she was on the brink of success. "I was planning to find a way to lock him up in jail."

"How are ye going to manage that?"

That, of course, was the bit she hadn't figured out yet. But there was no need to confess that to Plunkett. "I was working on it, actually, right up until _you_ came along and screwed everything up by causing that wretched accident." Trása crossed her arms against the chill and stared down at the little man, somewhat relieved she'd found a way to make her lack of progress his fault.

Plunkett didn't react to her accusation. Instead, he looked up at her, stroking his pointy little beard thoughtfully. "Ye know... that notion has real potential."

" _Had_ potential," she pointed out.

"It may still be workable," Plunkett said, furrowing his brow. "Do ye know for certain what ye have to do in this realm to be incarcerated, or are ye just guessing 'cause ye've watched a lot of television?"

Trása shrugged. Her plan hadn't advanced much further than a fleeting idea while she had been talking to Rónán earlier in the day, when he compared the camp in Utah with prison. Then she remembered something else Rónán had said. "I was planning to ask Jack," she told Plunkett. "According to Rónán, he's the expert on doing hard time. He should know what we have to do."

Plunkett nodded slowly. "Go ask him, then, so we can get this done."

"Don't be ridiculous. It's the middle of the night. I'll ask him tomorrow. It won't seem suspicious that way."

The _Leipreachán_ nodded reluctantly, in agreement. "All- righty then, but ye see ye do, Trása Ni'Amergin, or I warn ye, I'll be informin' ye _uncail_ of ye preference for kissin' the Undivided, rather than doing what ye were sent here to do with him."

## Chapter 20

"What does one have to do to get thrown in jail here?" Trása asked Jack the next morning, as they did their regular round of the glasshouse.

Jack sipped his sweetened tea as he poked about in the shrubbery with his pruning shears. A gentle rain pattered on the glass roof and ran down the misty walls in rivulets. The old man thought about her question for a moment and then shrugged. "Lots of things, I guess. Depends who you are, where you are..." He grinned suddenly. "And on how many Loyalists you've blown up."

"What did _you_ do to get thrown in jail?"

"I blew some Loyalists up," the old man replied matter-of-factly.

"So killing someone will get you imprisoned?"

"If you get caught."

Trása pondered that for a moment, sipping her own overly sweet tea - which she was growing to like - as they moved on to the next plant requiring Jack's attention. "What does 'unlawful carnal knowledge of a minor' mean?"

Jack stopped pruning and turned to stare at her. "I want to know what it means," Trása repeated.

The old man turned back to his bromeliad. He looked very uncomfortable and was silent for a long time. Trása was wondering if Plunkett would have to glamour Jack again to make him answer her question, when he mumbled, "It means they can send you to jail if you're caught... y'know... fooling around... with someone under the age of consent."

"What's the age of consent?"

"Seventeen, these days, I think."

"Oh." It seemed a bit arbitrary. What gave the law the right to decide such a thing? Among the _Daoine sídhe_ , it was the female who decided when she was ready, and it had much to do with the individual nature of the _sídhe_. It was her body, and she was the only one with the right to determine how it was to be treated. Trása's mother was _leanan sídhe_ and she was almost twenty-five before she found an artist who took her fancy enough for her to give up her maidenhead to become his muse.

"Where did you hear about unlawful carnal knowledge of a minor, anyway?" Jack asked, unsettled by her line of questions.

"Murray Symes."

The old man shook his head unhappily. "Jayzus... I'm not sure I'm game to ask why. Was he talking about you? And young Ren?"

"I suppose."

Jack shrugged. He turned back to the plants to avoid meeting her eye. "I dunno. A couple of kids fooling around... it's not exactly the end of the world. Even if they bothered to take it to court and found the lad guilty, if it's two teenagers having a good time, they're both willing and about the same age... say, your age or thereabouts... I doubt he'd get more than a few months. Maybe not even that. Just a slap on the wrist and some community service. At worst, the lad'd get a couple of years, maybe, if the judge was a real bastard."

_Two years_ , Trása thought. _That's not nearly long enough._

"How long were you in jail, Jack?"

"Too fecking long."

"You said you killed someone?"

He nodded, and kept pruning. "Several someones."

_Ah, that's more like it._ "And the penalty for killing several someones? What was that?"

"For murder? It's life, usually. For each count."

That was much more to Trása's liking. Locked away for life, confined and out of reach. That should satisfy Marcroy.

"A whole life?" she asked, making certain she had this right. "I'm tempted to ask why you're so interested in this, girlie.

You're not planning to murder someone, are you?"

"I might be," she admitted, confident Plunkett could glamour away Jack's memory of this conversation later. "If I can find someone who deserves it." Trása pondered the possibilities for a moment. There was one flaw she could see that needed clarifying. "You were sent to jail for life, Jack, so how is it you're here now, pottering among the bromeliads?"

"Politics," Jack said with a shrug. "Trumps justice every time."

"So..." she mused, sipping her tea thoughtfully. "Without political interference, someone sent to jail for life would have to stay there, right?"

"That's the way it's supposed to work."

Trása nodded. That's what she wanted to hear. She caught a movement among the coleus behind Jack and realized Plunkett was there, watching and listening.

"Do you still have many criminal friends in jail?" It had been Plunkett's idea that she ask Jack that. Plunkett figured - rightly so, Trása was forced to concede - that it would be much quicker to stage a crime Rónán could be blamed for if they had professional help.

Jack smiled, this time not too embarrassed to meet her eye. "More than I'd like to admit."

"Excellent," Trása said, drinking down the last of her tea. "Then let's finish up here and make some calls, old man. We have plans to make."

* * *

"There's an awful lot that could go wrong," Trása said later that day, as she continued to brush her hair, something that took so long she wondered if she ought to do what many women in this reality did - cut it short.

"Ye're too much of a pessimist, Trása. It'll be fine and, by tomorrow, we'll be home."

"How am I supposed to convince Rónán to do this?"

"You could use those legendary _Beansídhe_ wiles ye were so proud of last night," the _Leipreachán_ said.

Trása stopped brushing to look at Plunkett in the mirror. "But what if he's not the sort that cares about vengeance?"

"Then he surely not be the twin of Darragh the Undivided," Plunkett said as he sat down beside her on the bed, his little legs dangling over the edge. "This be his chance for redemption. Ye heard him. He thinks the accident be his fault. Even the man driving the car accused him of as much. Ye can tell, just by looking at him, the lad's riddled with guilt and remorse over the girl being hurt. Ye know Darragh, Trása, and trust me, his twin be made of the same stuff. If it be Darragh in the same position, he'd do anything he could to redress the balance."

She thought about that for a moment, then added with a puzzled frown, "I can't understand why she's not dead, though. I felt her death approaching when the car sped up."

"That would be those legendary _Beansídhe_ powers, again, would it?"

Trása had to resist slapping the _Leipreachán_ with her hairbrush. "You are getting very close to overstepping yourself, Plunkett. Marcroy put me in charge."

"They have their own healing magic in this world," the _Leipreachán_ said, conceding that she might have felt the approach of death. Trása smiled - this was the closest Plunkett would ever come to apologizing for getting above himself. "Perhaps in our world her injuries would have been fatal, but here, with their machines and their unnatural drugs... who knows?"

That made sense. Still, it was unsettling. She was _Beansídhe_ , after all. Trása was not used to being wrong about things like that.

"Things would be a lot easier if you hadn't interfered in the first place, Plunkett."

"Ye're making excuses."

"I'm being thorough. What if you tried to glamour Rónán again?"

"It won't work," the _Leipreachán_ insisted. "And it will cause problems if we try. He already be suspicious of me."

Trása resumed brushing her hair. "Rónán's never said a word about you. Except that you're creepy. Which isn't actually that far off the mark."

Plunkett pulled a face at her in the mirror. "That be because I have to keep up the pretense of being a toy when the Half-Lord be nearby. I canna move a muscle when he's looking at me. The glamour doesn't work on him, Trása, as well ye know. He sees me as I be, so it be yer job to make certain he does what we need him to do."

"He trusts Jack, I suppose," Trása said with a defeated sigh. She wasn't sure why she was uneasy about their plan. It was, after all, her plan. And her mission for being in this realm in the first place. "What if you glamour the old man and he convinces Rónán? I'm pretty sure Rónán will believe him."

"And if he doesn't believe Jack?"

"He has to." Trása lowered the hairbrush to look at Plunkett and remind him of the dire nature of their predicament. "You're right about one thing, Plunkett. It's time we went home. I'm not sure how much of a lead we have on the others who are searching for Rónán. Darragh was with my father when he died. He heard Amergin's deathbed confession. He knows where Rónán is now and he wants his brother back even more than Marcroy wants him kept away. You can bet your wretched pot of gold there are Druids here looking for Rónán, right now. If we can find him, so can they."

"Then let's get this done," the _Leipreachán_ said. He hopped off the bed and added with a frown, "Just so long as ye don't blame me if ye plan doesn't work, girlie. I be in enough trouble with Marcroy Tarth as it is."

## Chapter 21

Brydie woke with a dreadful headache. The room was dark, but she could hear voices. She moaned softly with pain, trying to remember what had happened. The last thing she could recall was lying on the bed, Darragh sitting astride her filled with passion and desire, and then everything went blank. She didn't think she'd drunk enough to pass out. In fact, she was sure she hadn't.

Peering through the darkness, Brydie saw a pale light at the foot of the bed. She wondered what it meant. Only magical light shone with that distinctive blue radiance.

"... would have expected you to hear something by now," said Darragh's voice. As Brydie's eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she realized Darragh was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to her, hunched over the source of the pale light.

He was scrying, she realized. Talking to someone through water.

Brydie had no magical ability, but she'd seen Malvina using a scrying bowl to contact other Druids. Ossian, the old Druid stationed in her father's Ráith, would often chat to his distant colleagues in the same manner.

Why, though, was Darragh talking to someone now? In the middle of the night? In a whisper?

Brydie remained still, lying on her side, able to see only a little of the room lit by the pale blue radiance of the scrying bowl. She strained to hear what Darragh was saying. She was certain the queen would be interested in this secret late-night conversation.

"Surely they've located him by now," Darragh whispered to the bowl. "I know he's close, Ciarán. I can feel him."

So Darragh was talking to Ciarán, his mentor, teacher and bodyguard. The man who should have been here in _Sí an Bhrú_ , watching over his precious charge. Álmhath would be fascinated to find out what Ciarán was up to.

"Aye, Darragh," Brydie heard the older man say. It was hard to pinpoint the source of the voice. It was as if it came from nowhere and everywhere, all at once, muffled and distorted by the water of the scrying bowl. "But you mustn't get your hopes up. Even if they've found him, it's going to be difficult making him leave everything he knows in the other realm."

Who were they talking about? Someone trapped in another realm? a lost rift runner, perhaps? Or a rift runner turned rogue?

Brydie had heard of that happening. Rift runners visiting other realms had been known to become so enchanted with the alternative version of their world they didn't want to come home. Some did it for love. Others for avarice. Some simply for the adventure.

But what would it matter to Darragh? He was one of the Undivided. His existence allowed the Druids to send rift runners to other worlds, but he wasn't responsible for them. He probably didn't even know most of them.

Still, a rogue rift runner was a dangerous problem, particularly if they were lost in a world of forbidden technology. It explained why Ciarán was away from _Sí an Bhrú_.

"They'll find a way," Darragh said, although it sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as much as Ciarán. "They must. Soon." He glanced over his shoulder at Brydie, who shut her eyes, feigning sleep.

"Are you not alone?" she heard Ciarán inquire.

"Álmhath sent one of her maidens to my bed. I'm not sure what she hopes to gain by it, though."

"Álmhath is at _Sí an Bhrú_?" Even through the distortion of the scrying bowl, the older man sounded concerned. "Why?"

"I don't know," Darragh said. "We haven't got past the festivities yet. But she brought Marcroy Tarth with her, so it's not going to be good news, I'll wager."

There was silence for a moment, before Ciarán spoke again. "You need to get rid of the girl. She's Álmhath's spy."

"Why, thank you, Ciarán," Darragh replied. "I'd never have worked that out for myself."

Brydie cautiously opened her eyes again, as Ciarán chuckled. "Sorry, lad. I'm sure you're being careful. Is she pretty?"

"Of course she's pretty," he said, a little impatiently. "What did you expect Álmhath to tempt me with? A dog? She's gorgeous. The legendary Mogue Ni'Farrell's daughter, no less."

"The one Amergin wrote so many odes about?" There was a note of wistful longing in his tone. "I remember when I was a lad and she was a court maiden. She was a rare beauty, right enough. I take it the lass can't hear us, then?"

Darragh shook his head. "I knocked her out with Brionglóid Gorm. She shouldn't wake up for a while yet."

_You bastard_ , Brydie thought. Still, it explained her headache. And why she couldn't remember her night of unbridled passion with Darragh. There simply hadn't been one.

It never occurred to Brydie until then what a good liar Darragh might be. Although she didn't really have any basis for the impression, she'd always imagined the Undivided to be above the petty politics of ordinary men. Was he pretending everything he'd said since she met him? Even at dinner, when he'd smiled at her like he desired nothing more in the world than her company? When he'd given up his brother's place at the table to have her by his side? And later? When she came to his room? When he'd kissed her like he might die for the wanting of her?

Brydie felt a surge of anger at his deception, even as it occurred to her that she had been no more honest with Darragh than he had been with her. She was in his bed, after all, to steal his seed. To preserve a precious bloodline the Matrarchaí could ill afford to lose.

Which brought up another interesting problem. What was she going to tell Álmhath? I'm sorry, my lady, I remain barren and the bloodline is lost because Darragh is up to something so secretive and dangerous, he drugged me and left me to sleep it off, while he made his plans in the dead of night.

It was easy to imagine what Álmhath's reaction would be to that.

And even if Brydie told the queen about this odd conversation, even if there was nothing sinister in it at all, Álmhath would want to know what Darragh was up to. She'd want to know about this rogue rift runner - if that was what Ciarán was searching for - and why he was so important to the Druids.

More importantly, the Matrarchaí wanted a child. If Brydie gave them what they wanted, she was assured of a shining future in Álmhath's court. If she failed... what then? The specter of Ethna's future stuck in some Gaulish backwater as the bride of a pig like Atilis was still fresh in her mind.

Could she do both? Brydie wondered. Her first instinct was to leap out of the bed, slap Darragh for his deceit, and snatch up her clothes and storm out of his chamber full of righteous indignation.

But what if she stayed?

What if she lay here and pretended to sleep? What if she woke in the morning and pretended to be completely innocent, and enticing, and managed to do what she'd been sent here to do? Brydie certainly wasn't averse to the notion. Unlike Atilis, Darragh wasn't some uncouth barbarian looking for a bride and a treaty to help hold off his equally barbaric neighbors. Darragh was young, and healthy and strong and agreeable to the eye - something she'd been weak-kneed with relief to discover when she first spied him across the hall the previous evening. Far worse fates might befall a woman of her station than being asked to bear the child of one so important. And so pleasing.

_I wonder if I could entice him to ask me to stay in_ Sí an Bhrú _after the queen leaves?_

Brydie was a little shocked to discover she might consider the notion. She hadn't come here to be made Darragh's mistress. She wasn't a Druid. Her loyalty lay with the queen of the Celts. If anything, she shared her father's opinion that the Druids - and the Undivided who were the source of their power - were an annoying necessity. The reasons Álmhath had given about why humans needed them were true enough. But she'd often heard her father remark that life would go on - a little less comfortably, perhaps - if they lost the Undivided, but surely it wouldn't mean the end of civilization.

"You might have some trouble if Álmhath discovers you thwarting her plans for you, lad," she heard Ciarán say. "And right now, it'll not pay to do anything to make her, or that damned _sídhe_ , Marcroy Tarth, suspicious."

"You're not suggesting I let her think she can manipulate me so easily, are you?" Darragh asked his mentor softly, sounding a little wounded by the suggestion. "It was almost insulting the way they threw the girl at me, thinking I'd be so easily diverted by the sight of a pretty face."

At least he thinks I'm pretty. Brydie moved her head fractionally, afraid the furs tickling her nose would make her sneeze.

"Be grateful they did," Ciarán told him. "It shows they know nothing about what's afoot, or indeed, anything about you, either. Play along with them, lad. Use the tools that come to hand. Haven't I always taught you that?"

Darragh sighed. "I suppose. When are you scheduled to open the rift again?"

"Tomorrow night," Ciarán told him. "Whatever scheme Álmhath and Tarth have cooked up between them, it would be useful if you could delay them until after that."

"They'll be there waiting this time, Ciarán," Darragh said with complete confidence. "I know they will."

"Is that your Sight speaking, lad, or are you just hoping for the best?" Ciarán asked gently.

Brydie strained to hear the answer. She was very interested to know that too. Was Darragh simply hoping for something to happen or had he Seen it?

For that matter, if he had the gift of Sight, why hadn't he Seen her in his dreams, or had some inkling as to why she'd been thrust in his path?

Prescience, Brydie decided, wasn't all it was cracked up to be. She moved her head slightly, to hear a little better, but this time Darragh caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He spun around faster than Brydie would have thought possible. The bowl tumbled to the ground, plunging the room into darkness, the scrying magic evaporating as the link with Ciarán was severed.

Darragh leapt astride Brydie, his hands at her throat, before she could utter a sound.

"Tell me everything you heard," he demanded, his sapphire eyes sinister and dangerous in the darkness. "And trust me, I'll know if you're lying."

She stared up at him in fear, her heart pounding, her breath strangled. Should she betray her queen or save her own life?

It should have been a difficult decision to make, but she decided she wouldn't be in a position to report anything to her queen if she was dead. Brydie did not doubt that Darragh was capable of carrying out his threat.

"I heard you talking to Ciarán. I gather he's hunting some rogue rift runner for you, and he's planning to bring him home soon. Or at least you're hoping he will."

He squeezed her throat a little tighter. Brydie could barely breathe. "Is that all?" he said.

"What else was there to hear?" Brydie gasped, struggling to drag air into her lungs.

"Why did Álmhath send you here tonight?"

"She... she wants me to have your child."

Darragh stared at her for a moment and then released his grip on her throat and stood up. He waved his hand, setting the candle by the bed magically alight. The meager flame did little to dispel the sinister cast to his angry expression.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded.

"Álmhath wants a child from you," Brydie repeated. "She says your line is too precious to lose."

"Why?"

"You are one of the Undivided," Brydie reminded him. "I would have thought the why was self-evident."

"Why now, then?" he asked, echoing the thought Brydie had had when the queen first marked her for this task.

"I don't know," she said. "I only know what Álmhath told me. 'The Tuatha have found something they weren't meant to find.' Those were her exact words."

Darragh frowned as he considered her information. Brydie wondered if the rift runner Ciarán was searching for had anything to do with the thing the Tuatha had discovered, the very thing that had precipitated her presence in Darragh's bed.

"So you're not really a volunteer, then?"

"No..."

"Get out." He said it in a flat, emotionless tone.

She was shocked. She'd told him the truth. "But... why?"

He sat on the edge of the bed and began to pull on his shirt. "Álmhath might want my seed bad enough she's willing to take it by force, but I'm not having any woman against her will. Go." Brydie couldn't believe he was kicking her out because he was so principled he didn't want to take a woman against her will. Laudable as that was, Brydie couldn't go back to Álmhath empty-handed. Or with an empty womb, for that matter.

"But Ciarán just told you to play along with Álmhath," she said, afraid she sounded like she was begging to stay. "You should be keeping me here to allay her suspicions, not sending me away."

He looked at her over his shoulder. "You heard that much, then?"

Hmmm... I probably shouldn't have admitted that. "Yes."

"I thought you weren't a volunteer."

"So now I am volunteering," she said, sitting up to look him in the eye, conscious the furs had fallen to her waist and her breasts were exposed.

Darragh studiously avoided looking at anything but her face. "You're spying for Álmhath."

"So, don't tell me anything of strategic importance." Brydie smiled, figuring if she couldn't entice him with her fabulous breasts, a smile was about the only weapon left in her arsenal. "At the very least, don't give Colmán ammunition to compose some dreadful epic poem tomorrow about your inability to keep a woman satisfied."

Even Darragh cracked a small smile at that suggestion. "I can see why Álmhath picked you."

Brydie smiled a little wider. "I have a better idea. You want to stall Álmhath and Marcroy Tarth until Ciarán opens his rift tomorrow night? Then stay here with me as you planned. Don't come out of your room at all."

"Why?"

She climbed onto her knees, warming to the idea. She could still get Álmhath the child she wanted, and also remain in the good graces of the young man who, a few moments ago, had his hands around her throat and might still be considering killing her to ensure her silence. "You've already had me tell Colmán you're planning to be here for days. So let's do it. They can't hold a meeting with the Undivided if you're not there, can they?"

He stared at her in silence.

"I'm up for it, if you are... and if you aren't... well, I know a few tricks that could help with that, too."

Darragh continued to study her with a puzzled expression. "Just whose side are you on, Brydie Ni'Seanan?"

"The truth?" she asked him honestly, thinking of Ethna and her grim future as Atilis's bride. "Mine."

## Chapter 22

Hayley wasn't sure when she became aware of her surroundings again. For a long time she floated in a world of emptiness... a warm cocoon where nothing seemed to matter. Reality resolved around her slowly. It took a while for her to register she was lying in a hospital bed and that there seemed to be some dissent as to her prognosis. She had heard people talking in the distance in hushed, frightened tones. Then the soft beeping of countless electronic monitors lulled her back into unconsciousness, while voices she didn't recognize whispered about her as if she wasn't there.

When she tried to move, she discovered a strange heavy feeling in her limbs, holding her down, but the cotton wool cocoon kept her warm and safe so she didn't feel the need to panic. She did want to know why her stepmother was crying, though, and why her normally jovial and talkative father was so ominously silent.

Hayley deduced that people were upset, and they seemed to be upset with her. She wasn't sure why. She wanted to tell everyone she was fine. She wanted to sit up and demand to know why she was surrounded by electronic beeps and whispering voices, because she had no idea how she got there.

Hayley's last memory was seeing Ren with that girl. He was holding her hand.

In the distance, the faint beeping seemed to grow more strident...

Hayley drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to tell anyone she was awake. Her head pounded constantly when she emerged from the darkness. Unconsciousness was a relief. Such a relief she was disinclined to do anything that might prolong her fleeting bouts of awareness.

Not that Hayley had any control over that, either. She couldn't move a muscle.

Her dreams were jumbled and chaotic, never focusing on any one thing for long. Her world was defined by haunting images interrupted occasionally by a reality so painful she prayed for the dreams to return. Her dream world was bewildering, but painless.

In her dream world, Ren wasn't holding that pretty blonde girl's hand. He was holding Hayley's. Ren featured a lot in Hayley's dreams which was why she preferred them to the real world. In them, he seemed much happier than the Ren she knew in her waking life. In her dreams, Ren wasn't haunted by dark nightmares so terrible he couldn't even tell his best friend what he dreamed about...

In her dreams, Ren noticed she was alive.

Even in her befuddled state, Hayley knew that wasn't fair. Ren didn't ignore her. Of course he knew she was alive. He was her best friend, after all, and she was his.

But that's all he was, she knew; that was how it was meant to be. Hayley had resigned herself to that long ago, and some days it even seemed a good idea. Ren had few real friends, thanks to his suspicion, not entirely unfounded, that people only wanted to know him because of his mother. He protected those few friendships jealously.

But he wasn't nearly so careful of casual relationships with girls, as their encounter in the mall with Shangrila had proved.

In that respect, he was like every other boy who had ever drawn breath. Kerry had once hugged her and told her to stop worrying about it. Besides, Kerry said, it's not like you have to care, darling. He's your cousin.

Adopted cousin by marriage, Hayley wanted to remind her, but she stayed silent. It hurt less if people thought she was just being a critical friend, questioning her cousin's taste, rather than a jealous fool with a crush on a boy she could never have.

Hayley once woke to a world she didn't recognize. Ren was there, as he was in all her dreams, except this time he wasn't the Ren she knew. He was a different Ren, with longer hair, and a more muscular build, as if he'd spent all summer working out, instead of playing that PlayStation of his. The Ren in her dream was dressed strangely, too. He was different, stronger, more serious. But every time she called to him, every time he turned to look at her, the dream vanished and she was back with the pain, the electronic beeps and the hushed, worried voices of reality.

"Hayley... can you hear me?"

Ren's voice pierced the fog and she realized she wasn't dreaming this time. She was stuck in the limbo between unconsciousness and waking where the pain hadn't quite returned, but she could hear the beeping that had become the soundtrack of her dreams.

Ren...

Hayley said his name in her mind but nothing came out. Her tongue was dry, stuck to the side of her mouth, forced there by a tube that took up most of the space between her teeth. She was aware of the tube, mildly surprised she wasn't gagging on it.

But she could do nothing about it. And she certainly couldn't speak. "They say you can hear me."

Yes, Ren, I can hear you. God... my head is pounding... it hurts so much to think...

"I'm so sorry, Hayley. This is all my fault."

Hayley might have agreed with him, had she been clear-headed enough to figure out exactly to what Ren was referring. She guessed it had something to do with the headache and the tube and the beeping and the fact that she couldn't feel her fingers or toes...

"They told me to just tell you good news... you know, like you'll get better, and keep on fighting, and all that crap... but..." His voice faltered.

But what? Hayley wanted to scream at him. Don't stop there! Tell me what's happening!

"Jesus, you'd better not die on me, Hayley."

Die? I'm dying? Thanks for the heads up, Ren...

She sensed him leaning in a little closer. "We're gonna get him for you," he whispered.

Get who? Make some sense here, Ren.

"Trása's called in a few favors from Jack's old prison cronies."

Trása? Who is Trása? Is that the skanky ho I saw you walking down the street with? Hand in hand?

"Turns out Murray is a first-rate sleazebag," he said.

Like somebody else, I could mention. If I could talk.

"One of Jack's buddies has some info on a deal he's got going this afternoon," Ren continued, still talking in a whisper, as if he was afraid he'd wake her.

God, Ren, stop going on about Murray Symes. Tell me what's wrong with me...

"The cops said they're not going to do anything about what he did to you, but we can get the bastard disbarred, or dismembered, or whatever it is they do to doctors caught dealing shit under the counter."

Is that what's wrong with me? Murray Symes gave me something? The thought didn't make much sense to Hayley. Th last thing she remembered was seeing Ren trying to cross the road amid a sea of photographers.

Was Murray Symes even there?

Hayley knew the answer was there somewhere, but in her pain-fogged mind, she couldn't quite make the connection. She wondered if Ren was holding her hand. If he was, she couldn't feel it.

He was still talking, but Hayley found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what he was saying. She wished she could open her eyes but there seemed to be something over them, blocking out the light, and she couldn't move her hands to check. By the time she finished that thought, she felt something on her forehead... Ren's lips, she decided, not sure if he was kissing her goodbye or she was back in another dream...

"Why isn't she awake yet?" Hayley thought she heard Ren ask, except he wasn't talking to her. His tone was no longer soft and conspiratorial. Now he sounded angry. Or maybe worried.

"There's nothing to worry about," she thought she heard Kiva tell him. Was Kiva here too? Why?

Hayley might have panicked at that point - if she'd been able to. God, I must be dying if Kiva's the one handing out sage advice.

"She's in an induced coma, sweetheart," Kiva explained to Ren in a low voice. "The doctors will bring her out when they're satisfied she's stable."

"But it's been more than a day..."

"And it may be a few more," his mother told him comfortingly. "There's nothing to worry about."

"Yeah... 'cause they induce comas for the craic, don't they?"

"Ren... please... not in here..." That wasn't Kiva. It sounded like her father. Was Patrick there too? Was everyone in the room, clustered around the bed, talking about her as if she was on her deathbed?

"I'm sorry, Mom," she heard Ren say after a moment. "About everything."

"It's okay, Ren," Kiva whispered.

"No... really. I'm sorry. About the red carpet. Accusing Murray of being a pervert. For getting Hayley into this mess."

"It's not your fault, Ren," Hayley heard her father say.

What? What isn't Ren's fault? Somebody tell me what's happening and why I can't make you hear me!

"Patrick's right, darling. Hayley's injuries are not your fault. As for Murray... he only wants the best for you. We all do. You just make it so hard, sometimes."

"I know," Ren said. He sounded worn down and defeated. Do you sound like that because of me? Hayley wondered.

"I do love you, Mom," Ren added in a low voice. "You know that, don't you?"

"You have an odd way of showing it sometimes, darling."

"Look..." Hayley heard Patrick say in a loud whisper. "Much as it's nice to see you two hugging and making up, can we move it outside? She can hear everything, you know."

"Then perhaps it's a good thing she hears us talking," Kiva said. "Hayley should know she's loved and that those who love her love each other."

"And she will," Patrick assured Kiva. "But really, if we crowd her, the doctors won't let any of us in here."

"I could have my naturopath call in..." Hayley heard Kiva begin. But she didn't hear the rest because the voices faded and Hayley could no longer make out what they were saying. Or perhaps she'd fallen asleep again, and had dreamed the whole thing.

Any time now, Hayley decided, I'm going to wake up at home in my bed and everyone is going to laugh themselves senseless when I tell them about this crazy dream I'm having.

Except if it's a dream, why does my head hurt so much?

## Chapter 23

"Anything coming?"

Ren glanced out of the warehouse window at the rain-slick cobbled alley. He shook his head.

"Nothing."

"Like you were even looking," Trása said, tossing Plunkett the Creepy Leprechaun Doll ahead of her before climbing up the stack of abandoned freight pallets to where Ren was sitting. She wore a very tight T-shirt that didn't quite cover her midriff, which Ren found distracting. "Some lookout you are."

Trása shoved the doll aside and clambered forward on the stack of old pallets to look out the window. It was still raining, but there was no sign of any cars yet. Ren wondered why she wasn't wearing a jacket. It was chilly in the warehouse, but the temperature didn't seem to bother her.

"Are you sure Jack is right about this?" he asked, still wondering why he'd allowed himself to be talked into this foolishness. Trása was far too good at persuading him to do things against his better judgment and he couldn't understand why. He'd only known her a couple of days.

In fact, the rational Ren inside him suggested - the one he wasn't listening to - if you had any brains at all, moron, you'd leave now. Before anybody else arrives.

And before his mother's manager, Jon van Heusen, discovered Ren borrowed his rented Ferrari while he was back at the house discussing Kiva's next movie offer with her.

But Jack had been adamant this was the real thing. And as Ren was helpless to do anything else for Hayley, getting Murray Symes off the road seemed as noble a quest as any.

"This is a matter of honor," Trása reminded him. She was very determined about this - so determined, Ren found it impossible to disagree with her.

"I wonder if that's reasonable grounds for breaking and entering," Ren mused, glancing around the rubbish-strewn building. There were a few cardboard shelters beside a couple of old shopping trolleys over in the far corner of the cavernous warehouse. He guessed a number of homeless people camped here at night. He wasn't sure how the homeless men found their way inside the warehouse. Ren and Trása had broken a lock to gain entry. "That door didn't pop open on its own, you know."

Trása shrugged. "You worry too much."

"Are you sure this is the right place?"

"It's the address Jack gave us."

"I still don't understand how Jack even knows about Symes selling drugs." Ren still wasn't clear on that point. Since Trása had thrown a stone at his window in the early hours of the morning, motioning him to come down to meet her, things had moved very fast. As soon as he'd sneaked out of the house, she'd taken him by the hand, pulled him through the gate in the wall to Jack's place, and then demanded her grandfather tell Ren what he'd apparently just told her.

Murray Symes is peddling drugs, Jack had informed him. And Jack went on to say there was a fair chance the holier-than-thou Dr Symes had been high on something when he hit Hayley.

Ren was appalled. The man who'd made his life a misery, the man who'd run Ren's best friend down in his haste to escape a few photographers, was dealing amphetamines on the side, and one of Jack's shady friends knew all about it.

Not only that, Jack informed Ren. He knew where the deal was going down. That very day.

"Jack already explained how he knows," Trása said, a little impatiently. "One of his old associates from prison is in on the deal. He saw Murray on the news and realized the accident happened next to Jack's place, so he called him to tell him that he knew the chap, and how he knew him."

"Yeah... I know that's what he told us, it just seems a little... convenient, don't you think?"

She glared at him in annoyance. "Why are you asking me, Ren? I'm just the messenger."

But Trása was more than just the messenger. She was driving this careening bus and the rational part of Ren had a feeling it would end badly.

That hadn't stopped him borrowing the Ferrari without permission - easier than taking the keys for the Bentley which Patrick never let out of his sight - and driving down to this abandoned warehouse to find out if Jack was right. Maybe, if he and Trása were lucky and they got away quickly enough - not a hard thing to do in a Ferrari - the only person this would end badly for was Murray Symes.

It was high time something went badly for Symes. The cops weren't going to do a damn thing about him. The policewoman had told them as much.

Ren sat a little straighter. "There's a car coming."

Trása leant forward to look, leaning on Ren's thigh to balance herself. She craned forward until Ren's face was almost smothered in her luscious, long, blonde hair, her hand on his thigh dangerously close to his groin. He breathed in the scent of her hair until he was giddy. She smelled like a warm summer day.

Ren turned to look out of the window again; a far safer option than drowning in the heady scent of Trása. A silver Mercedes had pulled up in the alley. It sat there, its wipers on, but nobody had emerged from it. Although there was nothing happening, the presence of the car made Ren feel a little better. Clearly, something illegal was about to happen. People who drove cars like that did their legitimate business in offices, conference rooms and hotel bars, not out the back of abandoned warehouses.

"One down, one to go," Trása said in a low voice, leaning back to make sure she wasn't seen from the alley below. "Are you sure this is going to work, Ren?"

"Now you're having second thoughts?" She pulled a face at him.

Ren shrugged, watching the car from the shadows. "If Jack's right, the game is on. All we have to do is ring the cops once Murray arrives."

Trása nodded. "Ring the cops."

Ren shook his head. "No point. Right now, there's a car sitting in an alley. We need someone else to turn up before we have anything happening. That's when we'll call the cops."

"Suppose the Gardaí don't come?"

"I'll tell them there's a man with a gun. Cops always respond faster when you mention guns." He'd learned that on the set of Angel of Justice in LA when he was eight, from the ex-cop acting as the movie's technical advisor.

Trása looked a little skeptical, but didn't argue the point. Ren wondered what she was thinking. Was she worried about being caught in a place where neither of them belonged? Or was she - like Ren - thinking only of Hayley, lost in a coma because she got in the way of Murray Symes's speedy getaway?

Suddenly there was a crash. They both turned to look for the source of the noise. On the other side of the warehouse, a man stood watching them. He wore a long, grubby coat, and was pushing an overloaded shopping trolley, stuffed with plastic bags. Ren guessed it was one of the homeless men who squatted here. The man stared at them suspiciously for a moment and then shoved his trolley behind a couple of sheets of corrugated iron that were leaning against the wall. He must have come in through another door at the back of the warehouse. Fortunately, he no longer seemed interested in what Ren and Trása were doing.

"The other car is coming," Trása hissed.

Ren turned his attention back to the window as a vehicle pulled into the alley behind the Mercedes.

"Call the cops."

Ren hesitated, wondering if he should wait. All they had down there, really, were two cars minding their own business in a lane between a couple of abandoned warehouses, and neither of them was Murray's BMW. There was no sign of anything illegal going on. If he called the Gardaí and they arrived too soon, they wouldn't find anything amiss. Murray Symes would get away.

Down in the alley, the car doors opened. "Call them," Trása insisted.

Ren reached into his pocket for his mobile.

He dialed . The phone rang a couple of times. "Emergency. Please state the service you require."

"Gardaí."

Four men stepped out of the cars, despite the rain. They were too far away to tell if any of them was Murray.

The phone rang again, followed by a female voice. "Please state the nature of the emergency."

"There's a man with a gun," Ren said, trying to inject a little panic - and something more of an Irish accent - into his voice. He gave them the address, and then added urgently, "Please be quick. I think there's some sort of drug deal going down. They're gonna shoot someone!"

Ren cut the call as the operator was asking for his name. Trása grinned from ear to ear. The glee of vengeance about to be served. In bucket loads.

"Time to go," Ren said, shoving the phone into his backpack. Already they could hear sirens. Only they weren't in the distance, they were loud and near and close enough for them to see the pulsing blue lights, reflecting off the warehouse walls.

Trása looked surprised. "That was quick."

"Too quick," Ren said with a frown. He'd made the call only seconds ago. For the Gardaí to be already here... he tossed the backpack to the floor. "Shit! We've gotta get outta here, Trása. Now!"

"What's the hurry?" she asked, as Ren jumped from the pallet stack to the floor. "Don't you want to see what we started?"

"I don't think it was us that started it," Ren said, scooping up his backpack. There were voices outside. Shouting. The sirens were loud enough to drown out the tattoo of rain on the warehouse's metal roof. "If the cops are already here, they didn't need us to tell them about this." Trása didn't seem to get how urgent this was. "Come on!"

Finally, she jumped to the floor, grunting in pain as she landed, leaving Plunkett on top of the pallets.

"You okay?"

She nodded. "Twisted my ankle a bit, that's all, you go ahead. I'll catch up."

Ren didn't want to leave her, but she pushed him away. "Go, Ren. I'll be fine."

He did as she bid, glancing backward after a moment. Trása was limping, rapidly falling behind. Ren hurried back to her, took her arm, placed it over his shoulder, and pulled her toward the door they'd broken through to get into the warehouse.

The Ferrari was parked just outside. They had to get to it before the police did, because even if Ren and Trása remained undetected, the police would know who'd rented the car the moment they checked the license plate.

About thirty seconds after they called the rental company, they would call Kiva's manager and they'd know Ren Kavanaugh was somewhere in the vicinity.

The paparazzi had radio scanners. It would take them another thirty seconds to be on the scene and then... well, who knew what might happen next.

Then Ren remembered Trása's damned toy. She'd left the creepy thing on top of the pallets. If there was any way it could be traced back to her, it would lead them right back to Ren...

When he glanced back at the pallet, however, the doll was gone. "What happened to Plunkett?"

Trása looked at him oddly. "What?"

"That creepy toy of yours," he said. "Where is he?"

"Don't worry about him, Ren," Trása said as she hobbled along beside him. "He'll be fine."

Ren couldn't have cared less about the _Leipreachán_ 's welfare, and it certainly wasn't why he was asking, but before he could clarify the reason for his question, the door ahead of them burst open. Police spilled into the warehouse like a river of dark ink, wearing helmets and bulletproof vests emblazoned with ERU across their backs.

Emergency Response Unit. Great.

Their presence removed any doubt Ren might have had about whether or not his call had been responsible for this ambush. He was certain he'd had nothing to do with it.

The Gardaí didn't send out the ERU on the strength of one anonymous phone call.

The ERU men carried semi-automatic weapons with laser sights that sprayed red dots around the warehouse walls like lethal confetti, which very quickly focused on the two teenagers trying to flee the scene.

"Halt or we'll shoot!"

Ren glanced down at the score of red lights dancing across his chest. He let go of Trása and raised his hands in the air, wincing as the action pulled on his wounded ribs.

"Drop the bag!"

Ren did as ordered. He dropped his backpack. It spilled open on the damp floor. The phone was screwed, he guessed, as it rolled into a puddle.

"On the floor! Face down! Now!"

Ren knew better than to argue with a bunch of trigger-happy ERU officers. He lowered himself to the ground, pressing his face against the cracked concrete floor. It was cold and damp and smelled of kerosene and feral cats.

On the edge of his awareness, oddly enough, he thought he smelled smoke.

He turned his face toward Trása as the police swarmed over them, roughly pulling their arms behind them, slapping cold metal cuffs on them with a great deal more enthusiasm than Ren thought the situation warranted. Then they grabbed his backpack and pulled them both to their feet. Trása didn't look so much scared as fatalistic about the whole thing. But Trása's mug shot wasn't going to be appearing on the front page of all the major daily newspapers the next morning.

Trása looked at Ren apologetically. She seemed genuinely remorseful. "I'm so sorry for doing this to you, Ren."

"Not your fault, Trása."

"Shut up!" the officer holding Ren ordered.

"There's a bright side to this, you know," Trása said, as if she was determined not to let the police intimidate her.

"I told you to shut up, kid!"

"A bright side?" Ren asked. Neither of them was paying any attention. It was a small act of defiance but an important one.

"You'll be safe now," Trása said.

"Safe?" That was one name for it, Ren thought as he was manhandled outside and into the back-seat of a Gardaí car for his trip downtown. They put Trása in a different car, and he soon lost sight of her as the cars pulled away in a flurry of flashing lights, misty rain, the squeal of sirens, and for some reason Ren couldn't fathom, fire engines heading at high speed back the way they had come from.

## Chapter 24

_"I'll kill you if I have to, to stop this."_

_Ren smiled down at the baby twin girls, dismissing the empty threat. "Even if you could get across this room before the deed was done, you can't kill me without killing yourself, which would achieve precisely what I am here to prevent."_

_He moved the blade a little, repositioning his grip. The candlelight danced across its engraved surface, mesmerizing the baby. Ren was happy to entertain her with the pretty lights for a few moments. His mission was to kill her and her sister, after all, not to make them suffer._

_There was a drawn-out silence as he played the light across the blade. Behind him, the presence that was both his conscience and his other half remained motionless. There was no point in him trying to attack. They were two sides of the same coin. Neither man could so much as form the intent to attack without the other knowing about it._

_The girls would be dead before anybody could reach the cradle to stop -_

"Chelan Aquarius Kavanaugh."

Ren was jerked rudely from the dream. He sat up, blinking furiously, his eyes watering, trying to focus in the sudden bright light. He'd been leaning his head on the cold metal table as he dozed. He was still cuffed and his shoulders ached from the unnatural position in which he'd been resting. "What?" he mumbled.

The detective took the seat opposite Ren, dropping a file on the table. Ren had no idea what time it was, only that he'd been there long enough to doze off. There was no clock. The room was bare, but for the table, two cold metal chairs and a two-way mirror on the cream-cultured wall behind the detective. And the fluorescent light overhead.

"Got quite a history, haven't you, Chelan Aquarius?"

"Yes, sir."

The officer they'd sent to interview him was fairly young, late twenties maybe. They probably figured Ren would bond better with a younger officer than with an older one.

"Want those cuffs off?"

Ren gritted his teeth. He hated the police who pretended to be his friend.

"No, thanks. I quite enjoy having my shoulders forced back at an unnatural angle." He looked around for the video cameras and the recording equipment. "Aren't you supposed to be filming this interview? Reading me my rights? Asking me if I want a lawyer?"

"We haven't charged you with anything yet."

"Then I can go home?"

The detective shrugged. "That depends on what you were doing in that warehouse."

"We weren't doing anything wrong."

"Which would be why the ERU brought you in. They were just cruising the streets looking for innocent bystanders to take into custody, I suppose."

"Someone should do something about that, officer. That's a waste of taxpayers' money, isn't it?"

The officer wasn't amused. He opened the file and glanced down at the charge sheet. The inside cover of the file had Ren's unflattering mug shot stapled to it. It was the same one the tabloids delighted in blowing up and pasting on the front page of national newspapers whenever they got wind of him being in trouble. "Says here you're a real smart-ass."

Ren leaned forward with interest. "Does it really? I didn't think you'd be allowed to use words like 'ass' in official documents."

"You think you're real funny, don't you, Kavanaugh?"

Ren shrugged, which proved a rather stupid and painful thing to do, given his hands were still cuffed behind his back. "I'm not trying to be funny, officer. I'm trying to co-operate."

"This is your idea of co-operating?" The officer looked back down at the file. "You celebrity kids are all the same. You think you're above the law because you're famous."

_Here we go again..._

"I'm not famous," Ren said patiently. "My mother is. That's not actually my fault, you know."

The cop studied his file as if Ren hadn't spoken. "How long have you been involved with Dominic O'Hara?"

The question was completely unexpected. "Who the hell is Dominic O'Hara?"

"The scumbag drug dealer you were acting as a lookout for today."

Ren stared at him, dumbfounded. "What?"

"Is he your boss?" the officer asked. "Your platinum Amex not enough for you, rich boy, so you thought you'd earn a little extra cash on the side dealing coke?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Ren asked, alarmed at the line of questioning. _Damn you, Jack O'Righin. So much for your inside information._

_How could Jack have got it so wrong? What happened to Murray Symes and his sideline in amphetamines?_

"If you weren't involved in O'Hara's little enterprise, what was a kid from a posh suburb like yours doing in that part of town?"

Ren frowned as it occurred to him that, for the first time, he was in trouble so serious that not even his mother's smooth- talking lawyer could negotiate his way out of it. "I want my lawyer."

The detective was growing impatient. "You wanna hope your lawyer can help you, Kavanaugh, 'cause you sure aren't helping yourself, right now."

Ren hoped he was projecting an air of quiet innocence, which was no mean feat, because on the inside he was bordering on blind panic. If he couldn't talk his way out of this mess, he'd probably die an old man in Utah.

His mother might forgive the time he was caught spraying graffiti on the windows of Harrods in London a couple of years ago. It helped that he'd been protesting seal clubbing with several of Kiva's co-stars at the time, who were much more high profile than Ren and who got most of the resulting publicity. Criminal acts for noble causes were easier to forgive than the time he'd filled all the umbrellas on the set of Rain Over Tuscany with talcum powder, which shut down shooting for a whole day while they cleaned up the mess, and got Ren sent back to school in disgrace. She'd even forgiven the time he'd stolen a realistic and bloody dummy corpse with its throat punctured by bite marks from the prop van and left it in the elevator of the hotel where they were staying. But Kiva was going to take a very dim view of a front-page headline announcing her son was caught acting as a lookout for a notorious drug lord.

He took a deep breath. Maybe it would be better if he co-operated. Or at least gave the appearance of doing so. Although he'd been warned - more times than he could count - to say nothing if he was arrested again, he decided to ignore the advice. "We just wanted somewhere quiet to hang out. We found the warehouse-" he started.

"You _broke into_ the warehouse," the officer corrected.

"Not us," Ren said, trying to look innocent. "Someone else must have busted that door, officer. We found it like that."

"Yeah... right," the officer said, shaking his head. "Why do you keep saying 'we'?"

"I meant me and Trása."

The cop stared at him blankly. "Who?"

"My friend. The girl they arrested with me."

He looked at Ren oddly. "Are you on drugs, kid?"

"No." Ren started to worry. "What happened to Trása?"

The officer shook his head. "There is no Trása," he said. "They picked you up alone, Kavanaugh. There was nobody else in that warehouse. Everything that happened today, you did all on your lonesome."

"That's not true. Trása was there..."

The officer shook his head, as if he'd heard it all before. "It's a bit late to start working on your insanity plea," he said, "by inventing an imaginary friend."

"This is bullshit!" Ren cried, wishing now he'd asked for the cuffs to be taken off, so he could shake some reason into this man. The police were playing games with him, he was certain. Trying to rattle his cage to get a confession out of him for something he knew nothing about.

"There was no girl," the officer insisted.

"She was there! Right beside me! She's about five six. She's pretty... really pretty. With incredibly long blonde hair. She was wearing jeans and a blue tank top. They put her in the other car. What have you done with her? You'd better not have hurt her!"

"I see." The officer was studying him with a strange expression. "Who do you claim she is?"

"Her name's Trása," Ren told him, realizing he didn't even know her last name. "She's Jack O'Righin's granddaughter."

"Really?" The officer leant back in his chair, smiling like he'd just won the lottery. "Jack O'Righin's granddaughter? That crazy old terrorist-turned-media-whore who lives next door to you? Are you serious?"

"No... I'm making it up because I think it's cute," Ren snapped. "Of course I'm fucking serious!"

"Watch your mouth, Kavanaugh."

"Then stop trying to fuck me about. What have you done with her?"

"Jack O'Righin doesn't have a granddaughter," the officer said flatly. "His wife and three daughters were murdered in the Troubles up north long before you and I were even born. Do your homework, smart-ass, before you go making up bullshit that won't hold up to even the most cursory examination."

"I'm not making this up! Christ, the cop who took my statement after Hayley's accident took one from her, too. She was going to bring it to the house."

The detective consulted his file for a moment and then shook his head. "No mention of her here."

Ren slumped back in his chair. He didn't understand what was going on. He thought they were just messing with his head, but the officer genuinely seemed to believe Ren was arrested alone.

But Ren had seen Trása in cuffs. He'd watched them loading her into a patrol car.

"Is there any chance they took her somewhere else? To another station, maybe, or -"

"For chrissakes, give it up, will you?" the officer snapped. "There is no girl, there was no girl, and if you have any brains at all, Kavanaugh, you'll do a deal with us to give up O'Hara's cocaine operation tonight, so we can all get out of here before morning."

Ren shook his head helplessly. "I have no idea who you're talking about."

The officer laughed. "So... you were just driving around in a stolen car with your imaginary friend, seeing how the other half live, I suppose, and Dominic O'Hara just happened to pull up with a carload of cocaine?"

"That's exactly what happened, officer. I even called it in. Check my phone. Better yet, check your records with the nine- nine-nine call center. I was the one who made the call." Then he added as an afterthought, "And I didn't steal the car. I borrowed it from my mother's manager." Picking up the keys off the counter in the kitchen while Jon was in the study with his mother didn't make it stealing, Ren reasoned. After all, he was planning to return the car.

"Yeah," the officer said, glancing down at the file. "Funny... borrowed is not the word he used when he reported it missing."

_Bastard_.

The door to the interview room opened and an older female cop walked in before he could be asked any more questions. She was accompanied by a very sleekly groomed, mid-thirtyish woman in a business suit, who Ren knew all too well. Eunice Ravenel, his mother's lawyer - she was usually dispatched to deal with the Ren problem.

"My client has nothing more to say," Eunice announced in her clipped and perfectly correct Swedish accent. She glared at Ren as she slammed her briefcase onto the metal table. Ren wasn't sure why, but she always slammed her briefcase down. Maybe she liked the noise it made. More likely she enjoyed the idea of seeing cops - every one of whom she was certain was either corrupt or incompetent - jump.

The officer who'd been interviewing Ren looked at his boss. The inspector shrugged. "Sorry, Pete."

"Yeah, Pete," Ren said. "I'm sorry, too. We were just starting to bond, I thought."

Eunice turned to Pete, her eyes blazing with indignation. "Why is this boy still in cuffs?"

Pete looked to his boss for help. "He said he liked them."

"Is this your idea of revenge? Because my client is the son of a celebrity?" Eunice turned on the inspector, who wore a pained look that spoke of long experience with Eunice Ravenel and her righteous indignation. "You can be sure I'll be lodging a formal complaint about this, Inspector Duggan. Ren is a minor. And you've kept him here, interrogating him like a prisoner of war, alone, without representation and chained like a common criminal. This is police brutality!"

Ren rolled his eyes, glad Eunice had her back to him and couldn't see him doing it. Police brutality. For once, he sympathized with the police. Although he supposed he shouldn't. Eunice was here to bail him out, after all.

The inspector sighed and nodded. "Why don't you do that, Ms Ravenel? In fact, I can give you a form. You can fill it out while we book your client for dealing in commercial quantities of prohibited substances, breaking and entering, trespassing, arson, and maybe even murder, if the homeless man they pulled out of the warehouse your client burned down doesn't make it through the night." She turned to the detective who'd been interviewing Ren. "Unlock the cuffs, Pete."

_What fire? What are they talking about? Homeless man? Did they mean the guy with the shopping trolley?_

With a grunt of disapproval, Pete produced the keys to the cuffs and freed Ren's wrists from the restraints. Ren eased his shoulders forward, glad to be free, but fairly certain it wasn't because they were about to let him go.

Eunice stared at him, dumbstruck. "God, Ren, you tried to kill someone?"

_So much for innocent until proven guilty._

"No. I don't know what they're on about."

Eunice shook her head with a heavy sigh, not believing him any more than Inspector Duggan or Detective Pete did.

"How long before I can arrange bail?" Eunice asked.

"Bail?" the inspector scoffed. "There won't be any bail for your boy this time, Ms Ravenel. He's facing serious charges."

"My client is not a flight risk. His mother -"

"Hasn't been able to stop him doing anything he wanted since he was ten years old. This kid is the very definition of a flight risk. He's not in the slightest bit sorry, he's facing serious time, has a valid passport, easy access to credit cards and a private jet, last I heard."

"We don't have a private jet," Ren said. "It belongs to the studio."

"Be quiet, Ren," Eunice ordered. "You're not helping." She turned back to the inspector. "If Ms Kavanaugh could guarantee Ren's good behavior-"

"Then the little smart-ass wouldn't be sitting here, would he?" Pete said, glaring at Ren.

"I'm sorry, Ms Ravenel," the inspector said in a tone that suggested she was anything but sorry. "Your client will be our guest for the evening and if you want to argue what an upstanding member of society he is, you can do it tomorrow. In court. To a magistrate."

Eunice looked like she might keep objecting, but the inspector never gave her the opportunity. She turned for the door. "C'mon, Pete. I'm sure Ms Ravenel wants a word with her client."

Pete gathered up his file, gave Ren a serves-you-right-you- little-smart-ass look, and followed the inspector out of the room, slamming the door behind them.

## Chapter 25

"I'm very disappointed in you, Ren," Eunice said, taking the seat recently occupied by Detective Pete.

"I didn't do anything, Eunice." Ren stared down at his hands, locking his fingers together until they turned white.

"A magistrate will go much more leniently on you if you take responsibility for your actions."

"I didn't do anything, Eunice," Ren repeated in a monotone. He felt like adding _you have to believe me_ , but that just seemed like begging, and he shouldn't have to beg his own lawyer to have a little faith in him.

She sighed heavily. Eunice Ravenel often sighed heavily when she dealt with Ren. "I've spoken to your mother. She's tempted to let you rot in here, Ren. So unless I can give her a compelling reason to believe you're innocent - no mean feat, given you stole a guest's car from her house - then I'm afraid there's no stopping the natural course of justice."

"How about you just accept it when I tell you I haven't done anything wrong, and you defend me like you're supposed to. You know... because you believe me."

Eunice wasn't so easily persuaded. "Then tell me what you were doing in that warehouse."

Ren didn't answer.

"Are you involved with this O'Hara character?"

"I never heard of him until ten minutes ago."

"Then how is it you happened to be at his warehouse at the precise moment his drug deal was going down?"

Ren was wondering that, too. For a moment, he even thought about telling Eunice everything. About Murray Symes. About where he got the information from about the drug deal...

But he didn't want to betray Jack until he was certain Jack had betrayed him. The old man had helped Ren too many times, and kept quiet about it for Ren to hand him over to the police just to get his own backside out of the fire. Besides, he was more worried about what might have happened to Trása. "It doesn't matter why we were there, Eunice. Can you find out what happened to my friend?"

"What friend?"

"Jack O'Righin's granddaughter. They arrested us at the same time, but now the cops are saying she wasn't there."

Eunice let out one of her trademark sighs. "Jack O'Righin has no granddaughter. If you'd read more than the dustcover of that shameless attempt to rewrite history that he's peddling and were less impressed by notoriety, Ren, you'd know Jack O'Righin's family was killed years ago. Vengeance for their deaths was one of his feeble justifications for the violence he perpetrated on all those innocent people."

"If you don't believe me, ask Murray Symes about her," Ren said, sick of everyone trying to convince him Trása was a figment of his imagination. "He's met her. He even threatened to have me arrested if I tried to have sex with her."

Eunice stared at him, saying nothing.

"It's the truth," Ren insisted. "If I was lying I'd have thought up something way better than that, Eunice, believe me."

The lawyer shook her head sadly. "You've had so many opportunities, Ren. But this time, you've crossed the line. Your mother has spent her life campaigning against drugs. You know how she feels about drug dealers."

"God! Aren't you listening to me? I wasn't dealing drugs!"

He might as well have remained mute, for all the attention she was paying to him.

She let out another sigh. "And now you're in danger of taking a man's life. What were you thinking, Ren? Setting fire to that place? Are you so starved for attention you thought you'd give arson a go? Was cutting yourself not getting the results you wanted, so you decided to hurt someone other than yourself?"

Ren closed his eyes, overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness. How was it possible that everybody got him so wrong? This woman was supposed to be defending him, and even she thought he was a lost cause.

"I swear to God, Eunice, I know nothing about the fire at the warehouse."

"The Gardaí tell me that when they searched you, they found another cut on your ribs. Is that true?"

Ren hesitated before he answered, knowing the truth was sure to condemn him. "Yes."

"I see." Eunice rose to her feet, with another sigh. "I'll call your mother and tell her what's happened. I'm sure she'll try to be in court tomorrow, but..."

"I know. She may not be able to get away." Ren knew that excuse by heart.

"She's still at the hospital with the rest of the family, Ren," Eunice told him. "I think poor Hayley's vigil is likely to take precedence over another one of your court appearances, don't you?"

Eunice had that much right. Hayley's fate was far more important than his.

The lawyer picked up her briefcase and knocked on the door. She glanced at Ren as she waited for someone to unlock it, but said nothing further. Pete opened it, looking far too smug for Ren's liking. He let Eunice out, entered the room and closed the door firmly.

"What now?" Ren asked.

"We're going to book you into the five-star accommodation of Chez Watch-house," Pete informed him, as he pulled Ren to his feet. "And it seems there's nothing your mother's celebrity lawyer can do to stop it, either."

"Can I order room service?"

"Keep it up, smart-ass." Pete shoved Ren toward the door, apparently pleased with the notion that Chelan Aquarius Kavanaugh would spend the night behind bars and that - unless he was kidnapped by aliens - that was where he was probably going to stay for the rest of his life.

* * *

The watch-house cells were noisy and brightly lit. There was no window in Ren's cell, so he couldn't tell what time it was. The walls were white, made of some sort of laminated material impervious to graffiti or vandalism. A narrow bed was built into the back wall and had a thin, vinyl-covered foam mattress. There was a stainless-steel toilet in the opposite corner. Ren wore overalls made of paper, presumably to stop him strangling himself with his own clothes.

Because he was only seventeen and still legally a juvenile offender, Ren was treated to a solitary cell, rather than a communal one full of drunks and addicts. He thought that was something to be grateful for, until he realized he'd been confined to one of the observation cells they used for suicide watch, which meant they cranked up the heating instead of giving him a blanket - again, he assumed, to prevent him making a noose out of it. He wasn't officially on suicide watch, but he figured he might soon be, if they didn't stop checking on him every thirty minutes to ask if he was okay.

Despite the regular interruptions, Ren had lost track of the time when they made the next round of checks. He even managed to doze off. It was several hours since dinner - which had turned out to be takeaway from the local fish and chip shop down the road - when he was woken by someone saying his name.

"Ren Kavanaugh?"

"Wasn't that my name the last time you checked?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. Then he realized that it wasn't what they'd asked him the last time. The last time they'd called him Chelan Aquarius. He squinted at the newcomers in the sudden brightness. They'd turned on the main light, which he assumed the cops had picked up at a sale of leftover stadium illumination equipment.

"Are you Ren Kavanaugh?"

"Yes," he said, with a sigh that would have done Eunice proud. "I am Ren Kavanaugh." He focused on his visitors and frowned. They were a man and a woman of indeterminate age, both dressed in dark suits. They looked like door-to-door salesmen.

"Come with us please."

"Where?"

"Please, do not question us."

Had he been less exhausted, Ren decided later, he might have started to worry when they wouldn't tell him where they were going. Given Trása had already vanished - seemingly without a trace - he had reason to be concerned. Not until he followed the suits out into the corridor and past the door at the end of it that normally needed a card and a PIN to get through, did it occur to him that something was amiss. The watch-house desk was abandoned, too, and an elderly sergeant was slumped over the keyboard of his computer, where he'd apparently been playing Solitaire before falling asleep.

Ren looked around the deserted reception area. "What's going on?"

"You are being evacuated," the woman said. She seemed to be in charge.

"To where? For what?"

"Please. Be patient."

"Can I have my clothes, then?" Ren asked, pointing at the white paper overalls that crackled as he walked.

"Clothes will be arranged for you when we reach our destination," the woman assured him.

"Destination? What destination? Where are we going?"

"Your questions will be answered soon enough, Ren."

"Has someone called my lawyer? She'll be royally pissed if she finds I've been moved and nobody's notified her."

"Everything has been taken care of. You have nothing to fear."

"Who are you guys?" Ren asked, as they hurried him into the elevator.

Suit One looked at Suit Two for a moment and then the woman smiled. "We are with Interpol."

_Interpol!_ Ren thought in alarm. _What the fuck have I done now?_ "Show me some ID."

"Very well."

The woman reached into the pocket of her jacket and took from it not a wallet with a badge as Ren was expecting, but a handful of blue powder.

Before Ren had time to turn away, the woman blew the powder into his face and he slumped unconscious into the arms of the man behind him.

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