Cold Iron (14 page)

She made him think like that. In terms of good and bad. And better. She made him want to be better. Better than his people had been to his daughter. And his Druid allies to his people.

“Living among them,” he said to Miach, as they followed the girl. “It changes you.”

Miach trailed his fingers along a hedge they were passing. “Yes. They rub off on you. Like rosemary. But I’ve never been foolish enough to bind myself to one. I like life too much.”

“Your father, Dian, once told me that we live too long. That is why we breed so sluggishly. Why we feel so little. Our capacity for emotion atrophies.”

“Anything atrophies,” Miach said, “if you don’t use it. But if you bind yourself to the girl, you’ll share her death. With the level of Druid skill she has now, she might live a few hundred years, maybe more if your seed takes in her and she bears offspring. Our magic crosses the placenta, imparts some of our longevity to women who carry our children, but when she dies, you will die, too.”

Conn contemplated a few hundred years, feeling as he had this past week, versus millennia unfeeling as he had been in Clonmel, and with the Court in times before. Then a thought occurred to him, strange and heartbreaking. “You will outlive all your children, Miach. Even the ones who are nearly full-blooded Fae.”

“Not if Brian murders me first. He craves fame and power, and this is a dangerous age for the Fae. Make no mistake, we are too few to rule the humans here. They have technology to rival our magic now, and if they knew of us, knew what we could do to them, they would destroy us.”

Miach put out a hand to halt them. Conn saw the girl unlock a low gate, a silly thing easily vaulted, and let herself into a rambling house. Shared, no doubt. Conn could see shadows moving behind the windows.

“I am disinclined,” Miach said, looking right and left and scanning the quiet empty street, “to glamour an entire house full of students.” He moved with the preternatural speed of their race, his motion a blur to anyone who chanced to observe, and severed Conn’s gleaming blond braid with a deft slice of his silver knife.

“What did you do that for?” It was only hair, he told himself, but he was vain of it, like all Fae. It had shocked him to see Miach close-shorn.

“It is memorable. Ren Fair reject is what the blond Amazon called you. We do not need to draw attention to ourselves here. Boston has never been a city renowned for the beauty of its inhabitants. We stand out enough, even when we mute our appearance.”

“Beth liked my hair,” Conn said, knowing he sounded petulant.

Miach handed him the shining braid. “Then give it to her as a love token. Now stop pouting. We need to question the girl and get back to your Druid. Liam and Nial are well-meaning but easily led.”

So was Frank Carter’s mistress. Christie Kelley was easily glamoured into opening her door. Her apartment was strangely lacking in personality, as though she had just moved in and only unpacked the essentials.

But she hadn’t. She answered their steady stream of questions, and Conn felt a growing unease as the girl spoke. She didn’t fight him. He was using the lightest touch on her mind, but there wasn’t even the dullest spark of resistance. She rolled over for him like a well-trained dog.

She’d been in the apartment for two years. Too long for such barrenness. Frank didn’t like to come here. Frank liked her to come to his house. Or his office. He liked her to service him in his office. She described this in the same matter-of-fact way as she did the other tasks he assigned her: grading papers, writing articles, answering emails.

She didn’t know where Frank was now. He’d gone to New York on business, but come back angry, told her to go get money from his bank—from the teller, not the machine—and bring it to him. Miach explained that this meant Carter suspected someone was tracking his movements.

She’d delivered the money to Carter at a café near the university. His friend Egan had been there. Something had gone wrong in New York. She hadn’t understood everything the two men had discussed.

“She may know more than she realizes. Take a look,” Miach said.

“Her mind,” Conn said, “is like a soft-boiled egg.”

“
Warriors
 . . . let me look,” Miach said.

Conn withdrew his touch from the girl’s mind. Miach remained seated on the hard wooden chair he had chosen when they’d entered the room. Christie’s face took on a quizzical look as her eyelids fluttered open and shut.

“Carter went to New York to sell the sword,” Miach said. “The girl didn’t follow what they were talking about, but it’s clear that his buyer double-crossed him. That suggests a Fae. He and the other man—Egan?—fled Manhattan with the sword and are looking for a new buyer. She doesn’t know where they’ve gone.”

The girl whimpered. Her eyes shot open, fixed on something far away, and tears started to pour down her face.

“That’s all we need, Miach. Don’t hurt her.”

“Hurting her is hardly my intention,” Miach said icily. “I’m trying to free her from the bastard’s control, but her will is badly eroded. He probably doesn’t know what he is or how to use suggestion without battering her mind.”

Like he’d battered Beth. And she’d survived, because the Druid in her had woken up and taught itself, inch by inch, to fight back. It was a process that had started long before she’d met Conn. It made him feel better, to know he had not brought all of this turmoil into her life. And it explained why she had the courage and skill to resist him.

Conn watched as Miach let go of the girl, then listened as the sorcerer spun a fantasy for Christie Kelley. He told her how she had realized Frank Carter was no good for her and had determined to break it off with him. He’d told her that she had finally recognized the way this man had isolated her from people and that tonight she would call up old friends, maybe go to a movie. When Frank Carter next called her—and Conn had promised himself that would be never, because he was going to kill the man—she would rebuff him.

Then, to Conn’s eternal amusement, Miach got up and made the girl a cup of tea. “I have granddaughters,” he said in response to Conn’s raised eyebrows. “Bad breakups are par for the course.”

It was dusk by the time they returned to Beth’s house. Conn felt a prickle of fear when he didn’t see any of Miach’s cars outside. He took the stairs two at a time, and when no one answered the door, he kicked it in.

He ran through the apartment calling for Beth. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the quilt missing from the bed, the sheets naked and tangled.

“Conn.” Miach was in the kitchen. There was blood dotting the floor ,and a smear of it was on the shattered glass of the back door.

Conn tumbled back through time, to the day he’d returned from enforcing some petty Fae edict and sought the warmth of his mistress’s house. He had remained fond of the woman, though she was no longer young. The Court had mocked him for continuing the liaison. But he’d ignored them and continued to visit the cottage where his mistress lived and his daughter was growing into a beautiful woman. Vanity, he had called it then, to watch his quick-witted child grow.

The cottage, too, had been empty. And by the time he found them, it was too late.

“Not this time.” He had said it out loud.

“Liam and Nial would not this do alone,” Miach said. “Brian must be behind it. Perhaps some of the Fianna.”

“I can’t reach Beth,” Conn said. “I gave her the earrings.”

“Well, I can find the Amazon,” Miach said wryly. “Luckily I don’t have your scruples. I marked her while she was out on the sofa. And before you scold me, it was only by way of a memo to myself. I used a felt pen. It will wash off.”

“You can have my blessing to bed every woman in Boston
tomorrow
, so long as you find my woman
tonight
.”

I
t was cold on the
water. Beth lay huddled in a corner of the boat, her hands tied behind her back. She still had the quilt, but she’d managed to get it over Helene, who was pale and unmoving and needed it more.

Helene’s eyes opened. At least the two of them were out in the air and not stuffed into the cabin. She’d been so afraid Helene would wake up in the trunk.

“What’s happening?” Helene asked. “Who are they really?”

“Criminals,” Beth said quietly.

“They’re not just criminals,” Helene said tonelessly. “The older one, he did something to me. He was inside my head.”

“They can do that,” Beth said. “They’re Fae half-breeds. And Conn and Miach are true Fae. Ancient and immortal. Beautiful but cruel. They can get inside your head, make you want them, make you do things.”

“I thought fairies were supposed to be nice.”

“We made the Fae into bedtime stories,” Beth said, remembering Conn’s words. “Because the reality would keep us up at night. Helene, I’m so sorry to have gotten you into this.”

“I’m sorry about what I said in the gallery.”

“Oh, Helene, you had every reason to be furious. I poured red wine down that beautiful dress.”

Helene smiled, bit her lip, and said, “Of course you did. I was ogling your boyfriend.” Then she burst into laughter mixed with tears, and Beth joined her.

“Enough of that.” Brian’s Fae resonant voice carried over the deck. The boat, Beth realized, had stopped. Nial cut their bonds and lowered them none too gently into the dinghy. Liam was careful not to look Beth in the eye, but she didn’t fool herself. There was no help there.

It was nearly dark, but there were no lights on the shore. Or in any other direction. They were miles from South Boston and from every other Harbor Island. Even if there had been another island nearby, it was too cold to swim the channel. There was no need to tie them up out here. There was no escape.

The shore was rocky. She felt every stone through the soft soles of her moccasins and stumbled blindly in the dark with only Nial’s rough hands to guide her. Somewhere up ahead she heard stones skittering and knew Brian must be dragging Helene. The sure-footedness of the half-breeds confirmed her suspicion. The Fae-blooded could see better than humans in the dark.

They reached the top of the shoreline, and rocky beach gave way to thick forest. It was old growth, stout and stolid, with a soft carpet of needles beneath her feet. Finally the moon—a bright crescent—came out of hiding and Beth realized they were on a trail that had perhaps once been a road. They climbed, up and up, until they reached a plateau and a clearing where the moonlight played silver off a hipped slate roof.

The island must have been one of the fortified British outposts before the revolution, built to repel the French, then turned against the colonists during the blockade of Boston. The graceful Georgian proportions and Flemish bond brick placed it firmly in the middle of the eighteenth century. Beth would have found it picturesque and lovely, sitting atop this hill, even with the gardens grown wild and the shutters rotting on their hinges, if its utter isolation didn’t mean Brian could do anything he wanted to them.

There was dim light behind the twelve-paned windows. Candles or oil lamps, Beth thought. No electricity in this forgotten place. She could smell smoke on the air. No heat either. And the temperature was dropping fast.

Ahead of her Helene was shivering. Brian laughed and ripped the quilt off her shoulders, flung it into the air. Beth saw it flutter to land on the wild grassy slope. Irrationally, she wanted to run and scoop it up, wrap herself in it, and hide, like from the boogey man. Because these creatures were all her worst nightmares come to life.

Except perhaps Liam, who stopped to gather up the quilt and throw it over his shoulder.

The wide doors to the house were open, the pillared porch peeling to gray wood and the painted floor of the front hall covered with windblown leaves and rustling brown pine needles. An eerie keening sound drifted out of the parlor to their right, and Beth’s first thought was the
bean sídhe
, foretelling her death.

But the music came from a man. An ordinary man. Not Fae or half -Fae. His clothes were tattered but had once been quite fine. White tie and tails. He sat in a chair beside the fire, an oboe to his lips, his fingers poking through the frayed ends of white gloves, and beneath them, the keys slick with fresh blood. As though he had been snatched from the orchestra at Symphony Hall and forced to play until his fingers bled. Very likely he had.

The creatures he entertained were of a piece with the elegant house: beautiful, clean limbed, and full of hidden rot. There were three of them, all pure Fae. If their long hair, antique clothes, and cruel smiles hadn’t told Beth what they were, the clenching in her belly would have.

She was glad Helene couldn’t see them as they really were, because even Beth, who had looked on Conn and Miach with iron-clear eyes, felt her teeth ache and her eyes burn looking at these Fae. She tasted salt and iron and realized her nose was bleeding.

She did not want to enter that room. She had not expected to encounter true Fae here. Brian and the half-breeds, yes. Discontents from the other Fae clan, the Fianna, yes. But this changed the odds considerably. Conn might be a tested warrior, but Miach was not, and if Conn tried to rescue them, it would be three against one.

And while she had been learning how to repel Miach’s and Conn’s mental advances, they, she realized, had been civilized Fae, used to touching humans minds, they’d gone native from their time spent with mortals. These Fae, though, were truly alien. When their leader stood, his night-black hair swept the floor. He rose from his chair with preternatural grace, then examined Beth the way a cat scrutinizes a mouse foolish enough to enter his domain.

“So this is Conn’s Druid.”

Every instinct told her to run, but Brian’s knife was pricking her back. He shoved her forward into the room, put his booted foot in the middle of her back, and thrust. She sprawled at the feet of the exquisite Fae.

In a second she would have to look up at him. She experienced a moment of perfect clarity as the ragged musician played on. Madness, she realized, was an option. She could, if she chose, curl up into a ball at the feet of this monster and tumble into the abyss. Allow her mind to splinter. Flee from the terror and the pain his sublime beauty promised.