Reluctantly Charmed (42 page)

“STOP!” I screamed at them. They weaved past each other like bees on a honeycomb. “The fairies won’t take you to Tír na nÓg. Brick is probably dead, or in the south of Spain.”

I ran around the inner edge of the circle. The members of the Hellfire Club appeared almost drugged, their eyes glassy as if they were on a hallucinogenic trip.

Maura
, I thought.
Which one is Maura?

Then I found her. Maura’s wig had come off, and thin, white wispy hair peeped from under her hood. She had no gloves on and her hands were gnarly and covered in liver spots. She was ancient.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her to wake her. “Maura! This is madness. The ground isn’t going to open up. Tír na nÓg isn’t going to appear!”

“Kate!” Maura, suddenly lucid, focused her eyes on me. “Isn’t it wonderful? We’re going to live forever, Kate! Forever!”

“You’re crazy, Maura. You’re all crazy.”

I didn’t need the fairy fort to protect me. I could outrun these old people. In fact, I could out
walk
them. I didn’t know how they’d managed to get my there, but they wouldn’t be able to stop my leaving. I broke through the circle just as some of the men were starting to disrobe. They’d worked themselves up into such a fever, no one even noticed.

I glanced back over my shoulder. The Hellfire Club members were now dancing naked, their frail, white bodies luminescent in
the darkness. They hopped and skipped around the fairy ring, emulating children in that carefree land of youth they so desperately wanted to be part of.

I ran, faster and faster, and as I ran, the sound of their chanting became softer and softer, until it was not much more than a hum. And then silence.

37

A
s soon as I was back safe and warm at Martin’s, drinking tea with a shot of whiskey in it as prescribed by Fiona with chocolate HobNobs from Lily, I rang Hugh. He came as fast as he could. He stormed in, held me close, and then threatened to kill every member of the Hellfire Club. He tried to convince me to tell the police, but I just shook my head. What was the point? They
were
the police, the government, the media. What could the local guards do against them? We were best off leaving them alone, and, anyway, I felt I was free of them. They were people near the end of their days looking for another option. However they’d planned to use me to coerce the fairies to take them to Tír na nÓg, it hadn’t worked.

I had a sleepless night, full of horrible visions of the Hellfire Club and the goings-on at the fairy fort. Now, lying exhausted on my bed, I could hear more chanting, this time outside my window. “Kaayyyyy-ate! Kaayyyyy-ate.” Today was the day. Outside, the chants had started at daybreak. They were low and rhythmic, and as steady as a drumbeat. The crowd were bobbing their heads in unison. Like a heartbeat. The bright lights of TV crews were blinding, and the busy chatter of reporters deafening. Helicopters scattered around the sky like the
throw of a die, zooming and hovering, the noise of their engines threatening and intimidating. Mam and Dad were due in at one that morning.

Hugh had left early, to feed the animals. I knew the girls were out for an early-morning walk, so I asked them to swing by and pick up Colm’s bike. It was actually more of a morning stalk than a walk. Fi was on the Anorak hunt. I made my way downstairs, only to discover that Martin had shut the shop—well, he’d actually barricaded the door.

“Just in case,” he said when he saw my look of surprise.

Hanging off the edge of a kitchen chair while Mavis made him breakfast was the spindly frame of Seamus MacMurphy. He stood tall and extended his arm for a handshake when I appeared. “I hope you don’t mind my delivering this in person. I was passing through en route to Galway, and thought I’d pop in and see what all the fuss was about. You’ve really put this place on the map.”

I shook his hand and sat on the far side of the table. Seamus MacMurphy was excited. “I mean really, it’s on every TV station. RTÉ news have live coverage running all day. It’s like a royal wedding.” His eyes were racing, and his voice was high-pitched and shaky. “It’s just amazing, you know. In a little tiny way I’m part of this whole thing. Our little law firm is part of all this attention. Amazing.”

Mavis plonked a gigantic plate of fried food in front of him. She looked at me, nonplussed by all the excitement. “Will you have tea?”

“I’m grand, thanks.”

“Ah, you will, yeah,” she said, ignoring me and moving toward the teapot.

“So, em . . . what happens now?”

“Well, I have the final Step here if you want it?” Seamus had lost the excited tone in his voice—he was back to business. He rummaged in his pocket and produced a sealed envelope that he slid across the table to me. “I tell you, I was nervous coming through the crowds there, carrying something like this. I should have got myself a bodyguard.”

“Thanks.” I picked up the envelope and, staring at the wax seal, ran my fingers over its sharp edges. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the envelope. This was it.

Father O’Brien’s words echoed through my mind: “This brings an evil.” I should have felt relieved, that this
was
the end. But what if it was different? What if it did start something? For everyone, not just for me? What if it was an awakening? Was I ready for this? Were
we
ready for this?

Father O’Brien was the only person who had read the seventh Step. Could I believe anything he had to say? I gripped the envelope tighter, unaware of the chatter around me. Shivering slightly, I hugged my arms around me to warm up.

“And the estate. As soon as this is published, you’ll get the estate.”

“I wonder what it is?” Mavis piped up before quickly excusing herself. “Sorry, love, it’s not any of my business. It’s your business.”

“I have the box in the car.”

“The box? The estate is a box?”

“Well, I don’t know what’s in the box. It’s been sealed for a hundred and thirty years. You’ll be the first to open it.”

I’d never thought the estate would turn up in a box. It felt like an anticlimax: all this for a box. Seven weeks earlier, the lure of an estate had enticed me. An “estate” had sounded awfully
grand—it sounded like it could be like a lottery win. It definitely had sounded like money. It had conjured up images of tweed jackets, springer spaniels at the heel, and hunts on horseback that ended with quaffing champagne. It had implied adventure, but now whatever was in that box was inconsequential compared to the journey that had changed everything for me. There were fairies in my life, spells in my head, and a gorgeous man in my bed. The contents of the box were irrelevant.

“So will you just be posting it online as you’ve done before?” Seamus asked, interrupting my train of thought.

“Yeah, I will, yeah. Fiona brought my laptop with her, I’m all set.”

Seamus nodded carefully. “So you won’t go out there?”

“No. I’m going to stick to what I’ve been doing. I just have to publish it, right? I don’t need to promote it.”

“Absolutely. Whatever you choose.”

Did I need to do something different? I didn’t want to.

“So, what does it say?” Seamus licked his lips, hungry for the envelope and its contents, and not the fry going cold in front of him.

“She doesn’t have to tell you anything,” Mavis spat out protectively. She heaved her heavy frame into a chair and daintily started to munch on some shortbread biscuits.

I felt my breathing quicken and pushed myself away from the table. My throat felt dry. “I might just go up to my room and, you know, take a minute.” I clutched the envelope and started toward the door.

“Sure, off you go, not a bother,” Mavis shouted after me, oblivious to the fact that I was shaking violently.

Upstairs, the dull beat of the chants outside echoed around my room. I crawled into bed and pulled the duvet over my head, hoping that the heat would stop my body trembling. But it was
fear, not cold, that I was shaking from. What if? What if? What if? Exhausted, I started to cry. This envelope was the end or the very beginning.

Just open it
, I thought.
Open it
. But I couldn’t. Instead, I stared at it. It wasn’t just what Father O’Brien had said. All the people outside, they believed; Father O’Brien, he believed; Maura and the Hellfire Club believed. And I believed. I believed in fairies.

I took a deep breath.
Stay strong
, I thought. With my heart in my mouth I broke the wax seal on the back of the envelope and lifted out the wafer-thin paper. It was covered in the same spidery, inky scrawl as the previous Steps.

My hand was shaking so badly the words jumped. I placed the paper on the bed.
Steady now
, I thought. Then I read it. And I read it again. And once more.

Stillness swamped me. Dark shadows flickered around the edge of my vision. I was aware only of my heart pounding in my chest. “Oh dear God.”

I felt as if my very self was being pulled out of me. My shoulders collapsed and I sank backward, washed over by a weakness. Breathe, I had to breathe, to concentrate on breathing.

It was different this time. It was all different. Father O’Brien had been right.

What had I done? I’d been tricked, tricked by the past, tricked by Grand-aunt Kate and tricked by the fairies. I’d accepted them too easily. I’d accepted their promise of innocence, never questioning that there might have been a darker force or real evil at work.

This was all my fault. I’d reintroduced them to the living world. Enraptured by their playfulness, I’d been lost in the idea of them, and never heeded the warnings. They’d disappeared
generations ago because they were meant to disappear. That was their journey. They shouldn’t have been here now. This was not their time.

The final Step was their battle cry. The fairies were ready to emerge from the shadows and release an unholy yell, and it would start a fairy war between the believers, led by the fairies, and the nonbelievers. This was payback for the nonbelievers not respecting nature: the fairies would send them under the earth. And then the fairies would reclaim the natural world and reign supreme. Hellfires and dark forces fueled their crusade. As soon as I published the Step, it would start.

I had been their pawn.

Father O’Brien had been right. The final Step would end all this; humanity as we knew it. I couldn’t let that happen. It had to end now. I had to stop it. But how?

I rolled into a tight ball and squeezed my eyes shut. What was I to do?
What am I to do? What am I to do?

I couldn’t release it. I couldn’t put that evil into the world. The chants outside drummed heavily inside me. All those people out there wanted to know what the final Step was. They’d traveled from all over and turned their lives inside out in the hope of glimpsing a fairy. They were fanatical: if I didn’t release the Step, they’d never release me. I’d be followed and persecuted for the rest of my life. They wanted an answer and I had it, but I couldn’t give it to them.

I couldn’t publish the Step. But I couldn’t
not
publish it, either. Maura and her cronies had tried to abduct me. What could a crowd of fanatics do? They could turn on me, become an angry mob. Who knew how far they’d go for the fairies? At that moment, I felt a genuine fear for my life. Anything could happen.

Could I tell them there was no final Step? Would they believe me? No, that would never work. They were too invested. They’d spent their lives looking for it. But there had to be a solution. Every problem had an answer—I just needed to figure it out.
Start at the beginning
, I thought,
and follow this through
.

And so I pulled out the original letter, and the six previous Steps, and I reread them, and then I studied them, I pored over them, every nuance, every rhyme, the syntax. And I wondered what I could do. How could I cheat the fairies? How could I go up against them? I needed to play them at their own game. I needed a trick.

Nobody knew what the final Step was, except for Father O’Brien and me. Not even Seamus MacMurphy knew. What if I forged it and made something up? What if I made it look and sound like the other Steps? Would that satisfy the believers? Would they fall for it? And how would I know that I’d succeeded in fooling everyone if I just posted it online?

And what would the fairies do to me when they realized I hadn’t completed their task? What hideous fate would lie in store for me? What would their plan for revenge be?

I went to the laptop and stared at Google. I had an idea. I didn’t know if it would work, but it was all I had. I typed in “W. B. Yeats” and waited for his poetry and musings to appear. The language he used was in keeping with the fairies’. And then I set to work rewriting the final Step. It would be my version, with a little help from Mr. Yeats. It was my biggest challenge as a copywriter to date.

Hours later, I emerged bleary-eyed and asked Mavis to get Johnny Logan on the phone. The only way I’d know if my fake
Step had worked was to see a reaction. I needed to see their faces—I needed a crowd. I’d deliver this one personally.

Johnny Logan would help me gather the masses, and I’d look them in the eye and, hopefully, finish it all. And no one would ever know the truth. No one would ever know how close we’d come.

38

I
couldn’t see when I stepped outside the door four hours later. The lightning bolt of flashlights burned straight into my eyes. I stumbled backward and felt Hugh’s hand on my shoulder, firm and warm.

I was petrified. I had made my decision—I felt that this was my only option, to come face-to-face with these people and lie to them, but what if they didn’t buy it? I’d never been a good liar. I’d never been a good actress. They might see right through me. And what then? Exposed and vulnerable, there was only one of me and thousands of them. Would they believe me? Could I end this? Would the fairies let me? I was eaten up with nerves. I shoved my shaking hand into the pocket of my jeans, where the fake Step was folded up neatly. I clutched it: this had to work. With a deep breath I muscled forward. The crowd heaved toward me. “Kayyyy-ate! Kayyyy-ate,” faster, louder, panicked. Like a brick wall they pushed through firmly, swiftly moving into me. Suffocating me. I ducked my head and attempted to torpedo through, catching zips and colored anoraks in my peripheral view. I tried to bulldoze onward, but was getting nowhere. I was penned in and pushed backward by a sea of anoraks. “Kayyyy-ate, Kayyyyy-ate.”