Remnants of Magic (27 page)

“Only your second,” Jonathan teased, but Willem waved for him to hush. The dragon raised his empty tankard toward the bartender, who obligingly brought him another.

In the corner as they were, with the noise of the telly by the bar to cover their conversation, no one at the table seemed terribly concerned about avoiding the discussion of all things magical even in this human establishment. But when Sean glanced around to see if anyone else wanted anything, his gaze fell upon Willem and paused before he turned and walked away. She knew what he’d seen. London twisted toward the Scribe. “Willem?”

When he lifted his face toward her, she brushed his hair with her fingers to disguise his slightly oversized and pointed ears. The Scribe’s face flushed bright pink and his large eyes widened even more. “Um… Uh…” He blinked and gulped hard at the same time.

Jonathan chuckled, nudging Lugh, “Your companions are flirting.”

Now London blushed. “His ears were showing.”

“Mmmhmm.” And London couldn’t tell if the dragon’s smirk was a tease or serious.

“I expect to return Willem to your continued hospitality before long.” Lugh gestured for London and Willem to precede him out of the booth. “If London’s scrying is accurate, we should have several more artifacts by then.”

“London.” Jonathan waved her closer. “Let’s exchange numbers, in case it is needed. These fey have no appreciation for technology.”

The Scribe beamed. He measured a space between his outstretched arms. “Jonathan has a scrying mirror as big as a whole wall!”

“Ninety-inch flat screen with high-definition 3D and digital surround sound, no less.” Jonathan gave her a wink.

Chapter Five

As usual, Lugh folded his arms and stared out of the window whenever London chauffeured him anywhere. His grave dislike of the ‘auto’ as a mode of transportation showed with each kilometer they traveled. “If you’d rather teleport, you don’t have to stick to using the car on my account.”

Willem leaned as far between the front seats as he could while still wearing his seatbelt. “He can’t. Neither of us should. Not with the Fade upon us.”

London glanced over at Lugh, who steadfastly watched the scenery flowing by with the same distracted stare as one might watch a fire crackling in a fireplace. “You’re sick?

“Not sick,” Willem explained, almost as likely to speak as to breathe. “Fading. We all are. The fey. Without the Mounds to renew us.”

“Oh.” She focused on the road ahead. Mind reaching for the months ahead. To the idea of all fey Fading. To the Sidhe vanishing from the world. To the serious hurting she’d be in without them. “And that’s what this mission is about? Stopping the Fade?”

“Indeed.” Willem folded his arms so his elbows propped on the backs of the bucket seats before him and his chin rested on his forearms.

“Hum.”

“Why did you ‘hum’ about that?”

“The Unseelie don’t conserve their magic. They throw it around without any trouble. And they’re not sick.”

Willem twisted toward Lugh. “You’ve seen the Unseelie?”

“I have not.” Lugh stated flatly.

“I was enchanted by one,” London explained. “I mean, captivated.”

“That’s so strange.” Willem wondered aloud, “Nothing could replace a link to a true source of magic, but perhaps they’ve found a temporary respite.” Now it was his turn to make a thoughtful ‘hum.’ “A well of magic, perhaps? Such as one within which Crom cast his dark magic? But a well stagnates rather quickly, making the dark magic poisonous, as well as dangerous. Perhaps the Unseelie, with their darker proclivities, could endure longer against the influence before succumbing, but eventually they would, I should think.” He paused as he considered this. “Were these Unseelie terribly feral? Vicious and violent?”

“Some more than others,” she agreed.

“That must be it, then. Some dark store of magic sustains them. But that wouldn’t last forever, nor help the rest of the fey. Only a new realm can save us all.”

“How are these artifacts going to help create an entire realm?”

In the rearview mirror she saw Willem shrug. “This is part of the quest, to discover the secret that perished with Danu. The mystery of how she wove such magic as to spawn the Mounds.”

“How close are you to creating this realm?”

“As close as we can be,” he sighed. “And yet no closer than when we began. There is some secret we’re lacking. Some key ingredient we’ve yet to discover.”

London glanced over at Lugh, looking cramped and uncomfortable, yet knowing the legends of him. This champion, this hero of the Sidhe, questing always to save his people. Noble and determined, and yet giving and gentle with her like no Sidhe she’d ever known.

But the wear of the stress showed on him. It couldn’t be easy, carrying the weight of the world when you were sick and possibly dying. Even with Willem and Jonathan to help him, Lugh bore the brunt of the burden. It had to be horrible. She couldn’t imagine what state she’d been in if all of humanity counted on her to save it. With her luck, they’d all be doomed, no doubt.

Even if she’d not needed his Touch to survive, she’d respect the hell out of him. He was a big-picture kind of guy. And she was just getting her first glimpses. “You think if the Unseelie understood how important this quest is that they might help you?”

“Unlikely,” Willem answered instead. “Not if they partake of the dark enchantment. They would care for little else but their own lusts. Even the most noble Sidhe would forget himself in the black haze.”

“Enough.” Lugh glared at Willem. “If you must speak, speak of something else.”

Undeterred, Willem stared at Lugh. He breathed, “Your eyes.”

London glanced over and saw the dark stains beneath Lugh’s eyes in the bright sunlight. They had a purple, black bruised appearance. Darker even than they’d appeared that morning. His irises were midnight blue, deeper than the winter blue that she first recalled.

Lugh turned away from them, back to the window. “Just fatigued. Trouble me not with such speculation of the Unseelie.”

In the mirror, London glanced at the Scribe. At how he watched Lugh with his brows pushed together. At the frown on the wide mouth more accustomed to grins. The fey wasn’t hurt by the Sidhe’s snappishness, nor by the way he’d turned his back to them, but rather concerned.

Chapter Six

Even with the streams of sunlight angling in the long windows, the shadows inside the museum seemed particularly dark and foreboding. Each footstep echoed with the hollow whispers of a place that felt abandoned. But she knew secrets hid within, like a magician’s storeroom. Perhaps it only seemed that way because she’d come to suspect curtains of Glamour or enchanted mysteries whenever she dealt with the fey. Even though they lived in the ‘real’ world, there was always something of the ‘otherworld’ about the fey. A foreignness that somehow didn’t fully mesh with reality as most humans knew it.

Lugh waited for them outside, sending in the Scribe and London alone. Once they’d gone several paces down the main hallway, Willem’s hand covered London’s forearm, giving a slight squeeze until she stopped and looked down at him. He wasn’t terribly shorter than her, given that she was on the petite side herself. Those wide eyes of his, with their changeable hazel coloring appeared more intense with the fracture of green and blue hues. It would be easy to dismiss him as childlike, if one judged only by appearance, except the intensity with which he stared at her now was anything but naive. “How long has he been corrupted?”

The question made her blink. “Corrupted?”

“With the darkness.” His gaze shifted, searching her face for his answers.

London thought back. To the disquiet she’d felt. To the shift in Lugh’s mannerisms. “Yesterday, before he went to visit the wood elves, he was different. Brighter, I guess. More…” She reached for a better term, “civilized.” Glancing back through the glass of the front door, she watched Lugh as he leaned on the hood of the car, face upturned toward the sun. “When he returned, he was changed. A little more aggressive. Darker.”

“The beast has been roused.” Willem’s fingers tightened on her arm. “The eclipse is coming.”

“Why am I not surprised?” London raised her hands in surrender. “Great! This is just great! Can’t anything just go my way for once? But, no. It’s always something more.” Pacing, she started in, “It’s not enough to get cursed by the Sidhe. It’s not enough to get caught up in the craziness of your politics and your problems. I’m trying here, I really am.” She thumped her palm to her chest with emphasis. “But signing on with a Seelie was supposed to solve my problems, not complicate things more. Not bring on eclipses or rouse beasts. I don’t even know what that means, but I know this much; my life has been nothing but a mess since the Sidhe first crossed my path, and getting worse by the minute. Mr. Sunshine out there was my first ‘ray of hope,’ and now you’re telling me that he’s going to go all bonkers on me?”

“You think this is about you?” Willem snatched her wrist with more strength than she would have expected from him. “Or about me? Or even about Lugh? It’s not!”

“Then what is it about?”

His grip released. “People think that Scribes hide in our libraries with our books and that we know nothing of the wider world, but that’s not true. We know more than you’d suspect. We see what weaves us all together in the greater tapestry. We know how threads of lives and magic knot together. Nothing just randomly happens.” He waited until she met his intense gaze. “I am telling you this: You are here at this place and upon this hour for a reason. We all have a part to play, whether we want it or not. As an orphaned child, do you think Lugh craved to be yoked with the responsibility as the Champion of the Sidhe? He didn’t. He was groomed for it and lived his life in service to it because that was his place in the scheme of magic and fate. You think you were ‘cursed’ out of some misfortune or some plot against you? It’s not true. You are a part of the weaving and you’ll serve your purpose whether you fight it or whether you accept it with grace. Being happy isn’t about getting what you want; it’s in wanting what you have. And you have a place in the fate of the fey as surely as I do.

“Think you that I’m not afraid? I’m a Scribe. I crave my own safe archive where I can happily record histories, not be a part of them, but that wasn’t my place in the weaving. I came to be Lugh’s companion because that is where I belong and where I have a crucial role to play. Just as you have.” Willem lowered his voice, moving into the shadows between the shafts of light through the window. “Just as Lugh’s beast has its place in the weaving. Darkness has corrupted him at this late hour for reasons beyond our knowing, but I tell you this: you and I are here for a purpose. Even if that purpose claims our lives. Because it’s not about us. It’s not just about the Sidhe. It’s about the greater whole. Humans and lesser fey, too. We’ll all perish from the world one day and leave only the tale of our lives and our weaving within the tapestry as our only legacy.” He straightened. “Let us at least do it with such dignity and grace as we can muster.”

In the past few months, she’d not managed to do much with grace or dignity. She’d fought her fate every step of the way, but it’d not relieved her of any of it. Every word the Scribe spoke made sense, somewhere on the inside, even if she still wanted to fight against it. “But what role could I possibly play? I’m not even fey.”

“You are as close to the fey as a human can be.” Willem nodded toward her necklace. “You wear his symbol. You’ve pledged yourself to serve him, is this not right? Even unto death? Did you mean any of it? Or were they just self-serving words to get what you wanted?”

Her hand stroked over the pendant Lugh had given to her. Had she meant them? Had she ever cared about something bigger than herself? Something more important than just her own needs and her own pains?

“Druidess, magic is a part of you now. Everything you’ve known and done before has prepared you for this day. Trust in that.”

Closing the pendant in her fist, London recalled the hope she’d felt in Lugh’s first kiss and the sense of wonderment in his Touch. That had come before the darkness corrupted him. He’d not promised her fairy lights and pixie wine. But then again, she never had been much of a fairy lights and pixie wine kind of lass. “All right, then. So what is this eclipse and this beast you’re going on about?”

“Most beings are a blending of the light and dark. You’ve felt it in yourself at times, no doubt. But you have a balance that comes naturally with it.” Willem twisted around to be certain no one else might be overhearing them. “Lugh isn’t a blend of the two. He’s pure light. That was why he was chosen as Champion by Danu. Unfortunately, because of his nature, he has no innate way to bring balance within when dark magic corrupts him. It’s like an allergic reaction. You see?”

London shook her head. “Not following you.”

“It poisons him,” Willem whispered, his voice low but fervent. “Poisons his mind. The greater the dose, the faster it consumes him, but the spread, once it starts, is inevitable until it is fully purged. It’s come upon him twice before, the first time by accident and the second in a plot against him by Crom.” Willem waved as if brushing aside his tangent. “Anyway, they call it the ‘eclipse’ when it does. Lugh loses himself to the beast of the darkness that possesses him. He’s struggling now, but I fear he can not attempt to purge himself or he would have done so. The Fade is too near. We can only hope to placate the beast long enough to complete the quest.”

“So how do we placate it? What does it want, this beast?”

Willem ticked off his fingers as he enumerated them. “Violence. Blood.” He paused on the third finger, a heat of a blush coloring his cheeks. “And sex. Or… or so I’ve heard.”

No wonder Lugh and Selena got along so well. The vampire mistress happily would fulfill all of those services, even without the promise of Lugh’s Sidhe blood in the bargain. “And if he loses the battle? If he goes fully into eclipse before the new realm can be made?”