Taken (Ava Delaney #4) (14 page)

“You mean
rebels. Where are they?”

He shook his
head, sadness in his eyes. “I can’t see them. Nobody can. No matter
what I do, they remain hidden. But you could find them for me. I’m
sure you could. You could help me change everything, Ava.”

“Help you start
a war, you mean.”

“No. Help me
fix our country. What kind of people are in charge, Ava? The kind
who allow children to be taken. The kind who protect the darkness.
Think about it. Think about what you should do.”

I stood
abruptly, suddenly terrified. “I… I don’t…”

He smiled, and
Maeve brushed my hands urgently. “Think,” he said again.

“I have to
go.”

I fled, only
waving at Carl as I left. Eddie wanted to instigate something
terrible, but what if he was right? What if something so drastic
was the only solution? What if I could help him stop those who
needed to be stopped?

What if I
caused a disaster that killed innocent people?

***

I thought it
was just the four of us meeting that night at Gabe’s bar, but
Esther brought a few friends, and it seemed impossible to talk to
her in private. Carl appeared to enjoy himself, but Peter was
withdrawn again.

I sat next to
him. “You all right?”

He nodded
glumly, and I knew I had to reach out to him, to force him back to
us.

“Haven’t heard
from you much,” I said hesitantly, realising he was likely to run
if I pushed too hard. I was walking on eggshells around everyone in
my life.

“I’m not good
company right now, Ava.” He sounded more tired than angry, and that
encouraged me. I leaned against him, and he let me.

He took another
gulp of his drink. “This isn’t working anymore. Seeing Shay brought
it all back. He was good to me back then. I’ve never thanked him,
and now I don’t know how.”

“Saying the
word usually works.”

“It’s not
enough. I told you I was on the list of suspects for… the murders.
Well, he was the one person who stood up for me, who didn’t act
like I was some scumbag murderer. He acted as though he were on my
side, and he even came to the hospital when I… when I couldn’t
manage. I had never met him before everything fell apart, but he
was the only one who came to see me.”

“No family?” I
asked, thinking of what Shay said about Peter’s uncle visiting
him.

“Told you. My
only family is in Spain. My da didn’t really think it was worth
coming home for. If it wasn’t for Shay, I wouldn’t be sitting here
today. I wouldn’t be sitting anywhere today. I wish I could tell
him. Explain to him what’s really happening.”

“But you
can’t.”

“But I can’t.”
He squeezed my knee. Too hard. “Are we getting closer to the end,
Ava?”

I realised just
how drunk he was, and my heart sank. “We’re getting closer, Peter.
Don’t worry.” I couldn’t tell him about Eddie. I couldn’t tell him
about so many things, and I worried he could see the lies in my
eyes.

But not when he
was drunk. He was blind when he was drunk.

I left early,
leaving everyone to their own devices. Sometimes I couldn’t breathe
for how sad I felt for Peter. And sometimes I couldn’t breathe for
how angry I was at him. He was his own worst enemy.

***

I decided to
work on my business while Esther was gone. It had to be better than
sitting around worrying about her. I couldn’t sleep the night after
she left, so I opened a spreadsheet and tried to forget about our
collective mission. We had no more fresh leads, and I didn’t want
to go looking for old leads again.

The trip to
Kerry had unsettled me. Shay’s nan had seemed as though she came
from another time. And I well believed their curse of silence
because even I hadn’t wanted to speak much while we were there.
Some kind of eerie gloom loomed over the village, and I had been
filled with such a sense of foreboding that I never wanted to go
back. The childless village filled me with a new kind of dread.

I was
interrupted from my work, or rather my staring at a blank screen,
later that night by a loud rap on the door. For some reason, I
expected to see Shay, but Peter stood on my porch, his eyes bright
with excitement. Sober Peter. Awesome.

“Answer your
phone, woman,” he said, brushing past me.

“It’s charging.
What’s up?”

He fell onto
the sofa with a grin, pulling me onto his lap. “Esther called me
when she couldn’t get an answer from you.”

“Is she
okay?”

“Yeah, fine.
She’s tracking down that old man. Anyway, she wanted you to know
she got a call from the drug dealer. He’s set up a meeting for the
weekend, if you’re still up to it.”

I grinned. “Of
course I’m up for it.”

“Well, good,
because I already arranged it. I can almost taste it, Ava. This
could be it.”

I tried to get
up, but he held tight. Closeness only ever came when he had the
scent of a hunt.

“It might be
bullshit though,” I said, ignoring a pang of hurt that tried its
best to distract me. “Moses isn’t exactly Mr. Clean.”

“It’s better
than the sweet-fuck-all we have now. At least we’ll be ruling out
another lead if it turns out to be nothing.”

“Fine. What’s
the deal?”

“We’re to meet
him at the IFSC in the middle of the night, behind the bank, just
us two.”

I frowned. “Why
the middle of the night? That’s weird.”

“Less chance of
being seen. He’s an informer, Ava. He has to think of his safety in
this. We don’t have a name, but we’ll see him on Saturday. It’s not
a big deal. We’ll be fine.”

“Yeah.” But I
didn’t feel fine at all, and I got the sense Peter was latching on
to any lead at all. Too many secrets were coming out of the
woodwork, and I almost refused to go, but I had promised Esther,
and that meant more to me than my own made-up discomfort.

Peter remained
jumpy with energy, and when I hinted at an early night, he left to
“take care of some business.”

***

The following
evening, Esther called. “The lead is a no-go, Ava. I’m sorry. He
was so senile that I couldn’t get a full sentence out of him.”

“Poor man,” I
said. “We’ll be okay.”

“As long as our
other lead comes through. You’re not backing out, right?”

“Of course
not,” I lied. “I’ve no intentions of backing out.”

“Well, good,
because I’m going to see your twins next. If everything goes well,
I might be home by Monday.”

“Here’s hoping.
Just be careful, Esther. Winston, Victor, and Cass aren’t Daimhín.
I spent a couple of hours with them, and that was way too much for
me. They’re different over there.”

“Don’t
you
start. I’ve enough of Aiden’s lectures to last me a
lifetime. You might want to keep out of his way. He’s somehow got
it into his head that you’re to blame for this.”

“It’ll keep him
on his toes.”

But when I hung
up, I had a terrible feeling that I kept pissing off the wrong
people.

Nervous tension
shuddered and trembled throughout my body as I waited for Peter to
pick me up. We were going to meet Illeana’s contact, completely
relying on the word of a well-known drug dealer. If Moses had lied,
I was going to kill him. That was, if I didn’t die first.

I sat on my
front gate while I waited, drinking in the night air. The moon had
always brought something out of me, as if giving me life, and
hunger sometimes, but on that night, all I felt was fear.

The unknown
contact had unsettled me, but the way everything seemed to be
spiralling out of my reach kept me awake. Too many skeletons rested
in too many closets. Too many lies seemed to grow and multiply
before my eyes. Who could I trust? Even
I
was keeping
secrets from Peter.

I pressed my
fingers against the long burn down my right arm, flinching at the
sting of contact. I knew I had to help the twins, but how could I
put Peter second when we were so close to finding out more? And if
my suspicions were right, one solution could lead to the other.
Everything was connected, and I feared someone had laid a path for
me to find my way into the middle of it.

The familiar
sound of Peter’s car engine drew my attention, and I hopped down
from the gate, steeling myself. He pulled up, and I jumped into the
front passenger seat, ignoring the way his knuckles whitened as he
gripped the gear stick and sped off. He was as nervous as I was,
but I couldn’t let myself think about it, or I would lose my own
nerve.

“We don’t have
to go,” I said after a few minutes.

“Would you
stop? What has you so edgy? You’re making me nervous.”

I wanted to
remind him that he was already nervous, but I didn’t see the point.
“I have a bad feeling,” I began, but I couldn’t find the words to
continue.

“It’s not a big
deal. You’ve done scarier things.”

I nodded, still
unable to shake the terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I’m
just tired,” I lied.

“This is your
holiday, remember. Daimhín will be back soon enough.”

“But not yet,”
I whispered and fell into silence for the rest of the journey.

We parked near
a Garda station and walked past the bus station to the outer
buildings of the International Financial Services Centre. Tall
buildings loomed over us, their many windows reflecting moonlight
prettily. We were a little early, so we checked out the area,
wandering down perfect pathways that were lit up like it was
daytime.

“It’s kind of
peaceful here,” I said as we walked closer to the dock. The water
lapped in a calming sort of way.

He shrugged.
“You picking up anything yet?”

I wasn’t. I
couldn’t even hear heartbeats, which was strange. There should have
been security guards at least, or people in some of the buildings.
All I could hear was water. We moved back the way we came, and all
of the lights in the buildings switched off, one by one. I
swallowed hard as I glanced around, seeing darkness come for us
rapidly.

“What’s going
on?” I whispered.

Peter gripped
my arm. “Hear that?”

I concentrated
and heard a shuffling sound, harsh breathing, and slow footsteps
coming our way. A shadowed shape slowly moved toward us, the
moonlight gleaming off the knife in its hand.

“Get ready,”
Peter said.

I hesitated.
Something was wrong. The only aggression was coming from Peter. If
anything, whatever was walking toward us was scared. It was small,
slow, and… confused.

“This isn’t
right,” I muttered, but the figure kept coming, and suddenly, the
lights came on.

Peter drew in a
choked breath. I threw out a hand to stop him, but missed.

“That’s it!” he
shouted as he ran. “That’s the thing.”

The thing was
green, scaled, and looked like a monster, but something was wrong.
Using my other sense, I went to the next plane to see what I was
really looking at.

Human. Shrouded
in magic. Human that smelled…

“Peter, wait!
It’s a trick!”

I ran after
him, but his fist collided with the figure before I could reach
him, knocking it down. Cinnamon-scented blood filled my nostrils,
and in desperation, I threw myself at Peter, taking us both to the
ground.

“Stop it!” I
shrieked as he struggled with me, his hands reaching for my throat
in his rage. “Stop it!” I straddled him and punched his jaw, not
hard, just enough to get him to listen to me. “It’s human! It’s a
trick! It’s just magic, Peter. It isn’t real.”

“It’s real!” he
roared, pushing me off and jumping to his feet.

The figure
dropped the knife, trembling visibly on its knees.

Peter lunged
again, but I got in his way. “Listen to me. It’s a child,
Peter.”

“It tried to
attack us.”

“It didn’t. It
stood there with a weapon in its hand. It didn’t attack you. What
you saw back then… that wasn’t real either.”

His face
contorted with anger, pain, and frustration. “It… it could be the
same one.”

“Peter,” I said
softly. “He smells like you. His blood… he’s—”

“Don’t you dare
say it,” he spat. “Don’t you dare.”

“But I’m sure
it’s him, Peter. I’m sure it’s Emmett,” I said, tears in my eyes as
I wrapped my arms around what looked like a small monster. “I just
know it’s him.”

“My son is
dead!” He turned and ran.

With a heart
weighed down by horror and pity, I turned to the figure. I choked
down a sob as he clung to my jacket, blood pouring from his
nose.

“It’s okay,” I
said softly. “Everything’s okay.”

I took off my
jacket and wrapped it around him to cover his face. His clothes
were falling apart, but they would have to do. On a whim, I took
the knife, too. I lifted him—he was light as a feather—and I ran.
Whoever had sent him had expected him to die, I supposed, but that
didn’t mean they wouldn’t come back.

At first I
moved almost aimlessly, mostly concerned with getting away, but
then I found myself running toward Eddie’s bookshop, keeping to
shadows as often as possible. Eddie would be awake. He never seemed
to sleep. And he was the only one I knew who understood magic and
might be able to tell me if my suspicions were correct.

Peter didn’t
believe me. Or he couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t even sure what was
going on. There was a chance the person I carried wasn’t Peter’s
child. He was a little small, not even as large as nine-year-old
Dita. I might have been wrong, building false hope like that. But
there was something in my gut that knew the tiny being in my arms
belonged to Peter.

The lights were
still on upstairs in Eddie’s home above the shop, so I knew he was
awake, but as I lay my hand on the door to push it open, a cold
breeze flung itself at me, physically pushing me away. I hesitated
before making my decision and running to the end of the road.
Looking back, I saw the witch leaving Eddie’s place and silently
thanked Maeve for warning me.