The Undivided (35 page)

The air in this realm was wrong.

Sorcha didn’t feel the loss of magic. She had no magical ability to speak of, so she was no more handicapped here by her lack than she had been in her own realm. But the air smelled wrong, and because of it, she felt uneasy.

From her perch in the trees, she could see the back of the house, and plenty of other houses besides. They all seemed too big and too close together, a mishmash of styles that didn’t look right. On her right, the golf course — whatever that was exactly — stretched out before her. Defensively, it was a nightmare. The large open swathes of clipped grass were broken up by lines of trees and undergrowth that might have some useful purpose, but offered too much cover for an advancing foe.

She heard a door opening and turned to survey the building. Rónán was coming out of the house, dressed — she presumed — in clothing appropriate to this world. He cut a much leaner figure than his brother, and lacked Darragh’s athleticism, but that was something they could address once they got back home. A few months of training should fill him out and put some meat on his bones.

Rónán looked around, his expression worried.

He’s looking for me
, Sorcha realised.

‘Psst!’

Rónán turned his head in the direction of her hiss. ‘Sorcha?’

She grabbed the branch she was squatting on, tucked in her head and rolled forward until she was hanging by her arms a few feet off the ground, and then she dropped, landing on the soft lawn with bent knees. ‘If you yell my name a little louder,
Leath tiarna
,’ she remarked as she straightened, ‘perhaps the people in the next village will know I’m here, too.’

Rónán regarded her for a moment. ‘You do realise we’re not in a village, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘We’re not even in what you would call a town. This is Dublin. There are a couple of million people living around here.’

‘Well, that would account for why the magic is gone from this world,’ she said. ‘What happened in this realm to make
Eblana
the centre of the world?’

Rónán seemed puzzled by the question. ‘The centre of the world? Dublin? You’re kidding, right?’

Sorcha shook her head. ‘Not at all. Why else would all these people gather here, if it were not the centre of learning and government for this realm?’

‘You think Dublin’s the largest city in this reality?’ Apparently amused by her question, Rónán turned and headed back to the house, obviously expecting her to follow. With a final glance around to assure herself they were safe, she followed him to the porch. He opened the back door and stood back to let her enter.

‘Isn’t it?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s not even close. Do you suppose you could come inside and get changed? I don’t want the neighbours ringing Warren to ask why Conan the Barbarian is patrolling his back garden.’

Sorcha gathered he was referring to her clothing. Maybe even her weapons. And the back garden was overlooked by the
upstairs windows of several neighbouring houses. Although she’d been hidden from view in the tree, on the ground, she was vulnerable.

She wasn’t happy about having to change, however. ‘Are you going to make me wear clothes like the mongrel
sídhe
is now wearing?’

‘You mean like Trása?’ He shook his head. ‘There should be some jeans in Warren’s daughter’s room that fit you, but if you’re not a fan of pink sparkles, Warren Junior seems to be a metal-head. There should be something in his room with enough studs and chains to keep you happy …’ He paused, and then gave her an odd look. ‘What?’

Sorcha shook her head. ‘I am discovering,
Leath tiarna
, there is a great deal of difference between understanding your words and understanding their meaning.’

‘Yeah, well —’ His words were cut off by a panicked cry from the half-
Beansídhe
traitor who’d followed them through the rift.

‘Rónán!’ The call came from somewhere deep in the house. The
Beansídhe
was no longer in the kitchen.

‘What?’ Rónán called back. He shut the door behind Sorcha and locked it.

‘You’d better come here!’

‘Jesus Christ, what now?’ Rónán muttered.

Sorcha followed him through the dining room — with its long table polished to a mirror shine and plush chairs fit for a council of kings — and into the front room. The
Beansídhe
was standing in the middle of the room. Next to her was Darragh, dressed in a similar fashion to Rónán. They were staring at a small box on one of the side tables by the far wall, which sat next to another small rectangular box resting in a cradle. There were blinking lights on both.

‘Could we keep the yelling to a minimum?’ Rónán said, as he stalked into the room. ‘Warren’s still asleep. What’s wrong?’

‘I heard the box talking,’ Darragh said, pointing at the blinking red light.

‘The answering machine?’ Rónán walked to the oddly shaped silver box in question and started pressing buttons.

Sorcha sidled up to Darragh and asked, ‘Why do they have machines here to answer questions?’

Before he could explain Rónán pressed another button and a woman’s voice emerged from the box.

‘
It’s me
,’ the voice said. ‘
Pick up the phone
.’ There was a pause, and then an exasperated sigh. ‘
Okay then, I was just ringing to let you know we’re on our way home. I’ve had a gutful of my mother. I can’t do anything right, according to her. I’m a heartless monster, our kids are a lost cause and you’re a hopeless loser. I swear, the next time I’ll listen to you and just send the miserable old bitch a card and a bunch of flowers for her birthday.’
There was another sigh, and the woman added:
‘We should be home around dinner time, so if you’ve been having wild parties while we were away, honey, you’ve got until then to clean up the mess.’
She chuckled and added,
‘Although knowing you, you’ve probably eaten at the club every night since I left … anyway, we’ll see you later today. Don’t forget to put the garbage out.’

The woman’s voice was replaced by a horrible beeping noise that Rónán shut off with the press of another button. Then he turned and looked at them. ‘Anybody care to hazard a guess as what
later today
means?’

‘If Warren’s wife is in Limerick,’ Sorcha pointed out, wondering why he looked so worried, ‘then we have a day or more, surely? If this city is
Eblana
as you claim, then Limerick is more than a hundred and twenty miles from here and they have no ability to travel magically via the stone circles.’

‘Yeah, but the magic of the internal combustion engine could have them here in a couple of hours if the traffic’s with them,’
Rónán said, looking very concerned. ‘Shit! I was hoping we’d have more time.’

‘More time for what?’ Darragh asked. Trása flopped into one of the big armchairs, picked up a magazine from the table beside the chair and began flipping through the pages. It was enough to make Sorcha want to slap her. Trása shouldn’t have been here, but now that she was, the least the mongrel
Beansídhe
could do was act as if she cared what was happening.

‘I need time to find out Hayley’s condition,’ Rónán said. ‘Time to figure out how we’re going to get her from the hospital to wherever we need to go, to get her back to your reality. Time to figure out where that is, by the way. Jesus! Just time!’

‘Who the fuck are you lot?’

Warren was standing at the living room door, staring at them in shock. He was rumpled and unshaven, still dressed in his golf clothes from the night before, bleary-eyed and obviously confused. Sorcha, who was standing closest to him, summed up the situation in a heartbeat. They needed time, Rónán said. At worst, they had only two hours before Warren’s family got home. Warren’s appearance was robbing them of precious minutes.

Without a word, she stepped up behind the man, put her arm around his neck so her forearm was pressing against his Adam’s apple, and then she pushed his head forward with her other hand, squeezing hard. Five seconds later, Warren slumped in her arms. She let him go and he dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

‘What the fuck!’ Rónán exclaimed in shock. ‘What did you do?’

‘You said we needed time,’ she reminded him, a little offended at his tone. ‘He was wasting it.’ Sorcha rolled her eyes. ‘What were you expecting me to do? Give him a fighting chance by letting him land the first few blows?’

‘But you knocked him out cold!’

‘It’s not that difficult, Rónán,’ Darragh said. He too seemed a little puzzled by his brother’s attitude. ‘If the blood vessels that feed the brain are robbed of blood, it induces almost instant unconsciousness. You didn’t want her to kill him, did you?’

‘Enough!’ Rónán exclaimed. ‘Christ! What was I thinking bringing you lot back here?’

‘Strictly speaking,
you
didn’t bring them here,’ Trása said, looking up from her brightly coloured magazine. ‘They brought you. It was Ciarán who opened the rift.’

‘Shut up,’ Rónán snapped. He turned to Darragh. ‘Can you check if Warren’s okay?’ he asked, pointing to the unconscious man. ‘We’ll need to lay him out somewhere until he comes around. And make sure you put him on his side. We don’t want him suffocating on his own tongue. We have enough problems as it is.’

‘What about me?’ Sorcha asked as Darragh manhandled their host into the hall. ‘Do you have any orders for
me
,
Leath tiarna
?’ Her tone left Rónán in no doubt about what she thought of his orders, but he ignored it, and took her question at face value.

‘Yes, I do. Get out of those clothes and into something that isn’t going to get us arrested the moment you step out of the house. And stop hitting people.’

‘Yes, Sorcha, do as the
Leath tiarna
says,’ Trása added cheerily. ‘Stop hitting people.’

Rónán turned on the
Beansídhe
, no more appreciative of her interjection than Sorcha was. ‘Will you shut
up
?’

‘I could render the halfling unconscious just as easily as I did the man,’ Sorcha offered, fairly certain that Rónán wanted to kill the mongrel
sídhe
even more than she did.

‘Don’t tempt me,’ Rónán muttered, glaring at Trása.

‘Pity,’ the
sídhe
said. ‘Because then you’d never learn what I know about Hayley.’

‘You don’t know anything about Hayley.’

‘I do,’ Trása said. ‘And if you promise on your brother’s life to release me from my curse as soon as we get back to our reality, I’ll tell you what it is.’

Sorcha took a step closer, her hand on the hilt of her sword. ‘Please,
Leath tiarna
, let me kill her. It will make things easier for us all.’

Rónán held up his hand to forestall her and studied Trása for a moment. ‘What do you know?’

‘Promise me first.’

‘Okay, I promise. What do you know about Hayley?’

‘She’s not in hospital any longer.’

Sorcha let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Please, Rónán. Don’t let her waste any more of our time. She can’t possibly know that.’

‘Sorcha has a point. How do you know where Hayley is?’

Trása tossed the glossy magazine to Rónán, who caught it in one hand. He looked at her.

‘Page twelve,’ Trása said, pulling a face at Sorcha before adding, ‘
Kiva’s Mission of Mercy
is the headline. There’s a lovely article in there about how she’s paying all the bills for her chauffeur’s daughter’s treatment after her terrible accident caused by the paparazzi outside her house. There are even pictures of your mother and your little friend, who is alive and well, you’ll be glad to know. Oh, except that apparently, she’s blind.’

Rónán tore open the pages until he came to the story Trása was gloating over. He scanned it quickly, his expression hard to read. Sorcha glared at the halfling
sídhe
and wondered if Rónán might eventually forgive her if she ran the little bitch through right now, and rid him of her, once and for all.

Before she could act on the impulse, however, Darragh returned. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

Sorcha didn’t know if it was the psychic link between the boys that warned him something was amiss, or simply the look
on Rónán’s face. She wasn’t even sure if the link still worked, here in this realm without magic.

‘Hayley’s been moved,’ Rónán told his brother, frowning.

‘To where?’

Rónán shrugged. ‘I dunno. I need to get on the net. Don’t suppose any of you noticed if Warren had a computer in the study?’ Sorcha assumed he wasn’t including her in the question. She still didn’t understand the answering machine. She wouldn’t know a computer if it jumped up and bit her on the face.

‘I know you don’t mean fishing, brother,’ Darragh said with a thin smile. ‘But that’s about all I’m sure of.’

‘The internet,’ Rónán explained. ‘I need to find where they’ve taken Hayley.’

‘And this … internet … will tell you where she is?’ Sorcha asked.

‘Not specifically,’ Rónán said, folding the pages of the magazine back to show his brother. ‘But how many
exclusive rehabilitation facilities for the blind
can there be in Dublin? She’s gotta be in one of them.’

‘And once you find her, how will we get there?’ Darragh asked, studying the pictures in the magazine with interest.

‘We drive,’ Trása said with the confidence of someone who believed she had proven her worth. ‘We’ll take Warren’s car.’

Rónán shook his head. ‘We can’t. Even if he doesn’t report it as stolen, his wife will. And if it’s fitted with a LoJack, they’ll be onto us before we can blink.’ His statement evoked nothing but blank expressions from the others, even Trása and Darragh. Rónán threw his hands up in exasperation. ‘Just trust me on this. We need to find a way to stop Warren reporting his car stolen, or we find another car.’

‘Why don’t we just take him with us?’ Sorcha asked. ‘If Warren is not here and neither is his vehicle, will not his wife just assume the two are together? If we drop him off somewhere
along the way … somewhere it will be difficult for him to raise the alarm, that will give us time, will it not?’