The Undivided (9 page)

Somewhat to Trása’s amazement, Dublin Guided Limousine Tours had a whole list of celebrity addresses on their tour itinerary, most of which, however, belonged to dead people.

The latest stop had brought the tour to Baggot Street. They were standing on the pavement outside yet another old house. This one was neat and narrow, four storeys tall with a bright blue door trimmed with brass fittings.

‘Do you only know where dead people
used
to live?’ Trása asked her guide, a plump blonde woman wearing a green uniform with a rather ridiculous four-leaf clover-shaped hat. The woman had introduced herself as Kathleen, which seemed odd to Trása because she looked more like an Anthea. ‘Or do you know where some
live
ones can be found?’

Trása had booked the tour with reception at the hotel when she checked in. She’d left Plunkett in her room to amuse himself while she went scouting their quarry. She had been in Dublin for less than three hours. She should have been minutes away from finally laying eyes on Rónán of the Undivided and this foolish woman with her ridiculous hat was wasting time showing her the residence of some pork vendor.

‘Francis Bacon is one of Dublin’s most famous sons. His paintings have been exhibited in every major gallery in the
world, including the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.’

‘But he’s dead,’ Trása pointed out impatiently. ‘So was the last chap, Yeats.’

‘You asked for the celebrity tour, miss.’

‘I wanted the
live
celebrity tour,’ Trása said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kathleen replied in a tone that was anything but conciliatory. ‘People who take this tour have usually some idea of the depth of Ireland’s cultural heritage.’

Trása smiled, which didn’t help matters much.
Stupid cow, you don’t know the half of it.
‘I want to know where Kiva Kavanaugh lives.’

‘Blackrock,’ the woman said with a sigh. She clearly thought Trása a complete philistine. ‘It’s about fifteen minutes from here. Ten, if the traffic’s with us.’

‘Let’s go then,’ Trása ordered, jerking open the car door. She climbed into the back of the limo, wishing she’d brought Plunkett along. He might have been able to glamour some manners into her rather put-upon tour guide.

Still … they were only fifteen minutes from the Kavanaugh house.

Only fifteen minutes from locating Darragh’s long-lost twin …

She cut the thought off before it could form into something more dangerous. Instead, she concentrated on the good things.

Her time in this reality was almost done. Soon she could go back to her own world where her magic worked. A world where she wasn’t constrained by the whim of a fickle
Leipreachán
. A world where everything made sense to her.

Well, almost everything …

Trása sank back into the deep leather seat of the limo.

It wouldn’t be long now, and she could go home.

‘You should have seen it, Plunkett,’ Trása told the
Leipreachán
when she arrived back at the hotel a couple of hours later. ‘It’s like a fortress. It has a high fence and locked gates and there’s a whole mob of noisy people camped outside with cameras, waiting to get in.’

Plunkett shrugged indifferently when he heard Trása’s tale of woe. He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the king-sized bed, rifling through the contents of the bar fridge, which he’d emptied while waiting for Trása to return. In addition to mounds of bacon, he was particularly fond of chocolate and potato chips. Outside, the night sky was bright with the lights of the city. That was another thing Trása found disconcerting. In the cities of this realm, it never really got dark and the sky, instead of being a reassuring backdrop sprinkled with familiar constellations, was a washed-out shadow of what it might have been, outdone by gaudy neon lights.

‘What did ye expect? A welcome mat?’ Plunkett said.

Trása slumped into the armchair by the window, staring despondently over the city. ‘I thought I’d at least be able to get a look at the house. And maybe Rónán. To make sure we’ve got the right one.’

‘Aye,’ the
Leipreachán
said, nodding sagely. ‘Best be sure we got the
right
Rónán, rescued from drowning at the right age, who’s the spitting image of the lad who might be his brother in our realm.’ He tore the wrapping off a triangular chocolate bar, snapped a piece off, and added, ‘Wouldn’t want to make that sort of mistake, would ye?’

‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘We have the right Rónán … hopefully.’

‘What do ye mean,
hopefully
?’ he asked through a mouthful of chocolate.

She turned from the window to look at him. ‘Well, if Marcroy and my father tossed Rónán through a rift to be rid of him,
what’s to say other versions of my uncle and my father, from other realms —’

‘Their
eileféin
,’ Plunkett interrupted, calling the alternative versions of the same people by their proper name.

‘All right, their
eileféin
… what’s to say they didn’t do the same thing? I mean, how can we be sure he’s
our
Rónán, and not a Rónán from somewhere else?’

Plunkett frowned. ‘Ye’re worried this Rónán is our Rónán’s
eileféin
?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Then maybe we should lead the Druids to him ourselves,’ the
Leipreachán
chuckled. ‘Can ye imagine the trouble if they brought the wrong Rónán back?’

Trása hadn’t considered that. Knowingly bringing someone’s
eileféin
back through the rift was a serious crime among the
Tuatha.
It invariably ended in someone’s death, usually the
eileféin
’s and often that of the rift runner who had brought them through.

She shook her head. It was a nice idea, but it wouldn’t really work. ‘The Druids would only be in trouble if someone brings the right one back. And even if they did, how would anybody tell the right one from the wrong one? The real Rónán from our realm is missing.’ Trása sighed unhappily. Her enthusiasm for this mission was waning rapidly, a feeling that surprised her, given she was so close to succeeding. She expected, at this point, to have become more excited, not increasingly bothered by the likelihood of success.

Perhaps it was because Rónán looked so much like Darragh. That was a hurt Trása knew would probably never heal. And she knew it was dangerous to think of Rónán as anything other than what he was — a threat that needed to be contained before the others found him.

Or perhaps it was because, although she loved her uncle dearly, she didn’t trust Marcroy Tarth much more than she trusted Plunkett.

‘Do you think we should send a message back home?’ she asked. ‘Let them know we’ve found him?’

‘And risk the news getting out?’ Plunkett asked. ‘I wouldn’t, if I was ye. But then, I’m only a hundred-and-eleven years old. Who am I to argue with a halfling
Beansídhe
?’

Plunkett must be feeling the pressure too
, Trása decided, surprised to hear the
Leipreachán
sounding so snappy. Or he’d eaten too much sugar.

‘How do we get to him, then?’ she asked. Plunkett might be right about keeping the news of their discovery to themselves, but she still needed to make contact with Rónán. How else was she going to lure him away from the rift? ‘You can’t glamour us past
all
those people at the gate.’

‘
I
could pay him a visit,’ Plunkett suggested, as he continued to devour the triangular chocolate bar.

Trása shook her head. ‘He’s been raised in a world with no magic. The
Tuatha
are nothing more than a children’s story in this reality. If a
Leipreachán
suddenly appears to him, telling him he comes from another reality where he’s a Druid with a long-lost twin, he’ll think he’s hallucinating. It sounds crazy even to me, and I
know
it’s true.’ She sighed. ‘I’m afraid no one raised in this reality is going to go anywhere with you voluntarily, Plunkett.’ Still, it wasn’t an entirely ridiculous idea. Her forehead creased thoughtfully. ‘Do you suppose you could glamour him into compliance?’

Plunkett shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Can’t glamour any kind of Druid in our world.’

‘But we’re not in our world,’ she said, leaning forward a little. ‘Maybe here, you
can
glamour a Druid, even one of the Undivided.’

The
Leipreachán
frowned, looking very uncertain. ‘Be taking a big risk if it doesn’t work.’

‘What risk? He doesn’t even know what a glamour is, so he won’t understand what you’re trying to do.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve seen the face you make when you glamour humans, Plunkett. He’ll probably just think you’re constipated.’

‘And what’s
your
solution, lassie?’ the
Leipreachán
asked, scrunching the foil wrapper of the chocolate bar and tossing it at her with a scowl. ‘Ye have no power as a
Beansídhe
here. What’re ye thinking? To lure him with feminine
human
wiles?’

The
Leipreachán
had a point. Trása’s magic was non-existent in this reality. She couldn’t fly, she couldn’t shape-shift. She couldn’t even tell if someone was dying, although that might have been a good thing. With so many people crammed as closely together as they were in the incomprehensibly large cities she’d visited since she’d been here, she’d have spent
all
her time wailing and crying, if she could sense the end for
everyone
about to die. Trása was stuck in her human form, and that meant that here she was just a seventeen-year-old girl with impressively long blonde hair, rather oddly shaped ears and a charming stuffed toy
Leipreachán
she was fond of carting every place she went.

Rónán wouldn’t know what she was. Or who she was.

And how was she supposed to explain herself?

What
would
she say to Darragh’s twin if she came face to face with him?
Hello, Rónán, I’m a Faerie — well, half a Faerie, truth be told — from another reality, and I’ve come to make sure you never get home or meet the twin brother you don’t know you have.

‘I think we need to try the glamour option first,’ she decided. She bit down on her bottom lip for a moment and then added, ‘But I’m not letting you do it alone.’

No need to add it was because she didn’t trust him. That was a given.

‘Which brings ye back to the problem of getting through the front gate.’ Plunkett ripped the top off the small tube of sour-cream-and-onion-flavoured Pringles and began stuffing them into his mouth.

‘You’re right,’ she said, something she’d never admitted to a
Leipreachán
before.

‘I am?’ the
Leipreachán
said, shocked by her admission.

‘The
front
gate is out of the question, but I checked out the neighbourhood, and according to the postman I spoke to, there’s an old man living alone in the house next door. Maybe there’s a way onto the Kavanaugh estate from his place.’

The
Leipreachán
thought about that for a moment and then nodded. ‘He might even know the lad,’ Plunkett suggested, chip crumbs spilling out of the side of his mouth and catching in his goatee. ‘Maybe ye can lure him out that way.’

‘It will solve most of our problems right there, if we can,’ Trása said, making her decision. She stood up, thinking it was about time she ordered room service. Plunkett’s bar-fridge binge reminded her she hadn’t eaten all day. ‘It’s settled, then. First thing tomorrow, we’re going back to the Kavanaugh house in Blackrock and we’ll try to make contact with Rónán using the old man next door.’ She leaned across and playfully jerked the little
Leipreachán
’s perky red cap over his eyes. ‘Time for you to pay your debt to the
Daoine sídhe
, Plunkett O’Bannon.’

The little man shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Marcroy sending me here with ye was punishment enough, Trása Ni’Amergin,’ he said, pushing the cap up in annoyance. ‘Trust me, lassie, I’m paying me debt to the
Daoine sídhe
. Oh, how I’m paying.’

Every morning, just before dawn, Jack O’Righin climbed out of bed, treated himself to a long, luxurious hot bath to ease the aches and pains that came with old age, and then walked downstairs to the kitchen. There, every day without fail, he ate two pieces of thick white toast with butter and honey, brewed himself a cup of good strong tea, shovelled four heaped teaspoons of sugar into it, and made his way out to his glasshouse.

Jack loved his glasshouse. It was the reason he’d bought this particular house. Not because of the neighbours, the posh location or the fact that — thanks to his runaway bestseller — he could have bought his own island in the Caribbean had he been so inclined. As long as Jack could remember, through a childhood filled with hunger and pain, a youth filled with violence and death, and much of his adult life spent behind bars, he had dreamed of being able to do exactly this. Get up, make a cup of tea, and potter around the garden with nothing more important to worry about than whether or not the
bromeliad
needed re-potting. It was his idea of heaven, and no matter where he went after he died — and Jack was certain, given some of the things he’d done, he was heading downwards to a very warm place — he would always be grateful that, for a short time at least, he’d known what it meant to be in heaven.

Well, almost heaven
, he thought, as he shovelled sugar into his chipped enamel cup, ignoring the mess in his kitchen. He knew he should at least put the dishwasher on, but Carmel, his cleaning lady, would be back next week. She ought to be grateful he’d left her so much to do. After all, he paid her by the hour.

Jack glanced out the kitchen window, looking for the sun, but the day was overcast and it seemed about to rain.
Perhaps a bit of precipitation will drive away those fools hanging around the gate next door
, he thought.

Living next door to a famous actress had unexpected consequences for a man who liked his solitude and privacy. There were always those wretched photographers lurking in the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

And then there was that poor kid of hers.

Jack liked young Ren, but knew he had problems. He didn’t believe for a moment Ren was slicing himself up for attention, or that he had anything else wrong with him other than being a perfectly normal seventeen-year-old boy. That made him a pain in the arse, at times, to be sure, but hardly warranted the attention of that fancy shrink Kiva insisted on sending him to. Jack had spent enough time in The Maze with lads who really
had
lost their marbles to know Ren wasn’t one of them. Someone else was inflicting those strange wounds on the young man.

At first, Jack thought it might be Kiva, but he dismissed that notion the time Ren stumbled through the gate, bleeding from a deep cut on his arm while his mother was on location in Italy.

It wasn’t a schoolteacher inflicting the injuries. The kids were on vacation until September.

That left the housekeeper and her husband. But that didn’t make any sense, either. The Boyles were the only solid things in Ren’s life, and their own kids seemed normal and perfectly well adjusted.

That left Jack with nothing to believe but the inexplicable truth.

Something unseen and unknown had the ability to wound Ren — sometimes seriously enough to threaten his life — and the lad genuinely had no idea what or who it was.

The doorbell interrupted Jack’s musings. He glanced at his watch, surprised to see it was not yet seven.

Curious as to who could be calling on him at this hour, Jack left his tea on the counter and shuffled through his echoing mansion to the front door. When he opened it, he was confronted with an unexpected sight.

Standing on his doorstep was a creature out of legend. That was his instinctive reaction, but he knew the girl couldn’t possibly be that. Even so, the girl standing at his door was just too ethereally perfect to be real. As tall as he was, she appeared to be only sixteen or seventeen years old, with luscious, wavy blonde hair that flowed down past her waist. She was slender and pale with cat-like almond eyes, wearing jeans and a rainbow-coloured T-shirt, and clutching a toy
Leipreachán
in her arms.

‘Yes?’

‘What’s your name, old man?’ the girl asked, smiling brightly.

‘Jack O’Righin,’ he said, never for an instant thinking he should refuse the information.

‘Do you live alone?’

‘Yes … well … the housekeeper comes once a fortnight, but …’

‘Excellent,’ she said, holding up her toy
Leipreachán
. ‘Say hello to Plunkett.’

She held the doll up in front of him. The toy was so well made he almost seemed alive.

‘This is yer granddaughter, Trása,’ the
Leipreachán
told him — which was an impossibility, Jack knew. It was just a toy. ‘She’s come to visit ye from the north. Ye’ve asked her to stay as long as she likes and ye’re not going to ask any questions about why she’s here.’

Jack nodded. ‘Very well.’

‘Oh, and we like bacon for breakfast. Lots of it. Now, say hello to Trása.’

‘Hello, Trása.’

‘Good work, Plunkett,’ Jack’s granddaughter said.

Jack stepped back to let her in. He didn’t remember having a granddaughter, or even a son or daughter to provide him with one.

But the
Leipreachán
had told him the girl was his, so it must be true.

Jack’s granddaughter followed him around for the rest of the day — then all evening, eventually staying the night — asking him questions about himself, his life and how he came to be living in this particular house, especially as it seemed far too large for one person. Jack found himself telling her everything she wanted to know, even things he normally didn’t share with other people.

He was enchanted by Trása, but any time he started to wonder about her, the thought seemed to hit a wall in his mind, vaporising like a mist and vanishing into a forgotten memory.

She seemed disgusted by the state the house was in, so she ordered her toy
Leipreachán
to clean up, which Jack considered a bit of wishful thinking, until he came downstairs the next morning to discover a sparkling kitchen with no dirty dishes, old pizza boxes or frozen TV dinner containers lying about.

A part of Jack knew there was something odd about his granddaughter. In fact, deep inside he knew he didn’t
have
a granddaughter, but that hardly seemed to matter. He couldn’t articulate the words, and when he did try to say something about it, suddenly that damned
Leipreachán
was there, staring at him, and he couldn’t remember for the life of him what he had been about to say.

But Jack didn’t mind. He found himself enjoying the company, in no small part because Trása was hugely impressed by his beloved glasshouse.

Carrying a cup of tea — complete with four sugars like his — she followed him the next morning through the misty summer rain, anxious to see his collection of exotic flora. He showed her around the benches, telling her the Latin names of each specimen, its origin and where he’d acquired it. She admired the plants he’d so carefully nurtured, ooh-ing and ah-ing with genuine awe over each new species, particularly the
bromeliads.
Jack was thrilled because the
bromeliads
were his favourites.

‘They’re native to the southern states of the US, like Florida,’ he explained, delighted to have an attentive audience. Ren visited him in the glasshouse often, but had no interest in anything Jack was growing. ‘You’ll find them all through central America and South America, all the way down to Chile. There’s even a very primitive species in Africa, but I don’t have one of them to show you. It’s survived there since before the two continents separated.’

Trása sipped her tea, looking at him oddly. ‘When did
that
happen?’

Jack shrugged. ‘Millions of years ago, I suppose. Don’t they teach you that sort of thing in school?’

She shook her head, and took another sip of the overly sweet tea. ‘Not the schools I’ve been to. We learnt a lot about plants, though.’ She pointed to a spiny, pale green plant with a large, rusty yellow seedpod. ‘What’s this one?’

It was Jack’s turn to look at Trása oddly. He put down his tea and picked up the pot with a grunt. It was very heavy. ‘Are you serious? You don’t know what that is?’

‘Should I?’

‘It’s
ananus comosus
. My God, girl … it’s the most well-known
bromeliad
of all.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

Jack laughed, and replaced the
bromeliad
on the bench. ‘It’s a pineapple, silly! Surely you’ve seen a pineapple before?’

‘No. Should I?’

He shook his head, still laughing, ‘Jayzus, it’s like you’re from another planet.’

‘Isn’t it?’ she agreed, without missing a beat. ‘Who lives over there?’

He looked up and followed the direction of her gaze. From the glasshouse, Jack could just make out the lights coming on in the upper storey of the Kavanaugh house through the trees.

Jack sighed. He was about to lose his audience. No teenage girl was going to stay interested in
bromeliads
when there was a celebrity living next door. ‘Kiva Kavanaugh,’ he said, with a certain air of resignation. ‘You know … the actress. I suppose you want to meet her. Get her autograph …’

‘No,’ Trása said. ‘But I’d like to meet her son. Do you know him?’

Jack smiled. The request made perfect sense to him. Why had he thought a girl Trása’s age might want to meet the revered Kiva Kavanaugh? Of course, she’d rather meet Ren. He was much closer to her age, a good-looking lad, and after the other night, a minor celebrity in his own right. ‘I know him.’

‘Does he have a triskalion?’ she asked, holding out her right hand. ‘Here. On the palm of his hand?’

‘Can’t say I’ve ever paid that much attention to what sort of tattoo he has on his hand.’

‘How could you miss it?,’ she asked, impatient with his poor observation skills. ‘It’s a three-pointed symbol in a red circle bordered with orange. It’s green with a yellow centre and a spiral at the end of each of the three legs.’

Jack shrugged. ‘I really don’t recall it, lass.’

‘Well,’ she said, with a heavy sigh. ‘I suppose I could check for myself.’

That was one request Jack
could
grant his newly acquired granddaughter. ‘He comes here to visit me,’ he told her. ‘I’m sure you’ll run into him, sooner or later.’

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘In that case, why don’t we have breakfast?’

‘We’ve already had toast,’ he reminded her.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘but Plunkett wants his bacon and if you know what’s good for you, old man, you’ll know it’s not wise to get between a
Leipreachán
and his breakfast.’