Undone Deeds (4 page)

An awkward silence descended as everyone took the opportunity to look elsewhere. Murdock knew about the friction that characterized my relationship with Callin and kept a diplomatic eye, scanning the crowd rather than starting a conversation. The Clure, though, couldn’t care less. “Greetings, Connor. You’ve been missed in the finest swill halls the Weird has to offer.”

Despite what I thought of his negative influence on my brother, I could not not like the Clure. With his infectious smile and mop of curly auburn hair, he had a way of making you feel like you were his best friend. “I’ve been a little distracted, Clure.”

He grinned, a rakish slash of teeth that split his face in two. “Ah, distraction needs its own distraction betimes.”

“If I remember correctly, all times are betimes around you, Clure,” I said.

He chuckled, a warm, smooth sound of unapologetic self-awareness. Callin didn’t react. Drinking—his, in particular—was a topic we avoided unless we were alone. Then, the conversation degenerated into argument. The moment was saved by the appearance of the first passengers coming down the escalator. The waiting crowd shifted in place, excited and attentive to the procession of tired people making their way into the baggage-claim area.

The first person I recognized was Keeva macNeve, my old partner at the Guild. I had almost killed her and jeopardized her unborn child when the dark mass had taken me over. She had been at Tara these last few months on bed rest for her pregnancy. Her skintight bodysuit revealed that she had had the baby, but I didn’t see a child with her.

Cal whistled low under his breath. “Did you ever tap that, little bro’?”

“No, and I’m glad I didn’t,” I said.

He chuckled with that edge of derision that he knew got under my skin. “Yeah, there’s the difference between you and me. I’ve never regretted getting laid.”

Keeva was smart, hot-looking, and tough as nails. Too tough for my taste and with a side of arrogance I had never liked. That she ended up in a relationship with Ryan macGoren proved my point that we wouldn’t have made a good couple.

I caught Keeva’s eye, but she frowned and looked away. I guess she hadn’t gotten over what I did to her even though I wasn’t in my right mind at the time. “I don’t see a baby. I hope that doesn’t mean anything bad.”

The Clure cleared his throat. “Not at all. She had a boy. Word is she fostered him out to relatives.”

Fostering children out—even babies—was not unusual among the fey, especially among the ruling clans. Keeva was related to the High Queen’s family. Not as close as she liked people to think, but enough to make her miserable to be around sometimes.

In the next wave of passengers, I spotted my father and was struck at how much Cal resembled him. They shared the same blunt features that marked them as strong men—the height, the muscle, the swagger—and the same easy smile that could vanish at a moment’s notice. A space next him indicated the presence of my mother, shorter than average and lost in a crowd. As they neared the waiting area, I saw—and heard—her. My mother kept a running commentary at all times, and right then, the jingling of massive amounts of jewelry on her neck and arms added a musical accompaniment.

When a gap in the crowd opened and she saw us, her face lit with excitement. She pushed her way forward, leaving my father behind, and ran toward us with outstretched hands. “Callie! Connie!” she shouted, and grabbed me and Cal around the waists in a hug full of bosom and lavender.

She stepped back and rubbed each of us on the side of the face. “What have you boys been doing? Fighting? You’ve been fighting again, Cal. And, you! Look at you. You’re too skinny, Connie.”

Callin and I exchanged amused glances over her head, comrades for the moment. Our mother was, well, a mom. We received brief flashes of treatment as adults, but at the end of the day, she was convinced she should have never let us out of the house to fend for ourselves. “I missed you, too, Ma,” I said.

My father hugged Callin with a back pat, then me. If I was with my brother, it was always in that order. I often wondered if it was a subtle signal to Callin that he always came first with our father. I didn’t take offense. It was one of those things I noticed and could as easily mean my dad hugged in age order.

As I introduced Murdock, both my parents put on their professional smiles. I was sure they didn’t know what to make of him, a police officer giving off a druid body signature and wearing an iron weapon.

We wrestled with their bags as my mother pointed out one after another. She pushed back her thick dark hair and cast an appraising eye at us. “Let’s have the others sent on.”

Murdock, weighed down with two shoulder bags and a suitcase, looked at me. “Others?”

“This is an awful lot of stuff, Mom. How long are you staying?” I asked.

My mother and father exchanged glances as we moved toward the exit. “The High Queen sent us home,” she said.

I tried not to stumble. I loved my parents. I did. But I had gotten used to not making the obligatory weekly trips to visit since they had moved to Ireland over a decade ago to work for the Seelie Court. I didn’t know everything going on in their lives. The converse was true, but that was for the best. “Is something wrong?”

We piled the suitcases on the curb next to a black car. “Of course, but she didn’t say. She sent most of the court away. It’s all very mysterious. Is this us? I thought we ordered a limo.”

“I have a car,” Murdock said.

She smiled up at Murdock. “That’s so sweet of you. You can take those bags and meet us at the hotel.” She cocked her head up at my father. “Where are we staying, dear?”

“The Bostonian,” he said.

Murdock’s eyes went a little wider as Callin helped the driver pack bags into the trunk. I covered my smirk by slipping a suitcase into the backseat. “We’ll be right along behind you.”

My mother hopped into the backseat of the black car. “We’ll make room for you, Cal. The Clure can sit up front. See you at the hotel!” She waved as Callin squeezed in next to her and closed the door.

With a thin smile, my father lifted his head. “Got all that?” he asked.

I chuckled as he walked around to the other side of the car. “Got it.”

The car pulled away. I turned to smile at Murdock. The bags still dangled from his shoulders. With a flick of the wrist, he flung one at me, and I caught it with a laugh. “I wasn’t planning on chauffeuring you to a hotel,” he said.

I picked up the lone bag on the curb and walked to where Murdock
had parked his car in the fire lane. “Oh, come on, Leo. It’s not like you don’t want to see more of this.”

He popped the trunk, and we pushed the bags in among his extra police gear, the spare tire, a milk crate filled with cleaning bottles, a pile of books, balled-up blankets, and a closed trash bag I was not going to ask about. It was cleaner than his backseat. “Oh, I think I’ve seen enough to get the picture,” he said.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” I said.

We got in the car, and he pulled into the exit lane. “Connie and Callie, huh?”

I glowered at him. “Oh, shut up.”

He giggled.

Despite mild pleading and promises of embarrassing family dynamics, Murdock resisted coming into the hotel. He helped unload his car onto a luggage trolley, then slammed the trunk and waved. “I have an appointment.”

“But you can eat all the olives in the minibar,” I said.

He smirked. “Bribing a police officer will get you a jail cell.”

I held out my hands, loosely together at the wrist. “Please?”

“Let me know if you get any leads on the dead elf,” he said, and pulled away. I didn’t mind. I loved my family, but having an independent ally around when we were all together would have been comforting. I pushed the trolley into the lobby, where a bellhop rushed to take it away from me.

The hotel suite had the hushed eloquence of money crossed with the generic style of hotel glamour. My parents weren’t rich, but they were comfortable. My mother appeared from the bedroom. She had removed most of the jewelry
from the plane. “Why were you wearing everything you own?” I asked.

She hugged me with a chuckle, then settled onto the couch while the Clure rummaged in the bar. “People run up to you in airports and cut the strap off your carry-on.”

“Mother….” I said.

“They do! I read about it. I didn’t want to take any chances. Your father”—she eyed him dramatically—“thinks I’m alarmist, but here I sit with all my belongings.”

My father checked the view out the window. “Except for the diplomatic pouch with fifty thousand dollars you left in the coffee shop.”

Callin choked on his drink. “What the hell are you doing with fifty thousand dollars in cash?”

“Your mother was afraid the banks would fail while we were in flight,” my father said.

Callin stared at me, another one of our comrade moments, united in the baffling things our parents did. “Please tell me you have the pouch,” he said.

My mother tilted her head in thought. “Grey, you had the pouch last. Remember, I told you to tip the porter?” She used a pet name for my father in conversation, but when she used a name, it was Grey.

“You said give him the pouch,” he said.

My mother gasped in horror. “I said pound! Give him the pound! You had that change in your hand,” she said. When Callin groaned, my mother shot me an impish smile. She was not above playing on her son’s perception of her as crazy. She slapped Callin’s knee and laughed. Chagrined, he dropped his head back as he realized he had fallen for her act.

My mother and Cal worked like that, joking, chastising, teasing. They connected on a comfort level I never had with her. My parents were always my parents, loved and loving. I knew I could rely on them to fulfill certain needs, sometimes needs I didn’t know I had, but our relationships always remained child to parent. We weren’t friends in the sense that some parents became friends to their adult children, like
Cal and my mother were. I didn’t resent it. It was who we were to each other.

Cal didn’t have the same relationship with our father that I had, and sometimes I wondered if he felt like I did about him and my mother. Thomas Grey was a man of few words and formidable intellect, someone whom I enjoyed, in the strictest sense of the word, spending an evening with debating politics or history or anything. He absorbed the happenings around him, picking up nuances, making connections that others failed to see. Even then, as Cal and my mother talked, I knew by the tilt of his head he was listening to every word even if he wasn’t cracking a smile. If Cal and my mother were friends of personality, my father and I were friends of the mind.

A burst of pink essence heralded the inevitable appearance of Joe to the gathering. He whooped as he circled the room, then plunged to my mother, wrapping his arms and legs around her neck. “Momma Grey!”

My mother took the assault with good nature. She and Joe were a mutual admiration society that served two members. “I was worried you had forgotten about me, dear.”

Joe reared back, mugging. “You? Forget you? Why I’d sooner forget to dress in the morning.”

My father gave a tired sigh. “Apparently, he did.”

Joe never wore more than his loincloth, and even that was a courtesy to nonflit sensibilities. “At least you don’t have to deal with his snoring,” I said.

My father tilted his head toward me. “And you haven’t seen the two of them in the garden after a few drinks.”

My mother hopped off the couch, tugging Cal’s hand. “Come see what I brought you,” she said. Cal let her lead him away. The Clure followed, throwing us an amused smile as they disappeared into the bedroom.

I poured my father a glass of whiskey and joined him by the window. The hotel overlooked Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. The two buildings had always been major components of Boston commercial businesses, from a sheep auction house to today’s restaurants and shops. “She seems in fine form.”

He didn’t answer right away, caught by some activity in the street below. An elf
in Consortium livery was standing in the plaza. He had a falcon on his hand. “She’s had a difficult year.”

I hadn’t heard about anything wrong from them in the few phone conversations we had had. “What happened?”

He pursed his lips. “No matter how I answer that, it will hurt your feelings.”

“Me?”

He smiled into his glass as he sipped. “See?”

I clenched my jaw. “What has Maeve done?”

“Nothing overt, per se. We are members of the Seelie Court, Con. You know that the winds of preference are fickle. You saw what happened to you when the Guild kicked you out. This last year, a chill spread, invitations declined or not offered, whispers behind closed doors, ranks closed. The Seelie Court is all about privilege. I’ve shielded your mother from the more vile things, but she’s no fool. Her receiving room has been quite empty of late, and now we are banished.”

The elf removed the bird’s hood and released it. The falcon wheeled above an appreciative crowd, swooping back down to the elf’s proffered glove.

I gripped my glass to keep from trembling. I had issues with the Guild and the Seelie Court. I had been vocal with my opinions about High Queen Maeve. I stood by everything I had said and done, but, dammit, this was my mom. She had done nothing to deserve being dragged into Maeve’s manipulations. “I’m sorry,” I said.

My father glanced at my reflection in the window. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Regula’s a big girl. No one goes to Court thinking it’s all fun and dances. She has never once blamed you. No matter what, you are our son.”

“I’m still sorry. If I can figure out a way to get Maeve off my back, I will. I hope she pays for all the damage she’s created,” I said.

My father finished off his drink. “There are no angels wearing crowns, son. Donor’s hands are no cleaner.”

“Were,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Then the rumor is true? The Elven King is dead?”

I nodded. “I tried to stop him from destroying the Guildhouse. It would be nice to say I didn’t mean to kill him, but I kinda threw a spear at him.”