Unfallen Dead (25 page)

He logged in, and the main Guildhouse menus came up. I accessed the archives’ logs. The dagger’s storeroom hadn’t been entered except the past week when I found Meryl replacing the missing essence amplifier. I spotted the likely date of her friend’s visit listed a few weeks earlier. Cross-checking it against the storeroom where the Ardman evidence was stored, the log showed the room had been accessed the same day. Meryl’s security signature had activated the lock.

Dylan pointed out the access-code identifier. “That’s a problem.”

I rested my fingers on the keys without typing. “If it wasn’t Meryl, how did she get in?”

Dylan walked to the opposite of the desk. “Powell must have somehow replicated Meryl’s essence to gain access. A glamour could work, but I doubt a security lock could be fooled by it like people are.”

We heard the metallic slide of the elevator, then voices in the hall. Dylan leaned out to look, and a professional smile sprang across his face. “Your Highness, I’m surprised to see you down here.”

Ceridwen. Not the person I needed to see. The hallway had a straight view from the elevator. I couldn’t slip into the storeroom area without her seeing me. The ATM receipt still had some of Meryl’s essence on it. I pressed the slip of paper against the space between a credenza and a filing cabinet. A barrier spell feathered like cobwebs against my face as I walked through the wall.

On the other side of the illusion, a tunnel led to the subway. Meryl had let me use it once. She hadn’t keyed it for me. I wouldn’t have made it through without her essence on the ATM receipt. The light from the office cast a bare illumination into the hidden space. Dylan’s voice trickled through the spell, but I couldn’t make out what was being said. He glanced into the office and indicated no surprise when he didn’t see me.

The dark mass in my head fluttered with a burst of pain at the same time a mental image of Ceridwen’s spear popped into my head. It shone like a bright sliver of essence in my mind. Dylan backed into the office, with Ceridwen following him. She had the spear.

“I’m sorry you had to look for me, Your Highness,” he said.

Ceridwen spoke to someone in the outer hall before closing the office door. With a confident smile, she tilted the spear toward Dylan, rolling the tip across his cheek in a caress. “The truth this spear seeks takes many forms, Druid macBain. We had only to ask it to guide us to you.”

Dylan looked uncomfortable. Ceridwen cradled the spear in the crook of one arm and glanced down at the desk. “Have you found anything?”

He shifted some papers. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve only begun looking.”

Ceridwen scanned the routine chaos of Meryl’s desk. She nudged a stack of books and picked up something small. As she toyed with it between her thumb and index finger, it caught the light with a metallic sheen. She dropped it back on the desk. “We want to know if you find anything remotely interesting.”

Dylan kept smiling. “These are the archives, Your Highness. Much of it is interesting. Can you offer me some guidance?”

Ceridwen considered him with a measuring look. “Neither of us is from here, Druid macBain. We were sent in the best interests of the Seelie Court. We trust you have no conflicts in your loyalties.”

“None,” Dylan said.

Ceridwen nodded once. “Good. We need to keep Meryl Dian confined until we acquire the answers the High Queen seeks. Find us the means to keep her so or the answers we need, and we shall be very appreciative.”

Dylan bowed. “I will do my best to serve the needs of the Guild and Court, Your Highness.”

She leaned forward, half-closing her eyes and smiling seductively. “I want you to know that I shall personally be very”—the smile widened—“appreciative.”

Dylan blushed from his neck to his hairline. “Thank you, Your Highness.”

Ceridwen straightened and became businesslike again. “You may call us at any time.”

She left. Dylan picked up a sheet of paper and wandered to the door as he read. Pausing at the threshold, his eyes shifted down the hallway for a fraction of a second. He dropped the paper on the desk and faced the wall I hid behind.

I suppressed a chuckle as he peered at me from inches away. He pressed his hand against the wall. From my side of the spell, the hand flattened as he encountered what he perceived as a hard surface. “I can sense the residue of your essence here, Connor. Are you there?”

I stepped forward, letting my chest replace the wall beneath his hand. “I see you can still blush on cue.”

He dropped his hand. “I don’t think she suspected you were here, do you?”

I shrugged. “You know Dananns are not very good at sensing essence, and there’s a lot of it in here.”

He nodded at the wall. “Care to explain that?”

“It’s a hidey-hole Meryl showed me. She uses it when she doesn’t want to talk to people. She keyed it to my essence.” If I revealed it was actually a full-blown exit, Meryl would be less understanding than Dylan would be if he knew I didn’t tell him the whole truth. I felt guilty not telling him, but he would appreciate the nature of confidences.

A small earring lay on the desk where Ceridwen had dropped it. Something felt naggingly familiar about it. Ceridwen’s brief contact with it had left her essence, but beneath it was Meryl’s.

Dylan leaned against the desk. “Con, I know there are things you’re not telling me, and I’m letting you. At some point, I expect you to tell me. Am I fooling myself by thinking that?”

That stung. He had every reason to say it, but coming from Dylan, it was tough to hear. I pretended to be interested in a pile of reports on Meryl’s desk. “I hope not.”

He bowed his head in thought. “Good. Because I would question my instincts if you walked away without a better explanation. I don’t want that to happen again.”

I lowered my head, too. “I know. I’ll say I’m sorry now, but I promise this time we’ll talk.”

He lifted his head. “I’ll take your word for it. Now, give me five minutes to settle in my office, then get out of here without attracting attention.”

He pushed away from the desk. I waited to make sure he left the floor. I picked up the earring again. It was a triskele, the druidic symbol of three spirals made with one continuous line. The symbol was generic, but something about the earring felt familiar. I stared at it and stared at it. I shivered as I recalled where I had seen it, or rather, its mate. It was bent and broken, but the piece of metal I found at the Kaspar murder scene was the mate to the one I held.

I stared and stared. The druidess essence I felt at the murder scenes was familiar. Familiar like Meryl. It wasn’t the same, but close. She was angry with the Guild, angry with the way she was being treated. Maybe something happened to her at Forest Hills, something I didn’t know about or understand. I was worried about myself. Maybe I should be worried about both of us.

I shook my head. Something was wrong. I was missing something. I refused to believe Meryl would kill two people for revenge of some kind. I put the earring back on the desk. She didn’t do it. I trusted my instincts.

I walked back through the wall. The spell resisted a little this time. I groped my way down the dark passage until I came to a staircase. Keeping my hands on the walls, I climbed the long flight of stairs. At the top, pushing hard against the spell blocking the exit felt like sliding through molasses. The receipt essence was almost drained.

I exhaled when I made it through. The dim lighting of the subway tunnel blinded me after the total darkness of the stairs. The wall behind me appeared to be a solid concrete slab when I pressed it. I pulled out the receipt. Meryl’s essence had faded to nothing. I would have stuck in the wall like a fly in amber if it had dissipated any sooner.

The platform at Boylston Street Station sat level with the train tracks. An old wire security fence prevented passengers from wandering into the tunnel. It worked more as a visual deterrent since you could walk around it. If you didn’t want to be seen doing that, a gap near a wall worked just as well. I mingled with passengers coming down the stairs on the inbound side.

Concrete arches separated the two halves of the station with wrought-iron fencing preventing anyone from crossing the tracks. An outbound train must have just come through because the opposite platform was empty. A lone man walked down the outbound side. He stared at me. I hate when people stare for no reason, playing their dominance games with strangers.

I stared back. The guy moved to the edge of the tracks, not taking his eyes from me. He seemed angry or annoyed. Three more steps, and he stopped on the tracks. I don’t know if anyone else had noticed him because I didn’t want to lose the staring game. The echoing station picked up the rumble of an approaching train. I moved closer to the iron fencing. He broke our gaze and looked up the tunnel. Headlights appeared in the tunnel on his side. He turned back to me.

“Train’s coming,” I said.

Light illuminated the tracks, throwing his solemn face into a white relief.

“Buddy, step back,” I said.

He didn’t move. I shouted as the train pulled in, my voice lost in the screaming of its wheels against the steel tracks. I rushed to the fence. The train stopped with a set of windowed doors opposite me. The man was inside the train. Almost. The floor of the car was several feet higher than the ground, cutting through him at the waist. He hadn’t changed his expression.
You’re going to die soon,
he sent.

The train pulled away in a rush of color, leaving behind an empty track. I backed away as several people cast anxious looks at me. They probably thought I was nuts. I would have. I was already thinking maybe I was. Really. As in, hallucinating and losing it.

My mind reeled as I rode the next train to Park Street Station. Maybe I couldn’t handle stress anymore. Maybe the thing in my head was causing brain damage. Maybe I was letting everything get to me like I never did before. Keeva was pushing herself beyond her limits; Meryl became more entangled in murder the more I tried to prove otherwise; Dylan was playing both friend and foe. And Joe had been too drunk lately to have a coherent conversation. Murdock might be a good sounding board, but he didn’t appreciate what it was like to deal with Guild messes, never mind the possibility that I was losing my mind. I hit a speed dial on my cell.

“It’s about time you called. Come on up,” Briallen answered. She hung up before I could whine like a scared child.

The door to Briallen’s house was always unlocked to me, allowing me to pass through her protective wards. I did a lot of growing up in her house, spent years learning things I never imagined possible when I was just a little kid. I trusted her with my life.

As I stood in the foyer, I sensed Briallen’s essence trailing upstairs. I found her in the parlor by the fire. She stared into the flames, unmoving, though I knew she had sensed me the moment I’d entered the house.

“Ceridwen had Meryl arrested,” I said.

Briallen didn’t respond immediately. “Sooner than I thought.”

I slumped into the opposite chair. “You knew?”

She pulled her legs up on the seat and adjusted her robes around them. “It was only a matter of time. Ceridwen is afraid of failing. High Queen Maeve doesn’t take disappointment well.”

“But Meryl doesn’t know anything.”

Briallen smiled as she sipped from a large mug. “I’m sure she would dispute that.”

“You know what I mean. She’s told them everything. We both have.”

She leaned her head back in the nook of the chair, her eyes half-closed. “Have you?”

Her tone made me blush, caught out like a ten-year-old telling a fib. It’s the tone she uses on me when she knows something that I think she doesn’t know. “Okay, everything they need to know.”

Briallen tweaked an eyebrow. “Deciding who needs to know what and who gets to decide that is the seed of most arguments in the world.”

I sighed. “I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t remember anything but what I’ve told them. Ceridwen essentially threatened me to get me to talk, and even Dylan doesn’t seem to believe me.”

“He mentioned you argued,” she said.

A little anger flared up. “You see? Ceridwen thinks arresting Meryl will put pressure on me to talk, and now Dylan thinks running to you will do it.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “I think it’s only fair to point out that you’re doing a little running to me right now.”

“That’s not true.”

She scoffed at me. “Sure you are. You think Meryl’s been arrested to put pressure on you, and you want me to confirm it. Did it ever occur to you that after you spoke to Dylan, he believed you? Has it occurred to you that Meryl doesn’t exactly make any attempt to inspire confidence in her veracity?”

“She’s telling the truth,” I said.

Briallen thrust her index finger at me. “
You
believe that.
You
do. Not the Guild. Just like you don’t want the Guild telling you what to do, the Guild doesn’t want you telling it what to think. Meryl’s a big girl. She’ll decide what to do.”

“If there is something she’s hiding—and I don’t think there is—she won’t say it, just to spite Ceridwen for treating her like this. She’s stubborn,” I said.

Briallen shrugged. “Then she’ll have to live with the consequences. Connor, you know Meryl well enough to know she won’t do anything she doesn’t want to. She’s a druidess. She takes that seriously. Let her decide how to respond. Sometimes the Grove and the Guild do not have the same agenda.”

“Don’t let Ceridwen hear you say that, or you might end up in a cell yourself.” I couldn’t help the dig.

Briallen grinned. “I’d like to see her try. At the bottom of all this, she knows the Grove and the Guild want essentially the same things. It’s just a matter of whose means to the end get used. Now, can we put this aside and discuss why you came to see me?”

Getting slapped down by Briallen didn’t exactly put me in the mood to make myself vulnerable. I feigned innocence. “I came about Meryl.”

Briallen laughed. “Oh, bull. You know I knew Meryl was under arrest ten minutes after she did. Something else is bothering you.”