Authors: Jennifer Fallon
Namito nodded, picking up his chopsticks. ‘You came through the
rifuto
stones,
wagakimi. Youkai
, even from another realm, are still
Youkai
. That’s why the Tanabe were so anxious to be rid of you before anybody discovered your arrival.’
‘It’s why they wanted to kill you,’ Kazusa informed him cheerfully.
‘Manners, little sister,’ Aoi chided softly.
Ren turned to Namito for an explanation. He shrugged. ‘My sister speaks true. The
Konketsu
and all who support them will go to great lengths to prevent you opening a rift back to your own reality.’
‘Why?’ Ren asked. He was hoping, given the trouble his presence seemed to be causing, that they would be glad to be rid of him.
‘The
Konketsu
fear that
Youkai
from other realms will see what the Empresses have done here … and seek vengeance.’
Ren was silent for a moment, slurping his noodles to give him time to think. It was obvious they knew how to open rifts. All he needed to do was find out how they did it and he was home, preferably before anyone in the reality he’d just left realised Darragh was still there and tried to make his brother pay for Ren’s alleged crimes.
There was that not-so-minor problem of the looming autumn equinox too. If he didn’t find a way out of here, return to his own reality, collect Darragh and then make it back to the Druid reality before
Lughnasadh
, it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Perhaps he should stop denying he was Faerie to these people. Did it matter if they thought he was? While it would get him killed among the Tanabe, apparently, here among the Ikushima, it seemed to be worth a great deal.
‘Do you travel often to other realms?’ Ren asked, as casually as he could manage.
What are the chances somebody here in this room can open a rift? Maybe Granny Masuyo is a great wizard? Or the shy and delightful Aoi?
‘Not any longer,’ Namito explained. ‘Not since the Empresses forbade it.’
‘Kazusa mentioned the Empresses earlier,’ Ren said carefully. ‘You’re not that fond of them, I take it?’
‘It would be treason not to be loyal to the Empresses,’ Namito said stiffly. ‘Kazusa was speaking out of turn if she implied otherwise.’
Touched a nerve, there, didn’t I?
He glanced at Kazusa who was slurping her noodles with great determination and avoiding her brother’s eye as well as the gaze of everyone else at the table.
‘Well, to be honest, I don’t know the first thing about your Empresses and whether or not I ought to be loyal to them. As you say, I came through the
rifuto
. First chance I get, I’d like someone to open it for me so I can go back through.’ He hoped he hadn’t broken any taboos by being so blunt over the dinner table, but as Trása reminded him when they arrived, it was only a couple of weeks until the
Lughnasadh
. If he hadn’t found a way back to the Druid realm by then, he — and Darragh along with him — would die when the Faerie Queen transferred the Undivided power to the new heirs. He didn’t really have time for social niceties. ‘Whatever it is the
Konketsu
have done here,’ he said, hoping to reassure them, ‘well, I think we’ll just have to invoke the Vegas clause.’ In response to their blank looks, he added, ‘You know … what happens in this reality, stays in this reality …’
Aoi looked at him in confusion. ‘Surely, if you are
Youkai
you can open a rift yourself, Renkavana? That is what Chishihero will assume.’
‘He can’t even heal a little cut on his own face,’ Kazusa reminded her sister. ‘How do you expect him to know enough
ori mahou
to open a doorway to another world?’
‘Is that how they open rifts here?’ Ren asked. ‘Using folding magic?’
‘Isn’t that what they do in your realm?’ the old lady asked suspiciously.
‘No … it’s more … hell, I have no idea what it is. It’s certainly not origami.’
‘
Ori mahou
,’ Kazusa corrected. She turned to her sister. ‘See? He’s hopeless.’
‘Not so hopeless as you think,’ Masuyo said, studying Ren closely. ‘Just because his magic is not the same as ours doesn’t make him any less useful for … other things.’
The old woman may not be the head of the household, but Ren got the feeling she was the power behind the throne. And he didn’t like the sound of the
other things
she spoke of. They sounded ominous.
‘I’m not sure my magic is of any use here,’ he said, conveniently overlooking his miraculous escape from the Tanabe. ‘I don’t know the first thing about your
ori mahou
.’
‘Told you,’ Kazusa muttered, loud enough for everyone at the table to hear.
‘Really, I just want to find my way home.’
‘What of your mate?’ Masuyo asked. ‘The one who turned into a bird and flew away? Don’t you want to find her?’
‘She’s not my mate,’ Ren told them. ‘And I’m sure she’ll find me if she wants to. For the record, she’s the
Youkai
, if you’re looking for one.’
‘Do you not have a life mate, Renkavana?’ Aoi asked with a coy smile.
‘No way! I’m only seventeen,’ he said, realising as he said the words, he was wrong. He was older than that, almost nineteen, in fact. The mystery of his actual date of birth was now solved with the acquisition of his brother’s memories. The realisation stopped Ren in his tracks for a moment. He hadn’t expected that little snippet to burble its way to the forefront of his consciousness without warning. ‘Or thereabouts,’ he added with a frown.
‘And in your realm,’ Masuyo asked, ‘one does not have to be
Youkai
to wield magic?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘They need one of these.’ He held up his tattooed left palm for them to examine. ‘You have the tatt, you have the magic.’
‘So anybody can be branded and then taught to use magic where you come from?’ Kazusa asked. With the prospect of magic being available to the masses, she was suddenly a little less dismissive of Ren’s brand of sorcery.
‘No … the ink is magical, I think. It doesn’t take on everyone.’
‘Perhaps it only takes on those with
Youkai
blood running in their veins,’ Masuyo suggested, reaching for the fish. ‘Magic is magic, after all. Just as the sun rises and sets in all the different realms in the same fashion, I imagine things as fundamental as who can and cannot wield magic are also the same.’
Ren shook his head. ‘In my realm, mixing Faerie and human blood in those who can wield magic is frowned upon.’
God, did I just say that? I sound like Darragh
, he thought, as he realised it was his brother’s knowledge he was quoting. He was calling Darragh’s reality ‘my realm’ now. Did that mean Darragh’s memories were starting to blend with his? When would he no longer be able to tell the difference?
And was the same thing happening to Darragh back in Ren’s world?
‘Whereas here in this realm the opposite is true,’ the old lady was saying. Ren dragged his attention back to the conversation. ‘Here, without
Youkai
blood in them, one cannot so much as light a candle with magic. Rather inconvenient, after one has eradicated all the
Youkai
from their realm.’
Ren stared at her in surprise. Kazusa had said the same thing, but coming from a child, it seemed an exaggerated claim. ‘They’re
all
gone?’
‘You’re the first I’ve met in my lifetime,’ Masuyo said. ‘And I’m older than I have any right to be.’
‘Then where is all the magic coming from?’ Ren asked without thinking.
Namito smiled. ‘So you
can
sense it?’
‘Sense it?’ Ren asked with a shrug, realising he’d well and truly blown any chance he had of denying his magical ability now. ‘This place reeks of it. Every breath you take is dripping with it.’
Masuyo smiled and looked to her grandson. ‘See, Namito. I told you it was worth the risk.’
‘It won’t be if the Tanabe learn he’s here,’ Namito said to his grandmother with a frown, and then he turned his attention back to Ren. ‘The magic comes from the
kozo
trees. They are the trees from which the
washi
is made — the paper used by those who wield
ori mahou
.’
‘Like Chishihero?’
‘Like her,’ Namito agreed with a frown. ‘She is of the
Konketsu
— those who are part-
Youkai
and part-human. Only they can perform
ori mahou.
’
‘So … if I want to find my way home, I need to find someone like her who knows folding magic to open the rift?’ Ren asked cautiously, aware of how such a suggestion might sound to the enemies of such a person.
Masuyo shook her head with a thin smile. ‘Chishihero cannot help you, Renkavana. Even if she did not kill you on sight, she is a minor member of the
Konketsu
. Otherwise, she would not be stuck out here in the colonies with us in the wilds of
Airurundo.
She would be at the Imperial court, serving the Empresses themselves.’
So much for Plan A
, Ren thought as the conversation moved on to Masuyo’s childhood memories of her visit to the Imperial court. Kazusa and Aoi couldn’t get enough of these stories. Ren only half-listened to her speaking, because something else the old woman said bothered him.
Magic is magic, after all. Just as the sun rises and sets in all the different realms in the same fashion, I imagine things as fundamental as who can and cannot wield magic are also the same.
Suppose she was right about that?
Ren wondered.
What does that make my brother and me?
And if she was right, why hadn’t anybody mentioned before now that Ren and Darragh — and probably all the Undivided to come before them — might be Faerie?
Pete Doherty hated family gatherings and he’d been dreading this one for days. Normally, he’d keep himself distracted by working, but his suspected concussion and Inspector Duggan’s fear that Pete was seeing double after he was laid out during the Kavanaugh kid’s escape, meant he was stuck at home, discovering just exactly how much crap there was on television on a Saturday afternoon.
Even so, with nothing else to do all day, he still managed to be late for his grandmother’s birthday gathering. Bracing himself, he opened the front door of her house to a wave of music and laughter coming from the living room.
Pete didn’t hate his family — quite the opposite. He just hated being the less blatantly successful one. Not that he considered himself a failure, nor did he resent his brother’s high profile. It was just irritating that it was so public. Pete’s career in the Gardaí had been stellar. He’d studied at Cambridge. He had a masters degree in criminology. But if he ever took a bullet in the line of duty, the one everybody would see on national television going on and on about it, would be his twin brother, Logan.
A door opened down the empty hall. The music and the chattering grew louder for a moment as his mother emerged from the room carrying a tray of empty glasses. She was dressed, as
always, in an elegant suit, probably from some fabulous designer in Paris. Logan would know which one. All Pete really knew was that his mother ran a very successful modelling agency and dressed that way because it was one of the perks of her job. He had never, now he tried to recall, seen her dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.
His mother glanced up when she saw him and smiled. She was a beautiful woman, one of those ageless women who seemed to reach their mid-thirties and never get any older. He’d run into one of his colleagues when he was having lunch with her once, and later, back at the office, the man had asked if Pete was dating her. To this day, he still thought Pete was lying about her identity, because he simply couldn’t believe this woman was his mother.
‘Peter,
ma cherie
! We were starting to worry you weren’t going to make it!’
‘Didn’t think anybody would notice if I was here or not,’ he said, shouldering the door closed.
She smiled sympathetically. ‘I would have noticed,
cherie
. This is probably the only chance I’ll get to see you before I leave.’
He walked the length of the narrow hall to kiss his mother’s cheek. As usual, the faint aroma of Chanel No 5 clung to her perfectly styled hair, the perfume she’d worn as long as he could remember.
‘What exotic destination are you off to this time?’
Pete’s mother was always travelling. She had done most of his life, leaving him and his brother to be cared for, more often than not, by their grandmother, whose birthday it was today. His mother never spoke much about her job, insisting it would bore them to tears, but she always brought them back a gift, no matter how small, to remind them that even though she was away, she was thinking of her children.
‘Nowhere exciting,’ she said. ‘Just a quick trip across the Atlantic. I’ll be back by next Thursday. Are those for your grandmother?’
Pete held up the large bunch of roses he was carrying. ‘Think Mamó will forgive my tardiness when she sees these?’
His mother chuckled, a warm throaty sound that Pete always associated with warmth, happiness and home. ‘I think she’ll tell you how well they’ll go with the roses Logan brought her. You two really should phone each other beforehand, you know, when you’re coming to these sorts of events. You’re always getting people the same present.’
‘Logan’s here already then?’ Not that he’d needed to ask. Logan’s red Porsche was parked out in the street.
His mother nodded and jerked her head toward the living room. ‘He’s inside. Brought a lovely girl with him. She’s been in a few commercials your Mamó’s seen, so he’s her favourite, for the moment.’ She focussed her eyes on Pete and added pointedly, ‘Your twin brother, at least, seems to be trying to give me grandchildren. Did you bring someone with you, perhaps?’
He glanced over his shoulder at the empty hall. ‘Obviously not.’
She seemed rather disappointed, but undeterred. ‘Are you seeing anyone at the moment, maybe?’