Authors: Jennifer Fallon
‘Did you want me to explain to Hayley’s family what happened to her in person?’
‘I want you locked up and medicated and under constant psychiatric care,’ Pete told him, realising that Darragh was so convinced of his fantasy, there was no helping him. And Pete knew he was out of his depth here. He had a degree in criminal psychology, but he wasn’t a psychiatrist. This kid needed help. Serious help. It was probably schizophrenia or something like it that caused him to hallucinate like this, but whatever ailed this boy, there was nothing Pete could do, here and now, to fix him.
‘I am not insane, Pete,’ Darragh said calmly as Pete headed for the door. ‘You’re just not equipped to accept the truth.’
Pete stopped with his hand on the doorknob. ‘Okay then, wise guy, explain this to me … suppose I buy your theory. Suppose I suspend all rational thought for a moment and accept that your brother stepped through a rift into another world with Hayley, and Trása and whomever else you care to name. Suppose I accept that you guys can open rifts between worlds at will … then why are you still here? If your story is true, why are you sitting here, under arrest and facing the next twenty years in gaol, if fairies can open a rift and come to get you, anytime they want?’
Somewhat to Pete’s surprise, Darragh didn’t even hesitate before replying with a worried expression, ‘I cannot answer that question, Detective Pete, and I fear it means something terrible has befallen my brother and the people I count as allies, because you are right. If they were in a position to save me from this realm, I would be home by now.’
Sorcha took her time making her way back to Jack’s place. She could have taken a cab or some other form of public transport. She had money. She could have been home in a matter of minutes.
But she was feeling out of sorts. It wasn’t just the necessary but unpleasant need to kill Warren that unsettled her. She didn’t feel right. There was something wrong with her. She felt slower, felt pain in places she’d never experienced it before.
Sorcha put it down to lack of exercise. She’d barely walked a mile since she’d come to this reality, and she wondered if that was causing the problem. She just needed to walk out the stiffness in her joints and she would be fine.
It took her all night and a good portion of the next day to get back to the tree-lined, suburban street where Jack O’Righin lived. She slept along the way, finding a leafy garden with a secluded nook that offered shelter from the elements. She didn’t mind sleeping in the open. She preferred it. By the time Sorcha rose in the morning, just as the sun was dawning over the city, she was rested but still not feeling better. If anything, her night in the open had made her feel even more stiff and uncomfortable.
She put aside her discomfort and headed toward Blackrock, following the DART line when she could. Other times she had to backtrack as it became obvious the roads were meant for
cars but not people. It took her almost half a day. Her stomach rumbling in complaint, she arrived back at Jack’s place just in time to see the ERU storming Kiva Kavanaugh’s estate.
Amergin!
she thought, reasoning the dead Vate’s
eileféin
had betrayed them, just as she knew he would.
You treacherous bastard.
Keeping to the shadows of the neighbouring high walls surrounding the estates, Sorcha made her way into Jack’s place unseen. As soon as she was inside she called out for Darragh to warn him of the attack next door.
‘Lord Darragh!’
They had to get out of here. Now. When the Gardaí didn’t find the boy they thought was Ren Kavanaugh at his mother’s house, the next place they would logically look — assuming it was Patrick Boyle who betrayed them — would be this place.
‘Curse you, boy! Where are you? We have to leave!’
Sorcha ran through the house, calling Darragh’s name, but the silence echoed only her footsteps and her fruitless calls.
Darragh wasn’t here.
‘
Danú
, save me from foolish children,’ she muttered as she stopped in the kitchen to catch her breath.
She guessed immediately where Darragh had gone. Next door. To his brother’s house. He would not have been able to resist the temptation to see how Rónán had lived. He had a head full of his brother’s memories and no way of sorting them into anything coherent. She understood his need, and cursed him for it at the same time.
‘You foolish, foolish boy!’ she shouted at the empty house, knowing he couldn’t hear her, but feeling a little better for it. She cursed herself roundly for leaving him alone. She should have anticipated this.
Sorcha had to know what was going on. She was tempted to take a peek herself by climbing the ivy-covered wall between the
estates to watch the attack, but she didn’t want to risk detection. She couldn’t save Darragh if she was also arrested. There was the problem of all those armed men, too. Sorcha could take three or four of them in a fight, armed with a knife or a sword, but she had no defence against bullets, and the men storming Kiva Kavanaugh’s house had all been carrying short, ugly guns.
Or maybe she did? Perhaps Jack had guns in the house?
Sorcha looked around, not even sure where to begin looking for a weapons cache.
Then it occurred to her that in this world where everything was reported on television, there might be something about the raid happening next door on one of the news channels. There was a clutch of paparazzi camped outside the house next door, day and night. Surely one of them was standing in front of the house, talking earnestly into a microphone, one finger to his ear — she had no idea why reporters seemed to do that — breathlessly chronicling the events at the Kavanaugh house as they unfolded.
Darragh was a bright boy and superbly trained by the best of the best. Ciarán had seen to that. Even injured as he was, it would be hard to take him by surprise. He could well have gone to ground at the first sign of the attack, and would elude capture completely, even if he hadn’t been able to get away. He could be concealed somewhere in the garden, either here or the garden next door, simply waiting for a chance to slip away …
There was one sure way to find out. She headed into the living room, sat down on the edge of Jack’s clever reclining armchair, picked up the remote and turned on the TV.
What she saw puzzled her at first. She thought perhaps she was watching a movie. On Friday night, after Patrick had been to visit, Jack sat down to watch TV. The movie
Independence Day
had been showing. Sorcha was stunned, not sure what shocked her most — that anybody would go to such pains to pretend
they’d won a battle that never happened in the first place, or that this reality devoted so much time and effort perfecting whatever it took to make such absurdities seem real.
Sorcha flicked through the channels with the remote control that Jack had shown her how to use, unable to find any channel not showing the same scenes — planes flying into impossibly tall buildings and after a time, the buildings crashing to the ground in an unimaginable swirl of smoke and dust.
‘By
Danú
,’ she muttered, staring at the screen in shock and disbelief. ‘I think this is actually happening.’
She couldn’t imagine how such a monstrous thing could be real. But then, until a few days ago, she couldn’t imagine a lot of things she’d witnessed in this world. The barbarity of the destruction defined this realm for her. That such violence could rest in the hearts of the same people who could construct something so tall and elegant and amazing was inconceivable. She didn’t understand half the things the voices on the TV were saying as they described the destruction and what might have precipitated it, but she gathered there was a god involved. Or the worship of one. Had such a thing happened in her realm, she might have looked upon this devastation and considered it the work of a jealous god, determined to bring down men who had dared challenge him with their creations.
But this wasn’t the work of a jealous god. This was humans deliberately hurting other humans and that made her want to weep for this realm and all who inhabited it.
Sorcha lost track of time as she watched the events at the World Trade Center unfold. She had trouble grasping the scale of the damage. Nothing could have prepared her for such a thing. She didn’t know what to do; didn’t know if this was a common occurrence in this realm or something so catastrophic and horrendous that nobody in this realm knew how to deal with it, either.
For a time, Sorcha even forgot about Darragh.
It wasn’t until there was a knock at the front door that she was jerked out of her stunned stupor.
Sorcha had no intention of answering the door. She had no idea who might be seeking entry into Jack’s house and no plans to engage with them, whoever they were. But the unwanted visitor must have heard the TV. After a few moments of knocking, a face peered in at the living room window.
It was a woman. An older woman, her grey-streaked hair pulled back into a loose bun. She caught sight of Sorcha and waved.
At least she wasn’t Gardaí.
Sorcha wasn’t sure she could ignore the knocking without raising suspicion now she’d been seen.
She cursed under her breath and headed for the hall. Hopefully she could divert the visitor and be rid of her without having to answer too many questions.
The woman was waiting patiently on the porch when Sorcha opened the door. She smiled and eyed Sorcha up and down for a moment before asking, ‘Are you a friend of Jack’s?’
‘Yes,’ Sorcha said. ‘I’m his cousin.’
‘I’m Carmel. His cleaning lady.’
Sorcha knew about Carmel. Jack had warned them as he left that they needed to be gone before she got here next Friday to clean the house.
‘What did you say your name was, dear?’
‘It’s Sorcha,’ she said, frowning. ‘You’re not due until next Friday.’
‘I know,’ the woman said. ‘But I was just coming out of the Frascati Mall when I heard the news on the radio. I called in to see if Jack had left for New York already. Wasn’t expecting anybody to be home, but then I heard the TV and thought I’d better check.’
‘Jack left a couple of days ago,’ Sorcha informed Carmel as the woman pushed past Sorcha to let herself in. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To put the kettle on, dear,’ the cleaning lady informed her as she headed for the kitchen. ‘God knows I could do with a cuppa right now. You look like you could do with one too.’
Sorcha stared after the woman in shock.
Who in
Danu’s
name does this woman think she is?
And is she right to be concerned about Jack?
Sorcha knew he was in New York, but the size and location of the city was unknown to her — other than it being far away — as was the likelihood that he might be anywhere in the vicinity of the World Trade Center.
‘How do you take it?’ Carmel called out from the kitchen as Sorcha closed the front door, wondering if she couldn’t get rid of Carmel whether she should kill her instead.
‘Black!’ Sorcha called back, looking around the hall for a weapon.
It was then that she caught sight of herself in the large hall mirror. Suddenly, the reason for her aches and pains, the reason for her feeling so out of sorts became apparent.
Staring back at her was an old woman. Dressed in the ill-fitting floral dress she’d stolen from the clothesline next door to Warren’s house, and the ratty, too-big cardigan she wore over it, she looked like a little old lady, ready to keel over in a strong breeze.
Her reflection seemed frail. Gone were her lustrous dark locks — her hair had turned almost white. Crow’s feet creased the corners of her eyes. She glanced down at her hands and noticed for the first time that her skin had begun to crinkle like old parchment. Liver spots speckled her forearms. She reached up and touched her face, appalled by the dried-out papery texture of her skin.
She knew what was happening. Sorcha was eighty-five years old, but her youth had been preserved by the time she had spent in the magical lands of
Tír Na nÓg
. Since emerging from the Faerie kingdom, she’d aged, but normally, and only as much as a younger woman might expect to age.
But Sorcha was no longer in a reality with any magic to sustain her. The magic was gone here, and with it her youth.
Sorcha realised then that she had an even more pressing reason to return to her own realm. It had nothing to do with protecting the Undivided. Nothing to do with the approaching
Lughnasadh
.
Nothing to do with saving anybody other than herself.
Because if Sorcha didn’t find a way back through the rift to her own realm soon, she was going to die in this realm of old age.
Fortunately for Brydie, once Torcán had officially gifted his future bride with her wedding gift, Anwen seemed disinclined to take it off. That meant Brydie had a bird’s eye view of the goings on in Álmhath’s court in a way she had never done before, even when she waited on the queen as one of her court maidens. She wasn’t sure if Anwen wore the jewelled collar because she knew Brydie was trapped in it and didn’t want to smother her, because she didn’t want to let the valuable necklace out of her sight, or if she simply liked wearing something so ostentatious. Whatever the reason, Brydie was no longer bored. She was intrigued, and not just by the goings on in Álmhath’s inner circle. For the first time since hearing about them when Álmhath sent her to
Sí an Bhrú
to be impregnated by Darragh of the Undivided, she was starting to appreciate the full power and reach of the
Matrarchaí
.
Álmhath had hinted that Brydie’s mother, the legendary beauty Mogue Ni’Farrell, was a member of the
Matrarchaí
, and that her bloodline was precious enough to warrant sending Brydie to
Sí an Bhrú
for Darragh to ensure its continuation. She hadn’t realised how pervasive the
Matrarchaí’s
influence was. Nor had she realised how closely they were allied with the Druids.