Authors: Jennifer Fallon
‘Did you want me to spell “no comment” for you,’ he asked his brother as he approached, ‘so you get it absolutely right when you’re writing up your notes?’
Logan, who was always ready with a wise-ass comeback, didn’t even crack a smile. As Pete neared him, he held something out to Pete. He took it from him and studied it curiously. ‘What’s this?’
‘Your passport.’
‘I can see that,’ Pete said, frowning. ‘What are you doing with it?’
‘I called past your place but you weren’t home. I thought I’d save you time by bringing it with me.’
‘Are we going somewhere?’
Logan nodded and pushed off the tree. ‘Paris tonight, then New York on Concorde in the morning. We’re connecting with a flight to Chicago from JFK.’
‘Has something happened to Mum?’ he asked, unable to imagine any other reason Logan would decide they needed to fly halfway around the world in the middle of the night. She was also the only person either of them had any interest in — as far as Pete was aware — currently in Chicago.
‘Not yet.’
‘Not
yet
?’ Pete glanced over his shoulder at Jack O’Righin’s house and everything that it symbolised. Hayley Boyle, who was still missing, presumed dead at this stage. Darragh, the crazy young man who believed he came from an alternate reality. The dead financier, Warren Maher, whose only mistake was parking his car and having a few too many whiskies at the golf club while his wife was away visiting her mother. The old woman laid out in the glasshouse like an ancient Celtic warrior. The not-so-reformed terrorist, who would probably never know another day of freedom, once his parole was revoked.
And of course, Ren Kavanaugh, without whom none of this mess would have started in the first place.
‘Logan, I just can’t up and leave in the middle of a case to take a Concorde to New York … how in God’s name did you swing that? Those tickets cost a fortune.’
‘Mum’s agency has an account with British Airways.’
‘Good luck explaining that one to her, when you see her.’
‘She flies her models across the Atlantic on Concorde all the
time. I happen to know that for a fact.’ Logan’s tone was bitter and hard.
‘You wanna tell me what this is about? I’m working, you know.’
‘I went to see Tiffany this evening. When I got to her place, she was gone. This is the note she left for me.’ He reached into his pocket and handed Pete a folded piece of lined paper torn from a spiral notepad.
Pete took the note, glancing over his shoulder to see if anyone had come to find out what had happened to him. Hopefully the ERU boys thought he was out here delivering a stern lecture to his reporter brother. He wasn’t sure what they’d do if they realised he was taking time out to console his twin over a broken heart.
‘What does it say?’ he asked. He didn’t want to read it.
‘It says I’m not to worry, she’ll be okay, she’s flying to Chicago and that Mum is taking care of everything.’
Pete’s initial reaction was to say,
so what’s the problem?
Then he realised what Logan was afraid of, when Tiffany wrote Delphine would be ‘taking care of everything’. He shook his head. ‘No way. Mum’s been harping on about being a grandma since we hit puberty. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that she’ll arrange a termination for her own grandchild.’
‘Not if she knows it’s mine,’ Logan agreed. ‘But what if Tiffany doesn’t tell her? She’s a model, Pete. Being pregnant isn’t a great career move.’
‘But still …’
‘If she lands in Chicago with runway shows already booked, and swears blind the kid isn’t mine, Mum would help her to have the problem “taken care of” in a heartbeat.’
He was probably right. Delphine was a ruthless businesswoman when it suited her. ‘Then call Mum and tell her the kid is yours.’
‘I tried calling her,’ Logan said in exasperation. ‘Don’t you think that’s the first thing I thought of?’
‘Sorry … of course you did. What happened?’
‘She’s not answering her cell phone. Her London office says she’s in Chicago. The Chicago office claims she’s away on a photoshoot with some of her girls and they can’t contact her. I’ve left messages with everyone I can think of. Oh … and the hospital she rang you from? The one she claims she was in? I checked on that too. She spent one night there and then discharged herself. Days ago.’
It all sounded very suspicious, but still not enough for Pete to walk away from his responsibilities here. Hayley Boyle was still missing. Jack O’Righin needed to be interrogated, and he was actually looking forward to that. ‘Look, Logan, I understand how you must feel, but —’
‘I keep having this recurring dream, Pete,’ his brother cut in, in a low voice, as if he was afraid of being overheard. ‘We’re both in it. And so are my kids. The kids that haven’t been born yet. I keep dreaming I’m going to —’
‘Kill them?’ Pete finished for him, the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly standing on end. ‘That’s why you rang me the other night.’
Logan nodded, looking both relieved and puzzled. ‘How did you know?’
‘Because I’ve been having the same dream.’
Once, when they were about fourteen, Logan and Pete had been accused of cheating at school, because they’d written almost identical essays during an English examination. They swore they hadn’t and Delphine had believed them. In high dudgeon — as only she could manage it — their mother had marched down to the principal’s office and demanded the boys be allowed to sit another exam to prove their innocence. She made a big enough fuss that she got her way and when they compared the two papers
after the second exam, once again, they were almost identical. That sort of thing happened less and less as they got older, but there was a feeling they had always shared when things like that happened, a oneness only identical twins understood. It was a state they could not begin to explain to anybody else. It was happening now, in that moment. Pete knew, without a shadow of a doubt, he needed to go with Logan. Nothing else happening in his world at the moment was as important as the fact that right now, Logan needed him.
Logan would do the same for him. Pete didn’t doubt it for a moment.
‘I’ll need to call Duggan and arrange some time off.’
‘You can do it in the car,’ Logan said. He didn’t question Pete’s change of heart or the reason for it. He knew.
‘Give me a minute to get rid of this,’ Pete said, pointing to his rain-spattered bulletproof vest. ‘I’ll tell Mac there’s been a family emergency.’
‘True enough,’ Logan agreed. He didn’t thank Pete or seem surprised.
‘Can we call past my place to pick up some —’
‘Clothes? No need. I packed a bag for you.’
Pete searched Logan’s face in the darkness. ‘You were pretty sure I would come, weren’t you?’
‘I was pretty sure of what you would do if I
didn’t
ask you to come,’ Logan replied with the faintest hint of a smile.
Pete nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ Logan was right about that. There was a confrontation looming involving their mother, and in that, Logan was right. He would have been furious if it had happened without him.
He gripped his brother’s arm. ‘We’ll sort this out, Logan. I promise.’
Logan smiled, but it never touched his eyes. ‘The world can’t fight both of us.’
‘Not in this reality,’ Pete said. He turned and jogged back through the light rain toward the house. They were loading Jack into a patrol car in the driveway in front of the house. Although his face was lit only by the blue and red flashing lights parked around him, the old man looked defiant but resigned. Pete would miss not being the one to sit down and coax a confession from such an old legend.
Why did I say reality?
Pete wondered, as he walked through the front door and began to rip the Velcro ties on his bulletproof vest open, while he looked for the captain of the ERU team.
I meant to say … hell … I don’t know what I meant to say.
Damn that kid.
It was bad enough to have it confirmed that he and Logan had been having the same dream. It was bad enough that he was walking away from all his responsibilities here, to follow Logan on what was probably a wild goose chase. He didn’t need to start buying into Darragh’s alternate reality crap.
Even if he’d seen, and still couldn’t explain, how Darragh had made that bloody writing appear on his arm in the hospital.
Maybe it’s a good thing I’m walking away from this case
, he thought, as he spied Mac coming down the stairs into the hall and hailed him,
because apparently, it is driving me insane.
The gimmick of pretending the Empresses knew her real name was wearing a little thin for Trása, so she morphed back into a cat before they got back, and stayed out of their way for the next few days. Mostly she wandered around the compound, listening in to conversations she wasn’t meant to hear — Chishihero plotting the downfall of the Ikushima, Masuyo plotting the downfall of Chishihero … It was all very fraught and in feline form, Trása was hard-pressed to care about the problems of these insignificant humans. She had whiskers to clean, furniture to mark and claws to sharpen on those delightful tatami mats they put down everywhere for her to walk on.
Rónán told the Empresses he’d sent her away, and Wakiko confirmed it, so the girls, although disappointed they didn’t have their very own pet
Youkai
to boss around any longer, soon lost interest and turned their attention to other matters, such as preparing for the arrival of Lady Delphine and destroying the Ikushima.
Chishihero was using the arrival of the Empresses to advance the standing of the Tanabe, even a few old scores and remove the thorn in her side — the fireworks factory in the middle of her valuable tree plantation. She had recovered much of her family’s honour by being the recipient of the message announcing the
Matrarchaí
were on their way. She would redress the last of her woes when the rift opened and Lady Delphine — along with the legitimate envoy — stepped through from another reality and she exposed Rónán for a fraud.
They only had a few days, little to work with and Trása was not convinced Rónán had the balls to follow through on Wakiko’s demand that he kill Lady Delphine and her envoy, even if it meant finding a way home.
The day before Delphine was due, she returned to
Tír Na nÓg
to check on the lesser
Youkai
who greeted her like a long-lost mother. Their pathetic need for guidance and comfort, for the security of knowing there was somebody in charge, left her wanting to weep for them. The
Leipreachán
were better at covering their distress, being cranky and curmudgeonly by nature, but the wood sprites, the undines, the kelpies and the like were more prone to showing their true feelings. Not a pool of water in
Tír Na nÓg
was calm when she walked past — any water, no matter how small, would roil as the dryads tried to reach for her, to beg her to make things the way they had been before the
Matrarchaí
and the Empresses came to their world.
Rónán had come up with a plan, of sorts, but it required the cooperation of the Ikushima. Somewhat to Trása’s surprise, he didn’t balk at killing Delphine and her envoy as much as Trása thought he would. It was telling, she thought, that he seemed more and more like Darragh as the days went by.
His plan was pretty much to ambush the gate, using the Ikushima to distract the non-magical forces of the Tanabe while he took on Delphine. Chishihero was going to be Trása’s task, one she accepted readily. She couldn’t wait for a chance to confront that smug, murderous bitch of a magician. She would show her what a true
beansídhe
with a horde of lesser
Youkai
at her back, could do.
Trása thought Rónán would have trouble convincing Namito to help, and she was right. When he broached the subject, the
Daimyo
was adamant he would have nothing to do with such a treasonous plot. Unable to change the intransigent young man’s mind, Rónán reported his failure to Wakiko, who promised to take care of it.
The following day, the Empresses held court in their
akunoya
and announced that the Tanabe were to be granted dominion over all the Ikushima lands, the factory was to be relocated to somewhere more isolated and for not notifying the Empresses immediately of the arrival of the
Matrarchaí
envoy, Namito would be required to publicly commit
Seppuku
.
The plan was, Trása supposed, to convince Namito that he would better serve the survival of his family and the family estates by defying the decree and teaming up with Rónán.
But Wakiko, despite all the time she had spent in this realm, and no matter how well she had mastered the art of the tea ceremony, did not understand the fundamental differences between the culture of her birth and this rigid, honour-bound realm. Here ritual suicide wasn’t considered a disgrace, but a chance to restore the family’s honour.
That it might cost him his life apparently never occurred to Namito, which left Rónán seething. When Trása returned to
Shin Bungo
with only a day to go until the rift opened, Namito was preparing to die and Rónán still hadn’t figured out a way to talk him out of it.
‘Have you tried speaking with Masuyo?’ she asked, when Rónán explained the problem on her return. She had flown into the camp disguised as a gull, slipping into the
akunoya
where Rónán was sleeping, before resuming her own shape.
He was expecting her. No sooner had she morphed back into her own form, Rónán thrust a thick cotton
yukata
at her. It was chilly in the tent and she was grateful he’d brought something for
her to wear, although she knew it had more to do with Rónán being embarrassed to see her naked than concern for her welfare.
‘Masuyo believes Namito’s death will restore the family’s honour,’ he told her. ‘The fact they’re going to lose everything, up to and including the roof over their heads, is apparently neither here nor there.’ Rónán was pacing, the same way Darragh used to pace when confronted with a dilemma he couldn’t resolve. ‘Namito’s already sharpening his
katana
and polishing his ceremonial armour.’