Blood Kin (25 page)

“Yeah, and what are they going to do when they find him … if they find him?” Tucker replied. “He’s a full Sidhe, nephew. Glamour, power, everything. I’d rather not be responsible for him harming police officers. I think it’s best he’s left to us.”

“You’ve a point, uncle,” Gareth said. “Apologies; I do tend to think as cop more than Clan sometimes.”

Tucker ruffled Gareth’s hair. “I’m sure you’re an excellent cop, nephew. Let’s use some of those skills to
help us figure out how to find him.” Tucker turned to me. “Go on, Keira, you’re exhausted.”

Sleep. I could do that. I nodded at my brother and wandered off down the hall.

Dreams assaulted me the moment I lay down. I didn’t even remember my head hitting the pillow before I was off in a nightmare.

Dreaming

H
E ARGUES WITH
the others, my name said over and over again. I cower in my hiding place, making sure to keep out of sight. If they can’t see me, they can’t hurt me.

“She is ours, Geraint—Father,” he says. “You cannot—”

“I can, and I will,” Geraint argues. “She has no magick, Daffyd. She cannot be heir.”

A shimmer of light and then I am watching Daffyd somewhere different: modern, glass reflecting him dressed in black, people of all ages and races walking behind and around him. He stares at the glass, into the store window, row upon row of flat-screen LCD displays showing some sports event. He turns away and walks down the street, hands to his side, held out a little as if gathering the very air and feeling. A steep walk up a hill, then he sees them. A couple with a guitar and a bodhrán, two men arguing while walking, but talking about music.

He follows them to the large concrete pillar, some sort of memorial. They pass it and join
the others in the crowd. Daffyd touches the pillar, stops, then walks further into the park and sits on the grass to listen. A song begins; string, drum and voice joining to rise above the crowd’s murmur. He stands, called by the music.

He concentrates, eyes closed, the music weaving inside him, sound of a flute joining the guitar and drum. He sees, oh Mother of All Holies, he sees.

He is taking the song and choking the life from it, killing the music. The dead Sidhe’s eyes
stare back at me, hazel, sad, regretful.
I’d come to see you,
he says in my head.
Come to find the heir.
Daffyd’s grin behind him turns into a rictus, his face into a skull, eyes left gleaming in the bare bone, searing my thoughts, burning my brain. I fight the pull, fight the pressure, can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t—

“K
EIRA, WAKE UP
.” My brother’s voice was too loud in my ears. I shoved my hands over them to block the noise.

“Tucker, it hurts,” I mumbled. “Stop.”

His voice dropped to a whisper. “You were screaming, sis.” He placed a cool hand on my brow. “You’re overwarm, a bit feverish. I’m going to get you something to drink. Stay here.”

He disappeared and I closed my eyes and turned on my side, clutching a pillow to my chest. A few minutes later, Tucker came back in.

“Here,” he said. “Drink this.”

I struggled to sit up, lethargy still keeping hold of all my limbs. “What is it?”

“Tea.”

I inhaled the smoky aroma. Mmm, Lapsang souchong, my favorite. “Thanks, bro,” I whispered. “What time is it?”

“Not quite one,” he said. “You’ve not been asleep long.”

Seemed like forever. “I had a nightmare.” I sipped the tea, both my hands wrapping around the big mug.

“Not a vision?”

I shook my head. “No, don’t think so. Too jumbled, memories wrapped around dreams, nothing I could definitely pinpoint as visions. Have Adam and Niko come back?”

“Not yet. I got Adam’s voice mail. Gareth had to go back out. Cop biz.”

“Damn.”

“Indeed.” Tucker perched on the edge of the bed, concern written all over him. “Keira, do you think Daffyd did it?”

I took a deep sigh and set my mug down on the nightstand. “I don’t know. Is he capable? Yes, of course, we both know that. But did he either run across the bard and kill him or deliberately seek him out? No clue. For all I know, he came with us to do precisely that.”

“Seek the bard out.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah. I think that was part of my nightmare. After what Gareth said, about the Courts having come years ago to visit Gigi here at the enclave. What if Daffyd was tangled up in that? After all, what I know about him and why he was in Texas was what he told me. How can we be sure he was telling us the truth?”

“Or all the truth,” Tucker reminded me. “They are good at lying, shading the truth or only telling part of it.”

I snorted. “Probably why our dear great-great-granny consorts with them,” I said. “She’s pretty damned good at that herself.”

“That she is, sis. That she is.”

I picked up the mug again and warmed my hands. “So, brother,” I began, then took a sip of the still-hot tea. “What do you remember of those days? Were you there when the Courts came?”

Tucker regarded me solemnly. “I was, Keira. Though, to be honest, you know none of us brothers have ever been involved in the political side of things. Both Courts came, separately: first the Seelie—your mother as the envoy for her aunt. Don’t know why she came rather than her
cousin, the heir apparent. Others came, too, of course. They stayed for several weeks. Sometimes closeted with Gigi and her advisors, sometimes wandering around the enclave. I mostly remember fancy dinners and elaborate entertainment neither Rhys nor I got to see. Their bards, our bards.”

“That’s where Dad met her, then.”

He nodded. “Yes, he was assigned to escort her at dinner most nights, to partner with her in dancing. I guess one thing led to another.”

“Therefore, me,” I said with a wry grimace.

“It’s not like that was a bad thing.” Tucker smiled and patted my knee. “I kind of like you.”

“I kind of like you, too, brother.” I smiled back. “So, the Unseelie Court …”

“Yeah, they came later. A few weeks, I think. Drystan, their king, came with a much bigger entourage. Gigi was enchanted. She squired Drystan all over the place, even took him down to Vancouver once or twice.”

“I don’t get this, Tucker,” I said. “How the hell did we not know that Gideon was part Sidhe? Surely, you’d met his father?”

“That’s just it, Keira,” he said. “I never did. After that summer, we went back to Texas and stayed there for years. Gideon’s mother went to London. A few years later, we heard about her son. Frankly, the only reason I remember the announcement is because I was having dinner with Gigi and Dad the day it got delivered. Gigi said something to Dad about him getting on the ball. Dad was pretty uncomfortable about the whole thing. I asked him about it later and he said it was some ridiculous notion of Gigi’s and not to worry. So, I didn’t. About a month or so later, we heard Branwen was pregnant.”

“It certainly explains a few things,” I muttered into my tea.

“Such as?”

“Gideon’s fascination with the dark,” I said bluntly. “Unseelie aren’t as squicked by that sort of thing.”

“Do you think he knows?”

“What?” I asked.

“That he’s half Sidhe,” Tucker replied. “Remember, Gideon was raised by his mother. None of us ever met his father … or at least, that we knew of.”

“Huh.” I sat up straighter. “You know, you’re right. He told me his father’s name was Tristan, but I never met him. I know when I asked what happened to him, all Gideon ever said was that his mom told him that his father had been a mistake.”

“We’re calling Gigi. Now.”

“It’s after one a.m., Tucker.”

“Like I said: now.”

“I
WANT
you here at the enclave.” Gigi’s steely tones rang loud and clear through the speakerphone. Instead of using my cell phone, Rhys, Tucker and I had decided to use the landline. Adam and Niko had returned and were waiting to hear the outcome of the call. They’d gone hunting Daffyd and the other Sidhe. Adam had hoped that his affinity to his Clan would help, but he’d found no sign.

Rhys and I stood next to a beautiful Euro-style desk, its clean, elegant lines broken only by the single multiline speakerphone sitting in the center. Tucker sat next to us in a very expensive ergonomic chair. The room had been outfitted as an office with the best furniture money could buy. From the looks of it, no one ever used it.

“But Gi—”

“Keira, there’s danger there and I can’t have you exposed. Not now.”

“Daffyd’s still missing,” I said bluntly. “You want we should leave him behind? And what about the dead Sidhe?”

“Neither the living nor dead Sidhe are my concern,” she replied, even more bluntly. “You and your siblings are. I want you out of the danger zone and here with me.”

“And our guests?” Rhys asked.

I shot him a look and mouthed “Guests?”—amused that my brother, honest and open as the years were long, still used polite and noncommittal terminology when speaking to our leader. Probably more politic that way.

“The pilot will be at the airport ready to take off at eight p.m. tonight,” Gigi said. “Since you are bringing along your … guests, you can’t depart until dark anyway.” I could almost hear the shit-eating grin on her face as she contemplated meeting our significant others. Bloody hell, I was bringing my boyfriend home to meet my family.

“Until then, I want you to stay in the condo, Keira. Do you understand?”

Gigi was also grounding me. Holy teenagehood, Batman. “Yes, Gigi, I understand.”

“You need some rest anyway. Rhys?”

“Yes, Gigi?”

“Rhys, on second thought, I want you to stay in town, work with your son. Someone from the family needs to be on-site. I’ll see who else I can send down. Tucker?” Gigi didn’t give him time to reply. “You will accompany Keira as previously planned. I want Keira safely here.”

Where she can keep an eye on me, I wagered. That said, I was kind of okay with it. Still uneasy—Gigi always made me feel as if I was on notice—but I understood, more or less.

“We’ll meet Liz at eight, then,” I said.

“No, you won’t.” Gigi’s delicate laugh echoed in the room. “I’m sending my personal plane.”

Oh, yeah, that again. All right, then, whatever.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you, child,” Gigi continued, her amusement evident. “And your brother.”

“See you tonight.” Before I could touch the button to hang up, Gigi had already done so on her end. Tucker stood up and walked out of the room without saying a word. After all, what was there to say?

“Well, that was interesting.” I leaned back against the desk and crossed my arms. “So she wants you to stay here, Rhys? Give you a chance to escape the madness of whatever she’s got up her sleeve with me?”

“She’s not that bad, Keira,” Rhys insisted. “You’ve been gone from the family more than you’ve been with us. You spent how many years in London? Eight? Then you get back and still stay apart.”

“You were the ones who left Texas, Rhys, remember?”

“You were the one who decided to nurse your wounds alone.” Rhys sounded hurt. “Did you ever stop to think that we hurt along with you, little sister? That we didn’t want to see you alone, emotional and angry at all of us?”

“I wasn’t angry with you, Rhys, or with Ianto, Tucker, or any of my brothers. I wasn’t even mad at Dad. I laid the entire thing on Gigi. I didn’t really understand why she felt she had to move to the Canadian enclave right then. Okay, I was being totally self-centered and completely selfish at that point, but I felt staying in Texas a few more years—hell, a few months—wouldn’t have been a problem. That’s all I wanted. My family to be my refuge for a while. I’d have been over it by Solstice and then we could have all come here. Instead, Gigi stuck to her
guns. I got my stubborn pride up and decided to stay. So she punished me with Marty duty—and you see how well that turned out.”

“I know, Keira,” Rhys said. “You were angry, she made you angrier. You are both so much alike.”

“We are so
not
!” I stomped away from my brother and went into the kitchen. Tucker was in there, making a sandwich. I didn’t even pause to look at Adam and Niko, who were sitting on a couch, heads together and talking about something.

“Here, sit down and eat this,” Tucker said.

I sat down at the kitchen island on a tall stool.

“And yeah, you are.” Tucker sat a plate with a sandwich on it before me.

“Am not,” I mumbled around a bite of roast beef on rye. I realized I hadn’t eaten since—egads, how long had it been? “So are we going to the enclave and leaving this mess here to Rhys and Gareth?” I took another bite.

“We need to, Keira,” Tucker said gently. He put a cold bottle of ale next to my plate. “I’m worried that your new Talents will start manifesting without control. From what Rhys said, you came too damned close to collapsing in that storefront. It’s nothing like the visions and occasional bouts of Talent that showed up while you were Changing. If anything happened now—say a run-in with a rogue Sidhe—you could be seriously hurt.” He took a swig of his own bottle.

Mouth full of ale and sandwich, I shrugged in reply.

“You really do need to be among family. Plus, we can talk to Gigi about Gideon, find out about this half Sidhe business and what’s really going on. If we need to come back to Vancouver, we can do so.”

I swallowed and sighed in defeat. “So we go. At some point, I’m going to have to figure out how to ask Gigi for a reprieve.”

“From what?”

“Heir duties. I’m perfectly willing to get some training on my Talents, but I want to go home, back to the ranch, with Adam.” I snuck a peek out at the living room, but Adam and Niko were still deep in conversation, not paying attention to either of us.

“I just found him, Tucker, and nearly just lost him. I’ll be damned if I let this heirship pull me away now. Gigi’s not abdicating her position anytime soon. She can send me reading material or something. Hell, she can send someone to stay at the ranch and help me learn whatever it is I need to learn. I want some years with Adam. I’m sure we can work something out.” Like perhaps Adam buying adjacent land near our enclave. He would enjoy British Columbia.