Stone Song (27 page)

“Do you have a better plan?’ asked Beth Carter. Tommy knew she was a Druid like Sorcha, but another kind, evidently one who couldn’t sing. She’d helped Miach set Tommy’s fingers, and she’d been the one to bring him a beer afterward.

“He doesn’t,” said Nieve. “But I do.”

“No,” Miach said immediately.

“You haven’t even heard it yet.”

“Whatever it is, your condition means you cannot carry it out.”

“What condition?” Tommy asked, because being lost in this particular household was a dangerous thing.

Miach smiled at him for the first time ever. “At last. Someone who didn’t find out before me. My granddaughter is pregnant.”

“I didn’t know,” said Deirdre.

“Yes, Deirdre, but you hadn’t left the house for a month before last night,” said Miach acidly.

“Congratulations,” said Tommy.

Miach’s smile disappeared. “It is not a matter for congratulations.”

Okay . . .

“Today is my day to visit my husband,” said Nieve, as though Miach hadn’t spoken.

“They’ll hardly be expecting you,” said Helene, “given the events last night. They’re holding your father’s right hand and that right hand’s lover prisoner.”

“Then they’ll be surprised as hell when I turn up, won’t they?” said Nieve.

“What about a temporary alliance with Donal?” asked Conn.

Beth Carter gasped. “You hate Donal. He was present at the torture and murder of your daughter.”

“You all have some very twisted relationships,” said Tommy.

“It’s a side effect of our longevity,” said Deirdre. “And a little complexity adds spice to old age,” she purred, looking Tommy directly in the eye. He still wasn’t entirely sure what their encounters in her studio had been about, and her assurance that Kevin wouldn’t mind hadn’t quite satisfied. But he’d done it anyway, because she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

“We need Donal and his followers to attack Finn,” said Conn. “He has more true Fae among his clan than we do. In a fair fight, he would prevail.”

“Then let’s not have a fair fight,” said Nieve. “Let’s stack the odds in our favor. I can distract Finn long enough for you to find and free at least one of them.”

“Or Finn will take you prisoner and he’ll have another hostage,” said Miach.

“Not if I’m carrying his grandchild.”

“Finn is crafty,” said Helene. “If you try to distract him, he’ll guess that it’s a diversion.”

Nieve smiled. “That’s why I won’t be the one distracting him.”

• • •

Finn hadn’t expected his daughter-in-law
to turn up. When she was announced, he considered what her presence might mean. It would be a farce to pretend that their houses were on good terms, or that he thought her good enough for his only true-blood son born in the last century. But her child was charming and called him Grampy, and the boy had been growing, as the children in Finn’s family did, like a weed. Garrett was barely three years old, but he looked a healthy five or even six, and that filled Finn with some pride. He could look into the boy’s face and see his own.

But not Brigid’s. None of Brigid’s children had survived the Druid revolt. That he knew of. It had been a chaotic time, after the Fae broke loose and put down their former vassals. He’d searched for the boys from one end of the Druid domains to the other and found no trace of them, which meant they were either killed or exiled to the other world.

His idiot grandchild had relayed to him Deirdre’s exact words about Brigid last night. They did not surprise him. Few Fae had understood what he had with Brigid.

The Fae rarely made permanent alliances like the one he had made with her. In human terms she had been his wife, but in his experience, mortal marriages were rarely the kind of partnership he had shared with Brigid. Most of the Fae and all of the human women he had ever slept with had been dazzled by his charisma. On the battlefield, a war leader wanted followers. In the bedroom he wanted something else entirely.

Brigid had given him that. She had never been blinded by his charm, beguiled by his voice, or in search of wealth or position for herself. She had been drawn by his power, but only because she was such a formidable female that she could find no equal for her will.

Brigid had been the kind of woman the pale northerners had written sagas about. When an insult threatened the honor of his house, it was Brigid who handed him his sword. When intrigue gripped the court, it was Brigid who plotted how she and Finn would come out ahead. She got the better of almost everyone she dealt with—sometimes she even got the better of him.

They had been equals, partners, and lovers, even if no one else had loved Brigid the way he had. He had often noticed that strength in a man was admired and in a woman despised. Brigid had been so strong that the Druids had been forced to invent new ways to torture her.

He would never forgive them. He had decided to tolerate Beth Carter, because she had some of Brigid’s strength and none of the Prince’s desire to bring down the wall.

While Finn hated the Druids, he did not want the Wild Hunt back. The Queen’s rule had been corrupt and arbitrary, and while he enjoyed making war, he loathed making it on the whims of a decadent ruler. And he had a family here he was fond of, even fucking Patrick, who was not the brightest of his descendants. That didn’t mean he wanted to see him dancing to the Queen’s tune.

Altogether, he liked running Charlestown. It required much of the same skill as leading an army into battle, without the drawbacks of sleeping in a tent or dickering over territory. And if he sometimes coveted Miach’s holdings on the other side of the city, he also recalled how difficult it was to hold multiple positions during a war. Besides, he didn’t much like the beach.

He would be content if he could keep the Druid and return to a state of low-level hostility with Miach. That Miach’s granddaughter was here probably meant the sorcerer was ready to negotiate to get his former right hand back. Finn was prepared to let Elada go, though he wanted a right hand for Garrett. They could find another Fae with that talent.

Nieve was preceded into Finn’s parlor by little Garrett. Finn had been keeping a human lover until recently who had wanted to bar the child from the public receiving rooms in the house. She’d fussed over occasional cereal or chocolate ground into the Persian carpets and the damask upholstery, about the vases that sometimes broke and the mirrors streaked with handprints.

Finn had turned her out. He enjoyed luxury as much as any Fae, but he did not want to be owned by it. And he had raised generations in this house, thank you very much, without a care for handprints on mirrors.

Some things, however, had changed. Today Garrett blazed into the room like a comet, gave him a perfunctory, “Hi, Gramps!” and climbed into the chair behind the desk in the corner to peck away at Finn’s laptop.

“Gramps” was no doubt Miach’s doing, and it would have to stop. The computer . . .

“Sorry,” said Nieve, coming in breathlessly behind the boy. “He’s looking for games. His little friends have them, but we don’t have any at Granddad’s house. Except on Elada’s computer,” she added pointedly.

“Your husband is busy today,” said Finn. “But you can leave the boy here for a visit, if you like.”

The girl didn’t accept the dismissal. “We can’t go back to Granddad’s. The social services people are there and they want Garrett.”

“Can’t Miach deal with them?” asked Finn. They had these problems from time to time with the human authorities from the city. The ones who were newly assigned to Southie and Charlestown and didn’t know better than to tangle with the Good Neighbors.

“Miach dealt with the ones who wanted to vaccinate him.”

Human medicines were toxic for the Fae and half-bloods. Nieve had nearly died in a human hospital while having Garrett, their drugs poisoning her as she labored to deliver the child.

“It’s that teacher from the elementary school who won’t leave us alone. They’ve seen Garrett at the playground with the other children and they assume he’s six and should be in first grade. That teacher is the one who called social services on us. The old man glamoured the child welfare people into forgetting about us, but he can’t seem to glamour the teacher.”

“If the teacher turns up here, we may need to use more persuasive methods,” Finn said. And he didn’t have time right now to dicker with some jumped-up human pedant.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Nieve. “Eventually Garrett will probably go to that school. But not just yet,” she said scooping the child up. Finn had to agree. Little Garrett still had the energy and attention span of a three-year-old and would not do well caged in a classroom. He’d hated his own lessons, forced on him because even a warrior had to be able to read and write in the overcomplicated language of the Fae.

“And Elada?” Nieve finally asked. “Can we see him?”

“Do you think you can persuade him to renounce the Druid?”

“I’m not sure. He didn’t just meet her, you know. He’s been going to the Black Rose and mooning over her for months.”

“How romantic,” said Finn. “Will you convince him to give her up?”

“I’ll try.”

“Do. It’s the only way you will get him back.”

• • •

Nieve left Garrett, at her
father-in-law’s request, in the drawing room. She climbed the stairs to the third-floor bedroom she usually shared with her husband, but Garrett, as Finn had said, wasn’t there.

She checked the rest of the bedrooms at the top of the house and the attics as well but found no sign of the Druid or her father’s former right hand.

She didn’t want to check the basement. The idea of finding Elada or the woman he was in love with chained in the cold and dark filled her with dread.

Nieve went anyway.

She had fought her grandfather for three long years to be allowed to see her husband and his family again, but she’d never felt completely welcome in this house. For one thing, Finn had true Fae followers who were not as assimilated as Miach and Elada. They tended to hang about the house, playing video games in the basement and teasing the half-breeds. Nieve found them cold and alien, and just occasionally one of them would try something with her. She didn’t roam the house without Garrett if she could help it.

Today there was a knot of them in the finished portion of the basement clustered around the giant television playing a game that involved castles, knights, chivalry, and jousting. And clustered at the pool table, resenting the appropriation of their game console, were a half dozen of Finn’s half-breed descendants.

“Make us something to eat, would you, Nieve?” called one of the half-breeds.

She flipped them the bird and headed for the unfinished portion of the basement.

“Have a little pity,” said another. “We’re starving.”

“After I find Garrett’s winter coat,” she called out. It was an excuse for searching the basement, and she knew none of them would want to help.

She didn’t miss the movement when one of the
Tuatha Dé Danann
set aside his game control and followed her down the long hall. She ignored him. If Cermait wanted to watch her rustle through boxes for half an hour, he could.

She entered the dank and unplastered portion of the cellar, where the furnace was located and the hot water heater and all the usual jumble of a large family’s off-season possessions, the sleds and kiddy pools and skis and boxes and boxes of clothes.

Neither Elada nor Sorcha was there, but she made a show of opening and closing boxes until she was almost certain that Cermait was gone, then she waded through the stacked cartons on the other side of the storage space where a padlocked door beckoned.

Nieve didn’t have the craft her grandfather or Garrett did, but simple locks were easy enough to pick with the magic she did have. She felt the tumblers slide into place and the lock fall open, then she opened the door.

It was pitch-black inside and she almost missed the figure lying on the ground. Sorcha Kavanaugh was curled into a ball. She lifted her head from the ground and squinted at Nieve.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Nieve. I’ve come to help you escape.”

She heard the footstep on the gritty floor a second too late. She whirled to find the door blocked by Cermait, who was watching her with cold intent. “What, I wonder, will Finn and Garrett say about this?”

Chapter 17

F
inn had to take his computer away from little Garrett and get some work done. No sooner had he wrested the device from his grandson than he was interrupted once more, this time by Patrick, who was still smarting from the tongue-lashing he had received from Deirdre.

“There’s a teacher to see you.”

Finn sighed. “Take him out back and make it clear to him that Garrett is none of his affair.”

“It’s not a he,” said Patrick. “It’s a she.” He grinned. “And she’s pretty.”

“And impervious to glamour,” said Finn.

Patrick’s face grew puzzled. He did not, Finn recalled, have an extensive vocabulary.

“Can we still take her out back?”

Or much judgment.

“Show her upstairs, Patrick,” Finn said. “And take Garrett down to the kitchen for lunch.”