The Shadows (25 page)

“You talk as if you’re ancient. What are you—eighteen? Nineteen? Not much older than I am.”

“Ah, that’s right. You had a birthday since I’ve seen you last, haven’t you? Happy birthday.”

“You remember that? Thank you.”

“So, seventeen. I suppose I’ve got to take back everything I said. Why, look at you”—he pressed a finger to my forehead lightly, a quick touch that burned—“wrinkles already. You’re very nearly an old crone.”

I laughed, and he looked surprised for a moment before he laughed with me. I liked the way his laugh sounded, as if it was real and true, and
so familiar
. I liked the way it looked on him too: his sparkling eyes, that long dimple creasing his cheek.
Just like in my dream . . .

My laughter died.

His own smile faded. It was another moment before he looked away. “So do you know what you’re getting into? Binding yourself to a man whose whole life is dedicated to Ireland?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Only that it’s the life Devlin’s chosen. Is it really the one you want for yourself?”

“It has to be.” I knotted my fingers together. “You know, I’ve always wanted a white knight to take me away. And now, here’s Patrick, waiting to do just that, and I . . . well. It isn’t what I thought it would be.”

“Things never are, are they? If it’s not what you want, why not just run away? Be your own white knight. There’s an entire world out there.”

“For you, perhaps. But I’m not a boy—What would I do?”

“Anything you wanted.”

“Oh, Derry, I think you don’t live in the same world I do.”

He looked at me as if he knew me better than I knew myself, and the images from my dreams felt too vivid—not dreams but memories, though that wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible.

He said, “Maybe not. But I would do what I could to help you, lass. Whatever I could. If you wanted to run . . .”

It was tempting. To run away. To leave everything behind. Like the first Grainne.

“Perhaps I could be your Diarmid.”

I swallowed. “I’m not that girl, Derry.” It felt as if I were putting something away, something I meant never to take out again, and I was suddenly, horribly sad. “I’ll marry Patrick when he asks. I’ll help him with the Fenian Brotherhood—”

“You should keep your distance from them.” His expression changed into one that chilled me. “That ogham stick . . . ’tis a dangerous thing. Did Devlin say any of that to you? When he offered it to you, did he ask you to say anything or to—”

“No, of course not. He wanted me to see it, that’s all. How could it be dangerous? It’s just a stone with some writing on it.”

“One that burned you, you said.”

“It had been in the sun. I told you that too. Patrick put the
cases where the sun could reach them. He says they look as if they’re . . .”

“Glowing,” Derry finished.

“I remembered something my father had told me, about the old magic . . . We’ve done something amazing . . . It’s real, and it’s as alive as it always was. . . .”

“You said that wasn’t all of the collection in his study,” Derry went on. “Do you know where he keeps the rest of it?”

I shook my head, lost in my thoughts. The glowing and the burning stone, Patrick’s words, and now Derry . . . and Oscar . . .

“Has he shown you anything else? A wand, perhaps? It would look like the stone, with carving, but made of wood. Of rowan.”

“No. No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Or a horn. Has he ever shown you a horn?”

A horn
. I stared at him.

Derry sat back. “You’ve seen it.”

“Patrick’s never shown me a horn. But I used to have one.”

“You?”

“An old hunting horn. It had been in my family a long time. But then Aidan lost it in a faro game. I don’t know where it is now.”

“What did it look like?”

“Just old. My grandmother told me it was ancient. It was cracked on one side. And it had a hammered silver band.”

“Silver. But that . . . you’re sure ’twas silver?”

“Yes. I know it so well I think I could tell it from a dozen
others in the dark. I used to lie on my bed and imagine all the places it had been. Why does it matter? Why should Patrick have a horn?”

“I don’t know that he does.” Derry glanced up; whatever trouble had been in his eyes cleared. “Here comes Oscar with your friend. Don’t say anything to her about this.”

“Another secret you’re asking me to keep.”

“Another secret.” He caught my gaze and held it. “Do me a favor, lass. Don’t rush into anything with Devlin. Can you do that for me?”

“Why should I?” I laughed incredulously. “I’ve just told you how I need to marry. Why should I wait? What has any of this to do with you?”

He glanced beyond me. Urgent and low, he said, “Use your good sense, Grace. Think about all this—” He broke off with a sudden, charming smile. I looked over my shoulder to see Oscar, with Rose clasping his arm, her round cheeks flushed, her eyes shining. What was it with my friends and these Irish boys? It was as if their sense had been stolen clean away.
Though I’m no better, am I?

“I thought you were going to join us,” Oscar said with his own charming smile.

“We got distracted.” Derry rose, holding out his hand to me, and I had no real choice but to take it.

“I think we should go.” I looked at Rose, who was studiously ignoring my pleading glance.

She smiled up into Oscar’s eyes. “Oh, but we just got here, Grace. No one’s expecting us for hours.”

Which was hardly an intelligent thing to say when we were with two boys we hardly knew, neither of whom could claim to be a gentleman. I felt Derry watching me; when I looked at him, his eyes glittered, with warning or something else, and I shivered, the things we’d talked about clashing like swords in my head.

From the harbor came the thunder again.

I started, and Derry’s fingers tightened on my hand, which he hadn’t released and I hadn’t drawn away. “I need to get back to the stables before they miss me.” He glanced at Rose in apology. “Some other time, maybe.”

Sighing, Oscar added, “Aye, some other time. ’Twas a pleasure meeting you both.”

“Just remember what I said,” Derry told me as he let go of my hand. Then that arrogance again, the flirt. “Try not to miss me too much.”

“It’s hard to miss someone you don’t think about!” I called to his retreating back as he and Oscar walked away.

He threw me a teasing grin over his shoulder.

Rose said, “Lucy is going to murder you.”

“Not if she doesn’t know. And if you say a word, I’ll tell your mother you were meeting some immigrant boy in Battery Park. She’ll never let you out of the house again.”

“Why, Grace Knox, I never realized you could be so devious.”

But she didn’t know, of course, just how devious I’d learned to be. Bill collectors and angry doctors. Men bearing
promissory notes signed by Aidan.
“Are you just hoping to keep it from him until he’s married you?”

“So what did he want to talk to you about? Did he declare his undying love? Has he thrown over Lucy for you?”

“Even if he had, I’m in love with Patrick.”

“Of course you are,” Rose said. “I suppose you’re right. He’s hardly appropriate.”

“Hardly,” I said. I turned back again, searching the crowd for glossy dark hair and white-blond that turned golden in the light.

But Derry and Oscar had already disappeared.

EIGHTEEN

Diarmid

S
he looks a bit like Neasa,” Oscar said as they went back to the stables. “Have you noticed that?”

“I noticed,” Diarmid said. “She said her people are from Allen.”

“Allen? How can that be a coincidence? By the gods, she
must
be the
veleda
. She must be. And that swoon . . . I’ve never seen anything like it. She saw me glowing, too, didn’t she?”

“Aye.”

“You have to tell Finn.”

Diarmid had known that was true the moment she’d put her hand to her head and collapsed before Oscar. He didn’t think he’d be able to get the sound of her keening from his head. Or her helplessness, the way she’d gripped his arms, that made him feel he would do anything to protect her.

Run away,
he’d told her.

He was a fool.

“Cannel can divine the truth of it,” Oscar said with assurance. “And if she is the
veleda
, Finn will never forget ’twas you who found her.”

“There’s something at least.”

“’Twould be good to see the two of you on solid footing again,” Oscar said, slowing, looking at him with a concern that told Diarmid exactly how much his rift with Finn had wounded the Fianna. And that made him feel even guiltier, that he was hesitating. It was about all of them. The prophecy.

They were nearly at the Devlin stables. Diarmid said, “I’ll tell Finn tonight.”

Oscar nodded. “I’ll say nothing until you do. Maybe it won’t be so hard as you think, Derry. Maybe the lass knows more than you believe.”

“Maybe.” Diarmid thought of the confusion in those dark, dancing eyes.

“Even if she doesn’t, you’ve a smooth tongue. You can convince a lass to do anything, even without the lovespot.”

Diarmid snorted. “Smooth tongue or no, this one won’t stay still enough to listen. You saw her today. She could hardly wait to be rid of me.”

Oscar considered him thoughtfully. “I’ve never known you to be wrong about a girl’s heart. What is it about this one that blinds you?”

“What do you mean?”

“’Tis obvious she wants you.”

Diarmid stared at Oscar, dumbfounded. “Which was it that addled you so, the heat or the little redhead?”

“And I’m thinking you want her too,” Oscar went on, ignoring him. “So show her the
ball seirce
and be done with it. Then you’ll both have what you want.”

“And what if she
is
the
veleda
?” Diarmid asked. “What if I have to kill her?”

“Well, at least she won’t die a virgin.”

Diarmid hit him. Hard, in the stomach, hard enough that Oscar doubled over. “What was that for?” he gasped.

“For being an ass. No wonder Etain took a club to you all those years ago.”

“She had a vicious temper.” Oscar moaned.

“You can hardly blame her, given that she was wedded to you. This is a different world, Oscar. We can’t just take what we want the way we used to. Here we’re no better than . . . than stableboys. You’d best remember it.” Diarmid walked to the stables, leaving a silent Oscar behind him.

When he went inside, Jerry muttered, “About time. You owe me a bottle for this one.”

Work felt good, sweat and effort, as good as it had felt to hit Oscar, though Diarmid regretted it now. He didn’t believe what his friend had said. Whether or not
he
wanted Grace Knox—and he did, he might as well admit it, even though he knew how foolish it was—he didn’t think she felt the same.

Though a few times he’d thought perhaps she was growing to like him just a little bit. In her bedroom, for example, when she’d looked up at him with those eyes shining in the dark and told him the things she wanted.
“Can you change the world?”

Or today when he’d seen her consider running away and he’d nearly fallen over himself to help her. The way she laughed—such a familiar sound, which was strange, as he would have sworn he’d never heard her laugh before. She rarely even
smiled
at him.

And then there was the fact that she’d come to meet him in the first place. He hadn’t been at all sure that she would, though he’d hoped what he’d asked Leonard to write for him would raise her curiosity.

“Can you change the world?”

He forked hay into the feeding troughs. He refused to think of Grace Knox for the rest of the afternoon. When night came on, he made his way through the moist and heavy air to the tenement—not rushing this time, smiling at the whores he passed, stopping to have a word with a passing newsboy or a man who recognized him.

“I heard the Black Hands was coming for you boys,” said Tommy Royce, who ran with a gang called the Alley Boys, as he spat tobacco into an already overflowing, fetid gutter.

“You put much credence in it?” Diarmid asked.

“Heard it from Little Nose himself.”

“You boys willing to fight with us?”

“Aye. Send the word,” said Tommy, slinking again into the darkness, and Diarmid went on his way. He glanced involuntarily at the black sky. The world felt uneasy; he would welcome something to make the feeling go away. A good fight would relax him.

Finn and Ossian were in what passed for a yard—dust
and baking sewage, stinking and miasmic—training a group of neighbor boys by the light of an oil lamp placed on the ground. Finn was saying, “If you can fight in the darkness, lads, you can fight anywhere.”

“We’re forming our own militia,”
Oscar had told Diarmid that morning.
“And it keeps those boys out of trouble too. Something to think about besides hunger and no work.”
Diarmid liked the idea. These people needed real heroes. For a moment, Diarmid wished, as he often did walking these streets, that the Fianna could be those heroes.