The Undivided (33 page)

‘Fine,’ she said tightly, forcing back her tears. There would be no getting rid of Emma or Gavin and Kiva until this was done and, more than anything at this moment, Hayley wanted to be alone. She wanted to weep. She wanted to feel sorry for herself, even for a short while, because later, when Patrick and Neil and Kerry came to visit and break the news that when she left here, she wasn’t going home, she’d have to pretend she was taking it on the chin.

She wanted her father to be proud of her and her little brother not to worry too much.

‘Get Kiva in here and let’s do this. I’m tired. I want to go back to bed.’

‘Good girl,’ Emma said brightly, as if nothing was amiss. ‘I’ll fetch Kiva. Gavin, can you check the light in here? It’s all wrong. You may have to pull the blind down a bit. That sunlight is far too harsh for Kiva at this hour of the morning.’ Hayley heard Emma heading for the door as she rattled off her orders, the faint squeak of the hinges as it opened and the publicist calling Kiva back into the room.

I’m not blind
, Hayley repeated to herself like a mantra, in the hope of keeping her tears at bay long enough to suffer through a photo shoot.
I don’t need to learn how to cope with a disability. I don’t have one.

Jamaspa managed to break out of
Sí an Bhrú
late one night a couple of weeks after Marcroy left, escaping the confines of Brydie’s brooch while she lay sleeping alone in Darragh the Undivided’s bed, pretending he was with her.

She’d done it twice now, the djinni had spluttered furiously, when he finally caught up with Marcroy in
Tír Na nÓg
, waking him as he slept in his tree house. Marcroy emerged, wrapping a spider-silk cloak around his shoulder to find the djinni standing on the bough, hands on his hips, turning dark blue with fury. A month ago Darragh had slipped in and out of his room unseen, the djinni ranted, and that shameless hussy Álmhath had thrown into his bed was covering for him, by pretending he was still there.

It took a bit to calm Jamaspa down. More than a few curious
sídhe
poked their heads through the branches of their trees to see what all the fuss was about. Marcroy shooed them away, hoping the ruckus would not disturb Orlagh. The last thing he needed was the queen wanting to know why a djinni was disturbing the peace of her kingdom.

Once he’d convinced Jamaspa to calm down, he had time to ponder the intelligence the djinni brought. The news about Darragh puzzled Marcroy for a number of reasons. The first was
why the girl Álmhath had planted in
Sí an Bhrú
to spy for her was now actively aiding Darragh. The second was to wonder what Darragh was doing, when he disappeared from his room in the dead of night. And the last, and most bothersome, question was
how
Darragh was doing it.

Marcroy was afraid he knew, and that meant the Brethren’s fears about the danger of these Undivided twins were well founded. They may have even underestimated them.

‘What else did you learn?’ Marcroy asked the djinni.

Jamaspa had taken an almost solid form. He paced up and down the long bough outside Marcroy’s tree house. ‘I learned I can learn nothing when I’m being smothered,’ the djinni complained, wringing his blue hands. ‘The human girl sleeping with Darragh is an untidy creature. She never hangs anything. She would toss her cloak to the floor — and me with it — as soon as Darragh looked at her sideways … the shameless slut … leaving me buried under mounds of fabric. More often than not, I heard only the sounds they made as they rutted like creatures of the forest — and even then, I’m not sure how often they were genuine cries of pleasure, and how often it was simply the woman pretending he was still in the room when he was long gone.’

‘But how was he getting out of the bedchamber?’ Marcroy asked. ‘Every rodent in
Sí an Bhrú
belongs to me. Nobody reported him leaving. And they were watching for it.’

‘He must be able to transport himself,’ Jamaspa concluded. ‘Like a
sídhe.
’

The idea that a human had acquired such a skill was too horrible to contemplate. Marcroy felt like wringing his hands, too. ‘It’s not possible.
Only
the
sídhe
have that ability. Darragh is human.’

‘Are you
sure
there’s no Faerie blood in the Undivided line?’ Jamaspa asked. His pacing was making the leaves quiver. ‘That would explain a lot.’

Marcroy shook his head. ‘We’d have seen physical signs of it before now. The vertical pupils, pointed ears, pointed teeth … There’s never been a hint of it. No. The boys are human. The line is human. For that matter, it’s not even a line. RónánDarragh share no familial ties with LonHarrian. Their mother was a Gaul. And the new twins come from another line with no discernible link to Sybille.’

‘We must find Darragh,’ Jamaspa announced. ‘Find out where he is and how he’s been getting there.’

‘Of course,’ Marcroy agreed, wondering if there was a way to send Jamaspa back to
Sí an Bhrú.
Or anywhere else, really. Back to Persia would suit Marcroy best. Trása — still trapped in her owl form — had brought him news, finally, of Rónán’s location. He was at Ciarán’s home
Ráith
at Drombeg. That was undoubtedly where Darragh had gone.

It had taken Trása a couple of weeks to track down Rónán. If he’d thought about it, Marcroy should have looked there himself, but it was such an obvious place for the warrior to seek sanctuary that Marcroy had dismissed the notion as ridiculous. Having since learned that was exactly where Ciarán had taken Rónán to hide, he was unable to decide if it meant Ciarán was a brilliant tactician or the greatest fool that ever lived.

Either way, the ruse had worked. The last place they expected Ciarán to take Rónán proved to be the last place they looked.

He couldn’t tell Jamaspa that, however, without confessing to his greater failure — the Undivided were now both in this realm, and if he didn’t find a way to remove one or the other of them, come
Lughnasadh
, there would be no transfer of power to the less dangerous heirs they’d discovered. RónánDarragh would step forth to take their place as the reunited Undivided and every fearful consequence of that arrangement would come to pass.

‘Is it worth questioning the girl?’ Marcroy asked, thinking that would be a way to distract Jamaspa.

The djinni’s eyes lit up. ‘That would mean revealing myself to her.’

‘Then perhaps you should,’ Marcroy said. It would be easy to blame the djinni for anything that went wrong, should the humans discover there was a djinni among them. ‘If you returned to
Sí an Bhrú
, you could trap Brydie in the brooch with you before Darragh returns. Then you could interrogate her at your leisure and nobody would be any the wiser. Darragh would simply assume she’d left of her own accord, and when you’re done with her, you could simply glamour away her memory of the interlude.’

Jamaspa stopped pacing. Almost as soon as he did, the lower half of his body faded into a wisp of blue smoke, and his upper body swelled significantly, a sure sign he was no longer worried about what to do. Marcroy smiled. The Djinn, for all their power, were simple creatures when it got down to it.

‘You are clever, Marcroy Tarth,’ Jamaspa said. ‘I will do as you suggest. The girl will tell me what we need to know.’

‘Then you should return immediately to
Sí an Bhrú
,’ Marcroy advised. ‘So you can capture her before the Druids awaken and discover a djinni in their midst.’

The djinni vanished in a puff of blue smoke without saying goodbye. Marcroy breathed a sigh of relief and turned to look out over the magnificent trees of
Tír Na nÓg
without really seeing them. ‘Plunkett!’ he called.

The
Leipreachán
appeared at his feet almost immediately.

‘My lord?’

‘Where did Trása go?’

‘She left for Drombeg already,
tiarna
.’

‘Then we should follow,’ Marcroy announced, shedding his spider-silk cloak so he could change form. ‘We need to rid ourselves of the Undivided problem, Plunkett, before that wretched djinni returns.’

Trása’s rough landing hurt. A lot. She’d not expected to change back into human form in mid-air. She wasn’t even sure what had made her dive through the closing rift. In her own realm, she’d been trying to warn Darragh that Marcroy knew about his brother. Her anger at being trapped in bird form these past weeks had all but smothered any lingering loyalty she might have had for the
Tuatha Dé Danann
. Marcroy had betrayed her and she was quite happy to betray him in return. She would warn the Undivided Marcroy knew Rónán had returned.

It was not, she told herself, as she staggered to her feet to confront the Undivided twins, in any way connected to the fact that in her own reality, only one of these young men could free her from the curse put upon her by her uncle.

Rónán hurriedly removed his cloak and offered it to her, as if embarrassed by her nakedness. She snatched it from him to cover herself, refusing to look Darragh in the eye. Rónán she could bear to look at, finding him much less intimidating than her childhood friend.

‘The owl,’ Darragh said, staring at her. ‘It was you.’

‘Why didn’t you just land on the road outside Drombeg and tell us it was you?’ Rónán asked.

Sorcha groaned softly. Trása wasn’t pleased she had come
through the rift with the Undivided. Sorcha might be a great warrior in her own realm, but in this one she would cause nothing but trouble.

‘I couldn’t,’ she said, pulling the cloak around her tightly. ‘Marcroy cursed me when he discovered Rónán was back. What did you do to Sorcha? Is she going to be all right?’

‘I imprinted her with the language of this realm,’ Darragh said. ‘But I had to do it in a hurry. I’m afraid I wasn’t very gentle.’

‘You shouldn’t have brought her here, Darragh,’ Trása said. ‘She’ll never be able to cope with this world.’

‘Why don’t you let me worry about that?’ Darragh replied in a frosty tone that caused even Rónán to look at him strangely.

‘Why would Marcroy curse you for my return?’ Rónán asked. ‘What has it got to do with you?’

Trása didn’t respond, not sure how to answer without making both Darragh and Rónán angry.

‘Because her job in this realm was to see you didn’t return,’ Darragh concluded with a frown when she didn’t answer. ‘That’s why you were in gaol. She thought it would contain you in this realm and you wouldn’t be able to escape to get home. She didn’t realise Brógán and Niamh had also found you.’

Rónán stared at her in shock. ‘You set me up?’

Trása remained silent, unable to deny the charge.

‘You nasty little bitch! You killed an innocent man! And they were going to charge
me
with his murder!’

‘Technically, it was Plunkett who set you up, Rónán, not me,’ she told him, daring the faintest hint of a smile. It was wasted on him. Rónán was furious.

‘You killed someone!’ he repeated.

‘It was Plunkett who —’

‘That’s just playing with words,’ Rónán cut in, angrier than she’d ever seen him. Angry in the way Darragh could get angry.
‘You killed some poor homeless guy, just so I could never find my way back to your reality? You really are a piece of work, aren’t you?’

He turned away, squatting down to check on Sorcha, who seemed to be slowly coming around. Trása wasn’t sure if Rónán cared about the warrior or was just looking for an excuse to not engage in any further conversation.

Darragh relinquished Sorcha’s care to his brother and stood up to confront Trása. ‘If Marcroy cursed you,’ he asked, clearly not believing a word she’d said, ‘why are you now in human form?’

Trása shrugged. She’d been wondering the same thing. ‘I guess there isn’t enough magic in this realm to sustain the curse. Why are you here?’

Rónán glanced up from taking Sorcha’s pulse. ‘Does that mean the curse is broken, or will she turn back into an owl as soon as we get back to the other reality?’

‘She’ll turn back,’ Darragh said. ‘Curses like that are not easily undone.’

‘This one is,’ Trása said, determined not to let this moment pass. She needed Darragh — or Rónán, although that seemed unlikely at the moment — to rescue her, once they got home. ‘This curse can easily be undone by one of the Undivided.’

‘You expect us to
help
you?’ Rónán asked, looking at her with a complete lack of compassion. Sorcha was struggling to sit up, still groaning. She probably had a headache from Darragh’s hasty
Comhroinn.
Rónán helped her up, steadying her with his arm.

‘That’s what friends do, Rónán,’ Trása said.

‘Really? And here I was thinking they just murdered random strangers so their
friends
could do twenty-five to life.’

‘Shall I dispose of her for you,
Leath tiarna
?’ Sorcha asked, as she gained her feet, her hand already on her sword hilt. ‘It will be my pleasure. Believe me.’

‘No!’ Rónán exclaimed, slapping her hand away from the weapon. ‘We won’t be killing anybody. There’s been enough of that already.’

‘Rónán is right,’ Darragh said. ‘In this realm, it would be unwise to use a blade to resolve a dispute. Even less wise to carry it,
Mháistreás
.’

‘Darragh has a point,’ Trása said. Her safety in this group — and any chance she had of returning home and being restored to her true form — lay with allying herself with the Undivided, not making enemies of them. And she had a lot of fences to mend. It seemed unlikely that she could re-establish her familiar relationship with Darragh, or her new friendship with Rónán. Not while the brothers blamed her for doing things like framing one of them for murder.

But she had been to this realm before. She’d spent the better part of the last six months here. Darragh and Sorcha needed her simply in order to survive.

And then it occurred to Trása that she had no idea
why
they were here.

She glanced around, wondering where they were exactly. Ciarán obviously hadn’t sent them to the same circle in Drombeg from where they’d left. There were no cities near Drombeg, even in this realm. They’d landed in another stone circle, but this one appeared to be hidden in the rough on a golf course. She could see a moonlit sand bunker surrounded by perfect lawn just beyond the tree line.

Beyond the golf course lay a sea of lights. Trása wondered which city it was and then she turned to the others and treated them to her best smile. It was time to act like one of the gang. Hopefully, if she did, they’d treat her like one. ‘Does anybody have any idea where we are?’

‘Ciarán was trying to send us to
Eblana
,’ Darragh said stiffly, not responding to her cheerful manner. He turned to Rónán, apparently not trusting Trása’s opinion. ‘Did he succeed?’

‘Hard to tell,’ Rónán said, turning to stare out over the city. ‘From here, it could be any city in the world.’

‘Not any city,’ Trása said. ‘Only a city built in a place where Druids have been in the past.’

Rónán looked confused. ‘How do you figure that?’

‘Look around you,’ she said. They were standing in the middle of an ancient stone circle. It was all but hidden in the undergrowth, weathered down to a few small stones worn almost smooth by the passage of time and a few thousand years of neglect.

‘I guess that means we’re somewhere in Eire,’ Darragh agreed, glancing around.

‘Or England,’ Rónán added, frowning. ‘Or Wales, or Scotland. Or France. Or Germany. Or any one of a hundred other places in Europe you can find ruins like this.’

‘I think you vastly overestimate Ciarán’s powers if you think we’re not still in Eire,’ Sorcha suggested. ‘Let’s assume he threw us through to the nearest circle to
Eblana
he could connect with in this realm. What do we do first?’

Rónán glanced around at their group, his eyes lingering longest on Trása. ‘Find a phone,’ he said. ‘And you’re going to have to ditch the weapons, Sorcha.’

Sorcha bristled at the very suggestion. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘The
Leath tiarna
speaks wisely,
Mháistreás
,’ Trása assured her, in as respectful a tone as she could manage, reasoning if she could get Sorcha on side, she might have some hope of softening the twins’ anger toward her. ‘In this realm, your current mode of dress — and your weaponry — will get you arrested, which would draw unnecessary attention to our group.’

‘And we don’t want that,’ Rónán added, in a voice laden with irony, ‘because thanks to our
friend
here, some of us are wanted for murder.’

‘They probably want you for escaping, too,’ Trása reminded him, which might not have been a wise move, given the glare he
treated her to. ‘We really must do whatever we can to avoid the authorities in this realm.’

Darragh seemed to find that amusing. ‘And to think, Ciarán told me your life in this world had been uninteresting and dull, brother,’ he said, grinning at Rónán.

‘It was,’ Rónán said, glaring at Trása. ‘Until she showed up.’

‘So why
did
we come back here?’ Trása asked. Why would Rónán and Darragh risk so much to come here? It wasn’t just the problems confronting them here in this realm they had to deal with. The fallout when they returned to their own realm and the Druids learned that the Undivided had been rift running, would dwarf anything the authorities in this reality could dish out.

‘We came back to help Hayley,’ Rónán told her. ‘Did you have anything to do with her accident?’

‘It wasn’t me,’ Trása repeated, truthfully enough. It was Plunkett, after all, who’d made the car go faster, and she hadn’t known about it until afterward so, strictly speaking, she was innocent of that charge. ‘But how can you help her? You can’t heal her here. The magic won’t work.’

‘If she needs our help, we’ll take her back with us,’ Sorcha explained. ‘A task that could be accomplished much more easily,
Leath tiarnas
, if you would allow me to remove the problem of this mongrel halfblood
Beansídhe
, so we can get on with the job.’

‘Tempting as that is, Sorcha,’ Rónán said, his gaze fixing unsympathetically on Trása, ‘we have more important things to worry about.’ He turned to Darragh. ‘Before we do anything, we’re going to need transport, a phone, and probably money.’

‘What about our clothing?’ Darragh asked. ‘We’re not going to blend in anywhere in this realm dressed as we are.’ He glanced at Trása and added, ‘Or
not
dressed, as the case may be.’

Rónán glanced at them and frowned. ‘Yeah … that could be a problem.’ He thought for a moment and then said, ‘Okay, if anybody asks, we’re on our way home from a fancy dress party.’

‘A what?’ Sorcha asked.

‘Fancy dress. It’s a cliché, I know, but it should work. You’re Xena, the Warrior Princess. You’re a Jedi, Darragh, and you,’ he said, turning to Trása, ‘can be … Lady Godiva. Just keep the cloak closed. I’m pretty sure we don’t want to put your costume to the test. I’ll be … your escort.’

‘I’ve been here before, you know,’ Trása reminded Rónán, tugging the cloak tighter. She was a little concerned with the way he was taking charge. She was the one who needed to be needed. If she wasn’t, they might abandon her in this realm. Right now, that seemed a fearfully real possibility. Neither Darragh nor Rónán seemed keen for her company and Sorcha was cheerfully frank about wanting to kill her.

‘Yeah, I remember you being here before,’ Rónán said as he turned and headed down the small slope toward the green. ‘That’s how come I came to be the lead story on
Garda Patrol
.’