Unshapely Things (31 page)

Waking up in the guest room in Briallen's house had felt like coming home. When my abilities kicked in at twelve, they kicked in hard. I'd spent many weekends in Louisburg Square away from my family. At first it was exciting learning things most kids only dream about. It became frustrating when I began to realize how hard it was going to be. Occasionally, it got lonely—adolescent angst coupled with the stigma of truly being different. The best part was making Briallen smile. Most times I did it with a joke, but often enough it was because I did something right. I began to strive for that. I let my fingers trail over the bindings of books in Briallen's study, looking for something, anything, to find a way past my dead end. Should I make Shay remove the pentagrams or not? Were they working as part of a meditation exercise or weren't they? I tried randomly pulling books off the shelves in the hope that something would literally fall into my lap, but fate didn't want to play the game. I was beginning to think my best bet might be a coin toss.

My cell phone rang. I picked up, and traffic noises blared in my ear.

"I'm at a pay phone across from the Guildhouse. I didn't want to use any lines inside. They're doing spell sweeps," Meryl said. "Listen, I've been studying the books you asked about the other day. I think I found something a little freaky. It's a spell of binding that unbinds. If I'm reading it right, it's about old powers. The real old ones. Like lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key old ones."

I said a silent thank-you to whoever might be listening.

"Can you meet me at the bandstand on the Common in five minutes?"

"Got it." She disconnected.

I went back to the guest room to put on my boots. Briallen's dagger had already started feeling comfortable on my ankle, but I still didn't like being without my old knife. Until I either bought new boots with a left foot sheath or made one of my own, I decided to leave my old blade behind. It wouldn't help if I managed to stab myself in the foot. I left the jacket, too. It was damned hot, and at least at Briallen's I wouldn't worry about it getting stolen.

I paused in the foyer. Briallen lay in a trance trying to find the cause of a blackout on the future, the kind of blackout that had happened when Convergence occurred. Meryl had found a Fomorian spell that unbound old powers with blood and pentagrams. When old powers were spellbound, it was usually behind dimensional barriers, the same kind of barrier that had been pierced during Convergence. A chill ran up my spine, and I ran up the stairs again. I had a spell that would bring about a cataclysm taken from a book that macDuin had read. I also had a series of ritual murders that fit the spell and that macDuin was trying to suppress. And I had an unexplained connection between macDuin and Corcan Sidhe. If the spell succeeded, it could create a world like old Faerie with the remaining humans as subjects—just like the elves and their fairy sympathizers wanted during World War II. Like macDuin wanted. The connections had to mean one thing. MacDuin was somehow using Corcan Sidhe to pierce a veil into the Fomorian prison and free the most powerful enemy of the Celtic fey. All hell would break loose on the world again. Only this time an enemy would be unleashed that no one had fought in millennia. Humans would have little chance of survival. Just the fey would, leaving a world dominated by the fey. MacDuin had set it all in motion again.

As I was about to press my hand against the door of Briallen's sanctum to wake her, I hesitated. She had scoffed at the possibility of a Fomorian spell. If I were wrong, I could be setting in motion the cataclysm she feared by disturbing her. If I were right, I could be facing certain doom by not waking her.

I rushed back down the stairs. I needed the spell. If it did what Meryl thought it would, Briallen would see it, too. It would be the proof I needed to justify interrupting Maeve's request. I locked the front door as I left. Briallen might have the house warded to the teeth, but it made me feel better. My cell rang again.

"I know, I'm coming," I said, thinking it was Meryl.

A static hollow sound echoed in my ear. For a moment I thought Meryl had called back with her silencing spell.

"This is Gerda Alfheim," a woman's voice said. Even through the bad connection, it had that continental smooth accent you hear in old movies, with just a touch of Nordic to it. They had taken so long, I had given up on the Germans. "We have a bad connection. Please hold on." I had reached the end of Walnut Street where it dead-ended on Beacon. Loud, heavy traffic moved in both directions. When a brief opening appeared, I rushed across the street to get to the relative quiet of Boston Common.

"You were calling about my son Gethin. Is he all right?" Gerda asked.

"He's here? In the States, I mean?"

"Well, yes. He's in Boston. I thought that was why you were calling."

I skipped down the short flight of stairs into the Common. I held my hand over the speaker of the phone to hear better. Most people cover their open ear to block out intruding noise, not realizing the speaker picking up ambient sound causes more of a hearing problem. I stood looking back and forth for an easy path across the Common, but there wasn't one, so I cut across the grass. "How long has he been here?"

"A few months this time. I was getting concerned because I haven't received a check-in call. What's this about?"

"I was doing some research, and your name came up. I really don't know anything about your son except that he is cross-species."

There was a long pause. "That's some rather personal research."

Her voice had gone cold. I could feel that I needed to tread carefully, or I would lose her. "We have a situation here I hope you can help me with. Has he ever been violent?"

Again there was silence. The moment dragged on. "I am not going to say another word until you tell me what this is about."

"I'm consulting on a criminal case that the Boston Guild-house is working on." It wasn't quite true, but not quite false. She didn't need to know that.

"The Guild?" Her voice was tinged with suspicion now.

"They have primary control of the case. There've been a number of fey-on-fey murders."

Again there was silence. She did not speak for several moments. "Hello?" I said.

"Keep Lorcan macDuin away from my son, Mr. Grey."

Stunned, I skidded to a halt. I was on top of the hill where I had witnessed Tansy's funeral. The bandstand sat downslope a few hundred yards away. Meryl hadn't shown up yet. "How do you know Lorcan macDuin?"

"He's at the Guildhouse there, isn't he? He has an unnatural attraction to Gethin. He even came to Germany last year to contact him. You asked if my son were ever violent. The only time I saw Gethin upset was because of Lorcan macDuin. Please, you must keep him away from him."

"I don't understand. Why did you let him come to Boston if you had concerns about macDuin?"

"What?"

"I said why did Gethin come to Boston?"

"I can't hear you, Mr. Grey," she said. A wave of static crackled in the phone. I spun wildly in a circle hoping the signal problem was on my end. The static grew louder. The call went dead.

"Damn," I said. I jabbed my finger at the phone to turn it off. The caller ID didn't list a return number. I paced across the hilltop, hoping she would call back. I kept glancing over to the bandstand. Meryl hadn't appeared yet. A line of trees obscured the view to the intersection she would be coming from.

My body shields came up and an instant later I felt the tingle of a spell across my skin. Before I could move my head more than a couple of inches, it froze in place. The rest of the spell draped over me like a layer of cool static that might have been refreshing under different circumstances. Someone laughed just behind me. Footsteps came closer and stopped beyond my peripheral vision. A hand snaked around and plucked the phone from my hand. An elf walked in front of me. He had a cocky grin on his face as he dialed my phone. Even though it had been dark, I recognized him as one of the guys who had jumped me. The one I had bit. He wasn't chanting, so I knew his spellcasting buddy must be behind me.

"We've got him," he said into my phone. He stared at me while he listened, nodded once, and disconnected. He lowered the antenna and slipped the phone into his pocket. With a smirk, he stood beside me and clasped the elbow of my still-bent arm. I felt myself rise an inch or two above the ground. He propelled me forward, walking nonchalantly like we were out for a Sunday stroll.

I tried to open my mouth to yell, but they had me in a pretty tight binding. We moved down the hill toward the city information booth and away from the bandstand. Fighting against the resistance, I managed to move my head to the right, but not far enough to see if Meryl was riding to the rescue. Sweat broke out on my forehead from the effort. We paused on the foot of the hill where a main path through the Common ran, waiting while a young couple walked past, oblivious to the sight of a tall man frozen in position with an elf holding his arm. I felt utterly ridiculous.

The elf pressed me forward, and we proceeded around the information booth. People milled all around us, but absolutely no one gave us a second look. As we neared the curb on the Tremont Street side of the Common, the elf companionably put his arm across my shoulders. A black Lincoln Town Car with black-out windows sat illegally parked, a Guild permit discreedy displayed on the rear windshield. Someone came up behind me, muttering. The other elf, the spellcaster, had made his appearance. He opened the rear door of the car, and before I knew what was happening, they grabbed my shoulders and pitched me headfirst inside. The door slammed roughly against my feet, launching me forward. I banged my head against the opposite door.

My nose pressed against the leather upholstery. Without anyone holding me, I was able to shift my body weight and roll over. I ended up halfway onto the floor, but at least I was faceup. The front doors opened one after the other, and my abductors sat down. I could see the spellcaster. He wore sunglasses again, but I could feel his eyes on me as he kept muttering in German. The car started and began moving.

Trees passed through my line of sight through the sunroof. We paused at a traffic light. The car had started rolling again when a sharp jolt rocked us. The spellcaster spun away from me in surprise. It took a long, slow moment for the binding to fade. I began to sit up as a second impact hit the car, and I fell back against the seat. The elves yelled at each other, but I couldn't make sense of what they were saying. As I grabbed at the door handle, the spellcaster turned and shouted. A ball of light burst from his hand and hit me squarely in the chest. I hunched forward, gasping for breath, and felt the binding spell descend on me again. The car sped up, pressing me into the seat. A third impact struck, but it felt only like a strong wind buffeting the car compared to the first two.

I could see where we were going now. We careened through traffic on Tremont Street, not bothering to wait for the light at Boylston. The Guildhouse loomed up on the right in the next block, and we circled around to the front. The dragon over the main entrance seemed to be laughing at me frozen in the backseat. We made the next light legally. As we entered the intersection, the driver made a wild right turn back around the other side of the Guildhouse, then another turn down the access alley on Boylston. A garage door opened as we approached, and the car swept under it with inches to spare. An old dwarf woman in the attendant's booth gave a desultory wave as the car passed.

The garage seemed to go on interminably. We circled down into the depths of the building. As with so much of the Guildhouse, it was hard to tell if I were being brought through a series of illusions or if the space were actually this vast. We came down a ramp that ended in a small area barely big enough for three cars.

I heard the pop of the trunk, and the driver got out. I groaned inwardly. There's nothing I hate more than being carted around in the trunk of a car. It's never comfortable.

The driver walked out of sight for a moment. I could hear rummaging sounds behind me in the trunk. The back door opened, and he shuffled in on his knees. With quick movements, he wrapped duct tape around me, binding my arms and ankles. The spellcaster stopped chanting. Before the binding could wear off again, the driver backed out of the car.

The spellcaster coughed a couple of times. "I need some water."

I sat still as the spell slipped off me. The driver stood several feet away from the car. I eyed the spellcaster as he got out. He was the one I had to worry about. Even though his binding ability wasn't a very strong one, he had enough to stop me. If I could incapacitate him, I might have a chance against the driver. I had no delusion that that chance was anything other than extremely small.

"Move out of the car slowly," the driver said. I swung my legs out and stood. It wasn't the side of the car I wanted to be on. The spellcaster came around to our side, closing the trunk as he passed it. So, I wasn't going for a ride.

"We can do this the hard way or the easy way," the spellcaster said. "Either we carry you with no problems, or we beat you up the side of the head until you pass out, and then we carry you."

I smiled at him. "What's the matter? All out of juice?" The driver punched me in the stomach. I wasn't ready for it and keeled over like an embarrassed sack of rocks. So much for taking either of them out. "Okay. Okay. I won't struggle." It was the driver's turn to chant. I felt my weight dissipate as I almost left the floor. The two elves stood on either side of me and grabbed my arms. I floated up with little effort. They guided me to an old wooden door. "You guys make a great team. I guess you have to, considering neither one of you can stand on your own."

"We could drag you if you prefer," said the driver. He opened the door with his free hand. I could feel the slight tingle of a ward stone as we passed into a long corridor. It had the same look as the old basement corridors, only long disused. Dust and debris lay thickly along the edges and a single, old-style wall torch flickered orange halfway down. Just past the torch, we stopped at an iron door. The driver opened a small viewing panel and peered into blackness. He gave no indication what he was looking for. He closed the panel and opened the door.