Wayfinder (25 page)

He was also, according to the scant handful of sentences she was
able to comprehend, suffering from a profound head wound. Students had found him on the Common two days earlier, and had rushed him to the hospital. Doctors were still uncertain whether he would survive.

“Lady, are you all right?” The news vendor lost his hostility, edging past a stack of papers to come into Lara’s line of sight, face now crinkled with concern.

“No.” Her abrupt response alarmed the vendor, who went so far as to put a hand on her arm in cautious support. Lara lifted the paper, shaking it slightly to emphasize the story. “I know him.”

“Jesus, they’ve been looking for somebody who does for days. Where’ve you been, with your head in the sand? Who did all that surgery on him?”

“He did it himself.” It was technically true, if physiologically impossible in human terms. Lara wet her lips, trying to pull her thoughts together enough to hold some sort of normal conversation. “I’m sorry. I just got back into town and I literally have no cash on me, no bank card, nothing. May I have this paper? I’ll come back and repay you, I promise, but I have friends I need to show this to, and …” Her voice was shaking by the time she finished. Ioan couldn’t, by any comprehensible measure, be in Boston, much less in a hospital. She’d seen him only minutes ago, whole and well.

Outrageous dissension rang through the thought. They couldn’t both be true: either he was here and hadn’t been in the Barrow-lands, or the photo was some kind of glamour. Lara crumpled the paper, eyes crushed shut against the sour musics vying for dominance.

Worry crept into the vendor’s voice. “I guess I lose enough off stolen papers that letting one go on purpose this once won’t hurt. Go ahead and take it, lady. I hope your friend will be okay.”

“Thank you.” Lara managed a weak smile for the man as she
backed away. “I promise, I really will pay you. I just can’t right now. I’m really sorry.” Then she turned and fled, meeting Dafydd and Aerin where she’d abandoned them on the street. The prospect of explaining what she couldn’t understand overwhelmed her and she simply thrust the paper into Dafydd’s hands with a feeble attempt to smooth the wrinkles she’d put in its surface.

Even Aerin, unable to read the words, understood in seconds. “This is a ‘photo,’ ” she half-asked, and then with more certainty if no more comprehension, “A photo of Ioan. The likeness is very good.”

“That’s what photographs do,” Lara whispered. “A nearly perfect replica. But it doesn’t make any sense.” Her head throbbed, Dafydd and Aerin’s glamours playing havoc with her vision and only made worse by the incomprehensibility of Ioan’s presence in her world. Her head had hurt for
days
, it seemed like: almost since they’d left the Drowned Lands themselves. A lack of sleep no doubt exacerbated the pain, and certainly clouded her thoughts against any real hope of figuring out what had happened. “He can’t be in two places at once.”

“Then either this is not Ioan,” Dafydd said slowly, “or the man we journeyed with in the Barrow-lands was not.”

A pure clear chime rang through Lara’s migraine, sweet vibrations breaking it away at Dafydd’s last words, and the impossible fell into place: “Merrick.”

The willpower necessary to cast an illusion of the depth Merrick had commanded staggered Lara. Almost literally: she had a hard time putting one foot in front of the other as Dafydd guided her through the streets toward Kelly’s apartment. It had begun—
had
to have begun—with Braith’s village in the valley. It hadn’t just been A
glamour hiding the town that had triggered her headache. The town itself had been an illusion, and her truthseeking sense had tried desperately to correct what it knew to be wrong. But it was more than that: in the Catskill mountains Merrick had only built an illusion to fool Lara. Kelly had seen through it, rescuing Lara from her own folly. This one, like the spell Merrick had created to mastermind his own apparent murder, had fooled more than one person into believing the same story.

“The magic would be easier to control and maintain in the Barrow-lands,” Dafydd explained. “In your world, tricking a single person with an in-depth illusion might take all of Merrick’s talent. I fooled everyone with my glamour, but it’s so very minor that the effort necessary to maintain it is almost negligible. Making you, a truthseeker, believe I had rejoined you in your world … that requires—”

“It requires my willing acceptance and belief in the scenario. And I think it required the same thing in Annwn. Maybe the real village was a little farther down the same road, and he created the illusion on the path I saw in order to waylay us. And we just delivered him into the heart of the Seelie army, Dafydd. Your father could be dead because of us.”

“As you said, riding into their midst could well be his undoing. I wouldn’t think, though, that it’s Merrick or even Ioan they’ll be seeing. I’d think it would be—”

“You,” Aerin finished grimly. “The son and heir returned, perhaps with a tale of vanquished enemies. There is no one left in the Barrow-lands to protect the Unseelie city now, Dafydd.”

“I’m surprised you care,” Lara said with more honesty than wisdom.

Aerin’s human countenance did nothing to spoil the cool arrogance in her gaze. “I dislike being made a fool of, Truthseeker.”

“Hafgan remains,” Dafydd said with the air of a man trying hard to defuse a fight. “He might yet be the Unseelie peoples’ savior. What I want to know is how he worked the scrying spell.”

“He didn’t.” They stopped at a crosswalk, Lara so grateful to stop moving that she didn’t look to see if they could jaywalk the section. It was a Bostonian pastime, striking out into traffic with the air of one indestructible. The trick was never making eye contact with the enemy: it lent jaywalkers the moral right of way, obliging drivers to hit the brakes. It was infuriating, but everyone participated while on foot, even if they’d only minutes earlier been in a car, swearing violently at jaywalkers themselves.

Dafydd, obviously as familiar with the game as she was,
did
walk out into traffic, eliciting a gasp of horror from Aerin. As if reminded of the danger, he skipped back—scoring one for the vehicles, Lara supposed—and settled in place to hear Lara’s explanation while they waited for the light.

“The scrying spell is one of ice and water. Merrick doesn’t command those elements. He just created an illusion, and we probably made it easier by giving him that tiny jug of water instead of a pool or a basin like Ioan and Emyr use. He must have been being so careful.” Lara closed her eyes, trying to recall exactly the words and phrases “Ioan” had used. “A direct lie would have triggered my truth-sensing no matter how good his illusion was. He never said he was Ioan. He didn’t even say he’d use the scrying power. He said he had duties to attend to, and was thirsty. It was all
true
. It just wasn’t—”

“Connected,” Dafydd said. “In the same way you intimated we were from Pennsic. My adopted brother is canny,” he added in a mutter. “I always thought him more honest than that.”

“You were always more willing to forgive him his birth than the rest of us,” Aerin said. The light changed and she strode into the street, boldness an illusion Lara could see through.

Dafydd’s jaw tightened and he moved swiftly to keep up, leaving
Lara a few steps behind. “Had the rest of you been more forgiving, perhaps we wouldn’t have come to this.”

“Would we not have? Would you have always been content to be the prince, Dafydd, and never the king?”

“Your ambitions were always greater than mine.” Dafydd fell back again abruptly, rejoining Lara in not so much a retreat as a strategic commentary. Aerin’s fists clenched, but she said nothing else, and let Dafydd and Lara take the lead again as they cut down another street toward Kelly’s apartment complex.

“Does it work that way?” Lara wondered aloud. “I thought maybe there was no real inheritance, not when you all live so long. Heirs in name only, for all intents and purposes.”

“For all intents,” Dafydd agreed. “Even royalty dies, as my mother did, but Emyr was never likely to set aside his crown from grief, even if Ioan and I hadn’t been children by our standards. Even almost by human standards,” he added. “We were very young. Ioan was only nine or ten when I was born and he and Merrick were exchanged as hostages to good behavior.”

“I thought you didn’t have very many children. I’d think two children in ten years would be unheard of.”

“It was. And perhaps Rhiannon paid the price for breeding at such a mortal rate, as I was only a child myself when she died.”

“I’m sorry. Oh, good, here we are.” Lara ran forward, suddenly eager to get out of the street as she buzzed Kelly’s apartment. Aerin scowled at the sharp sound, hand tightening on her “purse” again, and Lara shot her a sympathetic smile. “It’ll be quieter insi—Hello? Hi, Kelly? It’s Lara!”

Momentary silence followed Kelly’s initial “hello?,” which had been half-drowned under Lara’s reassurance to Aerin. Then Kelly gave a short incredulous laugh. “Oh my God. Come on up, I’m buzzing you in.”

She met them in the hallway outside her apartment, eyes wide
above a cheek swollen with medical staples. Lara made a dismayed sound, but Kelly charged forward to grab her in an astonished, breathless hug. “When you said ‘see you later’ I thought you meant in about ten years. Oh my God, Lara, you’re home already? You’re okay? What’s going on? And David!” She nearly yelled his name, releasing Lara to haul the slender Seelie man into a hug. “You’re not dead! And—oooh.” Her voice dropped as she took in Aerin, then put a hand out to shake. “I didn’t get your name, but you’re obviously the other wom—Uh, I mean, you’re Dafydd’s frie—I mean, aw, shit, I mean, hi, I’m Kelly.”

Aerin looked dubiously at Kelly’s hand, then carefully took it in her own. “I am Aerin.” She glanced at Dafydd, curiosity raising her white eyebrows. “Her injury appears profound. Why has she not healed it?”

Kelly shot Lara a look of bewilderment and Lara groaned. “She only speaks Seelie and my magic’s not enough to make you understand her. Or her understand you. This is Aerin. She wanted to know why you haven’t healed your cheek yet.”

“Are you kidding? The best doctors in Boston say it’s healing up really well. I won’t even need plastic surgery, probably, to hide the scar, it should be that unnoticeable.” Kelly grabbed Lara’s shoulders. “Speaking of plastic surgery—”

“I saw the newspaper story. Have you—?”

“I’ve been trying for two days to get in to see him. There are mooks in black suits and Ray-Bans lurking around the hospital. I can’t believe they haven’t taken him out of Boston yet.”

“How bad is he?”

“His brains are leaking out the back of his head,” Kelly said with an unfortunate degree of truthfulness. “I’ve got a girlfriend on the nursing staff, but even she can’t get me in to see him. All she can tell me is he hasn’t woken up and half of the medical community on the
Eastern seaboard has come in to look at him. The papers are sticking with the extreme surgery story, but people are talking about alien invasions.” She herded everyone into her apartment as she spoke, Dafydd translating her tumble of words for Aerin.

Four days was enough to have turned Kelly’s apartment from relatively tidy into a minor disaster area. She darted around the living room, scooping up empty pint cartons of ice cream and blankets and socks and dumping them into trash cans and closets. Lara counted seven ice cream cartons before they were swept away, and caught Kelly’s hand to stop her whirlwind cleaning.

There was no diamond on her ring finger. Lara said “Oh, no, Kel,” and Kelly went still, eyes cast downward.

“He’s been at the hospital all week,” she mumbled. “Sitting by Reg’s bedside when he can, sleeping in the lobby when he’s not allowed to. The only time he’s left, pretty much, was to come see me in the ER when I came in bleeding like a stuck pig. He made sure I was more or less okay, and then he broke up with me. Said he didn’t know who I was anymore, that maybe he never did. I blew it, Lara. I mean I really, really blew it.”

“No.” Unexpectedly, it was Dafydd who interrupted, voice low but confident. “No, Kelly, if anyone is to blame, it’s me. Dickon was my cameraman and close friend for years, and he had no reason to suspect I was anything other than human. Though in most ways I neither would nor could change that, I should have found a way to tell him the truth immediately after I returned from the Barrow-lands without Lara. He deserved better than the friendship I offered him, and you deserved far better than the disaster I imparted upon your relationship.”

“I could have picked him,” Kelly whispered. Tears trembled down her cheeks and she pressed a finger above the cut on her face, giving the saltwater another path to travel than into the wound. “I could’ve
done something else instead of turning into a criminal mastermind and spiriting us all away from a crime scene.”

Lara slipped an arm around Kelly’s waist, offering her a tentative smile. “Will it make you feel any better if I say no, you really couldn’t have?”

Kelly sniffled. “Couldn’t I?”

“Not from what I hear in your voice,” Lara said. “The truth is, helping Dafydd get away was the only thing you were ever going to do that day, Kelly. You weren’t going to let him die on a lab table, no matter how high the cost somewhere else might be. If Dickon can’t appreciate the strength of character that shows, then he doesn’t deserve you.”

Kelly laughed, a shaky wet sound. “That’s not fair. I have to believe it when you say it, Lara. I don’t have to believe
me
when I say it, but I have to believe you.” She wiped her eyes again, then hugged Lara hard. “Thank you. You might have to tell me five thousand times so I remember I have to believe you, but thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Lara hugged her back, then sighed. “How’s Detective Washington doing, anyway?”

Kelly sank down into an armchair. “He’s not out of the woods yet. We got stupid lucky with that mess at the courthouse garage, Lara. I mean, Dickon doesn’t care, because he was there and he knows we left Reg behind, but David’s lightning fried the whole security system. All the digital backups for the whole week got wiped out. There’s no footage anywhere that proves who was in the garage, and the only one who could identify us is Reg. He’s still unconscious, which is probably why I’m not in jail right now. They’ve got him at the same hospital Ioan’s at. If we could get in there, could you help him?” Her gaze went to Dafydd and Aerin, beseeching, and Dafydd once more translated before spreading his hands uncertainly.