The fae were real enough, and the portal, too. I’d seen them go inside that sidhe and disappear. They absolutely had stolen two children.
The dreams…those I couldn’t explain. The memory of what Blake had shown me plagued my mind – the gaping, horrified faces of my guys, the charred earth, the broken sky, the two empty stakes waiting for their next victims…
If what Corbin told me was true – ifallthis was true – and I do nothing, then that vision was our future. Even if all this was some hallucination I invented in my grief, then fighting the fae may help me heal. Either way, Jane needed her son back. There was everything to gain by fighting, and nothing to gain by closing my eyes and pretending this wasn’t happening.
The red streaks across the sky turned golden in hue, and light crept across the courtyard, bringing clarity to the darkened corners and cracked stones. I wished it would bring the same clarity to my life.
“Maeve?” A voice called to me from above.
I glanced up. Corbin’s head hung out of the tiny tower window, the breeze ruffling his dark hair. “You’ve got a text.”
“Throw it down!” I yelled, leaping to my feet and holding out my hands.
Corbin flung my phone into the air, and in a display of skill and dexterity I’d never before displayed in gym class I managed to catch it. The screen showed a number I didn’t recognize. I read the text:
It’s Jane. The police called off the search yesterday. I don’t know what to do, and if I stay in this house a moment longer I’m going to get very brassed off. You said I could come to the castle? I’d probably better wait until the sun has actually come up.
I texted her back.
Come anytime you want. I’m awake.
A moment later, my phone beeped again.
Good. Expect me in twenty minutes.
“Maeve, come back to bed,” Corbin called down.
“Or stop yelling across the courtyard,” Flynn’s head appeared over the side of the second-floor walkway. “Some of us are trying to get our beauty sleep.”
“An extra hour isn’t gonna help you,” Arthur called down, sticking his head out from the other side. “Hi, Maeve. Why are you up so bloody early?”
“She was helping me with the bread,” Rowan called up. I whirled around. Rowan stood in the doorway to the great hall, properly dressed now in jeans and a t-shirt, a familiar dusting of flour along his forearms obscuring his intricate tattoos. He glanced at me with a concerned look, but his eyes didn’t linger.
“Now that we’re all here…” I waved my phone. “Jane’s coming over. The police called off the search for Connor. I told her she could look at our books.”
“Do I have to put on pants?” Flynn called back.
“Yes,” the other three guys chorused.
“It’s really your decision,” I added.
Flynn huffed. “Fine. But there better be a dram of Irish whiskey waiting with my breakfast for this. The nerve of it – forcing an Irishman out of bed before noon.” His head disappeared over the rampart.
Corbin and I exchanged a look and I burst out laughing.
“And you think this is what took my son?” Jane frowned at the book open in front of her.
I nodded, smoothing down the page of the yellowed folklore book. Different types of fae were depicted on the page, each one with a description of their traits and whether they were Seelie orUnseelie. “I know it sounds crazy, but I saw them with my own eyes. They took your son through asidhe– that’s a doorway into their own realm. I tried to stop them, but it didn’t work.”
Behind me, Corbin clambered down the ladder with another stack of books in his hands. His expression said he thought showing these to Jane was a bad idea, but I admired the fact that he didn’t try to challenge me. Corbin believed so strongly that I was supposed to lead this coven that he was casting aside his years of leadership without a thought. Or maybe it was the fact that no one who saw the bags under Jane’s eyes and the fury etched across her face would be able to withhold anything from her.
Jane turned the page, peering down at a woodcut of fairies stealing a human child in the night and replacing it with one of their own. Her expression was unreadable. “I’ve seen pictures like these before. My grandmother used to tell me stories about the fae. She believed in all sorts of superstitions.”
“You had sprigs of rowan at your front door,” Corbin said, kindly. Jane’s face flushed briefly.
“Yeah, and horseshoes in most all the rooms. Those were my grandmother’s traditions. I kept them up even though I think they’re ridiculous. According to her, fairies don’t like rowan or iron. It’s actually her cottage I’m living in. She left it to me when she died a couple of years ago, as well as all the furniture and gardens. I had no idea she’d done that until a lawyer came to see me, but it kind of made sense. She and my mother don’t exactly get along. No surprise, because my mother is a cow, but Grandma always had a soft spot for me. I just wish she’d been able to meet Connor…” Jane trailed off. “I’m rambling.”
“Rowan’s making some of his amazing hot chocolate,” Corbin said. “Nothing seems as bad after a glass of hot chocolate.”
