Authors: Jennifer Fallon
After all, this was, perhaps, the only time in his life he would have a chance to see how his other half had lived.
Trása liked cats. She liked their independence. She liked their arrogance. She just wasn’t very good at being a cat.
Trása could turn into anything she chose but the avian form came easiest to her. Her uncle, Marcroy Tarth, favoured wolves, but he was just as adept at being a field mouse if it suited his purposes.
She sat down in the shadows and studied the compound, a little bemused. There were people running about shouting, armed men, hysterical children and no sign of a party. This wasn’t a community celebrating. They were preparing for war.
The people here were like the people in the fishing village where she’d found the bacon to bait her
Leipreachán
trap. They were a very attractive people — a mixture of Celts and Asians, blended in that odd way that seemed to bring out the best of both races. The Japanese, Trása realised, had been in Eire for a very long time indeed.
She watched the chaos for a time, wishing her grasp of the language were better. Much of what they were saying, as they ran hither and fro, had to do with preparing for another attack. Apparently, as far as Trása could make out with her feline awareness, there had already been one attack this evening. The panic seemed to be about the prospect of more attacks to come.
No wonder they were excited.
This compound was quite different from the one she and Rónán had been taken to when they first arrived in this reality. This one seemed older than the other place, more sprawling, and yet more solid than the postcard-pretty timber buildings with their upturned eaves. There were more children here, more women and they were dressed less formally — many in what looked like dressing gowns — although that could have something to do with the time of day rather than the local fashion.
The reason for the fireworks, she deduced, wasn’t to celebrate, but to illuminate the battle. There were no casualties she could see, but everyone was acting as though the world was coming to an end.
Foolish humans
, she said to herself, the thought coloured by her feline disdain for all things non-feline. Trása rose to her feet, rubbing the side of her jaw along the corner of the wall, and padded silently through the mêlée to the largest building she could see through the forest of legs running back and forth. The main house was the centre of the action. Her long, beautiful black tail swished back and forth elegantly and she made her way forward, trusting the humans in her path to get out of her way, rather than the other way around.
She was a cat, after all. She shouldn’t have to get out of the way of any other creature on Earth.
When she finally reached the main house, she leaped the short distance to the veranda, unbothered that it was completely dark now. She stopped, stretched her spine out luxuriously, and decided the first thing to do was find the kitchen, and after that, a comfortable place to sleep for the night. Somewhere warm, soft and not likely to be disturbed by dogs.
Trása didn’t get more than a few steps before she was forced to abandon her plan for a meal and a snooze. A familiar voice reminded her of why she had come.
‘I’m so sorry, Aoi,’ she heard Rónán saying as she rounded the corner. He was talking to a young woman with the most startling blue eyes dressed like a geisha without the white make-up. Had she not been weeping, Trása thought with feline disdain, the geisha girl might have been quite pretty. ‘I didn’t realise it was a crime to wield magic without the permission of the
Konketsu
.’
‘It’s not just that,’ Aoi sniffed. ‘You have confirmed for the Tanabe that we are harbouring a
Youkai.
The wrath of the Empresses will be terrible.’
What’s he done now?
Trása wondered as she sat down to watch. The young woman seemed very upset.
Why do they think Rónán is one of the Tuatha Dé Danann?
‘Look, I said I was sorry,’ Ronan repeated. ‘If I’d known waving a bit of magical fire around was going to cause this much trouble, I’d have let them storm the gates.’
‘We can fix the gates, Renkavana,’ Aoi sobbed. ‘We cannot fix this.’
With that rather melodramatic declaration, Aoi turned on her square wooden heel and fled inside, something that lacked a certain amount of grace and dignity accompanied, as it was, by the clacking noise of her
geta
against the wooden decking of the veranda, and that she stopped to remove her shoes before she ran inside.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Rónán muttered in English as he watched her leave.
If Trása had been capable of it, she would have smiled. Rónán was learning, she gathered, that not everyone appreciated magical intervention. She was mildly impressed to discover he’d found something magical with which to intervene. Perhaps his brother’s memories were beginning to make sense to him, although by the sound of it he hadn’t done much more than make a bit of fire. She did wonder how he managed to escape
the woman in the red kimono, and whether he’d used magic for that, too. It seemed unlikely. Perhaps Aoi had helped him? If she had, she was regretting it now.
Rónán watched Aoi leave and then turned and stepped off the veranda, following the raked path until he reached a small hut some distance from the main house. As he entered the hut, which seemed little more than a bedroom and a small washroom, Trása slipped in behind him onto the woven matting, waiting until he had closed the sliding door before rubbing up against his leg to tell him she was there. She hadn’t meant to announce her presence quite so affectionately — her feline instincts had taken over before she had time to consider the implications.
Smiling, Rónán bent down and scratched her under her jaw, sending a delicious thrill down her spine. She started purring, rubbing harder against his hands, astonished at how good it felt to be petted like that.
‘Hey, puss,’ Rónán said, squatting down beside her. ‘You’re a friendly little thing, aren’t you?’
‘
Mmmmm
,’ she said to herself, forgetting her words were nothing more than a rumbling purr.
‘Like that, do you?’ he asked, still scratching her under the chin. She turned her head sideways to enable easier access to that annoying spot just behind her ear that she could never quite reach. ‘Glad somebody around here appreciates my efforts.’
His words jerked Trása out of her feline bliss and back to annoying reality. Enough of this nonsense. She hissed at Rónán and moved away from him, resuming her human form as she went.
‘What the fuck!’ Rónán jumped back in fright as Trása morphed from a house cat into a full-grown person.
She rose to her feet, naked and annoyed. ‘Yell a little louder,’ she suggested. ‘I don’t think they heard you in Antarctica.’
Rónán seemed a little taken aback by her sarcasm. And her words. ‘You were listening in,’ he accused. ‘When I was talking to Hayley back at St Christopher’s. That’s exactly what I said to her.’
‘I was standing guard,’ she corrected. ‘Your voice carries. So does Hayley’s, by the way. Pass me the blanket.’
‘What?’
‘The blanket, moron. It’s cold in here. I’m freezing.’
‘I thought Faeries didn’t feel the cold.’
‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ she asked, looking at him oddly.
‘I remember when we were back in the warehouse in Dublin. It was icy in there and you were hardly wearing anything. You claimed you didn’t feel the cold.’
‘I was trying to distract you with my feminine wiles,’ she said with a shrug.
‘That’s bullshit.’
‘It was Plunkett’s idea. Can I have the blanket or are you not finished staring?’
Rónán did as she asked, passing her the soft woven blanket from the futon against the far wall, although not as hastily as he once might have. Trása wondered if that was the influence of Darragh’s memories too. The boy she had been able to divert with her enticing bare midriff back in the other reality would have blushed himself crimson at the sight of her naked body. The young man standing before her now seemed much less naïve. Given it was little more than a month since the incident in the warehouse, the change in his demeanour was unlikely to be the result of anything else.
Once she was covered, she glanced around the hut, pursing her lips thoughtfully. ‘So … you’ve found yourself a cosy little niche here, haven’t you? How did you get away from Madame Butterfly and her henchmen?’
‘How do you know who Madame Butterfly is?’
‘Well … I don’t, really. I just heard the name on TV in your reality. How did you get away?’
‘Long story,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Tír Na nÓg
.’
‘So there are Faerie here?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ she said, pulling the blanket a little tighter against the chill. ‘I think there are some lesser
sídhe
around, but I haven’t been able to find any to talk to yet. I was on my way to trap myself a
Leipreachán
when I saw the fireworks over this place and decided to see what all the fuss was about. What did you do, Rónán?’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Your girlfriend was crying and wailing like you’ve destroyed their whole world.’
‘Aoi’s not my girlfriend,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’ve been here two days. Her brother is the
Daimyo.
And all I did was scare off Chishihero when she came here looking for you and me. The trouble seems to arise from the fact that I used magic to do it. Apparently that’s a capital offence around here.’
Trása couldn’t resist smiling. ‘You mean you committed a capital crime
without
my help? And all this time you’ve been acting like you’d never do anything the slightest bit naughty unless I set you up first.’
Rónán didn’t seem to appreciate the irony. ‘Yeah … well, the only thing I’m sure about, Trása, is that we have to get out of here. We need to find a way to open that rift again. Time is running out.’
Trása’s smirk faded at the reminder. Not only would Rónán and Darragh die in a few days if they didn’t stop the Druids transferring the power of the Undivided to the new heirs on
Lughnasadh
, if the boys died Trása would never be able to return home unless she fancied a short and unwelcome life as a barn owl.
‘Do you know how we can open it?’ she asked.
‘They don’t use jewels here,’ he told her. ‘They use something called
ori mahou.
It means folding magic. Apparently the magic comes from the
kozo
trees they make the paper from.’
Trása nodded. It made sense. There could not be this much magic in a world unless there was something constantly replenishing the supply. Magic trees would do it. ‘So we just need to learn how to fold whatever it is that they fold to open rifts here, get enough magic paper to work the spell and we’re home free.’
Rónán shook his head. ‘You make it sound simple.’
‘In theory, it is,’ she agreed. ‘Bet it isn’t, though.’
‘Would the lesser
sídhe
know how to do it?’
Trása shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘Then you should probably find one and ask him.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Now who’s making things sound too simple?’
Kiva Kavanaugh’s house was huge. It wasn’t as big as
Sí an Bhrú
, of course, but scores of people occupied Darragh’s home.
Sí an Bhrú
was a community. Amazingly, this house was built to accommodate only two people — Rónán and his adoptive mother, Kiva.
Darragh had watched as the housekeeper, Kerry Boyle, had driven away earlier, clutching a purse and a list scrawled on the back on an envelope. Perhaps she was going shopping. Whatever the reason, she might be gone for some time. He didn’t know where Kira might be. Of Patrick Boyle, Darragh’s rescuer and the
eileféin
of Amergin, the Druid who had betrayed the twins so heinously in their own realm, there was no sign.
Darragh limped across the lawn from Jack’s place and let himself in the back door. It was a keypad lock, but thanks to the
Comhroinn
he had his brother’s memories and knew both the code and how the lock operated. He stepped into the kitchen and glanced around. It was a large room, not dissimilar in layout to Jack’s kitchen next door, with its white cupboards, black granite counter tops and shiny stainless-steel appliances. This kitchen was much cleaner than Jack’s, however. Kerry Boyle was a better housekeeper than Jack O’Righin and his once-a-fortnight cleaning lady, Carmel.
The house was silent but for the inevitable hum of electrical appliances on standby. Darragh found it odd that the people of this realm didn’t notice the sound. It was quietly driving him mad, and among the many reasons he couldn’t wait to get home.
Not that he was going to be able to get back to the reality where he belonged any time soon. He’d had no luck connecting with his own realm. Darragh had suspected, even before Sorcha went to such pains to set up the paraphernalia required to contact their own realm, that it wouldn’t be enough. Even with the combined magic of both Darragh and his brother Rónán, in the park, they had barely made contact the last time.
On his own he had no chance.
Sorcha would find it hard to accept that when she returned. She was determined to get home and did not want to entertain — even for a moment — the possibility that they were stranded here until someone came to get them.
She would have to accept it now, Darragh thought, as he gingerly limped through the kitchen into the hall. It was deserted and silent. The whole building evoked a wash of confused emotions. He stepped onto the floral carpet runner to muffle his footsteps and slowly headed toward the stairs. Although he knew the layout of the house and was familiar with every room, the room he really wanted to see was Rónán’s.
The stairs were wide, the banister made of polished oak. Darragh marvelled at the cleanliness of it.
Sí an Bhrú’s
floors were made of stone and compacted earth. Even when it was clean and tidy, spiders nested in the shadows, worms burrowed under the floors and all manner of insect and rodent creatures who shared the world with men, occupied the nooks and crannies of his home.