Autumn Thorns (20 page)

To my darling Tamil. Your loving father, Aidan.

There it was. Carved into metal. Proof that Aidan was indeed my actual grandfather. I held the locket, running my fingers over it. Peggin glanced over my shoulder at the engraving. I cast a look at her, feeling the weight of a hundred years on my shoulders.

“If Duvall knew he wasn't Tamil's father, do you think
that would make it easier for him to kill her? I want to know, Peggin. I want to put her to rest—to prove to the world that she didn't just run away, that she didn't abandon me. I wish I could figure out where her body is. I know that sounds morbid, but it might give us some answers and it would sure as hell give me closure.”

“Why don't you ask Penelope? You don't
need
anybody's permission, you know.” Peggin narrowed her eyes, and had hauled out her
don't-sass-me
voice.

I thought about the ramifications of talking to Penelope. I needed to meet her anyway, since I'd be working with her. And maybe, just maybe, I needed to do this on my own rather than having Ellia tag along. If I recalled, my grandmother had done plenty of things on her own without a lament singer there.

“All right. Would you go there with me tonight?”

“Graveyard creeping you out?” Peggin was repressing a smile.

I stuck my tongue out at her. “No. It's just . . .”

“Just that it's creeping you out?” She laughed then, and the mood lightened.

Carrying the locket, and a stack of journals, including the one for 2015, I headed for the door. “Grab another stack of those, please. These will keep me busy for some time. It's a good thing I'm a speed reader.”

“You always did ace classes because of that.” Peggin obligingly grabbed an armful of the diaries, and then we headed downstairs.

I stacked the journals on one of the side tables and she followed suit, and then we returned to the kitchen, where Peggin crossed to the cupboard. “You keep your junk food in here?”

“I don't eat junk food. Not much.”

“Bullshit, what are these?” She held up a bag of potato chips and I gave in with a rueful smile.

“Fine, so I do eat junk food. Yeah, chips are fine. Or cookies. Or whatever.” I thought over her question, though. “On a serious note, it's not that the graveyard is creeping
me out. It's the idea of actually meeting Penelope. The thought doesn't scare me as much as meeting Veronica, but jeez . . . I've spent years remembering my grandmother talk about the both of them. I run off to Seattle, then come back fifteen years later and boom, here I am, on their doorstep with little more than a
‘Hi, I'm back and have taken over?'
I'm not sure how either one will take it.”

“Penelope probably won't care. I think it's more Veronica you have to be wary of. Penelope has the same ultimate goal as you do—keep the dead in their place. Veronica likes waking them up.” She poured the chips in a bowl and set them on the table, biting into one with a satisfied look. “Yum, salt. I love salt.”

“Then you should have no problem coming out to the graveyard with me tonight to knock on Penelope's tombstone.” I grinned.

Peggin let out a snort. “Yeah, right. Of course I'll come with you, but damn, woman, you need to think of a better way to show a girl a good time, you know?”

I absently nibbled on a handful of chips. “You know you want to go.”

“Yeah, I do. So why would Duvall have it in for your mother? It can't be just because she wasn't his child, unless he was looking to hurt your grandmother. But he would have done that sooner, wouldn't he? And we can't forget your father vanished. Did Duvall have a hand in his disappearance, too? I don't know. I feel like there's something we're missing . . . or a piece of the puzzle we just don't have yet.” She swallowed the mouthful of chips she'd just taken, and leaned forward, an excited glow in her eyes.

I nodded. “Right. And if it's something we're missing, there's not much we can do about it for now.”

“He obviously knew she wasn't his. He was tested sterile before Lila got pregnant. I wonder if he told her about it, though? Did she know he couldn't father children? Maybe she thought he wouldn't realize he wasn't the father?”

Why hadn't I thought of that? It made sense. “Well, that
makes sense. But why wait until Tamil was an adult? Until I came along? Unless something was tying his hands.”

Still puzzling, I wandered over to the fridge and pulled out a box of breaded fish fillets from the freezer. I spread them on a cookie sheet, getting them ready to go in the oven. By the time I was done, Peggin was playing with my laptop. “What are you doing?”

“Checking out the names of his buddies that Ellia gave us. Hmm . . . Here's Heathrow Edgewater. He's done well for himself. He owns the Peninsula Hotel, and his son works there with him. Looks like a shrewd businessman. Besides working together at the hotel, the pair have developed a real estate business that now earns a pretty penny—they cover the entire peninsula area and apparently they're the number one earners in the area. Hmm . . . what's this?”

“What?” I glanced over her shoulder.

“This link? It looks like it leads to a back-end list of names.”

“What do you mean?”

“The website that this page is linked to doesn't have a return link to the home page. Let's see where the root link leads.” She erased the web address back to the root URL. “Cuchulainnshounds.com. What have we here?” The page that came up was a splash page to what looked like a club. It said very little—
Cú Chulainn's Hounds
and a picture of the Celtic warrior in full battle dress.

I glanced at Peggin. “Crap. Cú Chulainn . . . he's an enemy of the Morrígan. And my grandmother was convinced that Cú Chulainn's hag—whoever she is—is responsible for summoning the Ankou.”

“Then we need to find out more about them.” Peggin leaned forward, examining the screen. “Before we click on the
Enter Here
sign, are you working through a proxy server?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if they log IP addresses, they won't be able to trace the fact that you surfed their site.”

“How do I find out if I have one of those?” I wasn't an Internet dunce, by any means, but neither was I terribly savvy.
I knew enough to keep strong virus protection working on my computer, I scanned it regularly, I never opened an .exe program or file unless I knew who it was coming from and what it was, and I was cautious about phishing sites and e-mails. But that seemed pretty basic knowledge to me.

“Let me see what you have here . . .” Peggin's fingers flew over the keys and a moment later, she broke out into a wide smile. “You have a really good antivirus program; it offers a proxy server, a firewall, and safe-surfing options. Let's just enable these and we should be okay, unless they're computer geniuses. Go ahead.”

When I clicked on the
Enter Here
link, it brought up a pop-up window in which to enter my name and password. “Definitely members only.” I flipped back to the other tab, where the list of names was still visible. There were at least one hundred names, though a D preceded a number of them.

“You know, I don't think that the person who created this website realized that a search on names might bring up the page. I think they meant this to be private, but they didn't understand how search engine spiders work.” Peggin frowned.

“Okay, let's copy the names down, in case they get wise to the fact that their organization isn't as protected as they seem to want it to be.”

“Let me do a screen shot.” She tapped away again, and a moment later said, “I just e-mailed you the screen shot. I also e-mailed it to myself. We can print it out later. Let's see . . . who is listed here . . .”

And then I saw—Duvall Fellwater. “Duvall. Only there's a D after his name. Deceased. The D stands for
deceased
, I'll bet you anything.”

Peggin leaned over my shoulder. “Who else is there?”

“Well, Leon and Heathrow Edgewater, for one thing. Hmm . . . the other cronies Duvall hung around with are all here. Some names I recognize from high school, but mostly I don't remember any of them.”

“Is Corbin there?”

I scanned through the listings. “No. Neither is Bryan. Wait—Ellia's mother—Magda! Magda Volkov is listed here.
There can't be two of them in the same small town. And no D, which means . . . Magda is still alive and she's connected with this group.”

Peggin frowned. “Penelope and Ellia are sisters, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that much I figured out through my grandmother's journal. Ellia hasn't bothered to mention that little fact to me yet. I'm not sure if she thinks I already know, or if she just doesn't want to talk about it. She has to know I'll find out sooner or later. But whatever the case . . . yes, Ellia's mother is a member of this organization and appears to still be alive. This listing has to be fairly up-to-date, given Duvall hasn't been dead all that long.”

“Cú Chulainn . . . he was a legendary warrior, right?” Peggin jabbed at her glasses. “Celtic?”

I nodded. “I think he may have something to do with the Morrígan. Now, I really want to talk to Aidan Corcoran.” A pause—“My
real
grandfather.”

“See if he's got a phone number or listing. You said Ivy said he was in Seattle, right?”

So I typed in his name and the city name, and within seconds I was facing a phone number plastered across my screen. “Do I dare call him?”

“I don't see why not. He may be a shapeshifter and long-lived, but, Kerris, you need to find out everything you can before . . . anything else happens.” Peggin let out a small squeak. “Do it—and soon. I have a feeling . . .”

“Another feeling, huh? All right.”

I pulled out my phone but it was on the last bar, so I plugged it in and reached for the landline. As I dialed the number, I held my breath as it began to ring. A moment later, “Hello?”

“Hi . . . is this Aidan Corcoran?” How the hell was I going to dive into this? I had no clue what the hell to say.

“Speaking. How may I help you?”

I glanced at Peggin, who nodded to me. “You don't know me, but my name is . . . Kerris Fellwater. I live in Whisper Hollow, and I'm the granddaughter of Lila Fellwater. I'm Tamil's daughter.”

Silence. Then, “Oh.” Another pause. “You know, then?”

And just like that, he knew exactly what I was calling about. It was in his voice; it was hovering in the air between us.

“You're my grandfather, aren't you?”

Aidan cleared his throat. Finally, he spoke. “Yes, I'm your grandfather. If you know that, then . . .”

“Duvall is dead. So is Lila . . . they died in a car crash last week. The Lady took them. I came home to Whisper Hollow to take up my grandmother's work.”

More silence. “What about your mother? Tamil? Didn't she follow in Lila's footsteps?” His voice strained as he said their names and right then I understood that he didn't know. He didn't know that Tamil was gone.

I worried my lip, then let out a slow breath. “My mother disappeared when I was three. I think she was murdered.”

There was absolute silence for yet another long moment. Then Aidan let out a soft sigh. “I feared something like that might happen. I wanted to go back, I wanted to protect the both of them—it was my job. But Lila refused to allow me to return. I had to abide by her wishes. I never got to meet my daughter.” The sorrow in his voice was tangible.

I tried to absorb the fact that I was talking to my true grandfather. That Duvall had been a pale substitute. It was a relief to realize that his blood was not mine. Somehow, it made things easier to handle, knowing that the man who had been so cruel hadn't actually been my own blood.

When Aidan spoke again, his voice contained a whispered urgency. “Kerris, the danger's not over. You'll be their next target, if my guess is right. I'll do my best to fight my way back. I never thought I'd darken the roads of Whisper Hollow again, but now . . . Tamil needed me and I stayed away because I thought it would help her. I was wrong—I should have been there, to guard Lila and my daughter. Maybe . . . maybe I can make up for that.”

At first I thought, no—he'd be an old man, too old to help. But then I remembered, he was a shapeshifter. “I left when I was eighteen. I just got back.”

He sounded all business now. “I'll contact you shortly. I'm going to drive up and meet you. I need a little while to
make arrangements. Just be careful who you trust. The Hounds have eyes everywhere.” And with that, he hung up.

I stared at the phone, not knowing what to think or to say. “He's coming back. He sounds worried and told me to be careful who I trust.” I looked over at Peggin. “The fact that he's so concerned that he's coming back to Whisper Hollow after all these years frightens me, to be honest. He said that I'm going to be ‘their' next target, but he wouldn't say who they were.”

Before I could say anything else, my phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID. Bryan. “Hey, how are you?” As I answered, I realized that I sounded like all those women I tended to snicker at. But truth was, I was happy to hear from him.

“Hi there, gorgeous.”

I blinked. Not many people called me that, and he sounded like he meant it. “Can you come over? Peggin's here. I have a lot to tell you . . . and a favor to ask you.”

“I'll be there in twenty as soon as I clean up. I helped mop up after a nasty accident at a friend's store today. Don't ask—you don't want to know. It just necessitates a lot of soap and water and scrubbing.”

Feeling slightly flirty, I asked, “You're a dirty boy, huh?”

He snorted, and then his voice dropped, low and sultry and beckoning. “Kerris, if you knew what was going through my mind all day, after this morning, you'd see just how dirty.”