Into the Fire (11 page)

Eden giggled at this and then walked over to the wardrobe door and pulled it open.

Jane wasn’t naked, but what they saw was even more surprising. Jane was sitting at the kitchen table with the man whom Cedar had met outside of Maeve’s house. He stood up when he saw them.

“We meet again, Cedar,” he said.

CHAPTER 5

C
edar!” Jane cried, jumping up. “I didn’t think you’d be back so soon! What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

Cedar didn’t answer. Instead, she gently pulled Eden behind her, her eyes glued on Liam. He held up his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry, it must be a bit of a surprise to see me here. But your timing is excellent. I was just asking Jane if she knew how I could find you.”

He held his hand out to Finn, who was the closest to him. “You must be Finn,” he said. “I’m Liam Neill.”

Finn shook the man’s hand but didn’t smile. “So you’re the mysterious Liam. Why were you looking for Cedar?” he asked, clearly disinterested in small talk. “And who are you? Cedar says you weren’t exactly forthcoming the first time she met you.”

Liam didn’t seem offended. “I have to apologize for that as well. It seems as though I didn’t make a very good first impression.”

“You guys can come in and sit down, y’know,” Jane interrupted. “You don’t have to stand in the doorway. I just put on some coffee. Who’s this?” she asked, jerking her chin in Felix’s direction.

He bowed slightly and said, “Toirdhealbhach MacDail re Deachai at your service. You must be Jane.”

Jane gave Cedar a wry look. “Is he for real?” she said.

“Oh, for goodness sake, just call him Felix. The rest of us do,” Cedar said, and Felix straightened up and laughed.

“If you must,” he answered with a wink at Jane. “But one of these days I’m going to meet a human who can say my proper name.”

Jane scowled, and Cedar wondered if she had taken offense. Eden squirmed out of Cedar’s grasp and ran off to play with the toys and books she had left behind in her room. The rest of them found seats in the living room, where Jane brought out mugs of steaming coffee. Cedar sipped hers gratefully. It had been another long day.

Liam accepted a mug from Jane and wrapped his long, slender fingers around it. “Again, I’m sorry for the unexpected visit—well, both unexpected visits,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see anyone at Maeve’s house when I went to visit her grave. I’m glad I was there, since you seemed hell-bent on getting into that shed no matter what it did to you. But I’m afraid I wasn’t very talkative that day.” He stared down into his coffee. “I hadn’t been back to that house in many years. It was… difficult.”

“How did you know Maeve?” Cedar asked. Finn and Felix were both giving Liam wary looks, but Cedar was glad that he was here, glad that he’d come looking for her. She hated unanswered questions, and she’d thought about him a lot over the past couple of days.

“She was my student,” he answered.

“Your student? But I thought Brogan was the one who taught her,” Cedar said, surprised.

“No, he just arranged for me to do it,” Liam answered. “I only met him a couple of times.”

“So you’re a druid,” Cedar said. She felt like she was stating the obvious, but she needed to be certain.

“Yes,” he said. “I was her mentor for several years. After her apprenticeship was over, we lost touch. She didn’t want to have anything do with the druidic life after… well, after
he
left. By the time I learned what had happened to her, it was too late.”

“How
did
you find out about Maeve’s death? And how did you know Cedar was planning on going to Tír na nÓg?” Finn demanded.

“You of all people must know that the magical network is still vast here on Earth, even if it’s mostly hidden. A battle between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Merrow does not go unnoticed, especially one that results in the death of the Merrow queen. And it made even greater waves when the High King of Tír na nÓg was defeated at the hands of a human.” He bowed his head at Cedar. “Your bravery is exceptional.” Returning his attention to Finn, he said, “I did not know of your plans to return to Tír na nÓg; there is no spy among your ranks, at least to my knowledge. It was an educated guess. And I should have pressed my case harder. I came here today to warn you that Nuala wanders Tír na nÓg freely… but perhaps you already know that since you have been and returned.”

Before Cedar could answer, Finn asked, “How do you know about Nuala?”

“I’ve known about her for many years,” Liam answered patiently. “She attempted to contact as many druids as possible while she was here. I never spoke to her myself, but several of my kind did. Many of them were quite impressed. Rumor has it she’s convinced some of them to return to Tír na nÓg once she is crowned queen. They say she is offering them equality with the Tuatha Dé Danann. I admit that I can see how that would appeal to some.”

There was an awkward silence in which Finn and Felix exchanged loaded glances. Then Cedar asked, “Does it appeal to
you
?”

“No, on a number of levels,” Liam answered. “For one, I’m quite happy here. Also, I don’t put stock in the promises of the Tuatha Dé Danann—no offense. We had our time in Tír na nÓg, but here on Earth we serve no one but ourselves. Returning to Tír na nÓg would be a return to servitude, whatever Nuala claims. And if she thinks she can get all of the druids to return, she doesn’t know us very well. There’s no real organization or leadership. Most of us come and go as we please and are quite happily integrated into this world. We’re humans, after all—we just possess certain abilities that other humans do not.”

Felix stood up and started pacing the apartment. “It seems quite convenient that you were here exactly when we arrived, and that you showed up at Maeve’s house the night before Cedar was supposed to leave for Tír na nÓg. How do we know you aren’t helping Nuala?” he asked.

Liam nodded slowly, and when he spoke his voice was thick with emotion. “I understand why you might think so. But believe me, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Maeve was my best student and a dear friend. If the information I’ve heard is true, Nuala killed her in cold blood. Now Nuala is playing some sort of game with my kind. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t trust her. Why does she want the druids back in Tír na nÓg so badly?” His brow wrinkled as he considered this.

“I can’t give you proof if that’s what you’re looking for. But I can assure you I’m not helping her. She couldn’t offer me anything that would make up for what she did to Maeve, not even the High Kingship of Tír na nÓg. I didn’t come to spy on you—I came to warn you. Stay away from her.”

“We can’t,” Cedar said bluntly.

“Cedar, she killed your mother,” Liam said. “You have no idea what she—”

“I know exactly what she’s capable of, and what she’s planning,” Cedar interrupted. “She’s using the return of the druids as a way to convince the Council to make her queen. She conveniently forgot to mention the bit about offering them equality with the Tuatha Dé Danann. And when she’s queen, she’s going to use her ability to start a Third World War—or the apocalypse. Once all the humans have killed each other, Ériu will be ripe for the taking.”

“Holy shit,” Jane breathed. “Are you serious? Can she do that?”

“She can and will, unless we stop her. That’s why we’re here. We didn’t come back because we were running from her,” Cedar said.

“Then why
did
you come back?” Jane asked.

Cedar hesitated. It still felt too strange to say it out loud.

Felix was the one who answered. “Because
Cedar
is going to become queen, not Nuala.”

Jane blinked at him. “No. Seriously?”

He frowned. “You don’t think she is worthy?”

“She’s my best friend, of course I do,” Jane said, rolling her eyes. “Forgive me if the whole fairy-kingdom thing is still sinking in.”

“But if that’s the case, Cedar, why are you
here
instead of back in Tír na nÓg?” Liam asked.

Cedar swallowed. It was so much easier to accept these things when surrounded by the magic of Tír na nÓg. Here, it sounded ridiculous. But that didn’t make it any less true. “Even though my father was High King, the Council has given me a task to perform before they’ll make me queen. It’s a test, to prove myself. I have to find the Lia Fáil.”

Finn was still scowling, and Cedar could tell that he didn’t like talking about this in front of Liam. But something deep inside of her trusted him. And she wanted him to stay. From the sounds of it, he had known Maeve a whole lot better than she had, and she had about a million questions for him.

“The Lia What?” Jane asked.

“Foy-al. L-i-a-f-a-i-l,” Cedar spelled. Jane was already reaching for her laptop. “It’s also called the Stone of Destiny. It’s one of the four treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but it’s been lost somewhere on Ériu—I mean, Earth—for centuries. I have to find it. In a week.” She gave Liam a wry smile. “You don’t happen to know where it is, do you?”

Liam let out a long, slow breath. “Of all the things they could have asked of you…,” he said. “No, I don’t know where it is. No one does. We—the druids, that is—have searched for it for centuries. It’s an important historical and cultural artifact, even if it no longer has magical properties. But there are many large stones in sacred places around the world, and it could be any one of them.”

“Great,” Cedar said drily. “So we just need to go around and touch every stone in the world to see if it gets warm. Except it might not even work for me, being sort-of human and all.”

“Well, that’s where your Danann friends come in handy,” Liam said. “Never hurts to have a god or two around.”

Jane snorted. She was already online, her eyes flicking rapidly over the screen in front of her. “Okay, what do we know?” she asked. Quickly, Cedar filled Jane and Liam in on some of their theories, with Finn occasionally interjecting with additional information or to correct something Cedar had gotten wrong. Jane didn’t look up from her computer’s screen, her fingers clicking away on the keyboard as Cedar talked.

“What are you doing?” Felix asked Jane, peering over her shoulder.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s called a computer. Don’t you have computers in Fairyland?”

He smiled, his blue eyes twinkling. “No, but I did learn to use one during the two decades I was living here. It’s quite interesting, actually, watching human technologies evolve. It’s another way you differ from us. Our technology, so to speak, has more or less gone unchanged since… well, since forever. Yours has changed radically since the last time I was here—before this most recent stint, I mean.”

“When were you last here?” Cedar asked, intrigued.

“Oh, it’s been a while,” he said with a laugh. “Let’s just say that the humans hadn’t yet figured out electricity, let alone the Internet.” He leaned back and laced his hands behind his head. “I like humans,” he declared loftily. “Always have. Used to visit here quite a lot. I tried not to get too tangled up in the humans’ affairs, but it was difficult. There was always someone who needed healing, especially with all the wars going on, and before you lot discovered things like penicillin and vaccines—which are brilliant, by the way. Of course, the human women are interesting too. There was
this milkmaid once, in Derry… damn, she was beautiful. And she genuinely believed in the fairy folk.”

“What happened to her?” Cedar asked. She glanced at Jane, who seemed to be studiously ignoring Felix. Her eyes were still fixed on the screen, but they weren’t moving.

“She died,” he said simply. “I went back to Tír na nÓg for a spell. I guess more time passed than I realized—it’s so easy to forget that humans have such short natural life spans. When I returned, I found out that she had married, borne children, grown old, and died. But one of her daughters told me that her mother had always shared stories about the fairy she had once loved, so I guess she never forgot me.”

Cedar was sure that any woman who had met Felix in his godlike state would have a very difficult time forgetting him.

Jane’s expression took on a definite sour note. “You okay?” Cedar asked her.

“Huh? Yeah, I’m fine,” she answered, sweeping a strand of black and red hair behind her ear. “Just reading.”

Cedar yawned and stood. “I haven’t heard Eden in a bit. I’m going to go check on her.” She poked her head into Eden’s room and found her daughter fast asleep, sprawled out on her bed among several books and stuffed animals. She thought about waking her to brush her teeth and then laughed to herself. The fate of the whole world was at stake, and she was still worried about Eden getting cavities. She grabbed a spare blanket from the closet tucked it in around her sleeping daughter’s shoulders. “Good night, my heart,” she whispered, kissing her gently on the forehead.

When she came back into the living room, Finn and Jane were huddled around the computer screen. Felix had tilted his head back against the sofa, his eyes closed and the hint of smile on his face—probably thinking of that milkmaid, Cedar mused.

“Young Eden seems very independent,” Liam said, standing and stretching.

“She is—too much so, if you ask me,” Cedar said. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to properly meet her. I think she’s just glad to be back home for a bit with her old toys again.”

“So I cannot persuade you, then. You are going to search for the Lia Fáil and then return to Tír na nÓg.”

“Yes,” Cedar said firmly. “There’s no other choice.”

“I admire your perseverance,” Liam said. “And forgive my intrusion… I know it’s a decision only you can make. I just have your best interests in mind. Think of me as a concerned friend.”

Cedar gave a half-hearted laugh. “I can always use more of those. And I do appreciate your concern.” She tried unsuccessfully to suppress another yawn. It was late—very late.

“I think it’s time for me to take my leave,” Liam said. “I have to be on a plane back to Dublin very early in the morning. If you’re determined to do this, I’d like to help. It’s been a long time since my people have looked for the Lia Fáil, but I may be able to find some information that can help. And I’ll try to find out more about Nuala’s arrangement with these druids she claims to have on her side.” He handed her a white business card. “This is how you can reach me.