Stone Song (16 page)

S
he knew that she shouldn’t read too much into it. Her lonely childhood had driven her into high school looking for the love she couldn’t find at home with Gran. She’d thought that physical intimacy would lead to emotional intimacy, but mostly it had led to heartbreak, and to Sorcha feeling used.

Her mistake had been rushing into sex she didn’t really want. What she had wanted was companionship and affection. Looking back on high school, college, and her youthful wanderings afterward, she’d never felt truly attracted to any of the men she’d dated, only comfortable with them. She only wished she could understand why she felt so deeply drawn to the Fae.

“Why did those two Fae think you had bound yourself to me?”

A muscle moved in Elada’s cheek.

“Because I told Miach that I would do so, to discourage him from taking your life in the event that you fell into the Prince’s hands.”

“He was going to kill me?”

“To protect his family.”

“That isn’t fair. None of this is my fault.”

“Very little in life is fair,” said the brawny Fae. “And while the fight to bring the wall between worlds down isn’t your fault, it’s still your problem.”

There was nothing she could say to that.

And faster than she could see, he snatched the car keys from her hand and vaulted into the driver’s seat. With Tommy in the back, she didn’t have any choice but to join them.

Mass General was at the bottom of Beacon Hill, but with all the one-way streets they had to drive the long way around to reach the front of the hill.

While they were sitting in traffic on Cambridge Street, Sorcha asked the question that had been worrying her since they’d picked Tommy up.

“What about the woman we’re going to stay with?” she asked. “Is she a criminal, too?”

“Deirdre’s an artist. A good one, actually. She paints. Landscapes, mostly. And her boyfriend is . . . well, Kevin is a lot of things. One of them is a man who keeps decent coffee in his house.”

Beacon Hill wasn’t a neighborhood where Sorcha had ever spent much time. The hill was in the center of town, bordered by the Common, the State House, the River, and Government Center. Boston’s rich had built their houses on its high ground as far back as John Hancock’s day, and while the entire city had suffered an economic decline after the Second World War, Beacon Hill had been one of the first enclaves transformed by gentrification.

Now it was some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Sorcha wouldn’t have been able to afford the annual rent on a broom closet.

The back of the hill was mostly made up of tenements that had been turned into luxury condominiums along with a few straggling shabby apartment buildings that catered to students. The front of the hill was different. Its steep streets were end to end with snug Federal and Greek Revival town houses. Here and there the neighborhood’s brick fabric was punctuated by early American survivors in brightly painted clapboard. Sorcha saw multiple buzzers on many of the houses. She knew that you could buy a whole house in Jamaica Plain for what the floor of one of these cost. And no one on the hill hired Irish harpists to play at their parties. It was an old-money enclave of Protestant respectability.

Elada slowed down when they neared Anderson and turned the car sharply into what appeared to be only an alley between town houses. At the end of the alley was a fence painted green. They idled in front of it for no more than a minute. Then the gates swung open, and the Range Rover pulled in.

The little courtyard was a hidden world. Vines climbed up the blind sides of old brick town houses, but no windows looked out on this view. It was possible that the residents of those houses had never even seen the one behind them, so absolute was the privacy, so well hidden the facade from the street.

Deirdre’s house itself was a perfect colonial gem, five windows across, built of wide clapboard with rusticated corners and a hipped slate roof with dormers. It was painted an appealing shade of pale green that added to the verdant feeling of the courtyard. Pink flowers spilled from window boxes and clay planters, and a fountain played softly in the center of the cobbled piazza.

Elada stopped the Range Rover on the circular drive in front of the house and got out. Tommy still appeared dazed, and that was probably just as well, because the Fae who opened the door of the pretty green house didn’t look reassuring.

She was tall, like Elada and the Prince Consort, and while she had the slenderness of her race, her hips and breasts were almost impossibly lush in proportion to her tiny waist, the stuff of comic book fantasies. Her bright hair was woven into two thick plaits, and these were pinned into two spirals, one on each side of her head. The fluted velvet skirt she wore wouldn’t have looked out of place on the
Titanic,
but her slashed and textured T-shirt owed more to Japanese avant-garde fashion than to the Gilded Age, and the Kashmir shawl wrapped around her broad yet delicately boned shoulders must have taken years, if not lifetimes to weave.

Sorcha had seen such polyglot luxury before, in Keiran’s house, although she had not appreciated it at the time. She had passed a year in a haze of adoration and performance on demand, with occasional sudden punishment, and she realized that she would rather die at the hands of Donal’s Fae assassins than enter that kind of servitude again.

Elada wheeled Tommy to the door, exchanged words with the beautiful Fae woman, and helped him into the house. Then he returned to the car for Sorcha.

He opened the passenge-side door and offered her his hand.

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Deirdre is not Keiran. She’s an artist herself, and once, the Druids enslaved her and made her create images for them. She would not do the same to another creature.”

Sorcha looked at the forbidding Fae lady waiting on the steps.

“She doesn’t look friendly.”

Elada laughed. “I know she doesn’t look it, but the last time Deirdre and Kevin had houseguests, they were accused of being
too
friendly. Deirdre scowled at Miach’s wife, too, then invited her for a threesome.”

“Oh.” She knew her face was turning red.

Elada waggled his eyebrows. “I thought musicians were supposed to be adventurous bohemians.”

“Then you thought wrong. We’re too busy living hand to mouth to be that kind of adventurous. Our idea of risky behavior is stuffing our pockets with cookies from a wedding buffet and hoping the bride and groom don’t notice. Unless, of course, going to bed hungry counts as a grand caper.”

“That’s an adventure you won’t have in this house. Kevin is an excellent cook, and there’s always something hot on the stove. And you can’t go back home, Sorcha. The Prince knows where you live. So does Donal. Probably Finn as well by this time.”

“You mean there’s another Fae who wants me dead?”

“No. Finn probably just wants to torture you for decades.”

“That’s a joke, right?”

“No, unfortunately not. Finn’s wife was tortured to death by Druids.”

“I thought that all happened two thousand years ago.”

“The Fae don’t commit themselves lightly. Finn’s love for his wife was a thing of legend. He got free in time to hold her while she died, and he could see all that had been done to her. He has a large half-breed family, but he has never made commitments to any of his human lovers. It’s unlikely he ever will. She will always be his love.”

Another Fae whose name she now knew, whose story moved her. “You make him sound almost human,” she said. “And almost pitiable.”

“Don’t pity him, and don’t mistake his cause for justice. He and Miach parted ways over how to handle the Druid problem. Miach wanted to liberate the captive Fae and kill the operating Druids, the ones we knew to be fully in control of their power and responsible for atrocities against the captive Fae. Donal wanted to destroy the Druids, root and branch. Babes in their mothers’ arms. Innocents.”

Sorcha swallowed. “And Deirdre?”

“Was too injured to take any kind of revenge when she was freed. She has her pictures and her solitude and Kevin, and she asks for nothing more.”

“Tell me Tommy will be safe here,” said Sorcha. She was beginning to suspect that danger would stalk her wherever she went, that Gran had understood the world better than she all along. That didn’t mean that Tommy had to suffer for being her friend.

“Tommy will be safe here, Sorcha, and so will you. You have my word. And Fae vows are binding.”

Elada took her bag and Sorcha followed him up to the door, where Deirdre smiled coolly and acknowledged her with a regal nod of her head. The gesture suited her. The plaits on her temple burned like gold in the sun and circled her brow like a crown. She made Sorcha think of warrior queens. Elizabeth or Boadicea. Only there was something sad about her, too. Not the tragedy of isolation or impending doom, but a sadness lived so hard and so long that it had left a permanent impression. Perhaps it was her eyes. They were green and jewel-like and seemed to see something beyond what they were fixed on, something that could not be unseen.

The impression didn’t last long. Deirdre’s house wasn’t sad at all. And it didn’t have the fusty dark early-American feeling that radiated from so many dimly lit Beacon Hill interiors. It was light and bright inside, with walls probably removed between rooms to make the parlors lighter and brighter still, all painted in pale appealing shades of celadon and dove gray. The sofas were overstuffed and upholstered in rich quilted cottons and velvets. At the end of the hall beyond the stairs Sorcha caught a glimpse of a kitchen straight out of a decorating magazine.

Upstairs was just as cheerful. A large Palladian window lit the landing on the stairs, and a clear glass skylight high above brightened the next flight. There were bedrooms here off a long corridor, but the most interesting door was the one that stood open. It led into a service ell, a projecting wing at right angles to the house. This one had been renovated recently and now boasted a cathedral ceiling, which revealed the house’s original thick timber beams, and large glass windows all around.

It was a studio. There were easels everywhere, and canvases showcasing mostly landscapes. Sorcha didn’t pay much attention to the paintings. It was Tommy she cared about. He was sitting in an armchair, beer in hand, talking to a man who had to be Deirdre’s lover, Kevin.

He did not appear to be Fae. There was something familiar about him, and Sorcha felt as though she ought to recognize his face. Then it hit her. She’d seen him on television. Kevin Phelan, Olympic skier.

When Sorcha walked in, Tommy turned and beamed at her. “This is a terrific gig you found, Sorcha. I didn’t think anybody would hire me to croon with a busted arm and no fiddle, but I guess I’m just singing backup for you.”

Sorcha looked to Elada, who had come in behind her.
Is that what you told him?
she mouthed.

Elada nodded.

Tommy seemed happy enough. And she reminded herself that he was safe here.

For the first time she got a good look at his arm. It was wrapped in a fiberglass cast that looped over his thumb, and his fingers were in individual splints.

She cast a questioning glance at Elada, but his face was unreadable.

“Are you comfortable, Tommy?” she asked. “Because I’ve got to work out some of the details with our employer.”

“Oh, yeah, Sorcha. I’ve got a nice big room and there’s a stereo. The kind we used to talk about getting. It’s got a remote control and I can play songs off my iPod on it.”

He’d said nothing about the Prince Consort or the Fae, and seemed to be oblivious to the danger of their predicament. She opened her mouth to tell him everything, to shatter the comfortable illusion Elada had spun for him and Kevin had maintained, but he was smiling up at her and he had his smartphone in his lap and a set of headphones coiled on top of it. She supposed that between the beer and his music player he was as happy as he could be with a broken arm. An image flashed in her mind of him sobbing and broken on the floor of the Black Rose and she decided that Elada was right. A few lies were safer—and better—for Tommy.

“Then it’s all right. Thank you,” she added to Kevin.

Deirdre’s lover raised his beer at her and smiled. “No problem. Make yourself at home.”

He might not be Fae, but he had extraordinary charisma and was achingly handsome, so much so that she blushed just to be the recipient of his smile.

“Let me show you your room,” he added.

Elada carried her bag once more—unnecessary, but the chivalrous gesture warmed her. They followed Kevin up another flight of stairs to a landing that was light and bright and airy. There were windows at both ends of the hall, and a skylight crowning the stairs. The room Kevin brought her to was similarly cheerful, with two large dormered windows. It was comfortably appointed in French provincial furniture and printed cotton voile.

Kevin waved at the walls and said to Elada, “Sorry. It’s a little girly, but it’s the only guest room that’s comfortable for two.”

She hadn’t realized they’d be sharing, but before she could say anything, Elada started checking the windowsills with single-minded intent and then announced, “We’re just grateful to have someplace to lie low. Thank you.”

“The least we could do,” said Kevin. “Come downstairs when you’re ready.”

When they were alone, Sorcha said, “I didn’t realize we were going to share a room.”

“Do you mind?” he asked. He appeared to be scrutinizing the windowsills again, but she heard the hitch in his voice. He cared about her answer.

And the truth was that she wasn’t certain.

Sorcha looked at the sills. They were clean and recently painted, with what appeared to be designs in ink drawn across them, but that was all she could tell.

“You’re keeping things from me. I understand why. You don’t want me to be frightened. Just like I don’t want Tommy to be. And I think you’re doing it because you care about me, but I need to understand your world before I can decide if I want to be part of it.”

Her Fae lover opened his mouth to speak, but a voice from the open door forestalled him. “The choice was never yours to make, Sorcha,” said the black-haired Fae who could only be Miach MacCecht. “You were born a Druid bard, and you will be one all your life, even if you pass it alone in a cave on a mountain. The truth is that you’ve always been part of our world.”