Stone Song (2 page)

Because everything Gran had said was true. The Fae were real. Sorcha
was
a Druid. She’d realized that the day she had escaped from Keiran. She wished that she wasn’t. She wished she were normal, because if the Fae ever found out what she was—or what she had done—she would be hunted for the rest of her life.

Now she was more careful. She tightened the three iron strings on her harp—the rest were silver and gold—so they sounded sweet in her ear, in case she needed them.

Tommy chucked her on the chin and said, “We’ll play a nice dull set to please the tourists. Three bars of ‘Danny Boy,’ and I promise you the Fae lord out there will run for the hills.”

Or three notes from the iron strings of her
cláirseach
. That would show him. A precious piece of knowledge, a means of defense, gleaned from one of the little old men who had tutored her.
“They cannot stand the iron music,”
he had told her. If only Gran had told her as much. If only Gran had told her that music could be a weapon, if only Gran had taught her how to use her power, how to defend herself against the Fae—not just how to fear them—Sorcha’s life might have been different. But Gran had taught her nothing but fear, and there was no one else who could show her how to use her gifts.

The Fae lord—or whatever his rank might be among his own kind—was seated at a table that practically kissed the stage. The Black Rose was always bustling on a Friday, but the bar was particularly crowded that night. It was the students who made the difference, Sorcha thought. The public house’s proximity to Faneuil Hall made it a favorite of tourists. The live music made it a favorite of the local Boston Irish who worked downtown. But it was the return of college kids at the end of summer that turned the taproom into a standing-room-only crush.

The crowd was thick with athletes. But even in that press of youthful, toned bodies, he stood out. She had seen him before, standing up at the back of the bar near the door.

At first she’d noticed him because he was handsome. High cheekbones, chiseled jaw, intriguing gray eyes. An instant flare of attraction. Then she’d looked closer, studied that flawless profile, and caught her breath. Too perfect to be human, he was undoubtedly Fae.

Sorcha knew now that she had probably encountered the Fae before she’d believed in them, and been oblivious to them, just as the other patrons in the Black Rose were at that moment. But once you had contact with one, once you understood what they were and the subtle differences that set them apart, you couldn’t understand how you’d failed to notice them before or how others failed to notice them now.

It was difficult to describe how to spot them to someone else, but she’d done her best to teach Tommy to look for the signs. Almost always it was their proportions that gave them away. Not their height, though they were always tall and beautiful, as Tommy had said. It was the way they were made: arms, legs, shoulders, and waist, all in perfect proportion to one another. A Vitruvian ideal. A piercing perfection that compelled attention and at the same time set your teeth on edge.

While they were all exquisite to look at, some drew the eye more than others. The only word that came close to describing what she felt when she looked at
this
Fae was
sublime
. A combination of beauty and terror. A delightful frisson of fear and arousal.

It was often that way with them, and normally she was able to put aside the inconvenient feeling of desire the Fae aroused, but not with this one.

He’d never sent Sorcha a note, made a request, or tried to speak to her, and for some reason when they had locked eyes in the past, she’d gotten the impression that his distance was intentional, cultivated,
disciplined
—that he was taking care not to spook her—like a hunter watching his prey.

Tonight that distance was gone.

She tried not to look at him, not to make eye contact, as she adjusted her microphone stand, tonight as ever too tall for her five-foot-two frame. His presence flustered her, made her feel like a teenager, self-conscious and aware of her own sexuality in a way that she usually wasn’t. Her dealings with the opposite sex during adulthood had always been straightforward—and uninspired. Except when she came in contact with the Fae. Their presence brought out her dormant sensuality, and that unsettled her, because she hated them.

She took a deep breath to steady herself. She had to remember what he was. Alluring, but deadly. Especially if he discovered what
she
was. And suddenly the iron strings on her harp seemed far too exposed. She shifted her position on her stool and used her foot to push her harp across the floor and behind her as casually as she could manage.

It wouldn’t do for one of
them
to see the instrument. Not with those iron strings on it. She wished she had a sweater or a scarf to drape over it. The
cláirseach
was still too visible, especially since the Fae was seated so near the stage.

She didn’t dare play it, of course. She’d brought it in case she
needed
it.

She spied Tommy’s fiddle case lying open beside his stool and reached down to pull it out of his way—and in front of her harp.

Then she looked up. The Fae was watching her. Had watched, she was certain, her every move. His gray eyes traveled down her body, a blatantly carnal assessment, then rested on the fiddle case. A moment later he looked up and their gazes locked.

She knew better than to look directly at one of them, but she did it anyway, because the second worst thing after locking eyes with them was showing fear.

The beauty of the Fae was always mesmerizing. This one had thick golden hair, cropped short. Unusual for one of the Good Neighbors. The one she had met in New York the night she’d discovered just how real the Fae were had worn his hair in long braids that danced around his elbows. The creatures were always tall and clean limbed, but this one had broader shoulders than most, while maintaining the narrow waist and slim hips of his kind.

This one was trying to blend in—unlike the Fae she’d met in New York.

Keiran had dressed like an eccentric rock star. His wardrobe had rivaled the Metropolitan Opera’s costume department in size and extravagance. He had rarely worn anything made in this century, except very expensive, very well cut jeans. More often he had donned embroidered peasant blouses in jewel-colored silks or snowy-white cotton, velvet frock coats that swirled around his knees, or Persian lamb jackets with beaver-shawl collars.

This Fae was nothing like that. He wore thoroughly modern clothing. His jeans were practical and well worn, no fake fraying or impossible to maintain indigo hue. These looked washed, in a real washer. His plaid flannel shirt was faded and buttoned over an equally washed, soft-looking tee. He might have blended in with the college students, might have looked almost cozy to snuggle up to, all warm comforting masculinity, if there hadn’t been a feral cast to his face. It gave him a thuggish aura, made him look more like one of the toughs who hung out near the South Boston docks than a preppy schoolboy.

Tommy put a hand on her shoulder, breaking the Fae’s spell. He leaned over and whispered, “‘Danny Boy’ for starters. And if he gives us any trouble, it’ll be ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’ for him.”

• • •

Elada had never been so
close to Sorcha Kavanaugh before. He had admired her from afar in the past, long before Miach MacCecht had identified her as a potentially powerful latent Druid.

He hadn’t told anyone about his trips to the Black Rose except Miach’s granddaughter, young Nieve. His visits to the Irish bar were . . . private. It was the music that had drawn him, the high clear woman’s voice that had floated out of the low door and stopped him in his tracks that winter day. He’d been collecting protection money from the merchants in the Haymarket, the ones who paid tribute to the
Aes Sídhe
, and had decided to cross through Faneuil Hall on his way home to grab a cup of coffee. The day had been cold, Christmas lights already threaded through the trees and his breath visible in the air when he’d heard her, forgotten all about the coffee, and ducked inside the Black Rose.

She’d been seated on a high stool on a low stage, her raven hair falling like a veil over her shoulders, singing without accompaniment into the microphone. She’d been wearing a vintage lace blouse, the white softened to cream with age, with a Peter Pan collar that framed her heart-shaped face, and a black wool skirt that looked soft to the touch, like old felt. He’d come to realize that was a uniform of sorts for her, soft vintage shirts from thrift stores over short pencil skirts and black tights with practical wooden clogs.

The crowd in the bar had been rapt.

They didn’t know what they were listening to, only that it was sad and beautiful and that it conjured a lost world none of them had ever known but some among them might remember in their bones. Elada’s world. The Fae Court before the fall. Not the decadence or the cruelty in it, though there was that, too, salt in the sweet of her voice, but the life and color that had been the birthright of the Fae, the vivid, blistering pageant that had once been the hallmark of his race.

Some instinct had stopped him just inside the door of the Black Rose and kept him from coming any closer to Sorcha Kavanaugh on those occasions. And every time since. She might not know what he was—few outside the Irish enclaves of South Boston and the hinterlands of the old country believed in the
Aes Sídhe
anymore—but most intelligent creatures instinctively feared the Fae. And he was afraid that if he alarmed her, the next time he came to the Black Rose, she would be gone.

So he had always remained at the back of the bar, near the door, in as unthreatening a manner as he could manage. It was better that way for a whole host of reasons, the most important being that he was attracted to her, and he was living with another woman at the time.

It was over with Maire now, but there were other reasons he could not act on his attraction to Sorcha Kavanaugh. Unfortunately, they were difficult to remember when he looked at her. She was pale as any Fae, and possessed the night-black hair so prized by his kind, falling in soft waves around her shoulders. Her eyes were a deep, almost black-brown. She wore dark lipstick that made him think of raspberry wine, lush and intoxicating.

And if he frightened her away now with a clumsy come-on, he and Miach might lose a powerful ally in the fight to keep the wall between worlds standing.

He tossed off his whiskey to blunt his desire and called for another even as Sorcha Kavanaugh opened her luscious mouth and began to sing. He discovered that he was jealous of the microphone, just inches from her lips, and he shifted in his chair. His task tonight was to convert her to their cause, not get her in his bed.

Fortunately she was singing a maudlin and sentimental ballad that helped to dampen his ardor. “Danny Boy” wasn’t exactly her style, though it sounded well enough coming from her. She and the fiddler followed this with another musical travesty that somehow inspired the whole house to sing along with them.

The effect was curious. He could still hear her under hundreds of ragged, drink-soaked voices.
Even when she stepped away from the microphone.

Suspicion woke in him, unnerving and unwelcome.

Elada wanted Sorcha Kavanaugh the way a man wanted a woman, but Miach MacCecht, the sorcerer to whom he had bound himself two thousand years ago, with whom he had weathered the betrayal of the Druids and shared the last two millennia, wanted her for an acolyte. Miach wanted to train her as a Druid and channel her formidable power toward preserving the wall between worlds, the barrier that kept the corrupt Fae Court on another plane, in well-deserved exile.

Miach thought Sorcha Kavanaugh was a
latent
Druid. Tame. With no access to her power. Much as Beth Carter had been a year ago when they’d discovered her.

Miach had fixed on her, among all the possible Druids identified by the Prince Consort’s search, because she possessed that most Druidic characteristic: a passion for study. After her formal schooling she had traveled the world seeking out further instruction, different modes of thought about music. It was the hallmark of her bloodline, this thirst for knowledge.

Miach had deduced that Sorcha was a likely Druid because she studied music with single-minded focus, but he had not guessed that perhaps she had been drawn to music because she had it in her. Druid music. The kind that could fracture physical as well as magical foundations, like those that supported the wall between worlds.

Elada could hear her, one small girl, above all the other voices in the teaming room.

Sorcha Kavanaugh, Elada suspected, was not tame. There was a resonance in her beguiling voice, one that he knew—and feared. If Miach heard it, if Miach believed she could not be converted to their cause, he would kill her. And Elada was the only being on earth who could stop that from happening.

• • •

The Fae in the front
row was not amused. Sorcha could tell that by the way he tossed off his whiskey and scowled. Good. Maybe if he didn’t like the music, he would leave.

But he didn’t leave. Not after the first set, and not after the second, even when they sang an encore of “Danny Boy” and Tommy joined in with his ragged tenor.

That’s when she started to get nervous.

Then she saw the Fae signal the waitress. He caught her attention with a nod of his head and held it with a spectacular smile. Sorcha was wearing cold iron, and still that expression kindled something deep inside her. Jealousy. Even though she knew that nothing good could come of being the focus of such a creature’s attention, she still wanted that attention for herself. Such was the power of the Fae.

The waitress—Becky—didn’t know what he was. She wasn’t a Druid like Sorcha. And she wasn’t a local. The Boston Irish knew well what the Fae were. But Becky was human and unawake to the danger the Fae presented. She perked up and made a beeline through the crowd, ignoring the other patrons who tried to signal her.