Stone Song (31 page)

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Beth Carter came to visit
them the next day.

“We’re off to a conference in Zurich tomorrow, but I thought you might have questions you’d want to ask before I left.”

They were sitting in Gran’s parlor in the old frayed chairs with their musty throws covering the holes in the upholstery. Beth Carter had taken in all the iron with wide, surprised eyes, and been downright disturbed by Gran’s still room, but she’d come, and that was what mattered. Sorcha wished now more than ever to be done with the house, to put her childhood behind her.

“At least someone in your family knew what you were,” said Beth Carter, “and understood your gift, even if they tried to suppress it. Mine forgot their heritage entirely. All they had was a memory of danger and a fear of learning. I had to fight them to go to college, to get an education. And they don’t value anything I’ve done with my life now.”

“Gran was the way she was”—Sorcha now understood—“because the Fae killed my parents. I didn’t understand it growing up, but I began to after my year at Keiran’s.”

“There are others like us,” Beth said. “More out there. The Prince Consort had a facility in Ireland where he’d hired investigators and analysts to identify and find them. He tried training some, but most of them didn’t survive. The power that comes when you unleash your gift—”

“It’s cruel and seductive, like the Fae,” said Sorcha, who had experienced it for herself.

“Because that’s where we got our power initially. It’s linked to them. There’s no untangling it. But it isn’t destiny. We don’t have to be like the Druids who came before us.”

“I don’t want to be,” said Sorcha. “But I’m still not completely in control of my power, and there’s no one to teach me but Miach.”

“He’ll have both of you back. He’s happy just to have Nieve and Garrett home.”

“And Finn?” Sorcha asked. “Will he come after us again?”

“Unlikely. You cracked the foundation on his house and put the fear of Dana into his followers. Even if they would obey his orders and attack you again, Finn doesn’t have the resources right now to direct at you. He has convinced the city that what took place was a gas explosion, but that doesn’t get him off the hook with the historical commission. He lives in a preservation zone. He’s got to put his house to rights if he wants to keep it and he needs to keep it if he means to hold Charlestown. It has leveled the playing field between Finn and Miach.”

Beth promised to visit again when she returned.

“We’ll have moved,” said Sorcha confidently.

“In with Miach?” asked Beth.

“No,” Elada said flatly. “To Quincy.”

Later that day they were cleaning out Gran’s still room—the estate agent had taken one look at it and said to call her after it was emptied—and Sorcha said, “Quincy is too far. I need to be able to walk to the train with my harp for gigs.”

“I can drive you.”

“I don’t want to rely on you for rides. And I don’t want to drive into Boston myself. The parking is hell.”

“The parking isn’t so bad.”

“That’s because you park in fire lanes. I don’t.”

And later that day Elada said, “We could get a condominium on the wharf. You could walk to the Black Rose.”

“I thought you wanted a house, in Quincy.”

“I did, until I mowed the lawn on this one.”

Miach invited them to the house the next day. He agreed to continue Sorcha’s training. When he heard they were selling the ironbound house in Jamaica Plain, he approved. When they mentioned condominiums on the wharf, he did not.

“The wharf is too close to Charlestown and Finn’s domains. Stay out of his way for a while at least. And get yourself a house.”

They found one in Cambridge, a few blocks from Central Square, with no lawn but a small brick patio, walkable to the train and quite close to a couple of bars Sorcha liked to play. It took a month to close on the little clapboard two-story Greek Revival house. They moved in without furniture, and the first night they slept, blissfully, on a mattress on the floor, because it was not Gran’s house and there was no iron bed caging them.

Sorcha fell into a routine, spending her days practicing with Miach and her early evenings playing the Black Rose and the cafés in Central Square. Her nights she spent at home with Elada.

They were settled a month when Elada said, “You traveled a lot when you were studying your music, didn’t you?”

“Yup,” she said. “From town to town.”

“Do you ever miss it?”

She considered. “All the time. I only went back to Gran’s because I was afraid of running into more Fae. At least in Boston I knew which neighborhoods to avoid.”

“I’m glad you came back, because we met, but I want to know if you’re willing to travel again.”

“The harp is kind of heavy,” she said.

“I didn’t mean on foot.”

“Playing bars isn’t exactly lucrative,” she said.

“You wouldn’t be playing bars. Or, at least, we wouldn’t have to live on the money you earned. Miach thinks there may be others like you, stone singers, whom the Prince’s research has missed. He wants us to find them.”

“I thought he had a long list of Druids from the Prince.”

“He does, but the Prince, or one of his associates, has gotten to many of them already. If we’re going to fight him, we need to find more Druids like you, Sorcha.”

She considered a moment. “I’ve gotten used to playing with accompaniment.”

“You cannot bring the fiddler,” said Elada.

“I wasn’t thinking of Tommy.”

“And I don’t sing.”

“That’s only because you’ve never been taught,” she said. And she reached for him and began his instruction.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18