The Apothecary's Curse (47 page)

“I'm well aware. So, my old friend, it is a death pact we sign here, yes?”

“I suppose it is.”

“And Anne?”

“Anne will write about what she learned from me and the book—it will give her a lifetime's work. She has my notes, and my library, and now—”

“And now that you've told me of her tie to Eleanor, she shall have my fortune as well. It seems I owe you a debt of gratitude once again, to have connected me with . . . my niece, is it? Somehow it is comforting to know that I go to my grave having known her. It is a gift beyond measure.”

“You told her, then . . . about yourself?”

Simon shook his head. “That I couldn't bring myself to do, at least not . . . But it is all there in a thick packet of papers I insisted she take with her. She will know soon enough. She is, after all, my closest known relation, my own sister's descendent, unbelievable as it is. It will be a story to tell her children someday—”

Gaelan flinched. That was not something he wished to think about. They heard the taxi as it pulled up to Simon's door.

The two men embraced, wishing each other success as Gaelan hoisted his messenger bag over his shoulder, patting it to make certain the book was inside.

The house was silent; Simon's footsteps echoed on the foyer tiles, making the place seem yet more desolate. He reflected on Sophie's disappearance a moment before realizing he'd simply forgotten about her these past few days, perhaps for the first time in decades. He'd not missed her shrieks and mercurial temperament. Her bitter harangues or her biting tongue. She was gone. Really gone.

Had Simon finally done what she'd wanted all along? All that was required to let her go and send her back to her eternal rest? What was that ballad she'd always wailed, her cries and shrieks punctuating each and every verse? That was it: “The Unquiet Grave.”

Cold blows the wind to my true love,

And gently drops the rain,

I never had but one sweetheart,

And in greenwood she lies slain.

I'll do as much for my sweetheart

As any young man may;

I'll sit and mourn all on her grave

For a twelvemonth and a day.

When the twelvemonth and one day was past,

The ghost began to speak:

“Why sittest thou here all day on my grave,

And will not let me sleep?”

Simon wanted to believe that Sophie had finally broken free of him; he'd never wanted to hold her against her will. But his heart had mourned her, had felt guilty about her death—perhaps he had held her, but unwillingly so. And now she was gone, let go. At peace. There was only one thing for Simon to do. He uttered a fervent prayer as he took in hand the cobalt blue vial Gaelan had prepared for him: that Sophie would be waiting for him, not the banshee she had become, but the soul mate she had been back then.

“Simon, my love.”

Sophie.

“I thought you'd gone—”

“I have, my love. I am free, and I return to you of my own will. I know what it is you aim to do and shall be awaiting you when the time comes.”

“Soon, love, soon.” It would be all right.

He held up the amber bottle to the light, studying the liquid as it swirled in the glass. He put it to his lips and drank as if it were his only sustenance and not a poison. He tasted the tang of metal, like fine silver, and the alcohol solvent; the scent of almonds and orange peel surrounded him as he felt himself falling into a vast white sea of light.

Sophie awaited him, her hand extended, dressed in sapphire velvet, a diamond tiara in her black hair, radiant.

He was home.

NORTHERN HIGHLANDS, SCOTLAND, PRESENT DAY

CHAPTER 55

Thurso was on the northernmost tip of the Scottish mainland, overlooking the Orkneys. It was a wild area of stark beauty, the very feel of it otherworldly. Gaelan landed in Inverness and hired a car, taking his time to drive north and west through the Highlands. The road wasn't easy, and the car awkward to drive, with everything reversed. There was little traffic, but more than once, he had to remind himself to drive on the left, not the right as a car traveling the opposite direction would surprise him coming over a hill or round a curve. It wouldn't do to crash—again. It would be all he needed.

He'd been to this area as a boy, he'd thought, though much had changed. Feeling freer than he had in centuries, he knew he would be released from his burden soon enough—and then what? He felt for the small vial in his pocket. Medicine, he'd told the TSA agent at O'Hare, needed for seizures when in flight.

The book had never been his to give away or to keep. Lord Thomas Learmont of Erceldoune had been but a steward, keeping Airmid's powerful book of healing until such a time came when it might be used—with wisdom. A time that never would come in all the ages thenceforth.

Perhaps there had been a time once when true enlightenment might have come to pass, when a nexus was possible, formed of knowledge tempered by understanding, technology bounded by empathy. Gaelan wondered if that had been Airmid's idealistic hope when she handed the book to his ancestor so long ago—an antidote calculated to heal the world of its darkest ages. To bring about a new Camelot that could never be.

Yes, there were the Anne Shawes of the world, but far too many Handleys and Braithwaites—and the Transdiffs who would with this knowledge transform the world into something toxic and vile. “And Lyle Tremayne,” he said to no one. The name still tasted bitter on his tongue as he thought of the man who'd condemned him to hell in the first place.

Gaelan's GPS instructed him in a female British accent to turn left as his watch tapped him gently on the wrist. He smiled. Magic. A wristwatch with the ability to guide him halfway around the world. He would miss these little amazements.

“Your destination is in five hundred feet.” Gaelan stopped the car at the base of a small grassy hill and looked up to see the hawthorn tree of the book's cover. It was unmistakable. He trudged to the top and gazed along the coastline; puffins skittered across the water, leaving small whitecaps in their wake.

Setting up his campsite, he built a small fire and unrolled a down sleeping bag before relaxing beneath the tree. The light was fading now, and Gaelan watched the stars emerge one by one, and the planets. In the distance he thought he saw the glow of distant, fading glaciers, their white-blue adorning the water in an eerie haze.

He lay back on his sleeping bag, shoving a pillow of his clothing beneath his neck, and looked up. The Aurora Borealis lit the sky like he had never seen before: magenta, phosphorescent blue, tangerine, every color imaginable. The book lay at his side. He patted it gently, noticing Polaris gleaming bright so far to the north as the electromagnetic display faded. The stars were close enough to touch up here, pockmarking the black sky. Ah, there it was, Ariadne's Crown.

Perhaps he should drink the toxin now. Did it matter? Would the goddess Airmid—who, for all Gaelan knew, never really existed outside of legend and ballad—appear through some invisible portal to reclaim her book?

No. He must see this through to the final act. There would be time . . . after . . . 
After what? After the fairies visit you and steal back their book?
He laughed, thinking of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his steadfast and quite paradoxical belief in their world.

Finally, exhaustion overtook Gaelan, and he fell into a restless sleep, his dreamscape a towering maze, grotesque images of Anne's Transdiff colleagues at every turn. They chased him with syringes and scalpels until they caught him, strapping him then to a silver gurney. He could not move; he could not breathe. “The medical find of the twenty-first century!” The proclamation echoed everywhere as Gaelan fought with the restraints, awaking in the dark to find himself wrestling with his sleeping bag.

Panting and bathed in sweat, he sat up, elbows on his knees, as he tried to settle his breathing.
It will be over soon. No more nightmares, no more torture relived in an infinite loop for all eternity.

Gaelan had given up on going back to sleep when a breeze rustled through the leaves above him. And from somewhere nearby a sweet melody called out to him—an old folk tune, enfolding him, clearing his thoughts of trouble, as it drew him into a dreamless, peaceful rest.

“Gaelan—”

The voice was gentle as a breeze whispering through tall grass, close enough it tickled at the shell of his ear. This was different, more insistent than the murmuring song that had lulled him to sleep. His eyes fluttered open, and he squinted into the morning light as it washed over him. He patted the ground to his right—the book was gone. His first thought was that Gilles had somehow found him—found out his scheme. Had Anne been coerced, or had she betrayed him . . . ? No! Unthinkable. It must be here . . . somewhere . . .

“Gaelan.”

Shielding his eyes from the glare, he recognized her sitting there, swathed in a corona of sunlight. He blinked several times, and her face came into sharper relief. No explanation sufficed but that he was yet asleep, and in the midst of an improbable dream.

But then a delicate hand reached out, cupping his jaw, real as the dew that had gathered on the grass overnight. “Hallo.”

“Anne,” he breathed, trying to sit up. There was something amiss with his left hand, but his confusion over this . . . vision momentarily pushed it from his thoughts. “Anne, what are you doing here?” he inquired, not yet entirely certain whether this was real. But not even his most real delusion would have tasted so sweet as Anne's gentle kiss.

“He
told
you!” Gaelan wanted to be angry. “He'd
no
right. . . .”

“A note stuck to some papers he insisted I take. Coordinates: no destination, no name. I hazarded a guess and trusted in the Google.”

He should never have shared those particulars with Simon. But he'd been so fucking amazed by the manuscript's final bit of brilliance, and after all, they'd both be dead within a day.

A thread of suspicion wended its way through Gaelan's mind. “Just how did you escape Paul Gilles?”

“I never boarded my flight. It took off without me. I got a flight to Copenhagen, and from there to Wick. I drove the rest of the way. Cash transaction—thanks to my long-lost cousin
Simon
. The papers he left me . . . deeds, a will, and a very long letter. I've not read it all, but enough that I think I understand at least some of it—and his connection to you.”

Gaelan frowned as he wondered if his dear friend, Eleanor's brother, Anne's . . . uncle . . . had finally found peace.

“I'm sure when I didn't show up at Heathrow . . . I'm not fooling myself. They'll be after me. I daren't show up in the UK—at least not until my report about their activities is published three days from now. They offered to push the deadline.”

Gaelan had not at all planned on this turn of events. He could not begin to imagine taking the toxin in Anne's presence. How could he put her through that ordeal? He had to get rid of her. Or something. But how could he when she gazed at him with eyes so luminous in the bright sunshine that . . . ?

“I could not imagine your last hours spent alone, my love. Do—” Her eyes widened to saucers.

“What is it?”

“Your hand! Did you not notice?”

“My . . . ?” That was it—his hand; it was leaden, as if asleep—numb. Indeed he was occasionally plagued by the phantom of his lost fingers, even decades later. He'd brushed off the sensation.

Gaelan sat up fully, and his hand fell into his lap. Where there had been three stumps, there were now fingers—perfectly formed. He could not tear his eyes from the sight. Even after all these years, he wasn't quite sure what to make of it. But how . . . ?

Airmid and her brother Miach had healed the warrior Nuada, replacing the silver hand created by Dian Cecht, with one of flesh and bone, making him whole.