Reunion (14 page)

He was having one of those moments now as he escorted Trása back to the stone circle just outside
Tír Na nÓg
, so she could do something about the merman they'd brought back from another reality.

The merman in question was Trása's cousin. Somehow, whether by fair means or foul, Trása had scried Abbán out and convinced him to open a rift to his reality to allow Pete, Logan and Nika through and then to open it again to allow them to return to this reality with a kidnapped
Leipreachán
.

Such an event was such an absurdly long way from the life he'd once known, it didn't seem possible it could be real. Sometimes, he felt as if the real dream had been the first twenty-seven years of his life, and this life he had now - where he and his twin brother, Logan, could wield magic and cross realities at will - was the only life he had ever known.

Other times he wondered if, perhaps, he was just going mad.

For now, though, the bit where he was mostly Faerie and able to move from one reality to another was winning.

Trása had organized this particular cross-reality excursion, claiming she was doing it on Ren's behalf, although Pete was beginning to doubt that. She'd been very cagey about them discussing the trip with him. Pete gathered, given the fuss Abbán had made when he realized Trása wasn't coming through the rift, that she'd made some sort of promise to turn herself over to Marcroy, to get her cousin - all the
Tuatha Dé Danann
seemed to be cousins of one sort or another - to open the rift in the first place. The honor and kudos the merman could claim by handing her over to Marcroy was apparently sufficient enticement to get Abbán to open a rift.

Foolish merman.
Anybody with even a passing acquaintance with Trása should have known the chances of her voluntarily stepping into the reality where she was cursed to spend her life as a barn owl were vanishingly small. Abbán had fallen for it, however, and became quite vocal when he realized he'd been duped.

At that point, Nika, their refugee Merlin from yet another realm depopulated by the
Matrarchaí
, had become concerned about the noise Abbán was making, so - without any thought as to the consequences - she'd wrapped him in a magical cocoon and shoved him through the rift after Logan and Pete and then closed the rift behind them.

"Did anybody see you in the other realm?" Trása asked as they hurried along the leaf-strewn path toward the entrance to
Tír Na nÓg
.

He shook his head. "We did exactly as you asked. In and out as quickly as possible. Some of the lesser
sídhe
may have seen us, but I doubt they'd know who we were or what we were up to."

Trása frowned. "But you bought Abbán back with you."

Pete didn't appreciate the accusation in her tone. "Hey,
you
were the one who got Abbán involved, O Great and Omnipotent Acting Faerie Queen. Logan's suggestion, if you recall, was that if you wanted to go back to your own reality so badly, you should just ask Ren to lift the curse on you."

Trása shook her head. "That would have ruined the surprise."

"Yeah ... about that. Ren doesn't know a damned thing about this little expedition, does he?"

All hint of reprimand vanished as Trása flashed him a smile that was as blinding as it was forced. "You have a wild imagination, Pete. It's a hangover from being a cop. You think everybody is up to no good."

"That doesn't mean you
aren't
up to no good," he pointed out ... quite reasonably, he thought.

Trása didn't answer him and because they'd reached the entrance to
Tír Na nÓg
it was easy enough for her to avoid the subject. As they stepped through the veil into the mundane world outside, Pete could feel not only the temperature dropping, but the magic draining from the air and he wanted to weep for the loss of it. This whole reality was seeped in magic, but it was never as concentrated, or as heady, as it was in
Tír Na nÓg
.

The stone circle was only few minutes from the entrance, located at the very top of the cliff known in other realities as the Giant's Staircase. The stones were similar to those they had stepped through in Trása and Ren's reality, except these were covered in Japanese symbols, rather than the Celtic designs of the other reality.

The top of the cliff had a windswept, flat area on which the circle sat overlooking the Giant's Staircase. Nika was sitting on one of the low stones, her back to the ocean, watching over a young man who stood naked and scowling in the center of the circle, his arms pressed to his sides, held there by the invisible bonds the Merlin had wrapped around him. Pete smiled at Nika's ingenuity and made a mental note to be careful he never did anything that might tempt her to try the same trick on him.

Trása's
mara-warra
cousin, Abbán, wasn't quite as tall as Trása. Although his upper body was muscular and well-tanned - only the gills running in line with his ribs marking him as different - his legs were spindly and pale, a sure sign, Pete now knew, that he spent as little time as possible on land. As soon as they let Abbán back into the water, his fishtail would return and he would once again be the magnificent specimen of mermanity - if there were such a word - he fancied himself to be.

But that wasn't going to happen while he was threatening to run straight to Marcroy Tarth and tell him where Trása and one half of the missing Undivided had been hiding all these years.

The Merlin rose to her feet as they approached, bowing low to Trása with a respect that Pete found hard to credit. Nika was a powerful woman, both physically and magically and in Pete's eyes, quite the most beautiful creature he'd ever met. Another of the countless refugees they'd gathered here over the past seven years, Nika's reality had been devastated by the
Matrarchaí
just before she'd inherited her position from the previous Merlin who had died trying to fight them off. Alone, exhausted and helpless, Nika had been fighting a last-ditch battle against the
Matrarchaí
to save what Faerie she could when they'd stumbled into her world.

Perhaps it was because she'd seen Trása first, that day, or because here in this reality, Trása had - by default - become Queen of the Faerie, Nika had sworn her allegiance to the mongrel half-
beansídhe
and had been Trása's most ardent supporter ever since, even when it meant disagreeing with her lover.

They'd been too late to save Nika's realm from the
Matrarchaí
, but she was one of their first refugees. They'd saved her and the scores of
sídhe
she was defending and brought them back here to this world full of enchanted trees where the magic was strong. Her gratitude toward Trása for rescuing her people was perhaps only outmatched by her love for Pete, who still couldn't quite figure out what she saw in him.

The
Matrarchaí
's plans in this realm, at least, had - for the time being - been foiled.

At least, Pete hoped they'd been foiled. They all watched Isleen like a hawk when they were around her, looking for some hint she was about to turn nasty. Ren claimed he'd locked away the
Comhroinn
Delphine had performed on the girls when they were children and they could never become the monsters she had planned for, but Pete wasn't so sure. If the
Matrarchaí
had Teagan, it was certain they had now unlocked Delphine's memories in her. Although nobody ever said it out loud, he knew everyone but Isleen thought the same as him - Teagan had probably turned into the psychopathic Faerie-killer the
Matrarchaí
had bred her and her sister to be.

Pete might be mostly
sídhe
and able to wield magic, but he also had a Masters Degree in Criminal Psychology and he knew what the
Matrarchaí
were breeding better than most.

But that was a problem for another time. Right now, they had a very pissed off merman to deal with.

"I see you brought us a guest, Nika," Trása said, stopping just outside the stone circle to study their captive.

Abbán made some muffled noises but could not produce any intelligible sounds as Nika had covered his mouth with her magical bonds as well as his limbs and torso.

"A guest would not be so rude, my lady," Nika said as she bowed to Trása, her thick red braid almost touching the ground she bent so low. "Are you really a cousin to this creature?"

"So the story goes," Trása replied. "Release his mouth. I want to talk to him."

"You can talk to him, my lady," Nika said, tossing the braid over her shoulder, out of the way. "I haven't covered his ears."

Trása smiled. "Please, Nika, if you wouldn't mind."

Nika muttered something under her breath - in her reality all magic wielded by humans was via hand gestures and incantation - and Pete felt her unravel the magical bonds covering the merman's mouth.

Once he was free, Abbán didn't immediately launch into a diatribe. If anything, he seemed to be speechless. His eyes were fixed on Trása and full of suspicion.

Trása stepped into the circle, eyeing her cousin up and down for a moment, and then smiled. "Well, I'll bet this isn't how you planned on things turning out."

"You said you wanted to make amends." The merman was wide-eyed with anger. Pete feared he was about to burst something. "You told me you were ready to come home."

"I've been ready to come home for years," Trása agreed airily. "Not my fault if you thought I meant today."

"When Marcroy finds out you've broken through his curse -"

"He'll be very angry with me," Trása said. "Yes, I know that. What's he going to say to you, I wonder, Abbán, when he learns you opened an unauthroized rift so foreign rift runners could step into his realm and kidnap a merman and one of his
Leipreachán
?"

"You claimed Marcroy would reward me for aiding you! That I'd be a hero when I took you back to him in chains."

"I don't doubt it," Trása agreed. She glanced at Pete who got the feeling she was enjoying this immensely. "And just how are you planning to do that?"

"I know where you are now, Trása. I can come back to this realm anytime I want. I have Marcroy's jewel."

"Actually, merman, you don't," Nika announced, holding up a pigeon egg-sized ruby for them to see. "I have it."

Trása's eyes widened and Pete realized this was the prize.

In this reality, the
Youkai
and the humans who could wield magic opened rifts using
ori mahou
- folding magic. The flaw with this method was that not only was the paper exceedingly rare, it was a single-use item, as it was destroyed in the process of opening the rift. Pete had heard many tales of the jewels used in Trása and Ren's reality, but never seen one before. Curious to see the ruby, he held out his hand and Nika smiled and dropped it into his palm for his inspection. The gem was still warm and he could feel the magic pulsing inside it. On closer inspection, he noticed the center of the jewel was etched with a symbol that presumably was some magical rune written in the script of the
Tuatha Dé Danann
.

He closed his hand over it for a moment, and realized this jewel was his gateway home.

All this time, they'd had a different plan - search every reality they could find in the hope of capturing an agent of the
Matrarchaí
and forcing the location from them. The backup plan was to wait until the new stone circle commissioned by the
Matrarchaí
was functioning and return through there, a plan that had seemed the only logical choice.

Until now. Until Trása decided to change the rules.

This was the jewel Marcroy had used to open the first rift to their world so he could toss the infant Rónán through. This jewel - or at least the magic contained within it - knew the location of the reality where he'd been raised. The reality where he and his brother had worked in jobs they loved and had careers and nice apartments.

A reality where he was a nobody, really. Not like here.

It took Pete a moment to realize a return to that world was in his grasp. He met Nika's eye for a moment. It occurred to him that he might have to consider carefully whether or not he wanted to reach for it.

In the center of the
rifuto
, Abbán gamely tried to struggle against his bonds, but he was held fast, and Trása seemed to be getting a lot of satisfaction from the merman's predicament. Pete supposed, given they were related, there was some history between them; perhaps Trása was thrilled by his humiliation because she finally had the upper hand.

But gloating over this merman was an indulgence they really didn't have time for.

"What are we going to do with him, my lady?" Nika asked, before Pete had a chance to voice the same question.

"I can think of any number of things," Trása said, with a little too much relish.

"Pick
one
," Pete said.

"Well, we can't send him home," Trása mused, staring at the merman for a moment before turning to Pete and Nika. "He'll run straight to Marcroy if we do."

"Perhaps something you should have considered
before
you called him up on the puddle phone and asked him to open a rift back to Marcroy's realm," Pete suggested, pocketing the jewel for safekeeping.

Trása glanced over her shoulder and with anything but regal poise, pulled a face at him. Then she turned back to her cousin and pondered the problem for a moment before announcing her solution. "We'll release him into the ocean here," she said. She turned to them again. "I mean, without a jewel he can't go home, can he? And by the time he's figured out how the
Youkai
in this reality use folding magic, it won't matter. At least, not in time to do us any damage."

Pete rolled his eye at her naivety. "You think wielding magic is the only harm this guy can do?"

Trása threw her hands up impatiently. "Well, what am I supposed to do with him? We don't exactly have a
sídhe
jail to lock him in."

"I'll tell you what you do with him. You talk to Ren and get him to wipe this guy's memory and then send him home with some story about how he lost the jewel in a bog. That way he's not our problem, the jewel remains here, we can come and go as we please to your realm and, through that, to my home realm as well, and we won't have to sleep with one eye open for fear of some crazy, pissed-off merman trying to slit our throats in the middle of the night."