Reunion (26 page)

Only someone born in that ninja realm could find it again
without
the aid of a talisman, so knowing how to get there wasn't enough. One still needed something magical to open the rift ... Teagan or Isleen, if they ever got hold of such a talisman, could find their way home whenever they wanted. With the aid of the magically-infused paper from the ninja realm, and the right folding, Isleen had been able to run off in pursuit of her long-lost sister.

Ren could have returned to
his
own reality anytime these past ten years, had they not known that to do so would probably result in his death, and soon after, his brother's; and almost certainly, if he was discovered, Trása would also be found and brought back to serve out her life as a cursed barn owl for defying Marcroy Tarth.

But to get to this particular technological realm that loomed so large in all their lives, was not simple. To find it they'd needed someone from this realm, or a talisman that had been here before. Not one of them was native to this reality, despite their thinking of it as home. For the same reason, they couldn't return to the ninja reality directly, either.

Although they had a supply of
kozo
paper to open the rift to return, the fatal weakness of
ori mahou
was its transient nature. Hard talismans, like Marcroy's jewel, Delphine's crystal wand, and even Nika's hideous mummified baby's foot, could retain the location of a reality and allow the user to return there by using it. The process of folding the
ori mahou
shape from the fragile
kozo
paper destroyed the memory.
Trust the Japanese
, Logan had remarked with wry smile when they realized the limitations of the system,
to be the only magicians to invent a system with disposable talismans
.

The plan for this trip was for Logan to close the rift once they were through and open it again at sunset. He would return to the ninja reality and await their call if their plans changed, once he and Ren had retrieved Darragh and Sorcha. Contacting him would be easy enough. They could scry out Logan from here in the Enchanted Sphere of the Shard - where such a task should be relatively easy - and have him ready to open a rift from Marcroy's reality to the ninja reality as soon as they stepped through from this one if need be.

Opening a rift from the Shard would be simple, as it comfortably pierced the Enchanted Sphere. It was Ren's home realm, which meant he didn't need anything other than his own senses to find it. There was a magical stone circle built into the walls - at least Pete assumed it was built into the walls because there was no visible sign of the circle on this otherwise empty floor. They had also brought a supply of precious
kozo
paper with them to open the rift, and a bowl of clear rainwater from their realm so they could dial up Logan on the puddle phone and ask him to open the rift.

What
, Pete thought to himself with more than a slight touch of irony,
could possibly go wrong?

Ren stepped through the rift, holding Plunkett's hand, probably to stop the
Leipreachán
having second thoughts about aiding them.

"You'd better get back," he said to Logan. "We'll call when we're ready to come back through."

"Are you certain about this?"

Ren nodded and glanced at Pete. There had been a number of discussions in the past few hours about how they were going to do this, not the least of which was how they were going to find Darragh and Sorcha in the first place. Ren was convinced it would take little more than a call to Kiva Kavanaugh's house to get Darragh on a plane to London with Sorcha. With luck, they shouldn't have to venture too far from the Shard at all.

"We'll be fine," Ren said.

Logan nodded, glanced at Pete who gave him a look that said more than he could ever put into words, and then held out his hand. Ren - with some reluctance, Pete thought - handed over Marcroy's jewel.

"Don't lose it," Pete said.

"Oh, okay," Logan replied. "Good advice. Would never have thought of that on my own."

"Stay near water," Ren added, not even cracking a smile at the exchange between Pete and his brother. "We can't afford to hang around in Marcroy's reality on the way back. We need you waiting for us."

"Gee, I'm so glad you two are here to explain things to me," Logan said, stepping back through the rift. "I can see now why you need Plunkett."

With that, the rift closed, although Pete wasn't sure if Logan had closed it to be dramatic or Ren had done it to cut him off.

Either way, for the time being, Ren and Pete were alone here in the reality they'd once believed was the only reality, with only an irritated
Leipreachán
for company.

Pete's eyes were left with an afterimage of the lightning. He blinked a couple of times and allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Plunkett waddled over to the glass wall and looked out over the city.

"It be unsettlin' still feelin' the magic with so much technology down there."

"That's because we're in the Enchanted Sphere," Pete told him, marvelling a little at his own words. Of all the things he'd imagined he'd say if he ever found his way back to this reality, explaining the presence of magic in the Enchanted Sphere to a
Leipreachán
wasn't among them. "There won't be any magic once we get down to street level."

"I hope the lifts are working," Ren said coming to stand beside them. Pete couldn't tell if he was excited or terrified by this foray into a world they had worked so hard to put behind them.

"You hankering for a ride?"

"Not especially. I was just wondering what it would be like to climb eighty-odd flights of stairs on the way back."

Pete's thighs burned just at the thought of it. "Point taken. Shall we find out?"

"Where we be going first?" Plunkett asked. Whatever Ren had said to the
Leipreachán
on the other side of the rift appeared to have done the trick. He seemed ... cooperative.

"We need to find out if Kiva's still living in the same house," Ren said. "From there, we should be able to track Darragh down."

"How we be doing that?" Plunkett asked. "We be in London, not Dublin."

"Same way I used to find out where she was and what she was up to when I lived with her," Ren said. "The tabloids."

It wasn't as easy as they'd hoped to come and go through the Shard. There was no power to the elevators on the first four floors they tried. On the fifth floor down from the stone circle, they opened the fire escape door and walked into a room that obviously had power. There were banks upon banks of lights trained on what looked to Pete like the largest and most extensive hydroponic marijuana growing operation he'd ever seen - and he'd seen some impressive installations in his time with the Gardaí.

"Crap," Ren said, looking around in awe. "What is this place?"

"The bank," Pete suggested, as he walked to the nearest bench to see the seedlings beginning to poke through the growing medium in their hydroponic tubes. The sound of water being pumped through the troughs filled the air, which was humid and moist and completely unexpected this high off the ground.

"What do you mean?"

"The
Matrarchaí
has to get their money from somewhere. What do you think keeps the Mafia cashed up? That's what drove organized crime to drugs, you know. Ready cash."

"You think the
Matrarchaí
is funding itself by growing dope?"

Pete leaned a little closer to the seedlings and shook his head. "I'd say yes, but this isn't pot."

"What is it then?"

"They look like
kozo
trees."

"
Kozo
trees can't survive here," Ren said. "Not in this realm. There's no magic to sustain them."

"There is here in the Enchanted Sphere."

"What's the point of that?"

"I don't know. Let's find someone from the
Matrarchaí
and ask them."

"Very funny. Maybe they're using them to help sustain the Enchanted Sphere."

"These poor little buggers don't look like they could sustain much of anything," Pete said. "They're too small."

Ren looked around the room, shaking his head. "There're thousands of them, though."

"Which makes it interesting, but a mystery to be solved some other time. Try the lift."

The power was - thankfully - connected to the elevators from the hydroponics floor down, and as the sun rose over London, the building began to fill with workmen. Some were working on the Shangri-La Hotel that would occupy a good portion of the building between the thirty-fourth and the fiftieth floors, others on fit-outs of the offices, restaurants and shops that would occupy the rest of the building. Although there was nothing special marking the floor where the stone circle was concealed, there was nothing else marked as special, either. As they stepped into the elevator, however, Pete noticed the initials ORM written on tape and stuck on the several of the upper floors.

"The
Matrarchaí
are planning to move in soon, I'd say," he noted, as the doors closed. Plunkett waned out of the elevator as soon as it started to move. He didn't like elevators.

"How do you know that?" Ren asked.

Pete pointed to the tape and the handwritten initials. "Well, besides the
kozo
farm, look at this. ORM. That's the modeling agency Delphine used to run as a cover for the
Matrarchaí
."

Although he had Delphine's memories, Ren seemed to have little interest in her activities in this realm that didn't directly impact on her plans to eradicate the Faerie. There was too much information in his head, Pete supposed; too many other-people's memories. Sometimes, it really was just easier to ask.

For himself, Pete found the idea that he was back home more than a little surreal. Alarming even. Oddly, he discovered had no desire to look up old friends, not even to enquire after his cousin Kelly or his grandmother. He knew now that neither of those women were related to him. They were
Matrarchaí
, just like Delphine and apparently most of the models who'd worked for her. It had been a truly inspired cover for an organization whose main purpose seemed to be the blending of bloodlines designed to produce twins dedicated to the genocide of the Faerie. All those gorgeous girls coming and going. In one day and out the next.

Nobody suspected a damned thing.

But the mention of ORM must have sparked an odd random memory in Ren's mind and, curiously, the memory apparently belonged to him, not the other people he carried around which Pete privately thought made him more than a little unstable. "I think that's the modeling agency Kiva was with before she got her big break as an actress."

"There's a shock." It would make sense that Kiva, who'd adopted a child thrown into this reality from another, was somehow connected to the
Matrarchaí
. There were no coincidences in their worlds. Everything was connected and although Pete disdained the notion of fate, there seemed to be something more than random chance governing the series of events that had brought them to this place, at this time.

"Are you okay?"

Pete nodded, and forced himself to focus on the problem at hand. The life he'd had in this world was lost to him. He couldn't get it back, even if he wanted it. "I'm fine. Its just feels a bit weird being back here. Almost as if it was meant to be."

Ren nodded in agreement. "I know what you mean. I worry sometimes, that we're just puppets ... even though we think we're fighting them, the
Matrarchaí
are secretly pulling our strings."

"There's a cheery thought," Pete said, wondering why Ren sounded so bleak. He thought he'd be a little cheerful, at least, at the idea of being reunited with his brother.

The elevator doors opened into organized chaos. They'd not taken the elevator all the way to the ground floor; they were still thirty-five floors up. They needed a reason to be coming and going in this building, which was still a construction site even if it was just the finishing touches .

They needed to find something less obvious to wear. Ren and Pete were both wearing the clothes they'd entered the ninja realm in, over a decade ago. At least Pete was. Ren had matured into a man in that time. His clothes no longer fitted so he was dressed in the jeans, polo shirt and sports jacket Logan had been wearing when Delphine knocked him and Pete out cold with
Brionglóid Gorm
and carried them through the rift with the intention of murdering them. Tiffany had been killed in the same fracas that had seen Ren kill Delphine, and Pete realized he hadn't spared her a thought in years. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if Logan thought of her very often, or wondered about his unborn child who had died with her that day.

"Hey!"

Pete realized Ren had been talking to him. He hadn't heard a thing. "What?"

"Over there."

Ren was pointing at a set of hooks across what was soon to be a foyer to a temporary wall that held a number of fluorescent yellow, high-visibility vests with hard hats hanging over them. There were signs everywhere warning that this was a hardhat area and the few figures they could see in the distance were dressed in a similar fashion. Pete nodded and they headed for the hooks. A few moments later they were dressed like every other workman in the building and able to move about with a little more freedom.

Pete straightened his fluorescent yellow hat and turned to Ren. "Ready to do this?"

"Can you feel it?"

"Feel what?"

"There's no magic on this level. We're out of the Enchanted Sphere."

Pete could feel the lack of magic, now Ren pointed it out, and it shocked him to realize how much he missed it. He didn't have time to say so, though. The elevator chimed as the door opened and another couple of workmen emerged talking to each other. They nodded to Ren and Pete as they walked toward the far side of the floor, but didn't challenge them.

First test passed with flying colours,
Pete thought, pulling his hat down over his eyes. He hurried into the elevator before the doors closed again with Ren on his heels and pushed the button tape-marked Lobby, same as the one that had identified the ORM Agency and the various other tenants moving into the building.