The Dark Divide (2 page)

She stepped back to examine Hayley at arm’s length after Marcroy had introduced them. ‘Aren’t you a sweet little thing? You remind me of my daughter.’

‘You have a daughter?’ Hayley asked, a little surprised. Elimyer looked barely old enough to have a boyfriend, let alone a child anywhere near Hayley’s age. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on the Faerie girl’s face, uncomfortable with the casual nudity of Elimyer and her kind. At least Marcroy was dressed.

She wasn’t sure what she would do if he decided to go native.

The
leanan sídhe
reached forward to gently lift a lock of her dark hair and sniff it. ‘You are like her in many ways. But you smell different.’

‘Um … I suppose,’ Hayley asked, glancing at Marcroy. She wasn’t sure about the hair sniffing, but for all she knew, this was how the Faerie greeted one another. ‘What’s your daughter’s name?’

‘Her name is Trása,’ Elimyer said, stroking Hayley’s head with a vague smile. ‘You have such pretty hair. So dark and glossy.’

‘Trása?’ Hayley asked, an edge to her voice she couldn’t hide. She snatched the lock of hair from Elimyer’s hand. ‘That blonde cow Ren was hanging out with the day of my accident?’

The one who likes to chat up other people’s boyfriends
, she added silently.

Not that Ren Kavanaugh actually was her boyfriend. Her plans for that eventuality had been cruelly shattered by recent
events. First, she was hit by Murray Symes’s car, which put her in a coma and blinded her. Second, she was sent to live in that damned rehabilitation facility to learn how to deal with her ‘disability’. And then to top it all off, Ren had whisked her away to this magical alternate reality with the cops hot on their tail just so she could witness the horrific, but effective, removal of the bullet from Marcroy Tarth’s chest, which still made her stomach churn when she thought about it.

Now Ren is missing, my sight has been magically restored and I’m a guest of a real live Faerie prince in a magical kingdom that in my reality only exists in, well … faerie tales.
Hayley felt as if she’d been living doggy years, lately. It didn’t seem possible all that could have happened to one person in only a few weeks.

Elimyer smiled at her. ‘Who is Ren, dear?’

‘She means Rónán,’ Marcroy explained, smiling at her. ‘Hayley is from the realm where Rónán of the Undivided has been hiding all this time.’

‘All this time? It seems like just yesterday you brought us the news that the Undivided were divided, brother.’ She let out a vague little sigh. ‘I really should go beyond the veil more often. It’s so easy to lose track of what’s happening.’

Hayley thought calling Ren’s life in her realm ‘hiding’ a little odd, given Ren was barely three when her father, Patrick Boyle, had found him in that lake on the movie set where he was working as a stuntman; the same set where Kiva Kavanaugh got her big break, and, as it turned out, her adopted son. Hayley didn’t think Ren had been
hiding
in her reality. Ren — or rather Rónán, as they insisted on calling him here — must have crossed a dimensional rift from this realm to splash down in the lake. There was a good chance someone had hidden him, rather than Ren hiding himself.

She didn’t want to question Marcroy too closely, though. In the last few hours, Hayley had gone from trying to face her
blindness and despair to standing here, in another reality, cured, swapping pleasantries with a naked Faerie. She stifled the urge to giggle.
I must have tripped over and banged my head again
, she decided.
I’m back in the coma. I bet the brain damage I got when the car hit me is worse than they thought, and I’ve had a relapse.

It must be. This is fairyland and I’m talking to fairies. This can’t be real.

But it was real. Hayley knew it instinctively, even if she couldn’t explain exactly why she was so sure it wasn’t the result of some exotic fever dream brought on by a head injury and opiate painkillers.

Even more intriguing, this strange turn her life had taken had little to do with her. It was all about Ren and his mysterious origins.

How had Ren taken it when he discovered this world that was his true home?
she wondered, wishing he were here now. Hoping that wherever he was, he was safe. She wasn’t too sure about that. There had been bullets flying about when he pushed her through the rift.

When he was missing for all those weeks, had he been here? In
Tír Na nÓg
? Had he been as enchanted with the place as she was? How had he coped when he woke up here in this strange world full of impossible beauty and unbelievable creatures?

Marcroy had explained much to Hayley on her journey here, but she still found it hard to grasp.

Had Ren been so fortunate with the explanation he’d been given? Or did he just know this place and all the magic that came with it, because of who he was?

Hayley desperately wished Ren were here now. Marcroy was prettier than any creature had a right to be, but he wasn’t Ren, and she could do with something familiar. Trouble was, Hayley had no idea where Ren was. Marcroy said the rift had closed before he came through. Was he back home, trying to explain
her disappearance? Had the cops arrested him? Was his mother’s stiff-backed lawyer, Eunice Ravenel, trying to get Ren released on bail as Hayley stood here grappling with having crossed into a world where Ren was a prince and not simply a troubled teen with self-harm issues?

‘I have business with Jamaspa on behalf of the queen, Ellie,’ Marcroy informed his sister, placing his hands on Hayley’s shoulders from behind, his breath tickling her ear and sending shivers down her spine. His touch was electric. ‘So Hayley will be staying with you for a time.’

Elimyer’s eyes lit up. She seemed unduly pleased by the prospect of a houseguest. ‘That’s wonderful! Do you paint, dear? Draw? Write poetry? Play an instrument, perhaps?’

Hayley shook her head. ‘Not really.’

‘Pity,’ Elimyer sighed. She turned to Marcroy, filled with disappointment. ‘You didn’t bring her here for me to inspire her, then?’

‘No,’ Marcroy said. ‘She is a guest, Elimyer. Not your lunch. Be nice to her.’

‘A guest like Sorcha?’ she asked, with a raised brow and a slight edge to her voice. Hayley got the feeling there was something important being said here — something she should probably know about. She was too enchanted by her surroundings, and far too polite, to question either Marcroy or his sister about it.

Marcroy glanced at Hayley for a moment and then shook her head. ‘No. Not like Sorcha, Ellie. This one is my friend, not my lover.’

‘Then she’ll be here a little longer than Sorcha, I suppose?’

‘Perhaps,’ Marcroy said with a shrug. ‘We’ll see.’

Elimyer took Hayley by the hand, smiling. ‘You’ll be wanting something to eat, I’m guessing,’ she said, drawing her away from Marcroy. ‘Trása eats all the time when she’s here. Something about being half-human. Are you half-human, dear?’

‘I’m all human, as far as I know,’ Hayley said. She didn’t think her father’s annual eggnog-fuelled insistence they were descended from a long line of Celtic seers counted with this Faerie creature as evidence she might be anything other than entirely human. ‘But yes, I
am
hungry.’

In fact, Hayley couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. It was some time last night, but even that seemed hard to pin down. After dinner at St Christopher’s. She’d eaten some of her stepmother’s delicious, buttery shortbread. Was it only last night? For some reason, time felt different here — as if it flowed at a different pace.

Not that anything about Hayley’s life was ordinary, at the moment.

Life
had
been ordinary until just before Ren appeared out of nowhere at St Christopher’s — after everyone had just about written him off as dead — to whisk her away to this alternate reality and abandon her here on her own.

Where are you, Ren
? she wondered silently, as Elimyer beckoned her inside.
When are you going to come and get me?

Although you were right about one thing. You said you knew some people who could cure my blindness.

But it’s done now.

When can I go home?

P
ART
O
NE

CHAPTER 1

‘Onushirano shoguno namaewo mouse?’

‘Why do they keep asking who our lord is?’ Trása asked. She glared at Ren, both of them breathing hard after running behind their samurai captors’ horses for the better part of an hour. Climbing to her feet as the samurai dismounted, she brushed the sand from her jeans and glanced around, peering through the darkness for some hint as to where they might be.

Looking around, and trying to determine the same thing, Ren rubbed his wrists. They were chafed and raw from the hemp rope the soldiers had tied them with, before dragging their prisoners at a stiff trot from the stone circle where they’d landed in this reality to this torch-lit compound set on the edge of a vast forest. Although Ren couldn’t be sure in the darkness, the forest was mostly huge, yellow-flowering
kozo
trees. Ren recognised them because Jack had been cultivating a struggling specimen at home in a large clay pot in his beloved glasshouse — and lecturing any unsuspecting visitors on the origins of every single plant in the whole building every chance he got. Jack’s hobby lectures enabled Ren to identify the species, but he had never imagined
kozo
trees so tall, or so numerous.

The buildings to their left, and there were quite a few, appeared to be a residence and a number of smaller dormitories
and barracks. Beyond them, the fires of a working forge glowed red in the darkness, accompanied by the rhythmic, metallic clanging of a smithy plying his trade. On the other side of the compound, in a much better-lit area that must be running a night shift, given the number of people working, there were a series of open shelters with long tables and several large vats at one end. The air reeked of lye, although Ren had no idea why.

But the odd smell of this place was a puzzle for another time. He turned to Trása, hoping her experience as a rift runner might shed some light on their current predicament. And perhaps some clue to where they were. ‘Do you understand what they’re saying now?’

She shrugged. ‘Sort of. They’re speaking some kind of Japanese dialect, aren’t they? With a bit of Gaelish thrown in for good measure?’

‘Near enough,’ Ren agreed, as the man in charge shouted an order to his men to keep the prisoners there until he returned. The mounted warriors were staring at them with suspicion and mistrust. The easiest way for him and Trása to get themselves killed at this point, Ren guessed, was to try to make a break for it. ‘You ever been to Japan?’

She shook her head. ‘Not in your realm. But all rift runners are imprinted with languages they might encounter in another realm. I never needed this one until now. Are we still in Eire, do you think?’ she added, turning a slow circle to study the mounted warriors with their suspicious stares and their drawn bows aimed squarely at them.

‘We’re surrounded by a platoon of pissed-off samurai,’ Ren said. ‘I’m guessing not.’

Trása shook her head. ‘That doesn’t mean much. I’ve been in realms where the whole world was populated by Chinese who worship the Pristine Ones. There’re thousands of them ruled by the
Djinn
, thousands more ruled by maharajas. There’s even a
reality I’ve heard of where the Neanderthal still rule Europe. This could just be a realm where the Japanese are in ascendancy.’ She moved a little closer to him, until they were back-to-back, and added with a whisper over her shoulder, ‘If their magic is anything to go by, the
Youkai
here are very powerful. Can you feel it?’

Ren nodded, as another thought occurred to him. ‘You could turn into a bird and be out of here in a couple of minutes, couldn’t you?’

‘I’m not prepared to risk it,’ she said, and then lowered her voice even more to add, ‘Suppose the magic here triggers Marcroy’s curse and I can’t turn back?’

‘I can break the curse for you, can’t I?’

‘Sure. Do you know how?’ When Ren didn’t answer her — because he really didn’t know exactly what he was supposed to do to break the curse — she added, ‘Besides, these samurai look like they don’t miss very often. Owls don’t take off that fast.’

She had a point, Ren supposed, but still, he thought she at least might want to try. They were prisoners here and things were only likely to get worse. Now, while they were still in the open, she might have some chance of escape.

Rule Four of the
What To Do If You’re Kidnapped
rules drummed into him by his mother’s bodyguards leaped to mind.

Run if you get the chance.

Never run in a straight line.

Make a ruckus.

Get somewhere public as fast as you can.

Granted, they hadn’t been kidnapped exactly — they’d voluntarily jumped through a dimensional rift to trespass in this reality — but the situation seemed close enough. Regardless, they had to get away, either by talking their way out of it or escaping, although where they might
escape to
was almost as big a problem as staying put. They couldn’t waste time here
as prisoners of who-knew-what. Somewhere out there in the maelstrom of infinite realities, his brother, Darragh, and his friend, Hayley, were trapped.

If they weren’t in this realm, they were in another — maybe back in Ren’s magic-less realm, maybe in the one Darragh and Trása came from or maybe another random reality like this one. Hayley had stepped through the rift into Darragh’s realm a moment before Ren and Trása did, so Ren assumed she, at least, was safe and well. Ren had jumped through after Hayley, and he was here with Trása, so he figured Darragh was most likely still caught back in his world with only Sorcha for company and aid.