52. The Messenger
52
THE MESSENGER
Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise and cruel for that.
— OSCAR WILDE, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
“ T here’s a plane on standby at Galway to take her,” the messenger said through a mouthful of pastry that dropped crumbs all over Caitlin’s clean table. He had declined Caitlin’s offer of tea once we’d followed her to Connolly Cottage but made quick work of a seed biscuit. “When does the next boat leave this island? This afternoon?”
Robbie, Caitlin, Jonathan, and I had chosen to remain standing, awkwardly watching the man peck and nibble at his food. He was so birdlike in his movements that I wondered just how much time he spent in that form.
“Now, Fallon,” Robbie said as he took a friendly seat next to the man. “Surely you want to tell us what this is all about before you start ordering our guests around. Who is this Cassandra Whelan, and what business have you with her?”
Fallon looked up, small eyes flashing bright even in the dim indoor light. “Don’t be insulting, Master Connolly,” he snapped. “That is Cassandra Whelan, or I’m a cooked turnip.” He pointed a crumb-covered finger at me before returning to his pastry. “Honestly. It took me all of two minutes in the village to confirm her presence here. The whole of Ireland’s been cooking with a story of a powerful new seer in Dublin, and some of the seals’ children carried news of her back to the mainland just last week.”
“Damned mutts,” Caitlin muttered.
I glared at her but kept my mouth shut. I still hadn’t said a word since the messenger’s arrival.
“Now, now,” Robbie said, his tone even and soothing in response to Fallon’s frenetic energy. “Surely the Council isn’t believing every bit of hearsay that comes its way, is it?”
“If she wanted to stay anonymous, she should have stayed in America, where they keep their fae uneducated and stupid.” Fallon polished off his biscuit and sat back in his chair, his sharp black gaze focused on me. “I don’t know why anyone thought it would be smart to take her to the old country. Just look at her. She doesn’t exactly blend in. Tall, black-haired girl who frolics in the sea every day and stirs up the energy of everyone she touches. Not exactly the kind people forget.”
I opened my mouth to ask him just what he wanted but shut it when I felt Jonathan touch at my elbow. Don’t .
Fallon pushed back from the table and flitted around the chairs to examine me. His nose barely reached my collarbone, and he never blinked once, though small tics in his neck jerked his head from side to side as he looked me over. Finally, he reached one hand up as if to grasp his chin, but quick as lightning, he yanked a loose strand of hair from my temple.
“Ow!” I cried as I reared back. “What the hell, man?”
Jonathan pounced, shoving Fallon back to the table and flat on his back.
The bird smiled. “So it’s like that, is it, Lynch?”
“It’s like nothing, Fallon,” came the quick reply. “The Connollys are under my protection, and that includes their guests.”
“You touch one hair on my head, and the Council will have your neck,” Fallon practically chirped his reply. “You’re already on thin ice for the mess you made this spring.”
I frowned. Was he talking about me?
“Keep your pathetic talons to yourself,” Jonathan growled, shaking the small man once before releasing him. “And have some bloody manners.”
Fallon stood back up and smoothed one hand over his mussed hair, which only had the effect of making the crest at the top stand up even more. He looked pointedly at me.
“Apologies,” he said tersely as he held up the hair. “I need it to clear up this…problem of identification. Do you mind?”
“I suppose not,” I said, unsure of how else to respond. “You have it now.”
Fallon hopped back to his chair, where he rustled around the black coat hanging on the back of it and produced a vial of clear liquid and another containing a bright red hair. The same color as my mother’s. And, according to my Sight, Penny’s.
“You look nothing like her, you know,” Fallon remarked as he popped open the vial with the liquid and held it carefully as he slipped my hair into it.
The liquid bubbled and turned slightly blue, and the black strand began to glow, suddenly ten times thicker than it had before.
“I was just a lad when she left, of course,” he continued in a conversational tone. “But she was tiny and red, was she not?” He held up the vial containing Gran’s hair. “Not a black beast of a girl like you, more like a selkie than a seer.”
I frowned. I was really starting to dislike this little man.
“What’s your point, Fallon?” Jonathan asked sharply.
“Only that looks don’t mean much when it comes to heritage, and genetics even less so, especially with the likes of you around,” Fallon replied, gesturing at Robbie and Jonathan, the two sorcerers in the room who could easily disturb the function of a DNA test with just a few words. “Lucky for us. We’ve got one of these.”
“What is it?” I couldn’t help but wonder.
Fallon delivered an ugly smile in my direction. “The potion tests for magical energy. The kind that’s carried through the generations, no matter how many in between. Developed, as it were, by your father, Lynch. Something to be proud of, is it not?”
Jonathan said nothing, but I could feel the waves of tension vibrating from his stiff posture.
Fallon swished the vial around, then removed the cork from the vial containing Gran’s hair and tipped the contents of it into the one with the liquid and my hair. We all watched the liquid start to roll. The hairs now glowed, twisting and dancing around each other until the bubbles gradually calmed.
“Care to tell her the results, Lynch?” Fallon held the vial up so everyone could see it. “What does it indicate?”
But no one had to answer. The color of the vial had settled into bright blue now—the color of a seer’s energy. Where there were once two strands of hair, there was now one, suspended in the liquid and pulsing with an easy, common beat to which every cell of my body seemed to respond. If there was any doubt whose kind I was before now, it was completely gone. I was one hundred percent Penelope O’Brien’s granddaughter.
“Still unsure who Cassandra Whelan is, Robert?” Fallon asked.
“She’ll go,” Robbie relented immediately. “But she’ll not be taking the plane.”
“Now just wait, I’ve orders?—”
“Air sickness,” Jonathan interrupted. “And severe anxiety. You don’t want to know what it took to get her here in the first place.”
He didn’t dare look at me, and I knew without checking that my adherence to the charade was critical, even if I didn’t know why. I focused all my energy on the thought so that Fallon, with his animal instincts, wouldn’t be able to sniff out the truth. Robbie’s eyes twinkled with sorcery, and I didn’t have to look at Caitlin to know she was working her own magic to obscure the truth.
So, I shrugged and said what I could. “I have to take drugs to withstand air travel.” It was true for public travel, anyway.
“And we can’t have that if the Council wants to examine her, can we?” Robbie continued as if we had all practiced it.
Fallon glanced critically between the three of us for what seemed like several minutes. “If you’re lying…”
“Bloody hell, Fallon,” Jonathan blustered. “Robbie and I will be with her. She’ll be bubble-wrapped in a first-class carriage all the way to Dublin and then the boat to Manchester, and we’ll drive from there. We’ll be there in two, maybe three days if we leave tomorrow. Unless you would prefer to anesthetize her for a flight.”
I froze. There was no way I was allowing that to happen.
Thankfully, Fallon shook his head. “No, she mustn’t have her abilities compromised in any way,” he recited, probably from a list of orders. “All right, then. Three days. And not a minute later, or else the Council will have your heads.”
My stomach flipped. Three days. I was supposed to have four more years , and now I had only a matter of days before I had to face a literal inquisition.
Thank the goddess for Robbie. And Jonathan.
Fallon brushed the remaining crumbs from his shirt, and Caitlin followed their progress to her immaculate floor with a grimace. I could all but See her disdain for the man, but she said nothing and avoided my touch.
“I’ll be off then, to report back.” Fallon hopped off his stool and trotted in jagged steps to the door. Before leaving he gave us all a crumb-speckled salute. “Three days.”
And in a blink, he had transformed back into the lark that was obviously his more familiar state and disappeared into the twilight.
“Three days,” I breathed aloud.
“Three days,” Caitlin repeated, although in a far more foreboding tone.
Robbie and Jonathan’s expressions matched her dread.
She turned to me and, with substantial effort, ignored the mess of crumbs left on her table. “I think,” she said carefully,“that Penny’s wishes need to be amended. It’s time to open that box you’ve been hiding, Cassandra, and find out what we’re dealing with.”
I frowned. I thought I’d kept the thing well hidden since arriving. No one had said a thing.
Jonathan, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so reticent.
“The box?” Jonathan croaked. He turned to me, quickly enough that I leaned backward. “I thought we agreed to leave it in Boston.”
I frowned. “No, you said we should leave it there. I never said I did.”
“So you mean that— Penny’s secret— the Secret she was sworn to keep from the Council and the entire fae community—was carried across the Atlantic straight into the waiting hands of every powerful magical creature in the Western World? Gods in fucking heaven, Cassandra! All along I thought it was just you that made every bloody fae in Dublin turn and sniff.” Jonathan fell onto a stool with a thump and slapped his hand against his forehead. “How could I have been so stupid?”
“Because you were a fool falling for your mate,” Caitlin snapped.
Both of us glared at her.
Robbie frowned. “Have I missed something?”
“She knows, Rob,” Jonathan spoke through his teeth.
“Ah. Well. That’s out, then.”
“I knew what she was carrying in that bag the minute she stepped onto our property, and so did Rob,” Caitlin continued.“I keep telling you, Jonny, you need to take a few steps back. You won’t be able to protect her if she’s all you can see.”
Robbie reached over with a brief pat on his friend’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Jon. We’ve all been there. There’s a reason they say love is blind.”
“We’re not in love!” Jonathan and I both exclaimed in unison.
Robbie just patted Jonathan again, causing him to huff.
Jonathan looked up at me, fierce determination written across his normally stoic features. “You can’t keep things like this from me. I’m here to help you, but I need to know everything.”
I bristled. “Like you’ve told everything to me? Oh, wait, I think you’ve confused that with stalking, dictating, and keeping me in the dark. And that goes for all of you!” I stared at the three of them, each of whom wore varying levels of guilt on their faces. “I’m not a servant or invalid. If you knew people other than Caleb Lynch were looking for me, you should have told me. This is my life. I was completely blindsided by that Fallon person’s appearance, but none of you seemed surprised. We all need to know what’s happening if we’re going to work together. Everyone got that?”
First Robbie, then Caitlin, and finally Jonathan all nodded.
“All right, then,” I said as I marched to stand next to Caitlin. “Let’s find out what’s inside that stupid package. Maybe if the Council wants it so badly, they can just have it.”
Instead of leading them back to Gran’s cottage, I took them upstairs to my old room in the attic. I hadn’t dared to bring the box with me, fearing the risk of leaving such a valuable thing in a house that had no locks, whereas Rob and Caitlin both kept their home fortified with charms. It had seemed safer with the Connellys, buried in a chest of moth-eaten blankets that looked like they hadn’t been touched in years.
“It was a good instinct,” Caitlin confirmed dryly as I tugged the wooden chest from beneath the nicely made bed.“Although I would have appreciated being asked to harbor a lost magical object that’s been sought for millennia and for which my best friend was murdered.”
Though her words were meant lightly, the weight of them fell like rocks.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right. We all need to be more transparent with each other, don’t we?”
I rifled through the chest again, tearing out the blankets with abandon and finding only unvarnished wood at the bottom of the chest.
“I—I don’t understand,” I stuttered. “It was here. Who would have taken it?” I turned to everyone else, my heart full of dread. “Oh gods, I’ve made a horrible, horrible mistake, haven’t I?”
Robbie stepped forward kindly and put a hand on my shoulder. A flood of reassurance filtered through my system before he removed it. “You did,” he confirmed. “But since I figured it out anyway, it wasn’t hard to fix. Now, then, step aside, will you?”
I scooted back obediently and watched Robbie’s eyes flash again while he muttered something in Irish. When he was finished, his eyes softened back to their normal warm brown, and he smiled at me. “All right. Go ahead and look.”
I found the box sitting at the bottom corner of the chest as if it hadn’t been touched, still wrapped in its original cardboard,from the chest.
“It wouldn’t have hidden it permanently,” he admitted with a humble shrug. “And certainly not from truly prying eyes. But a disguising spell can be managed when a visitor like Fallon comes to call.”
I pulled the sleeves of my sweater over my hands, then took a deep breath, lifted the box from the chest, and set it on the bed in front of all of us.
“Well, go on, then,” Caitlin said. “Let’s see what’s inside.”
Robbie looked on with interest. Jonathan, however, was staring at the thing with blazing eyes, like he was waiting for it to attack. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could hear a low, thin growl emitting across the room.
Even through the cardboard, I could still sense the darkness. I remembered all too well the disorientation and blindness, feeling robbed of all my senses when I had touched the thing. It was a magical black hole. I didn’t want to lose myself in it again.
Caitlin came to stand beside me and hovered a hand above the box, careful to avoid touching it directly. “Well, you were right in one way. Penny constructed a void around it. Those who aren’t granted permission may touch it and never find themselves again. Smart, and dangerous too. Making the object a weapon itself.” She shook her head. “She always was a bit too fond of the dark arts.”
I looked down at the box, suddenly wanting to get as far away from it as possible. “You said those who aren’t granted permission. Can you tell who is?”
Caitlin looked up at me in surprise. “Why, you of course. You and Jonathan. Who else?”
“But—”
“You’ll fall through the hole together, Cassandra,” she clarified. “But Jonny’s got the power to See through secrets, and this thing is wrapped in them. It’s why Penny chose him. If you do it with him, you’ll come out the other side.”
I looked uneasily at the box, then at Jonathan, who looked shocked and even a little frightened.
“There’s really no time to waste on fear.” Caitlin poked him in the arm. “You’ve got to trust her and jump.”
Jonathan and I looked at each other nervously. Tentatively, he held out a hand. “That’s the thing about mates,” he said quietly. “You can’t get rid of me now. Even if you’re not entirely sure you like me.”
I took his fingers. I do like you, you know. Maybe a bit too much.
That full mouth quirked. I know. Maybe a bit too much too .
I swallowed. If only that were true.
It is, Cass. Always .
I didn’t have time to ask what he meant before we opened the box and fell into darkness together.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. Black swallowed me, dense and thick, just like last time. Timeless, spaceless. The color and feel of ruin and hopelessness.
This time, however, I was ready.
My stomach lurched, but Gran’s words and Aoife’s song hummed in the back of my mind. Jonathan’s touch called me to him.
I’m here, Cass , he thought. Focus. Sing that song.
So I did, just as I had last night. I didn’t reach for his kiss, but just the memory of it popped something, like a needle to a balloon. Below us, a pinprick of light appeared, white and shining.
I’m here, love, Jonathan was repeating in his mind. His hand squeezed mine even more tightly.
I looked down. The pinprick grew by my feet. Until I could see Jonathan’s feet too. As the light grew, it gradually turned gold, then brown, then focused to the color of wooden floorboards, then widened some more until finally, with a cough and hack and desperate gasp, we dropped through the hole and landed back on the floor of the attic room, completely wrapped in each other’s arms.
Even in pure darkness, we always seemed to find each other.
“All right?” he asked, clutching me to him.
I nodded, seeing stars. After the horrifying dark, the room was striped with light. “I’m fine. We made it.”
Caitlin and Robbie were still standing together, watching us closely, hands clasped like they were going into battle themselves.
Jonathan offered a crooked smile. “So we did.”
We got to our feet and crept to the box, now open on the bed. I looked inside, terrified of what I might find. Was it really Pandora’s box? If we opened it, had that been the best idea?
I was deeply let down.
“All that for a piece of paper?” I reached into the box and took out a browned and brittle bit of writing no wider than my hand.
“Parchment, I think. But what is that?” Jonathan asked, coming to stand next to me. “It looks like runes.”
Caitlin and Robbie soon joined us.
“It looks a bit like Ogham,” Robbie said. “Primitive Irish, developed with the arrival of Christianity in Ireland.”
“Maybe,” I corrected him. “Some scholars think it was developed early as a way for the druids to pass messages that couldn’t be understood by the Romans.” I eyed the sheet curiously. “Jonathan’s right—this is parchment. It’s incredibly old. And it doesn’t really look like the Ogham I’ve seen in books.”
Gingerly, I turned the bit over and back, as if searching for something else. Fragmented memories floated through my fingers, but it was impossible to get anything clear from them. I needed water. Maybe earth. And above all, I needed time.
“There’s none for that, Cassandra,” Caitlin said, having read my thoughts. “You’re supposed to be on your way to England within the hour.”
“We’ll take it with us,” Jonathan said. “On our way to the Brigantian, Cass and I can stop at Trinity. Rachel’s there. She may know what to do with this, and she can keep it safe during our visit.”
“Do you really want to bring the Order into this, Jon?” Robbie asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t think we have a choice anymore.”
“Cardy?” I asked. “The scholar from…”
“When you and I first met? Yes, that’s correct.” His mouth crooked again with a bit more warmth. “Do you know, that night, she said I’d never be able to let you go? I didn’t believe her, but I do now.”
The hairs on the back of my arm stood up as the memory of his electric pull even then struck me.
Then something else occurred to me. “Isn’t the Brigantian the school for sorcerers? Why are we going there?”
Jonathan and Robbie traded grimaces.
“Because,” Jonathan said. “The Brigantian is where the Council meets. They oversee the training of sorcerers and make their decisions based on what they learn.”
I looked at Robbie. “You’re on faculty there. Are you on the?—”
“Council?” Robbie shook his head with a shudder. “Gods, no. But I know some who are. And while we’ve bought you some time…it’s true what Caitlin says. You cannot be late. Not if you value your future with them.”
I swallowed. This was all going too fast. And yet, as I cradled the parchment, some rush of unknown knowledge floated through me. A feeling more than a vision. That this was in fact the next step I was meant to take.
“All right,” I said. “To the Brigantian we go.”