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Chapter 13

Nemain led us out to the main gate, then turned toward the fortress and started to walk back in. But Henri Lajoie’s softly accented voice split the quiet evening before she opened the door.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

She stopped and straightened, turned back to face us, one eyebrow raised in question.

“When we first got here,” the detective continued, “you mentioned that the Avartagh was imprisoned for experimenting with forbidden magic. Do you know anything about those experiments?”

My heart caught in my chest, and Aengus stiffened next to me—I heard him draw in a sharp breath. It was a dangerous gamble, and one Detective Lajoie probably didn’t even realize he was taking. He was merely seizing the chance to clarify some information which might be relevant, as any experienced investigator would do.

But if she felt the question constituted undue interest in forbidden magic, she might well decide he was a possible ally or spy of the Avartagh and immediately act to eliminate that potential threat, just in case. And Nemain was the most unpredictable of the Morrigan—to the Irish tribesmen who worshipped the Tuatha, she’d personified the havoc and chaos of war and combat. Legend said her battle cry could kill a hundred men. I couldn’t guess how she’d react.

I’d wanted the detectives to direct such questions through me specifically to avoid situations of this sort. But mere moments ago they’d been asking similar questions in the Avartagh’s audience chamber, and he must not have realized that very different rules were at play out here.

As she silently regarded the detective for a long moment, my hand inched closer to the hem of my shirt and the Glock underneath.

I wondered whose side Aengus would take if it came to that—he’d given us his countenance on this trip to the Otherworld, and until he formally withdrew it, honor demanded he protect us while we were here. But this was the Dún Dubh, and I didn’t know if the standard rules of Faerie hospitality applied to this situation. Protecting the prison against any potential threat may well outweigh such prior commitments.

To my great relief, I didn’t have to find out.

“Yes,” she replied, breaking the tension. “He was experimenting with the veil, the boundary between this world and the rest of creation. This is forbidden.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. The energy I’d called up on a mental hair-trigger dissipated harmlessly into the mountain. I looked over at Aengus, who met my eye and nodded slightly in shared relief—he’d known exactly what had come close to happening.

“Why is it forbidden?” Detective Connors asked. Her partner had initiated the line of questioning, but she was jumping on it, refusing to let go until they’d gotten every bit of information out of it possible. From what I’d seen this evening, that was the difference between them, the complementary roles that made them an effective team. Lajoie was the deep thinker, the chess player, tracing all the possibilities in his mind and making the initial forays. Connors was the fighter, the determined and driven investigator who’d follow the rabbit down the hole as far as she could while Lajoie moved on and thought about the next angle for them to explore. It was a good partnership.

“Because any disruption to the veil may well doom us all,” Nemain replied somberly. “Whether hubris or madness, the Avartagh’s belief he could control it is folly.”

“Do you know what the Tamesis is, exactly?” Detective Connors followed up immediately.

She shook her head. “I do not. Others may—Lugh, the Dagda, the sons of Lir, perhaps. But the secrets of the veil are not of my domain, nor those of my sisters.”

Detective Lajoie opened his mouth to ask another question, but she held up a hand to stop him.

“I will answer no further questions about the Tamesis or the Avartagh’s experiments. That is all I am at liberty to say about this. But perhaps,” she said, her voice becoming thoughtful, “I can help you in another way.”

She looked each of the detectives in the eye in turn, then smiled, broadly and sincerely. For the first time since our arrival, her beauty outshone her menace.

“My sisters and I admire boldness and determination, and you have shown both: you have come across the veil to fulfill your oaths, you faced the Avartagh’s cruelty, you met two of the Morrigan without showing fear—yes, I know of your earlier encounter with my sister Badb, for what one of us knows, all of us know.” She paused and thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Great risk, taken boldly, should by right lead to great reward or great catastrophe. This is the way of the Fae, and we of the Morrigan honor the old ways. You warriors have taken such a risk and acquitted yourselves well. Therefore, we offer you a just reward, earned by your own actions. Once only, without obligation, either of you may call upon the name of the Morrigan in your hour of need, and we shall strike fear and confusion into the hearts of your enemies, whosoever they may be.”

I took in a sharp breath. That was a hell of a gift. To my knowledge, the Morrigan hadn’t directly helped a human in battle like that for centuries. Likely not since the days of Fionn mac Cumhaill, almost seventeen hundred years ago.

“Our thanks, Lady Nemain,” Detective Connors replied after a few seconds, in a very, very quiet voice. “You honor us.”

Nemain nodded solemnly, again meeting each of their eyes.

“This is a mighty weapon. Wield it with care, only in the direst of circumstances, for you are unlikely to earn another in your lifetimes.”

That was quite the understatement.

She then bid Aengus farewell before returning inside the fortress, and the four of us began to descend the stairway.

“Hey, Quinn?” Detective Lajoie’s voice broke the silence a while later, when we were about halfway down the mountainside.

“Yes, Detective Lajoie?”

“You heard what the Avartagh said about my…perversions?”

I snorted. “Has that been bothering you, son? He was just trying to get under your skin.”

“Well…” he began but trailed off.

We continued our careful descent for several more steps before I figured he wasn’t sure how to express what he wanted to say.

“I already gathered that you’re homosexual, Detective. Is that what you’re worried about?”

“That was enough of a clue?” he sounded surprised.

“Well,” I answered, “that and your lack of reaction to the Tylwyth Teg earlier, when we first met up with Aengus. I originally thought you might simply be exceptionally professional, but after the Avartagh’s comments, I made an educated guess.”

“Given what that asshole said, I thought there might be some stigma against it. If it makes you uncomfortable, we should have that discussion sooner rather than later.”

“No, not at all.” I shook my head, though he couldn’t see me as I was once again in the rear of the line on the stairs. “In fact, the magical community is probably more welcoming to alternative lifestyles than most. No one really cares. When you live in this world, you learn to recognize there are a lot more versions of ‘normal’ than most people believe.”

“How enlightened,” Detective Connors remarked.

“At some point, somewhere, most varieties of romantic and sexual partnerships have been not only accepted but commonplace,” I explained. “Homophobia tends to be more commonly associated with monotheism, not paganism, and you’ve spent the evening in the company of beings that ancient pagans worshipped as their gods. The Avartagh might genuinely care, but probably not. More likely, he just figured it would get under your skin, same as everything else he said to the three of us.”

“That is correct,” Aengus added from the front. “The Fae do not normally consider homosexuality a perversion of any form. As I mentioned earlier this evening, sex does not hold the same taboos among my people as it does among humans.”

“I’m glad to hear that, then,” Detective Lajoie replied. “I was just afraid it might cause some tension in our working relationship. Happy that’s not the case.”

“There may well be tension in our working relationship in the future, Detective. You certainly wouldn’t be the first to find me difficult to work alongside. But your taste in romantic partners will not be the cause.”

He didn’t respond to that, and we lapsed back into silence for the rest of the walk down. When we reached the plain at the bottom of the stair, we huddled together for a moment before heading back to the stone by which we’d travelled here.

“So what did we actually learn?” The big Haitian man’s voice chattered slightly—the detectives were once again miserably chilled.

I’d been pondering just that since we left the Avartagh’s chamber.

“We still don’t know who is responsible,” I answered, “and haven’t even narrowed down the list of suspects. We still don’t know what the end goal of the ritual is, beyond somehow destroying the power of the Arcanum, and that it has something to do with the veil between Earth and the Otherworld.

“What we do know,” I continued, “is that the ritual is extremely complex and requires everything to be absolutely perfect. And that there will be at least three more victims before it’s over, unless we can stop it.”

“Three?” Detective Connors asked, her brow furrowed in confusion. “How do you figure?”

“The Avartagh said he was almost there before the Arcanum stopped him, and he’d sacrificed four sorcerers by that point. That means five victims seems to be the bare minimum, maybe even more if the strength of the sorcerers matters. Evan was one. The Jane Doe in North Philadelphia was two. Ergo, at least three more.”

“What about the four others in North Philly, the mom and her kids?”

I shook my head. “They weren’t used in the ritual. I don’t know why they were killed, but they weren’t part of the Tamesis rites.”

Her partner nodded. “That all makes sense. But do we know how to stop the next murder?”

“No,” Aengus replied before I could. “The Avartagh said ‘patterns within patterns.’ We have the basic pattern of each ritual itself, but we do not know how the sacrifices are connected to each other and to the ‘cycles of the two worlds’ he mentioned. Like Nemain, I have little understanding of the nature of the veil and know nothing of any Great Cycle. We cannot guess where the next sacrifice will be without more information.”

“That’s a good point,” Detective Connors added. “Does it even have to be in Philly? Are we going to have to start coordinating with other departments? Feds? We don’t know anything yet that could help us narrow it down.” She looked over at me. “Unless you’re still holding out on us, Quinn.”

“I’m not,” I shook my head. “At this point you know basically everything I do about the Tamesis rites, except some technical magic details about the ritual construction and the ambush spell left behind. Nothing that would be useful to either of you. But it’s possible that I could come up with something on that front by extrapolating from the ritual itself. I’ll work on it tonight once we get home. It might be pointless without more information, but it’s worth trying.”

“There’s something else,” Detective Lajoie mused. “You asked him, at the end there, about who helped him develop the ritual in the first place. Do either of you have an idea who that may have been?”

“I do not,” Aengus shook his head, “for as Lugh said, I had left the Faerie Court before the Avartagh’s experiments. I heard of them after, and have seen the depictions of the rites themselves, but I know not the details of the events surrounding the rampage.”

The three of them looked at me, but I had to shrug. “No, sorry. It was at least eight hundred years ago. It wasn’t mentioned in the annals, and the Rectors didn’t exactly keep detailed investigation records at that time. I’ll check whatever I can find and let you know, but don’t get your hopes up. There are a lot of magical beings who might have that kind of knowledge. Too many to narrow down without more to go on.”

“Okay,” Detective Lajoie began, but then a thought struck him. “That bastard said something about time being different here than in our world. What time will it be when we get back?”

“We left at about eleven, so it will be around a quarter past eleven when we get back,” I responded.

“Fifteen minutes?” Detective Connors laughed. “All of this, in less than fifteen minutes?”

“Yes,” I replied, “although your watch has been running steady since we got here, so you’ll have to reset it. But it means I’ll have plenty of time to work on figuring out the pattern of the rite, and you two can get some sleep before you have to be at the office in the morning. The three of us can meet up at lunch tomorrow and compare notes.”

“What about you?” Detective Lajoie asked Aengus.

“I am happy to help with anything involving the Fae, but I cannot directly participate in the investigation of sorcerer matters on Earth. The Treaty of Tara forbids my interference in the Arcane Court’s jurisdiction without formal sanction from the Council or a duly appointed representative such as a Rector.”

“And the fact that Quinn is pretty sure a Faerie is involved doesn’t change that?” Detective Connors raised an eyebrow.

“Not without proof.” He shrugged. “My hands are tied, unfortunately. I, like the rest of the Tuatha Dé Danann, swore a threefold oath upon the exact wording of the Treaty. I cannot break it.”

“That’s alright,” I replied. That’s why I’d gone to him for information rather than asking him to help investigate. “You’ve done what you can, and for that we thank you.”

“Is there anything else to do in the Otherworld before we go home?” Detective Lajoie asked.

“No,” Aengus answered. “Even if the sons of Lir know of the nature of the Tamesis as Nemain suggests, we would not get that information from them. They are the protectors of the veil and would not reveal its mysteries to anyone. And Quinn here has already entered into one bargain with Lugh. Another would be foolishly dangerous.”

“What about the Dagda?” Detective Connors asked. “Nemain said he may know, as well.”

Aengus shook his head vehemently and looked away. “No. I will not—I cannot—take you to my father.” His tone brooked no argument.

I remembered the tales I’d heard about him and his father: how Aengus felt he had been slighted and responded by stealing the Dagda’s house, how the son had saved the father at the Battle of Moytura, how the Dagda had disapproved of his son’s love for a mortal Christian girl. I didn’t know what had happened between them when Aengus had left Ireland and the Otherworld, but I’d heard rumors that he hadn’t spoken to his father since. I’d never asked about their history—it wasn’t my place. But clearly something remained unresolved.

“In that case,” I broke the tension after several awkward seconds, “let’s head home.”

Aengus nodded and led the way to the carved stone. We returned to the Plain of Delight, then walked past the camp back to the gate from which we’d initially arrived in the Otherworld.


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