Another question dominated my thoughts. “Does the Alliance know the Ohanzee have retaken the Weald?”
Gavin shook his head, and broke eye contact with me. “We’re sure they do—we’ve prepared as if they do—but with the exception of the few minutes it took me to travel from Fayetteville to the Weald, none of us have been uncloaked since we arrived. The Alliance may not know—yet.”
“And no one followed you?”
He smiled and shook his head. “I didn’t sense any Fae, and quite frankly, as Naeshura I move faster than any Fae I’ve ever encountered. I wasn’t followed.”
It wasn’t bravado. I remembered following him across the Sahara last year when the Jinn sensed him. None of them could catch Gavin.
“Is that why Tse-xo-be sent you to talk to the Sidhe—because you’re fast and elusive?”
Gavin laughed. “Well, that might have helped. The biggest reason was to protect the Ohanzee and the Sidhe. Ozara is more paranoid than ever—she’s bound to learn I’ve been here. But since I’m not an Ohanzee, we’re hoping my meeting with Dana won’t raise any suspicions.”
“Do you think the Alliance will come here?”
“Eventually, yes. Dana and Ozara have a complicated history, but that’s a story for another time.”
“Is Wakinyan…”
“Yes, Maggie. Wakinyan is with your family. He won’t leave them, and Danny is close, as well. They will be fine. Please forgive me for leaving them, I know I promised—”
“No. Don’t apologize. They’re safe with Wakinyan, and honestly, I’m glad you’re here.”
He cupped my tiny hand in his thick fingers, and relaxed into his chair. Being with him made me very happy, and in truth, I had been second-guessing my decision to leave him in Arkansas from the moment I did.
“Are you going back after the meeting tomorrow?”
“I have to report back to the Ohanzee, but whether I stay in Arkansas is up to you. I know what you have to do—I don’t want to get in the way.”
The last three weeks had been crazy—the world had become exponentially more complex and dangerous. The Alliance was consolidating power and the independent clans were on edge. The Rogues were doing the same, it seemed, while blitzing small clans. It was only a matter of time before they figured out where I was and came after me. The Alliance hadn’t killed as many people as the Rogues had, but the fact that Ozara didn’t seem bothered by human casualties made learning how to create Aether even more important than before. Maybe Gavin could help me. Consumed in thought, I paused when I noticed Candace and Ronnie staring a hole through me.
I glanced back to Gavin. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I want you here.”
* * *
After dinner, the four of us went to Doolin House, a local pub. A few of the customers appeared to be tourists, but the vast majority were locals. We slid into a booth. In a hushed voice, the serious conversation started.
“Why did you let Mara get close enough to bite you?” Gavin asked, nursing a pint.
“I had no choice.”
He had a pleasant expression, but I could sense his concern.
“I tried everything I could think of, but she was too strong. It wasn’t until she bit me that I connected with the water in her body.”
Gavin sighed. “We call that teagmháil fhisiciúil. Had she not touched you, you would have died.”
“I know that now. I have to learn how to create Aether.”
He nodded. “We need to focus on your fighting techniques. You need practice—fighting with the elements needs to become second nature. I can help you with that.”
I nodded. “It was terrifying. She countered everything I did—came at me so quickly. She was so fast. I thought I was going die.”
Candace frowned and her eyebrows pressed together folding the skin above nose into deep valleys. “I knew it was bad, but I was afraid to ask how bad. I was right.” She turned to Gavin. “Her arm was shattered above the elbow and she’d lost so much blood…”
Gavin concentrated on Candace’s face, then Ronnie’s, before turning back to me. The muscles in his jaw clenched and he ground his teeth.
“Please don’t be mad,” I begged. “I was afraid if I told you, you’d put yourself in danger.”
Like sitting next to a campfire, heat radiated off of him. “Who healed the break?”
“I think it was Sara. She found me on the freighter and healed my arm, and got rid of the fever.”
“You think? Did either of you see who it was?”
Ronnie shook his head. “I didn’t see anyone. Maggie was delirious and running a fever one minute, and then sleeping peacefully the next. The wound on her neck was seeping blood and infected when we changed the bandages a few hours earlier. When she woke up, they looked like they did a few hours ago when you found us.”
“It was Sara,” I said. “I heard her voice.”
Gavin shifted his gaze to Candace.
Candace shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything. Ronnie’s right, I didn’t see anyone either. Could Sara have been cloaked?”
Gavin scanned the interior of the pub and it made me nervous. “No, Sara doesn’t know how to form Clóca. As far as I know, with Mara and the Arustari dead, there are maybe six or seven Fae on the planet who can cloak—or at least rumored to. Bastien most certainly, and Caorann, if she still exists, are two. Her-Lang, an elder with the Ancient Ones, is said to have the ability, and Ozara has long believed that Pele, an elder of the Noe Po’e, can cloak. The Seelie have tried to find her for more than three thousand years, but she has always eluded us. Then of course, there’s Tse-xo-be and Wakinyan.”
“You said six or seven, who’s the seventh?” I asked.
He nodded, more relaxed than he had been a few minutes earlier. “The Second, if the second isn’t one I just mentioned.”
Candace frowned. “Pele, as in volcanoes?”
“Yes.” Gavin nodded. “She’s Fire-aligned and quite gifted with the Earth element…I know what you’re thinking.”
“What is she thinking?” Ronnie asked.
“If she can create Clóca, and she has mastered Air and Water…”
Ronnie’s eye widened. “Oh, Air, Fire, Water, Earth…she could be the Second.”
“It’s a possibility,” Gavin said. “The Noe Po’e have a complicated history with humans, but despite the frightening legends, Pele often showed compassion for your kind. Personally, I don’t believe it’s very likely. But the question remains: who healed Maggie?”
“Gavin, are you sure it couldn’t have been Sara? She could have come as a bird or something.”
“Maggie, with the exception of the envoy who met Amadahy in Greenland two days ago, none of the Sidhe has travelled beyond the island in two months—or so we were told.”
All eyes were on me as I let the news sink in. A Fae had visited me on the freighter. It had concealed itself and it had saved me. A chill ran through my body when I remembered all the times I felt like someone was watching me.
“What’s wrong?” Candace asked.
“The sensation of being watched…” I whispered, “…I’ve felt it the entire time we’ve been in Ireland. I feel the sensation right now.”
NINETEEN
KILLINEY HILL
The instant I mentioned the odd feeling, the sensation of being watched disappeared and I wrapped us in an Air Barrier. I felt Gavin channeling energy, and his entire body tensed. I put my hand across his forearm. “It’s gone.”
“In London you said the sensation felt different,” Candace whispered while scanning the dark wood-paneled walls.
“Different?” Gavin asked.
“Yes. It’s different. When Mara was close, the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I felt her—when she was watching me I knew she wanted to hurt me. This is more like…it’s less of a feeling and more of an…well, I don’t know how to explain it…it’s like an impression, or a fading memory. Does that even make sense?”
Gavin nodded
once very slowly. “It’s time you change your scent again. This is the perfect place to do it.”
“With people watching?”
Gavin shook his head. “They won’t see a thing. I’ll compel them to see you exactly as you are now.”
“Gavin, if that’s the case, can you change me back to the way I used to look. I’d like to recognize myself in the mirror again—will that be safe?” Candace asked.
“You’d be less recognizable as a brunette or even a different race, but I’ll let you decide—the moment you leave Dublin, you’ll be under the protection of the Sidhe.”
“We aren’t right now?” she asked.
“No. The Seoladán for this part of the world is just south of here in the hills. Dublin is neutral ground,” Gavin said.
Candace took his hand and looked around us again. “Then we need to get out of Dublin.”
Gavin nodded. Candace’s eyes darkened from pale blue to hazel, and starting at the roots, her hair straightened and turned back to the familiar dark Auburn. Gavin looked at Ronnie.
“I’d like to look the same as I did, but can I keep the bod?”
Gavin laughed lightly and took Ronnie’s hand, transforming him back into something more familiar. Haunting mint green eyes and pale skin stood in sharp contrast to his thick, coal-black hair. I thought he looked much more handsome as a brunette.
“Well, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I’m going to miss the Draco look,” Candace said, wincing like Ronnie was hard to look at. “But at least you get to keep the body enhancements.”
“You’re one to talk,” Ronnie quipped.
“I look exactly like I did before, thank you very much.”
Ronnie began laughing. “Whatever. I’m not the only one with a new chest.”
Candace flushed and crossed her arms protectively. “Oh shut up. They’re exactly the same size as they’ve always been.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, you do look better this way, but puh-leaz, I’ve seen you every day of your life since kindergarten.”
“I am exactly the same. Shut it.”
“Anything you ask, Candy.”
I was laughing when Gavin asked, “And what about you?”
“I hate to admit this, but when I was little, I always wanted to look more like my friends. I used to hate the ugly comments and the nasty names, but I’m not that little girl anymore. I’m absolutely ready to look like myself again.”
His warm eyes were intense, and focused squarely on mine. “You’re beautiful to me regardless of what you look like—I see past the skin and the hair, but I can’t think of anything I’d rather see right now than your face and your eyes looking back at me.”
Candace sighed, “And you’ll never get old and fat, either.”
His words sent my heart racing long before he took my hand. His smile broadened as my skin darkened to golden brown and my hair grew to the middle of my back. Despite the low light, my loose black curls had more luster than I remembered. Gavin exhaled slowly, a deep humming sound coming from his chest. I felt lucky that Gavin had picked me, but more than that, I loved the fact that he always acted like the fortunate one.
We left Doolin’s a few minutes later and walked back to the hotel where Candace and Ronnie left Gavin and me alone in the lobby.
“So, how angry at me are you?”
I didn’t look at him, but there was no mistaking the long exhale. “I’m not pleased, but I understand why you kept your injuries from me. Something else is bothering me—please, tell me how Mara found you?”
Sweat beaded on my forehead. “She can track me…could track me when I tracked her.”
He was quiet for several seconds. “Are you certain?”
“We caught a flight from St. Louis to New York. While we were onboard, I projected to find her and…” I paused.
“And?” he pressed.
“And somehow she saw me flying.”
Immediately he seemed to figure it out. “I feared as much when you tried to explain what happened—I wanted to ask you more when you were projecting, but you seemed frustrated by trying to explain yourself. It’s clear to me—she destroyed those aircraft looking for you.” He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly.
“Yes, but she didn’t find me. We landed safely…”
His voice was louder than normal. “And then what did you do?”
My stomach churned. “We rented a hotel room in Queens, and from there we did an internet search for an empty warehouse in Brooklyn.”
“Empty?”
“One for lease or sale. I found one, a huge one, and drove down alone. Then I projected again.”
“Do you mean you intentionally lured her?” He sounded disgusted, and it upset me.
“I had no choice,” I snapped. “She was killing innocent people to get to me. Besides, she’d already figured out I was in New York.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how. Maybe she could tell which way the plane was headed. Maybe she got lucky. Or maybe she could track me the same way I tracked her—I’m probably not the only person who knows how to astral travel, and if a human can learn it, surely a Fae can.”
“I’ve considered that. Tse-xo-be thought it might be possible for us to project—many Ohanzee have tried it, but none have been successful.”
“All I know is that when I projected at the warehouse, she was sitting on top of a building a few miles away. It was like she was waiting for me. She was a tracker, after all.”
He spoke softly. “I’d feel better if I knew for sure how she found you. If there are Fae who’ve learned how to project, it might explain…”
“I know. That might explain why I feel like I’m being watched all the time, but that doesn’t explain how I was healed—I can’t use my abilities, so a Fae—”
“What? If you can’t, then neither can a Fae?” he finished my sentence. “You’re assuming that a projecting Fae is unable to control the elements with his or her mind because you can’t. That’s a dangerous assumption. You’re powerful but you’re very young and inexperienced with the elements,” he said in a whisper.
“Thanks for the confidence boost.”
He chuckled lightly. “You need rest now. Let’s get you to your room. We can talk more in the morning.”
The soft thud of the door meeting the frame set the butterflies whirling in my stomach—that night was the first time in two years we’d been alone. While I didn’t know how I was going to learn to create Aether, or what I’d do with it once I did, my trepidation disappeared. I still mourned my father’s death—it was an ache in my heart—but at that moment there was only room in my mind for Gavin. I created a Clóca barrier and pressed it to the walls, hiding us from the rest of the world—and prying eyes—I hoped. As he turned around, my heart raced even faster. He tilted his head forward, his square jaw just above his chest, and gazed at me from just beneath his masculine brow. It was such a sexy look I forgot we’d been arguing.
At no point in the last two years had I voluntarily allowed my real thoughts and emotions about him out. I had kept them locked safely behind the impenetrable barrier in my mind, hidden from Fae and human alike. At that moment, though, I wanted Gavin to know exactly what I was feeling, to see the images racing through my mind. The devilish smile and the smoldering look in his eyes meant he knew what I was up to and had already tuned in to my mind.
He sauntered over to me, at least that’s the best way to describe it. Thighs rippling under the fabric of his jeans, muscular arms draped loosely at his sides, he seemed completely relaxed…except for his eyes. They were fixed, intense. He was in my mind compelling me to relax. The tightness in my chest dissolved in a warm sensation that seemed to caress my entire body. I felt like I was on the verge of shivering, but my body simply didn’t want to expend the energy. The sensation was intoxicating.
He stopped a few inches from me and flashed a devastating half-smile. Despite the induced relaxation, my body tingled as my lungs quickl
y expanded and contracted. I didn’t want him to speak, just to touch me. He read me. The soft, warm connection of his lips brushing against my neck ignited the nerves in my skin and tingled all over my body. Without a second thought, I ripped his shirt over his head and pulled the sleeves down his muscular arms, exposing him from the waist up. Oh my god…
Before the desire to be pulled into his arms fully registered in my brain, he’d seen it in my mind and carried out my wish. His face inches from my throat and his hands exuding a warm energy that penetrated my flesh, he traced the curves of my back and shoulders and exhaled against my neck, causing a new eruption of sensations. His skin, wrapped over thick, muscular flesh, felt warm and smooth under my fingers as I traced the ridges of his chest and stomach. I felt consumed by the need to have his skin against mine, to eliminate the space between us, and he sensed it, slipping my blouse off and pressing himself to me. He read every nerve ending in my body, seemed acutely aware of every chemical rushing through my veins, and played off of them.
With each desire my mind conjured, he reacted instinctively and then countered by treating me to feelings and sensations I didn’t think possible. All of my senses went into overdrive. The sweet taste of his lips and the clean, masculine scent of his skin mingled in my brain with the groans and deep sighs from his chest, and it all drove me crazy. I couldn’t remember feeling as much pleasure in my life as I experienced at that moment. My Clóca barrier fell. I couldn’t concentrate long enough to create another, and honestly I didn’t care. Every fiber of my body celebrated when he scooped me off the floor and slowly carried me across the room.
* * *
Daybreak came with soft light filtering through the thick drapes. As Dalkey woke, the sounds of the city began to invade my new world.