The Maebown

  I huffed and sat beside her. “Explain.”

  She smiled. “Billy is going to Caorann, to warn her and the Sidhe that something is going to happen to force them out of hiding. When that happens, you’ll track the Alliance and when they’re in place to ambush the Sidhe, you’ll let us know and we’ll eliminate the threat.”

  “Assuming, of course, that the Alliance is actually going to ambush the Sidhe.”

  Sara nodded. “Yes, we’re going on what we have.”

  “God, what if I’m wrong. What if I’m leading the Coalition into another trap—what if I misunderstood what they meant—you know Ozara didn’t exactly spell things out for me.”

  “We trust you, Maggie. You need to trust yourself.”

  I flopped back into the bed and stared at the wood beams in the ceiling. “Easier said than done.”

  She grew quiet.

  “Sara?”

  “What.”

  “I think there used to be a knot in that beam,” I said pointing.

  “You’re mistaken. It was in that beam,” she said, pointing to the next one over.

  “No. I think it was this one—I’m positive. I stared at it for two years, you know.”

  She wrinkled her nose and studied the ceiling until I began laughing.

  * * *

  When I wasn’t projecting, I was scouring the internet for news about some impending disaster in Ireland. I recruited Candace to help. Any time I felt the presence, I gave a different signal—we changed them each time. Ozara’s visits were short. When she drifted away from me, I projected and followed her. The Olympians took up residence inside the first island. She searched for each one. When she disappeared, I followed her back to the desert until she left the little girl’s room. I raced back to the Weald and signaled that it was okay to work on the old Seoladán. With my help, we recreated it in a few evenings. Using pure Earth energy and Clóca, it was masked so well I couldn’t sense anything when I stood directly over it. It took a little practice, but I managed to create a perpetual field. When Ozara left Aether plugged in at the other Seoladán, she’d inadvertently taught me how to hide things from her. The Fae avoided the old Seoladán, staying close to the cottage and the second island—Ozara’s presence never went up the hill. It was like that for seven long days, a cat and mouse game of me watching her watching me.

  * * *

  Sean, Ronnie, and Gavin tossed a football with Mitch just beyond the rock patio that looked over the lake. Candace, Grandma Sophie, and I were in the front garden. Sara offered to deadhead the flowers, but I wouldn’t let her. We needed a distraction, something to do outside, so we worked. I took frequent breaks to project, but the Alliance seemed eerily content to wait in the desert. It was odd, being bent over in the late summer sun pulling weeds, but it was completely cathartic.

  “It’s really quite beautiful,” said a deep voice behind me.

  I’d been so lost in thought, I hadn’t noticed Poseidon come up from the lake. “Thank you. Please,” I said, motioning for him to come through the gate.

  He nodded, opening the gate with his mind. Justice trotted up to him and pushed his nose into the palm of Poseidon’s hand. “Justice…no,” I said.

  “No, we are good friends, your dog and I. He visits me at the lake.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel better, he only likes some Fae.”

  “Really?” Poseidon said, ruffing Justice’s head.

  “He hates Unseelie. Growls every time they’re around.”

  My brain didn’t believe my eyes when Poseidon bent over and let Justice paw his silver beard. “Then we have that in common, Justice. Wish I’d had you sixty-one hundred years ago.”

  Gavin’s story about Atlantis bubbled up from a memory. I didn’t have any words—what could you say to a Fae who’d lost everyone and everything he’d ever cared about?

  In the bright sun, Poseidon’s eyes seemed even more like liquid sapphires shimmering under lashes that looked like strands of sterling silver. “I apologize—that is too dark a subject, perhaps.”

  “Actually, if it doesn’t upset you to talk about it, I would like nothing more than to learn.”

  “Me, too,” Candace said.

  “Me, three,” Grandma added, taking off her gloves.

  Poseidon studied us, a smile growing under his silver beard. “I think a story is better when you can see.”

  “Oh my god, really?” Candace said, throwing her pruners down.

  The silver-haired Atlantean walked through the garden to the stone table overlooking the lake. I took a seat next to him. Gavin, Mitch, Sean, and Ronnie crowded next to Candace and Grandma.

  Poseidon smiled; iridescent tears, like liquid pearls, formed in the corner of his eyes. “I have not shared this with anyone. Atlantis was an isle of unequaled beauty—the one time in our history where human and Fae lived in harmony. I want to share this with you, Maggie O’Shea, as proof that what you seek can be found. There were fifty in my clan, and two hundred thousand humans—what I’m going to show you we accomplished in just a century.”

  The flowers of the Weald garden transformed as Poseidon began compelling us. The cottage dissolved, the bluffs melted away, and the lake rose. My heart raced as my t-shirt and shorts loosened into pale white material smoother and softer than any I’d ever felt. In my fingers, it reminded me of silk, but slightly thicker and more pleasant to the touch. A gentle breeze played with my hair and caressed the bare skin of my arms. It carried a floral scent I wasn’t familiar with. I drew in a deep breath and let it sink into my lungs. Fresh, clean, and soothing.

  “That is the scent of the Atlantean Rose—we called it Corosethia. It’s extinct now,” he said, pointing to a vining waxy-leafed shrub growing up a wall of smooth stacked stone. On every branch, deep fuchsia blooms poked out into the evening sun. Below us, a stone-lined canal shimmered past a stone dock. Golden-skinned men, wearing the same material as my gown, unloaded baskets of fish from a sleek wooden sloop with a shimmering white sail. Beyond the canal, and a slight rise on the opposite bank, were fields of black earth with rows of plants. They stretched to a distant wooded hill. To the west, just below the setting sun, a large conical mountain dominated the horizon in the golden haze.

  “This was Caspia, as I last saw it,” Poseidon said.

  I turned and saw what hadn’t been there seconds before. Tucked into the crook of two small hills were buildings of red-brown and black stone. Placed around a piazza, they were polished like marble and reflected the orange-pink clouds in the evening sky. I stood to climb the stairs.

  “I will take you there, Maggie. Remember, nothing you see is really there—I don’t want you tumbling down a hill,” Poseidon said.

  No sooner had I sat down, than the vision changed. We were seated at an engraved table and the sun had set. The building glowed with glass lamps, and gauzy curtains tossed in the breeze. The sky was a dark indigo blue, and toward the east where it was darkest, the stars were becoming visible. The soft sound of music, stringed instruments, and laughter filled the piazza. A woman with light gray, wide-set eyes brought a platter of roasted vegetables to our table.

  “Her name was Licia. This was her home—she had three children.”

  “How many people lived here?”

  “Five hundred thirteen, mostly fisherman, farmers, and their families. There,” he said, pointing to the black stone fountain burbling in the middle of the paved square, “His name was Thaddeus. He was Atlantean Fae. He served as a village elder.”

  Thaddeus was handsome—bronze skin and light brown hair coiffed short in the style of all the men I’d seen. He looked like Lucia’s brother, with massive gray eyes set wide in a chiseled face. He knelt at the waist and raised both hands, palms up, in a sort of greeting, when a small gray-haired woman shuffled past him with her arms full.

  “She looks quite old.”

  “Yes, Candace. It would surprise you to know that the average life-span of the people here was nearly ninety years—considerabl
y longer than any civilization then or since.”

  Poseidon explained that the Atlantean Fae had taught humans how to make glass and steel before it was invented anywhere else in the world. The homes had plumbing, and no one starved.

  “So Fae and humans…it worked?”

  “Yes, for one hundred and twenty years. Until Zarkus and the Unseelie—but I digress.”

  “It’s really beautiful, but isn’t there supposed to be a large city?” Ronnie asked.

  “Shall I show you Poseidus, the capital city?”

  “Poseidus?” I asked.

  Poseidon merely smiled.

  The vision changed again. We stood on the deck of a wooden boat, sail unfurled, and silently cruised up the canal under a starlit sky. Gavin wrapped his arm around my waist.

  “Did you ever visit—before it was destroyed?”

  He nodded. “I’d forgotten how beautiful and peaceful it was.”

  “Were you Olympian then?”

  “Yes, I was. This, the grand experiment, fascinated me, but the Elders thought it was dangerous.”

  “Grand experiment?”

  “Yes. This was the original test. Before Poseidon and his clan transformed it, this was nothing but a barren thirty-two-mile-long rock.”

  Mitch wiggled his way in between us, wrapping his arms around my waist, leaning his head into Gavin’s side.

  “What do you think?” Gavin asked.

  Mitch looked up, his leaf green eyes as big as saucers. “It makes me sad.”

  “Me, too,” he said, squeezing Mitch’s shoulder.

  Grandma seemed as awestruck as the rest of us. She asked Poseidon dozens of questions, all of which he seemed eager to answer. Candace and Ronnie joined in, both of them feasting on the experience.

  We cruised miles along the canal as it wound through verdant fields of squash, grain, and grapes, and then past groves of olives. We passed through a lock with massive counterbalanced stones. Poseidon explained that the intricate canals linked all twenty-three villages on the island with the capital city. The flow of water between each lock could be reversed, permitting travel in both directions. At the third lock, we passed into the Grande Canal of the capital’s outer ring.

  The City of Poseidus lay at the base of three rolling, wooded hills. A broad canal ringed the capital center, which was a half-mile in diameter and contained public buildings, baths, piazzas, amphitheaters, temples, and a thriving marketplace. Constructed of white marble and several stories tall, the pillared buildings glowed under the night sky from thousands of glass lanterns. It was awe-inspiring.

  We passed under bridges that linked the city center with the second ring of the city, where residences of black and red stone flanked cobbled paths planted with olive and lemon trees. Balconies along the paths displayed dozens of species of Atlantean Rose planted in finely crafted pots of myriad designs. Another, wider canal separated the second and third rings of the city. The outer ring, tucked inside a thick, heavily ornamented stone wall, contained the glass shops, the metal furnaces, the artisans, the fabric mills, and more residences. The Atlantean military housed guards in the outer ring, where sentinels patrolled the parapet atop the wall. I found myself wanting to stay in the city. Music echoed along the waterway, people meandered above us, and the further we travelled, the more I wondered what depraved and malignant heart could have destroyed such a beautiful place.

  The image faded away, and for a moment, it felt like I was waking from the most wonderful dream. I wanted desperately to go back. But there was no going back. Poseidon hung his head. Gavin reached across the table to him. “My brother,” he said.

  “Six thousand years—I still hear their screams…” Poseidon whispered.

  Candace got up from the bench and wrapped her arms around him. He looked up and smiled, then turned to me. “I wanted you to see what could be done together—I still believe.”

  I nodded. It inspired me. The grumpy old Fae who spoke only to Justice knew exactly how to soothe my nerves. I felt deep affection for him.

  “None of the people knew that I was Fae. None needed to know. It can be done—I watched Olympian and Ohanzee rebuild this place. Zeus himself restored the plaster in your bedroom.

  “No…” I said, my mouth gaping open.

  “Well, no…but he oversaw it. Nonetheless, I have hope. You should as well.”

  Poseidon stood and Candace let her arms drop. He stroked her face and walked away, pausing briefly by a white rose next to the garden wall. “If I may?” he said, looking back at me. I nodded. The foliage changed shape and grew darker green, and then fuchsia blooms erupted all over it. “A memento. May it flourish,” he said before disappearing under Clóca.

  * * *

  I drank in every word as Candace, Ronnie, and Grandma relived the vision of Atlantis. Mom complained about us not coming to get her. I sat in Gavin’s lap in one of the overstuffed leather chairs in the keeping room, and Mitch crawled into my lap. He hadn’t done it in years. I pressed my face into his thick, tawny hair and listened to him breathe. Every thirty minutes, I projected. Each time I found Ozara and the Alliance in the desert. She and Zarkus traded barbs—still playing the game for the rest of them—but they seemed to be waiting. None of their conversations gave me any clues about what they were planning, but I knew my wait was about to end.

  Sometime around dusk, when the sun had slipped behind the flat-topped hills on the opposite side of the lake, and the sapphire sky reflected off the water, I heard Ronnie gasp. “I know what it is,” he said.

  Before he got past the library door, the keeping room began filling with Fae. Billy, Sara, Zeus, Wakinyan, Sinopa, Pavati, and Aphrodite. Ronnie’s eyes bugged out and he froze in the dining room as Apollo, Poseidon, Tadewi, and Enapay took form by the fireplace.

  “Well, boy, you found something?” Apollo barked. If Zeus looked like Gavin’s older brother, Apollo was a first cousin. He was chiseled, too chiseled, but undeniably gorgeous. He was also curt.

  “Umm…” Ronnie said, shaking his head. “Yeah. We’re thinking about it all wrong. We were looking for a natural disaster.”

  “Yes?” Wakinyan prodded.

  Ronnie swallowed hard and continued, turning the Macbook around with the screen out. “It’s a biological disaster—a virus. They’re calling it Irish SARS, and the Green Plague.”

  “I saw that yesterday,” Candace said. “Five people—“

  “Three thousand,” Ronnie interrupted.

  Wakinyan walked across the room and stared at the screen. Ronnie backed away a half step.

  “Supervirus. Ninety-nine percent mortality rate—flu-like symptoms, bleeding from the eyes and ears, then death. They don’t know how people are being exposed. Just that it takes about twenty-four hours from the first symptoms until the internal organs shut down when the victim bleeds out.”

  “Biological…” Sara muttered. “That doesn’t make much sense. There are several Sidhe who would welcome the loss of human life without destruction to the land. The Sidhe will not risk their lives…”

  Sean stood and stormed out of the room. Candace went after him. Gavin and I exchanged a quick look and he went after them both.

  Ronnie’s shoulders slumped. “Oh god, I forgot…”

  Wakinyan put his hand on Ronnie’s shoulder.

  “Well, so did I,” Sara said. “I, of course, do care.” She shifted and went after Sean as well.

  Ronnie continued, “There are cases in fifteen counties. It appears to have gotten out of hand before anyone knew there was a problem.”

  “Should I find Caorann?” Billy asked.

  “Do you think it’s Alliance, or natural?” Zeus asked.

  “Either this is engineered, or it’s coincidence—I don’t believe in coincidence,” Wakinyan said. “Find Caorann.”

  I chased Billy into the garden. “I’ll be okay, Maggie.”

  “I’m going to keep an eye on you, regardless. Hope you don’t mind.”

  We held hands. He smile
d and then disappeared.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  CHASING DEMONS

  “Relax, Maggie, Billy will be fine—your fidgeting is making me nervous,” Candace said, half-joking, half-serious.

  “I can’t help it. Why in the world would they use a biological attack?”

  “It won’t be limited to Ireland—my guess is the pathogen has already spread to Europe, probably here as well. Thousands of people come and go from Ireland everyday—”

  Candace’s gasp cut Wakinyan off. He smiled and shook his head. “You are perfectly safe. Had you contracted anything, we would know it.”

  “Can you stop it?” Sean asked.

  “It depends on how widespread it is. If a few thousand people are infected, it would not take much time to eradicate the agent. If a few million are infected, there is not much we can do—there are only so many of us.”

  “Could that be it? Could they be hoping that you spread yourselves too thin—pick off a few Fae who are vulnerable?”

  “Perhaps,” Wakinyan answered me. “Or they simply want our hands tied so that we miss the bigger threat. Speaking of which…”

  “I know. I need to focus on what’s happening at Yellowstone,” I finished. Wakinyan nodded.

  With everyone watching, I had a little performance anxiety. It took me longer than normal to concentrate when I closed my eyes. Eventually, I blocked everything else out and focused. The Fae in Yellowstone were exactly where I’d felt them earlier—deep below ground. They hadn’t altered the level of energy they were channeling—it was still an enormous amount, but it wasn’t any more than before. What I sensed, however, was different. The area around them was much hotter than it had been—each used a barrier, and I assumed that was the only thing preventing them from burning up.

  Crap, they’re going to trigger an eruption.

  I would go back and tell Wakinyan and the others when I could, but I had to check on Billy. In Naeshura, he flashed across a gray sea under a moonless, rainy night. White-capped waves from horizon to horizon were Billy’s only company. I didn’t sense any Fae around him. I hoped that if an enemy did look for him, he’d be difficult to find in this anonymous place. I followed his essence for a few minutes across the dark, churning sea and then allowed the tether to pull me back to the Weald.