“If someone wanted a setting like that,” Oriel said, “they would make one. No one would intrude without an invitation. That would be rude.”
“You made that? It didn’t already exist?”
He shrugged.
We wandered down the main hall we had been following—at least I thought it was the same hall. Some time later, we encountered his mother, sitting on a stone bench near one of the side tunnels. Her appearance was similar to how she looked when I met her in my world—pale skin, long black hair—but her face was more like Roisin’s, with large, sharply slanted, slit-pupiled eyes, sharp cheekbones, a heart-shaped mouth, and a pointed chin. She was at least a foot taller than Roisin, though, even taller than me.
She smiled, showing some intimidating pointed teeth. “Hello, Erin. How nice to see you again.” Standing, she asked, “So, how do you like our world? You haven’t been foolish enough to eat or drink anything while you’ve been here, have you?”
All of the myths about humans lured into the mounds erupted in my mind, and I stared at her, momentarily paralyzed.
Her laughter echoed down the hall, and she put her arm around my shoulders. “Oh, I just couldn’t resist. I do hope my son hasn’t been starving you.”
Tiana pulled me into the side hall, which branched after a dozen steps, and then along another corridor until we came to what looked like a quaint little café, very similar to one Roisin had invited me to in Killarney Village. We entered, and around a couple of more corners, found a table with Roisin and Lizzy.
Lizzy leaped to her feet and met me before I could reach the table. We gathered each other into a hug, and it felt so good. Her smell—a mixture of honeysuckle and lavender—filled my nostrils.
“I missed you,” I whispered.
“Oh, Goddess, I missed you, too. You and Jolene, and Sam, and Jenny, and everyone. Especially, my dad. It’s lonely here,” she said.
I smiled down at her. “Don’t tell me that you’ve had to go celibate.”
She shrugged. “Oh, no, things aren’t that bad. I have a lover, and he manages not to be an ass most of the time, but it’s not the same. He’s never lived full time in the outer world, so there’s a lot he just doesn’t understand.”
We walked over to the table and sat down. Food and drink appeared in front of us. The brownies were definitely good at their jobs.
For the next three hours, Oriel and I filled Lizzy and Roisin in on events in the outer world and answered their questions. I could tell that news of Fae working with the Knights worried them.
“The resistance members I met in D.C. said they have encountered at least half a dozen Fae working with the Knights,” Oriel said. “And Erin and I discovered that a congressional staffer tied to a presidential candidate with a pro-Knight agenda is Fae. What have you been able to find out here?”
Roisin and Tiana traded a look, then with a sigh Roisin said, “It appears that Tiana and Reginn’s assessment is correct. There is a group within the Unseelie who are plotting to rule. The queen hasn’t taken an active role in more than five hundred years, so the court really has been chaotic for quite a long time. On the Seelie side, the king is debauched and doesn’t pay a lot of attention to what’s going on either.”
Tiana took up the narrative. “The upshot is that those who have power don’t exercise it, and those who want power seem to be taking advantage. As far as I can find out, the malcontents are mostly younger people, who don’t remember the last time we warred against humans.”
“And the Heart of the World is the key,” Roisin said. “That is why they are infiltrating the Knights. Gain access to the Heart, and they’ll have more power than any Fae has had in eight thousand years.”
“Any idea where the Knights are keeping it?” I asked.
Tiana and Roisin shook their heads. “That is what we’re trying to find out,” Roisin said. “We’re starting to deploy our own spies. If the Heart is found, then we need to make sure people with the proper motives take possession of it.”
“And what do you consider a proper motive?”
Tiana chuckled. “Someone who doesn’t want to keep it. It needs to go back into the Well. It’s obviously too dangerous to have the thing floating around where any idiot can pick it up and wield it.”
“But the Knights managed to find it and take it out of the Well,” I said.
“We don’t have a better place to hide it,” Roisin said. “It was secure there for eight thousand years. We’ll just have to place better wards on the Well this time.”
Lizzy walked with Oriel and me for the rest of the afternoon. I got the feeling that although she wasn’t a stranger to the Winter Court, she wasn’t terribly comfortable with it, either.
We did have one incident. Three young men—somewhat human in appearance and obviously deep in their cups—decided that it would be entertaining to harass Lizzy and me. It went beyond verbal catcalls and insults, with them jumping toward us, pinching or grabbing parts of our anatomy, then jumping away. They reminded me of barely pubescent boys on a playground. Oriel attempted to scare them off, but they simply taunted and laughed at him.
One of them came a little too close to me, however. I reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around, and jumped on his back with my arm around his throat. In my other hand I held my dagger with its point resting against his cheekbone, less than a millimeter away from his eye. He froze in place.
“Now we’re having fun, aren’t we?” I crowed into his ear and grinned at his buddies. “Shall we place wagers as to whether or not I’ll stick this knife into his eye? Afterall, I’m just a girl. Maybe I’m squeamish. Maybe the knife isn’t real but just an illusion.”
The other two stared at me. Sweat broke out on the brow of the man I held.
“Aw, come on,” I jeered. “Where’s your sporting blood?” Nobody moved. “Okay, suppose we don’t bet on an eye. How about a testicle? I seriously doubt he has any use for those. If he did, he wouldn’t need to harass girls.”
My captive’s breath came quicker and louder. My legs were wrapped around his waist, and I straightened one out, then brought my heel violently between his legs. He crumpled, and I leaped free of him toward the other two.
“Who wants to play next?”
No one volunteered, so the three of us walked away.
Lizzy chuckled. “Even without magic, you’re a handful.”
“I’m just not a fan of jerks. I got bullied enough when I was a trainee with the Illuminati. The only thing that kept me going some days was the fantasy of payback.”
A while later, Oriel stopped. Lizzy pulled me into a fierce hug and said, “Take care of yourself.”
I looked around but didn’t see anything more unusual than any place else we had been since Oriel brought me underground.
“You have to go back?” I asked. “Okay. It was great seeing you. Take care.”
Lizzy shook her head. “No, it’s time for you to go. Say hello to Jolene for me.” She pulled me back into the hug. “I love you. You’re a good person, Erin. A hero.”
She stepped back, and Oriel took my hand. The next thing I knew we were passing through the churning, tainted ley lines again. We didn’t seem to be caught in them as long that time. And then we were out in the world, with the sun setting in front of us. I looked around and discovered we were standing in front of Oriel’s house in Killarney Village.
Chapter 14
“We walked three thousand miles in two days?”
Oriel shrugged. “If you want to look at it that way. As to how long it took, time is different under the mounds. It might have been two days, two hours, or two weeks in this world’s time. With the ley lines as screwed up as they’ve been, it’s even worse than normal.”
I turned on my phone and was astounded to see that it had been five days since we entered the mounds in Virginia. My first impulse was to call McGregor. I had been worried about him ever since we abandoned him.
“Erin! Good to hear from you. Where are you?” Ian sounded cheerful, and I relaxed.
“Killarney Village. We just got in. Are you all right?”
“Oh, yeah. Landed in Portland the day before yesterday and took the train in that night.”
I asked if he had heard from Frankie and the other members of our group that went to Washington, and he assured me they were all safely back in Westport. Feeling better about how things had turned out, I asked Oriel to drive me in to Rosie’s.
On the way, I checked the news on my phone and found very little about the Knights or martial law in D.C. One thing I definitely knew was that the ley lines were still screwed up. The longest that had gone on in the past was a week. The majority of mages in the world didn’t have one of the Knights’ rubies to filter the affects, so that meant a lot of people were sick in bed. I wondered if people might die if it went on for too long.
Sam was working behind the bar, talking to Karl Langermann, when we entered the pub. He came around to give me a hug, then took our orders, and set our drinks in front of us.
“So, Ian tells me you ventured into the mounds,” Sam said, leaning on the bar.
I nodded. “Evidently, I really do have some Fae blood. Interesting experience, although I didn’t really see very much.” I took a sip of my beer. “Sam, I tried to check on the news when we arrived back, and I’m not seeing much at all. Before we left D.C., the president had declared martial law, the military was fighting an all-out battle with the Knights, and the Capitol building was in the middle of a civil war. Is everything over?”
Sam sighed. “Not over by a long shot. Martial law gives the government the power to regulate the news.”
He went on to tell us that things had gotten worse. The situation in Washington had settled into a grim stalemate. The Universal Church had declared the U.S. government had no jurisdiction over it under the principle of separation of church and state, plus the divine blessing of the Deity on the Prelate. Several countries controlled by the Church had made threatening noises in support of the Church. Poland, Italy, and Mexico had mobilized their militaries.