Page 61 of Crown of Tides and Fury

Kitch pulled the zipper to the end of the pouch, reached inside, and pulled Hank free. Ivy opened her hand, and he gave her the stone.

“When Griffon took you,” Persi said, “Hank was with me. He couldn’t have put a tracker—”

“It’s not Hank.” I nodded at the bag in Kitch’s hand.

He reached inside, felt for a minute, then pulled out a tiny, fuzzy scrap the color of dark bronze. Wickham took it from him.

“A feather? A pinfeather? Ye’ve had an actual piece of Fae with ye—”

“Since the night he took me back to Dublin. I found it in my pocket, thought it had fallen off him. It just…felt wrong to throw it away.”

“Aye, I’ll bet it did. And I’ll wager he counted on just that.”

I sucked in a breath as the realization crystalized. “He planted it.” It felt like a horrible betrayal until I remembered what happened soon after Griffon had left me there at the hotel, with Urban—the phone call, when he’d voluntarily offered us information about the Fae king…and the call to the operator immediately after, to get his phone number—so I could trackhim.

“All’s fair in love and war,” Wickham said quietly, as if he’d read my thoughts.

I took the feather from him. “What do we do with it now? Flush it?”

He shook his head, smiled. “Same as usual. Wear it around with ye, when ye’re on the property. Leave it in yer room when we leave.”

“Use it.”

“Aye. Let him believe ye keep to the estate. Let him wonder. And if ever we need to… manipulate him…we have tried and true bait.”

I cheered instantly. “You think we can use it to get Fallon back.”

“With luck, aye. But for the moment, we’ll leave him playin’ nanny. After all, we’ve got a book and half a dozen Naming Powers to find.”

24

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall

At two that afternoon, we gathered in the war room fitted for battle and ready to get back to business. It was like coming back to work after a vacation that had lasted a day too long. I’d watched War of the Worlds with Persi a few nights before and hadn’t been able to shake it, imagining Orion’s dogs were just as determined as the aliens, set on destroying Muirs and leaving their bodies, clothes, and blood in puddles on the ground.

In the movie, it was biology that brought the aliens down, but we wouldn’t be that lucky. We would have to do it ourselves, and we couldn’t wait to get at it.

Persi and Kitch weren’t all over each other, or holding hands and cooing into each other’s eyes, but at least they no longer pretended the other one didn’t exist. I took Persi’s seat beside Ivy, who sat in Wickham’s usual seat, which left my usual seat open next to Kitch. Persi gave me a little nod before she claimed it.

Alexander, Wickham’s eldest, slipped into the room and sat on the floor beside Alwyn, who always liked to know what was going on, in case we needed him to fight that day. Wickham wasn’t happy to see his son there, but he didn’t kick him out. They’d been arguing out by the orchard after lunch, and now we all realized what it had been about.

Looked like the boy had won.

“Before we get started,” Wickham said, “Ye should know that Alexander will be going to the Edinburgh house. He and Davey will begin trainin’ with Wyndham, Ander, and the rest.”

I hadn’t met Wyndham, but I knew Ander was the man they called The Dragon, whose wife came to inspect the stones embedded in Hank. I assume “the rest” referred to the other Highlanders who had once been 18thcentury Jacobites.

I was honestly shocked Alexander would be allowed to train. He was only eleven! I couldn’t imagine what he might have said to get his father to agree to it, but surely his mother had a say…

Ivy turned and sent a little smile her son’s way, but gave no other reaction to the news, other than gripping my hand under the table. “Better than sitting on a shelf like a doll,” she said, from the corner of her mouth. I suspected that had been her son’s winning argument.

We put our heads together to ferret out where the Grandfather would have hidden his book where we could find it. It would have been hidden with us in mind, not Wickham. Considering none of us knew much about the old man, we had few ideas to offer.

I thought aloud. “He didn’t know any of us well, right? So it’s not like he knew where we would look.” I asked Wickham, “Are you sure he didn’t leave it in the tunnel?”

Wickham shook his head. “He kenned I’d sealed it, that ye couldnae find the tunnel, let alone something inside it.”

“Would he have left it in Castle Ross?”

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