Page 33 of House of Furies
Mary squeezed my hand again, her sweet, familiar face back to smiling shyly.
“What was that?” I whispered breathlessly.
“Only a bit of shielding,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Poppy’s scream could kill us all, the little scamp. She never did learn how to rein herself in.”
“Then Mrs. Eames is dead.” It was less shocking than I expected. Less affecting. I didn’t know if I believed the stories about her, but I did know that there was no longer anything I could do about it.
“Oh aye,” Mary replied, taking my arm. She tugged me gently back toward the house. “But she went real quick-like. No suffering but what was already eating away at her heart.”
“No.” I pulled my arm out of her grasp. “I won’t go back in there.”
“Well, you can’t sleep out here,” Mary said with a frown. “You’ll catch your death.”
Grimacing, I nodded toward the barn. “It’s warm enough in the hayloft. Those shadow things... I’ll never rest knowing they’re prowling about.”
“It does take some getting used to,” she admitted. “Can I at least bring you tea in the morning? You have to eat eventually, you know.”
She looked so sad, so... offended. And I suppose in a waythat made perfect sense. I was rejecting her as much as I was rejecting the rest of the madhouse she lived in. Her cloak settled in the lessening wind, falling more tightly to her body, and she hugged herself, waiting for my reply.
I couldn’t meet her warm green eyes. Green eyes that had peered back at me for years and years of my childhood, eyes that had sparkled to hear my jokes and shed tears when I shed tears. But this was not Maggie, it was Mary, and Mary had just helped a little girl kill someone. I would not allow myself to be deceived, even if her eyes said: Trust me, and her smile said: I mean well.
“I can manage on my own,” I said, turning back toward the barn. “I don’t need your help, and I don’t want it.”
Chapter Twenty
Ainsprid Choimhdeachta: Guardian Angels
or Guardian Devils? A Journey
In the spring of 1798, I brought a handful of gifts to Kilmurrin Cove, following a rumor of a spring sacred to the Dark Fae. There is the better known Holy Well, which is easy enough to find, but this particular spring was a long-held secret of Waterford. Mentioning the secret spring in pubs and taverns resulted in grunts and dismissals and suspiciously high bills. These inquirieswere not wanted, and thus, I was not wanted.
It was on an unseasonably warm evening, after another failed campaign of casual suggestions in a pub, that a young man approached me as I left. He was stout and round-faced, with ruddy hair and a knowing cat’s grin. The name he gave me, Alec, was surely not his own.
“If a spring’s your thing, I ken one fit even for a king.”
Charming though his rhyming was, I was not in the mood for games. It did, however, spark my interest, considering nobody else in the Irish town seemed willing to entertain my questions. And so I indulged him, answering in kind.
“If you know the place, I have a coin for your trouble; lead on, young friend, to the place where dark secrets bubble.”
“Aye, to the spring we will go, but not without tribute. The Fae are greedy, as you and I both know.”
The redheaded boy began to walk a spiraling route through the shadow-draped town, avoiding the alleys where stray cats called and dogs barked. Wood smoke filled the summer air. Whiffs of heather from the surrounding valleys tricked one into the mindset of a bright, hot day. Alec must have walked for twenty minutes with me close on his heel, taking me to the edge of Waterford and to the cove proper. The harbor air was thick with the scent of fish, making my nose twitch from the power of it. Here the winds blew harder, and I breathed deep, filling my lungs with the air fresh off the river currents.
We cut along the top of the cove, the drop down to the waterstomach-churningly steep. One false step would plunge a man to his death among the jagged rocks waiting below. Alec moved swiftly, and in my mind, unnaturally, a fact that made me more certain of our destination. We moved inland for a half mile or so, to a place where the grass grew thin and the stones rose in a kind of uneven circle. This was the spring; I could hear the water bubbling nearby, and a curiously neat ring of mushrooms grew around the rocks.
“The spring is yon, but you must pay the price. For you, strange one, an answered riddle and a trinket will suffice.”
I nodded and told him to continue.
Alec’s smile glittered under the stars. The mushrooms sprinkled around the spring were bright red, the spots on their caps shining like a dusting of crushed diamonds. “An open-ended barrel, I am shaped like a hive. I am filled with the flesh, and the flesh is alive.” He cackled, throwing his head back. “What am I?”
It was a simple riddle, one I puzzled out quickly enough. “A thimble.”
Pouting, Alec seemed disappointed in my quick response. But then he smiled again and clapped his hands and pointed to the pocket on the right side of my coat. “The price is inside; now toss it in the spring. Who knows what manner of blessing the thimble will bring...”
I reached into my pocket, and sure enough, my hand closed around a small, cool thimble. The spring bubbled more fervently as I moved into position, and I gazed down into the roilingwaters, wondering just what might come of doing as the odd boy said. But I did, closing my eyes, casting the trinket into the spring.
Alec had disappeared when I opened my eyes.
