Page 123 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“The wolf pack? And they were willing to see him?”
Another nod. “Wouldn’t let me get within earshot, but you know they were planning something. Moran’s about as secretive as you, Jonny, but a few extra pints, and he mentioned Caomhán was talking about the Order, and if—” Cary cut himself off with another suspicious glance my way.
Jonathan rapped the table again impatiently. “I told you, she’s fine. What did Moran say about the Order?”
Cary sighed. “Only that they’re watching Caomhán. A bit more carefully these days, if you know what I mean.”
Jonathan looked queasy. “Anyone else, then?”
Cary cast an eye upward as if searching his memory, but it was clear by his stifled smirk that he had something much larger to share. This one liked to play games. “I know who it is you’re looking for, Jon, andhe’s not been seen for months. Although rumor has it he’s asking for you and moving in the opposite direction. But I suppose you might care to know that Beatty’s dead.”
At that news, Jonathan straightened. A quick touch of his knee again rendered me instantly aware that Ian Beatty was another shifter—an alley cat who made a living prowling the docks and airport for fae tourists whose pockets were easy to pick. Like Cary, he was often a purveyor of information, but highly corruptible, and had had no qualms selling himself as a spy to the highest bidder. Beatty’s services often included making his subjects disappear after the information was procured. He was a popular resource for the dark underbelly of the Dublin fae and extremely good at eluding the Council and others not so pleased with his activities.
Someone must have caught up with him.
“It’s not clear what killed him. Coroner came up with shite. But a girl next door said she heard a man threatening him, asking for a box, wondering why he hadn’t found it yet. Then nothing but a struggle through the walls. Says she watched the biggest raven she’d ever seen fly off against the moon.” Cary looked knowingly at Jonathan. “That doesn’t mean anything to you, Jon, does it?”
It certainly meant something to me, but Jonathan’s touch warned me to keep that to myself. He assumed an unfazed expression and muttered something of the “perhaps, I’ll have to think on it” variety. But the rising hair on his forearm mimicked my own, prompting a cackle from Cary and a sideways glance from me.
The two men launched into more gossip about the fae community that I couldn’t follow, and eventually, I moved out of range of Jonathan’s touch and allowed myself to sink into the haze of another beer, and then another, along with shepherd’s pie and a basket of chips shared by the table.
Had Gran come here? I wondered as the fiddler started playing one of her favorites, “Wild Mountain Thyme.” Or would she have been too afraid of the gossip?
My mind drifted back to Cary’s story about the selkies—the ones who supposedly looked like me. And as the bittersweet melody played directly to my thoughts, I wondered if it really was a pirate’s blood running through my veins and whether it wasn’t that I was escaping my thoughts when I dove into the sea, but rather returning home again.
36
THE PRINCE
Surely the peasant is no man whose hand forgets the plough, nor the warrior whose hand forgets the sword hilt.
— T.W. ROLLESTON,THE HIGH DEEDS OF FINN AND OTHER BARDIC ROMANCES OF ANCIENT IRELAND
“You don’t think he’ll tell anyone that we were here, do you?” I asked when the Roving Raider disappeared back into brick a few hours later.
Night had fallen completely over Dublin, along with a heavy fog and light drizzle that neither Jonathan nor I seemed to notice, as our jackets remained open, our faces turned up and toward each other. My stomach was full and happy, my mind awhirl from the effects of alcohol, nostalgia, and the fondness and attraction slipping through my glove where Jonathan held my hand again told me he was in a similar state.
I was happy, I realized.
And not fleetingly so. I’d been that way for hours.
I shouldn’t have felt that way. I should have been nothing but overwhelmed. Here I was, at the beginning of a quest with no visible end or even a legible path. In a strange country, a city that seemed bursting with thousands of years of conversations, and a crowded pub where everyone seemed to have hundreds of years of stories within them. And yet, it had been a lovely evening. I’d been completely and utterly content to wile away the evening that way, supported by the stolid sorcerer next to me.
The fiddler hadn’t stopped throughout the evening, and even after Cary had left us at the table, Jonathan and I had remained, our fingers finding each other under the table, stroking palms, toying with knuckles, teasing inarticulate thoughts and feelings apart.
Happy. Huh.
Jonathan looked down. “Are you really?”
I flushed. I desperately needed to learn to shield.
“But I rather like that you don’t.”
“Puts me at a bit of a disadvantage with you.”
He looked down at our joined hands, then back at me. I didn’t have to read his thoughts to know the message: I could let go if I wanted.
I didn’t. Neither did he.
