CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I ran after the little girl. There was a tumble of ruins past the garage, some building not strong enough to withstand the crushing hand of nature. I picked my way around it and through a tangle of bushes and—

Three men stood there. I stopped short, backing up into Gabriel, who caught me. I glanced over at him. He was scanning the landscape—the field and trees, the lake just visible behind them. He gave no sign of seeing the men, and when I looked again, I realized why. The one closest to me was dressed in an old-fashioned hunting jacket and boots, his hair slicked back, with massive sideburns.

Men from a different era. Ghosts or visions. One leaned on a shovel. Another held a gun. The third was dapper, wearing gloves and a bowler hat. When I turned, the Villa and all its buildings were gone, and I saw only field and trees and holes. Construction had just begun.

“I’m telling you, there’s something here,” said the man leaning on the shovel. The foreman, I guessed. He had a thick Scottish accent.

“And I’m not denying it,” said the man with the hunting rifle. “We’ve got squatters, Mr. Mills. That’s what happens when you build on land long empty. Folks consider it theirs.”

The foreman shook his head. “If it’s squatters, then where are the huts? The tents? Whatever’s here, it’s not natural.”

“It’s perfectly natural,” the hunter said. “We’ve seen them and we’ve heard them. They’re canny, always flitting about, hiding on us. But you’re making a fool of yourself, Campbell, filling Mr. Mills’s ear with your old-world nonsense.”

“Mr. Napier?” The dapper man—Nathaniel Mills—spoke to the hunter. “I believe you have work to do. I want those fox holes cleared out today.”

“I’d rather be clearing the squatters,” Napier said. “Begging your pardon, sir, but I believe they’re a greater nuisance than a few foxes.”

Mills dismissed the hunter, and the man stalked off, grumbling under his breath. When he was gone, Mills turned to the foreman.

“Whatever’s out there isn’t canny at all,” Mills said. “It’s uncanny. Unnatural. I’ve heard laughing when no one’s there. I’ve seen figures that disappear in broad daylight. The other night, when I was walking the grounds with my dogs, I heard music and my hounds wouldn’t take another step. They tore back to the motorcar and cowered there. Napier might think me a fool for saying so, but I’ll believe what I see and what I hear. My granny used to tell me stories . . .” He peered across the wild yard. “Something’s out there, and I’ll not bring Letitia here until it’s safe.”

“You’re a wise man, Mr. Mills. Folks like Napier don’t understand. They think every danger can be fought with a good hunting rifle.”

“This one cannot.” Mills looked at the foreman. “I trust you know how it can be handled?”

“Not myself, sir, but I know folks that do. The question is how you’ll want it dealt with. Like those foxes, we can smoke them out and hope they’ll relocate. That’s what I’d advise myself.”

Mills shook his head briskly. “No. I told Napier I don’t have time for that with the foxes, and the same goes for these . . . whatever they are. I want them gone. Permanently. Get them gone and call in a priest to bless the land. I want a good Christian home for my wife and our children.”

The foreman looked uneasy. “These aren’t foxes, sir. They’re—”

“—a far more dangerous sort of vermin. Get them gone. If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

Mills strode off, disappearing as he walked. I turned back to the foreman. He’d vanished, too. The ruins reappeared, and the little girl, who stood watching me, waiting.

“There were fae here,” I said. “But they weren’t the sort that are in Cainsville.”

“They were and they weren’t. When the woodlands began to vanish in the Old World, some fae came to the new one and founded towns like Cainsville.”

“Where they could control their environment. Keep to themselves and maintain the boundaries. Mingle with humans only as much as they cared to mingle.”

“Yes. As those safe havens grew, some of the wilder fae found homes there. But in the early days, they took refuge where they could. In places like this. Today, wherever they might live, the Tylwyth Teg and the Cwn Annwn are kept safe by human ignorance. One cannot fear what one doesn’t believe exists. In the early days, though, there were more believers, and sometimes it ended like this . . .”

The sun flashed, blinding bright, forcing my eyes shut, and I reopened them to a moonless night. Men carried torches at the perimeter of the main property. A dozen men with torches and bags. They dumped something from the burlap sacks in a ring around the grounds.

“What is this?” one man called. “It looks like . . . metal shavings.”

Iron. They’re sowing iron.

I shivered in spite of myself and rubbed my arms. I glanced around, but Gabriel and the little girl were gone. It was just me, alone in the yard, watching the men work. At a whisper, I saw a shadow slip behind a tree.

“Cad atá ar siúl?”

I turned toward the voice. A woman stood beside me. Or it looked like a woman—I struggled to focus on her, as if she were behind old glass, her form and features shifting and blurring. She was my height, with dark hair and sky-blue eyes. Those eyes were fixed on the men.

“Cad atá ar siúl?”

What’s happening? That’s what she was asking. I knew it, though I couldn’t place the language.

They’re sowing iron filings, I wanted to say. But what came out was, “Níl fhios agam.”

I don’t know.

The men finished the circle, a huge one that wrapped around us and the land that would one day hold Villa Tuscana. Then the torches went out. I stood there, with the woman, unable to speak or move, as voices whispered all around me. What’s happening? What’s going on? What should we do?

We don’t understand.

The torches leapt to life again, but the flames . . . the flames were blue, and I caught a whiff of something both unfamiliar and terrifying, something that chilled my very core. That’s when the screams began.

“Run!” I shouted, wheeling to the woman beside me. “Run!”

I heard my voice, my English words, and saw her stare in fear and incomprehension, and I struggled for the right words, any that would help, but I knew none would. Nothing could help.

The men threw the torches, and the blue fire ripped through the dry field, devouring it at an impossible speed. The woman ran. Others ran, too, shadows and forms in the night, all racing for safety . . . and stopping when they reached the perimeter the men had drawn. The ground sown with iron.

They cannot cross. They’re trapped.

The fire caught a shimmering figure in the field, a blond man. It caught him . . . and it rolled over him, consuming him, leaving screams long after he’d vanished. Terrible, unearthly, impossible screams, as if the very ground continued to shriek after he’d disappeared.

I could see the iron filings on the ground. I raced over and reached down. They burned my fingers. I lifted a handful to throw aside, to clear an opening for the others, those whose blood ran true, who could not cross. But the filings fell through my fingers. I frantically tried to scoop them, then to kick them aside, to no avail. The field was aflame and all I could hear were the screams of the dying, trapped within the circle.

Then I saw another figure. One of flesh and bone, no shimmering phantasm, no blurred and shadowed being. Gabriel, standing where I’d left him, the blue flames swirling around him.

I raced back, shouting his name, but the screams drowned me out. He just stood there, impassive, his shades still on as he stared out into the blazing field. When I drew close, he turned to me.

“I smell fire,” he said. “And I hear . . .” He trailed off, brows knit in confusion.

The flames licked at his feet, and I grabbed for him, but I stumbled and it was like falling face-first through a portal. I was in darkness, and then I wasn’t, and I was still stumbling, still falling. Gabriel caught my arm and pulled me upright.

“Did I startle you?” he said. “I was only saying that I—”

“—smelled fire and heard something.”

“Yes.” He looked out at the ruins. “It’s gone now.”

“It was . . .” I gulped for breath, and it felt like inhaling that terrible fire, as it scorched my lungs. Gabriel took my arm again, keeping me upright.

“Before the construction, they trapped the fae in a circle of iron and lit the field with some kind of blue fire. I don’t know what it was, but it was . . .” I shivered. “Awful. The smell and the sound and the screaming. They died. They all died, horribly.”

Still gripping my arm, Gabriel turned. I glanced back to see the girl there. He yanked off his shades with his free hand, staring in her direction.

“Is this really necessary?” he said. Then he shook his head sharply. “No, let me rephrase that. This is not necessary. There is no possible reason she needs to see a hundred-year-old massacre.”

I expected her to smile and answer with some riddle. Or perhaps to solemnly say that it was necessary. Instead, she walked to him and reached out to touch the hand hovering there, holding his sunglasses. The moment her fingers made contact, he yanked his hand back and then covered the reaction with a scowl.

“What have they done to you, Gwynn ap Nudd?” she said.

“Leave Gabriel out of this,” I said.

She smiled at me, wistful. “You protect him as he protects you. And the other, too. The three of you, in a circle of support, as it should be, as it was once, before the circle was torn asunder and the darkness came.”

“The other. What other? I have no idea what—or who—you mean.”

“You know exactly who I mean. Matilda, Gwynn, Arawn. Over and over, until the damage is fixed. Until the two sides”— she held up her hand, a black and a white stone on her palm; she closed her fist, and when she opened it again, there was one stone, two colors swirling through it—“are one again.”

“You realize I have no idea what you’re talking—”

“You will.”

“But this Matilda . . . am I her? Reincarnated or something?”

“Or something.” She pursed her lips as if in thought. “Reimagined. Not reborn, but born anew. As he”—she motioned at Gabriel—“is not Gwynn ap Nudd, nor the other Arawn. You are, and you are not. You are destined to play the roles again. To give us another chance. But when two sides have been at war so long, neither cares for peace. Only victory.”

“Two sides,” I said. “You mean the Tylwyth Teg and the Cwn Annwn, right?”

“There’s more to this story,” she said. “Follow me.”