CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Grace ushered us into the hallway and then locked the apartment door behind us.

“What the hell were you two doing in there?” Grace snapped.

I opened my mouth, but Gabriel beat me to it.

“You changed the lock on Olivia’s apartment,” he said.

“So you randomly started opening doors?”

“No,” I said. “When the lock on mine didn’t work, I was checking whether the one next door looked new, if maybe you’d changed all the locks. When Gabriel turned the knob, it opened.”

Her gaze met mine. “Just like that. It popped open.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said.

“As if you left it open,” I said. “Left it for us to find.”

“I would never—” She cut herself short. “If that door opened for Gabriel…”

She trailed off, as if realizing that his fae blood must have undone whatever magic she’d placed on it.

“What did you see in there?” she said.

“A crappy apartment,” I said. “Just like mine.”

“Don’t you bullshit me, girl. You—”

“Give Olivia the new key for her door,” Gabriel said. “Now. We will return to clear the last of her things, and you will refund all her unused rent money. If you do not, I will sue you for unlawful eviction.”

“I didn’t change her locks.”

“Then undo whatever magic you put on my door to keep me out,” I said.

“It’s not to keep—” Again, she broke off. Then she said, “I want to know what you saw in there. Exactly what you saw.”

“You tell us,” Gabriel said, his voice deceptively soft. “It’s your building.”

Her glamour rippled, her true form shimmering through. “Don’t play games, Gabriel Walsh. Not with me.”

“Nor you with me.” He moved closer, towering above her. “Tell me what we saw in there.”

“Do you honestly think you can intimidate me, Gwynn?”

“Don’t—”

“Oh, yes, don’t call you that. You hate to be called that. You flee from the reminder. Squeeze your eyes shut and pray it all goes away.”

That note of contempt—of outright mockery—had me bristling and moving forward, Lloergan growling at my side.

Gabriel only turned cool eyes on Grace and said, “If you’d let me finish, I was merely going to tell you not to play that game.”

“What game?”

“The one where you try to distract me by calling me Gwynn. I was going to warn that it won’t work. I am learning to accept what I am. It’s hardly productive to deny that part of me is indeed Gwynn ap Nudd. Just don’t use that name in hopes of distracting me. And perhaps, if you do use it, you’d do well to remember what it means. What Gwynn was. What I am.”

“And what do you think you are, Gabriel Walsh? King of the Tylwyth Teg?” she snorted. “You’re a boy. A child. I remember the true Gwynn and—”

“And I remember you.” Gabriel’s voice held a note of Gwynn’s, stopping Grace short. “Is that not what I have of him? His memories? One could argue that is the essence of a person. Not DNA, but memories. I have his, and it only takes a trigger—such as seeing your true form—to bring them back. To remind me of who you are.” He looked her in the eye. “And what you did, bogart.”

She flinched at that, and then recovered and said, “I’ve done many things, Gabriel. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Do I?” he murmured. “No, I don’t think so. When you’re ready to tell us what we saw in there—and why we saw it here—you know where to find us. Olivia?”

Grace stayed where she was as we walked away.

Only once we were on Rose’s front steps did I say, “Okay, I have to ask. What did she do?”

“I have no idea.”

“You were bluffing?”

“Hardly. Everyone has something to hide. One only needs to suggest one knows it, and let guilt fill in the blanks.”

“Sluagh,” Rose mused as she scanned her bookshelf. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how to spell that?”

“Gabriel said they were sidhe.” I glanced at him, and he nodded.

“Which makes them Irish rather than Welsh,” Rose said. “That’s a start.”

Ideally, for the best answers on this, we’d have gone to Patrick. While Rose was an excellent researcher, she was human and relied on human retellings, which often bore only a glancing acquaintance with the truth. Patrick’s books—coming from the fae themselves—made for far more reliable reading, but we were persona non grata with him right now.

We’d royally pissed off two elders in a few hours. That had to be a record, even for us overachievers.

Rose pulled a tome of Celtic folklore from her shelf.

“Here it is,” she said as she flipped through one and showed us that the book devoted a single page to the lore…and half that page was an illustration of a giant bird beating at a window.

“The birds are smaller,” I said. “Much smaller. Which would make them far less scary…if there weren’t thousands.”

“You called them harbingers,” Rose said to Gabriel. “Here, they’re the sluagh itself in manifested form. In post-Roman-invasion lore, the sluagh steal the souls of those who haven’t received last rites.”

“The unforgiven,” I murmured.

“Yes. Pre-Christian, it’s a more general form of unforgiven. Those who cannot be forgiven, who do not belong in the proper afterlife—the Otherworld. They are trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead, in the form of birds who claim the souls of the unwary. They come at night, through open windows, from the west.”

I nodded. “Which matches with Gabriel’s memories—close the windows, particularly on the west side. Anything else?”

“They’re associated with the Wild Hunt.”

“The Cŵn Annwn?”

“The Irish version of it. The lore is divided on whether they are the Wild Hunt or just another form.”

“Another type of fetch,” I said. “Taking souls. Okay, so the question is, why did we see that in Grace’s apartment? She didn’t seem too surprised.”

“No,” Gabriel said. “She did not.”

“Then I suggest we let her stew on it,” I said, “while we pay some visits.”

Gabriel advised we start with Todd. He made up some excuse about needing to warn Todd, in case Seanna took another run at him, but the real reason was simply that I’d be in a much better mood for Todd if I hadn’t seen Pamela first.

When they brought my father in, he looked as he always did—healthy and grounded and a whole lot more cheerful than one would expect from a guy who has spent half his life in prison. I suspected I wasn’t the only one who took a moment to put on a game face before we met.

As always, Todd walked out smiling. Before he sat, he tapped his knuckles against the glass. I tapped mine back. Then he nodded at Gabriel and lowered himself onto the stool.

“You’re a day early,” he said. “Guess you heard I had a visitation from the dead.”

“Actually…” I explained that the woman who’d tried to visit him really was Seanna.

“So, not an entirely welcome resurrection,” he said when I finished.

“To put it mildly,” I murmured.

Todd looked over at Gabriel. He didn’t offer any sympathetic comment, but he nodded, as if to say he understood this wasn’t welcome. Then he turned back to me with, “Well, if she tries to see me again, I’ll keep on refusing. I can’t imagine what she’d want anyway.”

“She says she knows something about your case.”

“How—?” He paused. “Right, she’s from Cainsville. She knows about the fae, then.”

“Actually, she doesn’t,” I said. “Whatever she’s coming here for, it’s bullshit. If she tries again, we’d appreciate it if you’d alert the prison authorities, so we can clear up her latest death hoax. But otherwise…”

“Steer clear,” he said. “I will. I’m not interested in whatever game she’s playing. Pam might be, though. You know how she is.”

Oh, I know exactly how she is.

“She’s already talked to Seanna,” I said. “She couldn’t resist that. We’ll speak to her next, and see what happened.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much.” Todd gave me a half smile. “Your mother can take care of herself. It’s Seanna you should be concerned about.”

“I’m not,” Gabriel said.

“Maybe so, but we know how Pam feels about you, Gabriel. If she sees Seanna as a way to hurt you…” Todd shrugged. “Just don’t ever tell yourselves that Pam can’t do much from behind bars.”

“I think she’s already proven she can,” I said.

He winced. “Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to remind you. I know you’re a match for her. Just…be careful. Both of you.”

We’d just left the visiting room when someone called, “Mr. Walsh?”

It was a guard—a young one I’d seen before, maybe twenty-one. He looked as if he’d come straight from the army with his crew cut, ramrod spine, and manner that was a little too deferential for my tastes.

He hurried over and said, “Thank-you for waiting, sir.”

Gabriel grunted, as if he was more comfortable with rudeness. Civilities meant someone wanted something from him.

“It’s about that lady who came to see Todd Larsen? Said she was your mother?” The guard inflected his sentences, adding invisible question marks to the ends.

Gabriel nodded curtly, hurrying him along.

“She asked me to give Todd something,” the guard said. “I told her we can’t do that, but she said it was only a piece of paper, and she was real insistent. So I took it.” Along with a twenty-dollar bill, I bet. “While I’m sure it’s nothing—Todd’s a good guy, never any trouble—I can’t break the rules. I figured I’d give it to you, and you can pass it along, since you’re his lawyer.”

The guard held out a church offering envelope. Which could mean Seanna was being clever, gift-wrapping her message in the most innocuous package possible, but it had probably just been the easiest place to steal an envelope.

Gabriel took it and passed an expertly folded fifty, saying, “Thank you, and I apologize if she placed you in an awkward position.”

“No, sir. It’s fine, sir. Happy to help.”

“If she comes back, I would very much appreciate a phone call. She has dropped out of contact, and I’m concerned. My mother has…” He dropped his voice and said, “Substance abuse issues.”

The guard nodded, a little too puppy-eager.

“I’d like to get her the help she needs,” Gabriel said.

“Absolutely, sir. I’ll keep my eye out. And good luck with Todd. It seems you have a decent case.”

“I hope so,” I said. “Anything you can do for him, I personally would appreciate.”

“We both would,” Gabriel added.

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, sir.”

He backed away, bumping into the wall as he went. I waited until he was gone to roll my eyes at Gabriel.

He lifted the envelope. “May I?”

I nodded. He opened it and pulled out a piece of paper. I watched over his shoulder as he unfolded it to reveal a name: Greg Kirkman.

“Does that mean anything to you?” I said.

Gabriel shook his head and handed me the paper, and I pocketed it for future research.