FIFTEEN
My phone rang, and I looked at the number. It was Claire. “Hello?” I answered.
“Oh, Mercy dear, I’m glad you answered,” Claire said, her voice betrayed her anxiety. “Listen, we need to talk. Any chance you could drop by?”
“Of course. I’ll come right over.” I knew she would try to convince me not to share the encounter I had witnessed between her and Emmet with Peter. I felt Peter should know about his brother. Still, I hoped it wouldn’t fall to me to do the telling, as once again, I’d probably lose my nerve. I hoped that his parents would in time come to terms with their grief and tell Peter themselves. In the meantime, I had to set Claire straight about Emmet. She knew he wasn’t exactly human, but still I knew he couldn’t be whatever she believed him to be. To begin with, he had no people. He had donors, the witches who had made him. My family was as close as it came to his having people.
I left Iris and Oliver in the garden and went inside to change into a more presentable outfit, a pleated cerulean blouson sundress Ellen had bought for me. My inner tomboy fought back, so I paired it with some beat-up tennis shoes. I was glad Ellen wasn’t around to catch me pairing the dress with this footwear. She’d never let me out of the house this way. It hit me that I hadn’t yet thanked Ellen for all the trouble she had gone to on my behalf. I decided that I’d at least pick her up a card before returning home.
Stepping back outside, I decided the temperature had risen too high for me to walk, and for the first time, I felt too pregnant for my bike. I grabbed its handlebars and wheeled it inside the garage. “See you later, old friend.” I couldn’t help but give it a pat. An eerie sense of finality washed over me, and I started to cry. “So silly,” I said to myself, shaking off the tears. Hormones and capricious magical abilities made for some very intense, if peculiar, emotions. I closed my eyes and felt my body slipping. My one attempt at keeping my eyes open while jumping from one place to another had made me sick and dizzy. When I opened my eyes, I was standing in the alleyway behind Magh Meall. I rang the delivery buzzer and tried to collect myself, still feeling an inexplicable sense of loss.
I waited as I heard the sound of the large steel bar that secured the back door being removed from the brace that held it. The deadbolt turned and the door opened. Even though Claire had been expecting me, she looked surprised. “Oh, dear, it’s you. That was fast.”
I worried about rubbing her nose in my magic after the meltdown she’d had around Emmet. So I fibbed a little. “I was nearby when you called.” I entered and watched as Claire returned the steel bar to its place and flipped the deadbolt.
“I appreciate your coming by,” she said, weaving her way through the kitchen and out to the bar. I followed on her heels. “We need to talk about what happened last night. I must explain to you . . .”
“About Peadar, and about this preoccupation you have with Emmet.”
“Yes, Emmet,” she responded, taking a seat at the table with the best view of the front door. She motioned for me to join her, and I sat across from her. “I cannot warn you away from that one firmly enough. He isn’t what he appears to be.”
“And what if I told you that I already knew that?”
Her head tilted back slightly and her eyes widened as she took in my words. “You know?”
I knew Emmet was not human, even if I wasn’t sure what she believed him to be. “Yes,” I said, justifying my half-truth by holding it up against the years Claire had been keeping secrets from Peter and me. “But I don’t understand why you think I should be afraid of him.”
Her face grew taut, and she leaned into me, grasping my hand in hers. “Because he’ll try to take your son.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Mercy, hear me. I knew the first time I saw Emmet that he spelled trouble. I should have come to you then, but I had hoped to deal with the situation myself, sparing you. I thought I’d found someone who could help me. Someone who could convince Emmet to take off and leave our family alone. When they found Peadar’s body, I knew I couldn’t keep it from you any longer. I had to share the truth with you, for the baby’s sake. I don’t understand why his people need our children, but they find you when you are hopeless. They come to you when you are too desperate to tell them no. They come with their deals and their promises and their lies.”
I pulled my hand from her grasp. “What did they offer you in exchange for your son?” I, of course, had no idea who they even were, but now that Claire was finally sharing her secrets, I wasn’t going to say anything that might stop her.
She was taken aback by my words. Her skin grew ashen, and she leaned forward suddenly, almost as if she were about to pass out. “They promised me,” her words came out in a ragged whisper, “that he would live.” She raised her eyes to meet mine. “He was dying. Blood cancer. The doctors could do nothing for him. Only their kindness forced them to admit this to us and let us bring him home at all. When we got to the bar, she was waiting here for us.”
“She?”
“I have no name for her. Never laid eyes on her before and never laid eyes on her or her kind since, until this Emmet. She was such a beauty. A beauty so perfect I found it impossible to believe her to be anything but good. I thought we’d left her kind back in the old country, but it looks like they followed us here too. She said it was our music that had attracted her to Magh Meall. When she spoke, her words had such power over us.” Claire paused. “Or maybe it was only the hope they offered that affected Colin and me so. She promised us that our boy would live. He would know a life of love and luxury. Her people would raise him as a prince,” she said, her eyebrows knitting together over her sad smile.
“She promised us we would see our son again before we died. It never occurred to us that they would send him back to us a shriveled-up old man. A desecrated corpse.” She began to shake, and I reached out to her. “I don’t know why they would have done that to him, my girl.” She shook her head, her eyes imploring me for an explanation, even though she couldn’t really think I had one to give. But I did, and I could not let her go on thinking her son had been murdered in cold blood.
“They didn’t,” I said, the weight of my guilt collapsing my fear of confession.
“But how could you know that? How could you know what his last minutes were like? What he was thinking as they ripped his heart from him?”
“Because, it didn’t happen like that.” I got up, and then knelt before her. “You know that my family is different, that I am different.”
Her expression turned wary as she looked down at me. “If by that you mean you are a truckload of witches, yes, I’ve always known. I’ve got a bit of the sight myself.”
“Peadar, your son, he didn’t die alone,” I said, reaching up to smooth her hair. “And no one murdered him.”
“Then you tell me what happened to him.” Her voice grew stern. She stopped my hand from stroking her.
“He was lost, confused, and dying when I found him.”
“You found him?” she echoed me.
“He wasn’t alone. I was with him,” I said, trying to ease her pain. “I tried to help him. To restart his heart.”
She pushed herself back with great force, knocking her chair over as she stood. “You? You did this to him?”
“Not to hurt him. To help him,” I pleaded. I stood and took a step toward her, but she raised her hand as if she would slap me.
Her palm quivered as her fingers curled in toward it, leaving only the pointer aimed at me. “Don’t come near me. Not right now. Don’t come near me.”
“Claire, you must know I’d never intentionally hurt your son. I didn’t kill him. I swear. He had no pulse. I was only trying to help. You have to believe I’d never hurt Peter’s brother.”
Her hand fell to her side. Her mouth fell open, and then she laughed. A hard and bitter laugh. “Oh, you stupid girl. You stupid girl. You don’t understand at all.”
“Understand what?”
“The deal Colin and I made. That’s what,” she said and drew nearer. “Peter has no brother. The man whose heart you burned out, he was my son. My only son. My Peter.”