Undone Deeds

3

The next morning, Murdock and I waited inside the doors of the international terminal at Logan Airport as armed security positioned themselves nearby. The plane from Ireland had landed over an hour earlier, and its passengers had not been processed through customs yet. More guards filled the concourse, and the baggage area had been closed to the public. Only people on an approved list had been let inside, and we had been ID-checked several times. With the number of high-level Guild staff and important members of the Seelie Court aboard the plane, the government was not taking any chances.

Before he died, Donor Elfenkonig had been going to great pains to blame the solitary fairies under the leadership of Eorla Elvendottir for the attack on the Boston Guildhouse. He had come to Boston in disguise in order to discredit Eorla. It worked, to an extent, but Eorla was a member of the elven royal house, and many people made no distinction between her and her deceased cousin, the king. The general public didn’t know that Donor was dead.

High Queen Maeve fed the paranoia. Anything that made the elven fey look bad made her look good by comparison. The human government had been swayed by what they called credible threats against the Celts. If I knew the way Maeve operated, she had made the threats herself.

Murdock had taken to wearing a black tactical uniform when he was off duty. It intimidated the hell out of people, and they gave us a wide berth. He felt more like a bodyguard than a friend, but I wasn’t going to complain if it kept someone from taking a shot at me.

In the roped-off area near the gate, various fey waited for their loved ones and friends to arrive. Body signatures jostled for my attention. I tamped down my sensing ability to ease the noise. Since the faith stone had lodged itself in my head, the pain from the black mass had diminished. It still wanted essence, but with the stone helping out, I didn’t need to eat ibuprofen like candy anymore.

When I had lost my major abilities, my sensing ability had become more acute. At first, it was a confusing side effect, a curious piece of the puzzle of what had gone wrong with me. As the black mass had grown and changed inside me, the reason for the acute sensing became clear. The black mass wanted essence. That was how it worked. It absorbed essence from the world around it, around me, seeking out the most intense sources to drain. What had been a nice little investigative tool for me to use had become a means for the black mass to hunt.

The faith stone tempered the hunger of the mass. The stone produced incredible reserves of power, and the black mass fed off it instead of using my sensing ability to feed off others. The two mysteries had formed a kind of alliance, right next to my cerebellum.

Behind me, a strong druid body signature pressed against my sensing field even though I had dampened it. Once a druid met someone, that person’s body signature became a recognizable feature, drawing attention like a familiar face in a crowd. There was no mistaking a signature I had known all my life.

“Hey, little bro,” Callin said. My brother towered over me. He was a big man, like our father, built to brawl and not one to retreat. From the healing nicks and cuts on his face, he had been in one recently. Behind him lingered Clure—the Clure, actually—head of the Cluries clan and Callin’s comrade in trouble. The faint odor of alcohol clung to both of them, a not-uncommon condition for either.

“Hey, guys. You remember Murdock,” I said. Hands were shaken all around. Since his presence wasn’t unexpected, Callin’s arrival wasn’t suspicious. His showing up on time did surprise me. It wasn’t in Cal’s nature. I doubted the Clure had anything to do with it either. The only time the Clure kept track of was happy hour.

Cal and I had a complicated history infused with competition, family loyalty, and anger. We had been close as children and into adulthood, but something always managed to drive us apart as we aged. When we were kids, my abilities manifested before his, which he resented. When we hit our twenties and both worked at the Guild, I was promoted faster. No matter what I said, Cal couldn’t blunt his aggressive attitude. The more things failed for him, the more alcohol he consumed, with all the attendant fallout. He was drummed out of the Guild and lost friends. He became estranged from me and our parents.

An awkward silence descended as everyone took the opportunity to look elsewhere. Murdock knew about the friction that characterized my relationship with Callin and kept a diplomatic eye, scanning the crowd rather than starting a conversation. The Clure, though, couldn’t care less. “Greetings, Connor. You’ve been missed in the finest swill halls the Weird has to offer.”

Despite what I thought of his negative influence on my brother, I could not not like the Clure. With his infectious smile and mop of curly auburn hair, he had a way of making you feel like you were his best friend. “I’ve been a little distracted, Clure.”

He grinned, a rakish slash of teeth that split his face in two. “Ah, distraction needs its own distraction betimes.”

“If I remember correctly, all times are betimes around you, Clure,” I said.

He chuckled, a warm, smooth sound of unapologetic self-awareness. Callin didn’t react. Drinking—his, in particular—was a topic we avoided unless we were alone. Then, the conversation degenerated into argument. The moment was saved by the appearance of the first passengers coming down the escalator. The waiting crowd shifted in place, excited and attentive to the procession of tired people making their way into the baggage-claim area.

The first person I recognized was Keeva macNeve, my old partner at the Guild. I had almost killed her and jeopardized her unborn child when the dark mass had taken me over. She had been at Tara these last few months on bed rest for her pregnancy. Her skintight bodysuit revealed that she had had the baby, but I didn’t see a child with her.

Cal whistled low under his breath. “Did you ever tap that, little bro’?”

“No, and I’m glad I didn’t,” I said.

He chuckled with that edge of derision that he knew got under my skin. “Yeah, there’s the difference between you and me. I’ve never regretted getting laid.”

Keeva was smart, hot-looking, and tough as nails. Too tough for my taste and with a side of arrogance I had never liked. That she ended up in a relationship with Ryan macGoren proved my point that we wouldn’t have made a good couple.

I caught Keeva’s eye, but she frowned and looked away. I guess she hadn’t gotten over what I did to her even though I wasn’t in my right mind at the time. “I don’t see a baby. I hope that doesn’t mean anything bad.”

The Clure cleared his throat. “Not at all. She had a boy. Word is she fostered him out to relatives.”

Fostering children out—even babies—was not unusual among the fey, especially among the ruling clans. Keeva was related to the High Queen’s family. Not as close as she liked people to think, but enough to make her miserable to be around sometimes.

In the next wave of passengers, I spotted my father and was struck at how much Cal resembled him. They shared the same blunt features that marked them as strong men—the height, the muscle, the swagger—and the same easy smile that could vanish at a moment’s notice. A space next him indicated the presence of my mother, shorter than average and lost in a crowd. As they neared the waiting area, I saw—and heard—her. My mother kept a running commentary at all times, and right then, the jingling of massive amounts of jewelry on her neck and arms added a musical accompaniment.

When a gap in the crowd opened and she saw us, her face lit with excitement. She pushed her way forward, leaving my father behind, and ran toward us with outstretched hands. “Callie! Connie!” she shouted, and grabbed me and Cal around the waists in a hug full of bosom and lavender.

She stepped back and rubbed each of us on the side of the face. “What have you boys been doing? Fighting? You’ve been fighting again, Cal. And, you! Look at you. You’re too skinny, Connie.”

Callin and I exchanged amused glances over her head, comrades for the moment. Our mother was, well, a mom. We received brief flashes of treatment as adults, but at the end of the day, she was convinced she should have never let us out of the house to fend for ourselves. “I missed you, too, Ma,” I said.

My father hugged Callin with a back pat, then me. If I was with my brother, it was always in that order. I often wondered if it was a subtle signal to Callin that he always came first with our father. I didn’t take offense. It was one of those things I noticed and could as easily mean my dad hugged in age order.

As I introduced Murdock, both my parents put on their professional smiles. I was sure they didn’t know what to make of him, a police officer giving off a druid body signature and wearing an iron weapon.

We wrestled with their bags as my mother pointed out one after another. She pushed back her thick dark hair and cast an appraising eye at us. “Let’s have the others sent on.”

Murdock, weighed down with two shoulder bags and a suitcase, looked at me. “Others?”

“This is an awful lot of stuff, Mom. How long are you staying?” I asked.

My mother and father exchanged glances as we moved toward the exit. “The High Queen sent us home,” she said.

I tried not to stumble. I loved my parents. I did. But I had gotten used to not making the obligatory weekly trips to visit since they had moved to Ireland over a decade ago to work for the Seelie Court. I didn’t know everything going on in their lives. The converse was true, but that was for the best. “Is something wrong?”

We piled the suitcases on the curb next to a black car. “Of course, but she didn’t say. She sent most of the court away. It’s all very mysterious. Is this us? I thought we ordered a limo.”

“I have a car,” Murdock said.

She smiled up at Murdock. “That’s so sweet of you. You can take those bags and meet us at the hotel.” She cocked her head up at my father. “Where are we staying, dear?”

“The Bostonian,” he said.

Murdock’s eyes went a little wider as Callin helped the driver pack bags into the trunk. I covered my smirk by slipping a suitcase into the backseat. “We’ll be right along behind you.”

My mother hopped into the backseat of the black car. “We’ll make room for you, Cal. The Clure can sit up front. See you at the hotel!” She waved as Callin squeezed in next to her and closed the door.

With a thin smile, my father lifted his head. “Got all that?” he asked.

I chuckled as he walked around to the other side of the car. “Got it.”

The car pulled away. I turned to smile at Murdock. The bags still dangled from his shoulders. With a flick of the wrist, he flung one at me, and I caught it with a laugh. “I wasn’t planning on chauffeuring you to a hotel,” he said.

I picked up the lone bag on the curb and walked to where Murdock had parked his car in the fire lane. “Oh, come on, Leo. It’s not like you don’t want to see more of this.”

He popped the trunk, and we pushed the bags in among his extra police gear, the spare tire, a milk crate filled with cleaning bottles, a pile of books, balled-up blankets, and a closed trash bag I was not going to ask about. It was cleaner than his backseat. “Oh, I think I’ve seen enough to get the picture,” he said.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” I said.

We got in the car, and he pulled into the exit lane. “Connie and Callie, huh?”

I glowered at him. “Oh, shut up.”

He giggled.