“So it all ended happily ever after.”
He frowned. “When magic is involved, there is never a happily ever after. You know that.”
And the way he said it, chills washed down my skin. He was right. I knew that. Magic could lick the happy out of a lollipop.
“There are still members of the Authority who disagree with the decision to allow magic to go public. Your father’s actions were the crack in the ice, and ever since then the Authority has been fracturing, splitting apart. If some of the factions have their way, there will be a war. The Authority will shatter.”
“And that’s bad, right?”
His lips pressed into a grim, flat line. “You have no idea.”
I dug around in my head a little, expecting a comment or reaction out of my dad, but he was silent as a shadow. If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t think I was possessed. The last time he was this quiet was when Zay and I had been at dinner.
Interesting.
Traffic, which had been crawling, growled back up to freeway speeds. We crossed the Columbia River and within a short while were on the opposite shore in Vancouver, Washington. Zayvion turned east along the river.
“Is it far?” I asked.
“We’re almost there.”
I don’t know what I expected Maeve’s place to be like. Where would secret classes that taught the secret ways of magic be held?
Another fifteen minutes or so and Zayvion slowed and took a road south, toward the river. We crossed the railroad tracks into an abandoned industrial area, and pulled up alongside a long building with identical rows of windows that lined the upper, middle, and ground floors. It sat parallel the length of the train tracks and the river.
I could feel magic radiating like a subtle warmth from the place.
About a half dozen cars were parked along the far chain-link fence that separated this lot from a scrap metal collection site next to it. There were no parking places near the building, which was strange since there was room for several. Instead, big raised boxes and whiskey barrels of plants and flowers took the lion’s share of the parking space, green even in January, filled with sturdy bushes with red and white berries dotting twigs.
“Talk about out-of-the-way,” I said as we parked.
“Used to be right in the middle of everything,” he said. “It was a railroad boardinghouse and inn. Train used to go right through here.”
“It doesn’t anymore?”
He shook his head. “When the Flynns bought the place, they lobbied to have the spur discontinued. No real train business down here, and they didn’t want to risk that kind of attention to the well.” He unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door.
“Well?” I got out of the car. The wind and rain smelled of fir trees and river algae and the dusty grease of the rusting scrap metal next door.
Zayvion tipped his head to one side. “Can’t you feel it?”
I tucked my chin down into my coat collar and calmed my mind. I felt the air, rain that was thankfully a lot lighter, heard the call of crows on the breeze. I paid attention to the ground.
Magic beneath my skin turned and twisted, reaching out for and not quite connecting with the massive pool of magic that radiated a strange heat of its own deep, deep beneath the soil and stone under the inn. I opened my mouth and inhaled. Magic was so concentrated here, I could almost taste it, a faint, fuzzy warmth, like electricity from a thun derstorm, but sweeter, thicker on my tongue.
The well.
The cool metal taste of iron and lead that I always associated with magic, since magic was channeled through conduits of the material, was strangely absent here. Here, in this pocket between two cities, I could almost forget magic was on the grid, controlled, tamed. Here magic roiled in a deep, dreamlike rhythm just below my conscious awareness.
“Wow,” I said.
Zayvion wrapped his arm around my shoulders, a solid warmth that brought me back to my surroundings. Good thing too. I’d stopped walking and was just standing there getting wet.
“Let’s go in,” he said.
I didn’t pull away, preferring to linger against his body and soak up the heat of him.
He started toward the inn, shifting so we were shoulder to shoulder as we walked up the wooden steps to a covered porch that stretched along this side of the building and corner to continue across the front, riverside of the building.
A wooden sign next to the door read FEILE SAN FHOMHER and beneath that, WELCOME.
Zayvion lifted the door latch and pulled open the door, the old hinges giving out a mewl of metal on metal.
The scents of sage, butter, bread stuffing, and baked apples filled my nose and mouth as we entered the high ceilinged, open-raftered main room of the inn. A lunch counter to the right of the room traced a round-edged square in white marble countertop. Only a few people sat in the walnut T-backed stools around the counter, a mix of old and young, suits and jeans.
Rows of round tables filled the space between us and the lunch counter, and square tables tracked along the windows all the way to the end of the building.
A smattering of people sat at the tables. A group of gray-haired men who looked as if they didn’t have a penny between them were working their way through heaping turkey meals. At a table by the window, six teen girls chatted and laughed.And at other tables I saw executives holding business lunches, moms with shopping bags at their feet and children in high chairs, a set of couples, some construction workers, and more than a few loners, men and women, eating lunch, talking, reading papers, drinking coffee while the waitstaff-a couple girls, at the moment-connected them all through service and smiles. Several people behind the lunch counter kept busy cooking and cleaning. The overall atmosphere was a nod to the past, when transitory people gathered and socialized in the comfort of a home away from home.
“Zayvion, Allie.” The voice had a lovely Irish lilt to it, and I looked away from the tables to the woman walking across the room. Maeve wore jeans and deck shoes and a dark green sweater layered over a cream turtleneck. Her red hair was pulled back in a bun and tendrils of it fell free to curl in soft reds and gray around her face. Her eyes were green with wicked intensity, her smile welcoming, if not exactly warm.
What was it Zayvion had said at dinner? My father killed her husband? I suddenly wished I’d asked him more about that.
“Any luck?” she asked Zayvion.
He shook his head. “Still hunting.”
Maeve turned toward me. “I’m glad you made it. Let me take your coat. Then you and I can get started.”
Zayvion tensed. “You don’t want me there?”
“Not this first time. I want to see what Allie can do on her own.” She strode off, talking over her shoulder. “You can stay out here if you’d like,” she said. “I don’t think this will take long.”
I picked up the pace to keep up with her as she beelined between tables, smiling at her guests. She led me back to a wide hallway, where wall lanterns cast the wood in warm tones, then past a white wooden staircase that square-railed up and up. We strolled through a doorway into a small sitting room done up like an old-fashioned parlor.
Plush love seats and chairs big enough for two filled the room. Beside each chair was a small table. In the center of each table was a clear glass bowl, lined with lead.
Magic conducts through glass and lead, if the right glyphs are worked into both. I also noted the wallpaper that at first looked like gold and forest green flowers in a repeating pattern were actually magical glyphs. I caught Shield, Ward, and several other negating glyphs around the room before Maeve had crossed to a dark door that did little to call attention to itself.