Zantree turned toward the commotion raised by Father Otter chivvying Fielding along and Fielding himself drew up short, taking a nasty smack across the head from Father Otter for doing so.
“Shelly,” Fielding breathed.
She gave him a cool glance, then looked past him to me as Quinton eased me into a chair. She pointed at a pile of barnacle-crusted objects at her feet with a finger tipped by a hooked white nail. “I believe these are what Gary was after. I’m sorry to have left you to confront my mother on your own but I knew the gateway would collapse soon and I had to take the chance that presented itself.”
Father Otter started forward, scowling, as if he meant to confront Shelly in some fashion.
Quinton put out his hand to restrain him. “Let’s not do that again,” he suggested.
Apparently things had been much livelier than I’d imagined here on Mambo Moon while Solis and I were in transit. I glanced at Quinton, who gave a tiny shake of his head. I wasn’t going to argue with his brush-off; all I really wanted was to fall into bed and sleep until I stopped aching.
Father Otter issued a guttural hiss, but took a half step back and made another ill-tempered snap at Fielding’s ear. Fielding flinched.
Shelly looked disgusted. “I won’t say I’m happy about the death of my mother,” she started, sending a quick glare at Solis, “but it is better for all of us that she’s gone. And I don’t need these, nor do I want them. Since I found Gary snooping around them and you had the Valencia’s bell on the dock, I assume it’s you who wants them. Though I suppose it could have been the dobhar-chú who sent him, trying to steal them and break my mother’s power.”
She gave Father Otter a dirty look. He curled his lip and gave a low growl in return.
I leaned back in my chair like a boneless thing, not caring how weak or impolite it might look—I hurt too much to play that game. “Why?” I asked, panting a little against the painful constriction of breath in my chest. “Don’t you need them?”
“No. When I realized how my mother’s power worked I went looking for something else. I knew how to make sure we weren’t closed in the cove again but I wasn’t going to do it for her sake—not after what she’d done to me. And now that she’s dead I can claim my own power; I don’t need this filthy stuff.”
“So the whole virgin thing . . .” I started, making a rolling gesture with my hand to encourage her explanation.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh . . . Mother . . .” She shook her head. “She couldn’t very well tell me I didn’t need her, could she? As long as I was a sheltered little fry, hidden away in her cove, she could control me and my magic. When I went outside, bad things happened and she used that to convince me to stay under her thumb. But I’m not stupid. I realized she had lied to me about power and about . . . your kind. I couldn’t and won’t do what she could do, but I can do my own tricks. I don’t need these,” she added, pointing again to the relics on the deck. She looked at Fielding. “And I don’t need you or anyone else to show me what I really am and what I can do for myself and my folk.”
Fielding looked stricken and moaned her name.
She sighed. “Oh, Gary. You’re such a selfish jerk. A pretty one, but still a jerk. My people have been devastated but we can survive—as long as we don’t have to fight our neighbors all the time. I could take you as a hostage, I guess, like some kind of royal insurance policy, but, frankly, I just don’t want you. If that makes Father Otter angry, we’ll have to find some other way to bring peace here. But you . . . ? I think we’d all be better off if you left.”
I cut in, trying to keep the conversation on track. “So, you can’t even use these?”
Shelly made a face and shook her head. “I could do that kind of magic but I won’t and I don’t want them here. They stir up bad feelings. Take them and do as you like.”
Father Otter inched forward and started to reach for one of the objects in the pile. Shelly sucked in a breath and made fists of her hands at her sides, as if she were restraining herself from slapping him away. I did it for her, though the movement sent a flare of nauseating pain through my chest and sides. Father Otter flinched and glared at me.
“Don’t. It won’t help you or your people and now is not the time to get greedy.” I turned back to Shelly. “You don’t plan on . . . using your siren wiles on other boats, do you?”
“No. Well . . . not that way. I might like an occasional frolic, but I have seen too much death and pain and I don’t have any taste for killing if I don’t have to.”
“Then I’ll thank you for giving these to me.” I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do with the things, writhing and foaming as they did with shadows and shades.
Solis glanced up from his watch. “Fifteen minutes,” he said.
I frowned. Fifteen minutes from what?
The surfaces of the objects on deck—bells and bottles, bowls and boxes—shimmered and sparked a moment; then the gleams of color that bound them fell away, unraveling like rope decayed to dust.
“Just touch them,” Solis added. “I think I’ve guessed it right.”
I bent forward like an arthritic old woman and brushed my fingertips over the nearest of the crusted trove—another bell, this one much smaller than Valencia’s and not as heavy, gleaming a bit of brass through its veil of seaweed and barnacles. A flood of silver mist and white light burst out of the bell, flashing for a moment into four images: two young women and two men. They let out a sob and a cry, then leapt for the night sky above us, spiraling away into the scattered starlight of the Milky Way’s spangled band.
I turned an amazed glance on Solis. “Everything balances out—we lost fifteen minutes the first time we rang the bell, so this time we had to regain it.”
“What about the bubble around the cove?”
“Why would ringing the doorbell count on that timer?”
It was loopy, but it made as much sense as anything else in the Grey and more than some things. “How did I miss that?”
He shrugged. “Busy.”
I suppose they would have responded as well to anyone, now that the spell was broken, but everyone seemed to have agreed it was my job to let the ghosts out of their shells. As uncomfortable as it was, I managed to creep to each of the receptacles and brush away the last remaining strands that held the souls of the drowned at bay. Each time they poured out and upward in swells of lambent mist and shimmering light, sighing and weeping, then crying out in joy and vaulting for the deepening night sky that stretched above us, pierced like black velvet with the brightness of stars. The river of the Milky Way, tipped for a while into our planet’s tilted, whirling view, seemed to grow brighter and thicker as the ghosts rushed away from their captivity into freedom. An uncanny wind blew them away in coils of silvery mist that turned a massive head in our direction just long enough for me to recognize the passing shape of the Guardian Beast shepherding the spirits of the dead onward. It didn’t pause to say thank you and the velocity of its passage rocked and shook the boat as easily as an autumn leaf. I got no sense that it cared the deed was done or done by me. The balance of power in the area had been leveled and that was all that concerned it. There was, indeed, nothing human or humane remaining in the Beast and I finally put that niggling thought away, relieved.
When the last spirit was no more than a memory of sound and light in our senses, I eased back into my chair once again, satisfied but struggling with my exhaustion and discomfort. I glanced at Shelly, who was still standing, looking up at the sky, smiling a bittersweet kind of smile.