When I’d drained the last sickening drop, they left me. I felt the liquid moving through me, slowing my thoughts, deadening my reflexes. Then my body started to tremble uncontrollably, and I was hit by a wave of dizziness. If I’d been able to move from the chair, I’m sure I would have fallen to the floor. The floor itself seemed to be swaying, the walls spinning. Menacing shadows crawled in the corners of my field of vision.
I took a deep breath, trying to center myself. I whispered a quick spell drawn from my Alyce memory, and after a few moments the hallucinatory shadows receded a little. The dizziness and sluggishness remained, though.
At last I heard footsteps on the stairs. The owl and weasel returned. “He’s ready for you now,” the owl said.
I had no doubt of who was waiting for me. Ciaran. My mother’s mùirn beatha dàn, the one she’d loved. The one who had killed her.
The owl waved a hand over me and muttered an incantation. Again I stood and followed with jerky motions. The dizziness didn’t pass, but I found I could walk through it.
We walked up to the first floor, through the kitchen, and then up the main staircase to the second floor. I was led into a wood-paneled room lit by candles. A fire glowed in the fireplace. I was shoved into another chair. The two masked witches left and shut the door.
Ciaran stood in front of the fireplace, his back to me. He wore a robe of deep purple silk with black bands on the arms. I fought down a wave of nausea. My mother’s murderer.
He turned to face me, and for a disorienting moment the trembling and the nausea vanished. In their place I felt surprise and a massive sense of relief. This wasn’t Ciaran. This was the man from the courtyard and the bookstore, the man with whom I’d had such an affinity, the man in whom I’d placed such an immediate trust.
The nausea returned an instant later as I realized just how badly I’d misplaced that trust. Now I could feel the darkness of his power, like a cyclone of roiling blackness.
Ciaran watched me.
“I never asked your name,” I said, my voice once again my own.
“But you know it now, don’t you?” he asked. His face was harsh in the firelight, his eyes unreadable dark slashes.
“Ciaran,” I said quietly.
“And you are Morgan Rowlands,” he replied courteously.
Oh, Goddess, how could I have been so blind? “You’ve been playing with me all along,” I said. “You knew who I was even before we met.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “I only realized you were the one Selene destroyed herself over when we talked in the bookstore.”
“H-how—”
“I became curious when I sensed how powerful you were. So when we got to talking about scrying, I decided to find out more about you. My scrying stone is bound to me. Even though you were the one holding it and I was on another floor altogether, it showed me what it showed you. I saw—was it your sister? — coming out of the Widow’s Vale Cineplex. The name Widow’s Vale rang a bell, and then when you gave me your name, that clinched it. Truthfully,” he went on, “I hadn’t planned on taking care of you quite so soon, but when you just put yourself in my hands like that, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, could I?”
“The owl at the window last night—?”
“Was spying on you,” he confirmed. “But then, we were already on the alert. We’ve been watching the Seeker ever since he came to the city. It was easy to discover what his mission was, and after that it was child’s play to set the trap, feeding you the clues that would bring you to us. I gave you the vision of Killian in the candle’s flame and the vision you had today. I even helped you break the warding spells on this house. My dear, you should have known you don’t have that kind of ability. Not at your level.” Ciaran regarded me with a rueful smile.
I’d been such a fool. Time and again he’d manipulated me. And I’d never even suspected.
“Tell me.” His tone sharpened with the command. “Where’s the Seeker now?”
“I don’t know.”
His dark eyes raked me. How, I wondered, had I ever thought him distinguished and trustworthy? All I saw in him now was the predator, waiting to devour his prey.
Ciaran steepled his fingers. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have blocked the messages you tried to send,” he murmured, as if thinking aloud. “Perhaps I should have made it easier for him to find you.” Then he shook his head. “No, he’s clever enough that he’ll find you anyway.”
I sagged, despairing, as I understood what Ciaran meant. If Hunter did find me, then he would be destroyed along with me.
There was a knock on the door, and the hawk witch entered the room. I watched in disbelief as she handed Maeve’s pocket watch to Ciaran. “We found this in the girl’s jacket.”
Ciaran’s face went totally blank for a moment. Then it grew pale and distorted. “Leave!” he snapped at the hawk. Then he whirled on me. “Where did you get this?” he demanded.
“You should know!” I lashed back, glad for the chance to tell the truth. “You gave it to my mother before you murdered her!”
Ciaran stared at me, his eyes wide with undisguised shock. “Your mother?”
And I realized that Selene had never told him who I was. She’d never told him I was Maeve’s daughter.
He bolted from the room then. I took it for the last moment of triumph I would ever know. I’d actually shaken the leader of Amyranth. And I’d only have to pay for it with my life.
Exhaustion descended on me like a heavy cloak. I hung my head, let my eyes close, giving in to the drug they’d fed me.
That lying, manipulative wench Selene! She knew this girl was Maeve’s daughter and she never told me! What other secrets did she keep from me?
Maeve’s daughter! You wouldn’t know it from the girl’s looks. She doesn’t have Maeve’s delicate, pretty face, the sprinkling of freckles across her nose, the soft waves of reddish-brown hair. All she has of Maeve is her power. Though there’s something about her eyes that’s damnably familiar.
How did Maeve and Angus manage to spawn that one without my ever knowing? And how the bloody hell did she find out what happened at the end? Even those who knew Maeve didn’t know we were mùirn beatha dàns, and no one, save Maeve and Angus, knew about how the fire started. All witnesses are dead.
Selene couldn’t have told her. Selene knew nothing of what was between me and Maeve. Or…did she? I’ve never been sure just what Selene did and didn’t know. All of which raises the question: What else is there that Selene didn’t tell me about this girl?
My thoughts are heaving like the sea. There’s something at the edge of my mind, a disturbing presence on the edge of consciousness. It has a truth to show me.
Damn it. What is it? What is it?
Hunter, putting the silver chains of the braigh on David Redstone…Mary K., huddled in a corner of Selene’s study, confused, frightened, and spelled…Cal, absorbing the cloud of darkness that Selene hurled at me…His beautiful golden eyes…
No! I started out of my stupor, shaking and grieving at the images that kept parading in front of me. For a moment I couldn’t imagine where I was. Then memory returned. The house with the vines. The masked witches. Ciaran.
I was now in a much larger room. My head ached, and I felt even dizzier than before. With effort I focused my eyes on the ceiling, on the leaves and vines and ornate plaster molding, all horribly familiar. Black candles flickered from sconces and from an elaborate silver candlestick atop an inlaid ebony cabinet. Black drapes covered the windows. I cast out my senses. They were frighteningly weak, but I could still faintly detect objects of power inside the cabinet—athames, wands, crystals, animal skulls and bones, all emanating dark magick.