I would have. If Dylan were being attacked, I would have done the same thing. I did do it. I killed fourteen people when I thought he had been killed. “You don’t seem remorseful,” I said.
“I’ll deal with it in my own time. I’m not like you,” he said.
“Damn right you’re not,” I muttered.
I didn’t know what to make of him. We had been so close, and now this wall was between us. Maybe it was inevitable. Dylan had remained the good Guildsman. I had gone my own way. Maybe two people can’t always be what they once were to each other. I grunted in amusement. Maybe that wasn’t always such a bad thing.
“What’s so funny?” Dylan asked.
“Meryl and I used to hate each other. It’s funny how things change,” I said.
“The Wheel of the World turns as It will. Sometimes that’s good,” he said.
Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes life put you in a corner and dared you to come out. Briallen taught me that I had to change to meet new challenges and accept it when I couldn’t. Nigel taught me that I didn’t have to accept anything I didn’t want to and that I could push life in the direction I wanted. Somehow, they were both right and both wrong.
From the top of the hotel, I could see destroyed buildings. I could imagine the destroyed lives. I had helped stop some of that, keeping it from being worse than it was. I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that a lot of it happened because of me.
“What’s Eorla going to do?” I asked.
“She said it didn’t matter if I stayed or left. She’s going to handle things the same either way,” he said.
“So your lying was pointless,” I said.
“I don’t think so. I learned a lot,” he said.
“Like not lying?” I asked.
He chuckled. “No. If I hadn’t done this, Con, if I hadn’t fooled everyone, I wouldn’t have met Eorla. Regardless of everything else, I learned from her that sometimes doing the wrong thing can be in the service of doing the right thing.”
“Is she in danger?” I asked.
He leaned both hands against the parapet. “Of course she is. She’s the Unseelie Queen.”
“Have you compromised her, Dyl? I want to know if something you said or did is going to hurt her,” I said.
He didn’t answer, so I glanced at him. He was pensive, a bit bemused. Then he smiled. “I’ll tell you this, Con. I stopped reporting on Eorla weeks ago. I’ve seen what she wants, and it’s not terrible. I’ve been helping her.”
“Sounds like you have a need to lie to someone all the time,” I said.
He flicked his eyebrows. “That’s the business, I guess.”
“That sounds cold.”
He shook his head. “I saved your life. I didn’t have to.”
And I had saved his. He had had a knife in his heart. I had saved his life because he was dying for trying to help people. More than that, I saved his life because I couldn’t imagine a world without Dylan macBain, the guy that made me laugh, the guy that made me feel like I could do no wrong. He was in love with me then, maybe still was, but I was the one who didn’t want to change what we had. “You know what, Dyl? I think I figured out why I left New York. You said you saved my life but didn’t have to. You know what? When the situation was reversed, I saved your life because I did have to.”
His face went tight. “Ouch.”
I nodded, staring at the mist wall. The level of essence in it was higher than that of any druid fog I had ever encountered. No good would come of it. When it did whatever it was going to do, I wanted to be someplace good. “Yeah. I think I’m going to go home now.”
“You’re going back to your apartment?”
I shook my head. “No. I said home. I’m going to Meryl. She’s home now. Thanks for saving my life.”
I left him alone on the roof.
33
I waited for Meryl in the lobby. Eorla didn’t want me to go out the front, but I was tired of feeling like a fugitive or like I had done something wrong. All I wanted was to sleep in a warm bed and not worry about getting shot at or kidnapped. It wasn’t much to ask. People went to bed every night with that expectation.
Meryl’s MINI Cooper zipped up on the sidewalk and under the grand arch of the hotel. An escort of brownies followed me outside. Across the street, people shouted about death and murder. My name was mixed in there. A flurry of bottles and cans flew through the air, but they bounced uselessly against the barrier shield.
Meryl shifted into gear, then rubbed my thigh. “How’re you doing?”
I dropped my head back against the seat. “Tired—no—exhausted. My brain has turned to mush. How’s Leo?”
“I think he’s in shock. He can barely speak. What the hell happened?” she asked.
I gave her the brief version of Gerry’s attack. “I was on the ground at that point. If he had fired again, I would have been dead if Dylan hadn’t shown up.”
She turned onto the Oh No bridge. Normal-sized cars had to creep over the twisted surface, but Meryl bounced the MINI across without any fear. “Dylan macBain? As in, dead Dylan macBain whose funeral I went to?”
“Yeah. It was all a setup for him to go undercover. He’s been impersonating Rand for months,” I said.
It said something about the world I lived in that Meryl wasn’t shocked Dylan was alive and wasn’t furious I didn’t tell her. “Huh. Now I know where all that intel was coming from,” she said with an understanding look.
“You knew Eorla had a spy?” I asked.
She flicked me her trademark of-course look. “Come on, Connor. Everyone spies on everyone. Stop acting surprised.”
“You could have told me,” I said. Suddenly, I felt like I was having the same conversation as with Dylan.
“And what? Eorla would have increased security? Double-checked her advisors? She was doing that anyway. That’s how things operate normally. Saying it out loud doesn’t change it.”
“Still….” I said.
“Oh, please. You’re looking for an argument. How’s this: The Guild has spies in the Consortium, the police department, the statehouse, and, yeah, Eorla’s hotel. By the way, Eorla and Bastian both have spies at the Guild. I don’t know the names of every single mole, but, yes, occasionally I do see reports. Now, what are you going to do about it, and how will it change anything except that I told you what you already know?”
I crossed my arms. “It would be nice to decide on my own whether I would try.”
She slammed the clutch into a downshift. “Really? Tell me more about your little magic bowl, Mr. Transparency. I don’t seem to remember that coming up in conversation. Or how about using it on Manny? I heard about that from Gillen Yor, for Danu’s sake. You want to go down this road, you better be damned ready to answer some questions, too.”
The car rocked as she swerved around a pothole. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me, too,” she said.
“No, really, I am sorry. I’ve been bombarded the last few days, and I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. Let’s start over. Does Leo hate me?”
“I don’t think he hates you, Grey. Does he associate major hurt with you? Yeah, I think so,” she said.
“How do I fix this?” I asked.
She pulled into a dark alley near the Tangle and parked, not something that would be most people’s first choice. “I don’t think this is something that gets fixed. It’s something that you have to get past. His brother was killed. It doesn’t matter what Gerry was doing when it happened, and it doesn’t matter that it was you it was being done to. Let him grieve.”
We got out of the car. “What are we doing here?”
“We walk the last few blocks. I washed my car, and I don’t want it getting shot at. Ceridwen has the harborfront guarded,” she said. She dropped the strap of her giant bag over her head and wore it across her chest.
I wrapped my arm around her, and we walked amid the burned wreckage of the neighborhood. “Maybe it’s time I left Boston.”
“Yeah, I was thinking I’d dye my hair,” she said.