She eased back as I entered.
“You keep calling me ‘brother,’” I said.
She moved behind a table stacked with books, her pale, stained hands caressing the covers though she kept her whiteless eyes on me. “Kin or akin matters not between us. We touch the Wheel the same.”
“I’m not like you.”
Her large dark eyes shifted to my dagger. “Aye, ’struth. I could not touch such a thing as that. Lay it aside, brother, and rest in my home.”
“And leave myself unarmed? If you violate the rules of hospitality, to whom shall I complain?”
She rubbed long fingers down her face, watching me out of the corners of her eyes. “Keep it, then.” She vanished and reappeared at my side. “It will avail you naught.” She vanished again and peered at me from behind a tall grandfather clock, clutching the edges of the wood with cracked gray nails. “Unless I will it.”
She vanished again. I tracked her with my sensing ability and pressed the knife to her chest as she tried to slip around me. “That’s close enough.”
She dropped her masking glamour to reveal a surprised and frightened face. Thrusting her hands up, she bowed her head and sank to the floor. “Spare me, brother. I seek only kinship.”
“I’m not here to kill you,” I said.
She looked up at me through a tangle of hair, suspicious, yet curious. “I have no quarrel with you either, my brother. Shall we sit, then? I should like that.”
I motioned her away with the dagger, and she scuttled along the floor to an armchair. Curling up in its corner, she pawed at one eye as I eased into the opposite chair. She shoved her hand into a tattered pocket. She withdrew her hand, clenched around something. Tentatively, she reached across the side table and dropped a battered piece of bread. “I have not flesh nor fluid to offer, but crusty things can stem the pangs of hunger.”
She was trying to follow the old rules of hospitality, even if the bread had a couple of colors on it that I didn’t usually associate with freshness. “I’m good. Um. Thanks.”
We observed each other. At least, by the shifting of her unsettling black eyes, she was doing the same thing I was. Such a small being to inspire such a lot of fear. She was barely half my height but had the ability to take down the strongest of fey. Except for her emaciated head, the only parts of her body visible outside layers of clothing were her thin arms and grimy ankles.
I closed my eyes a moment. If I continued the conversation, I was committing to something, or at least admitting to it. I was seeking help from a leanansidhe. I took a deep breath. “You said we touch the Wheel the same. How do you touch the Wheel?”
She threw her hands over her face. “We touch the outside from within, and the Wheel turns.”
I frowned. “If you think I believe you can turn the Wheel, you’re wrong.”
She screeched with laughter and scrambled up the side of the chair. “No one turns the Wheel, brother. It turns and turns, and we touch It where few dare to know. Not all who ride the Wheel ride the Wheel.”
“You’re lying. Even the Dead ride the Wheel the same as everyone else. It’s the Wheel of the World,” I said.
She tangled her hands in her hair. “Ah, stupid druid, sees the surface and sees nothing more. The Wheel is a wheel on both sides.”
The idea landed on me in stunning realization. I had spent my youth in study of the druidic path, learning from my mentors. The test of a true follower of the path was an intuitive understanding of what came next, the ability to move beyond receiving knowledge to attaining it on one’s own. We called it secret knowledge, the knowing of the Wheel in a fundamental way. I left my training years ago and stepped off the path for personal gain, but every once in a while, I was granted a flash of insight to the nature of the Wheel. I laughed in my throat at the realization the leanansidhe handed me. “There are two sides to the Wheel.”
She squealed as she dropped to the floor and clutched my knees. “You see, my brother! You see the within and without, and the Wheel lies between.”
I clenched my jaw at the wave of body odor she emitted. “Show me how you touch the Wheel,” I said.
She gasped in excitement, clutching her hands to her cracked lips. Those dark orbs whirled in their sockets, searching. In the blink of an eye, she vanished, surprising me with her speed. Seconds later, she returned, walking through the door and cradling something in her hands. She knelt in front of me with a rat that fought to escape, its sharp claws scratching her hands. “Shhh, shhh, shhh, little thing. Rest and receive,” she crooned.
Deep violet essence coated her hands. Tendrils formed, lines of purple light that burrowed into the rat. The rat froze in some kind of paralysis. With a moan of pleasure, the leanansidhe brought the filthy rodent to her cheek and closed her eyes. More tendrils waved out of her face where the rat touched skin. They pulsed with light, and the rat flinched as its essence seeped away. Something moved within the leanansidhe, something dark and impenetrable. It reached up from within her essence and sapped the rat’s essence.
I flinched as the dark mass in my head shifted. The vision in my right eye faded as pain stabbed at it. Pain from within. Something black leaped out of my face, an indistinct line of darkness that burned. The leanansidhe screeched and fell back, holding the rat toward me. “Yes, yes, brother, it is yours! Yours! Druse did not mean to take it from you.”
I fought the pain, pressing my body essence against it. My left forearm burned with the effort, the swirls of my strange tattoo giving off an uncomfortably pleasurable cold burn. The dark thing inside me recoiled, and I gasped. My vision returned to see a dead rat in a filthy hand inches from my face. By force of will, I didn’t slap it away. “Keep it,” I said.
The leanansidhe shook the rat. “No, yours! ’Sokay, ’sokay.”
I turned my head to the side. I didn’t know the ramifications of taking a gift from a leanansidhe, even if it was only a rat. I wasn’t interested in finding out. I stood, and she fell back.
“I said keep it.” I stumbled toward the door.
“No! Stay, my brother! You see the truth of it now! Stay with Druse, and we shall aid and comfort each other. Druse will show you the way beyond the pain to the pleasure of the Wheel,” she called out.
My head pounded beyond a migraine. I held my aching arm against me as I retraced my way in the dark, not thinking of anything but escape. Without the flashlight, I followed the path in my memory, bumping into walls and tripping over changes in levels of the floor. Passing through the masking ward in the warehouse basement, the dark mass in my head gave me one more kick and stopped spiking.
I ran the rest of the way—across the basement, up the stairs, and through the warehouse. The door slammed against the outside wall as I shouldered through it. I landed on my knees on the snow-covered sidewalk and threw up in the street. A wave of dizziness swept over me, and I fell into the blessedly cold snow. My face pressed against it, the icy shock of it soothing the pain in my head.
A light flashed rose against the snow in the dead white night. “Really, Connor, this throwing up in the gutter is a bad habit.”
I tried to talk, but a retching sound came out. Joe grabbed at my jacket collar. “Connor! What’s wrong?”
He flew up, pulling me into a seated position. “I’m okay,” I said.
He hovered in my face. “Screw that, you look like day-old shite. Your essence is . . . I don’t know what it is. It’s rippling like a wave.”