I frowned. “Forgive me, but you don’t think I believe for a minute that Amy Sullivan was the Queen’s Herbalist.”
She giggled. “I wouldn’t believe that either, now that you mention it. I wasn’t the Queen’s Herbalist back then, silly. What can I do to prove it to you?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. This is some game Maeve is playing.”
A crease formed on her forehead. “What interest would Maeve have in you?”
I moved toward the door. “Now I’m really not believing you. When you report back to Maeve, tell her I said nice try. Insulting, but nice try.”
I yanked the front door closed behind me. At the bottom of the steps, Tibbet waited in the car. I strode down and got in.
Tibbet put the car in gear. “What happened?”
“Do you trust Eagan?” I asked.
She rocked her head indifferently. “He tries to manipulate me constantly and sometimes succeeds, but, yeah, I trust him.”
“Why?”
She glanced sideways at me with a wry smile. “Because more often than not—way more often—his instincts are right. I’ve known him a long time, Connor. He can be a frustrating man, but I wouldn’t have stayed if I didn’t believe in him.”
“How do you know when he’s lying?”
She shrugged. “I assume he is and go from there. It’s easier that way. Fewer disappointments and, honestly, more fun. Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“Eagan implied I shouldn’t trust Moira Cashel. When I ran into her on my way out, she claimed she was someone from my past,” I said.
Tibbet considered. “Are those two things mutually exclusive?”
“No. But if she really is the person she claims, then I’m not sure whether I should believe her or Eagan.”
Tibbet nodded. “Who is she claiming to be?”
“A woman I knew when I was younger.”
Tibbet merged the car onto Storrow Drive and wound along the edge of Back Bay to reach the expressway. She’d lived in Boston a long time. On the map, the route might look ridiculous, but it was the fastest way to the Weird. We slowed as the traffic on the elevated struggled out of the merging of three lanes.
Tibbet smiled comfortingly. She rubbed my thigh. “Connor, I’m not going to ask who she was to you, but if you’re worried about memories being destroyed, don’t be. They’re your memories. If Moira Cashel is this person she claims to be, that doesn’t mean she gets to destroy who she once was to you.”
“But if Eagan is right, maybe she had an ulterior motive for coming into my life then,” I said.
Tibbet coasted off the elevated down to Atlantic Avenue. “Did something bad happen?”
I chuckled. “No. The opposite, actually.”
“Then let it be. Brownies have an old saying: ‘Don’t go bogey until you have to.’ ”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Is that a real saying?”
Tibbet snickered as she pulled the car to the curb in front of my building. “Yes. It sounds more dramatic and true in Gaelic. But you get the point, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. I’ve got enough to worry about without getting all anxious about something this old.”
“Good!” She withdrew a flat round stone from her inside coat pocket. A tingle of essence itched my palm as I took it. “It’s a calling ward. Say my name, and I’ll come pick you up,” she said.
I slipped the stone in my jacket. “Can’t I call your cell?”
She grinned. “Anytime. But if you have something for the Old Man, use the stone. It never drops calls and doesn’t depend on area coverage.”
I kissed her just below the ear. “See you, gorgeous.”
She ruffled my hair. “Later, handsome.”
Tibs and I have never had an argument. We had a strange and wonderful random relationship. We didn’t seek each other out, but we didn’t avoid each other. We never criticized each other, but always knew the right thing to say at the right time to move the other along in a decision, not necessarily the one either of us wanted to make. We used to have incredible sex until we stopped. Seeing each other always prompted smiles.
And yet, as she drove away, I realized that for the first time since I’d known her, she had said something that wasn’t true. Not that she lied. But I knew memories could be destroyed. Mine already had been. I had blank spots. I thought the memory loss started with the damage to my abilities two and a half years previously, but an old friend recently mentioned something from earlier than that, and I had no recollection of it. It made me uneasy. It meant there might be more things I didn’t remember that I didn’t have the slightest notion I’d forgotten.
I remembered Amy Sullivan, though, and the memory brought a smile. I remember seeing her for the first time in a store, lost in thought as she stared at something on a shelf. She was older than me—much older—but that was part of her appeal. She was a woman, a beautiful woman, and when I spoke to her that first time, she became the first adult woman who didn’t dismiss me as a child, who treated me like the man I thought I was. She opened a world to me that my mentors didn’t. Couldn’t, precisely because they were mentors. Amy taught me things about life, and I didn’t understand that until much later. I thought I was in love, and I thought she was, too. I realized afterward that it was something less than that for both of us, yet something important in a different way. When she disappeared without a trace, I was devastated, but even that made me smile in hindsight. Amy taught me that learning wasn’t just about knowing, but growing. Maturing. And the gift she left me was understanding that life had a lot more to offer me than I ever imagined from reading books.
Which brought me back to Moira Cashel. If she was Amy Sullivan all those years ago, nothing sprang to mind that hinted at a hidden agenda back then. If she was playing mind games with me, it worked, but probably not in the way she intended. It wasn’t like she thought I’d trust her because she was Amy. If she was Amy, revealing that she lied to me years ago and oh-by-the-way happened to be a current member of Maeve’s court was not the way to endear herself to me now.
Of course, I couldn’t ignore the Guildmaster’s role in all of it. Eagan typically knew more than he let on and never made a move without a calculation. He wanted both Nigel and Moira to see me at the house and me to see them. Whether I wanted to be or not, he’d put me in play.
My various mentors taught me many different things, but they all agreed that the first move in avoiding a trap was recognizing that a trap existed. The second was deciding whether to step out of the trap or turn it on whoever set it. But first I had to figure out whose trap it was and whether it was for me or someone else.
4
Snow crystals pelted against my face as I hustled down Old Northern Avenue. The street had started life as an industrial service road, and it still was. That made it wide and open to accommodate trailer trucks and other large vehicles. Which meant it was one big wind tunnel connecting Fort Point Channel with the Reserve Channel. Whichever way the wind blew, it blasted its way down the street.
A bank of clouds had descended on the city as night fell. We hadn’t had a real snowstorm yet, but in New England storms weren’t as much a question of when as how much. The tiny ice particles whirling about weren’t real precipitation but a condensation of harbor and channel air that was still cold and annoying.
The Avenue met Congress Street at a vague boundary between the commercial end of the street, where fey folk also lived, and the industrial end, where people worked. I had seen more than a few fistfights along these sidewalks, more so in recent days.
Tainted essence floated through the Weird, the residue of a major spell that had gone wrong earlier this year at a place called Forest Hills. The Taint was the last thing the neighborhood needed, yet was the one thing it seemed to have in abundance. When fey folk came in contact with it, the damaged essence provoked their worst aggressions. In the Weird, that made bad things worse, especially with the stresses caused by the police crackdown.