Rhys scowls. “Yes, I did want him locked up. By us, so we could take care of him. I didn’t want him kidnapped by these fanatics for whatever nefarious purpose they have in mind.”
“No one in a black cloak has ever been good news,” Doug mutters in agreement.
“Magicians?” Jade offers.
“Case in point.” But Doug smiles, and Jade brightens at this softening.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Artemis will be wherever Leo is, so the goal doesn’t change. And Rhys is right. Whatever they want him for, we have to stop. Our only hope is that Cillian’s mom can give us a lead to track down Artemis and the zealots.”
“Because someone let the zealots steal our book that could have shed light on the problem.” Rhys’s jaw twitches. Normally, Cillian would reach over to soothe him, but Cillian has his arms folded tight, his face unreadable. I don’t know who in the car he’s most angry at. If it’s me, he’s not alone. I’m most angry at me too.
Cillian pulls out the necklace we took from the cloakers and holds it in his palm. I know how much it’s going to cost him to face whatever we’re going to find out. It means letting go of his memories of his father, potentially replacing them with bad things. His mother asked me to keep him away from it all, but thanks to my choices, that’s not an option anymore.
“Cillian.” Rhys lifts a hand toward him. Rhys is pale, and his hand shakes slightly, but he seems okay in spite of having donated so much blood. Cillian takes Rhys’s hand and squeezes it.
“Let’s do this.” We follow Cillian inside. The Littles must have been bundled into Cillian’s room with Jessi, and this early it’s still quiet. But the light in the kitchen is a warm island in the chilly ocean of the dawn. Cillian’s mother dances around the kitchen humming as she prepares food. We shuffle in. The space isn’t large enough for all of us, so Doug and Jade sit at the table for three, while Rhys, Cillian, and I block the entrance and exit to the kitchen. I don’t know if we stage it this way on purpose, but she can’t get out without going through us.
Jessi appears on the stairs and glares at us all. “Be quiet,” she hisses, before disappearing back upstairs.
“Oh, hello!” Esther beams and her eyes sweep over us. They pause on Doug, but only long enough to register mild surprise and then move on. She does know about demons, after all. She continues bustling about, pulling things from cupboards and the fridge. “I wasn’t sure what the little ones would like, so I’m making a bit of everything. I thought today we’d take a picnic to the beach. It will be cold, but I’ll bundle them up. Then we can stop by the shop for a treat if Jessi says it’s okay. She’s quite intense, isn’t she? But I love the shop. It’s so well done, Cillian. You really changed that space for the better.” She seems genuinely happy to have the Littles here, excited at the prospect of taking them for a fun outing. Gods, don’t let her be secretly evil. Please let this mom be a good one.
Cillian leans against the counter and folds his arms. “That’s great, Mum. Do let us know if you decide to run away to Tibet or Madagascar or Shangri-la as a change of plans, though. We’ll need at least five minutes’ notice.”
Her reflexive smile is tight and defensive. “Give me a moment and I can make you all eggs. You still like them sunny-side up, right?”
Cillian doesn’t answer. He pulls out the necklace instead. She flinches as it winks in the light. “What is this?”
“Toast?” Her glance at me is accusatory. I wasn’t supposed to bring Cillian into it.
“It’s too late,” I say. “I’m sorry. We have nowhere else to turn.”
Cillian moves to block her path to the toaster oven. “This is our only lead. You owe me this. If we don’t find these people, our friend will die.”
His mom’s hands tremble as she reaches up and smooths the wrap around her braids. “What—what can this have to do with your friend?”
“The people wearing this symbol took him. And it can’t be a coincidence that Da’s puzzle is the same pattern. Was he involved with this before he died? Were you? Are you? Because they’re all zealots, and you’ve spent a lot of time trying to find God or religion or whatever.”
The kettle whistles, and Cillian’s mom shuffles around him to pull it off the heat. She pours five cups of tea and pauses on the sixth, raising an eyebrow at Doug. He shakes his head, and she sets the kettle back on the stove. We each get a mismatched mug. I take Jade hers, not wanting to let Cillian’s mom away from where we have her cornered. Jade’s face is bruised, her lip swollen, and I catch Doug staring at the damage with an unreadable expression.
Cillian’s mom wraps her hands around her mug and turns to face us, leaning against the counter with the same physical posture I’ve seen Cillian do a hundred times. “Your father isn’t dead.”
Cillian chokes on his tea. “What?”
“In my defense, I never said he was dead.”
He sets his tea down on the tile counter. We’re all frozen, unsure where this is going. “Yes,” Cillian says, “you did.”
“No. I try not to lie to you. If you remember, all I ever said—all I have ever said—is that we lost your father. I meant that literally. We lost him.”
“I think we should sit down.” Rhys takes Cillian’s elbow and leads him to the worn pink sofa. I can’t tell whether Cillian looks like he’s more likely to pass out or murder someone. I sit on his other side, both to support him and to keep him in place in case he does decide to strangle his mother.
Esther sits on a chair across from us, balancing her mug on her knee and staring down into it as though the tea leaves might reveal an easier way to tell this story.
“I was a student of fairy tales. Grad school. I wanted to teach. I’ve always been interested in oral traditions, the stories we pass down generation to generation. Why we tell the stories we do. I traveled the Irish countryside, asking for regional variations of the tales of fair folk. I found the same general information in every single one, but some of the towns and villages had details—very specific details. A hill you should never visit at night. A path that should never be walked alone. A house that was abandoned two hundred years ago and still stands unclaimed to this day. I could sense the power behind their fear. It wasn’t terror—it was self-preservation. It had all the same rules and practical steps as my spells. And that got me interested. I went to one of the abandoned houses at night, made a protective circle, and I waited. At midnight, a portal opened.” She pauses, then looks up at Doug. “I’m sure none of you will be surprised to learn that our world contains—contained—gateways and portals to other worlds. These weren’t fairy paths and fairy doors. They were openings to other dimensions. Hell dimensions. All the stories about keeping your loved ones safe from ageless, unknowable beings who would take them and never return them, or return them so altered you wouldn’t recognize them, were true. They were just about demons, not fairies. Same concept, different name.”
“I like ‘fair folk’ better than ‘demon.’ ” Doug shrugs. “Has a nicer ring to it.”