The top floor of the house had wooden doors at either end, both closed. Incongruously, a great stone door set in a stone arch stood in the center of the landing. Briallen laid her hand on the door. "You're about to see something I rarely show anyone."

She pushed, and the door opened soundlessly. A dim white glow came from wiuiin. Inside was an oval room, its walls paved with slate and curving inward toward the center of the ceiling. Where the tiles met, stones of all kinds glittered in the crevices. Onyx jammed in next to crystals of pink and yellow and blue. Bloodstones lined the baseboards, along with quartz of all kinds mixed in with opals and fire-stones. Even the floor had a fortune in precious stones, including what could only be true rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. I couldn't possibly catalog them all. The dominant stones were selenite, other moonstones, and sapphire for invoking the powers of the night, only fitting for a druid daughter of the Moon. In the center of the room stood the lone piece of furniture, a white granite slab of a table just the right length for Briallen to stretch out on if she chose. A preternatural light glowed from various places, reflecting back and forth in a myriad of color.

Druids are notoriously guarded about their private sanctums. The one I had before I lost my abilities was much simpler, but I had still shown it to only a handful of people. "I'm honored," I said.

"I've already keyed the door to your essence. Once I close it, only you can open it from the outside. If I'm not out in three days, come get me. With any luck, I'll have figured this all out."

She reached out and hugged me. As I held her, she gripped hard before releasing me. The seriousness of the situation was sinking in. Briallen was always physically and emotionally demonstrative. But that one hard squeeze told me she was scared. She stepped back into the room with a grim smile on her face. The door closed, meeting the jamb with a soft thump that sounded like the sealing of a tomb.

CHAPTER 15

I tried calling Gillen Yor several times the next morning but kept getting his answering service. Finally, by midafternoon, I got a real person on the line who informed me that Gillen was unavailable until further notice. As I turned off my phone, I glanced up at the ceiling as though I could see through it to where Briallen lay in deep meditation. I knew she would have helped the queen with just about anything if asked. But if Maeve had gotten Gillen to investigate as well, and he had agreed, it truly was serious.

Waking up in the guest room in Briallen's house had felt like coming home. When my abilities kicked in at twelve, they kicked in hard. I'd spent many weekends in Louisburg Square away from my family. At first it was exciting learning things most kids only dream about. It became frustrating when I began to realize how hard it was going to be. Occasionally, it got lonely-adolescent angst coupled with the stigma of truly being different. The best part was making Briallen smile. Most times I did it with a joke, but often enough it was because I did something right. I began to strive for that. I let my fingers trail over the bindings of books in Briallen's study, looking for something, anything, to find a way past my dead end. Should I make Shay remove the pentagrams or not? Were they working as part of a meditation exercise or weren't they? I tried randomly pulling books off the shelves in the hope that something would literally fall into my lap, but fate didn't want to play the game. I was beginning to think my best bet might be a coin toss.

My cell phone rang. I picked up, and traffic noises blared in my ear.

"I'm at a pay phone across from the Guildhouse. I didn't want to use any lines inside. They're doing spell sweeps," Meryl said. "Listen, I've been studying the books you asked about the other day. I think I found something a little freaky. It's a spell of binding that unbinds. If I'm reading it right, it's about old powers. The real old ones. Like lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key old ones."

I said a silent thank-you to whoever might be listening.

"Can you meet me at the bandstand on the Common in five minutes?"

"Got it." She disconnected.

I went back to the guest room to put on my boots. Briallen's dagger had already started feeling comfortable on my ankle, but I still didn't like being without my old knife. Until I either bought new boots with a left foot sheath or made one of my own, I decided to leave my old blade behind. It wouldn't help if I managed to stab myself in the foot. I left the jacket, too. It was damned hot, and at least at Briallen's I wouldn't worry about it getting stolen.

I paused in the foyer. Briallen lay in a trance trying to find the cause of a blackout on the future, the kind of blackout that had happened when Convergence occurred. Meryl had found a Fomorian spell that unbound old powers with blood and pentagrams. When old powers were spellbound, it was usually behind dimensional barriers, the same kind of barrier that had been pierced during Convergence. A chill ran up my spine, and I ran up the stairs again. I had a spell that would bring about a cataclysm taken from a book that macDuin had read. I also had a series of ritual murders that fit the spell and that macDuin was trying to suppress. And I had an unexplained connection between macDuin and Corcan Sidhe. If the spell succeeded, it could create a world like old Faerie with the remaining humans as subjects-just like the elves and their fairy sympathizers wanted during World War II. Like macDuin wanted. The connections had to mean one thing. MacDuin was somehow using Corcan Sidhe to pierce a veil into the Fomorian prison and free the most powerful enemy of the Celtic fey. All hell would break loose on the world again. Only this time an enemy would be unleashed that no one had fought in millennia. Humans would have little chance of survival. Just the fey would, leaving a world dominated by the fey. MacDuin had set it all in motion again.

As I was about to press my hand against the door of Briallen's sanctum to wake her, I hesitated. She had scoffed at the possibility of a Fomorian spell. If I were wrong, I could be setting in motion the cataclysm she feared by disturbing her. If I were right, I could be facing certain doom by not waking her.

I rushed back down the stairs. I needed the spell. If it did what Meryl thought it would, Briallen would see it, too. It would be the proof I needed to justify interrupting Maeve's request. I locked the front door as I left. Briallen might have the house warded to the teeth, but it made me feel better. My cell rang again.

"I know, I'm coming," I said, thinking it was Meryl.

A static hollow sound echoed in my ear. For a moment I thought Meryl had called back with her silencing spell.

"This is Gerda Alfheim," a woman's voice said. Even through the bad connection, it had that continental smooth accent you hear in old movies, with just a touch of Nordic to it. They had taken so long, I had given up on the Germans. "We have a bad connection. Please hold on." I had reached the end of Walnut Street where it dead-ended on Beacon. Loud, heavy traffic moved in both directions. When a brief opening appeared, I rushed across the street to get to the relative quiet of Boston Common.

"You were calling about my son Gethin. Is he all right?" Gerda asked.

"He's here? In the States, I mean?"

"Well, yes. He's in Boston. I thought that was why you were calling."

I skipped down the short flight of stairs into the Common. I held my hand over the speaker of the phone to hear better. Most people cover their open ear to block out intruding noise, not realizing the speaker picking up ambient sound causes more of a hearing problem. I stood looking back and forth for an easy path across the Common, but there wasn't one, so I cut across the grass. "How long has he been here?"