Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

But this… He did not know.

The shapeshifter moved closer to the stone bodies, his eyes searching for signs of their tethers.

"Well?" Graves asked.

"Nothing," Clay replied. "It’s as if they’ve always been nothing more than inanimate objects. Maybe because they’re no longer flesh, but there’s no connection to the killer that I can see."

"Curiouser and curiouser," Graves whispered.

Squire returned, a quickness to his step as he crossed the room.

"Just got a call from Mr. Doyle," he said.

"I didn’t hear any phone ring," Clay commented.

"He doesn’t have to use a phone," Squire explained. "Me and the boss, we got this system set up so that he can contact me through the shadows. All he has to do is find a nice patch of darkness and speak in my native tongue to make the connection."

Interesting, Clay thought. Here was yet another unique talent the little goblin had never exhibited before. Squire was always full of surprises, which was probably why Conan Doyle kept him around.

Graves’s spectral form shimmered in the gloom. "What did Conan Doyle want?"

"He and the rest of the crew are coming to Greece. An old acquaintance dropped by the brownstone and filled him in on what’s really going on around here."

"And?" Clay prodded him.

"The Greeks’ve got a fucking Gorgon problem."

Ceridwen stood naked in the empty rooms that were to be her quarters, now that she had decided to stay. In recent days she had used one of the many guest rooms on the upper floors, but if she was going to live here, she desired a more permanent and more personal space. Conan Doyle had recommended this suite of rooms because of their location. There were half a dozen high windows along the rear wall of her bedroom, three each on either side of broad French doors that opened onto a small courtyard garden behind the house. The doors were wide open now, and a cool breeze swirled and eddied about the room, caressing her skin, bringing up gooseflesh and hardening the nubs of her breasts. It was a delicious sensation and she shivered in pleasure.

She swung out one long leg and did a spin on the smooth wooden floor, her bare feet rejoicing in the feel of the wood. There would be no carpet for Ceridwen. The smell and feel of wood was her preference.

The sun shone upon the cut edges of the many glass panes in French doors, and it glinted there, refracting, throwing a scattering of tiny rainbows across the natural maple floor. The rooms were bright with sunshine and had been cleaned recently. She wondered if Arthur had used magick to tidy up, or if he had had Squire clean the suite earlier, presuming she would stay.

No. He didn’t know I was going to choose to remain here, she thought. Though perhaps he hoped.

And it had been clear that he was glad Ceridwen was staying behind, and not solely because she was a staunch and valuable ally. That was all right, though, for she had not been forthcoming about the entirety of her reasons for that decision. The Faerie sorceress had not lied. She had simply not provided the whole truth.

Fighting at Arthur’s side made her feel complete, somehow. As though it was meant to be. Such attitudes toward destiny were common among her kin, but she had always eschewed such ideas as flights of fancy. Now she could not decide what to think. But, then, Conan Doyle had always had that effect on her.

A tiny smile played upon Ceridwen’s lips and she shivered again at the caress of the cool breeze upon her flesh. I think it must be his eyes, she thought. Yes. His eyes. There’s iron there.

She danced over to the open doors and stepped into the warmth of the sun. Her flesh absorbed it, the heat radiating down to her bones. Ceridwen went to her knees on the stone patio and glanced around the garden. It was a pitiful thing, with little variety and less vigor, but she would soon see to that. With a satisfied sigh she plunged her fingers into the soil and she felt the life there. The earth responded to her touch, quivering beneath her. There was so much she could do here. The garden needed color and wild scents. And water. She would want a fountain, built of stone and with the water summoned from deep within the earth, a spring she would create by simply asking the water to flow upward.

Elemental magick was her very pulse.

As Ceridwen smiled, sprouts burst from the soil, a trio of small buds that grew rapidly to full-fledged flowers, the same violet as her eyes. They smelled of vanilla and oranges and they grew only in Faerie, only within the walls of Finvarra’s kingdom.

Unless she willed it.

They were the merest fraction of the color and life she would bring to this garden. But now she had other duties to attend to. A different sort of summoning to answer. Ceridwen stood and stretched, enjoying the sun on her body. The walls around the garden courtyard were high. Anyone inside Conan Doyle’s house might see her, but she knew he had thrown up wards to keep away the attentions of prying neighbors. Not that she minded. Women of the Fey were never coy about their bodies. In its way, the flesh was the fifth element, after fire, air, water and earth. She only wished she could control her flesh as easily as she did the others.

With a sigh she slipped back into her bedroom, calling a small breeze to blow the French doors closed, just softly enough not to shatter the glass. The only things of hers she had already brought into her suite were some of the clothes she had kept in the guest room upstairs. Now she examined the closet and chose a light gown the color of the winter sea. Once she had slipped it on she also donned a hooded cloak of a blue deeper and richer than the gown.

Eve wanted to take her shopping for clothes more appropriate for the modern human world. Ceridwen felt that since she had decided to remain for a time, perhaps she would take the vampire up on this offer. At the very least, it ought to be an entertaining evening out. Beyond their fondness for Arthur, the two women had little in common.

Ceridwen retrieved her elemental staff from its place by the door, the wood cleaving to her grip and the fire within the icy sphere at its tip glowing brightly within. Another wind blew up and closed the door behind her as she went out into the corridor.

This part of the old house was silent… what Arthur and his former associate, the disquieting Mr. Gull, were doing on the roof had no echo down here. Ceridwen liked it this way. In Faerie, everything was alive and vibrant. There was a beauty and sublime rightness to the dwellings of the Fey, particularly the homes constructed in the boughs of trees, but something about mortal houses brought her an inner peace. There was an elegance and a sense of artistry in a dwelling such as this one that she could appreciate in quiet moments.

Now, though, was no time for reflection.

Ceridwen swept along the corridor, a blue mist swirling around the ice atop her staff, her cloak nearly brushing the floor. They would all have gathered upon the roof by now and might already be awaiting her. Yet even as she thought this, Ceridwen passed a pair of large doors that had been thrown open and saw within the vast spectacle of Conan Doyle’s library. Nostalgia bloomed within her, a feeling rare for one of her race. Yet it was powerful enough to pause her in her purpose and divert her into that massive hall. For calling it a room would not do it justice.

The library was a glorious place, fully four stories high with nothing but bookshelves along the walls, save for the large skylights far above. The center was open and filled with comfortable chairs in which to cozy up and read. Stairs led up to the second floor, which was little more than a balcony that ran around the perimeter, looking down upon the first. The third floor balcony was slightly narrower, and the fourth the narrowest of all, so that the vast open air of the library grew wider the higher one climbed.