C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

True form. Nobody said things like that. Mucking with magic really did rearrange the speech patterns laid down over a lifetime. I sighed, ready to give it another shot—something like “Show me what you really look like”—but he shrugged before I spoke. “I don’t have one, not the way you mean. I’m shaped by desire.”

Caitríona, horrified, blurted, “I don’t desire me da!”

He gave her Morrison’s best reassuring smile, which was pretty damned reassuring. Or would have been, if he’d been Morrison. Even so, I was reassured as he explained, “Not necessarily sexual desire. Safety, reassurance, stability. I answer whatever need is utmost in your mind.”

“Gancanagh,” Méabh said. I resisted the urge to say “Bless you,” and the handsome devil-may-care fellow turned to give Méabh an acknowledging nod. “You’re dangerous,” she said without sounding like she meant it. “A woman should never trust her heart’s desire. He seduces,” she told us. Me, perhaps, since presumably Caitríona was in fact not hot for her daddy. “He is one of the fae, like the fear darrig. We cannot trust him.”

“Of course you can’t. But I can lead you to evil’s lair.”

My voice shot up. “Why would we want you to do that?”

All three of them, Gancanagh, Méabh and Caitríona, said, “Aibhill,” which still sounded like “Evil” to me, but this time I recognized they probably meant the O’Brien banshee. “To Aibhill and her host of wailing women,” Gancanagh went on. “Four and twenty of them.”

“Twenty-five,” Cat said obstinately, but Gancanagh clicked his tongue and winked at me. “Twenty-four now. She lost one recently, you know.”

I did know, having kind of ripped a banshee’s head off a year ago. “Twenty-four isn’t really an improvement in the odds.”

Gancanagh smiled and shrugged. I caught a scent of Morrison’s cologne and ground my teeth together. This was not my boss. It was not the man I’d fallen in love with. It was not even, according to what Méabh had just said, technically a man at all. I could accept that intellectually, but on a gut level I was just relieved as hell to see Morrison here and ready to fight at my side. Fists knotted until my nails stung my palms, I grated, “Never mind the odds. Why would you lead us there?”

“Because I don’t want to see the world end, Walker. Aibhill’s master doesn’t have a place in his lineup for someone like me. I’m about life and love, not death and loathing, so if he wins a major victory I’m left out in the cold.” He shivered delicately, which Morrison would never do, and murmured, “I don’t like being cold.”

Morrison would probably never say that, either, but something about the way he said it made Méabh and me both take a step toward him, ready to warm him up in any way his little heart desired. Only Caitríona’s squawk of dismay stopped us, and for a few seconds we glared at each other while Cat said, “Jaysus and they’re going to be all over me da if this doesn’t end quickly. I can’t take it. We’re going with you, but don’t say a word to them, d’ye hear me?”

Gancanagh put a finger over his lips, playful and sensuous, and I thought it was a damned good thing Caitríona wasn’t suffering from an egregious schoolgirl crush at this particular time in her life. I didn’t know who the most popular Irish heartthrob was, but if she was seeing him instead of her father we would all be—so to speak—screwed. I cringed at my choice of words, even unspoken, and fell obediently into line behind Caitríona and Gancanagh.

Not so much into line, actually, as two by two, them in front and me and Méabh elbow to elbow where we could make sure neither had a better view of Gancanagh’s very fine derriere or, more important, make sure one of us had no chance to speak to him without the other. I knew I was being ridiculous, but hints of Old Spice kept wafting back toward me, and it was all I could do to not punch Méabh just for existing. A little desperate, I said, “Tell me about Ailill.”

Méabh glowered. “So you can steal him for yourself? I think not.”

“For— This is not some kind of perverse Mrs. Robinson thing, Méabh! I’m just trying to distract myself!”

“From eyeing my man!” She rounded on me, but I saw it coming and ducked under the fist she threw.

Caitríona bellowed, “Ah, fer sweet Christ’s sake, will ye’s stop?” and fell back to put herself between us. “What is wrong with you?”

“She thinks I want to steal her boyfriend. I totally don’t.” In fact, the last thing I wanted to do was get in a bare-knuckles match with somebody who had a thousand years of fighting skills on her side. Besides, if anything, she was trying to horn in on my territory, not the other way around.

I seized my head, trying to stop that line of thought. Gancanagh dropped back to walk beside me, murmuring, “She’s a beautiful woman. You’re powerful, to be sure, but there’s something exotic about her, isn’t there?”

“Morrison doesn’t like women taller than he is.” I had no idea if that was true, but it gave me something to hang my hat on. I forced my way past his flirtation and scowled at the landscape. It was still Ireland, but it seemed like every step we took it got darker. The grass turned jade, not emerald. Leaves deepened to evergreen shades, and thick-barked oaks sucked light in until we meandered through gloom. Morrison’s scent caught me off guard every time I took a breath, though Gancanagh himself sidled between me and Méabh while Caitríona tried to herd him back to a lead position. At least she didn’t want a piece of my man, though Morrison really was too old for her. Hell, at thirty-nine he was almost too old for me. Which would make him a babe in Méabh’s arms. The impulse to smack her rose again. Desperate to keep my head on straight, I muttered, “Where are we going?”

“Into the heart of Thiobraid Árann, where kings and priests once ruled.”

On the positive side, that was definitely not something Morrison would say, which helped me remember it wasn’t him. On the less positive side, I still had no idea where we were going. Caitríona volunteered, “ Thiobraid Árann is Tipperary,” which I could sort of see once she’d spoken the Anglicization of it. She went on with, “The O’Brien took his crown at Cashel, where Patrick had converted his ancestors to Christianity,” while I compulsively mumbled, “It’s a long way to Tipperary.”

Cat gave me a dirty look and I spread my hands in self-defense before asking, “ The O’Brien? Weren’t there a lot of them?” and then, “It really is a long way to Tipperary, especially if we’re walking. We’re sort of on a deadline here, folks. How’re we gonna—”

Gancanagh started to answer. Caitríona shot a glare his way and he subsided with a smile and a flutter of eyelashes. She, rather ferociously, said, “There may be a hundred O’Briens, but only one is The O’Brien. The leader, the king, the one they all looked to. And The O’Brien of whom I speak is Boru, who was crowned—”

“Oh!” I said gleefully. “I know this one! At the Rock of Cashel! The big awesome castle! Mom and I went there!”

For once I didn’t get the look that said I’d crushed a thousand fondly held memories by the way I’d phrased my limited historical knowledge. Caitríona seemed pleased. I was so proud of myself I danced a little jig, which Gancanagh joined in on, catching my arm to swing me around.

Right into Méabh’s breastplate. I clanged against it and held very still, as if a rabbit who perhaps would go unnoticed by the bird of prey if I didn’t move. Of course, rabbits didn’t usually have their noses in the bird’s cleavage, not that breastplates made for a lot of cleavage. I held still anyway.