Rituals (Cainsville 5)

"Do I?" he murmured. "No, I don't think so. When you're ready to tell us what we saw in there--and why we saw it here--you know where to find us. Olivia?"

Grace stayed where she was as we walked away.

Only once we were on Rose's front steps did I say, "Okay, I have to ask. What did she do?"

"I have no idea."

"You were bluffing?"

"Hardly. Everyone has something to hide. One only needs to suggest one knows it, and let guilt fill in the blanks."

--

"Sluagh," Rose mused as she scanned her bookshelf. "I don't suppose you have any idea how to spell that?"

"Gabriel said they

were sidhe." I glanced at him, and he nodded.

"Which makes them Irish rather than Welsh," Rose said. "That's a start."

Ideally, for the best answers on this, we'd have gone to Patrick. While Rose was an excellent researcher, she was human and relied on human retellings, which often bore only a glancing acquaintance with the truth. Patrick's books--coming from the fae themselves--made for far more reliable reading, but we were persona non grata with him right now.

We'd royally pissed off two elders in a few hours. That had to be a record, even for us overachievers.

Rose pulled a tome of Celtic folklore from her shelf.

"Here it is," she said as she flipped through one and showed us that the book devoted a single page to the lore...and half that page was an illustration of a giant bird beating at a window.

"The birds are smaller," I said. "Much smaller. Which would make them far less scary...if there weren't thousands."

"You called them harbingers," Rose said to Gabriel. "Here, they're the sluagh itself in manifested form. In post-Roman-invasion lore, the sluagh steal the souls of those who haven't received last rites."

"The unforgiven," I murmured.

"Yes. Pre-Christian, it's a more general form of unforgiven. Those who cannot be forgiven, who do not belong in the proper afterlife--the Otherworld. They are trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead, in the form of birds who claim the souls of the unwary. They come at night, through open windows, from the west."

I nodded. "Which matches with Gabriel's memories--close the windows, particularly on the west side. Anything else?"

"They're associated with the Wild Hunt."

"The Cwn Annwn?"

"The Irish version of it. The lore is divided on whether they are the Wild Hunt or just another form."

"Another type of fetch," I said. "Taking souls. Okay, so the question is, why did we see that in Grace's apartment? She didn't seem too surprised."

"No," Gabriel said. "She did not."

"Then I suggest we let her stew on it," I said, "while we pay some visits."

--

Gabriel advised we start with Todd. He made up some excuse about needing to warn Todd, in case Seanna took another run at him, but the real reason was simply that I'd be in a much better mood for Todd if I hadn't seen Pamela first.

When they brought my father in, he looked as he always did--healthy and grounded and a whole lot more cheerful than one would expect from a guy who has spent half his life in prison. I suspected I wasn't the only one who took a moment to put on a game face before we met.

As always, Todd walked out smiling. Before he sat, he tapped his knuckles against the glass. I tapped mine back. Then he nodded at Gabriel and lowered himself onto the stool.