My father had almost become sluagh? They were the restless dead, the ones who couldn’t move on. “I thank you for finding him. It can’t be easy for you.”
“I would do anything for Harry. When everyone else abandoned me, he was there. I never knew my own father. He died when I was young. Harry…well, I don’t want to get too emotional. The old man can’t handle it,” Shy said. “He’s ready to talk if you are.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
Shy turned and her eyes went black. “Hello, me darling. Don’t pass out on me this time. After all, we’ve got a war to fight.”
I moved to the end of the bed and took Shy’s hand, took my father’s hand. “Hello, Dad.”
Chapter Six
Shy’s chest sighed, the movement so familiar though the body was different. “You haven’t changed at all. Is it true it’s only been a few days for you?”
I was talking to my dead father. He was dead and hiding in another body. I forced myself to let that sink in. It wouldn’t stand. I would find a way to fix all of this, but I had to start handling things better. “We were gone for roughly four days. I don’t understand what happened. The painting was enchanted.”
“The painting was meant for Marcus. It was spelled specifically for him,” my father explained. “I know all of this because I spent the first year of my death in the Council building, following Myrddin and learning about his plans. He never meant for Daniel to go through that painting. He was perfectly happy to lose Devinshea and you and Kelsey, but he wanted Daniel around and properly under his influence.”
“Under the thrall stones.”
Shy’s head nodded. “Yes. He knew where he was sending Marcus to, knew that if you went through too they would likely figure out what he’d done. The stones are much more easy to obtain on the outer planes. It’s where he got them. When Devinshea disappeared, he knew he couldn’t keep Daniel. That was when he allowed the two of you to go through. He knew Daniel would never stop searching for Devinshea. The trap was for Marcus and Kelsey. Devinshea was what he hadn’t counted on. The wizard came in and quickly assessed the threats to his absolute control over Daniel.”
“Marcus and Kelsey. I’m insulted I wasn’t on that list.”
“Ahh, but he never gave you enough credit, my darling girl. He thinks you’re nothing more than a wife and mum. He doesn’t understand the most dangerous of all creatures is a mum whose kids are threatened.”
“Why go after the kids?” I asked. “They couldn’t challenge him. Why not allow Declan to come for them? Miria would have taken them and they wouldn’t have been any trouble at all.”
“When he came for the children that day, I think that’s what he might have done. The hours after you went missing were quiet. No one had a clue you were gone because Danny was supposed to help with the locator ceremony.”
Myrddin had planned to hold a ceremony in the dark temple at midnight that night. Danny and I were going to attend, and it could have gone on for hours. “He told everyone we were in the temple?”
“That was what I believed,” my father agreed. “I stayed over because I wanted to talk to you when you got back from the business with Daniel. When you didn’t come back, I went to look for you. I overheard them talking, and Myrddin decided the best way to deal with the situation was to lock down the crown very quickly. Honestly, I think he panicked a bit. He’s not used to his plans being upended. I know he came into the penthouse that morning and fed me a line of bullshit about how you and Danny had been attacked and he needed to get the children someplace safe. Albert was already on the move, getting the children ready. Trent had spent the night with Fenrir, so he was back there, too. I held him off as long as I could.”
“How did he kill you?” I wanted to know everything, every single reason to punish the wizard when the bill came due.
“When he realized I was giving Albert and Eddie cover, he stormed back into the kids’ rooms. He quickly discovered that Eddie had transported them, and he took it out on me. The great Merlin packs quite a punch when he wants to. I’m not sure if he was trying to kill me or trying to hurt me and send me a message, but when that bolt of lightning from his hands hit me, my heart gave out. The world went dark and when I came back to consciousness, it was several weeks later and Myrddin had done his worst by then.”
“His worst?”
Evan took that one. “He’d consolidated his power by killing everyone he could. He put out the story that the royals had been killed by a rogue group that had embedded members close to the royal family.”
“Let me guess. Trent and Sasha,” I concluded.
“And Marcus,” Evan added. “He used Marcus’s disappearance to make the vampires look particularly bad. Not that there aren’t a subset that work with Myrddin now, but it was a good way to sway the supernaturals who don’t like the vamps.”
“It was a good way to get rid of all of our allies.” The political situation had been tenuous at best. It always was in our world. Daniel’s coalition had held, but there were always factions fighting, millennia of bad will and betrayal among the different tribes. The wolves didn’t trust the vampires, and the witches are wary of the Fae. There was often some sort of rebellion to put down. “I take it he invited the demons in.”
“Yes. By that point he’d brought in the demons, and the witches had taken over the Council,” my father explained. “I had no idea where the children had gone then. I stuck close to Myrddin and learned a lot about his plans. In those first months, he simply struggled to secure the throne. He didn’t bother to go after the children. He tried to figure out why the painting hadn’t worked the way he thought it should. It went blank after it took you and Daniel.”
I had so many questions about that. “Did he enchant it himself?”
Shy’s hands expertly poured the tea as my father spoke. “He painted it himself, but the enchantment was commissioned. It was a particular form of magic that wasn’t of this plane. He feared if he used his own, one of the witches would have sensed the purpose. He couldn’t use demonic magic since there were wards against it at the time. So he was forced to use a witch from another plane.”
I had to laugh because I knew what had happened. The trick had been on freaking Myrddin. “He tried to lay a trap for Marcus and perhaps Kelsey, but Marcus was needed by the outer planes. Twelve years ago did anyone sense a…” What to call it? “A disturbance in the force?”
Shy’s head shook but the expression was pure Harry Wharton. “My daughter the geek. What do you mean?”
Evan had a thoughtful expression on her face. “Are you talking about the days when the veil thinned? I don’t remember it well but Albert talks about it. It was how we moved so easily across the planes for a while. Even when it settled down, there were still places where it thinned from time to time. Albert thought Myrddin was doing it.”
So they’d felt the convergences on the Earth plane as well. “No, it was because the Night King was dying and the Day Queen needed her successor to take over the job of fueling the planes. The outer planes exist basically on top of one another. Like Shy explained your relationship, those planes share a space and they require a unique magic to keep the walls up and the planes separate. Summer is made from that magic. She is that magic. But as with all things in our universe, she works best with a balance. Night to her day.”