When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears: The Goblin Wars, Book Three (17 page)

“That’s good,” Finn said as Gil stepped out of the alley once more.

Gil put his shoulders back and his ears up. He took an experimental step, then hopped up and clicked his bare heels together.

“No cavorting,” Finn said. “Just walk.”

Gil froze as the next car passed.

“See?” Finn said. “You’re fine. As soon as you’re comfortable, you just let go.”

“You won’t let go of me?” Gil asked, as if the pavement would sweep him off his feet and away if Finn did. “Not until I let go first?”

“I won’t,” Finn assured him. “Now, come on.”

Gil stopped jumping at every car, but stared at the Halloween decorations on lawns and in windows. He gaped open-mouthed at a group of ghosts hung by their necks in a tree.

“This place is scary,” he said, still looking at them over his shoulder as Finn pulled him away.

“Scary? You’re from Mag Mell, for cats’ sake. Everything there has teeth, claws, or a bad attitude.”

Gil just shook his head.

They were almost to the library when Teagan saw the white minivan coming toward them.

“Don’t tell me that’s McGillahee,” Finn said.

“It’s him, all right.” Teagan looked for a doorway to dodge into but there wasn’t one.

“Now would be a good time to get comfortable and let go,” Finn suggested.

“No,” Gil said. “I’m still afraid.”

Seamus did a U-turn, managing to run his front tire over the curb as he did so.

“You have a little bromance going on there, Mac Cumhaill?” he asked through the open window when he pulled up beside them. Gil edged behind Finn and peeked around him at the minivan.

“Just helping a friend, McGillahee. Ever had one?”

“Not like that,” Seamus said. “Detective Deneux wants to talk to you.”

“Both of us?” Teagan asked.

“Just Finn. I told her that if she kept it friendly, I’d bring him down to the station for a chitchat.”

“You told her that?”

“I’m trying to help you out here. Show what a helpful, upstanding citizen you are. Is that a body wrapped in my coat?”

“It is,” Finn said. “I suppose I could go talk to the cops after I’m done disposing of it.”

“I’d offer you a ride”—Seamus glanced from the bundle in Teagan’s arms to the
cat-sídhe
behind her—“but I just cleaned my van. I’ll wait for you. Could you remind me how to get to your house from here?”

“Take the next right,” Teagan said. “Then a left and a left.”

“Going down to chat with the police.” Finn shook his head as the minivan eased down the street. “I once worried that I might complicate your life, girl. Can you imagine that? But that was before you dragged me to Mag Mell, declared war on everyone in sight, made a lot of questionable friends, and got me involved with a lawyer.”

“You can’t blame Seamus on me,” Teagan protested. “Mamieo called him.”

Finn squinted at the turn signal that had just started blinking on the back of Seamus’s van. “Is he turning left?”

“Yes,” Teagan said as the van disappeared. “Yes, he is.”

“The anti-Aiden,” Finn said. “The man’s the anti-Aiden. And don’t tell me he’s not so bad, Tea. I’m leading a parade of
cat-sídhe
and holding hands with a phooka. I’m stretched to my limit here. I couldn’t bear hearing a good word about that idiot on top of everything else. Not one.”

The library was closed, the parking lot full of police cars and black SUVs. Men and women in uniform were ducking under the yellow and black crime-scene tape that was stretched across the gateway. The thick-stemmed trumpet vines that had twined through the wrought-iron fence, hiding the park from the street, were mostly burned away. The old trees that had woken when her mother’s ashes were scattered among them were gone.

Teagan adjusted the bundle under her arm, then stepped closer to the iron bars. Gil whimpered, and the
cat-sídhe
started to yowl. It wasn’t the ashes or the smell that was bothering them. It was the iron. Teagan could feel cold radiating from it. She hadn’t come this close to the fence the day before. Not close enough to feel it. If standing this close to the fence was painful for her, it must be agony for a
cat-sídhe
.

When she’d walked without her flesh and bones, she’d had no problem carrying Finn’s iron knife. It hadn’t affected her—not until it had pierced her bilocating body. Finn wrapped his free hand around a fence bar, and both Teagan and Gil shuddered.

“Look at the bench, Tea,” Finn whispered. “The one you left your body sleeping on.” The cement that had been the bench was melted, slumped into a glassy puddle. No wonder Homeland Security was involved. It looked like a small nuclear device had gone off.

“You kids move along,” an officer called.

“Raynor did
that?
” Finn asked as they walked on down the street.

Teagan looked over her shoulder. That was what her house would look like if the angel stepped aside. Gil was right. Raynor
was
scary.

Fifteen

T
EAGAN
led the way now. She’d walked to the west side of Rosehill with her parents plenty of times before Aiden was born, but when they got there, she wasn’t sure she could find the path. The chainlink fence that separated the back of the cemetery from the street was completely hidden in bushes. She was afraid someone might have mended the gap in the fence that teenagers or a rogue bird enthusiast had made, cutting and folding the chainlink back to create their own entrance into the grounds. But when she finally came across the path through the bushes, it was clearly still in use. The iron in the galvanized-steel fence wires felt like ice around her as she ducked through.

Gil whimpered, but he followed Finn through the fence, and the
cat-sídhe
came after him, scrambling through as quickly as they could, then disappearing in different directions into the woods.

“I like it,” Gil said, finally releasing Finn’s hand. “It smells like frog water!”

It did smell wild and boggy, but these trees were not as old as Teagan had thought they were. They were not
awake
the way the trees in the park had been. Restless, but not awake.

“Where do we put him, then?” Finn spoke in hushed tones.

“Not this close to the path.” Teagan didn’t want birders to stumble across them digging a hole in a cemetery, even if all they could see was an empty checkered coat. She headed south, working her way through the thick bushes and away from the fence, and occasionally catching glimpses of the
cat-sídhe
through the brush.

There was more than the fitful slumber of trees here. Gil’s ears were swiveling front to back.

“Something’s scratching,” he said.

Teagan stopped and closed her eyes. Yes. It
was
a scratching . . . like mice behind a wall.
Like something trying to get out
. There were no old graves underfoot here, no wooden coffins ready to split and spill corruption. But it felt as if there were.

“Are you hearing something?” Finn asked.

“Not with my ears,” Teagan said. “But there’s something here.” She could hear it more clearly when the wind managed to make its way through the trees. It wasn’t the rustling of dry leaves, though; it was somehow
behind
that sound.

They found two ruts, a road of sorts that led past trash piles—boards and window frames collected from construction of some kind on the other side of the cemetery grounds. It looked like they had been hidden here out of sight for years.

Augustus stepped out of the underbrush and motioned for them to follow. The
cat-sídhe
had found a tiny clearing.

“This’ll do,” Finn said.

Teagan laid Bill Bailey down, and Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, and James stood over him like guards while Finn took the trowel and started to dig. It went quickly once he had cleared the top layer of grass and roots. The soil beneath was loamy and soft. Finn broke it with the trowel, and Teagan and Gil scooped it out with their hands until it was deep and wide enough for the small body.

Teagan laid the coat-wrapped
cat-sídhe
gently in the ground. Peter walked closer, edging past Finn and Gil, and dropped the flowered lei into the grave.

“Deuteronomy choose you,” he said.

“Be chosen,” the other cats echoed, dropping their treasures in after the lei. James, the one who had been secretively clutching his treasure, dropped in a fifty-cent piece.

“That’s touching,” Finn whispered. “Apart from the doll head, I mean. Was this bit in the book, then?”

“No,” Teagan whispered back. “In the book, Old Deuteronomy is just a wise cat. In the play, he selected cats to be born again.”

Peter walked over, reached up, and touched the back of Teagan’s hand with the back of his own.

“Bill Bailey ssleeeps warrrrm. Thank you,
Teagan
.”

“Teagan,”
the others repeated, and her name didn’t pull at her or twist her. It felt like a blessing, a word full of every good wish.

“Stop saying her name,
beasties
,” Gil shouted.

The
cat-sídhe
flattened their ears and hissed.

“Oh, so
they’re
the beasties now?” Finn asked.

“We
hatessss
you, Mac Cumhaill,” the cats spat.
“Keeee-yill!”

“Of course you do,” Finn said as the
cat-sídhe
stepped back, fading into the bushes.

“Keeee-yill, keeee-yill,” echoed in the air for a moment, and then they were gone.

“The jacket was my idea, by the way,” he called after them. “Come on, let’s look around.”

They moved east, making their way through the brambles until they reached the paved roads of the cemetery. Gil walked gingerly onto the tarmac, tiptoeing beside Teagan past tombs and mausoleums, reclining statues in glass boxes, and bronze children gazing forever into eternity.

“What is this place?” the phooka asked. “Is it magic?”

“It’s a cemetery,” Finn said. “A place for the dead.”

“Why do dead people need stone houses?” Gil asked as he studied a miniature Greek temple.

“The houses are not for the dead,” Finn explained. “They’re for the living. It gives us something to set our eyes on. We’re not ready to look straight into eternity. Not yet.”

“Death, you mean?” Teagan asked.

“I’ve tried to get my mind around it. But I can’t.” He nodded toward a row of graves. “They’ve stepped away from us, that’s all. We’ll follow along someday, but until we do, the missing and the longing . . .” He shook his head. “The reaching out to touch someone who isn’t there.”

“Phookas don’t have that problem.” Gil bounced over a log-shaped tombstone.

“So they never grieve, do they?” Finn asked.

“No.” Gil kicked an ancient stone sticking out of the grass. “Phookas don’t like anybody enough to miss them.”

“Stop that,” Finn said. “Phookas might be heartless beasties, but that’s no excuse to be disrespectful. This is where people bury”—Teagan felt the adrenaline shoot through him— “Dump Dogs.”

His knife was in his hand faster than Gil could get behind him. The teens were lying on the sunny steps of a mausoleum, tangled together like models in a bad fashion shoot.

They sorted themselves out, and the girl stood up, shook, and stretched.

“No Dump Dogs buried here,” she said. Her voice was throaty, hoarse.

“Not yet,” Finn agreed. “But that could change.”

The boys stood up beside her.
Hyenas
, Teagan thought. They moved like hyenas, more feline than canine. But they weren’t focused. They were . . . well fed and sleepy.

“Finn,” she said softly, “they don’t want a fight.” Which was a good thing, because they gave her the same uneasy feeling she’d had the first time she’d seen them. If they did start something, three were too many for Finn to handle, and she didn’t know how much help she or Gil could be.

The girl looked Teagan up and down.

“A sensitive? That can be fun at a party. I knew a boy like that once. One of your cousins. Mmmm.” She wiggled. “He was
wonderful
. Since you know we’re not here to fight . . . I’m Saoirse. These are my brothers, Lollan and Bairre.”

“If you’re not here to fight,” Finn said, “what are you here for?”

“No introductions?” Saoirse looked hurt. “We know who you are. Finn Mac Cumhaill and Teagan Wylltson. Your auntie Mab is looking for you, Tea.” She leaned over to look at Gil. “Who is this cutie?”

Gil gulped and shook his head.

“What are you here for?” Finn repeated.

“To rescue a special friend of Bairre’s. Roisin. We went by to see her, but there was a very scary fellow at your house.”

“The angel,” Gil whispered.

“You’re no friends of Roisin’s,” Finn said.

“Thomas told you that, did he?” Bairre spoke for the first time. “Have you asked her? Do you know whether she’d rather be with him or with me? Or do you choose her friends for her now?” Teagan could feel his shift in focus. Anger. But still not enough to overcome his full belly.

Lollan turned his face toward the woods, scenting the wind, and Teagan hoped that Peter and his friends had gone back the way they had come.

“And what are you three doing here?” Bairre asked. “We’ve been friendly. Explained ourselves. How about you?”

“Minding business of our own,” Finn said.

Lollan belched, then spat in the grass. “They put some nasty shit in the bodies here before they bury them.”

“Been having breakfast, have you?” Finn asked.

“He’s teasing.” Saoirse smiled at Teagan. “He knows Thomas will have been filling your head with rot about us. Probably gave you his big bad bird ‘destroyed armies, toppled kings’ speech, too.”

“I believe he mentioned it,” Finn said.

“You’re awfully quiet for a Highborn,” Lollan said to Teagan. “A little on the short and skinny side, as well.”

“Let her alone, Lolly,” Saoirse said. “She doesn’t know you well enough to know you’re teasing. Let me tell you something about
lhiannon-sídhe
, Finn. They are weak little parasites. They don’t make songs or art or poetry. They just amplify the abilities of those who do have those gifts. I’m sleepy.” She yawned, and Teagan had the impression of too many teeth, just as she had when the girl had grinned at them before. But the goblin wasn’t lying; her body was so lethargic she almost seemed drugged. She turned back to the mausoleum.