When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears: The Goblin Wars, Book Three (37 page)

“I sang your song, Zoë! I did it!”

“Finn?” Teagan asked.

“In Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center,” Raynor said. “He’s stable. And Father Gordon has Jing cornered at St. Drogo’s, Abigail. The young man might appreciate being rescued.”

“Yeah,” Abby said. “Like the cops are going to let me rush right over there. They’re going to have questions, right?”

“Just walk close to me,” Zoë said. “Hello, Thomas. I’m glad to see you here.”

The police officers and HAZMAT crews were walking right past them, not looking up. The goblins had done the same thing in Samhain Market as Zoë held the dying baby, Teagan realized.

“You’ll want to go to the medical center, Tea.” The dance therapist nodded toward her arm. “But let’s take Aiden back to the Widdershins’ and get you some clothes first.”

“But Mamieo—”

“You’ve been gone three days,” Zoë said gently. “Everything’s been taken care of. John Wylltson might not have been able to see phookas, but he could see more than you might think. Like the need to have someone there for his children. Sophia knows that John is gone. She’s waiting for you.”

“Zia Sophia?” Abby said. “She’s, like, their guardian?”
That’s what her dad had wanted to talk with Seamus and Mrs. Santini about
.

“But Ms. Skinner is never going to allow that,” Teagan said.

“She has recently had a life-changing experience,” Zoë said. “She isn’t pressing charges, by the way. A very perceptive detective named Deneux persuaded her that she wants nothing to do with Wylltsons or Mac Cumhaills. She’s handed the case over to me.”

They’d made it out of the cemetery without anyone questioning their presence, or even seeing them, apparently.

“Tea, you’re okay now, right?” Abby said when they reached the street. “Because I’m going to St. Drogo’s.”

“Of course,” Teagan said.

“Thomas,” Zoë said. “Will you come with us?”

“No,” Thomas said. “I need to find Roisin.” He turned and walked away, for all the world as if he had no wings.

“Is he a good guy, Zoë?” Aiden asked.

“He’s trending in that direction.” The dance therapist pursed her lips. “Raynor, I don’t think he should go alone.”

The angel looked after Thomas.

“I work exclusively with saints,” he said.

“I’m aware.”

“What about Finn?”

“Finn and Tea do a pretty good job of looking after each other, don’t you think?”

“Zoë.
He killed my brother
.”

Zoë just looked at him, her eyes full of love. “I know. You have a choice to make, Raynor.”

Raynor hesitated for a long moment, but finally, he nodded.

“Yes, Boss,” he said, and started after Thomas.

Epilogue

T
HE
kitchen of the Widdershins smelled
right
again— like paint and linseed oil. Like creation. Teagan leaned over the sink to look out the window into the backyard, making sure Aiden and Lennie weren’t getting into any trouble.

Aiden was squatting like a magical Christopher Robin in yellow puddle-jumpers and a raincoat in the midst of the prairie trillium, columbine, foxglove, beardtongue, fire pink, and who-knows-what-else Joe had called up. A few were already blooming, but most were just spring green. Aiden was singing to a little tree. Lennie, in size-ten puddle-jumpers of his own, was stomping a made-up magical dance around Aiden while Joe held Grizabella, her orange fur glorious and full, in his arms. Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, and James sat on the cinder- block fence. No one was safe on the ground when Lennie Santini danced.

The Green Man had slept through his autumn thundershower and all through the winter while the squirrels scratched and worried away every piece of burn from him. He’d woken once at the solstice to mumble something cryptic, then slept again until the first plants peeked out of the soil. When he’d come fully awake at last, he and Aiden had visited the parks and wild places of Chicago, causing a chaos of growth. Somewhere in their wanderings they had gathered an oak seedling. Aiden spent an hour a day singing to the little tree, and it had already put on several years of growth.

Her parents would have loved this.
Did love it
, Teagan reminded herself. Even if they were on the dark side of a one-way mirror in space and time, Teagan was sure they loved the future they had helped create. She never would have been able to stand in this room again if she hadn’t been sure of that, and sure that Mamieo Ida was with her Rory. The Widdershins’ was a place of life, even though death had visited.

“You still think that’s a good idea?” Abby looked up from her painting. “Singing roots into Mag Mell right here in the backyard?” She brushed away a sprite who was trying to weave a ribbon into her hair. Lucy had been keeping more than chocolates in her cup on the kitchen shelf. Her three baby sprites had been obsessed with decorating Abby for weeks now.

“It will be more convenient,” Teagan said. They had to think of a better solution to the problem of the woolly squirrelephants, swat-bats, and sprites leaking out of Mag Mell, though. Joe couldn’t spend all his time shooing them back in.

There was a steady stream of visitors from Mag Mell to consider, too. Currently they stepped through the remaining gate at Rosehill and made their way through the streets to the Widdershins’. Enkidu spent half his time here, and Seamus brought Irish Travelers he had recruited on their way to Mag Mell or back again. The Fianna were reforming, though this time they included not only warriors but Web wizards, streetwise Travelers, and wattle-jowled detectives. It took all kinds to deal with
sluagh
in the sewers and the occasional lowborn or Highborn run amok in the streets, courts of law, or cyberspace.

Raynor had popped in just once, after Finn had gotten out of the hospital. He’d sympathized when he’d learned that Mrs. Santini had insisted that Finn move to her house—close enough to watch over Tea and Aiden, but far enough away to be proper—then he’d taken the Indian Four that he’d left parked in the kitchen, and popped out again. Thomas was apparently a great deal of work.

“I won’t have to walk all the way to the gate at Rosehill in order to get to class in Ithaca,” Teagan said. There were advantages to being Highborn. Mag Mell had promised to open a gate for her, to make the path from her back door to Cornell short and straight. She would be able to visit Cindy and Oscar only once a month, though. Agnes’s mind might have been opened to the possibility that unicorn farts were real, but Teagan couldn’t tell her about any of this. Neither she nor Dr. Max was ready for a bilocate who could study all night while her body slept, or walk through any world of creation. They certainly wouldn’t understand how she could keep up with her schoolwork and commute from Ithaca to Chicago every day.

The doorbell rang.

“That’s Finn,” Abby said.

“How do you know? More psychic powers?” Teagan teased.

Abby pointed to the white envelope that had been gathering dust behind the change jar. “Yeah. Like math. Six months to the day since your dad told you to put that envelope up there. He’s here for his quest, right?”

Finn stood on the doorstep, looking more like an Irish gypsy than ever in his lace-up boots and bandanna. He had a knife in each boot now, a few more scars, and he’d added an earring and a vest for the occasion.

“Look at you!” Abby said. “All dressed up for a fight.”

“Don’t you have someplace else to be, Gabby?” he asked as he stepped inside. “Like out with Jing, maybe?”

“He’s picking Cade up for a game. He can’t play, but he still likes to be there.”

“I think I hear your
zia
calling you, then.” He pushed her toward the door.

“I don’t hear anything,” Abby said as he opened it and pushed her out. “Tea! Are you going to let him do this?”

“Yes.” Teagan laughed. “Seriously, Abby. Go call Jing or something.”

Finn leaned against the door. “She’s like a vampire, then, isn’t she? You let her in once, Tea, and she’s never leaving.”

“I don’t want her to leave.”

He took her hand and ran his finger down the scar on her arm. The electric arc that followed his touch spread nets of static over her body and shivers of delight down her spine.

As much as she hated to admit it, Mrs. Santini was right. There was no way she was going to focus on her studies with a sexy beast in the house. Certainly not with an
electric
beast that smelled and looked as good as Finn.

“Are you nervous?” Teagan asked as they walked to the kitchen.

“Na,” Finn said. “I’m Finn Mac Cumhaill. I’ve faced hellhounds for you, girl. Whatever it is, I’ll get it done. Besides, I’ve already got it figured.”

“The quest?”

“Our future. It’s the ghosties, isn’t it? The ghosties are us, come back old and gray to peep at the past.”

“Why would you think they were us?”

“Mamieo said it herself.” Finn winked. “Old age is the one thing you can’t outrun.”

“Maybe,” Teagan said. “But if that’s so, we become old and gray. Aren’t we in an Irish story anymore?”

“I already died once, girl. Twice is too much to ask, even of an Irishman.” He stopped to study Abby’s canvas. “That’s . . . amazing.”

Teagan nodded. The First Grove was so real that you could almost reach in and pluck a moon rose. The light falling on the tiger-eyed girl beside the pool looked as if it might have spilled out of a Maxfield Parrish painting.

“I think Abby’s getting a scholarship, too.” The Art Institute of Chicago had been interested in the work Abby had done in the past six months. Very interested.
Transcendent
was the word they’d used.

Teagan took the envelope down from the shelf above Abby’s easel and handed it to Finn.

He tore it open carefully and pulled out a piece of paper.

“It’s a list.” He frowned and turned it over. “Front and back.” Then his face went pale, and he sank into a chair.

“What? A list of what?”

“Books.” Finn’s voice shook. “The man’s given me a list of
books
to read. There must be a hundred of them.”

Teagan took the list from Finn’s hand.

“A hundred and one,” she said. “He numbered them. You
are
going to do it, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. I’m Finn Mac Cumhaill. I’ll get it done.”

“Then, why—”

“The old ghostie man,” Finn said. “He was holding a book then, wasn’t he? The last time we saw him. I had to be ninety years old, and I still hadn’t finished reading these books.”

Teagan shook her head. “You just loved them so much you were reading them again. I’m sure of it.”

“I’m glad one of us is.” Finn took back the paper and turned it over in his hands. “He said I couldn’t ask you to marry me until I’d finished the quest. He didn’t say a word about canoodling. Do you want to—”

“Yes.”

Visit
www.hmhbooks.com
to find all of the books in the Goblin Wars trilogy.

About the Author

K
ERSTEN
H
AMILTON
is the author of several picture books and many novels, including the acclaimed YA paranormal trilogy The Goblin Wars. When she’s not writing, she hunts dinosaurs in the deserts and badlands near Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she lives. For more about Kersten, please visit
www.kerstenhamilton.com
.