The Annex
“Max said that he was after the Pot,” Stone said. “Not a pot, or pots, but the Pot, as in one particular pot of gold he hasn’t found yet.”
The team had converged back at the Annex to dissect what they’d learned from the raid on Eden Manor. Stone had been relieved to find Baird and Ezekiel waiting for them after he and Cassandra had taken a return trip through the mausoleum door. Dry clothes and hot coffee had helped put the moat behind them, although Stone’s hair still smelled of smoke and ash. Bridget and Brigid were also on hand, anxious to get the scoop on what was happening.
“And he didn’t seem all that concerned about leaving that other gold behind,” Cassandra added. She was seated at the conference table along with the others, all except for Jenkins, who preferred the privacy of his own desk. “From what I could gather from the charts and notes I glimpsed, he’s all about locating a specific pot.”
“Belonging to one particular leprechaun?” Baird speculated. “And he’s been hunting leprechauns in general just to find the right one?”
“Sucks to be one of the wrong leprechauns, I guess.” Ezekiel had his feet up on the table. “Too bad we don’t know who the real target is.”
“I may be able to remedy that.” Jenkins rose to address the room. “While you’ve been bearding the enemy in their lair, I’ve been cross-referencing the Library archives with the leprechaun census reports I acquired from Mill Ends. It took considerable time and effort, but I’ve determined that a particular leprechaun, one Finbar O’Gradaigh, completely fell off the grid nearly sixteen hundred years ago, around the same time as a certain incident on Saint Patrick’s mountain, almost as though he has been in hiding ever since.”
“So what are we thinking?” Baird asked. “That this Finbar character is the leprechaun who ran afoul of the Serpent Brotherhood way back when? And that they’re still after his personal pot of gold for some reason?”
“MacDonagh said that the bad guys were targeting hermits and loners,” Cassandra recalled. “If Finbar has been lying low since the fifth century, he could be the one they’re really after.”
“But what’s so special about his pot of gold?” Ezekiel asked.
“That, Mister Jones, remains a mystery,” Jenkins said, “although I’m hopeful that more research will shed some light in that direction.”
The leprechaun’s name tugged at Stone’s memory. “‘O’Gradaigh,’” he repeated. “As in ‘Grady’?”
“My Grady?” Bridget blurted. “From the pub?”
“‘Grady’ would be a modern derivation of ‘O’Gradaigh,’” Jenkins noted.
“Indeed, ’tis a fine old Irish name,” Brigid said. “Among both mortals and the Wee Folk alike.”
Jenkins looked at the other Bridget. “How much do you know about this individual’s background, Miss O’Neill?”
“Nothing really,” she admitted. “He just showed up a while back, offering to play his fiddle at the pub in exchange for free drinks. Seemed like a fair exchange at the time.”
“He implied he couldn’t return to Ireland because of some unspecified issue,” Baird said. “I just assumed he was alluding to The Troubles, not to some close encounter with the Serpent Brotherhood centuries ago.”
Stone recalled the switcheroo Grady had pulled on Max back at the pub, trading his fiddle for Max’s pistol. Stone never had figured out exactly how Grady had pulled off that magic trick.…
“Whoa!” Bridget said. “Grady’s a crafty old devil, to be sure, but are you seriously suggesting that he’s actually a leprechaun?”
Cassandra took a book down from a shelf. She gently opened it to reveal a four-leaf clover pressed between its pages.
“Only one way to find out,” she said.