CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

ALEXANDER

 

I cursed myself for the hundredth time. How could I have agreed to let Tressa go without me? It had been insanity.

"Xander, you've got to calm down or you'll explode," said Matt.

He sat in a leather executive chair in front of the screens, monitoring the cameras and motion detectors around the estate.

The small control room didn't lend itself well to pacing, which I had been doing anyway for several hours. Ever since five minutes after Tressa left and a pain in my gut screamed danger.

It took a half hour, but she finally answered her phone. She hastily summarized their encounter with Morgan. Once I was sure she had gotten away and was on the way home, the pain began to ease. Still, I refused to leave the control room with a possible immanent threat of Unseelie, and apparently I couldn't make myself stop the pacing.

"I should've gone with her."

"We thought the Morgans might be here. You made your decision based on the information you had at the time."

"Hmm," I said noncommittal. I wasn't convinced I made the decision at all. Tressa was really good at getting her way when she wanted to.

"Anyway, it sounds as if things would have been much worse if she hadn't gotten there when she did. I hate to think what you would have found if you had gotten there three hours later." Matt was right, but somehow that didn't make me feel better. "Well anyway, on the bright side, the only activity I see on the Estate is a few deer scrounging for food. The last time an Unseelie touched the wards the camera picked up flashes of red. I haven't seen any of that either."

My father's silver Honda appeared on one of the cameras and my shoulders immediately felt lighter. They had finally arrived. I had planned to run to meet them, but I stayed put to watch the screen when I noticed they had stopped before turning into the driveway.

Tressa sat in the driver's seat arguing with Sloan, who sat next to her. The camera at the gate captured an amazing amount of detail. I could see the weariness and frustration on Tressa's face.

I tried to read their lips, but they spoke so quickly it was fruitless. With Tressa still talking, Sloan opened the door and rushed out. Tressa lunged across the seat and tried to grab her, but Sloan was too quick.

She slammed the car door in Tressa's face. Turning back for a moment, she inadvertently looked directly at the security camera before jogging out of view. Her expression startled me. I expected defiance, anger, or perhaps even ambiguity, but instead her face had been lined with pain. It didn't make any sense. Why not come in and let Tressa help her if she had hurt herself?

The fleeting thought evaporated. I left the control room and sprinted toward the front door. My only concern was to make sure the rest of them were okay.

"Shamus, they're here," I yelled, but when I reached the foyer the old Brounie was already there.

"No need to shout, Mr. Xander," Shamus said in that haughty way he had. "It is my duty to greet anyone who enters this home, so of course I am here."

I stopped the biting remark that jumped into my mind from escaping out of my mouth. Choosing to ignore him instead, I ran out the door and met the car as it pulled up to the front of the house.

The Honda came to a stop and an instant later, Tressa flung her arms around my neck. Her body trembled with stress and fear. I pulled her to me, resting my head on hers.

"It's okay. You're home. Everything's okay now."

I held her until she relaxed. I kissed her quickly before pulling away—just a soft peck, because in my peripheral vision I saw my daughter come through the door. We hadn't told Sophia about the day's drama; she knew only that her grandfather was coming for a visit. She skipped to the car door singing, "Poppy, Poppy, Poppy!"

Dad didn't react to her. He sat motionless in the back seat, staring straight ahead. She smacked her palm on the door window and he still didn't respond. Lady, who lay with her head in Dad's lap, looked up at Sophia and wagged her tail.

I opened the car door and peered in. Dad turned his head, but he made no move to exit. Lady scrambled across his lap and jumped out.

"Wow, that's a big dog!" Sophia said.

Lady's head was taller than Sophia's. The dog stretched her neck forward to sniff the girl. Sophia leaned forward, touched Lady nose to nose, and giggled. She brushed her hand down the dog's wiry gray coat as she went to her grandfather.

"Dad, are you okay?" I asked while Sophia took his hand and pulled. Her touch broke him out of the strange stupor.

"I'm fine. Just tired is all. Hey there, baby girl!" he said, letting Sophia pull him from the car.

Shamus met my father at the door, greeting him with great formality before bustling him and Sophia off to the dining room. Tressa and I put our arms around each other and walked behind them. At the door she stopped and turned.

"Where's Lady?"

"The dog?" Matt asked from inside the foyer. "I saw her on the monitor. She ran after the girl."

Tressa looked out into the night, her face creased with worry.

"There's nothing you can do for Sloan if she doesn't want your help. She knows where to find you if she changes her mind."

Tressa nodded and closed the door.

 

We conversed lightly over our evening meal, as if nothing unusual had happened that day. After eating I suggested that Sophia take her grandfather to the farmhouse and show him around.

The rest of us met in the library. The place so closely resembled Tressa's grandfather's study that it was hard to believe it was an entirely new room.

"Let me get Shamus," Tressa said as Matt and I settled on the leather furniture by the unlit fireplace. Before she had even finished saying his name, Shamus came to the door. "Oh good, you're here. Please come join us."

Shamus didn't sit, but stood leaning on the wall next to the fireplace. Tressa retold her story about the afternoon's events. We listened quietly until she finished.

"So you're saying that the Morgans lived across the street all those years, watching for my mother to return?" I asked, incredulous.

"Aye. Evidently Deaglan Mór was punishing them for something by banishing them from the Otherworld. I couldn't make out whether Mór assigned them to stay close to your father, hoping to catch your mother if she returned, or if it was their idea. He seemed confident the bringing me to Mór would serve the same purpose."

"And he threw the Unseelie Faugh a Ballagh into the wind?" Shamus asked.

"Aye."

The old fae contemplated this with a creased brow. "It would be difficult to judge what that means. Did he make the Faugh a Ballagh in the middle of the fight out of habit, or was he calling to Unseelie whom he knew to be in the area? It could have been either."

"But if these guys could flit the way Tressa does, wouldn't they have arrived almost immediately?" Matt asked.

"And if the Morgans were out of favor with Deaglan Mór, would the other Unseelie come to his call?" I piped in.

"Have there been any more attempts by Unseelie to get onto the estate?" Tressa asked.

"We haven't seen any sign of them," I said. "How does that fit in with everything else that's happened today?"

"All superb questions," Shamus said. "We thought had we kept the Unseelie out of the Human World. Yet in these last few weeks, we've learned that some have slipped through anyway. I cannot believe, given the Seelie's years of vigilance, that an entire army of Unseelie could be here."

"I agree," I said. During my stay in the Otherworld I had seen firsthand the security at the borders. No border patrol is perfect, but I doubted many had gotten past them. "And, to Matt's point, if they were answering his call they would have flitted there in seconds."

"So what's the plan?" Matt asked, rubbing his eyes.

"We have done everything in our power to make Pine Ridge safe. There's no safer place for us to go. We must stay diligent and fight our battles as they come," Shamus advised.

 

"You held Dominion over my father!" I said in mock horror when Tressa and I were alone. "What happened to all that talk? 'Oh, I'm a Sidhe, I can convince anyone to do anything.'"

"You had to be there to understand. He wasn't rational. Nothing would make him leave that house. Truly, it was my last resort."

"You might just be losing your Sidhe mojo," I said, wiggling my eyebrows up and down. It was easy to laugh about it now, though earlier I thought I would die knowing she was in trouble and I was too far away to help.

Tressa slapped my arm lightly as she climbed into bed. "Don't tease me! I feel bad enough as it is."

I pulled her close until she sat with her neck in the crook of my shoulder, my arm wrapping her into my embrace. I played with her hair, almost subconsciously.

"I need a way to address him besides John, and he doesn't want me to call him Mr. Mannus." Tressa rarely addressed people by their proper name, preferring nicknames to avoid holding Dominion over someone accidentally.

"Sloan calls him Mr. M, like his students used too, but I think you should call him Dad. He would like that." I kissed her as a wave of gratitude washed over me. "Thank you, my love, for getting him here safely."

Now that Tressa, my father, and Sophia were secure under one roof—and no Unseelie had descended upon us—I felt giddy with relief. Dad, still experiencing the after-effect of being held in Dominion, had quietly gone to sleep with Sophia fussing over him.

It took longer for Sophia to drift off; the excitement of having her grandfather close kept her amped up long past her bedtime. The farmhouse was getting crowded, and—like it or not—we would have to consider swapping Matt for the Guesthouse or moving back into the new Manor House.

"Tell me again, why didn't Sloan come home with you?" I asked. I was curious, but not unhappy that the girl had chosen not to stay.

Tressa cuddled closer, turning onto her side and laying her arm over my waist.

"Sure and she's a stubborn child," she said drowsily. "We got all the way to the gates at the end of the drive and she demanded to get out of the car. She said she was a loner and preferred to be on her own."

"But where will she go? She doesn't know anyone here. She can't stay on the streets—it's too cold." Tressa lifted her head, looking at me with raised eyebrows.

"What's this? Are you starting to care about the 'street urchin?'"

"I still don't trust the girl in the least, but that doesn't mean I want her to freeze to death."

Tressa smiled warmly and kissed me. We lay together, quiet for a while. I continued to pull her copper curls straight just to let them spring back.

"When I was in trouble, she didn't hesitate to come to my defense. She carries that blade around, however I don't think she's a seasoned fighter. Morgan's death seemed to shock her."

"Yeah, I'm sure it was different than the Gray Man. He seemed more like a monster. Morgan was a person."

"Plus, you killed the Gray Man. She didn't," Tressa said. "I don't know that she killed Morgan, necessarily; it could have been any or all of his wounds that were actually fatal. She was fine during the ride home. It seemed like something else was going on at the gate. She seemed to be in physical pain."

Emotionally drained, I had nothing left in me to spend worrying about Sloan. "Maybe she'll flit back to the lighthouse," I suggested, instantly hoping it was true. I felt better not having her around.