Dreams and Shadows - By C. Robert Cargill Page 0,105

band following them, a local favorite. The crowd wasn’t thick, but it was dense enough to make finding Nora tough. Frantically he scanned the room, looking for her.

And then he saw her. She stood at the back of the room, a foot propped up on the wall behind her, wearing exactly the same outfit as the night they’d met. She smiled and winked, noting that he’d finally found her. Then she blew him a kiss, nodding. He was ready.

BREEEEOOOOOWWWWW! The first chord resonated like a bolt of lightning striking the amp, its thunder rolling over the crowd. Everyone looked up. Everyone. Ewan paused before he touched his guitar again, letting that single, drifting note draw everyone in. An awkward anticipation hung in the air, as if the crowd had been awakened suddenly at their desks in class with no idea why everyone was staring at them.

And then he laid into his guitar like a ravenous dog on a piece of meat. There was nothing limp or mediocre about it. It was profound. It was like seeing the aurora borealis for the first time. Everything they were doing seemed wrong, but felt right. Discordant notes blended to form melodies and shockingly addictive chords. Hooks that felt as if they’d been in the audience’s heads for years played to their ears for the first time. Eyes and jaws stared wide, unblinking, at the stage.

There was no stage show. No lighting. No pageantry. But their essence was palpable. Three guys pouring their hearts into a song that everyone swore they’d heard somewhere before but could not place. Everyone present would describe their experience differently, but they would all speak of it reverently, as if it were somehow religious.

The band had left a dozen T-shirts behind the bar, the same dozen shirts they’d had printed months before and brought with them just to seem legitimate. Simple and black, they had a seemingly handwritten scrawl upon them that read: “Limestone Kingdom.” All twelve sold before the end of the second song.

Mallaidh, dressed as Nora, stood at the back of the crowd, beaming with pride. She knew the music well. They were fairy tunes she remembered from childhood, played originally by the master musician Dithers and duplicated with raw intensity by his ward and unknowing student. She rocked back and forth, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, nervously fidgeting with her rainbow-colored scarf, giddy as a schoolgirl.

“He’s beautiful,” said a woman standing next to her.

Mallaidh nodded with a love-bitten smile.

“You’ve chosen well.”

“Excuse me?” Mallaidh gave the stranger a sidelong glance. The woman beside her was lithe, graceful and only slightly taller. She looked as if she were in her late twenties, yet at the same time ageless, with a timeless style and tattoos that looked neither fresh nor faded. Her hair was short and black, her eyes sharp and dazzling. A faded rock T-shirt clung to her body, knotted above her belly button, leaving her tight, youthful midriff exposed. Below that, she wore a pair of faded, tattered jeans, too perfectly torn to be a mistake, too ragged to be prefabricated.

The woman was the very definition of rock style. And she was eyeing Mallaidh’s man.

“You’ve chosen very well for your first time out,” said the woman.

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” said Mallaidh.

The woman smiled. “Your first love. You can always tell when a Leanan Sidhe is looking upon her first love. There’s a sort of magic to it. I wish I could go back and reexperience my first. It was incredible.”

Mallaidh winced. “What are you talking about?”

“Sweetie, you knew these were my stomping grounds. Right? You had to imagine that you’d meet your mother one day. Guess which day today is?”

Mallaidh’s jaw dropped and her heart with it. The thought had never crossed her mind. She’d never known her mother, never thought she’d meet her. And her pursuit of Ewan had been so single-minded that it didn’t matter where he ended up—she would have followed him there. He just happened to be in Austin. Now, standing before her, was the woman who had abandoned her decades ago, looking no more along in years than an older sister.

“Wait,” said the woman. “You had no idea?”

“Cassidy?” asked Mallaidh.

“Cassidy Crane.”

“Mo . . . ?” Mallaidh began.

“Call me Mom and you’re dead meat, kiddo.” Cassidy glared facetiously, smiling at the same time. Her daughter looked just like her. She could see through the glamour—all the tricks and wiles of the Leanan Sidhe—and noted that,