there. You’ll talk to your dad. Then right back inside.”
Andrea patted his shoulder. “You’re a sweetie, Ronan.”
Ronan marched so close to Andrea as they crossed the yard that their bodies touched. Andrea felt him quivering hard with fighting instinct.
Andrea stopped at the weak spot on the ley line, her skin tingling as she neared it.“Father,” she called.
The air split, and a pale, cold light touched her. Fionn Cillian stood tall and strong in the shimmering entrance to Faerie.
Andrea held out her hands. “I need you. Can I talk to you?”
Fionn smiled, his warrior face filled with triumph. He caught Andrea’s hands in his, ignored Ronan’s cry of surprise and outrage, and tugged Andrea, alone, into Faerie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sean checked Glory’s usual haunts and turned up little. Glory was more adventurous than most Shifters, liking to hang out in human bars and dare the patrons to make something of it. No one could mistake six-foot-tall Glory for anything but a Shifter, but she enjoyed letting humans be fascinated by her.
In a bar way out on the west side of town, Sean finally found a trace of her. Glory had told him about this place a few years ago, though Sean had never taken her up on her offer to visit it. It was closed this early in the day, but Sean didn’t need to go inside to catch Glory’s scent.
The scent was strongest at the field beyond the parking lot, where asphalt crumbled into waist-high weeds. No cars lingered in the lot, including Glory’s, but here, he smelled blood. Not much—someone had cleaned it up, and he couldn’t smell who under the stench of blood. But he knew the blood was Glory’s.
Sean stood up, heart thumping, pulled out his cell phone, and called his father.
Faerie wasn’t what Andrea had expected. Instead of shimmering mountains of ice or trees of silver, she saw ordinary-looking trees stretching up to gray sky, the muddy ground laced with ferns and other undergrowth.
On second glance, the trees weren’t ordinary. They were a species she’d never seen, with dark green needles, somewhat like pine, but the trees were studded with bloodred berries. Fallen berries littered the forest floor, scarlet juices staining the mud where the berries had burst. Behind Andrea, the rent in the fabric between the worlds snicked shut. She searched the air but found no sign of the bright light that marked the doorway.
Fionn let go of Andrea’s hands and pulled her into a bone-crushing embrace. “My daughter. I knew you’d come to me at last.” He released her and looked her up and down. “Now, where is the Sword of the Guardian?”
Andrea put her hands on her hips. “As a matter of fact, I came here to ask you about that. Why do you want the sword so much?”
Fionn’s dark eyes filled with fire. “Daughter, that sword has unbelievable magic. It is the original Sword of the Guardian, did you know? The first one forged by a Fae woman and her Shifter mate.”
“Yes, Sean told me.”
“That Fae woman, Alanna, was the daughter of kings, and her magic was great. It runs in the family. Our family.”
Andrea stared. “Our family? What are you talking about?”
“We are descended from Alanna’s brother. He was an evil bastard, I’m sorry to say, but we can trace our line to him through his pure-Fae offspring. Thus, the magic in her family has passed to me, and so to you.”
“And that means what?” And who actually used the word thus? “That I can wield the sword? I doubt that. Sean is the Guardian, chosen by the Goddess. And please don’t tell me I’m related to him, even distantly, because that would just be too weird.” Shifters had an even greater horror of inbreeding than did humans.
Fionn shook his head. “Sean is descended from the Shifter sword-maker’s sons by his Shifter wife, not from Alanna. He is pure Shifter as our family is pure Fae. But it means that both you and Sean are connected through the sword. By magic.” Fionn put a hand on her shoulder. “Think, Andrea. The sword speaks to you, does it not? It connects with you.”
Andrea thought of the way the sword’s threads wove through her fingers, how it seemed to whisper whenever she drew near, how she’d drawn in its power to heal Ely. “Yes.”
“That means it will connect to me too. We will defeat our enemies if we have it.”
Andrea growled. “It’s not for you. It’s Sean’s, and it’s not a weapon of war.”