The last time I’d seen Phelan as pale as I saw him that moment was when Matt and J.T. had fished him out of the Grand River, half-drowned and bleeding from a half-dozen wounds—including the ones that had left the heavy scars on his hand, two straight lines where it looked like he’d grabbed a sword bare-handed and held on for dear life.
“Not real?” he echoed softly, staring at her blankly.
“And something other than human ghosts, too,” she added, casting a quick look at me. Bile bubbled up in my throat. I gulped down a mouthful of cocoa to force it down. The liquid burned its way down my throat but did little to settle my nerves.
“What’s she saying?” my brother asked. I shivered, forgetting that he couldn’t hear her—or at least had never admitted to being able to hear her, even when she wanted to be heard.
“She took a closer look at Leviathan’s army,” I told Matt. “She came across a few interesting things in the doing.”
“Illusions,” Phelan said softly, “and what else, Ériu?”
“Wraiths,” she said. “And worse, Uncle, things like I’ve not seen, but I can feel them.” Her gaze flicked toward Leinth, who drew up silently in Phelan’s shadow, a latecomer to the party, it seemed, for all that she was early for wrangling with Leviathan beyond the walls. “She may be able to identify the rest with more precision than I could.”
Leinth gave an uncomfortable grimace. “I would if I’d been paying more attention to the army than to him. I’m sorry. I just know that none of it felt right.” A visible shiver ran through her, her lips pressing tightly together in a thin, white line.
“This isn’t good, is it?” my brother asked, looking at Phelan.
“Not at all,” Phelan said grimly, shaking himself. “Not at all. I suspected that something wasn’t what it appeared, that it was somehow a little too good to be true…but this is a little more than I expected when I said I had a bad feeling about this.”
“It always is,” I said, staring into my mug. “So what are we going to do about it?”
Matt answered with a shrug. “Shore up the defenses, post a stricter watch, let the Hunt know what’s going on—and pray,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “A lot of praying. Whether that army’s illusionary in part or not, that’s still a lot of spirits and ghosts to contend with and I, for one, am not looking forward to that at all.”
damn…..you continue to spring real surprises on us! this is one of my top fave stories, full stop! well done and keep it going – if i dont see all this come to at least some sort of closure before you decide to stop, i might just go stark raving nuts (O.O)
Leviathan can either play nice or find out what’s happened to just about everyone else who decided to mess with these guys.
I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next with Leviathan and his droogies.
Also, being of an economics bent, myself, I’m looking forward to the results of the trade mission.