Summer's End by Lisa Morton Read Free Book Online

silent
prayers to the other gods, but this was Bal-sab’s moment.
    The dark god’s overpowering
presence vanished abruptly, and the gathered Druids all exhaled in relief. Bal-sab
had accepted the sacrifices, and ensured another year of prosperity for his
worshippers. A feast would commence now, and even if the sidh should
cross over, Mongfind and Mog Roith would be ready. The Celts would enjoy
another year of prosperity, until next Samhain.
    Samhain…Halloween…four days
away.
    I finished the shower, dressed,
walked to the living room on legs gone numb, didn’t even correct myself when I
missed the couch and sagged to the floor.
    True. All of it, true.
    The Morrigan had possessed me
last night, and together we’d committed murder. I’d just washed our victim’s
blood from my hands, and yet that wasn’t what had taken the feeling from me and
dropped me:
    I couldn’t deny what had
happened last night—any of it. There was a world beyond ours—a world of violent
gods and ancient magic and hunger for human life. History is a lie and reality
a thin sheet, beyond which we sometimes glimpse shadows that strut and grasp at
us. Nothing in Mongfind’s journal was fantasy or deception; it was the truth,
not what I’d spent my life experiencing and believing.
    And ó Cuinn…he’d known exactly
which spell to send me to, the one that would provide an encounter so intimate
that even the most confirmed of skeptics wouldn’t deny it. This couldn’t be
explained away as a cheap Halloween mask, or even the finest special effects trick
created by a master wizard.
    Or could it?
    I still couldn’t accept it
completely. A drug, perhaps; certain psychotropics were widely used to induce
ecstatic states. Could ó Cuinn have somehow slipped me something? I thought
back to everything I’d eaten and drunk yesterday—tea from my own supply, Thai
food from the same restaurant I ate at twice a week, wine from a bottle I’d
just opened. It didn’t seem likely, but…
    What if he hadn’t tampered with
my food? That meant he was right—that we were both Druids, that he had called
up the sidh …
    That they’d murdered Wilson
Armitage.
    Had ó Cuinn meant that to
happen? Or had he been unable to control his guests once they’d arrived here?
    After some time I found the
strength to rise, and resolved to continue with my schedule as planned. I’d
taken this week off from my day job as a bookseller to focus on my Halloween
commitments, and I wouldn’t abandon those now. I had a phone interview set up
with the BBC in thirty minutes—I’d be damned if I’d give that up now because I’d
had a psychedelic trip into fairyland.
    Even as I thought that, I hoped
I wouldn’t be damned for other reasons.

 
     
     
     
    October 28
     
    Evening
     
     
    I managed to get through the day
somehow. In between interviews and answering e-mails, I packed last night’s
clothes into a trash bag, drove to an alley thirty minutes away, found an open
dumpster, tossed the bag in and came home again.
    Night fell, and I drove to Dark
Delicacies, a nearby genre specialty bookstore, for a signing. I didn’t like
the idea of being out at night, but this wouldn’t be like walking across a
large, empty campus; even if I had to park a short distance from the store, I’d
be walking past stores on a heavily-trafficked street.
    The signing was pleasant if
under-attended (aren’t they all), and afterward I ended up walking with friends
to a coffee shop two blocks away, where we gabbed over tea and dessert. For an
hour or so, I was able to forget about goddesses and murder and pagan rituals,
as we lost ourselves in the simple, mundane pleasures of gossip and jokes.
    At 11 p.m. (how had it gotten
to be that late?), the shop closed up and kicked us out, we said our goodbyes
on the sidewalk, and I turned to head for my car, now parked several blocks
away. It was late enough that the stores had closed, and few cars drove by. In
the distance I could hear the