CHAPTER 91

"Aye." He pinched off the head of a stunted bulb. "Much like these flowers, if ye be leaving the head to rot, the whole plant still tries to feed it. Imagine then if these blighted buds in me bucket fed off each other—till one becomes strong enough to attach itself back to the plant. Ye remove the dying buds so that the whole plant may live, after all, so why would ye be wanting to reattach the damn thing?"

"Well, you don't."

"Exactly. So these beings go traipsing around, trying their damndest to remain on the mortal coil, living a faux life, as it were." He picked up his bucket. "Unseen by mortal eyes, they continue to bleed away the life of the whole plant."

"Is that why dullahans exist?"

He nodded with a huge smile. "Indeed! It's me job to pinch the bud before it becomes something more sinister. Something twisted, like the sluagh that chased you when you first crossed. My sister's job were similar, though she be having a smaller clientele."

"Smaller clientele...do you mean Cecilia?" Now this was news. "Cecilia is your sister?"

"As much as 'tis possible for my kind. We be some of the first fae, created by the queen herself. She followed the rules of creation, and it were considered fashionable to mimic the new humans that were roaming about. One fine day, she reached into the heavens and commanded the light of the stars to create the banshee and the dullahan—or so the old tales be sayin'. We be made in pairs, one man and one woman, and Cecilia is me twin. A woman to be tendin' the home and a man to roam the fields, though I've heard tell that's no the case these days. We be a physical manifestation of midnight and mortality, so the queen gave us our fearsome appearance to scare the living and the dead. It helps us with our jobs delivering souls to the other side. We keep them from lingering around and making trouble."

"Oh, I see. So you're a lot like Death."

"What?" He tilted his head. "Not a'tall, not a'tall, lass, we be very different. Death is the one who cuts the thread. I be the one who comes to collect and deliver."

"I see. So you're kind of like a failsafe then."

"I guess so." He lifted his bucket, looked inside, then back at Beth. "I promised the centaurs I be tending the ones in the hedge maze as well. Walk with me, lass?"

Beth smiled, twirling a strand of her hair with her fingers. Something about the dullahan was igniting a spark inside her, and the thrill of the chase was just what she needed to take her mind off the faerie queen. Besides, the dullahan seemed eager to chat, and she wouldn't mind a sympathetic ear right now.

"I'd love to," she told him, then walked down the steps of the porch to join him.

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Kisa watched from the window as Beth walked down and joined Sulyvahn on the path that led to the hedge maze. She yawned and rolled over on her back, frustrated that her sunbeam had moved.

The last couple of days had been nothing like she expected. Besides a few basic questions about where she may have come from, the others seemed content to let her have free roam of the house. She hadn't explored much on the third floor. Those were bedrooms, and the weird door at the end of the hall was guarded by a small group of rats. Apparently the mechanism holding it shut was capable of killing you if you didn't know the code, so she did her best to put it from her mind.

Yesterday she had explored the second floor. The room where she woke up was still empty. Mike had explained that they had ordered some furniture for that room and she was welcome to it if she wanted it for her own. She had accepted, but all that was in there right now was Mike's sleeping bag, which wasn't that comfortable.

The other rooms on that floor were mostly for the rats, though she did find an interesting room that looked like a small library. The window overlooked an impossible mountain range, and she wondered what would happen if she climbed out the window and just started walking. The thought was brief, though, because the air had been cold and the cliff was very steep. Apparently nobody had really thought about exploring that area, and without wings, she wouldn't get to either.

Today had been a perfect day to lounge downstairs. Tink was busy trying to fix the electrical panel again, and Mike was with the centaurs. With most of the floor to herself, she had gone into the office and found the door leading to her current location.

The room she was in now was full of Egyptian artifacts, and though she had been fascinated, a large sunbeam had been shining through the bay window at the front of the house, and she had curled up on the seats.

Once the beam had faded, she woke from her nap to see Beth speaking with Sulyvahn.

She watched them for a few minutes, but she couldn't hear what they were talking about, so she became bored very quickly. Looking around the room, she saw plenty of things to investigate. Rubbing her hands together in anticipation, she slid off the window seat and started looking around.

Kisa couldn't help herself.

When she had come in before, her entire world had become about the sunbeam on the window seat, but now that she saw the contents of the room, curiosity had her digging through the contents of the shelves. There were many leather bound books, and way too many statues.

She eventually spotted a device with a pair of lenses like binoculars attached to a stick with a double picture on the end. When she held it to her face, she found that when she relaxed her eyes, the image of the Sphinx would turn three-dimensional.

"Fascinating device, isn't it? It is called a stereoscope."