The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [158]
“Be careful, Deirdre,” Sasha said, wagging a finger at her.
“Be careful of what?”
“I don't know. I think . . .” Sasha cast a glance at the open door. “All I know is they keep watch, all right?”
A shiver ran up Deirdre's spine. “Who's keeping watch? Do you mean Anders? Is that why they assigned him as my new partner—to keep watch in case Farr contacts me?”
Sasha shook her head. “I don't know, and I don't intend to know. And if you're a smart girl like I think you are, Deirdre, you won't start turning up stones that are better left untouched. I've learned it's best to keep your curiosity outside of the Seekers, no matter the access number on your ID card.”
Deirdre didn't know how to respond to that. Sasha was attaché to some pretty high-up people in the Seekers. What did she know that Deirdre didn't? Before she could ask, Sasha headed to the door, then glanced back over her shoulder.
“I love you, Deirdre, and I don't want you to come to harm. So be a good girl. I mean it.”
Then Sasha was gone.
An hour later, Deirdre stumbled through the door of her flat, cold and drenched once again. Maybe Madeleine was right about the whole umbrella thing. She shucked off her wet clothes and spent the next twenty minutes under a hot shower. As she toweled off, she thought again about what Sasha had said, only it didn't make any more sense than it did the first time around. Besides, Deirdre had other matters on her mind.
Forget not the Sleeping Ones. In their blood lies the key.
Only the key to what? The inscription was important, Deirdre was sure of it. But how? Blood had been found on the old keystone—blood with a DNA signature similar to Glinda's and the other denizens of Surrender Dorothy. Fairy blood.
Connections sizzled—that was it. Travis and Grace had used the blood of the fairy they rescued from Duratek to activate the gate artifact and step through to the world AU-3. Could it be possible the keystone was similar in nature to the gate? Was it part of a doorway—not a door to another room, but one to another world? Maybe. But what did that have to do with anything she was working on now?
The bee in the back of her brain finally buzzed close enough for her to catch it. She had been so focused on understanding why Atwater hadn't been punished that she had forgotten to consider the infraction itself. The place he had been forbidden to return to was an establishment called Greenfellow's. She had assumed it was simply a shop of some sort, named after its proprietor. But what if it was something else?
She threw on a robe and slippers and hurried out to the dining room. Her computer lay on the table, powered on and waiting. She sat down and typed several commands. Minutes later, she sat back, staring at the screen. Once again she had found a link where she had thought none existed.
A search on the word Greenfellow's had brought up a list of several results. The only one that mattered was a reference to a seventeenth-century London drinking house. She had superimposed the location of the tavern on a modern map, and the result glowed on the screen in front of her.
Brixton. The establishment Atwater had been forbidden by the Philosophers to return to was a tavern located in what was now Brixton. It was the same spot where the keystone had been found. And the same spot where Surrender Dorothy would stand nearly four centuries later, where Glinda and Arion and the others with fairy blood in their veins would die at the hands of Duratek.
But what did it mean? The connection couldn't be random. The Philosophers must have known about the tavern—and the strange nature of the people who inhabited it—for centuries. So why had they kept it a secret all this time? And what did the tavern and the keystone have to do with Linear A and the civilization of ancient Crete?
The phone rang. Deirdre stared as it rang a second time, a third. Then she snatched up the handset.
“Hello?”
A hissing, then a voice spoke. “They're back.”
Fear jolted through her, and