The door came open again and Daniel strode in. “Getting out of this war? Have you talked to your brother again? Is he willing to let us in? Once Lee turns, we won’t have to worry about him as much.”
He wasn’t thinking straight, and that made me wonder if he’d heard me, too. It sucks to be surrounded by supernatural hearing. It makes gossiping and complaining under my breath hard, and those are two of my favorite hobbies. “Being in one of the sitheins attached to the Earth plane won’t help us. The demons will merely find a way in once they’re done playing here.”
“It could buy us decades,” Danny mused.
“And still end the same way. What happened today that has you both on edge?” It wasn’t merely what I’d said. It couldn’t be. “Was it the wolves? Or Declan?”
“It was both, and then we’ve got the issue with Zack.” Danny sat on the edge of the bed. “The blood worked for a little while. Now he’s feeling tired again. Worse than he was before. Lisa wants to take him back out to the woods, but I’m worried Myrddin would simply find him and finish the job. He knows where to look.”
“He met me miles away in Reykjavík,” I pointed out. “I wasn’t strolling around the mountainside. But it does make me wonder how he knew. Especially since he suggested he was the one who sent Declan.”
Dev nodded. “Declan received word shortly after we returned. According to him, he knew we were back within hours.”
That meant one thing. “He’s got spies at the Council building. I thought they got rid of all the Fae.”
“All the ones they can see,” Dev replied.
Ah, so Declan’s hidden guard was hard at work. That could play in my favor if he ordered them to help me. If I could trust them. They would always work in the best interests of Faery. I would rather work with spies who Sasha trusted. “That explains how he knew we were back, but not where we are now. Has anyone checked Alexander’s communications? Does he pop outside to use a cell?”
“Zoey, he’s been here in Frelsi for a week and he hasn’t left once, nor has he used the mirrors to communicate,” Danny said with a sigh. “I understand that he’s dangerous, but he’s one of the best spies we’ve got.”
“Well, either one of your spies is a double, or Myrddin’s got some of his own here.” I didn’t buy that he simply guessed we were going to be in Reykjavík today. “He definitely had someone on the ground. He couldn’t have sent that projection of himself without someone here helping him.”
“I suspect we can easily explain how he knew. He does have spies in the cities,” Danny said. “There are bounties on all of the kids’ heads, and there are also rewards for information about us. Sasha’s tried to shake up the scheduling for supplies, but word can always get out. We’ll have to hide our tracks better. Maybe we all need glamours when we leave Frelsi.”
“He can see through them.” Danny and Dev weren’t used to being suspicious of Myrddin one hundred percent of the time. I had to be the leader in this. “Myrddin won’t be fooled by glamours. We need more than that. The Mantle of Arthur is the only thing that will work on him, and even then, we have to be careful. We can’t run around the streets of the city in an invisibility cloak.”
“I don’t see why not. You’re planning on doing it,” Dev pointed out.
“For one very specific job. Should we worry that he’s got something that can detect the cloak? After all, it was in his possession for a thousand years. He’s got to guess it’s how I stole the book in the first place.” I was already poking holes every place I could. It was the only way to plan a job. “I would assume when he took over the council building he took an inventory.”
The Mantle of Arthur was one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain, and Myrddin had gifted it to Daniel on the day we were taken by the old council. It had been how Danny and Zack had gotten away. We’d kept it close ever since. I had to assume Myrddin would mark its absence. I also assumed Lee and the kids had played with it over the years since it had been his favorite toy as a child.
“It nullifies magic,” Danny explained. “Zack and I made a study of the cloak, and it renders you invisible to everything, including magic. We tried it on several witches and a whole bunch of wards and spells. When you’re under that cloak, no one can find you. It’s like you drop off the map of the world. I’m not worried about Myrddin being able to sense you. I’m worried about the two of you being under there. It’s going to make it hard to move. It was one thing when he was eleven.”