“I think he’s still alive, Murdock.” As I approached, the essence vanished.

I stopped short. Murdock came up beside me. “He’s dead, Connor. I don’t need your sensing ability to know that.”

“I saw something.”

Judging by Murdock’s expression, I must have looked as confused as I felt. “Are you okay?”

I rubbed my hands over my face and adjusted the knit cap. “Yeah. Maybe I’m just tired.”

Murdock nodded. “We’ll let the forensic guys take care of the rest. Come on. I’ll give you a ride back to your place.”

I scanned the body once more but sensed nothing. Maybe I had seen some overlapping essence from the officers around the body. Even with experience, the dual vision of essence and normal sight could be confusing.

We went down the front stairwell. On the ground floor, the medical examiner brushed by, looking none too happy to be roused in the middle of the night for a homeless guy. He didn’t bother to acknowledge us.

I opened the passenger door to Murdock’s car and dropped myself onto the pile of newspapers on the seat. Murdock pulled a U-turn and drove onto Old Northern Avenue. The main drag of the neighborhood had the calm of late night, only a car or two coasting along. Even the Weird quieted down at night eventually. The streetwalkers and spell dealers gave up and went home. The partiers stumbled into the decrepit backseats of cabs. The only people still out and about were the die-hard and the desperate.

Murdock didn’t say anything, and for once I thought he might actually be tired. The man’s a machine and puts in more hours than I want to think about. He pulled up in front of my apartment. “I’ll let you know if we get an ID.”

I let myself out. “I’ll look into the runes, see if it’s a spell that’ll tell us anything.”

He leaned across the seat. “Get some sleep first. You look like hell.”

As I walked up the four flights to my apartment, I couldn’t shake the image of the dead guy. I knew I’d seen his essence before I’d seen his body. I wasn’t that tired. It didn’t make sense. When someone dies, their life essence vanishes. Period. I’d seen it happen enough times. The old faith said we went on to our afterlife in TirNaNog and didn’t come back. Dead is dead.

I entered my apartment, noting the faint odor of old coffee and empty beer bottles doing battle with fresh laundry and Pine-Sol. Home smells. I’m not the best housekeeper and can’t afford one. I did my best but let the dust bunnies roam where they will.

I was tired. Too many late nights and too many bars were catching up with me. Maybe Murdock was right. Seeing dead guys walking around dark, empty warehouses might be a sign it was time to get some sleep.

I cradled a bottle of wine in the backseat of a cab. Guinness is my preferred drink, but Briallen ab Gwyll has a well-known liking for French wines. A dinner on Beacon Hill was always an opportunity for good food and conversation, whether the invitation came via cell phone or sending. Briallen prefers the intimacy of mental contact. Her cool, feathery touch in my mind was a pleasant surprise after so many months.

The cab pulled up in front of the townhouse on Louisburg Square. In the cool evening air, I admired the old place-five stories of bricks and mullioned windows that dated back to the late 1800s. The gas lamps flanking the entrance made me feel welcome and reminded me of my teenage years when I had been Briallen’s student. I broke one of the lamps once swinging on it, and a welder patched it, slightly off center if you looked closely. Briallen wasn’t happy and made me memorize an entire land registry in Old Irish as punishment. To this day, I remembered that one Ian macDeare owned all the land from the split oak tree to the ford of a nameless stream by the summer pasture in Ireland’s County Clare.

I let myself in. Briallen had keyed the door to my essence long ago with a warding spell on it that told her if I entered. As I set one foot on the stairs leading to the second-floor parlor, noise from the kitchen pulled me to the back of the first floor, where I found the lady of the house busy with a pot at the stove. I placed the wine on the counter and pulled off my knit cap as she gave me a broad smile.

“You look like absolute hell!” She threw her arms around me, tucking her head into the crook of my neck.

“Thanks. You look wonderful.” The last time I saw Briallen, her hair and skin were bleached white from the stress of a major spell. Her color on both counts had returned, her skin a warm peach and the healthy glow of chestnut in her hair, the close-cropped length she had preferred for the past few years.

Briallen was a good hugger, but one with ulterior motives. As she released me, her hands came up the back of my head, and she stared into my face. I felt a vague pressure as she used her essence to probe the strange dark mass in my mind. Surprise and intrigue flickered across her face.

“It’s changed. It’s shaped differently. How do you feel?”

I ran my hand over the scruff of dark hair growing in. “I had a tough time a couple of weeks ago, but I’m okay.”

She gave a half smile back. “I heard about Forest Hills.”

Of course she did. Everyone had heard about Forest Hills. When a giant dome of essence implodes and people die, news got around. I stopped the disaster from being worse than it was, but I don’t remember how I did it.

Briallen waved me to a stool as she stationed herself at the stove. Dinner plates were set on the other end of the kitchen island. For all the room Briallen has in the house, she spends most of her time in the kitchen and the upstairs parlor.

I noticed three place settings. “Is someone joining us?”

She nodded, sipping from a spoon. “My nephew showed up this afternoon. I hope you don’t mind.”

That was a surprise. I didn’t know Briallen had any family. “I don’t remember a nephew.”

She handed me a corkscrew. “Well, technically he was a fosterling. Long before you showed up.”

Amused, I lowered my eyes at her as I poured her a glass of wine. “I cannot believe all the things I don’t know about you.”

She handed me a bottle of Guinness and took the stool on the opposite corner. “People a lot older than you still don’t know everything about me.”

Her eyes danced above the rim of her wineglass. Briallen verch Gwyll ab Gwyll lived a life most people would envy and the rest would find exhausting. When she wasn’t teaching at Harvard, she was mentoring at the Druidic College, working behind the scenes at the Fey Guild, or serving as an international ambassador for a variety of people and causes. Sometimes she even took vacations, which supposedly was what a recent trip to Asia had been about. I doubted that, though. Briallen may like Thai food, but she didn’t need six months to learn about it on-site.

I tapped her glass with my bottle. “I’m glad you’re back.” Before either of us could say more, we heard someone coming down the stairs. Briallen slid from the stool and moved to the kitchen door. “I think our guest is joining us.”

I hadn’t sensed anyone when I had entered the house. Briallen kept dampening wards everywhere to prevent her essence-infused artifacts from interacting with one another. Plus, she valued her privacy and didn’t want anyone walking in and sensing who had been in her home. Even so, moments before the man appeared, I sensed his essence, recognizing first that he was a druid, then, surprisingly, who he was.

Briallen slipped her arm around his waist and pulled him into the room. “Connor, this is Dylan macBain. Dylan, this is-”

He stretched out his hand. “We know each other, Auntie Bree.”

From the look on Briallen’s face, she hadn’t known.

“Good to see you.” I shook his hand. He hadn’t changed a bit since I had last seen him, still young-looking, dark brown curls snug on his head, dark eyes against pale skin.