“There’s no way you’re getting behind or under that thing, Lara. There can’t possibly be any artifacts left under it anyway. They’d have been pulverized when it was built.”

“But it’s here.” Lara turned in a loose circle, wishing her conviction would offer more information. “Someone must have taken it before they built the dam,” she said slowly, testing the idea for veracity. It rang true, though uncertainty caught her for a moment. With the way her power was changing, it seemed possible that if she wanted it to be true badly enough, she might convince herself of the lie.

Or she might force a true thing back to before the dam’s construction, changing the time line that had led to this moment. That idea was vastly more appalling. Lara groaned, dropping her face into her hands, then let out an explosive breath as she looked up. “Okay. I’m going into town and see if I can find out when the dam was built. If it was recently enough, maybe there was some kind of preservation work done first.”

“You’re deluding yourself, Lar.” Kelly’s dry response sounded unfortunately accurate, but Lara spread her hands in semi-defeat.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Not really. David, can you handle the car again?”

He pushed to his feet, using the tree for support. “Reluctantly.”

“Then we’ll drive in. C’mon.” Kelly headed for the car, Lara stepping up to Dafydd’s side to help him back. His weight was negligible, as though he might blow away in a strong wind, and she frowned at him.

“If we can’t find a clue or a hint somewhere fast, I want Kelly to take you back into one of the forests we just drove through, okay? You need the rest more than I need the help searching.”

“Lara, if the staff is what you say it is, it’s not meant for mortal hands. It could be very dangerous to you.”

“Oisín carried it for years,” Lara argued. “It might be less dangerous in mortal hands than in Seelie. And this isn’t up for debate. You’re—” She broke off, unwilling to finish the sentence. Unwilling to voice the truth that the Seelie prince was dying, as if letting it go unsaid might let him eke out a few more hours.

He hesitated beside the car, looking down at her before his shoulders slumped and he nodded. “Very well. I would prefer we find it rather than split up, but I … am not strong. I don’t want to burden you in your search.”

“You’re not a burden, Dafydd. I just have no intention of explaining to your father how I got his son and heir killed on a world not even his own.”

“You’re very sweet,” Kelly said from inside the car. “Now stop mooning over each other and get in. The longer this takes the more wasted David’s going to be.”

Dafydd murmured, “Again to the heart of the matter,” and accepted Lara’s help getting in the car. He shied away from metal, even forgoing the seat belt, and Lara kept a nervous eye out the window for patrolling police who might notice the minor transgression.

There were none on the short drive into Turners Falls, nor any readily visible as they reached the town center. Village center, Lara read on a tourist information sign minutes later. The township was Montague, made up of five smaller villages, of which Turners Falls was the largest.

“Oh, great,” Kelly said from the other side of the sign. “Welcome to beautiful Turners Falls, named after Captain William Turner, who slaughtered a village full of sleeping Indians in this location three hundred and forty years ago. I bet anybody who knew where your staff was has been dead since then.”

Lara came around the sign with a laugh, and chagrin crossed Kelly’s face. “I mean, okay, yes, obviously, they’d be dead by now anyway. You know what I meant.”

“The dam was built in the eighteen sixties,” Dafydd read from where Lara had left him, a note of discouragement in his voice. “Certainly there was no hope of preservation work having been done so long ago.”

“No, but there were survivors of the massacre.” Lara picked up the history where Kelly had left off, tracing the words with a fingertip. “Maybe there are still a few descendants who might know something about a legendary staff.”

“And how are you going to find them?” Kelly asked with curious exasperation. “Go around knocking on doors? ‘Excuse me, were your ancestors murdered in their beds by an army captain? They were? Great! Do you know anything about Saint Brendan’s visit a thousand years ago, or about a staff he brought here?’”

Lara glanced down the street at storefronts already closed for the evening and restaurants doing late-dinner business. “If we have to, but there must be some bars off the main street here that are less trendy and more local. We could start by talking to people at them, instead of knocking on doors.”

“And if any of them watched the news and recognize us?”

“Recognize me,” Lara said decisively. “Dafydd’s glamour won’t hold, so he can’t go anywhere people might get a good look at him, and I’d rather not leave him alone. So if you guys want to hole up in—” She turned back to the tourist poster and tapped a green square a block and a half away from where they were. “In Peskeomskut Park here, then I’ll catch up with you later, okay?”

“Lara …” Worry creased a line between Kelly’s eyebrows. “You’re not very good at sweet-talking people. Maybe I should—”

“Much as I would like to retreat to a wooded place with Lara and allow you the search,” Dafydd murmured as he joined them on their side of the sign, “I suspect that if Lara should find anyone who knows of Brendan or the staff, her truthseeking talents might be critical in establishing herself. You’ve been extraordinarily helpful, Kelly, but I fear in this you and I may be relegated to the sidelines.”

Kelly’s frown increased, then slid away in a rueful smile at Lara. “How does he make that sound so reasonable?”

“Because it is reasonable,” Lara said, but Dafydd put his hand over his heart and bowed elegantly, if more shallowly than full-blown theatrics might call for.

“Centuries, even aeons, of practice, my dear Miss Richards. Now, if you would be so good as to escort me to this mouthful of a park, I would be grateful for rest among some greenery.”

Kelly severely said “You be careful,” to Lara, and “‘Peskeomskut’ isn’t that hard to say,” to Dafydd as they headed for the park, leaving Lara behind.

Bars and dance clubs were not Lara’s natural or comfortable habitat. In the one or two trendy clubs, she was at least the right age; in the more local bars, she stood out as both too young and too touristy.

And, she decided, probably too determined to broach a particular topic of conversation. Films always showed locals closing ranks when a stranger came in to talk, and that representation felt dismayingly accurate. Still, she nerved herself beyond the front door in more than one bar, ordering a glass of wine and putting on a shy smile for the bartender. By the third bar she wished she’d ordered soda all along, though it did seem to be getting easier to broach her awkward topic. Amused at the realization, she leaned forward to explain herself for the third time.

“I’m doing research on Native American legends. I—”

“You’ll probably want the Discovery Center, then,” the bartender said. So had the previous two, and Lara nodded with familiarity.

“Probably, but I got into town after it closed. I thought I’d see if there were any locals willing to share stories, especially about the falls.” Unrelated statements, both true, meant to sound like together they meant something. If someone else had done that, it would make hairs stand up on Lara’s arms, but her truthseeking sense allowed it to slip past, this once at least. “I’m on a tight deadline, so I hope I can skip going through the Discovery Center.”

A hint of sympathy tempered the barman’s smile. “Put off a college research paper, huh? Look, you can try Old Jake. He’s usually down at the Canal Bar—you know where that is? Head west three blocks, until you get to the canal, then go north two. He’ll tell tall tales as long as you keep buying him another drink. I don’t know if any of them are true, but you’re looking for legends, not the truth, right? And if you’re looking for a place to stay, the bar’s got rooms, too. Canal Bar and Inn, you can’t miss it. New building, part of the revitalization work going on here, not one of the old mill buildings.”