Lir's shoulders dropped noticeably, and he looked back at Emery. "Is it true?"

Emery didn't know what to say.

"I told you not to consent!" Lir cried.

As happy as she was to see him, Emery couldn't help growing angry. "How can you blame me? You told me to go there!"

Lir held out his hands as if to calm her, which only irritated her more. "Emery, I believed you'd understand the importance of my request. Telling you to listen to Fear Doirich was the only way for me to find you. I couldn't access your location, wherever you were, but once you were on the move, the druid--" Lir glanced back at Charlie, who stood there looking smug as ever. Pointing at him, Lir said, "You, stay," to which Charlie gave some self-satisfied gesture of acquiescence, and then the God took Emery into the living room.

The two of them just looked at each other for a moment. It hadn't been that long since they'd seen one another, and yet so, so much had happened, had come to light, since then. Emery had thought, in the very beginning, that she'd been lucky to know someone like Lir (Adam, as he'd once been), that he'd sort of upped her popularity, and she'd never quite understood why he'd attached himself to her. He was tall and slender, brown and handsome, nonchalant and playful, always ready with a clever idea or entertaining story. He'd had a way of pulling in everyone around him, making each person feel important, and he'd always wanted to include her. After he'd gone, Cathbad had told her that she'd be unlikely to see him again, that Gods didn't tend to mingle with mortals, so why was he here?

As Emery studied him, she sensed a wide gap between them, and it wasn't just from the time they'd spent apart. Lir was . . . different. Surely. He exuded a sort of grace, of nobility. His eyes, though still sparkling, possessed something deeper, more pensive, and he carried himself straighter. His attire didn't help put her at ease, either: he wore a beautiful blue and golden cloak over a white tunic and leggings, blue leather shoes winding up his legs, gemstones of various blue-greens and sea glass hung on cords around his shoulders and down his chest and back. His hair was longer, perhaps to his chin, where he had the beginnings of a beard, and at his wrists and neck were golden rings engraved with patterns that resembled waves.

"Is Fear Doirich right? Have they touched you?"

Rather than say anything, Emery held up her wrist, showed him the bandages.

"Shit."

She laughed quietly. Adam swearing was one thing--but Lir? It must have been a leftover habit.

"This muddies the waters." He put his hands on his hips. "It was unwise of me to tell you to go to them on your own. In truth, I thought I'd reach you before you got there; I didn't realize how persistent Fear Doirich is."

"What he said-- was that true? If I'm too far from him, I'll--"

"Yes." Lir paused, breathed hugely, and then suddenly roared in frustration. Emery had never seen him upset and could only stand and watch as he bit at his knuckles and swore some more. "I should never have . . . ah, but it doesn't matter, now. It's all such a mess. This changes everything." He turned to Emery. "Your blood runs with theirs, now. It will consume you, Emery, unless . . . We must get back to the druid. There may be something he can do. But we'll have to take along that loathsome thing."

"Charlie?"

"Yes. You need to be near a source. Darkness craves the dark, and Fear Doirich is Dark itself. You are drawn to it."

"So, like a magnet?"

"Something like that." Lir suddenly smiled. "Schuster's physics class taught me something."

His mention of their past brought up emotion in Emery. She bit her lip; her eyes softened. "I thought you were dead," she said softly. "We looked everywhere."

Lir made as if to step toward her but caught himself, hesitated, and drew back. "I feel that self, here," he put a hand on his chest. "He's a part of me, forever. I'll always be grateful to you, for being my friend when I was lost."

Emery nodded, trying not to show her disappointment at the obvious distance between them. "Me too. I mean, thank you for being my friend."

"Manannán mac Lir, God of the Sea, of the Tuatha dé Danann, never cared for any mortal, Emery, until you gave me reason to. It is why I am here, now."

"Can I still call you Adam?"

Pain flickered across his visage. "I am no longer that person. He is only a memory."

"I understand," the girl said quickly. "I can call you Lir." She rubbed under her eyes to suppress any tears that might be threatening. She'd been crying too much, lately. "Why were you here with me, anyway? Why was your memory gone, too?"

"I have yet to understand," he returned, flattening his expression. "I was very grateful when your druid and warrior found me and sent me home."

Emery sat down on a couch and stared absently at a stack of books on the coffee table. The hope she'd been feeling at Lir's arrival was beginning to dim. "Why didn't you tell me, somehow? I was stuck here, trying to figure everything out--"

Lir frowned, waved a hand as if swatting away a fly. "There was much to do when I got back. Things were in . . . disarray. And also, from what I understand, you weren't ready to believe the truth. I was not the one cursed, Emery--you were. It was easy enough for me to go home when I discovered who I was, but you . . . you were in a different place. If I'd interfered, I may have only made things worse."

Emery would've asked more, but Lir stopped her.

"We can talk later, but I don't trust Fear Doirich. We should leave as soon as possible. He has a particular control over you, here."

"Yes! Please take me back!" She practically jumped off the couch at the thought of returning to Dun-Dealgan.

Lir hesitated.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"How did you get here, to this time? This house?"

Emery shook her head. "You'd have to ask him. I wasn't awake when he brought me. Why?"

A troubled expression crossed his face. "The portal in the woods nearby--the one you and I went home through--it was open. It's how I got here. But I understood that your druid closed it after returning with you."

"So, maybe he reopened it?"

"I doubt as much. But it doesn't matter. We can travel back through it, assuming it is still open. I myself can't create these portals, so it's convenient it was there when I needed it."

"But you're a God, right?"

"Though I am not a druid. Even Gods have their limits. And I'm essentially a child as far as divine beings go; I'm at least a thousand years younger than most of my kin."

"Those monsters that I saw, that did this to me--"

"Not Gods--Fomorians. Primordial brutes; they were here long, long before we were. My kind fought in two wars with them before finally banishing them to the darkest, foulest netherworld. We'd heard rumors, felt tremors, if you will. We didn't believe it, that they were actually here, that they'd awoken, after all this time . . . but you've seen them, and they've begun a blood ritual!" Lir hung his head and groaned, and Emery was afraid he'd get angry at himself again. But then he looked back up ather. "You're sure it was them? Balor? With the one eye?"

"Well, there was one that was blindfolded--"

"That's him."

"There were some goat men . . . and a woman with a big staff . . . and a really old man."

Lir inserted names as she mentioned each. "Conand and Morc, brothers; Cehtlenn the prophetess; even Cichol, the ancient? He, too?"

"And one was called--Bres." Emery faltered at the memory of what he'd done to her. "He actually looked human, and I think he was there with his father."

"Gods--Bres! Treacherous fiend. And Elatha." He heaved a great sigh. "Yes, these are them, though there are many others, as well. The Fomorians have access to much obscure magic--black, ancient arts. They likely have dark druidry on their side, as well. They mean to turn you to their advantage."

Emery was almost afraid to ask Lir, but she had to know: "Can the other Gods--can they help me with this infection?"

The God looked at her as if wanting to give her hope when he knew he couldn't. "I don't know."

"Can you ask?"

"Well, they aren't being exactly . . . forthcoming with me. They consider me something of a--of a nuisance as of late."

That was unfortunate. "But, the Fomorians--this Darkness--it seems pretty big. Isn't it something that will affect everyone, even your Gods?"

"Yes . . . about that." Lir began to move around distractedly. "They sent me to--to deal with all this before it got out of control. I don't think they took the threat seriously, or they would've sent someone else, someone with more illustrious credentials. Clearly, I have failed. I can't go back until we've fixed you, if that's even possible. They won't be happy to know I've only worsened everything. And after I've put in so much effort to enter their graces!" He pressed his fingers against his skull.

"Well I'm so sorry for you," Emery replied, unable to hide her sarcasm. "Your friends might find you annoying, but I'm sitting here with literal poison flowing through my body so some giant goat-men and ogres can eat me."

Lir considered her, was about to speak, when a voice drawled from behind, "Have you done with your lovers' quarrel?"

They spun to find Charlie leaning against the doorframe. Lir narrowed his eyes and clasped one of the cuffs at his wrist. "I must take you both with me. I will not leave Emery, Fear Doirich, but I cannot take her away from you, either."

Charlie looked as if he'd eaten something bitter, but he said nothing.

"And I'd like Féth Fíada back, if you don't mind," Lir added, holding out his hand.

Charlie put out his arm which, to Emery's confusion, looked to be missing its hand. But then he made a throwing motion, and Lir made a grabbing motion, and his hand disappeared. The God bent and pressed his cheek onto what looked like empty space. Then he made as if he were folding something and tucking it away into his cloak, and Emery realized from the alternating appearing and disappearing body parts that Lir held some invisible fabric. Once he'd finished re-adjusting himself, he added, "Let's go."

Emery stood. "I'm going to put on some more clothes, before we go. There's snow out there, and I don't even have shoes. One of my sisters probably has things I can borrow. Or take, I guess."

"Don't go too far," Charlie cautioned with a grin.

Emery ignored him and looked to Lir, who nodded curtly. She thanked him, scooted around Charlie (who stared at her as creepily as ever), and went to the staircase. Once out of the others' sight, Emery felt able to breathe a little. Lir had come in and changed everything--and she was grateful for that. No longer would she have to be alone with Charlie, who surely would be less volatile, now; Lir was a God, after all, and Charlie was merely The Dark Man, a mercurial member of the aos sí, a gatekeeper as he himself had said. Surely he wasn't as powerful as a God (even a young one).

Up the stairs she went, noting how everything looked the same as when she'd lived there, toward the room that had once been hers. The farther she moved, the more she recognized a strange sensation in her limbs, the same she'd felt when she'd awakened, yet stronger--a weird tingling from within, a discomfort that disconcerted her. Was this what Charlie had meant when he'd said they couldn't be far from one another?

In her old-room-turned-Deirdre's-room, Emery went through the closet and found a sweater as well as a pair of plush-lined boots, doing her best to ignore the nettling under her skin. Then she went to the dresser and found some pants. Deirdre was shorter and curvier than she was, but the clothes fit her well enough. When she began to dig through the sock drawer, though, she inadvertently came across Deirdre's journal. That girl had always been one to keep a diary. In fact, Emery distinctly remembered teasing her about it at one point, threatening to tell a certain someone something that might have been written about him. But none of that sibling rivalry touched her, now. Instead, she flipped through the pages of Deirdre's handwriting, missing the friendship they'd shared, smiling at the doodles and scraps taped into the notebook. Emery turned to the dates from a few months back, wondering if Deirdre had anything in there about her, but nothing stuck out. It was true--Emery had been entirely erased from this place.

Just as she was about to put the journal away, though, she caught something toward the very end--a page with probably a hundred hearts drawn all over it, colored a rainbow of reds and pinks and purples. It was very juvenile, but it was also quite pretty to look at. Obviously, her little sister had a new crush.

Emery remembered her own days of doodling hearts and writing out various boys' last names with her first to see how well they'd flow. Oh, but she knew so much more, now, than crushes. What she felt for Cullen--that was something different, essential. They were meant to be with one another; she knew it more with each memory of him, and she wanted only to return to him, to be back in his arms, see the rare smile that she'd finally been able to coax out of him. He'd been right all along--she was his Emer.

Her heart sank at what Charlie had told her--that she was infected, now, and that the poison would consume her. One of theirs, he'd said. But she couldn't possibly believe that there was no way to stop it. Lir's arrival gave her hope. She had to get back to Dun-Dealgen and tell them all she was alive, tell them what had happened. Surely together, they could figure out how to reverse whatever those malevolent beings--those Fomorians--had done to her.

Staring blindly at Deirdre's page of hearts, her vision blurring, Emery suddenly zeroed in on a string of words she hadn't noticed before. They wove in and out of the hearts in print so tiny the girl had to bring the journal right up to her face to see them. As she read what was there, Emery's stomach dropped. "Hair as dark as a raven's wing," Deirdre had written, "skin like snow, eyes like blue ice. I'm in love! He's going to take me away!"

Emery snapped the journal shut and shoved it back in the sock drawer. Grabbing the boots, she ran out of the bedroom and down the stairs, practically stumbling into the living room, where Charlie and Lir stood in some sort of silent showdown. They both looked at Emery as if she were crazy.

She caught her breath, not failing to notice that the minute she was in the same room as Charlie, that irritating sensation she'd felt upstairs entirely dissipated. "I know who opened the portal. We have to go, now!"