The woman straightened up and hurriedly said, ‘Yes, I’d like to be alone with Master On-el.’
‘O’Neil,’ Brendan corrected.
‘Yes, Prin— Mr O’Neil.’
Agent Murano finally took notice of the woman. ‘Can I see some identification please?’
‘Some what?’
‘Identification.’
The old woman looked like she didn’t know what he was talking about. She looked over to Brendan and said, ‘Can we get on with this?’
‘Yeah,’ Brendan said with a sigh, ‘go for it.’
The woman reached up to her ears and pulled off the marble-sized gold earrings that were hanging from her lobes. She held the two shiny spheres in her palm and incanted under her breath. The gold balls glowed then rose from her palm and encircled each other like tiny binary stars.
The uniformed cop stepped in to get a better look but Murano backed up and said, ‘What the—’ He didn’t get to finish before the two balls shot through the air and exploded into the chests of the two officers. They were thrown against the wall in a shower of light. When I could see again it looked like they weren’t getting up any time soon.
Brendan went through the FBI man’s pockets for the handcuff key while the old woman checked on the health of the cop.
‘’Bout time you got here,’ I said to Brendan. ‘That Fed is a nutcase. It was only a matter of time before he dropped a starving rodent down my trousers.’
I stood up and went over to where the old woman was holding the policeman’s head. I leaned in and took a close-up look at the old woman.
‘Essa?’
She smiled – it wrinkled up her whole face. ‘Miss me?’
‘Essa, you’re so …’
‘I’m so what?’ she said in a tone that sent warning bells exploding in my brain. ‘How do I look, Conor? Tell me.’
‘Well, you look …’
‘If you say “wrinkled” I’m going to chain you back to that chair. For you, I got off my horse and set foot on the ground in the Real World. Because you and Brendan don’t know how to hide, I am what an eighty-year-old woman looks like in this gods forsaken land. So once again, how do I look?’
‘I was just about to say that you don’t look a day over seventy.’
‘Can we get out of here please,’ Brendan said, ‘I’ve just assaulted a federal agent. I’d like to be gone before that appears on my permanent record.’
Essa opened her briefcase and took out a jar of Vaseline.
‘Are we going to slide out of here?’
Essa didn’t even bother with a dirty look.
‘Oak tree sap,’ Brendan said. ‘It was my mother’s idea to put it in a Vaseline jar to get it past security.’
Essa smeared the sap in a circle on the windowless wall. Then she placed her hand on the sticky circle and incanted. When she removed her hand a gold handprint glowed in the brown circle. She straightened up, groaned and rubbed her back.
‘Ready to leave?’
‘I sure am, grandma.’ That got me a dirty look.
She shouted a single word that sounded like a sneeze and the circle silently blew out of the wall. Daylight poured in among the dust and I could see parked cars through what moments earlier had been a wall.
Brendan crouched down and pointed. ‘We have to get past that gate. My car is parked on the other side.’
I walked over to the unconscious Agent Murano. He was starting to come round and if I was honest, I’d have to admit that I was toying with the idea of kicking him in the ribs so he would have something to remember me by. That’s when I saw it. Brendan had emptied the FBI man’s pockets looking for the handcuff key. In a pile on the floor, was scattered change and car keys attached to a keychain that said Porsche.
‘I’ve got a better idea.’
In the parking lot I pressed the fob attached to the keychain and lights on Agent Andy’s white sports car blinked. It was almost like his car was saying ‘Steal me.’ The car, like the special agent’s shoes, was meticulously cleaned and waxed. It wasn’t new but he tried to make it look like it was – right up to the new-car smell air freshener. It was obvious that my torturer loved this vehicle and I was looking forward to smashing it through the front gate. I didn’t get a chance. Brendan wouldn’t let me behind the wheel. He pointed out that he’d been trained in high-speed driving and I had only been driving for a year. I wouldn’t have gotten to smash it into the gate anyway because it was open. We zoomed past a surprised (and soon-to-be unemployed) guard without even a scratch.
It was a tight fit in the car. I got stuffed in to the back and we broke all Pennsylvania speeding laws. After my incarceration I needed some air, so I reached into the front and pulled the latch for the convertible top. The wind took the roof and ripped it right off the car.
‘Oops,’ I said with a smile worthy of Fergal.
‘Yeeha!’ Essa whooped.
I laughed and shouted over the sound of the rushing wind, ‘Where did you learn to do that?’
‘Isn’t that what you and Fergal used to do when you were excited?’ Essa said, her grey hair swirling around the car.
‘It is – well remembered.’
Brendan was tearing around the back country road at an alarming speed. I would have thought that Essa would be terrified but she loved it.
‘This is like being on dragon-back,’ she shouted. ‘Can everybody go around in contraptions like this?’
‘If they go this fast they get in trouble from the police,’ Brendan answered.
‘But it’s OK because you are police – right?’
‘Not any more,’ Brendan said, ‘I handed in my badge the instant the FBI man hit the wall.’
Brendan slowed a little bit as we turned onto the narrow roads that led to his house. At last we skidded around a corner and saw Brendan’s mother and daughter waiting for us at the exact place where Brendan and I had arrived from Tir na Nog a week earlier.
It was the first time I had ever seen Brendan’s daughter. She stood there in a purple tie-dye tee-shirt, a small pack on her back, a white stick in her hand and classic full-sized Ray-Ban sunglasses that took over her whole face.
Essa quickly busied herself opening the portal. Brendan’s mother, Nora, said, ‘It is very nice to see you again, Conor. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine, Mrs Fallon.’
I crouched down and addressed Ruby. ‘And you must be Brendan’s little Gem?’
Ruby straightened up and said, ‘Only Daddy can call me Gem.’
‘Oh, sorry. It is very nice to meet you, Miss Fallon.’
She shot her hand straight out in front of her. ‘It is nice to meet you, Mr O’Neil.’