"I'd love to be able to sit and talk with you." She laid a hand on his arm. "When there's not so much going on."

"Well, that's a thought, isn't it? I've got to be going.

You should go inside. You shouldn't be standing out here in that thin blouse. You'll catch a chill. My best to your family."

As he made his escape, Mary Kate sighed. He'd noticed the blouse.

He'd handled that well, Shawn congratulated himself. Friendly, a sort of older brother to younger sister kind of thing. He was sure the little crisis had passed. And it was really rather sweet that she'd thought of him the way she had. A man had to be flattered, especially since he'd slipped through those sticky loops with no harm done.

But deciding a bit of backup wouldn't be out of order, he dipped into Saint Declan's Well and sprinkled the water on the ground.

"Superstitious? A modern-thinking man?"

Shawn's head came up, and his eyes met the clever blue ones of Carrick, prince of the faeries. "A modern-thinking man knows there's a reason for superstitions, especially when he stands and finds himself having a conversation with the likes of you."

Since he'd come for a purpose, Shawn walked away from the well and over to Maude's grave. "So, tell me, are you always here and about? I've come to this spot all my life, and it's only recently I've seen you."

"There was no particular reason for you to see me before recently. I've a question for you, Shawn Gallagher, and I'm hoping you'll be answering it."

"Well, you have to ask it first."

"So I will." Carrick sat by the grave across from Shawn so their eyes were level. "What the bleeding, blistering hell are you waiting for?"

Shawn raised his eyebrows, rested his hands on his knees. "All manner of things."

"Oh, that's typical of you." Disgust edged Carrick's voice. "I'm speaking of Mary Brenna O'Toole, and why you haven't taken her to your bed."

"That would be between Brenna and myself," Shawn said evenly, "and no concern of yours."

"Of course it's a concern of mine." Carrick was on his feet now, the movement too fast for the human eye to catch. The ring on his finger glowed a deep, deep blue, and the silver pouch hanging from his belt glittered. "I judged you to have the kind of nature that would understand, but you're more boneheaded than even your brother."

"Sure and you aren't the first to say so."

"It's in place, Gallagher the younger."

Because Carrick was now standing beside Shawn rather than across from him, Shawn got to his feet. "And what would that be?"

"Your part, your destiny. Your choices. How is it you can look into your heart for making your music, and not for living your life?"

"My life is as I like it."

"Boneheaded," Carrick said again. "Finn protect me from the foolishness of mortals." He threw up his hands, and thunder rumbled across the clear bowl of the sky.

"If you think to impress me with parlor tricks, you won't succeed at it. That's just your temper talking, and I've one of my own."

"Would you dare match it to mine?" As a demonstration, Carrick waved a finger, and a bolt of blinding white light lanced into the ground in front of Shawn's feet.

"Bully tactics." Though Shawn had to fight the instinct to leap back. "And unworthy of you."

Fury turned Carrick's eyes nearly black, trembled from his fingertips in little licks of red flame. Then sub sided as he threw back his head and laughed. "Well, now, you've more courage than I gave you credit for. Or it's just stupid you are."

"Wise enough to know you can cause mischief if you like, but no real harm. You don't worry me, Carrick."

"I could have you on your knees croaking like a bullfrog."

"Which would hurt my pride but little else." Not, Shawn thought, that he wanted to put the matter to the test. "What's the point of this? Threats don't endear you to me."

"I've waited six of your lifetimes for something you could have in an instant, just by holding out your hand." But this time he sighed. "Tears from the moon I gathered for her the second time." As he spoke he took the pouch from his belt. "And at her feet I poured the pearls they formed. And all she saw was the pearls."

Turning the pouch over, he poured a white waterfall of glowing white gems onto Maude's grave. "They glowed in the grass, in the moonlight then, white and smooth as Gwen's skin. But she didn't see that it wasn't pearls I'd poured at her feet, but my heart-the longing in it, and aye, the purity of that love as well. I didn't know she needed to be told, or that it was already too late, as I hadn't given her the part of me she wanted."

Carrick's voice was full of despair now, and so ripe with unhappiness that Shawn touched his arm. "What did she want?"

"Love. Just the word. A single word. But I gave her diamonds-jewels plucked from the sun, and these pearls, then the final time the stones you call sapphires that I harvested from the heart of the sea."

"I know your story well."

"Aye, you would. And your new sister, Jude, has put it in her book of tales and legends. The ending is still an unhappy one as I cast the spell over my Gwen, in anger and in pain-rashly, Gallagher. Three times love would find love, heart accept heart with all the failings and the foibles. And then, my Gwen and I will be free to be together. A hundred years times three I've waited, and my patience is sore tested. You're a man who has words."

Considering, Carrick circled Shawn and the grave. "You use them well with your music-music others should hear, but that's another matter. A man who has such a gift of words is one who understands what's inside a person, sometimes before that person knows. It's a gift you have. I'm only asking you to use it."

In a long flourish, he waved his hand over the grave, and the pearls blossomed into flowers. "The jewels I gave Gwen grew into flowers. Your Jude will tell you it was the flowers she kept. Some women want the simple things, Gallagher, so I've come to understand."

He lifted his finger. Resting on the tip was a single perfect pearl. With a thin smile, he flicked it toward Shawn, then nodded, pleased, when Shawn snatched it from the air. "Take it, keep it, until you realize who it is you're to give it to. When you do, give the words. They're more of magic than what you have in hand."

The air trembled, wavered, and Carrick disappeared into it.

"The man wears you out," Shawn murmured, then sat beside Maude's grave again. "It's very unusual companions you have."

Then, because he needed it, Shawn let himself fall into the quiet. He watched the moonflowers, blooms open despite the steam of sunlight, dance across the grave. He studied the pearl, rubbing it through his fingers. He put it in his pocket before reaching down to pick a single blossom.

"I don't think you'll mind, as it's for Jude," he said to Maude. He sat and kept her company another twenty minutes before going back home.

He didn't knock. It had been his home too long for him to think of it. But Shawn did think, the minute he'd closed the door behind him, that he was very likely interrupting Jude's work.

When she came to the top of the steps before he could decide if he should go back out again, he glanced up in apology. "You'll be working. I'll come back 'round later."

"No, that's all right. I don't mind a break. Would you like some tea?" she asked as she started down.

"I would, yes, but I'll fix it for both of us."

"I won't argue with that." She smiled uncertainly when he held out the moonflower. "Thanks. Isn't it the wrong time for this to be blooming?"

"In most places. It's one of the things I'd like to speak with you about." He started back toward the kitchen with her. "How are you feeling today?"

"Good. Really good, actually. I think the morning sickness is passing, and I'm not sorry to see it go."

"And your work's going well?"

It would be Shawn's way, she thought, to wind his way around to the genuine purpose of the visit in his own time. So she found a little bottle for the blossom while he put on the kettle. "Yes, it is. I still have moments when I can't believe I'm doing it. This time last year I was still teaching, and hating my work. Now I have a book on its way to being published, and another one coming to life every day. I'm a little nervous be cause this one's a story out of my head instead of a compilation of others I've been told, but I really love the process of it."

"Being a little nervous you'll probably write a better story, don't you think?" At home, he got out the biscuit tin and filled a plate. "Meaning, you'll have more care with it."

"I hope you're right. Are you nervous when you're writing your music?"

"Not the tunes," he said after a moment's thought. "The words sometimes. Trying to find the right way of saying what the music's telling me. It can be frustrating."

"How do you handle it?"

"Oh, I bang my head against it for a while." After the pot was warmed he measured out the tea. "Then if all I get from that is a headache, I'll take a walk to clear it, or think of something else entirely. Most times, after I do, the words are just there, as if they'd been waiting for me to pluck them."

"I'm afraid to walk away when it's not working. I always think if I do I won't be able to write at all when I come back. Your way's healthier."

"Ah, but you're the published author, then, aren't you?" While the tea steeped, he got out cups.

"Do you want your music published, Shawn?"

"Maybe, one day. There's no rush about it." Which, he knew, he'd been saying for years already. "I write it to please myself, and that's enough for now."

"My agent might know someone in the music business. I'd be happy to ask."