Chapter 6
SHE TOOK THE MORNING FOR DOMESTIC TASKS, TIDYING and polishing her house to what Connor often called her fearful standards. She considered herself a creature of order and sense, and one happiest when her surroundings echoed not only that order, but her own tastes.
She liked knowing things remained where she wanted them, a practical matter to her mind that saved time. To be at her best, she required color and texture and the pretty things that brightened the heart and appealed to the eye.
Pretty things and order required time and effort, and she enjoyed the housewifely duties, the simple and ordinary routine of them.
She appreciated the faint scent of orange peel once the furniture was polished with the solution she made for herself and the tang of grapefruit left behind once she’d scrubbed her bath.
Fluffed pillows offered welcome as a soft, pretty throw arranged just so offered comfort and eye appeal.
Once done she refreshed candles, watered plants, filled her old copper bucket with more peat for the fire.
Meara and Iona had set the kitchen to rights before they’d gone off to the stables, but . . . not quite right enough to suit her.
So while laundry chugged away in the machines, she fussed, making a mental list of what she wanted at the market, a secondary list of potential new products for her shop. Humming while she planned, she finished the last of the housework with mopping the kitchen floor.
And felt him.
Though her heart jumped she made herself turn slowly to where Fin stood in the doorway that led to her shop.
“A cheerful tune for scrubbing up.”
“I like scrubbing up.”
“A fact that’s always been a mystery to me. As is how you manage to look so fetching doing it. Am I wrong? Did we agree to work this morning?”
“You’re not wrong, just early.” Deliberately she went back to her mopping. “Go put the kettle on in the workshop. I’m nearly done.”
She’d had her morning, Branna reminded herself, her time alone to do as she pleased. Now it was time for duty. She’d work with Fin as it needed to be done. She accepted that, and had come to accept him as part of her circle.
Duty, she thought, couldn’t always be easy. Reaching a goal as vital as the one sought required sacrifice.
She put away her mop and bucket, put the rag she’d tucked in the waistband of her pants in the laundry. After taking just one more minute to gird herself for the next hours, went into her workshop.
He’d boosted the fire, and the warmth was welcome. It wasn’t as odd as it once had been to see him at her workshop stove, making tea.
He’d shed his coat, stood there in black pants and a sweater the color of forest shadows with the dog standing beside him.
“If you’re wanting a biscuit we’d best clear it with herself first,” he told the dog.
“I’m not saying you didn’t earn one or a bit of a lie-down by the fire.
” He stopped what he was doing, grinned down at the dog.
“Afraid of her, am I? Well now, insulting me’s hardly the way to get yourself a biscuit, is it? ”
It disconcerted her, as always, that he could read Kathel as easy as she.
And as she had with him in the kitchen, he sensed her, turned.
“He’s hoping for a biscuit.”
“So I gather. It’s early for that as well,” she said with a speaking look to her dog. “But he can have one, of course.”
“I know where they are.” Fin opened a cupboard as she crossed the room. Taking out the tin, he opened it. Before he could offer it, Kathel rose up, set his paws on Fin’s shoulders. He stared into Fin’s eyes for a moment, then gently licked Fin’s cheek.
“Sure you’re welcome,” Fin murmured when the dog lowered again, accepted the biscuit.
“He has a brave heart, and a kind one,” Branna said. “A fondness and a great tolerance for children. But he loves, truly loves a select few. You’re one of them.”
“He’d die for you, and knows I would as well.”
The truth of it shook her. “That being the case we’d best get to work so none of us dies.”
She got out her book.
Fin finished the tea, brought two mugs to the counter where she sat. “If you’re thinking of changing the potion we made to undo him, you’re wrong.”
“He’s not undone, is he?”
“It wasn’t the potion.”
“Then what?”
“If I knew for certain it would be done already. But I know it brought him terror, gave him pain, great pain. He burned, he bled.”
“And he got away from us. Don’t,” she continued before he could speak. “Don’t say to me you could have finished him if we’d let you go. It wasn’t an option then, and will never be.”
“Has it occurred to you that’s just how it needs to be done? For me, of his blood, for me, who bears his mark, to finish what your blood, what cursed me, to end him?”
“No, because it isn’t.”
“So sure, Branna.”
“On this I am. It’s written, it’s passed down, generation by generation. It’s Sorcha’s children who must end him. Who will. For all those who failed before us, we have something they lacked. And that’s you.”
She used all her will to keep her mind quiet as she spoke, to keep her words all reason.
“I believe you’re essential to this. Having one who came down from him working to end him, working with the three, this is new. Never written of before in any of the books. Our circle’s the stronger with you, that’s without question.”
“So sure of that as well?”
“Without question,” she repeated. “I didn’t want you in it, but that was my weakness, and a selfishness I’m sorry for. We’ve made our circle, and if broken . . . I think we’ll lose. You gave me your word.”
“That may have been a mistake for all, but still I’ll keep it.”
“We can end him. I know it.” As she spoke, she took the crystal from her pocket, turned it in the light. “Connor, Iona, and I, we’ve all seen the first three. Not in simple dreams, but waking ones. We’ve connected with them, body and spirit, and that’s not been written of before.”
He heard the words, the logic in them, but couldn’t polish away the edges of frustration and doubt. “You put great store in books, Branna.”
“So I do, for words written down have great power. You know it as I do.” She laid her hand on the book. “The answers are here, the ones already written, the ones we’ll write.”
She opened the book, paged through. “Here I wrote you and I dream-traveled to Midor’s cave, and saw his death.”
“It’s not an answer.”
“It will lead to one, when we go back.”
“Back?” Now his interest kindled. “To the cave?”
“We were taken there. We’d have more, learn more, see more, if we took ourselves. I can find nothing about this man. The name meant nothing to Sorcha’s Brannaugh. We need to seek him out.”
He wanted to go back, thought of it every day, and yet . . . “We have neither the place nor the time. We’d have no direction, Branna.”
“It can be done, it can be worked. With the rest of our circle here to bring us back if needed. Cabhan’s sire, Fin, how many answers might he have?”
“The answers of a madman. You saw the madness as well as I.”
“You’d go back without me if you could. But it must be both of us.”
He couldn’t deny it. “There was death in that cave.”
“There’s death here, without the answers. The potion must be changed—no, not the essence of it, in that you’re right. But what we made, we made specific to Samhain. Would you wait until Samhain next to try again?”
“I would not, no.”
“I can’t see the time, Fin, can you? I can’t see when we should try for him again, and without that single answer, we’re blind.” She pushed up, wandered the room. “I thought the solstice—it made good logic. The light beats back the dark. Then Samhain, when the veil thins.”
“We saw them, the first three. The veil thinned, and we saw them with us. But not fully,” he added before she could.
“I thought, is it the solstice, but the winter? Or the spring equinox? Is it Lammas or Bealtaine? Or none of those at all.”
Temper, the anger for herself in failing, bubbled up as she whirled back to him. “I see us at Sorcha’s cabin, fighting. The fog and the dark, Boyle’s hands burning, you bleeding. And failing, Fin, because I made the wrong choice.”
On a half laugh—just a touch of derision in it, he arched his eyebrows. “So now it’s all yours, is it?”
“The time, that choice, was mine, both of them. And both of them wrong. All my careful calculations, wrong. So more’s needed to be certain this time. This third time.”
“Third time’s the charm.”
Huffing out a breath, she smiled a little. “So it’s said. What we need may be there, for the taking, if we go back. So, will you go dreaming with me, Fin?”
To hell and back again, he thought.
“I will, but we’ll be sure of the dream spell first. Sure of it, and of the way back. I won’t have you lost beyond.”
“I won’t have either of us lost. We’ll be sure first, of the way there, and the way back. It’s Cabhan’s time, his origins—we agree on that?”
“We do.” So Fin sighed. “Which means you’ll be after bleeding me again.”
“Just a bit.” Now she lifted her eyebrows. “All this fuss over a bit of blood from a man who so recently claimed he’d die for me?”
“I’d rather not do it by the drop.”
“No,” she said when he started to pull off his sweater. “Not from the mark. His origins, Fin. He didn’t bear the mark at his beginning.”
“The blood from the mark’s more his.”
She did what she did rarely, stepped to him, laid a hand over the cursed mark. “Not from this. Yours from your hand, mine from mine, so our blood and dreams entwine.”
“You’ve written the spell already?”
“Just pieces of it—and in my head.” She smiled at him, forgetting herself enough to leave her hand on his arm. “I do considerable thinking when I clean.”
“Come to my house and think your fill, as your brother left the room he uses there a small disaster.”
“He’s the finest man I know, along with the sloppiest. He just doesn’t see the mess he makes. It’s a true skill, and one Meara will have to deal with for years to come.”
“He says they’re thinking the solstice—the summer—for the wedding, and having it in the field behind the cottage here.”