Chapter 17
SHE INCREASED HER EFFORTS. IT COULDN’T BE RUSHED—no, working with a lethal mix couldn’t be hurried. But Branna spent every minute she could on concocting the poison.
Whoever from her circle spent time in her workshop took on a task—magickal or otherwise. She herself rarely went out, beyond a walk through her winter gardens to clear her head of formulas and spells and poisons.
Even on those brief walks, Branna obsessed whether five drops of tincture from the angel’s trumpet were too much or four too little. Should the crushed berries be freshly used, or allowed to steep in their juices?
“It matters,” she muttered, half to herself as she meticulously lined up the jars for the day’s attempt. “One drop off, and we start again.”
“You said the four drops didn’t work yesterday, so do the five,” Connor suggested.
“And if it should be six?” Frustrated, she stared at the jars as if she could will them to tell her the secret. “Or is the other recipe I found the true one, the one that calls for five death cap mushrooms, taken from under an oak?”
“The more poison the better, if you’re asking me.”
“It can’t be more or less. It’s not like cooking up a kitchen-sink soup.
” Though she heard the testiness in her own voice, she simply couldn’t smooth it out.
“It must be right, Connor, and I feel this may be our only chance. If we fail, at best we have to wait another year before trying again. At worst, the demon finds a way to shield himself when he finds we’ve a way to attack it. ”
“You’re fretting far too much, Branna. It’s not your way to fret and second-guess.”
He was right, of course, and fretting, she admitted as she pressed her fingers to her eyes, tended to block more than open.
“I feel an urgency, more than I have. A knowing, Connor, this must be the time, or our time is done. And the thought we might only go on slapping at Cabhan as we have, for our lifetime, only hold him off until we pass this duty to the next three? It’s not bearable.
You’ll have children with Meara. Would you want to weigh one or more of them with this? ”
“I wouldn’t, no. Of course, I wouldn’t. We won’t fail.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, rubbed them. “Ease your mind a bit. You’ll block your own instincts—and they’re a strength—if you pour in all this doubt.”
“This will be the third time I’ve tried creating the brew. The doubt’s there for a reason.”
“Then put it aside. This recipe, that recipe, put that aside as well. What do you think—how does it feel to you? Maybe it’s not like throwing together a soup, but you’ve been mixing potions since you were four.”
Deliberately, he closed the books, knowing full well by now she could recite it all by rote in any case. “What do you say—not just from the head this time, but from the belly?”
“I say . . .” She shoved impatiently at her hair. “Where the devil is Fin? I need his blood for this, and I want it fresh.”
“He said he’d be here before noon, so he will. Why don’t I work on the order with you, and the words? Then when he comes, you’ll bleed him, and begin.”
“All right, all right.”
Time to stop fussing and fiddling and do, she ordered herself.
“The blessed water would be first. I’ve got ‘First we pour the water blest to form the pool for all the rest. Belladonna berries crushed and steeped, stirring juices slow and deep. Hair from a pregnant yak mixed with manchineel tree sap to dissolve the wing of bat. Angel’s trumpet, wolfsbane petals, add them in and wait to settle. Then . . .”
“What do you think, Branna?” Connor prompted.
“Well, I think I rushed it last time. I think this stage needs to work, to boil a bit.”
“So . . . Stir and boil and bubble and stir . . .”
“Until the rise of smoke occurs—yes, I rushed it. It should boil and steam a bit. All right.” With a firm nod, she wrote more notes. “The mushrooms, we’ll try the mushrooms as—what the bloody hell, it feels right.”
“There we are now.” Connor gave her an elbow poke of encouragement.
“Caps of death soft and white, bring about eternal night. No, no, not for a demon.” She crossed it out, started again. “Caps of death three plus two, spread your poison through this brew.”
“Better,” Connor agreed.
“And the conium petals. Ah, pretty petals sprinkled in, let this lethal magick begin.”
“Deadly magick’s better, I think.”
“Yes, deadly.” She made the change. “Blood to bind it, drop by drop, and the demon heart will stop. Power of me, power of three, here fulfill our destiny. As we will, so mote it be.”
She dropped the pencil on the counter. “I’m not sure.”
“I like it—it sounds right. It’s strong enough, Branna, but not fussy. It’s death we’re dealing, so there’s no need for frills.”
“You’ve a point there. Bloody hell, it needs to thicken, go black. I need to add that. Blacken, thicken under my hands . . .”
“To make this poison for the damned,” Connor finished.
“I quite like that,” she considered. “I want to write it all up fresh.”
“If you can’t start until Fin’s here, why don’t you—” He broke off, turning to the door as Fin came in. “Well, here he is now. She’s after bleeding you, mate.”
Fin stopped in his tracks. “I gave more than enough yesterday, and the day before.”
“I want fresh.”
“She wants fresh,” Fin grumbled and tossed off his coat. “What are you doing with what’s left I bled for you yesterday, and the day before that?”
“It’s safe—and you never know when it might be useful. But I want to start it all fresh today. I’ve changed some of the spell.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again,” she said in as irritable a tone as he. “It needed work. Connor agreed—”
“I’m not in this.” Connor held up his hands. “The two of you sort this out. In fact, now that you’re here, Fin, I’m off. It’s Boyle, I think, who’s coming in a bit later, so he can sweep up the leavings if the two of you battle.”
He grabbed his coat, his cap, his scarf, and was out the door with Kathel slipping out with him—as if the dog agreed some distance wouldn’t hurt a thing.
“Why are you so cross?” Branna demanded.
“Me? Why are you? You’ve got that I’m-annoyed-at-every-fecking-thing between your eyebrows.”
Only more annoyed, Branna rubbed her fingers to smooth out any such line. “I’m not annoyed—yes, I bloody well am, but not at every fecking thing, or at you. I’m not used to failing so spectacularly the way I am with this damnable brew.”
“Not getting it right isn’t failing.”
“Getting it right is success, so its opposite is failing.”
“They called it practicing magicks for a reason, Branna, and you know it full well.”
She started to snap, then just sighed. “I do know it. I do. I thought I’d come closer the first few times than I have. If I keep missing by so wide a mark, I’ll need to send for the ingredients again.”
“So we start fresh.” He walked to her, kissed her. “Good day to you, Branna.”
She let out a half laugh. “And good day to you, Finbar.” Smiling, she picked up her knife. “And so . . .”
She expected him to roll up his sleeve, but he pulled off his sweater.
“Take it from the mark,” he told her. “As you did for the poison for Cabhan. From the mark, Branna, as you should have done the first time with this.”
“I should have, it’s true. It hurts you, it burns you, when I take blood from there.”
“Because the purpose is the enemy of the mark. Take it from there, Branna. Then I want a damn biscuit.”
“You can have half a dozen.”
She stepped to him with the ritual knife and the cup.
“Don’t block it.” He drew her eyes to him. “The pain may be part of it. We’ll let it come, and let it go.”
“All right.”
She was quick—quick was best—and scored across the pentagram with the tip of her blade. She caught the blood in the cup—felt the pain though he made no sound, no movement.
“That’s enough,” she murmured, and set the knife aside to pick up the cloth she had ready, pressed it to the wound.
Then, putting the cup by the jars, turned back to him to gently heal the shallow wound.
Before he knew what she was about—perhaps before she did—Branna pressed a kiss to the mark.
“Don’t.” Stunned, appalled to the marrow, he jerked back. “I don’t know how it might harm you, what it might do.”
“It will do nothing to me, as you did nothing to earn it. I spent years trying to blame you for it, and should have blamed Sorcha—or more, her grief. She harmed you—she broke our most sacred oath, and harmed you, and many before you. Innocents. I’d take it from you if I could.”
“You can’t. Do you think I haven’t tried?” He yanked on his sweater again. “Witchcraft, priests, wise women, holy men, magicks black and white. Nothing touches it. I’ve been to every corner of the world where there was so much of a whisper of a rumor the curse could be broken.”
His rambles, she realized. This was their basis. “You never said—”
“What could I say?” he countered. “This visible symbol of what runs inside me can’t be changed, it can’t be removed by any means I’ve tried.
No spell, no ritual can break the curse she cast with her dying breaths.
It can’t be burned off, cut off or out of me.
Considered lopping my arm off, but feared it would just sear in on another part of me. ”
“You— Good God, Fin.”
He hadn’t meant to say so much, but couldn’t take back the words. “Well, I was more than a bit drunk at the time, fortunately, as cursed is cursed, two-armed or one, despite what seemed desperately heroic at two and twenty, when shattered on the best part of a bottle of Jameson.”
“You won’t harm yourself,” she said, shaken to the core. “You won’t think of it.”
“No point in it, as I’ve been told time and again when all attempts failed. The curse of a dying witch—and one who’d sacrificed herself for her children, to protect them from the darkest of purposes?—it’s powerful.”
“When this is done, I would help you find a way—all of us—”