Chapter 24 #2
“If the lights have been hunting in the forest, then Cernunnos must have been here in Pelham for weeks. We need to let him know we’re here somehow,” Cillian said.
“The only way to do that is with bait.”
Bran followed Scáthach’s gaze to Aisling, and fury slammed through him like a storm. He stepped in front of his sister, pushing her back. “No.”
Scáthach stared down her nose at him. “Yes. He will know she has returned.”
“You are not putting my sister at risk. She’s been through enough.”
“Do you want to get her voice back?”
“How do you even know it was missing?”
“Small-town gossip is quaint but useful.” Scáthach’s gaze cut to Cillian. “If you want any hope of regaining your rightful place in the Winter Court, then you will need the bean sí’s ability to herald your reign.”
“And if I don’t want it?” Cillian asked warily.
Scáthach snorted. “What will you do when the mortal ages and dies and you do not? Will you stay here and let the witches kill you? No, child. The Otherworld is your home, not this place of iron, and you know it.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“One may not remember and still yearn for a home.”
Bran didn’t like the troubled look in Cillian’s eyes, and his heart clenched at the thought of Cillian leaving him. He shoved that thought aside, needing to focus on the present and not some ephemeral possible future. “You’re not using my sister to lure Cernunnos to us. Find another way.”
Aisling tugged on his sleeve, and he looked at her. She held up the notebook, pages pressed open by her fingers, and read the note she’d written there. I want to help. You’ll keep me safe.
“No. Aisling—”
“Let her,” Scáthach cut in. “Or do you doubt your magic is enough?”
Bran rounded on her, furious at the accusation but unwilling to bend. “Aisling is thirteen. She’s my sister and the last family I have. I won’t put her at risk.”
“She already is. We Fae know what she is, and there are those who would do anything to claim rights to a bean sí and the crown such Fae can offer. Houses have been destroyed over such desires.” Scáthach glanced at Niamh, who said nothing.
“She has a goddamn name. Aisling isn’t a thing. Stop treating her like one.”
“If you care for her, then treat her like she is worth protecting.”
“What would you have us do?” Seamus asked like he had the right to.
“Cernunnos will come. He will not have left her voice behind, so he will have it with him. It must be freed and returned.” Scáthach glanced up at the sharp tip of her glaive. “We must fight.”
Before Bran could argue against that, Aisling tugged on his arm again. He read her newest note as she stared stubbornly at him. I want my voice back.
His heart cracked at those words—written out and unvoiced.
Bran stared at his little sister, seeing her and not the bean sí everyone was fighting over.
He knew their mother would have done anything and everything to keep them both safe, but that job now fell to him, and putting Aisling in harm’s way wasn’t something he wanted to do.
It was something he had no choice but to do.
Because the forest wasn’t safe, not when the lights hunted.
Bran swallowed thickly before resting his hand on her thin shoulder, looking into her deep blue eyes. “You don’t leave my side.”
Aisling nodded slowly and closed her notebook. She mouthed thank you at him before kissing him on his cheek. He hugged her tight with one arm, and she hugged him back, and Bran hoped it wasn’t the last time he’d ever get to hold his little sister.
“So what’s the plan?” Cillian asked.
Scáthach eyed him with something that might be regret. “You used to be one of the best swordsmen in the Four Lands.”
“I know how to shoot a gun, not wield a sword, and something tells me bullets won’t stop Cernunnos.”
“He’ll use the lights to attack us. It’s what he did when he kidnapped Aisling in the first place,” Bran said slowly. “So one of us will need to engage Cernunnos while the rest hold back the lights.”
“Will the lights even fight against Fae?” Cillian asked.
“They can be commanded to,” Niamh said reluctantly.
“Then that makes us all targets, including the town.” Bran looked up at the sky and the fading sunlight, the eastern horizon smudged dark with the encroaching twilight. “I’ll make sure the lights can only come to us.”
Cillian frowned at him. “How?”
Bran looked down at the grimoire, stroking his fingers over the leather cover. “My coven has lived here for centuries. Our magic knows the forest.”
Recollection crossed Cillian’s face. “The witchmarks.”
Bran nodded. “I’ll keep the lights out of the town, but that means when they come to us, it’ll be all of them, and I don’t know how many that will be.”
“We’ll handle them and Cernunnos,” Niamh promised grimly.
“Children,” Scáthach drawled, gaining their attention. “You will deal with the lights. Leave Cernunnos to me.”
“What about us?” Bran asked.
She flicked them a dismissive look. “Stay out of the way.”
If Bran had hackles, they would’ve risen. He didn’t like Scáthach—for many reasons—but her condescension was right near the top of the list. But the sooner they got through the night and survived, the sooner the Fae would leave.
Hopefully.
Bran turned toward the damaged display case. “I’m going to call the witchmarks.”
He handed the grimoire to Aisling and assessed the debris piled on top of the door that led to the basement. Mac had piled and swept a lot of the debris behind the counter, where it was out of the way of foot traffic but made it impossible to access the door.
Bran sighed and raised a hand, tracing a witchmark in the air with a twist of his fingers, focusing on the debris to move.
Magic glittered in the air, golden sparks that swirled around the debris and shifted them across the floor with a clatter.
Bran stepped into the space and knelt, searching out the latch and prying the door open.
Aisling handed the grimoire back and followed him down into the basement, glittering magic lighting the way.
Cillian joined them below, looking around curiously at the space that made up their mother’s—Bran’s—stillroom.
The space was meant for their coven only, and Bran should have sent Cillian back upstairs.
He didn’t.
“I never knew this place existed,” Cillian said.
Bran set the grimoire on the table, the mess of herbs and vials there needing to be thrown away. Whatever potency they could have had would’ve been lost in the months they’d lain on the table, untended and unused. “It’s not meant for outsiders.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
Bran looked over at him, seeing Cillian staring back. He hesitated a moment before shaking his head. “No. You should stay.”
Bran wasn’t letting Cillian go again, and he already knew about Bran’s magic. Besides, letting him inside their coven’s circle didn’t feel wrong, only right. The Council of Witches would probably call him a heretic for everything going on, but Bran didn’t care.
He reached for a small metal box and opened it, digging through the iron bits inside it until he found three tiny iron disks the size of a quarter.
He pocketed one, slipped one into Aisling’s pocket, then went over to Cillian.
He reached for Cillian’s pants, tucking the iron disk into his pocket as well.
“I know it burns your skin, but I’ll feel better if you keep iron close tonight. ”
Cillian raised his hand to cup the side of Bran’s face, thumb stroking gently over his cheek. “Thank you.”
Bran nodded and returned to the worktable and the grimoire there.
He opened it up with a flick of his fingers and a touch of magic.
The grimoire’s leather cover snapped open, the pages fluttering to the one he’d requested.
It was closer to the beginning of the grimoire than the end, faded, spidery handwriting scrawled across the parchment.
Drawings filled the page on the right: witchmarks still in use by his coven, carved into trees in the forest to guide the lost to safety.
This time, he needed to guide the lights to them.
Bran made sure the witchmarks on the page were how he remembered them before stepping away from the table.
He settled himself in the center of the pentagram’s circle, facing east. Aisling stepped into the center with him and held her hand out to Cillian, wriggling it.
Cillian hesitated before joining them inside every line of the pentagram and circle.
“What are you going to do?” Cillian asked in a hushed voice.
Bran raised his hands, fingertips glittering gold with magic, Nature washing through him. “Keep the lights out of Pelham.”
He drew the witchmarks in the air, focusing on the intent of what he wanted—guidance, only this time, not toward the safety of a cabin in the woods. He wanted the paths the witchmarks lined in the forest to lead to the Shoppe.
To them.
He framed the witchmarks with his hands and focused on his magic, letting it spill out of him and into the pentagram, lighting up the circle.
Cillian gasped in surprise but didn’t speak.
Bran was concentrating too hard to be able to answer any questions anyway.
He closed his eyes and centered himself, sinking into an awareness of Nature that pulled him along like a river into the surrounding land.
Bran’s magic flowed outward in a wave that washed through the surrounding forest for miles.
Amid the countless trees, carved where only the lost would find them, witchmarks burned in his inner sight, like guiding stars fallen to earth.
He used his magic to dim some and brighten others, creating a path that snaked through the forest and ended in the trees outside the Shoppe.
They would be impossible to miss, spread as they were across the forest, pointing the way for the lights to find them rather than go through town and put people at risk.
And at the edge of his awareness, far across the forest, something cold began to spread.
Began to hunt.
Bran extricated himself from the net of magic tangled over the forest through the witchmarks, opening his eyes.
The witchmarks that hovered between his hands and anchored the spell had faded so much he could barely see them.
The spell they powered clawed at the forest beyond the Shoppe, buried in all the witchmarks that had been carved into trees long before he’d been born.
Aisling tugged on his arm to get his attention, looking at him with a silent question in her wide, deep blue eyes. Bran tucked some of her hair behind her ear, the round curve of it like his—for now, at least.
“The lights are coming,” Bran said.
There would be no outrunning them this time.