Chapter 23
We decided to make the time to pick up a bag for Davin, since it wasn’t as though plane flights could be undertaken at the drop of a hat, and it would be faster to stop and pick up clothes that had already been purchased in the correct sizes than go shopping for more when we got to Scotland.
Not that I thought we were going to be worried about whose clothes had been worn for how many days when we were fighting bad guys in the middle of nowhere.
Who cared if they thought we stunk?
They were assholes.
By the time we’d gotten into town and Davin was dipping into his apartment for his bag, my phone was ringing, and instead of the expected call from my mother saying she’d made all the arrangements, it was Caspian.
Before I so much as had a chance to get a “hello” out, he said, “I’m at the Avalon airport. We’re ready to go whenever you arrive.”
Whenever we arrived?
Huh.
Mother had already called him, then.
I’d half expected to have to meet him closer to where we were headed, but I wasn’t going to complain about not having to take a commercial flight to .
. . Inverness? Glasgow? Somewhere in the north of Scotland, but what I knew about the details of geography were .
. . more than most people, but not that much.
I’d been counting on my mother to make those arrangements, which I supposed still said something about my adulthood . . . or lack thereof.
Still, I’d never been out of the country, so I’d been lucky to remember to pack my passport in my bag, let alone anything more complicated than that.
“Shall I assume that to be agreement, and that you’ll be on your way soon?” Caspian asked, and like Davin, he sounded amused rather than annoyed by my drifting attention.
“Yeah, yes. It’s . . . sorry. Davin is getting a bag right now. We’re going . . . now?”
His amusement did not abate, and he had one of those voices where it was super obvious he found you entertaining. Or maybe he’d just never bothered hiding the fact that he found me funny. I wasn’t exactly the kind of guy people had to hide their true selves around, unless they were, like, evil.
“We’re flying to Scotland right now,” he said, a smile in his voice. Almost actual laughter, in fact. “We’ll spend a night at a hotel I enjoy there, make some plans, and then go.”
That made sense. “You, um, you think we can handle this. Right?”
There was a beat of silence, and I was concerned that maybe he was about to laugh at me and tell me I was ridiculous and it was unlikely I would even help.
“I wouldn’t have agreed to go if I thought it would kill us, Flynn.
If I were alone, I’d be a bit concerned about how I could handle your grandfather.
But I think with Fearson, you’ve already proven you can handle a dragon. Your mother told me how that went.”
“I didn’t . . . I mean, it was mostly The Mórrigan, I guess.” It felt weird, calling her that, since I’d gone thirty years calling her nothing other than my friend. Well, that and a slew of entertaining insults.
Douchecanoe indeed.
“I will admit, I am not from the part of the world that worshipped your friend,” he said, and he sounded oddly pensive. “But my understanding of her was not that she interfered on behalf of people terribly often, but that she chose a favored champion based on their own abilities.”
“So you’re saying you think she helped me because I can already handle myself?” I was, admittedly, dubious. I hadn’t ever been in a real fistfight in my life. Scary Mary had almost killed me with nothing but a knife and my own incompetence just a few months earlier.
Davin came jogging out of the apartment building with a duffel slung over his shoulder then, and the smile he shot me was right out of a modeling shoot.
Fuck, my boyfriend was pretty.
“Your mother, rather chagrinned, told me that apparently you’ve been speaking to this goddess for decades,” Caspian was saying on the other end of the line, barely capturing my attention when I had such excellent distractions as Davin in my shirt smiling at me.
“I have,” I managed to agree with him. “Thirty years.”
“Then I should think that she knows you as well as anyone in the world, don’t you?” It was a fair point, and I gave him a halfhearted hum of agreement before he continued. “Tell me, Flynn. How do you think most men would fare in a fight against their grandfathers?”
And that was a record scratch moment for my brain. Because he was right. Even if Tadhg was one of the most powerful dragons ever born, he was my grandfather. He’d been ancient long before I’d been born. But . . . “Don’t dragons get bigger and more powerful as they get older?”
Davin was close enough to hear that as he approached, and he and Caspian scoffed at the same time.
Surround-sound-scoffing.
Sweet?
“You were the first dragon in generations who managed to become a dragon,” Davin pointed out.
“Really?” Caspian asked, having heard Davin and sounding intrigued.
“If that’s true, it more than answers your question.
Because let me tell you, what I know of your grandfather?
He might have been stronger than your father by virtue of his age, but I have never heard of him transforming.
Becoming a dragon physically is the benchmark that all dragons have been failing for over a thousand years.
I was impressed enough when your father apparently did it in desperation.
If you’ve also managed it? It says something even more important.
I’ll be waiting with bated breath to find out precisely what. ”
And then he hung up without even saying goodbye.
Not that that mattered, since we were going to join him on his plane. Going to Scotland.
Yikes.
“Before the airport, we need to drop by Teas(e),” I told Davin, sliding my fingers into my pocket. Before he could make a crack about me needing tea for the road, I held up the ring I’d taken from Fearson. “I want to see if Amelia or Arthur can destroy this monstrosity right now.”
He winced and took a step back, but nodded. “Agreed. It’s an awful thing.”
Fortunately, the drive from Davin’s apartment to the tea shop was a matter of minutes.
Less fortunately, Amelia and Arthur seemed to have a near-superhero sense for trouble, because within ten seconds of us walking into the shop, they were both headed for us, looking worried.
Yeah, I’d come to see them, so it was good they were there, but I hadn’t meant to freak them out.
“Is everything all right?” Arthur was the first to ask. “It’s not like you to close the shop for a week. Is something wrong with Olive?”
Ahh. That made sense. I held up a hand, already shaking my head.
“Everything is fine. Olive is fine, and so is her new granddaughter. But we’ve got some things we need to handle.
It turns out”—I made a face at the realization that I was going to have to explain the whole sordid mess of Fearson, after what he had done to Arthur.
Ugh.
“We’re going out of town for a few days to handle something,” Davin finished for me, dodging the entire subject for the moment. “But we were hoping you could help us before we go.”
He turned to look at me expectantly, so Arthur and Amelia did the same. I could handle this part. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ring. They both leaned in and looked at it, and Arthur whistled. “It looks like a Minoan piece. Beautiful.”
Amelia, though . . . she knew. She was frowning at it, her eyes narrowed and lips pursed in displeasure.
Her, then.
I looked at her till she met my eye. “Can you destroy it?”
Arthur gasped, but Davin patted him on the shoulder. “Not the whole thing,” he promised. “Just the magic in it.”
That, however, just made Arthur gasp again. “It’s an artifact? But they’re so rare. Priceless.”
I shook my head and met his eye, not a doubt in my mind that destroying the magic in it was the right choice.
Just because a thing was rare didn’t make it good.
“Albert Fearson was using it to force his way into people’s heads, because that’s what it does.
And you don’t even have to have magic to use it.
It’s possibly the most dangerous thing in the world, and I won’t lie, I’m not gonna sleep well until it’s just a pretty art piece.
” Davin nodded along with my words, and this time, Arthur stepped back half a pace and looked at his sister.
Amelia, clearly unsurprised by my explanation, nodded. She just stared at the ring, and after a second, I could feel it as the magic inside it simply unraveled and fell away.
I took a deep breath, then nodded. “Thank you. I’m, um, probably still gonna have nightmares for just a bit about the world melting around me, but at least I know it won’t happen to anyone else.”
This, naturally, made them both step in again. They pressed me toward a table, Arthur suggesting that chocolate was always good for stress, and Amelia suggesting a nice cup of tea. While I didn’t especially want to turn either of them down—
“That would be lovely, but it’ll have to be to go,” Davin said, in that sexy ass take-charge way he sometimes had. “We appreciate everything, but we were on our way to the airport to catch a flight and we have to get going.”
“We just really didn’t want to leave that undone,” I said, waving the ring around. “In fact, I should probably give this to someone. If it’s”—I looked up at Arthur—“Minoan, you said? Then I’m sure it belongs in a museum.”
Davin rolled his eyes at me. “I wonder what person you know who could handle that. Maybe the very man we’re meeting at the airport?”
That was a good point. If anyone knew how to slip artifacts into the correct hands, it was probably Caspian.
It sure wasn’t me.