Chapter 14
IT FELT GOOD, AND IT FELT RIGHT TO HAVE EVERYONE TOGETHER AGAIN. Everyone tucked into the roomy kitchen with good cooking smells, voices carrying over voices, the dog sprawled at the hearth.
It made the normal, to Iona’s mind, despite the dark and light of the paranormal.
She tossed a big salad, kind of her specialty. She did pretty well in the kitchen as long as it didn’t involve actually cooking.
So she felt good and right and, with the increased push on her lessons with Branna, strong. Even the recounting of the altercation with the wolf, once again, reminded her of the power in the blood, at her fingertips. And made her feel confident.
“It’s bold, isn’t it?” Meara commented as she slathered herbed butter over thick slices of baguette. “To come at the pair of you that way, in the daylight and so close to Ashford.”
“I’m thinking it wasn’t planned.” Connor nipped a slice of bread from the baking tray before Meara could slide it in the oven to toast. “But more he saw an opportunity and took it, without the planning.”
“Maybe to frighten more than harm,” Fin suggested. “To harm certainly if that opportunity opened. You were having a nice, easy ride, relaxed.”
“And not on guard.” Boyle nodded. “A mistake we won’t be making again.”
“It’s a kind of terrorism, isn’t it?” Fin carried the big bowl of salad to the table. “The constant threat, the not knowing when or where it may come. And the disruption of the normal rhythm of things.”
“Sure he’s the one who bore the brunt of it.” Branna dumped drained pasta in a cheerful blue-and-white bowl. “And got his arse kicked by a witch barely out of the cupboard.”
“Satisfying.”
But as Fin spoke, Iona caught the quick look he shared with Branna.
“But? But what?”
“He’s come after you twice. Here, sit now, get started,” Branna ordered. “And both times he’s been sent off with his tail between his legs.”
“He underestimated her,” Boyle said as he took his seat.
“No doubt of that, and little that he’ll do so again.” Branna handed the salad set to Meara. “Dish it up. I’ll turn the bread.”
She could follow the dots, Iona thought, especially when they were so clearly marked. “You think he’ll come after me again? Specifically?”
“It’s you coming here that’s set things in motion that held for hundreds of years. There’s apples in here,” Connor discovered as he sampled the salad. “It’s nice.”
“So if he scares her off—at least—and back to America?” Meara frowned. “What does that do?”
“I’m not sure it matters now. She’s the third.” Branna brought the bread to the table, sat to have her salad. “And he knows it, as we do now. Her power has opened, and wider and faster than he—or I for that matter—had anticipated. The cork’s not going back in that bottle.”
While she appreciated the compliment, Iona continued to follow the dots, into a very uneasy place. “But if he kills me, or either of you?”
“Pain’s better.” Connor ate with obvious enjoyment, and spoke with something kin to cheer. “Or seduction. Those lead to turning, and by turning any of us, he gains more power. Killing outright, he’d get some, but far from all. Still he might try it out of frustration or spite.”
“There’s a happy thought,” Meara muttered.
“If that’s true, why hasn’t he gone for either of you long before I got here?”
“Oh, he’s made a few swipes from time to time, but no scars.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Connor winced. “I’m sorry for that, Fin.”
“It’s no matter. He couldn’t know, as none of us could know, the three of you were the three. Not until you came, Iona, and the links clicked together.”
“And the amulets help to shield,” Branna added. “And if he did away with me or Connor, there’d be another. There’s O’Dwyers a plenty.”
“Not like you.” Boyle spoke quietly. “Nor like Connor. Or you,” he said to Iona. “You knew, Fin, it would be this three and this time.”
“Only for certain when I saw the horse. I saw you on him,” Fin said to Iona. “Astride the stallion under a moon so full and white it seemed to pulse against the black sky like a bright heart. I saw fire in your hands, and power in your eyes.”
“You said nothing of this before.”
Fin glanced at Branna. “I bought the horse because I knew it was hers. I didn’t know when you’d come, not for certain,” he said to Iona. “Only that you would, and you’d have need of Alastar. And he of you.”
“What else have you seen?” Branna demanded.
His face shuttered. “Too much, and not enough.”
“I’m not looking for riddles, Finbar.”
“You’re looking for answers, as always you do, and I don’t have them.
I’ve seen the fog spread, as you have, seen him watching from the shadows, a shadow himself.
I’ve seen you under that same bright moon, glowing like a thousand stars.
With the wind flying through your hair, and blood on your hands. I’ve wondered if it was mine.”
Saying nothing, Branna rose to go to the stove, to pour the simmering sauce in a bowl.
“I don’t know what it means,” Fin continued, “or how much is real and true, how much is wondering.”
“When the time comes, it’ll be his blood spilled.” The cheer left Connor’s voice. Now there was only a hard edge, a lick of temper.
“Brother. I am his blood.”
“He doesn’t own you.” With her shoulders very straight, her eyes very direct, Iona looked at Fin.
“And feeling sorry for yourself isn’t helping.
He’s been around, waiting for hundreds of years,” she continued in a practical tone as Branna shot her a quietly approving look over her shoulder.
“What the hell has he been doing for centuries?”
“Fin thinks he goes back and forth, when he’s a mind to, between times, or worlds. Or both,” Boyle added.
“How does he— Oh, the cabin, the ruins. The place behind the vines. If he can do that, why doesn’t he kill Sorcha before she burns him to ashes?”
“He can’t change what was. Her magick was as powerful as his, maybe more,” Fin speculated, “before she took ill, before he killed her man. It’s her, I think, who spellbound the place, protects it still. What was, was, and can’t be altered. I’ve tried myself.”
“Well now, you’re full of secrets, aren’t you then.” Branna dropped the bowls on the table, snatched up the salad to put it aside.
“If I could’ve finished what she started, and ended him, it would be done.”
“But so would you,” Iona pointed out. “Maybe. I think. Time paradoxes are . . . paradoxical.”
“In any case, I couldn’t change it. My power was there, I felt it, but it made no matter. And I couldn’t hold my place, if you take my meaning. It all wavered, and brought me back where I’d started.”
“You could’ve been lost,” Connor reminded him. “Taken somewhere, or some time else entirely.”
“I wasn’t. I think it’s like a string of wire, from then to now, and there’s no veering off from the wire.”
“But there’s a lot of years on the wire,” Iona mused. “Maybe it’s a matter of finding the right spot.”
“Change one thing that was, it all changes. And you should know better,” Branna said to Fin.
“I was young, and foolish.” He sent Iona a quick smile. “And feeling sorry for myself. Now that I’m older and wiser, I see it’s not any one of us who’ll end him or the curse he carries, but all of us.”
“What if we all went back?”
Connor paused in ladling sauce over his pasta to study Boyle. “All of us, together?”
“Maybe it would change things, but we don’t know when he’ll try to harm any one of us, or what else he might do. I don’t know why you can’t change what was, or why you shouldn’t try when what was is something evil.”
“It’s a slippery hill to climb, Boyle.” Branna twirled pasta, untwirled, twirled it again.
“Some ask if you had the way and means, wouldn’t you go back and kill Hitler?
Oh, the thousands of lives saved, and so many innocent.
But one of those lives saved might be worse and more powerful than Hitler ever dreamed. ”
“But don’t you try all the same? A lot of years on the wire, as Iona said. Can’t we find the time, the place, take the battle to him? A time and place we know won’t wink Fin out of existence.”
“Thanks for that.”
“I’m used to you,” Boyle shot back to Fin. “And have no desire to run the businesses on my own. Is there not some magick the four of you can devise to give us the best chance of it?”
“We may not come back to the world we left, if we come back at all,” Branna insisted.
“Maybe we’d come back to better. He’s a shadow in this time, as Fin said.”
“Shadows fade in the light.” Meara lifted her wine. “That’s something to consider. I may not be able to conjure a spell, but I know basic physics. Is it physics? Ah, well, action, reaction, yes? And I know it’s always better to take the enemy by surprise, on ground of your choosing.”
“You’d go?” Iona asked. “I mean if we could, and would.”
“Well now, unless I had a hot date lined up.”
“It’s not a joke, Meara.”
Meara reached over, rubbed a hand on Branna’s arm. “You’ve carried the weight long enough. Time to spread it around. Saying we’re a circle and really meaning it are different matters, Branna. You can’t protect us all, so let’s protect each other.”
“We could think on it. On how to find that time and place, and block him from knowing it. And how to make the time and place here and now—or here and when we’ve found the answer to destroying him once and for good.”
* * *
“SHE’LL STUDY AND THINK AND WORK,” IONA SAID QUIETLY to Boyle as they cleared the table. “And worry. I wonder sometimes if there’d be less work and worry all around if I hadn’t come.”
“It’s been an axe dangling over their heads long before that. And you did come. I don’t think much about what’s meant, but it seems you were meant to come. It needs to end sometime, doesn’t it? Why not now? And with us?”