Нора Робертс - Blood Magick

“She came here?” Connor paused in the act of sliding a stack of pancakes onto his plate. “Our kitchen?”

“She did. I’d had a restless night, full of dreams and voices. Hers among them. I couldn’t be sure of the place as it was vague and scattered as dreams can be.” She took a single pancake for herself. “I was here, getting my first cup of coffee, and I turned around. There she was.

“She looks like me—or I like her. That was a jolt of surprise, just how close we are there—though she was heavily pregnant. Her son comes today—or not today, as in her time it was still a fortnight to Samhain.”

“Time shifts,” Iona murmured.

“As you say. They’d gone to Ballintubber Abbey on the way here. That’s where the dream took me.”

“Ballintubber.” Iona shifted to Boyle. “I felt them there, remember? When you took me to see it, I felt them, knew they’d gone there. It’s such a strong place.”

“It is, yes,” Branna agreed. “But I’ve been there more than once, as has Connor. I never felt them.”

“You haven’t been since Iona’s come,” Fin pointed out. “You haven’t been there since the three are all in Mayo.”

“True enough.” And a good point, she was forced to admit. “But I will, we will. On your wedding day, Iona, if not before. She said the others, those before us, guard the place, so Cabhan’s barred from it. He can’t go in, see in. It’s a true sanctuary if we find we need one. They, who came before, gave light and strength to the three. And hope—I think she needed that most.”

“And you,” Iona said, “all of us. Hope wouldn’t hurt us either.”

“I’m more for doing than hoping, but it gave her what she needed. I could see it. She said—in the dream, and here—we will prevail. To believe that, and they’ll be with us when we face Cabhan again. To find the way. To know, if it isn’t for us to finish, another three will come. We will prevail.”

“Though it takes a thousand years,” Connor added. “Well then, I’m fine with hope, fine with doing. But I’ll be buggered if I wait a thousand years to see the end of Cabhan.”

“Then we find the way, in the here and the now. I had pancakes once when I went to Montana in the American West,” Fin commented. “They called them something else . . .”

“Flapjacks, I bet,” Iona suggested.

“That’s the very thing. They were brilliant. These are better yet.”

“You’ve rambled far and wide,” Branna said.

“I have. But I’m done with rambling until this is done. So, like Connor, a thousand years won’t suit me. We find the way.”

Just like that? Branna thought and struggled against annoyance. “She said they’d be with us, next time we faced him down. But they were there on Samhain, and still he got away from us.”

“Only just there, or barely,” Connor remembered. “Shadows like? Part of the dream spell we cast, that could be. How would we bring them full—could it be done? If we could find that way, how could we not end him? The first three, and we three. And the three more with us.”

“Time’s the problem.” Fin sat back with his coffee. “The shifts. We were there on Samhain, but from what you say, Branna, they were not. So they were but shadows, and unable to take part. We have to make the times meet. Our time or theirs, but the same. It’s interesting, an interesting puzzle to solve.”

“But what time and when?” Branna demanded. “I’ve found two, and each should have worked. The solstice, then Samhain. The time should have been on the side of light. The spells we worked, the poison we created, all done to mesh with that specific time and place.”

“And both times we wounded him,” Boyle reminded her. “Both times he bled and fled. And the last? It should’ve been mortal.”

“His power’s as dark as ours is light,” Iona pointed out. “And the source of it heals him. Longer this time. It’s taking longer.”

“If we could find his lair.” Connor’s face turned grim. “If we could go at him when he’s weakened.”

“I can’t find him. Even the two of us together failed,” Fin reminded him. “He has enough, or what feeds him has enough to hide. Until he slithers out again, and I—or one of us—can feel him, we wait.”

“I’d hoped by Yule, but that’s nearly on us.” Branna shook her head. “I’d hoped we could take him on by Yule, though that was more from a wanting it done than a knowing it was the time. I haven’t found it in the stars. Not yet anyway.”

“It seems to me we have an outline of the work needed.” Boyle lifted a shoulder. “Finding the day, the time. Finding the way to bring the first three into it, if that’s a true possibility.”

“I believe it is.” Fin looked at Branna.

“We’ll study on it, work on it.”

“I’ve time this morning.”

“I have to go into the shop, take stock in. I’m barely keeping up with the holidays.”

“I can help tomorrow, my off day,” Iona offered.

“I’ll take it.”

“I want to finish a little shopping myself,” Iona added. “My first Christmas in Ireland. And Nan’s coming. I can’t wait to see her, and to show her the house—well, what there is of it.” She leaned into Boyle. “We’re building a house in the woods.”

“She changed her mind on the tiles in the big bath again,” Boyle told the room at large.

“It’s hard to decide. I’ve never built a house before.” She looked at Branna. “Help me.”

“I told you there’s little I’d love more. Give me tomorrow, and we’ll spend an hour or so over wine at day’s end for looking at tile and paint samples and so on.”

“Connor and I start talking about what we might want our place to look like, sitting in the field above the cottage here. And my brain goes to mush instantly.” Meara swirled a bite of pancake in syrup. “I can’t really get my mind around the building of a place, and the knowing down to the color of paint on the walls.”

“Well, come for the wine and we’ll play with yours as well. And speaking of houses,” Branna added as she saw the door opening to her early-morning thoughts. “The lot of you have places—Boyle’s, Meara’s. There’s no need for all of you to pack yourself in here every night.”

“We’re better together,” Connor insisted.

“And there wouldn’t be the idea that sleeping at Meara’s flat would mean oatmeal for breakfast most mornings?”

He grinned. “It would be a factor.”

“I’ve a fine way with oatmeal.” Meara poked him.

“That you do, darling, but did you taste these pancakes?”

“I confess even my famous oatmeal can’t rise up to them. You’re after a bit of space,” Meara said to Branna.

“I wouldn’t mind some, now and again.”

“We’ll work on that as well.”

“It seems we’ve plenty to be working on.” Boyle rose. “I’d say we have to start with clearing up Branna’s kitchen, and getting to the work that makes our living.”

“When will you be back from your shop business?” Fin asked Branna.

She’d hoped the divergence of talk had distracted him off that, and should have known better. More, she admitted, avoiding working with him couldn’t be done. Not for the greater good.

“I’ll be back by two.”

“Then I’ll be here at two.” He rose, picked up his plate to take it to the sink.

• • •

MAKING A LIVING HAD TO BE DONE, AND IN TRUTH, BRANNA enjoyed the making of hers. Once her house was empty and quiet, she went up to dress for the day, banked her bedroom fire to a simmer.

Down in her workshop she spent the next hour wrapping the fancy soaps she’d made the day before. Adding the ribbons and dried flowers to the bottles of lotions she’d already poured.