Island of Glass (The Guardians Trilogy #3)(63)

“People are just going about their business,” Sawyer added. “We can’t go at her. She’s just a girl. Nerezza’s using her, so it’s not like we could knock her on her ass.”

“Or shoot her, as Sawyer pointed out to me. She said we were weak, and she was growing stronger.”

“To prove that, she showed us. The girl changed, and there she was, standing in this crowded pub. Her hair’s not all gray now. It’s got black streaks through it, and she’s got some age on her, but not like she did when I had a grip on her over Capri.”

“She’s healing,” Sasha murmured. “Regaining her strength and powers.”

“Riley dissed her. Pulled the ‘bored now’ bit.”

“Bad Willow. Buffy reference.”

Doyle gave Riley a light shove. “Do you mind?”

“Look, seeing as it was, in reality, some innocent girl, dissing was all I could do. All we could do.”

“She said maybe she’d make Riley a pet, give her to Malmon.”

“As if.”

“Don’t toss that off,” Sawyer argued. “For whatever reason she’s gunning for you right now. When she got pissed at Riley, the pub shook. Bottles, glasses rattling around. Nobody noticed.”

“Then Sawyer took a solid dig at her, said maybe she could get us some beer nuts. Pissed her off more, so then it was all peeling our skin off, feeding it to dogs. Since we couldn’t go at her, we shrugged it off. The last thing she said was: ‘The storm comes.’ Then the waitress was back, looking dazed and confused.”

“She didn’t try to harm you.” With a nod, Bran finally picked up the wine, passed one glass to Sasha. “She had you down to two, in an enclosed, public space where you’d have hesitated to use force or violence, but she didn’t strike at you.”

“Because she couldn’t,” Sasha concluded. “She’s not strong enough for that yet. For illusions, for using other means. But not striking out herself.”

“She wasn’t actually there. Do I have that right?” Doyle turned to Bran. “The illusion of her only.”

“That would be my take on it, yes.”

“If she had been stronger, we wouldn’t have been with you.” Annika stepped over to Sasha—away from Sawyer. “We wouldn’t have known you were far away. And if you were taken or hurt, we wouldn’t know.”

“We weren’t.” Sawyer felt it vital to point that out. “I’m sorry, bad judgment, but we weren’t taken or hurt. And all of us are alone or with only part of the team all the time.”

“Not alone or in part in bloody Dublin,” Doyle snapped.

“Hence the bad judgment. It was the wrong way to go about it, but we pulled in some information. You can keep slapping us back for the bad judgment, or we can use what we brought back.”

“You suck at groveling, too,” Riley commented.

“Apparently. Look, what I went to do was really important to me. I went about it wrong, and I’m sorry. Mea culpa squared, sincerely. That’s it.”

“Maybe we should all just cool off a little, then we can talk about this more reasonably.” Sasha moved over to stir the sauce. “And we still need those supplies.”

“You didn’t get the buggering supplies.”

“We got a little distracted,” Riley snapped back at Doyle. “We’ll go get the buggering supplies now.”

“No, Annika and I’ll go get them.”

“Yes.” Annika linked her arm through Doyle’s. “We will go, and I will get cool so we can talk again.”

She held her hand, palm up, to Sawyer. “You have the list of what we need to buy.”

He pulled it out of his back pocket, handed it to her. Said, “Balls,” when she sailed out beside Doyle.

“She’ll get over it. You’re all going to have to get over it,” Riley said. “We did what we did, copped to it. If you’re going to scold us some more, I want more wine.”

Sasha glanced back from the stove. “It was unnecessarily risky.”

“It didn’t feel like it.” Riley shrugged.

“Until you were waiting for the dark god to bring you beer nuts?” Bran suggested.

“Even then. It was clear intimidation, Irish. Did it give us a jolt? Sure. But what was she going to do? She doesn’t, or hasn’t, come to fight on her own. We should have told you guys—sans Anni. Not doing that was stupid, just stupid. I can only say I guess we were so into the secret mission we didn’t think of it.”

“Shortsighted, impulsive. And understandable.”

“Under—” Shocked nearly speechless, Sasha swung around, gaped at Bran.

“A ghrá. A man in love often thinks with heart instead of head.”

Sawyer tried a winning smile in Sasha’s direction, patted his hand over his heart.

She sniffed. “Riley’s not a man in love and should’ve known better.”

“For friendship one also does the foolish.”

“Foolish isn’t— I’ll shut up,” Riley decided. “Come on, Sash, all’s well that ends with everybody breathing. And you know you want to see the rocks. You really want to see the shinies Sawyer bought for the ring.”