Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #3)(27)

“That may have been a mistake for all, but still I’ll keep it.”

“We can end him. I know it.” As she spoke, she took the crystal from her pocket, turned it in the light. “Connor, Iona, and I, we’ve all seen the first three. Not in simple dreams, but waking ones. We’ve connected with them, body and spirit, and that’s not been written of before.”

He heard the words, the logic in them, but couldn’t polish away the edges of frustration and doubt. “You put great store in books, Branna.”

“So I do, for words written down have great power. You know it as I do.” She laid her hand on the book. “The answers are here, the ones already written, the ones we’ll write.”

She opened the book, paged through. “Here I wrote you and I dream-traveled to Midor’s cave, and saw his death.”

“It’s not an answer.”

“It will lead to one, when we go back.”

“Back?” Now his interest kindled. “To the cave?”

“We were taken there. We’d have more, learn more, see more, if we took ourselves. I can find nothing about this man. The name meant nothing to Sorcha’s Brannaugh. We need to seek him out.”

He wanted to go back, thought of it every day, and yet . . . “We have neither the place nor the time. We’d have no direction, Branna.”

“It can be done, it can be worked. With the rest of our circle here to bring us back if needed. Cabhan’s sire, Fin, how many answers might he have?”

“The answers of a madman. You saw the madness as well as I.”

“You’d go back without me if you could. But it must be both of us.”

He couldn’t deny it. “There was death in that cave.”

“There’s death here, without the answers. The potion must be changed—no, not the essence of it, in that you’re right. But what we made, we made specific to Samhain. Would you wait until Samhain next to try again?”

“I would not, no.”

“I can’t see the time, Fin, can you? I can’t see when we should try for him again, and without that single answer, we’re blind.” She pushed up, wandered the room. “I thought the solstice—it made good logic. The light beats back the dark. Then Samhain, when the veil thins.”

“We saw them, the first three. The veil thinned, and we saw them with us. But not fully,” he added before she could.

“I thought, is it the solstice, but the winter? Or the spring equinox? Is it Lammas or Bealtaine? Or none of those at all.”

Temper, the anger for herself in failing, bubbled up as she whirled back to him. “I see us at Sorcha’s cabin, fighting. The fog and the dark, Boyle’s hands burning, you bleeding. And failing, Fin, because I made the wrong choice.”

On a half laugh—just a touch of derision in it, he arched his eyebrows. “So now it’s all yours, is it?”

“The time, that choice, was mine, both of them. And both of them wrong. All my careful calculations, wrong. So more’s needed to be certain this time. This third time.”

“Third time’s the charm.”

Huffing out a breath, she smiled a little. “So it’s said. What we need may be there, for the taking, if we go back. So, will you go dreaming with me, Fin?”

To hell and back again, he thought.

“I will, but we’ll be sure of the dream spell first. Sure of it, and of the way back. I won’t have you lost beyond.”

“I won’t have either of us lost. We’ll be sure first, of the way there, and the way back. It’s Cabhan’s time, his origins—we agree on that?”

“We do.” So Fin sighed. “Which means you’ll be after bleeding me again.”

“Just a bit.” Now she lifted her eyebrows. “All this fuss over a bit of blood from a man who so recently claimed he’d die for me?”

“I’d rather not do it by the drop.”

“No,” she said when he started to pull off his sweater. “Not from the mark. His origins, Fin. He didn’t bear the mark at his beginning.”

“The blood from the mark’s more his.”

She did what she did rarely, stepped to him, laid a hand over the cursed mark. “Not from this. Yours from your hand, mine from mine, so our blood and dreams entwine.”

“You’ve written the spell already?”

“Just pieces of it—and in my head.” She smiled at him, forgetting herself enough to leave her hand on his arm. “I do considerable thinking when I clean.”

“Come to my house and think your fill, as your brother left the room he uses there a small disaster.”

“He’s the finest man I know, along with the sloppiest. He just doesn’t see the mess he makes. It’s a true skill, and one Meara will have to deal with for years to come.”

“He says they’re thinking the solstice—the summer—for the wedding, and having it in the field behind the cottage here.”

“They’re both ones for being out of doors as much as possible, so it suits them.” She turned away to fetch a bowl and her smallest cauldron.

“They suit each other.”

“Oh, sure they do, however much that surprised the pair of them. And with Boyle and Iona before them, we’ll have spring and summer weddings, new beginnings, and the gods willing, the rest far behind us.”