Blood Magick (9 page)

When Connor came in he kept his silence, as magicks swam through the air. Branna and Fin stood, hands outstretched over the cauldron while smoke rose pale blue.

“Sleep to dream, dream to fly, fly to seek, seek to know.” She spoke the words three times, and Fin followed.

“Dream as one, as one to see, see the truth, truth to know.”

Stars flickered through the smoke.

“Starlight guide us through the night and safe return us to the light.” Branna lifted a hand, and with the other gestured toward a slim, clear bottle.

Liquid rose from the cauldron, blue as the smoke, shining with stars, and in one graceful flow, poured into the bottle. Fin capped it.

“That’s done it. We’ve done it.” She let out a breath.

“Another dreaming spell?” Now Connor crossed the room. “When do we go for him?”

“It’s not for that, not yet.” Branna shoved her hands through her hair again, muttered a curse at herself, and this time just pulled the pins out. “What time is it? Well, bloody hell, where did the day go?”

“Into that.” Fin pointed to the bottle. “She nearly ate my head when I was so bold as to suggest we take an hour and have lunch.”

“She’ll do that when she’s working,” Connor agreed, giving Fin a bolstering pat on the shoulder. “Still, there’s always supper.” He gave Branna a hopeful smile. “Isn’t there?”

“Men and their bellies.” She took the bottle to a cupboard so it could cure. “I’ll put something together as it’s best we all talk through what Fin and I worked out today. Get out of my house for a bit.”

“I’ve only just got into the house,” Connor objected.

“You’re after a hot meal and wanting me to make it, so get out of the house so I can have some space to figure on it.”

“I just want a beer before—”

Fin took his arm, grabbed his own coat. “I’ll stand you one down the pub as I could use the air and the walk. And the beer.”

“Well then, since you put it that way.”

When Kathel trotted to the door with them, Branna waved at the three of them. “He could use the walk himself. Don’t come back for an hour—and tell the others the same.”

Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked through to her kitchen.

Spotless, she thought, and so beautifully quiet—a lovely thing after hours of work and conjuring. She would’ve enjoyed a glass of wine by the fire, and that hour without a single thing to do, so she had to remind herself she enjoyed the domestic tasks.

She put her hands on her hips, cleared her head of clutter.

All right then, she could sauté up some chicken breasts in herbs and wine, roast up some red potatoes in olive oil and rosemary, and she had green beans from the garden she’d blanched and frozen—she could do an almondine there. And since she hadn’t had time to bake more yeast bread, and the lot of them went through it like ants at a picnic, she’d just do a couple quick loaves of beer bread. And that was good enough for anyone.

She scrubbed potatoes first, cut them into chunks, tossed them in her herbs and oil, added some pepper, some minced garlic and stuck them in the oven. She tossed the bread dough together—taking a swig of beer for the cook, and with plenty of melted butter on top of the loaves, stuck them in with the potatoes.

As the chicken breasts were frozen, she thawed them with a wave of her hand, then covered them with a marinade she’d made and bottled herself.

Satisfied things were well under way, she poured that wine, took the first sip where she stood. Deciding she could use some air, a little walk herself, she got a jacket, wrapped a scarf around her neck, and took her wine outside.

Blustery and cold, she thought, but a change from all the heat she and Fin had generated in the workshop. As the wind blew through her hair, she walked her back garden, picturing where her flowers would bloom, where her rows of vegetables would grow come spring.

She had some roses still, she noted, and the pansies, of course, who’d show their cheerful faces right through the snow or ice if they got it. Some winter cabbage, and the bright orange and yellow blooms of Calendula she prized for its color and its peppery flavor.

She might make soup the next day, add some, and some of the carrots she’d mulched over so they’d handle the colder weather.

Even in winter the gardens pleased her.

She sipped her wine, wandered, even when the shadows deepened, and the fog teased around the edges of her home.

“You’re not welcome here.” She spoke calmly, and took out the little knife in her pocket, used it to cut some of the Calendula, some hearty snapdragons, a few pansies. She’d make a little arrangement, she thought, of winter bloomers for the table.

“I will be.” Cabhan stood, handsome, smiling, the red stone of the pendant he wore glowing in the dim light. “You’ll welcome me eagerly into your home. Into your bed.”

“You’re still weak from your last
welcome
, and delusional besides.” She turned now, deliberately sipped her wine as she studied him. “You can’t seduce me.”

“You’re so much more than the rest of them. We know it, you and I. With me, you’ll be more yet. More than anyone ever imagined. I will give you all the pleasure you deny yourself. I can look like him.”

Cabhan waved a hand in front of his face. And Fin smiled at her.

And oh, it stabbed her heart as if she’d turned the little knife on herself. “A shell only.”

“I can sound like him,” he said in Fin’s voice
. “Aghra, a chuid den tsaol.”

The knife twisted as he said the words Fin used to say to her.
My love, my share of life
.

“Do you think that weakens me? Tempts me to open to you? You are all I despise. You are why I am no longer his.”

“You chose. You cast me away.” Suddenly he was Fin at eighteen, so young, so full of grief and rage. “What would you have me do? I never knew. I never deceived you. Don’t turn from me. Don’t cast me aside.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Branna heard herself say. “I gave myself to you, only you, and you’re his blood. You’re his.”

“I didn’t know! How could I? It came on me, Branna, burned into me. It wasn’t there before—”

“Before we loved. More than a week ago, and you said nothing, and only tell me now, as I saw for myself. I am of the three.” Tears burned the back of her eyes, but she refused to let them thicken her voice. “I am a Dark Witch, daughter of Sorcha. You are of Cabhan, you are of the black and the pain. You’re lies, and what you are has broken my heart.”

“Weep, witch,” he murmured. “Weep out the pain. Give me your tears.”

She caught herself standing in front of him, on the edge of her ground, and his face was Cabhan’s face. And that face was lit with the dark as the red stone glowed stronger.

Tears, she realized, swam in her eyes. With all her will she pulled them back, held her head high. “I don’t weep. You’ll have nothing from me but this.”

She jabbed out with the garden knife, managed to stab shallowly in his chest as she grabbed for the pendant with her other hand. The ground trembled under her feet; the chain burned cold. For an instant his eyes burned red as the stone, then the fog swirled, snapped out with teeth, and she held nothing but the little knife with blood on its tip.

She looked down at her hand, at the burn scored across her palm. Closing her hand into a fist she drew up, warmed the icy burn, soothed it, healed it.

Perhaps her hands trembled—there was no shame in it—but she picked up the flowers, the wineglass she’d dropped.

“A waste of wine,” she said softly as she walked toward the house.

But not, she thought, a waste of time.

She’d stirred the potatoes, taken the bread from the oven, and had poured a fresh glass of wine before the rest of her circle began wandering in.

“What can I do,” Iona asked as she washed her hands, “that won’t give anyone heartburn?”

“You could mince up that garlic there.”

“I’m good at mincing, also chopping.”

“Mincing will do.”

“Are you all right?” Iona said under her breath. “You look a little pale.”

“I’m right enough, I promise you. I have something to tell all of you, but I’d as soon wait until I have this all done.”

“Okay.”

She focused on cooking, on letting the voices flow around her while she worked. She didn’t have to ask for help—others set the table, poured wine, arranged food on platters or in bowls.

“Do you have a marketing list?” Meara asked as those bowls and platters made their way around the table. “And if not, if you could make one, I’ll be doing the marketing for you—unless you object.”

“You’re doing my marketing?”

“The lot of us will be taking turns on it, from now on. Well, as long as you’re stuck doing most of the cooking. It’s gone past cleaning up after being a fair trade-off. So we’ll see to the marketing.”

“I have a list started, and planned to go to the market tomorrow.”

“It’ll be my turn for that, if that’s all right with you.”

“Sure it’s fine with me.”

“If there’s anything you want taken into your shop, I can haul it in for you at the same time.”

She started to speak, then looked around the table, narrowed her eyes. “What’s all this then, doing the marketing, taking in my stock?”

“You look tired.” At Connor’s eye-roll and sigh, Boyle scowled. “Why dance around it?”

“Thank you so much for pointing it out to me,” Branna snapped back.

“You want the truth or want it fancied up?” Boyle’s scowl only deepened. “You look tired, and that’s that.”

Eyes narrowed still, she ran her hands down her face, did a glamour. Now she all but glowed. “There, all better.”

“It’s under it where you’re tired.”

She started to round on Fin, and Connor threw up his hands. “Oh leave off, Branna. You’re pale and heavy-eyed, and we’re the ones looking at you.” He jabbed a finger when she started to rise, sent a little shove across the table to put her back in her chair.

She didn’t need the glamour now to bring the flush to her cheeks. “Want to take me on, do you?”

“Just stop it, both of you,” Iona ordered. “Just stop. You have every reason to look tired, with all you’re doing, and we have every right to take some of the load off. It’s just marketing, for God’s sake, and cleaning up and
chores
. We’re doing it so you can have some time to breathe, damn it. So stop being so snarly about it.”

Branna sat back. “Doesn’t seem so long ago it was an apology coming out of your mouth every two minutes or less. Now it’s orders.”

“I’ve evolved. And I love you. We all love you.”

“I don’t mind the marketing,” Branna said, but calmly now. “Or the chores—very much. But I’m grateful to pass some of it on for the time being as we’ll all be busy with more important matters, and Yule’s all but on us. We should have light and joy for Yule. We will have.”

“Then it’s settled,” Iona stated. “If anybody wants to say anything else about it, I’m cooking tomorrow.” She forked up some chicken, smiled. “I thought that would close the subject.”

“Firmly.” Branna reached over to squeeze her hand. “And there’s another subject entirely needs discussion. Cabhan was here.”

“Here?” Connor shoved to his feet. “In the house?”

“Of course not in the house. Be sane. Do you think he could get through the protection I’ve laid—and you as well? I saw him outside. I went out in the back garden to check on the winter plantings, and to get some air as I’d been working inside all day. He was bold enough to come to the edge of the garden, which is as far as he can step. We spoke.”

“After Connor and I went down to the pub.” Fin spoke coolly. “And you’re just telling us of it now?”

“I wanted to get supper on as there’s enough confusion in that with the kitchen full of people. And once we sat, the conversation began on my haggard self.”

“I never said haggard,” Boyle muttered.

“In any case, I’m telling you now, or would if Connor would stop checking out all the windows and come back to the table.”

“And you wonder I don’t like leaving you on your own.”

She shot arrows at her brother with the look. “Mind yourself or you’ll be trying to make such insulting remarks with a tongue tied in knots. I was wandering the garden, with a glass of wine. The light changed, the fog came.”

“You didn’t call for us.”

This time she pointed a warning finger at her brother. “Leave off interrupting. I didn’t call, no, because I wanted to know what he had to say, and I wasn’t in trouble. He couldn’t touch me, and we both knew it. I wouldn’t risk my skin, Connor, but more, you—all of you—should know I’d never risk the circle, what we have to do. Not for curiosity, not for pride. For nothing would I risk it.”

“Let her finish.” Though Meara was tempted to give Connor’s leg a kick under the table, she gave it a comforting squeeze instead. “Because we do know it. Just as we knew he’d try for Branna before it was done.”

“A poor try, at least this time,” Branna continued. “The usual overtures. He’d make me his, give me more power than I could dream of and more bollocks of the same sort. He was still hurting a bit, hiding it, but the red stone was weaker. But he still has power up his sleeve. He changed to Fin.”

In the silence, Fin lifted his gaze from his wineglass, and the heat of it clashed with Branna’s. “To me?”

“As if his illusion of you would shatter all my defenses. But he had a bit more. He’s canny, and he’s been watching us for a lifetime. He changed again, back to when you were eighteen. Back to the day . . .”

“We were together. The first time. The only time.”

“Not that day, no, but the week after. When I learned of the mark. All you felt and said, what I felt and said, all there as it had been. He had enough to make me feel it, to draw me to the edge of my protection. He fed on that so the stone glowed deeper, as did his arrogance, as he didn’t understand I had more than enough to take out my garden knife and give him a good jab with it. As I did I grabbed the chain of the stone, and I saw fear. I saw his fear. Back he went to fog, so I couldn’t hold it, couldn’t work fast enough to break the chain.

“It’s ice. So cold it burns,” she murmured, studying her palm. “And holding it, for that instant, I felt the dark of him, the hunger, and most I felt the fear.”