Page 47 of Premonition of Peace

“What’s with the sunglasses? It’s the middle of the night.” She waved me in, and I stepped into the foyer.

“About that,” I said, taking them off and turning to her. “We have some catching up to do.”

Piper’s mouth fell open but she didn’t say anything, just watching me intently as a crease formed between her brows. Eventually, she nodded and cleared her throat.

“Ronan,” she called, never taking her gaze off my face.

“Hmm?” His deep timbre rumbled from the other room.

“Put the kettle on for Nat, will you?” She paused. “And bring whiskey.”

Several minutes later, I found myself sitting in Piper and Ronan’s living room while they stared at me. The kids and Mist had recently gone to sleep, thanks to a concoction the Señora had put together to get the twins to sleep at the same time. It wasn’t perfected yet, but the trials were getting closer.

“So,” Piper began, her eyes peering over her cup at me as she took a small sip, “that is going to take some getting used to.”

“That’s what you focus on?”

“What? It looks . . . weird. I’m just saying,” she mumbled, lifting a shoulder. “If I showed up on your doorstep with a golden metal eyeball, you can’t say you wouldn’t say the same.”

“Yeah, I probably would . I plan on keeping it glamoured, so you won’t have to get used to it too much. No one needs to know. I’d be killed in a heartbeat just so some idiot supernatural could steal it from me. I just figured the easiest way to get the conversation started was putting it out in the open.” Letting the magic settle over my face, the glamour covered the orb, and Piper could stop staring at it. “Better?”

Ronan tilted his head. “Did my brother convince you to do this?”

I snorted. “Please. I make my own decisions. You know me well enough by now. He didn’t know about it until the surgery was underway.”

“Are you going to fill us in on why you did it, then?” Piper asked, setting her cup down on the table.

“Brace yourselves. It’s a lot,” I said, and began to fill them in on everything that had happened in the two and a half days. Carissa’s death. Kat’s family secret bomb. Morgan La Fay not being able to actually die and me being her ultimate vessel. My plan for how to trap her. All of it. Including my complete failure in locating the objects of fate.

“TheMorriganis in Sasha’s body? Are you fucking serious? How is that bitchnotdead?” Piper asked, a mild mix of panic and anger in her eyes. “We killed her. Or sort of killed her. Did we? If we didn’t kill her, who was it?”

“We killed a vessel. Nothing more. Her soul jumped to another one.” I crossed my arms, wincing. “I just thought the coven had brought her back. I didn’t have a clue she’d been alive-ish for centuries, bodysnatching.”

“Fucking magic and glamours,” she mumbled. “Looked just like her.” She finally breathed out a long sigh, then nodded. “This a lot to take in.”

I hated that she was worried. I could see it on her face. How could she not? She had her children to think about. This affected all of them too.

Pressing my lips together in a thin line, I gave her a look of apology and sympathy. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. There’s just so much . . .”

“There’s more you aren’t saying, isn’t there?”

I sighed. “Even with all of this, I’m also trying to think of a way to save Marcel, and I just . . . I don’t know how. I check on him every day. He’s weakening, and I can’t do anything to stop it. I’m lost, Piper. I’m in over my head, and I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore. Everything is a fucking ticking time bomb.”

Piper wiped her palms on her pants, leaning forward. “You aren’t kidding,” she murmured, before shaking her head ofwhatever thoughts had crept into her mind. “So . . . what do we do? We’re here to brainstorm, right?”

I gave her a small smile in thanks. “I’ll take whatever advice you have. Give me any ideas.”

It felt like hours had passed as we tossed suggestions back and forth, finding a hole in each and every one of them. Each idea we tossed around fell apart under the weight of practicality or unforeseen complications. It was frustrating, disheartening even, to come up against so many dead ends.

Three pots of tea had been consumed. Snack wrappers littered the coffee table. Piper paced the room, chewing her thumbnail as she thought in silence while I slumped on the couch, my neck bent back over a pillow while I stared at the ceiling.

“Maybe there’s a way to go about itwithoutthe objects of fate?” Piper asked. “If you can’t find them with the Eye, maybe it can do something else?”

“Not that I know of,” I said, glancing at Ronan and he shook his head in agreement. “I can see the ties that bind all of us. Everything is covered in thin gold threads. I can touch them, but I can’t do anything with them.”

“Would she fall for a lure somehow? A way to coax her out of Sasha’s body?” Ronan suggested.

I pulled my legs up on the couch, sitting crisscrossed. “Not likely. She’s too cunning for that. She chose Sasha for the safety net. The Morrigan knows we won’t just kill her out right.”

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