Page 80 of Shadow Spell

“It is,” Connor agreed. “As long as I’m here, he can come again. I do you more harm than good by staying.”

“Would you take this, if you please?” Teagan held out a flower topping its bulb. “And when you can, if you’d plant this near our mother’s grave. She favored bluebells.”

“I will, yes, soon as I’m able. I must go, must take Meara back.”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“I’m not. Have a care, all of you.” He wrapped his arms tight around Meara, pressed his face into her hair.

She woke in bed, sitting up with Connor’s arms around her, with him rocking her as he might a baby.

“I had a dream.”

“Not a dream, or not only a dream. Shh now, give me a moment.”

His lips pressed onto her hair, her temples, her cheeks, all slow and deliberate.

“Let me see your side.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” she insisted as he shifted her, ran his hands over her. “In fact I feel someone dosed me with a magick elixir. And I suppose that’s just what happened. How did it happen? Any of it, all of it?”

“Eamon dreamed of me and I of him. He drew me to him, and I drew you with me. And likely Cabhan set the stage for it all.”

His hands fisted in her hair until he carefully relaxed them again.

“To use me, my dreaming, to attack Eamon.”

“You pushed me behind you.”

“And you did the same with Eamon. We do what we do.” On a sigh, he laid his forehead on hers. “Your sword struck his flank, and his claws yours, but he was still part in shadow so the blade drew his blood, but didn’t stop him. That’s my theory on it.”

“He came out of the air, Connor. How do we fight what comes out of the air?”

“As we did. The light drove him back—Eamon’s and mine joined, then the girls.”

“He screamed,” Meara remembered. “It didn’t sound like an animal, but a man.”

“Balancing between worlds, and forms. It’s catching him when he steps off on one or the other, I think. It’s near dawn. It’ll be an ugly business, but I’m waking Branna. I’ll leave it to you to ring up the others. This is something to share with all and straightaway.”

But first he cupped her face in his hands as he had in the dreaming time. “Don’t be so fucking brave next time, for the next time might kill me where I stand.”

“He was just a boy, Connor, and straight in its path. And he looks like you, or you look like him. The shape of the face,” she added, “his mouth, his nose, even the way he stands.”

“Is that so?”

“Harder to see it yourself, I’d think, but it’s very so. I’ll ring Iona, then she’ll be in charge of waking Boyle, who can wake Fin.”

“All right.” He ran his hands through her hair, long and waving as he’d released it from its braid the night before. “Whoever gets downstairs first puts on the bleeding coffee.”

“Agreed.” Because she could see the worry in his eyes still, she leaned in to kiss him. “Go on, you’ve got the worst job between us in waking Branna when the sun’s barely up.”

“Have the first-aid kit ready.” He rolled out of bed, yanked on his pants.

As he left, Meara reached over for her phone, and saw the bluebell. Thinking of Teagan, so like the girl Iona must have been, she rose, fetched a glass of water from the bathroom, set the bulb in it.

For Sorcha, she thought, then called Iona.

She made it down first, did her duty with the coffee. She considered making oatmeal, the only breakfast meal she had a decent enough hand with. And Connor nearly always scorched the eggs if he had charge of breakfast.

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