Page 130 of Threadbound

“What now?” Jamie asked, when he’d scraped the last spoonful from his carton.

Bran pushed at his dinner, half-moving his food instead of eating it. “We need to find the missing ingredients,” he replied. “For theDraught.”

“In Elfhame? Or here?”

“Here,” Bran replied. “I know where to find what we need in Elfhame.”

Jamie nodded. “You should finish that,” he said, nodding down at Bran’s curry.

The fae looked up at him. “Not hungry,” he muttered.

“You should still finish it,” Jamie replied, standing from his desk chair—Bran was in the recliner—to take his own empty containers to the trash in the tiny kitchen. “You haven’t been eating much.”

Jamie completely understood the look of annoyance Bran shot his direction, although the fae did eat another mouthful. Jamie remembered what it was like when his momma was dying—remembered the pit in his stomach and the sense of futility every time he thought about eating, even when he was hungry. Why bother eating when Momma was dying and wouldn’t ever eat again? Jamie’d lost far too much weight while his momma lay dying. And then when he’d had to deal with the aftermath—the lawyers and the funeral arrangements and Bill Eckel and hishalf-brothers and -sisters… he’d been weak already, and missed meals had only made things worse.

Hopefully Bran wouldn’t have to plan his father’s funeral—that was what they were trying to do, after all—but if they were going to hunt down all the things in the recipes, he was going to need energy. Especially since Jamie was pretty sure that most of them—like the wax-dipped fleece of a highland goat or moor-grown heather gathered under a full moon—probably couldn’t be picked up at a store.

At least the full moon was in two days, so they didn’t have to wait a month. They would have to find heather somewhere on a moor, but that shouldn’t betoohard. Once they got themselves to a moor, anyway.

“Bran?”

“Aye?” He sounded tired.

“Did you have a plan for how we were going to get to a moor?”

“What?” The fae looked up at him, his expression confused.

“We need moor-grown heather gathered under a full moon,” Jamie replied. “Do you have a good way to get to a moor to gather it by Sunday?”

Bran blinked. “Oh. Um.” His face was blank, lost.

“I—I could ask Rob?” Jamie offered.

Bran stared at him, his features furrowed and uncertain. Jamie didn’t blame him—he wasn’t certain what he thought about the idea of asking Rob to drive them out to the moors, either. Because Rob would want to knowwhythey were going out there, and Jamie wasn’t certain he could come up with a very convincing story, given that the truth was so completely unbelievable—even to Jamie, whoknewit was the truth.

“I—we can’ttellthem, can we?” Jamie asked, then.

Bran’s frown deepened, and he didn’t answer for what must have been a few full minutes. “How much do you trust them?” he asked, finally.

Chapter

Forty-Five

They’d agreed to tell Rob and Trixie, and although Jamie was glad that he could stop lying to his friends—in theory, anyway—he was now worried that he wouldn’thavehis friends once he tried to explain to them who—and what—Bran really was and why they needed Rob and Trixie’s help. Although Rob had been Jamie’s first suggestion because he was the one with the car, Trixie had gone through a witch phase when Jamie’d first met her, and he thought she might be more likely to believe him… and maybe to know something about human magic. Maybe.

He honestly thought it was more likely that both Rob and Trixie were going to decide he was insane. Jamie had asked Bran how, or evenif, they were going to prove the existence of fae and magic, but Bran had just shrugged, looking worried.

Jamie’d invited both Rob and Trixie over for pizza, although they’d just be having the frozen kind. At the moment, Jamie was making cookies, the first batch of which were in the oven so that they’d be done before Rob and Trixie arrived.

“Do you know anything that could… make them forget?” he blurted out.

Bran, who had been making lists from the copied-down recipes, looked up. “Why?” he asked, not actually answering Jamie’s question. Jamie assumed that probably meant that Bran could, in fact, make them forget.

“If this goes badly,” Jamie replied, a flush creeping up his cheeks. “If they freak out or something.”

Bran set his pen down. “They willna take it well,” the fae replied. “Not at first. Humans never do.”

“I know,” Jamie replied, frowning down at the mixing bowl as he waited for the first pan to finish baking. He hadn’t handled learning that fae were real so well himself, and he’d read any number of accounts, fictional and possibly historical, and the revelation of fae magic to a human almost never went smoothly. “But if it goesreallybadly. Like, they run out screaming or something.”

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