Morrigan's Cross (Circle Trilogy 1)

“Could you do that, destroy a child whatever he’d become?”

“Without thought or mercy.” He glanced at her, and she saw he’d known the other question running in her mind. “And you’re no good to us or yourself if you can’t do the same.”

She left him then without a word and went back to stretch out beside Hoyt. Because the conversation with Cian had chilled her, she pulled her own blanket up to her throat, curled toward Hoyt’s body heat.

And when she slept, finally slept, she dreamed of children, with sunny hair and bloody fangs.

She woke with a start to find Cian leaning over her. A scream clawed up to her throat until she realized he was shaking Hoyt awake.

She pushed at her hair, skimmed her fingers over her face for a quick glamour. They were speaking in low tones and, she realized, in Irish.

“English, please. I can’t follow that much, especially with the accents.”

Both turned vibrant blue eyes on her, and Cian straightened as she brought her chair up. “I’m telling him we’ve about an hour flight time left.”

“Who’s flying the plane?”

“King’s got it for the moment. We’ll be landing at dawn.”

“Good. Great.” She barely stifled a yawn. “I’ll throw some coffee and breakfast together so…Dawn?”

“Aye, dawn. I need a good cloud cover. Rain would be a bonus. Can you do this? Otherwise King will land it. He’s capable, and I’ll be spending the rest of the flight and the day in the back of the plane.”

“I said I could do it, and I will.”

“We can do it,” Glenna corrected.

“Well, be quick about it, will you? I’ve been singed a time or two and it’s unpleasant.”

“You’re welcome,” she muttered when he left them. “I’ll get a few things from my travel case.”

“I don’t need them.” Hoyt brushed her aside, got up to stand in the aisle. “This time, it’ll be my way. He’s my brother, after all.”

“Your way then. How can I help?”

“Call the vision to your mind. Clouds and rain. Rain and clouds.” He retrieved his staff. “See it, feel it, smell it. Thick and steady, with the sun trapped behind the gloom. Dusky light, light without power or harm. See it, feel it, smell it.”

He held his staff in both hands, braced his legs apart for balance, then raised it.

“I call the rain, the black clouds that cover the sky. I call the clouds, fat with rain that streams from the heavens. Swirl and close and lay thick.”

She felt it spin, spin out from him, spin out to the air. The plane shook, bucked, trembled, but he stood as if he stood on a floor of granite. The tip of the staff glowed blue.

He turned to her, nodded. “That should do it.”

“Well. Okay then. I’ll make coffee.”

They landed in gloom with the rain like a gray curtain. A little overdone, in Glenna’s opinion, and it was going to be a miserable drive from the airport to wherever the hell they were going.

But she stepped off the plane and onto Ireland, and there it was. A connection, instant and surprising even to her. She had a quick sense of memory of a farm—green hills, stone fences and a white house with clothes flapping on a line in a brisk wind. There was a garden in the dooryard with dahlias big as dinner plates and calla lilies white as wishes.

It was gone almost as quickly as it had come. She wondered if it was her memory from another time, another life, or simply a call through her blood. Her grandmother’s mother had come from Ireland, from a farm in Kerry.

She had brought her linens and her best dishes—and her magic—to America with her.

She waited for Hoyt to deplane. This would always be home for him, she saw it now in the pleasure that ran over his face. Whether it was a busy airport or an empty field, this was his place. And part, very much a part, she understood now, of what he would die to save.

“Welcome home.”