"And since I cannot enter Cainsville, sadly, you must take Liv back with you, while I go 'curry my horse.' I actually have a business to run, Patrick. Unlike the Tylwyth Teg, we work for a living. And not by jotting down fanciful tales and calling it gainful employment."
Patrick looked at me. "And you accuse me of snide comments?" He turned to Ioan. "If my job is so easy, I'd suggest you give it a shot. I bet it pays at least as well as yours. And it's fun. Which is more than I can say for any 'gainful'--and tedious--job you do, chained to your desk like a common office grunt."
"Did I mention I run--?"
"Enough," I said. "Let's all find someplace to discuss this."
--
"You said you had a vision, Liv." Ioan sat with his coffee and pastry. "Where exactly did you have it?"
"Unimportant," Patrick said.
Ioan bristled. "I understand that you delight in being contrary, bocan. Even for a fae, you're difficult, argumentative, and whimsical."
"Whimsical? You take that back."
"You are prone to following your whims, wherever they may lead. That is the definition of whimsical. Also the definition of a bocan."
"If I soured the cream in that coffee, as bocan are wont to
do, it is not on a whim, but because you would have, to use Liv's colorful vernacular, pissed me off. I am not disagreeing about the importance of her vision. But she did not stumble over sluagh in the real world, so where her vision occurred is unimportant."
"I beg to differ and don't see why I can't ask the question."
Because it happened in Cainsville, and Patrick didn't want Ioan to know that.
"The vision took me into an old house," I said.
Ioan's mouth opened as if to say that wasn't what he meant, but I pushed on, leading him through the vision and ending with, "It was getting dark and Gabriel said we had to turn on the lights and close the shutters, starting from the west. I think that's significant."
"It is," Ioan said. "That's the traditional way to fight the sluagh."
"Good call," Patrick said to Gabriel.
"It's just hereditary memory," Ioan said.
"Moving right along," I said. "We shut the windows. One was glass, so we could see out. A swarm of birds started flying around the cottage. Dark red birds, the size of sparrows, with white eyes and teeth. Gabriel managed to banish them. Then something else came and the cottage exploded. That's when we snapped out of the vision."
"How did you banish the harbingers?" Patrick asked.
"He didn't," Ioan said. "The melltithiwyd withdrew in advance of the sluagh."
"Mellti--"
"It means the cursed, the damned. It's our name for the harbinger birds."
"Is that what they usually do?" I asked. "Withdraw when the sluagh come?"
"Well, no, but--"
"Gabriel put his hand on the window. He told them--in Welsh--to go away. When he demanded it, they left."
Patrick nodded. "Given who you are, Gabriel, that would work. With the melltithiwyd, though. Not the actual sluagh."
"Because the melltithiwyd are harbingers," I said. "They foretell the coming of the sluagh."
"Exactly," Patrick said. "They are, in their way, the parallel to the Tylwyth Teg's owls and Cwn Annwn's ravens. Avian spies. However, our owls and ravens are relatively harmless. They will attack each other, as you saw when one of Ioan's black scavengers came snooping around Cainsville."