Shadow Spell (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy 2)

She turned to Fin. “Your cousin Selena. Would she be willing? Three’s a better number than two, and gives it all power and blood from each of us. Three would balance, I’d think, should we need to be righted again.”

“She would be more than willing. She’s in Spain, but I’ll contact her. I’ll speak with her about it.”

“Then that part’s settled. I’ll study on it.”

“I have been,” Connor told her. “The potion, to open the vision, shared by all inside the ritual circle. Best done outside, in the air. We take our guides as well, the horse, the hound, the hawk.”

Branna started to speak, reconsidered. “You have studied on it.”

“I have. Fin, your horse, your hawk—and I don’t suppose you can come up with a hound in the next fortnight? Three for three.”

“I have one. I have Bugs.”

“Little Bugs?” Iona began, thinking of the barn dog at the big stables.

“Little as you are, game as you are. Three for three,” Fin repeated with a nod. “Horse for Boyle, hawk for Meara, hound, such as he is, for me. It’s well thought, Connor.”

“It’s you who must link them to the others, as they come from you.”

“So I will.”

“And so inside the circle, our circle and our guides,” Connor said. “Our circle, the six, hands joined as the spell is spoken, as the spell is cast. And minds linked as well, which I will do. Minds, hearts, hands linked, and we go together, on the dream, to the night of All Hallow’s Eve, to Samhain, in the year Sorcha’s Brannaugh, Eamon, and Teagan returned to Mayo.”

“Their presence adds power.” Branna sat again, reached for a cookie herself. “The night the Veil thins. We may draw their power, and Sorcha’s with ours. No, he could never expect this. There’s time enough to perfect the potion and the spell. And then, to draw him there. That’s for Meara.”

“It’s for me?”

Branna huffed at her brother. “You haven’t spoken to her of it.”

“Between one thing and the other, no. It’s you he wants to use this go,” Connor told her, “so it’s you who’ll use him. You’ll sing him there.”

“Sing?”

“Music, light, joy—emotions. Flames to his moth,” Connor explained. “When he comes, it must be as quick as we can make it, giving him no time to slip away again.”

“We go much as we did on the solstice,” Branna began.

“No.” Now Fin pushed to his feet. “We failed there, didn’t we?”

“We have a new strategy, a stronger weapon.”

“And if he once again manages to draw the three apart again, even if only for a moment? If the spell, the ritual, the end, must come from you, then he must be held off while you cast him out. We engage him. Boyle, Meara, and I. We cost him blood and pain before. We’ll do worse this round. We’ll do worse while you do what’s best.”

“Do you want his end, Fin, or do you want his blood?”

“I want both, and so do you, Branna. You can’t shed it for gain or for joy.”

“Nor should you.”

“And I won’t. We won’t. But we’ll shed it and worse in defense of the three. In defense of the light. If there’s joy in it as well? A witch is still human for all that.”

“I’m with Fin on it,” Boyle said. “Iona’s mine. And all of you my family. I’ll stand for her, for you. I won’t stand back.”

“They’ve said what I’d say.” Meara shrugged. “So that’s done.” She set her hands on her knees. “So, as I have it, in a fortnight’s time, we’ll all—including horses, hounds, hawks, go dreaming ourselves back a few centuries. I’ll sing, and like the Pied Piper’s tune to rats, that will lure Cabhan. Three of us fight, three of us cast the spell to destroy him. When the job’s done we take our bows, then wake up back here where we should take another bow for certain, as we’ve vanquished evil. Then I suppose we should all go to the pub for a pint.”

“That puts it all in a nutshell,” Connor decided.

“All right then. I think there should be whiskey all around as we’re all raving lunatics.” She let out a breath, picked up a biscuit and bit in. “But at least one of us does indeed make brilliant gingerbread.”