Magic Triumphs

CHAPTER 10

I PARKED MYSELF in front of the Shiva fountain. When Curran ran, he took on an odd shape, neither a lion nor a human but a strange beast: compact, powerful, built for speed. Most shapeshifters had two shapes, animal and human. Those with talent could hold a warrior form. I had never met anyone who could turn part of his body into one shape while keeping the rest in another. Except for Curran. He restructured his body for whatever purpose he saw fit.

A sticky warm puddle formed on my shoulder. Conlan drooled in his sleep.

Car horns blared. A man leaped over the vehicles that were stopped at a traffic light. He sailed over them like they were nothing, landed, and kept running, long legs pumping. That couldn’t be . . . Yep, my honey-bunny running in human form.

I waited. He saw me. He didn’t slow down; he just adjusted course.

A hundred yards. Seventy-five. Fifty. Damn, he was fast. He shouldn’t be that fast, not after running for several miles.

Sweat slicked his hairline, darkening his blond hair. His longer blond hair. His hair was at least two inches longer than it had been this morning. Maybe more.

What the hell? The only time his hair grew into a mane was during a flare. We weren’t due for one for another two years.

Twenty-five yards.

It’s hard to look sexy with a drooling child on your shoulder, but I did my best. “Come here often?”

He slowed. For a moment I thought he’d stop, but he moved forward in a slow, sure way, not walking, but stalking, foot over foot. His hair was definitely longer. It framed his hard, handsome face. Gray eyes looked me over, checking for wounds. Our stares connected. A lion looked back at me and my heart sped up. Suddenly I was aware of every inch of distance between us.

He closed that distance, moving with a dangerous, borderline-feral edge. He looked like my husband, was my husband, but there was something alarming in the way he held himself. I turned to keep him in view.

He pounced. It was lightning quick, and if I’d wanted to get away, I wasn’t sure I could’ve matched his speed. I didn’t want to get away. His arms closed around me and he kissed me. The kiss scorched me, so intense it was almost a bite. I gasped into his mouth.

“Okay?” he asked me.

I had been until he kissed me. “Yes.”

“Conlan?”

“Fine. Just tired.”

He squeezed me to him. “What happened?”

“Had a run-in with a sahanu at Biohazard. You’re crushing me.”

He let me go.

“That’s twice in two days. We have to stop meeting like this,” I told him.

“Are you planning on continuing to run into fights?”

“I didn’t run into her. She hunted me down.”

Two Toyota Land Cruisers emerged from traffic and roared their way to the parking lot. Each of those carried eight people. Great. First, he dramatically ran over, then he kissed me like the world was ending in public, and now he’d brought a crew of mercs with him, enough for a small siege. All the navigators piloting vampires on the walls of the Casino had to be loving the show.

“You brought two meat wagons with you? Did you expect to fight an army?”

“They followed me.” He grinned at me, baring his teeth. “What happened to the sahanu?”

“She’s dead. I’m not. The People patched me up. I need to talk to you. And Barabas.”

“Good, because I’m not letting you go anywhere without me.” Gently, he took Conlan off my shoulder.

“Letting?”

“You heard me.”

The doors of the nearest meat wagon opened, and people waved at us.

“Where did you park?” he asked me.

I pointed at our Jeep on the left.

“I’ll get the car,” he said, and took off with Conlan.

Okay.

I trotted to the closest meat wagon. Faces looked at me, some dirty, some blood-spattered. Douglas, Ella, Rodrigo . . . Curran’s elite team. The roar of the enchanted water engine was deafening, so I had to scream.

“What the hell are you all doing here?!”

“We followed him!” Ella yelled.

“So, what, you just pile into cars whenever he gets a thorn up his ass and chase him around the city?”

“We were on the job,” Ramirez told me in his bass voice. “We were finishing up the gig when he said his wife was in trouble and took off.”

“We chased him all the way from Panthersville,” Ella added.

Curiouser and curiouser.

“Thanks for coming!” I told them.

“Where is the fight?” Douglas demanded.

“I already killed everybody,” I said. “You gotta be faster next time.”

They jeered at me, and I jogged to the Jeep. Five minutes later we rolled out of the parking lot.

“How did you know where to find me?”

“Just had a feeling,” he said.

“That’s it? A feeling?”

He nodded.

Odd.

Maybe it was me. Maybe I’d subconsciously called him while fighting. I’d have to ask Erra if that was possible.

“What’s happening with your hair?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It keeps growing.”

“Are we about to have another flare?”

“I don’t know. How bad was the fight?”

“It wasn’t bad.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” he said quietly. “You went to the Casino.”

“I got scared. She said she would kill our son and eat him. I bashed her face in. It was overkill.”

He reached over and squeezed my hand.

“Curran, he can’t cloak. Ever since he turned, he’s been shining like a star. And I was so used to having him with me, it didn’t even occur to me that he can be tracked. That’s how she found us. I put our kid in danger.”

“It’s okay.” He squeezed my hand again. “You protected him. You will always protect him. You’re his mother. They would have to kill both of us to get to him. Think about it.”

They would have to go through the two of us. Many had tried before, and all of them had failed. Even my father.

“We’ve got this,” he said. “We’ll kill them all.”

Our son snored in his car seat without a care in the world. As he should.

Curran was right. We would kill them all.

ONCE UPON A time the Guild was housed in an upscale hotel on the edge of Buckhead. Tall buildings didn’t weather magic well, and the hotel proved no exception. Its shiny tower had broken off and toppled, leaving a five-story stub. The Guild put a makeshift roof on it, cleaned it up a bit, and called it a day.

A couple of years ago, as the Guild teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, a giant had made some exciting modifications to the roof with his fists, which forced a remodel. About that time Curran and Barabas joined the Guild and eventually took it over. Barabas ran the admin side, Curran served as the Guild Master, and a year and a half ago, the mercs unanimously voted me in as a Steward, which meant whenever the mercs had problems or grievances with either of them, they ran to me and I fixed it. I’d needed the added responsibility like I needed a hole in the head. In fact, I wasn’t even at the meeting, because I’d gotten held up getting a boggart out of a local middle school. The mercs conveniently voted in my absence and then presented me with the Steward’s scroll when I showed up, dripping slime and picking trash out of my hair.

Bob, of the Four Horsemen, had held the unofficial position of Steward before me and apparently put himself in the running, but after he tried to raid the pension fund, his street cred took a beating. He never did warm up to either my or Curran’s presence. His Furriness, never one to waste resources, sent him down to Jacksonville to run the brand-new satellite Guild. Within three months Bob tried to stage a coup and declare independence, and the Jacksonville Guild expelled him. We had no idea where he was or what he was doing.

One of the first things the three of us did was to fix the Guild itself. Curran fortified every place he frequently occupied. I had to talk him out of walling in our subdivision. But with the Guild, Barabas and I gave him free rein. Some battles weren’t worth fighting.

The walls had been reinforced, the new masonry seamlessly blending in with the skeletal remains of the hotel. The upper floor sported arrow slits. A brand-new roof, equipped with four howitzers and four sorcerous ballistae, crowned the building. A massive metal door blocked the entrance, and behind it was a second door just in case someone breached the front. It was a wonder he didn’t dig a moat around the place.

We parked and went inside. Conlan was still out, so Curran carried him in the car seat. The inside of the Guild matched the outside: clean, functional, professional. I nodded to the Clerk at his counter, and we made a left to the glass walls of Barabas’s office.

The former Pack lawyer and current Guild admin sat behind his desk. Lean, wiry, pale, Barabas brought a single word to mind: sharp. Sharp eyes, sharp teeth, sharp mind. Even his bright red hair, which stood straight up on his head, looking like a forest of needles, gave the impression of sharpness.

Christopher sat in a chair, reading a book. The first time I’d seen him, he’d been locked in a cage. He’d looked fragile and brittle, a ghost of a man, with hair so pale, it seemed colorless. Despite both Barabas and me trying to keep him eating, he had looked like that until about two years ago, when he finally remembered his powers. Christopher was a theophage. My father tried to merge him with Deimos, Greek god of terror. Christopher had resisted, and in a last desperate act of defiance, Christopher had shattered his own mind. As punishment, Roland had delivered what was left of Christopher into the tender care of his warlord, Hugh d’Ambray.

Now he was broad-shouldered and muscular, with a powerful athletic build. Where Barabas was all sharp lines and quick, precise movements, Christopher possessed a kind of quiet calm. Sitting in a chair now with a book, he seemed almost unmovable. Of course, the calm lasted only until Barabas or one of us was threatened, and then Christopher sprouted wings and fangs and went berserk. The human and divine had merged inside Christopher, with the man having the upper hand over the deity. Barabas was forever paranoid that people would start worshipping Christopher and that balance would tip the other way, but so far it hadn’t happened.

They were so different. Christopher was in love with Barabas. Barabas loved him back, but since he’d taken care of Christopher while the other man’s mind had been fractured, he faced an ethical dilemma. The last time we’d spoken about it, he’d been worried that Christopher’s feelings weren’t love but misplaced affection for a caretaker. Barabas didn’t want to take advantage. They continued to live in the same house. They looked like a couple. They acted like a couple. Neither of them volunteered any information about their relationship. We respected their privacy, and nobody asked.

Both men looked up at us.

“Bad news?” Barabas asked.

“Yes.” I shut the door behind us. Curran gently put Conlan on a big pillow on the floor. Shapeshifters had an unholy love of floor pillows, and even though Barabas spent most of his day in his chair, he refused to give his up.

I sat in the other chair.

Barabas sniffed in Conlan’s direction. “What’s different? Something’s different.”

“He shifted,” Curran said quietly.

Barabas sat up straighter. Christopher’s pale eyebrows crept up.

“Is he unusual like you?” Barabas asked Curran.

“He’s worse,” I said.

“Worse how?” Christopher asked.

“He can hold a warrior form,” Curran said.

Barabas choked on empty air. “What do you mean, he can hold a warrior form? For how long?”

“For as long as he wants to,” Curran said.

“Also, he’s unable to cloak,” I said. “So, anyone familiar with my or Roland’s specific magic signature can track him down. We were attacked by a sahanu this morning. I killed her, but according to Robert, Razer is in the city. My father must’ve given a general order to kill my son. So there will be more.”

Christopher leaned forward and rested his hand on mine. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

“I’m fine,” I told him.

Christopher got up, poured a cup of hot tea from the kettle, and brought it to me.

“Thank you.” I took the tea and drank.

“The Pack says Roland is mobilizing,” Curran said. “What are the scouts saying?”

Scouts? “You have people watching Roland?”

“We,” Curran told me. “We have people watching Roland.”

“He’s doing the same thing he did a year ago,” Barabas said. “Pulling personnel in from neighboring states. Last time nothing came of it. This time, it’s too early to tell.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“He has to move a large number of troops to Atlanta from the Midwest. Last time he sent people to evaluate the ley line route,” Curran said.

Made sense. The ley line carried you forward at a high speed, but once it ended, it would spit you out at the ley point into the waiting arms of whoever wanted to ambush you there. There was no avoiding it.

“You didn’t tell me?”

“You were in labor,” Curran said.

“Doolittle categorically forbade it,” Barabas said. “Anyway, nothing came of it. He must’ve decided the route was too vulnerable. This time he’s going with trucks. He’s been flirting with the local teamster guilds, and there is a rumor he’s hiring mechanics.”

“If he starts actively acquiring mechanics and drivers, I want to know about it,” Curran said.

Barabas nodded.

“And trucks,” I said. “He doesn’t have enough trucks sitting around, and he won’t be satisfied with just any trucks. He’ll get top of the line, probably directly from the manufacturer, so they all match. He might even paint them gold.”

“Would he steal them?” Barabas asked.

“No,” Christopher said. “It’s beneath him. He would take them as spoils of war, but he won’t stoop to theft.”

“We have two more immediate problems.” I brought them up to speed on the box and the burning man parade. Christopher leaned forward, listening intently. When I finished, Barabas glanced at him. Christopher shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“So, what’s the question?” Barabas asked.

“Doesn’t matter. They killed Mr. Tucker. The answer is no,” I told him.

Barabas glanced at Curran. “What do you want to do about this?”

“There is nothing we can do,” Curran said. “We wait until this asshole shows his hand.”

“You said there were two problems,” Christopher said.

“We have to protect Conlan,” I explained. “He’s like a lighthouse shining in the night. The sahanu will be drawn to him. Curran and I have to be able to move around the city.”

“We can take him to the bear clan house,” Curran said.

He wouldn’t like this part. I reached into my pocket, took out the folded photograph, and put it on the table. The three of them leaned in to look at it.

“Avag Barsamian,” Christopher said, his eyes dark. “Landon’s second.”

“How dangerous is he?” Curran asked.

Christopher leaned back, one leg over the other, braiding his long fingers into a single fist on his knee. “He’s one of the Golden Legion, so he’s a formidable navigator. He’s skilled in diplomacy in a way very few people are. When Avag negotiates, he crosses from savoir faire into art. He’s cunning and cautious, and he has nearly infallible instincts. I used him on several occasions. They send him in when things are complicated.”

“He was escorted into the Keep with a briefcase and came out without one,” I said.

“How sure are you?” Curran asked.

“Rowena’s vampire took the photos. They have others. The next day Robert brought us the offer of alliance from the Pack.”

Nobody said anything. Barabas frowned. Curran’s face turned inscrutable. Christopher pondered the wall.

“Also, this may or may not be related,” I added, “but Raphael asked me to let Ascanio go.”

“When?” Curran asked.

“The same day Avag brought them an offer.”

“Did you?”

“I did. It’s not about me or Clan Bouda. It’s what Ascanio wanted.”

Silence fell again.

I tapped my fingers on the table. “Something important was in that briefcase.”

“It may have been a gift,” Barabas said. “They brought a gift, Jim took the trinket, listened to what they had to say, and sent them on their way. I’ve seen Curran do that a dozen times.”

“My father doesn’t send trinkets. He poisons the flowers in your garden, and when your child sniffs one and becomes sick, he sends the antidote in a vial carved out of amethyst and corked with a diamond as a gesture of good faith and friendship. Whatever it was, Jim took it.”

Barabas frowned. “Robert’s timing is obviously suspect.”

I nodded. “There are two possibilities: either they said yes to Roland and are going to betray us, or they didn’t mean whatever they said to Roland and they are not going to betray us.”

“Three,” Barabas said. “They may be thinking it over.”

“They don’t even have to fight against us. They can just not show up and it would weaken us.”

“If the Pack abstains from the conflict between us and your father, and Roland wins, the Pack will be next,” Barabas said.

Christopher stirred. “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres . . .”

“The whole of Gaul is divided into three parts?” I asked.

“The opening line to Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar,” Christopher said. “Caesar conquered Gaul tribe by tribe. Had they unified from the start, Rome’s first emperor would’ve never made it back to Rome. There is a copy of this book in the Pack’s library. I’ve seen Jim reading it. He knows that divided, we will fall.”

“Jim isn’t an idiot, and he’s been Curran’s friend for over a decade,” Barabas said. “I don’t see it.”

“Roland has a way of subverting friendships,” Christopher said. “It’s a policy of isolation. He becomes your family, your friend, your confidant.”

A shadow passed over his eyes.

“Then he betrays you,” I said. “He did it with you, Erra, Hugh, me. The list goes on.”

“Hugh was a special case,” Christopher said. “We were adults. Hugh was a child.”

“Hugh could’ve walked away. Instead he committed one atrocity after the next.”

“It’s not that simple.” Christopher shook his head.

There was more there, but now wasn’t the time to dig for it. I turned to Curran. His face showed all the varied emotions of a stone wall. He’d gone into his Beast Lord mode.

“Is there any way for us to be sure that Jim won’t betray us?” I asked.

“No,” Curran said.

That’s what I thought. If we confronted him with the pictures, he would deny everything and we wouldn’t be able to determine if it was the truth. If he was playing us, he would pretend to be outraged; if he wasn’t, he would be outraged that we didn’t trust him. Either way told us nothing.

“We have to assume Jim betrays us. It’s the only safe way to plan.” Barabas rubbed his face.

I looked at Curran. “Does he have any gaps in his armor?”

My husband turned to me, and his face was pure Beast Lord. “Everyone has gaps. Ours is sleeping on the pillow. Thinking of hitting Jim where it hurts?”

“No. But if Roland is pushing on a pressure point, we want to know about it.”

Curran leaned back, his voice calm and measured. “Short term, siding with Roland would be to Jim’s benefit. They lost a lot of people and an alliance would avoid further bloodshed. There are those within the Pack who would welcome that solution. From that position, not showing up at all is his best option. However, Jim thinks long term. If he fails to support us, he’s left with Roland as victor. Your father doesn’t do alliances. He wants obedience. Jim will chafe at it and so will most of the others. Besides that, if Jim betrays us, Clan Bear, Clan Bouda, and Clan Wolf would rebel.”

“I don’t know about Clan Wolf,” I said.

“Desandra always votes in your favor,” Barabas told me. “She’ll often say provocative things to stir shit up, but she always supports you.”

Clan Bouda, Clan Bear, and Clan Wolf would comprise close to half of the Pack. Jim would face a civil war.

“Perhaps Jim is thinking longer term,” Christopher said.

Curran turned to him. “Explain.”

“People always long for the good old days,” Christopher said, his light eyes thoughtful. “We look at the past with rose-colored glasses.”

“I have no plans to take the Pack back from Jim,” Curran said. “He knows this. Jim is paranoid, but he is a more effective Beast Lord.”

“But he doesn’t have your charm,” Barabas said. “He hardly ever roars and makes everyone cringe.”

“People as individuals are intelligent,” Christopher said. “People as a political body are finicky. They gravitate toward symbols of strength and power. You have a bigger presence than Jim.”

“So, you think he hopes Roland will take me out?” Curran asked, his voice almost nonchalant.

“Not you.” Christopher looked at Conlan.

No. I could believe that Jim would sit the fight out, but he wouldn’t go that far. “He wouldn’t,” I ground out.

“By now he likely knows that Conlan can shapeshift or suspects he may be able to in the future,” Christopher said. “Shapeshifters tell stories about you now. In a couple of decades, they will be legends. If Conlan is allowed to grow up, he’ll be the son of the first Beast Lord, the man who created the Pack, the man who knew no equal while he ruled. He will have the physical power and the enhanced shapeshifting of a First. He’ll be a natural leader. If you see a weed in your garden, would you pull it out now, while it’s small and weak, or would you wait until it grows?”

“This is nuts,” I told him.

“In my former life I was the Legatus of the Golden Legion,” Christopher reminded me, his voice gentle. “My existence depended on eliminating my rivals before they came into their full power. I would eliminate your son now, in a way that couldn’t be traced back to me. Perhaps a raid by Roland’s covert team on the grandparents’ clan house while your son is there. Everyone would be murdered. A great tragedy, an atrocity. Terrible. It would evoke outrage, of course, but also breed fear. Terrified people cling to familiar leaders. As to the two of you, there are few greater challenges to a marriage than the death of a child.”

I hated this. I hated sitting here and imagining people who were our friends plotting to murder my kid. There was something wrong with the world that it was even a possibility.

“What do we do? We have to warn them that this could happen, and we can’t tell Mahon,” I said. “If he even suspects it, he’ll storm the Keep, roaring, and he will get himself or someone else killed.”

“We’ll tell Martha,” Curran told me.

Martha would defend Conlan with her dying breath. My imagination flashed a picture of her mangled, bloody body curled on the floor around my son. It was too much. I got up.

Curran was looking at me, concern in his eyes.

“I need a minute.”

I opened the door and stepped onto the Guild’s main floor. Mercs moved here and there, some tired and covered in grime or blood coming from a gig; others, clean and bored, waiting for one. A group of Curran’s elite team sat on the raised platform stuffing their faces. The food in the Guild mess hall had gone from slop to legendary. Shapeshifters challenged each other to the death for power and had the potential to snap into psychotic spree killers, but give them bad food and they were mortally offended. The first time Curran smelled the old mess hall’s food, he’d gagged. He overhauled the mess hall the moment he had the chance.

The mercs were grinning. Ella, petite and pretty, said something. Charlie shot back a reply, his eyes narrowed to mere slits. Douglas King rocked his massive six-foot-five frame back in his chair and laughed, the light reflecting from his bald head and off the mess of glyphs and runes tattooed there. The man was obsessed with “magic runes.” The weapon sellers around Atlanta knew this and were always peddling junk to him, because he’d buy anything as long as it had some mysterious inscription on it. The last sword he bought was engraved with a word in Elder Futhark. He’d brought it to me to read. It said DICKHEAD, spelled out phonetically with Norse runes. He barely survived the disappointment.

A few years ago, I would have gone and sat right up there with them. Back then I didn’t have a care in the world. My biggest worry was paying my meager bills and trying to earn enough for a new pair of shoes.

Suddenly I felt homesick, not for the house but for a different time and a different me. Not-in-charge-of-anybody me. Not-protecting-the-city me. Not-wife me. Not-mom me. Just me.

That’s the way Voron had intended me to be. I’d been his version of a lone gunman. No ties, no roots, no attachment to friends or possessions. Back then I could’ve picked up at a moment’s notice and vanished, and nobody would’ve worried or cared. I was a no-name merc, minding my own business. But inside I was still the same. Still a killer, still Roland’s daughter. Hands still bloody, and no amount of magic could turn that blood to dust.

Back then I’d given Curran a speech. I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d said, something about dragging my beat-up carcass to a dark empty house. Nobody cared if I made it home. Nobody waited up, nobody treated my wounds, nobody made me a cup of coffee and asked me about my day. When I thought about it now, my memories of that time seemed gray, as if all the color had been leached out of them.

When I thought of my house now, it was filled with warmth and light. It always smelled of seared meat or a fresh pie or fresh coffee. It was my little piece of the world, welcoming and comfortable, a place I’d built with Curran. A place for Conlan. A place where I belonged.

Christopher was right. We looked at the past with rose-colored glasses.

I’d picked this new life. I built it day by day. I had friends, I had a husband who loved me, I had my son and a city to protect. Standing here wallowing in self-pity and wondering who might betray me next and how I would deal with it accomplished nothing.

I’d made no progress on Serenbe. I still had no idea who’d sent me the box. I had to figure out how to protect Conlan. I would take this moment, get all of my “woe is me” out of my system, and be done, so I could do all of the other things I had to do.

At the table Douglas bared his right arm and flexed, showing off a bicep the size of a baseball. Yes, yes, you are big and mighty. New tattoo, too.

Wait a minute.

I pushed from the wall and made a beeline to Douglas.

“Hey, Daniels.” Ella grinned at me.

“It’s Lenna-a-a-art,” Charlie sang out. “It’s been Lennart for two years. Get your shit straight, Elle.”

“New ink?” I asked Douglas.

He bared even white teeth. “Yeah.” He tapped the skin on his arm, still red from the needle. A serpent in the shape of a sideways S. Between the loops of the serpent, a broken arrow formed a Z, the section with fletching vertical, the rest of the arrow diagonally piercing the loops, and the last bit, with the arrow head, pointing down. Serpent and Z-rod.

I almost heard a click as pieces snapped together in my head.

“It’s Scottish,” he said.

“Pictish,” I told him. “Nice one.”

I turned and walked away to my small office.

“What the hell was all that about?” Charlie asked behind my back.

“You cut her some slack,” Ella told him. “Someone tried to kill her baby today. She beat her to death with her hands. I was dropping off a package for Biohazard and I got to see the body. The chick had no face left. Just raw hamburger.”

I walked into my office, leaving the door open, and went to the bookcase filled with my reference books. It was either here or at Cutting Edge. I ran my fingers along the spines. Not that one. No, no, no . . . There. I pulled a green volume off the shelf. V. A. Cumming, Decoding Pictish Symbols.

I flipped through it. There. Two circles, joined together, with wavy lines through them, two dots in the center, and a Z-rod, a broken arrow. Double disc and Z-rod. It looked right. The proportion, the thickness of the rectangular piece connecting the two discs. It felt right.

I landed in my chair, the book in front of me. Nobody knew much about the Picts. Everyone knew about Hadrian’s wall, but the Romans had built another one, the Antonine wall, in AD 142. It bisected Scotland. The Romans called the “painted” people on the other side of that wall Picts. Later, they were called Caledonians. Nobody knew for sure who they were or how long they lived in Scotland. Some claimed they were Celts, others argued that they came from Gaul. Pictish myths referenced Scythia and arriving to Scotland a thousand years or so before Anno Domini. Nobody knew for sure.

They left behind metal jewelry and Pictish stones. Dozens of ancient stone steles, covered with mysterious carvings. Most occurred on the eastern side of Scotland. But the earliest Pictish stones dated back to the sixth century. Way too late for Erra’s invaders.

There was no Z-rod on the box, but the knife matched. The knife looked like it came from the British Isles.

Picts didn’t wear torques. Some of the archaeological hoards traced to them contained heavy-duty chains, but nobody knew their purpose. However, Celts definitely wore torques, and they had eventually spread through the British Isles.

I needed an expert on Picts. Unfortunately, there was no such thing. The next best bet were the Druids. The Druids didn’t like me. They didn’t like anybody. The specter of human sacrifice hung over them, and so they did their best to project a benevolent image. They wore white robes, waved tree branches around, and blessed things. But nobody I knew had ever been invited to a druid gathering. They never answered questions about their rituals or ancestry either. Showing up on their doorstep and asking them to help me decipher Pictish symbols would get me a nice pat on the back, followed by a door in my face. I didn’t even know where that doorstep could be.

I needed help. Somebody who had an in with the pagans. Somebody familiar with old magic . . . Somebody who wasn’t afraid of Druidic history and whom they couldn’t bullshit.

Roman. He was a pagan, a black volhv, and his mother was one of the members of the Witch Oracle.

I needed to visit the Covens anyway, now that my father was going on the offensive. We’d made a plan together: the Covens, my aunt, and me. But the witches seemed to be dragging their feet with getting it implemented.

Curran walked through the doorway. He came around the desk and leaned against it.

“I’m thinking of going to see the Witch Oracle,” I told him.

He frowned. “It’s a bad idea.”

It was an awful idea. I avoided the Witch Oracle like I avoided fire. When you consulted an oracle, you rolled the dice. Whatever they said would alter the course you took. It was always accurate; it always applied to the situation but never in the way you thought it would. An oracle could warn you that water would be a problem for your house in the future, so you prepared for a flood, but then your house caught on fire, and you didn’t have enough water to put it out. The fact that the oracle was right wouldn’t get your house back. Ninety-nine percent of the time you were better off not getting the prophecy in the first place. Unfortunately, I was down to one percent on the scale of desperate. I needed answers about the box, I needed to secure Roman’s help, and I had to talk to the Oracle about getting a move on with our final strategy to fight my father.

Besides, we had to prevent a second Serenbe from happening, and if the Oracle could help with that, I’d kiss their feet.

“I need to talk to Roman about the Druids. And I want to ask the Witch Oracle about Serenbe.” And a couple of other things. “I can’t just sit on my hands and do nothing, Curran. People died. We have to do something about it.”

“I’ll watch the boy,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Will you come home tonight?”

“I will.”

“Good,” he said. “Because I have plans.”

“What kind of plans?”

His gray eyes turned warm. “Come home and I’ll demonstrate.”

“You’re insatiable,” I told him.

“Maybe you’re just irresistible.”

“Sure I am.”

He leaned in and kissed me, sending a shiver through me. It was funny how the world stopped when he kissed me. Every single time.

He fixed my gaze with his. “Go do your thing. Nobody will hurt Conlan while you’re gone.”

I smiled at him and dialed Roman’s number. He picked up on the second ring.

“Three months. You don’t call, you don’t write,” Roman’s accented voice said into the phone. “I am offended.”

“No, you’re not.”

He laughed. “Fine, I’m not. What do you need?”

“I need to see the Witch Oracle and to talk to you about something.”

“Do you need a vision?” he asked.

I took a deep breath. Once I said this, there was no going back, and I would have to live with whatever prophecy they delivered. “Yes.”