“Not like you.” Boyle spoke quietly. “Nor like Connor. Or you,” he said to Iona. “You knew, Fin, it would be this three and this time.”
“Only for certain when I saw the horse. I saw you on him,” Fin said to Iona. “Astride the stallion under a moon so full and white it seemed to pulse against the black sky like a bright heart. I saw fire in your hands, and power in your eyes.”
“You said nothing of this before.”
Fin glanced at Branna. “I bought the horse because I knew it was hers. I didn’t know when you’d come, not for certain,” he said to Iona. “Only that you would, and you’d have need of Alastar. And he of you.”
“What else have you seen?” Branna demanded.
His face shuttered. “Too much, and not enough.”
“I’m not looking for riddles, Finbar.”
“You’re looking for answers, as always you do, and I don’t have them. I’ve seen the fog spread, as you have, seen him watching from the shadows, a shadow himself. I’ve seen you under that same bright moon, glowing like a thousand stars. With the wind flying through your hair, and blood on your hands. I’ve wondered if it was mine.”
Saying nothing, Branna rose to go to the stove, to pour the simmering sauce in a bowl.
“I don’t know what it means,” Fin continued, “or how much is real and true, how much is wondering.”
“When the time comes, it’ll be his blood spilled.” The cheer left Connor’s voice. Now there was only a hard edge, a lick of temper.
“Brother. I am his blood.”
“He doesn’t own you.” With her shoulders very straight, her eyes very direct, Iona looked at Fin. “And feeling sorry for yourself isn’t helping. He’s been around, waiting for hundreds of years,” she continued in a practical tone as Branna shot her a quietly approving look over her shoulder. “What the hell has he been doing for centuries?”
“Fin thinks he goes back and forth, when he’s a mind to, between times, or worlds. Or both,” Boyle added.
“How does he— Oh, the cabin, the ruins. The place behind the vines. If he can do that, why doesn’t he kill Sorcha before she burns him to ashes?”
“He can’t change what was. Her magick was as powerful as his, maybe more,” Fin speculated, “before she took ill, before he killed her man. It’s her, I think, who spellbound the place, protects it still. What was, was, and can’t be altered. I’ve tried myself.”
“Well now, you’re full of secrets, aren’t you then.” Branna dropped the bowls on the table, snatched up the salad to put it aside.
“If I could’ve finished what she started, and ended him, it would be done.”
“But so would you,” Iona pointed out. “Maybe. I think. Time paradoxes are . . . paradoxical.”
“In any case, I couldn’t change it. My power was there, I felt it, but it made no matter. And I couldn’t hold my place, if you take my meaning. It all wavered, and brought me back where I’d started.”
“You could’ve been lost,” Connor reminded him. “Taken somewhere, or some time else entirely.”
“I wasn’t. I think it’s like a string of wire, from then to now, and there’s no veering off from the wire.”
“But there’s a lot of years on the wire,” Iona mused. “Maybe it’s a matter of finding the right spot.”
“Change one thing that was, it all changes. And you should know better,” Branna said to Fin.
“I was young, and foolish.” He sent Iona a quick smile. “And feeling sorry for myself. Now that I’m older and wiser, I see it’s not any one of us who’ll end him or the curse he carries, but all of us.”
“What if we all went back?”
Connor paused in ladling sauce over his pasta to study Boyle. “All of us, together?”
“Maybe it would change things, but we don’t know when he’ll try to harm any one of us, or what else he might do. I don’t know why you can’t change what was, or why you shouldn’t try when what was is something evil.”
“It’s a slippery hill to climb, Boyle.” Branna twirled pasta, untwirled, twirled it again. “Some ask if you had the way and means, wouldn’t you go back and kill Hitler? Oh, the thousands of lives saved, and so many innocent. But one of those lives saved might be worse and more powerful than Hitler ever dreamed.”
“But don’t you try all the same? A lot of years on the wire, as Iona said. Can’t we find the time, the place, take the battle to him? A time and place we know won’t wink Fin out of existence.”
“Thanks for that.”
“I’m used to you,” Boyle shot back to Fin. “And have no desire to run the businesses on my own. Is there not some magick the four of you can devise to give us the best chance of it?”
“We may not come back to the world we left, if we come back at all,” Branna insisted.
“Maybe we’d come back to better. He’s a shadow in this time, as Fin said.”
“Shadows fade in the light.” Meara lifted her wine. “That’s something to consider. I may not be able to conjure a spell, but I know basic physics. Is it physics? Ah, well, action, reaction, yes? And I know it’s always better to take the enemy by surprise, on ground of your choosing.”
“You’d go?” Iona asked. “I mean if we could, and would.”
“Well now, unless I had a hot date lined up.”
“It’s not a joke, Meara.”
Meara reached over, rubbed a hand on Branna’s arm. “You’ve carried the weight long enough. Time to spread it around. Saying we’re a circle and really meaning it are different matters, Branna. You can’t protect us all, so let’s protect each other.”
“We could think on it. On how to find that time and place, and block him from knowing it. And how to make the time and place here and now—or here and when we’ve found the answer to destroying him once and for good.”
* * *
“SHE’LL STUDY AND THINK AND WORK,” IONA SAID QUIETLY to Boyle as they cleared the table. “And worry. I wonder sometimes if there’d be less work and worry all around if I hadn’t come.”
“It’s been an axe dangling over their heads long before that. And you did come. I don’t think much about what’s meant, but it seems you were meant to come. It needs to end sometime, doesn’t it? Why not now? And with us?”
“I’m not a big fan of procrastination.” She thought it over as she wiped the table clean, kept her voice down under the clatter of dishes being loaded into the washer. “I just like plowing through to whatever’s next. But I think I could happily push all this into a box in a corner for a couple hundred years.”
“Someone’s got to shovel the shit.”
“And we’ve got the shovels. Yeah,” Iona conceded. “Might as well put our backs into it. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, and not just to get out and see the world beyond a two-mile radius of Ashford.”
“It’s kilometers here.”
“I’ve a feeling I’ll master Irish easier than the metric system. I think getting a better sense of the area beyond our little core of it might be helpful. Plus, I have an exceptional guide.”
“We’ll be seeing about that.”
Take the moments, she thought. Every moment of normal, of happiness and ease. “I want ruins and old cemeteries and green hills. And sheep.”
“You don’t have to ramble far for any of that.”
“But I’ll be rambling with you.” Turning, she wrapped her arms around his waist.
She felt him shift, that subtle move of embarrassment, though the clatter and chatter continued around them. And because she found it endearing, she added to it by raising to her toes and giving him a quick kiss. “I could drive for a while. Practice the on-the-left thing before I buy a car.”
“I think no, most firmly.”
“I know how to drive a truck.”
“You know how to drive a truck on the right when you’re counting the miles. But you don’t know how to drive a lorry on the left when you’re clicking off kilometers.”
He had her there. “That’s the point. You could teach me.”
“Best you try that with someone less . . . volatile,” Branna suggested.
“She means someone less likely to shout blue murder if you clip a hedgerow or veer off the wrong direction on a roundabout,” Meara explained. “You’re better off with Connor, as he’s long on patience.”
“I’d need be no longer than a thumbnail to have more patience than Boyle. I’ll take you out on the road, cousin, first chance we have for it.”
“Thanks.”
“And if you’re after buying a car, I’ve a friend in Hollymount in the trade who’d make you a fair deal.”
“Connor’s friends everywhere.”
He merely smiled at Meara. “Sure I’m a friendly sort.”
“And all the girls attest to it. I should be off. You’ll text me if you devise some grand scheme,” she said to Branna.
“I’ve some thoughts to put together. I’ll let you know when I have them sorted out.”
“Have a care.” Meara added a hug.
“I could use a care as well.”
Lifting her eyebrows at Connor, Meara tapped his cheek. “Enjoy your rambling, Iona, and you and Boyle have a care as well. And you, Fin.”
“I’ll walk out with you. I’ve some thoughts of my own to put together,” he said to Branna. “We might consider Litha.”
She nodded. “I am.”
“Isn’t that—yes, that’s the summer solstice,” Iona remembered. “Not till June?”
“A bit of time yet. Light smothers dark—and it’s the longest day, which we may use to our advantage. I’ve to think about it.”
“Would you rather I stay here tomorrow? Work with you?”
“No, go rambling. You’re right that it’s good for you to have a better sense of the world around this core of it. And I need that time to think.”
“Why don’t we give you some peace then,” Boyle suggested. “I’ll come fetch you, Iona, about nine.”
“You could. Or I could go with you now, and we can leave from your place whenever you’re ready.” She smiled at him. He didn’t shift, but she sensed he wanted to. “They all know we’re sleeping together.”
“Is that a fact?” Connor feigned surprise. “And here I thought you’ve been having a chess tournament and discussing world events.”
“You’re a rare one,” Boyle muttered. “We can leave from my house if you’d rather. Just don’t take half the night getting together what you need, as we’ll just be tramping around rubble and gravestones.”
“I packed a bag already, just in case. Call me,” she told Branna, “if you need me for anything.”