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“Simon.” Max nodded. “Here? I can’t see, but I can feel. They came back here.” Once again, he looked toward the cornfield, rustling, rustling in the autumn breeze. “Eric died here, as I did.”
“Yes, here. And only a few months ago, I killed Allegra here. Maybe that’s why this, I think, you coming again was meant to be here. They have a daughter.”
“Eric had a child? Eric and Allegra,” Max said, slowly now, “have a daughter.” He looked up, seemed to search the stars. “She’ll be like them.”
“Yes. She’s darker and more powerful than they were. We’ve come so far, Dad, done so much. The cost, it’s a terrible cost, but we’re winning this war. But I can’t end it, I can’t finish it until Petra, Eric’s daughter, and what she serves is destroyed. All this power.”
She pushed her hands through her hair, tossed them up. “All they’ve given me, but I can’t have the answer to the one question I need. When to strike. I don’t ask how, I don’t ask the cost. I don’t ask if I’ll survive. I don’t ask if the sister of my heart survives, or the man I love. Just when.”
“You’re wearing a ring.”
“What? Oh, yes. Duncan.”
“Katie’s boy.” With a nod, he looked out again, not to the cornfield, but to the gardens. “He makes you happy.”
“Yes. You’d like him. I know he was only a baby when you died. I wish you could meet him now. He’s on rotation, tamping down a flare-up of DUs—Dark Uncannys—out west.”
“He’s a soldier,” Max murmured.
“A soldier, a commander, an artist. He’s . . . everything.”
“I see that.”
“It has to be me, Duncan, and Tonia who go to the circle, destroy Petra and the source of the dark. It has to be the three of us who set the shield again. Our shared blood, the blood of the Tuatha de Danann. If we strike too early, too late, we’ll fail. And I can’t see.”
“Trust your birthright,” he told her, “and your blood. You were conceived in love and magicks at the very instant the dark brought death. Not a moment before, not a moment after.”
“January second.” She searched herself. “I knew that was when we had to strike New York, so I can see the logic in that, the closure. But it doesn’t feel like the answer now, not for this.”
“The gardens there, renewal and rebirth, year after year. My blood there, given to keep you safe. Your mother left all she knew to keep you safe. You came from us, but you were born on a night of storms and came into the hands of another. A father. And the light took her first breath of the world in those hands, on that night. There were three to love and protect you until you came to be. As there are three there.” He gestured to the alicorn, the wolf, the owl. “You’ll be three who fight the final battle of a night of storms. A night of power.”
“My birthday.” She felt it then, the answer, the knowledge. “It’s nearly here,” she acknowledged. “My birthday, because this is what I was born for. They sent you to tell me. You’re the sign, and the answer.”
“The messenger,” he corrected with a smile. “I can’t stay.”
“But we’ve barely had any time.” She grabbed for something happy. “Fred and Eddie have five kids, and she’s going to have another.”
“Eddie?” Max laughed, the sound rolling out into the night. “Eddie and Fred. I didn’t see that coming, but now that I do, well, it’s perfect.” His grin flashed, quick, delighted. “Did you say five kids?”
So good to see him smile, so good to see that sorrow lifted. “Six come spring. They named their oldest boy Max.”
His eyes, gray like hers, softened. “Tell them I’m honored. I can’t stay,” he said again. “But all I have will be with you when you lift that sword. Blessed be, my brave and beautiful daughter.”
“But, don’t—” He faded away, and she stood alone with magicks still thrumming. “Blessed be, Max Fallon, my brave and beautiful sire.”
Fallon closed the circle, and with plans and possibilities circling in her mind, rode Grace home. It shouldn’t have surprised her to find Mallick waiting in the predawn stillness. He stood at the edge of the garden as the first stars began to sigh away.
“You knew?”
“No.” He slipped a hand in Grace’s halter as Fallon dismounted. “But I felt the rise of magicks, the stir of powers, and with them, with you, I knew. They sent you Max Fallon to give you the answer.”
“His image, his spirit, and only for a few minutes.” She lowered her forehead to Grace’s cheek. “No time, and so much I wanted to say to him. I couldn’t even think of all I wanted to say, then he was gone again. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”
“It’s common to say, so means little to hear, but he’s always with you.”
“I asked for a sign, and he was there.”
“And what sign could be clearer? Who could have been sent who has more love for you and for the light than Max Fallon? Brood over the brevity later, girl. You have work to do.”
Typical of him, she thought. Just get on with it. “I’m not brooding. I’m . . .” Sulking, she realized, but wasn’t she entitled? “Thinking. Considering.”
“You know what to do next, go do it. I’ll tend to Grace.”
She handed over the reins. “You’re figuring you can wheedle breakfast out of it.”
“I don’t wheedle,” he said with considerable dignity. “I do expect the household will be stirring soon, and your mother, being gracious, will issue an invitation.”
“Same thing.”
“Not in the least,” he objected when she flashed away. “You’ll break your fast with extra oats,” he told Grace. “And if I were to put pancakes in Lana’s mind, that can’t be considered wheedling.”
She flashed straight to Duncan. She found him already up, dressed and strapping on his sword.
“Trouble?” she asked quickly.
“Not here. I dreamed . . . I saw you, felt you. I was just about to go, to check.” She moved right into him, wrapped around him. “I shouldn’t have gotten dressed.”
With a half laugh she shook her head, burrowed in. “I tried again, asked again. They sent Max. Sent his spirit.”
He eased her back, cupped her face in his hands. “Hard for you.”
“Yes. And wonderful. Wonderful and hard. But he gave me the answer. The time’s almost here, Duncan.”
“When?”
“In nine days.”
“Nine days. That’s . . .”
He did the quick calculation, and she saw the realization on his face. “Your birthday. Of course, it’s your freaking birthday. We’re idiots for not seeing it all along. The start and the finish.”
“I came from three. Max, my mother, Simon. I was given three. The owl, the wolf, the alicorn. Another three—the book, the sword, the shield. And given the answer with nine days. Three and three and three.”
“And three go to the dance of stones, to the broken shield and murdered woods. The blood of the three, against the three that remain. The source, the dragon, the witch. On a night of storms the light breathed life. On a night of storms, the light strikes the dark.”
He paused, shrugged. “You’re not the only one who can prophesize.”
“I know we’ve been preparing for this all our lives, but now it’s down to nine days, and there’s a lot to do. I need to get back, get started.”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
“The DUs here?”
“Suppressed. We’ve got some scouts out hunting stragglers, and there are some civilians who need some help. I can organize that and be back in New Hope in a couple hours.”
“That works. I’ll get Tonia.”
He grabbed her hand, yanked her in for a kiss. “In twelve days—keeping it in multiples of three—you and me are going on a date.”
“A date?”
“Like people used to. Dinner, music or something, and sex.”
“I like dinner, music or something, and sex.”
She held on another minute, to that hope, to that promise, then left him.
They turned the war room into what Simon dubbed Magick Central. While troops continued to suppress flare-ups, instructors continued to train, people harvested crops, stored wood and supplies for the winter to come, Fallon, Duncan, and Tonia worked on spells and weapons.
Life went on in New Hope. Work on the clinic expansion neared completion, Arlys broadcasted to anyone who could hear. Chuck continued to search for any rumors of those flare-ups.
The three, united in purpose, focused all they had to be sure life did go on.
Hours every day centered on combat training where they fought dozens of Mallick’s ghosts. If they defeated one, he sent three more, sent darker ones, more vicious ones.
