“If there’s anything else that could make you more comfortable, you have only to ask.”
“More comfortable.” The phrasing bothered Briar. It sounded too much like it could end withbefore your time comes.
“No, not like that,” Linden said.
Briar leaned on his shoulder for support, so their faces were very close. He could make out every crystalline eddy of Linden’s blue eyes, every fine, flyaway hair from his plait.
“I told you before. I will find you that cure.”
CHAPTER 19
Briar woke to a missed call and text message from Rowan.
>>Just checking in. How are you feeling?
His heart tripped and sank. Rowan used to sign his texts with three kisses.
He almost flopped back into bed to weep, but he needed to eat so he could take his potion. Vatii, perched on the headboard, took her head out from under her wing and followed him into the kitchen. He heated another container of Christmas dinner. While the microwave hummed, he looked at the enchanted ribbon from Linden on his desk lamp; it still shone with the runes keeping Gretchen at bay. Briar wasn’t ready to reconcile with her, but calling Niamh couldn’t wait any longer. He needed to know what was going on in Coill Darragh in regard to his curse, Gretchen’s death, the forest’s involvement, and Rowan’s peculiar connection to it.
There was something else he wanted to ask Niamh, too.
The microwave dinged. He retrieved his leftovers and tucked in. Even reheated, the smell pulled him through a tide of memory. Jostled between Rowan and little Ciara at a table sagging under the weight of its feast. Looks exchanged across the room like love notes passed in secret. Little more than a day since then, but it felt like an age. The moment in the hospital had carved a gulf between then and now.
He texted Rowan back a quick, >>Feeling better today. Thank you for the food, it’s helped like magic.
Sending it without thexxxon the end felt like a lie of omission.
Pushing aside his empty container, he filled a bowl with water and took it to the kitchen table. Then he fetched the packet he’d stowed in his tithe belt, the pollen inside like fine grains of sand.
This tiny portion cost him everything he’d earned knitting custom mittens for an entire family.
The ghost orchid pollen caused hardly a ripple as he poured it in. As before, the water turned metallic blue, and he hovered over it, picturing Niamh. Her dark clothes and graying hair. The sharp scrape of a knife sharpened on a whetstone and potpourri smell of her aura.
The water rippled, Niamh’s face resolving within, wavering so badly that her features warped.
“Is—Briar I see?”
“Niamh! I have to ask you something—”
Her response came through garbled. Anxiously, Briar wondered if the apothecary had underestimated the amount of pollen needed for the spell. He called Niamh’s name while the bowl vibrated on the table, then it stopped, the surface turning placid as a lake. Niamh’s hand retracted as the grains of pollen tumbled from her fingers into the scrying bowl on her side. Briar’s vision narrowed. The chair he sat in seemed to tip forward and dump him into the bowl, his flat falling away, replaced instead by the rough-hewn furniture and esoteric incense of Niamh’s shop in Wishbrooke. Her familiar—a leathery black bat—hung from the curtain rail and twitched its ears. Briar couldn’t be there physically, but the more powerful tithe had strengthened the connection to such effect that he might as well have been.
“That’s better,” Niamh said. She shuffled a pack of weathered tarot cards with split corners. “Had a feeling I’d be hearing from you. You showed up in my dream, bawling about only having a few months to live.”
Briar said, “It’s true.”
“You were also a lizard in the dream.”
“Well, not that part,” Briar said, annoyed.
Rearranging her skirts, Niamh sat across from him. “Let’s do a reading for you. That should sort it out. It will cost your silence again, but that’s old hat by now.”
“I don’t have time for—I need to ask you about what happened in Coill Darragh ten years ago. With Éibhear, and Gretchen, and the invaders, whoever they were, and—”
“Ah sure, nasty business. But you already know as much as I do about it, I can tell you that.”
Briar’s hopes floundered. “You must know more. What the invaders came for, what happened to Gretchen.”
“All that’s for you to find out. Shuffle the cards.”
