“Do you want me to leave?”
Bran looked over at him, seeing Cillian staring back. He hesitated a moment before shaking his head. “No. You should stay.”
Bran wasn’t letting Cillian go again, and he already knew about Bran’s magic. Besides, letting him inside their coven’s circle didn’t feel wrong, only right. The Council of Witches would probably call him a heretic for everything going on, but Bran didn’t care.
He reached for a small metal box and opened it, digging through the iron bits inside it until he found three tiny iron disks the size of a quarter. He pocketed one, slipped one into Aisling’s pocket, then went over to Cillian. He reached for Cillian’s pants, tucking the iron disk into his pocket as well. “I know it burns your skin, but I’ll feel better if you keep iron close tonight.”
Cillian raised his hand to cup the side of Bran’s face, thumb stroking gently over his cheek. “Thank you.”
Bran nodded and returned to the worktable and the grimoire there. He opened it up with a flick of his fingers and a touch of magic. The grimoire’s leather cover snapped open, the pages fluttering to the one he’d requested. It was closer to the beginning of the grimoire than the end, faded, spidery handwriting scrawled across the parchment. Drawings filled the page on the right: witchmarks still in use by his coven, carved into trees in the forest to guide the lost to safety.
This time, he needed to guide the lights to them.
Bran made sure the witchmarks on the page were how he remembered them before stepping away from the table. He settled himself in the center of the pentagram’s circle, facing east. Aisling stepped into the center with him and held her hand out to Cillian, wriggling it. Cillian hesitated before joining them inside every line of the pentagram and circle.
“What are you going to do?” Cillian asked in a hushed voice.
Bran raised his hands, fingertips glittering gold with magic, Nature washing through him. “Keep the lights out of Pelham.”
He drew the witchmarks in the air, focusing on the intent of what he wanted—guidance, only this time, not toward the safety of a cabin in the woods. He wanted the paths the witchmarks lined in the forest to lead to the Shoppe.
To them.
He framed the witchmarks with his hands and focused on his magic, letting it spill out of him and into the pentagram, lighting up the circle. Cillian gasped in surprise but didn’t speak. Bran was concentrating too hard to be able to answer any questions anyway. He closed his eyes and centered himself, sinking into an awareness of Nature that pulled him along like a river into the surrounding land.
Bran’s magic flowed outward in a wave that washed through the surrounding forest for miles. Amid the countless trees, carved where only the lost would find them, witchmarks burned in his inner sight, like guiding stars fallen to earth. He used his magic to dim some and brighten others, creating a path that snaked through the forest and ended in the trees outside the Shoppe. They would be impossible to miss, spread as they were across the forest, pointing the way for the lights to find them rather than go through town and put people at risk.
And at the edge of his awareness, far across the forest, something cold began to spread.
Began to hunt.
Bran extricated himself from the net of magic tangled over the forest through the witchmarks, opening his eyes. The witchmarks that hovered between his hands and anchored the spell had faded so much he could barely see them. The spell they powered clawed at the forestbeyond the Shoppe, buried in all the witchmarks that had been carved into trees long before he’d been born.
Aisling tugged on his arm to get his attention, looking at him with a silent question in her wide, deep blue eyes. Bran tucked some of her hair behind her ear, the round curve of it like his—for now, at least.
“The lights are coming,” Bran said.
There would be no outrunning them this time.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cillian took the stairs up from the basement two at a time, finding the Fae had left the Shoppe and were back outside. Niamh heard them, looking over her shoulder as they exited the building. Her gaze flicked to Bran, who had brought his coven’s grimoire with him. “Your magic touched the entire forest.”
Bran scowled at her. “How else was I supposed to find the lights?”
“Most witches wouldn’t have that reach.”
The contemplative look she gave Bran had Cillian stepping between the two. “What now?”
“We wait,” Scáthach said, the metal-shod butt of her glaive ground into the dirt. She faced the trees, not them, her fierce focus on the surrounding dark. “The lights will come to us, and so will Cernunnos.”
“You seem real certain you can beat him when lots of people in this world consider him some kind of god,” Bran said.
“Do you?”
“No. Witches who know better don’t pray to Fae.”
“Our gods left us so long ago they are nameless to us. We were told to make our own way, and we did, until we were banished. This world is not how it was when we ruled.”
