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“I was—am a bit. You’re a frustrating creature, Blair, and I’ve never had to put so much work into wooing a woman.”
“Woo?” Something snapped shut in her throat. “I don’t like the whole woo thing.”
“That’s clear enough, but I do. And a man has to please himself as well as the woman who’s caught his eye, doesn’t he? But in any case, whether or not I’m annoyed and frustrated, I wouldn’t leave you alone.”
They always do, a little voice whispered in her head. Sooner or later. “I’m okay. Just a little wigged out at getting a message from the land of the gods.”
“What is the message?”
“Better get everyone together and deliver it all at once. In the library,” she decided. “It’s the best setup.”
She paced, waiting for Hoyt and Glenna. Apparently, magic couldn’t be interrupted even by messages from gods. Struggling against impatience, she toyed with the two crosses around her neck. One, she’d worn nearly all her life. It had come down through her family, through Nola, and all the way back to Hoyt. Morrigan’s Cross, one of those given to him at the onset of this battle while he was still in his own time.
The second, he and Glenna had forged with silver and fire and magic. A team emblem, she supposed, as much as a shield, which each of them—but Cian—wore at all times.
The first had saved her life once, she remembered. So magic, she supposed, had priority over impatience.
Still, when Moira offered her tea, she shook her head.
Already she was going over in her mind what had to be done—and she didn’t like most of it. Still, it was movement, and that’s what they wanted. What they needed.
“There are two outside,” Moira said quietly. “We haven’t seen any for days, but there are two out there now, just at the edge of the trees.”
Blair moved to the window beside her, scanned. “Yeah, I see them. Just barely.”
“Should I get my bow?”
“That’s a long shot in the dark.” Then Blair shrugged. “Sure, why not? Even if you don’t hit one, it’ll show them we’re not sleeping.”
Blair glanced around as Moira went out. Cian was sprawled in a chair with a glass of wine and a book. Larkin sat on the couch, sipping at a beer and watching her.
She didn’t want the tea Moira had brought in, didn’t want to be soothed by it. Nor did she want alcohol to dull the edge.
So she paced a little more, stood at the window again. She saw the vampire on the left poof. She hadn’t even seen the arrow, but she saw the second vamp fade back into the trees.
No, we’re not sleeping, she thought.
“Sorry that took so long, but we couldn’t leave that in the middle. Tea. Perfect.” Glenna went directly to the table when they came in, poured a cup for herself and for Hoyt. “Is something up?”
“Yeah. Moira will be right back. She just went up to take out one of the vamps outside.”
“Oh.” Glenna let out a little gush of breath as she sat. “So they’re back. Well, it was nice while it lasted.”
“I could only get one.” Moira came in with her bow. “It was too dark to see the second, and I’d have likely wasted an arrow.” But she propped the bow and her quiver by the window, in case she had another chance.
“Okay, we’re all here. Morrigan paid me a visit—or had me pay her one. However it works.”
“You had a vision?” Hoyt demanded.
“I had whatever it is. At the battleground. It was empty. Just wind and fog, her. A lot of cryptic god stuff, the bottom line being she said we’re to leave for Geall a week from today.”
“We go back?” Moira stepped to Larkin, squeezed a hand on his shoulder. “We go back to Geall.”
“That’s what the lady said,” Blair confirmed. “We’ve got a week to get ready for it. To figure out what we need, pack it up, finish up what’s going on up in the magic tower. We go to the stone circle, the way you got here,” she said, nodding at Larkin and Moira. “The way Hoyt came through. I don’t know how it works, but—”
“We have keys,” Moira told her. “Morrigan gave me a key, and one to Hoyt.”
“I’d say travel arrangements are up to you guys. We’ll take all the weapons we can carry. Potions, lotions—whatever Hoyt and Glenna figure we can use best. Major glitch that I see is that for Cian to get there, we have to hope for a cloudy day or leave the house after sunset. Since we’ve got watchers again, they’ll know we’re on the move. They’ll try to stop us, no question.”
