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“Can you get here in half an hour?”
“To Lugh’s? Yes. See you then.”
He hung up and I called Mathi, basically repeating the conversation without the whole Eljin thread. He didn’t have the right or the need to know I was dating someone aside from Cynwrig.
“You want me armed or not?” he asked. “I’d prefer the former given the number of times they’ve caught us unawares thus far.”
Carrying a gun wouldn’t actually guarantee we wouldn’t be caught unawares again, but it’d still make me feel better if at least one of us had a weapon. The wind and my knives could only do so much.
“I take it you are cleared to carry?”
I could almost hear his smile. “I’ve special dispensation on a case-by-case basis. I’ll let my father know what we’re doing so that if things go wrong and someone gets shot, we’re covered.”
“You really aren’t averse to using your father’s position for personal benefit, aren’t you?”
“Not just personal. Family too.”
Which only made me wonder what other shady dealings Ruadhán had turned a blind eye to.
And whether Sgott knew.
I hung up, tucked my phone into my pocket, then walked over to the sash window and slid it up. The wind whisked in, thick with the promise of heavier rain. There were no voices to be heard within her, no screeching caterwaul to suggest Beira was trying to contact me, but I nevertheless had a sense of her presence. She continued to keep an eye on things, even if a distant one.
But there was also something—or rather, someone—else in the wind now. It was little more than a distant tremble of wickedness, but it made my skin crawl. If that tremble was the storm mage, he wasnoton the side of the angels.
I stuck my hand out the window, letting the wind play through my fingers as I envisaged the front that held the sword safe within its stormy heart. Once I’d “caught” it, I sent it skittering toward Cheltenham. Given the recent attacks, it really wasn’t safe to call the sword down and physically keep it close right now. I’d have to do so once we were ready to enter the cave, of course, but until then, ithadto be safer where it was.
Lugh appeared twenty-five minutes later.
“Any problems with Rogan?” I asked, as he stripped off his coat and hung it on one of the hooks near the door.
He shook his head. “Other than wanting a few details, he practically pushed me out the door.”
No surprise given how desperate he was to get his hands on the Claws for the museum. “How is he going to react when he discovers we actually intend to destroy the Claws rather than allow the museum to display them?”
“In a perfect world, he won’t discover it. I certainly have no intentions of mentioning that particular fact.”
“Rogan’s not stupid. He’s going to figure out something is wrong sooner or later.”
“It wouldn’t be the first relic hunt that has amounted to nothing.” He shrugged. “Can you put the coffee on? I need to change out of my office gear.”
His office gear—jeans, a shirt, and a woolen sweater—wasn’t all that different to his civilian clothes—jeans, T-shirt, and a long-sleeved fleece—but I nodded and headed over to the brand-new coffee machine. Darby had a serious love for freshly ground coffee and had obviously installed this as a replacement for Lugh’s crappy one.
Mathi and Cynwrig arrived within a few minutes of each other. After making coffee for everyone, we sat around the kitchen counter and discussed the various scenarios of attack and how we could counter them.
I hoped we’d done enough to be safe.
I suspected that we hadn’t.
But maybe that was my natural pessimism coming to the fore. Things hadn’t exactly gone our way so far, although at least we’d managed to keep hold of the sword this time.
We headed out twenty minutes later. The traffic was relatively light and the conversation surprisingly easy and without tension. It was close to one by the time we turned onto the narrow lane that led up to an empty parking area. According to Google Maps, there was another one farther up the main road, with a path that led to the lookout I’d seen in my vision, but this one meandered around the quarry’s base. There wasn’t much in the way of photos of the old quarry itself, but the limestone cliffs appeared steep enough that accessing the cave from above wasn’t practical and probably unsafe, despite all the ropes and harnesses we had with us.
Once we’d parked, I grabbed my credit cards and license from my purse and slipped them into a card holder attached to the back of the phone. With all the other shit we had in our backpacks—climbing gear, headlamps, water, and protein bars—I wasn’t about to carry anything more than necessary. Besides, with the way our luck had been running of late, the car would get broken into while we were in the cave, and I didn’t need the hassle of trying to replace all my cards on top of everything else.
I was about to shove the handbag under the front seat when instinct twitched. I retrieved my purse, pulled the Eve token out of the coin section, and tucked it into my pocket. I had no idea why instinct was insisting I take it with me, but I wasn’t about to gainsay her.
I climbed out and glanced skyward. My storm hovered almost directly above the Chimney, although it looked no different from any of the other rain-laden clouds currently threatening to unleash winter hell upon us.
