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“I’m fine, Little Cat,” Zaide tried to assure her, but he still sounded like a drunk sailor.
“You are tilting to the side,” she retorted as they walked down the pier, toward the lights of the little houses.
Laurence guided us down a few dark streets until we stood in front of two small cabins. The light from inside the cabins didn’t illuminate outside enough for me to really see what the cabins looked like, but I was so tired I didn’t care. I just wanted a bed and to rest in the knowledge a dragon wasn’t about to eat me.
“One for you.” He handed me a key. “One for you.” He handed Daithi another. “There’s nothing in the cupboards, so you’ll need to come to the main house, which is at the top of that hill”—he pointed—“for breakfast. But I expect you’ll need your rest after the last few days.”
* * *
Tuckedinto bed next to Clawdia and with Zaide’s dulcet snores echoing on her other side, I closed my eyes, so tired, but I wouldn’t be getting a restful sleep. To keep my sworn promise to my birth mother, I needed to dreamwalk to her every night for her to train me. I did as I was taught and followed a connection to her through a fog until I appeared in her living room.
“Charlie,” she said, quickly standing up from her sofa. “What happened? Your familiar is safe?”
Elizabeth frowned, stepped toward me and reached out a hand, but stopped short. I collapsed into the armchair and filled her in on everything that had happened since leaving the dream last night.
When I finished, she looked a tad green around the gills and began pacing, rubbing her arms and chewing her lips. “Hunters.” She shook her head. “The situation is getting more dire by the second.”
“You’re telling me. This shit is unrelenting. But hopefully, this protected island will give us time to plan the next move instead of just being smacked in the face by universe balls.”
She sighed and ducked her head but not before I saw the slight smile turning the corner of her lips. “Now that you’re being chased by hunters, I’m going to teach you more defensive magic. Something that will protect you—invisibility spells, luck potions, barrier spells …”
Books appeared in the middle of the table as she listed protective spells.
I frowned. “I thought I couldn’t do potions.”
She paused and gave me a wary look. “Why did you think that?”
“Because the way magic was explained to me was that some families do spells, some families do potions, and others track.”
If fucking Simon was telling me lies, I’ll make his life hell when I find him. Slimy bastard.
She rubbed her forehead. “I’d forgotten you are still so new to magic and there are so many who don’t fully know our history.” Sitting on the sofa opposite me, she sighed and said, “Let us start at the beginning. The emergence of witches in the human realm.
“Our realm has been linked to other realms since its conception, and therefore, other beings have always been in and out of our realm, doing what beings do. Reproducing. As generations have passed, the magic in their blood from their ancestors has faded to humans who have extraordinary smell and singing voices. People who can see the future, get feelings about things or push their desires into being.
“Witches are humans who were stricter with their bloodlines. They knew their power came from their ancestors, whatever mix of otherworlder they were, and chose, strategically, to continue and strengthen those lines to retain power.
“Families do have certain specialties; however, there has been so much interbreeding across witch families over thousands of years that there isn’t a witch alive who can’t do the basics of magic.”
A little china dish and cup appeared on the coffee table in front of her, brimming with some kind of fruit tea. She picked it up and sipped.
I waited for her to put her tea down before I asked, “And casting spells. How did that come about? Otherworlders don’t have books of spells.”
“Spells are just voiced intentions. It’s easier to teach if it’s spoken because it focuses the brain on the meaning and the intention. Witches have built spells and magic that works for them over thousands of years, enough to separate our magic from the otherworlder’s now.”
I wanted to ask about my tracking ability, where it came from but I had a feeling it was a longer conversation. Instead, I asked, “How do you know this?”
“Every witch should know their history,” she replied simply.
I rolled my eyes. “And yet the leader of the witches has just risen an old man from the ground to protect her from otherworlder slave traders without knowing he’d been risen before or that in raising him, she’d be raising a magic-eating dragon too.”
She paused and pursed her lips. “I’ll admit it’s embarrassing, but I think their lack of knowledge has more to do with Fafnir and his followers than the witches being ignorant.”
I raised my eyebrow and leaned forward. My tiredness and irritability faded as I felt the tingle of my magic.We are on to something here. Finding something.
“While I don’t trust Debs as far as I can throw her, she said Mary gave her a document about raising Sigurd and told her to hide him from the council. Knowing who Mary is now, it makes sense. She wanted to raise Fafnir and got it done by feeding Debs a line about bringing back Sigurd for protection but then hid Sigurd from the council so he’d die before they could help him. Question is, was it Mary’s idea to raise him or something Fafnir planned?”
I eyed my birth mother, who sat stiffly. “If Fafnir left a plan for his descendants to enact in order for him to rise again, surely you would have known about it.”
