Morrigan's Cross - Circle Trilogy 1 Part 10

It was a small s.p.a.ce, but the light was excellent. Her walls were covered with her paintings and her photographs, and were painted the green of minced onions to reflect the light.

Rugs she'd woven herself dotted the floor with bold tones and patterns.

It was tidy, which suited her nature. Her convertible bed was made up as a sofa for the day, plumped with pillows. The kitchen alcove sparkled from a recent scrubbing.

"You live alone. With no one to help you."

"I can't afford help, and I like living alone. Staff and servants take money, and I don't have enough of it."

"Have you no men in your family, no stipend or allowance?"

"No allowance since I was ten," she said dryly. "I work. Women work just as men do. Ideally, we don't depend on a man to take care of us, financially or otherwise."

She tossed her purse aside. "I make my living such as it is selling paintings and photographs. Painting, for the most part for greeting cards like notes, letters, messages people send each other."

"Ah, you're an artist."

"That's right," she agreed, amused that her choice of employment, at least, seemed to meet with his approval. "The greeting cards, those pay the rent. But I sell some of the artwork outright now and then. I like working for myself, too. I make my own schedule, which is lucky for you. I don't have anyone to answer to, so I can take time to do, well, what has to be done."

"My mother is an artist, in her way. Her tapestries are beautiful." He stepped up to a painting of a mermaid, rising up out of a churning sea. There was power in the face, a kind of knowledge that he took as inherently female. "This is your work?"

"Yes."

"It shows skill, and that magic that moves into color and shape."

More than approval, she decided.

Admiration now, and she let it warm her.

"Thanks. Normally, that kind of thumbnail review would make my day. It's just that it's a very strange day. I need to change my clothes."

He nodded absently, moved to another painting.

Behind him, Glenna c.o.c.ked her head, then shrugged. She went to the old armoire she used as a closet, chose what she wanted, then carried it into the bathroom.

She was used to men paying a little more attention, she realized as she stripped out of the dress. To the way she looked, the way she moved. It was lowering to be so easily dismissed, even if he did have more important things on his mind.

She changed into jeans and a white tank.

Letting the subtle glamour she'd been vain enough to use that morning fade, she did her makeup, then tied her hair back into a short tail.

When she came back, Hoyt was in her kitchen, fiddling with her herbs.

"Don't touch my stuff." She slapped his hand away.

"I was only... " He trailed off, then looked deliberately over her shoulder. "Is this what you wear in public?"

"Yes." She turned, and just as deliberately invaded his s.p.a.ce. "Problem?" "No. You don't wear shoes?"

"Not around the house, necessarily." His eyes were so blue, she thought. So sharp and blue against those thick black lashes. "What do you feel when we're like this? Alone. Close."

"Unsettled."

"That's the nicest thing you've said to me so far. I mean, do you feel something? In here."

She laid a fist on her belly, kept her eyes locked on his. "A kind of reaching. I've never felt it before."

He felt it, and a kind of burn in and under his heart as well. "You haven't broken your fast," he managed, and stepped carefully back.

"You must be hungry."

"Just me then," she murmured. She turned to open a cupboard. "I don't know what I'm going to need, so I'm going to take whatever feels right. I'm not traveling light. You and Cian have to deal with that. We should probably leave as soon as possible."

He'd lifted a hand, was on the point of touching her hair, something he'd wanted to do since he'd first seen her. Now he dropped it.

"Leave?"

"You don't expect to sit around in New York and wait for the army to come to you? The portal's in Ireland, and we have to a.s.sume the battle's to take place in Ireland, or some mystical facet thereof. We need the portal, or at some point we will. So we need to go to Ireland."

He simply stared at her as she loaded bottles and vials into a case not dissimiliar from his own. "Aye, you're right. Of course, you're right. We need to start back. A voyage will take much of the time we have. Oh, Jesus, I'll be sick as six dogs sailing home."

She looked over. "Sailing? We don't have time for the Queen Mary, sweetie. We'll fly."

"You said you couldn't."

"I can, if it's in a plane. We'll have to figure out how to get you a ticket. You don't have ID, you don't have a pa.s.sport. We can do a charm on the ticket agent, the custom's agent."

She brushed it away. "I'll work it out."

"A plain what?"

She focused on him, then leaned back against the counter and laughed until her sides ached. "I'll explain later."

"It's not my purpose to amuse you."

"No, it wouldn't be. But it's a nice side pocket. Oh h.e.l.l, I don't know what to take, what not to take." She stepped back, rubbed her hands over her face. "It's my first apocalypse." "Herbs, flowers and roots grow in Ireland, and quite well."

"I like my own." Which was foolish, and childish. But still... "I'll just take what I consider absolutely essential in this area, then start on books, clothes and so on. I have to make some calls, too. I've got some appointments that I need to cancel."

With some reluctance, she closed her already loaded case and left it on the counter.

She crossed to a large wooden chest in the far corner of the room, and unlocked it with a charm.

Curiosity piqued, Hoyt moved over to study the contents over her shoulder. "What do you keep here?"

"Spell books, recipes, some of my more powerful crystals. Some were handed down to me."

"Ah, then, you're a hereditary witch."

"That's right. The only one of my generation who practices. My mother gave it up when she married. My father didn't like it. My grandparents taught me."

"How could she give up what's inside her?"

"A question I've asked her many times."

She sat back on her heels, touching what she could take, and what she couldn't. "For love.

My father wanted a simple life, she wanted my father. I couldn't do it. I don't think I could love enough to give up what I am. I'd need to be loved enough to be accepted for what I am."

"Strong magic."

"Yeah." She took out a velvet sack. "This is my prize." From it she lifted the ball of crystal he'd seen her with in the vision. "It's been in my family a long time. Over two hundred and fifty years. Chump change to a man of your years, but a h.e.l.l of a run to me."

"Strong magic," he repeated, for when she held it in her hands, he could see it pulse, like a heart beating.

"You're right about that." She looked at him over the orb with eyes that had gone suddenly dark. "And isn't it time we used some?

Isn't it time we do what we do, Hoyt? She knows who I am, where I am, what I am. It's likely she knows the same about you, about Cian. Let's make a move." She held the crystal aloft. "Lets find out where she's hiding."

"Here and now?"

"Can't think of a better time or place."

She rose, jutted her chin toward the richly patterned rug in the room's center. "Roll that up, will you?" "It's a dangerous step you're after taking here. We should take a moment to think."

"We can think while you're rolling up the rug. I have everything we need for a locator spell, everything we need for protection. We can blind her to us while we look."

He did as she asked and found the painted pentagram under the rug. He could admit that taking a step, any step, felt right and good. But he'd have preferred, very much, to take it alone.

"We don't know if she can be blinded.

She's fed on magic blood, and likely more than once. She's very powerful, and very sly."

"So are we. You're talking about going into battle within three months. When do you intend to start?"

He looked at her, nodded. "Here and now then."

She laid the crystal in the center of the pentagram, and retrieved two athames from her chest. She placed these in the circle, then gathered candles, a silver bowl, crystal wands.

"I won't be needing all these tools."

"Fine for you, but I prefer using them.

Let's work together, Merlin." He lifted an athame to study its carving as she ringed the pentagram with candles. "Will it bother you if I work skyclad?"

"Aye," he said without looking up.

"All right, in the spirit of compromise and teamwork, I'll keep my clothes on. But they're restricting."

She removed the band from her hair, filled the silver bowl with water from a vial and sprinkled herbs on it. "Generally I invoke the G.o.ddesses when casting the circle, and it seems most appropriate for this. Suit you?"

"Well enough."

"You're a real chatterbox, aren't you?

Well. Ready?" At his nod she walked to the opposite curve from him. "G.o.ddesses of the East, of the West, of the North of the South,"

she began, moving around the circle as she spoke. "We ask your blessing. We call to you to witness and to guard this circle, and all within it."

"Powers of Air, and Water, of Fire and of Earth," Hoyt chanted. "Travel with us now as we go between worlds."

"Night and day, day and night, we call you to this sacred rite. We cast this circle, one times three. As we will, so mote it be." Witches, he thought. Always rhyming.

But he felt the air stir, and the water in the bowl rippled as the candles leaped to flame.

"It should be Morrigan we call on,"

Glenna said. "She was the messenger."

He started to do so, then decided he wanted to see what the witch was made of. "This is your sacred place. Ask for guidance, and cast your spell."

"All right." She laid down the sacred knife, lifted her hands, palms up. "On this day and in this hour, I call upon the sacred power of Morrigan the G.o.ddess and pray she grant to us her grace and prowess. In your name, Mother, we seek the sight, ask you to guide us into the light."

She bent, lifted the crystal into her hands.

"Within this ball we seek to find the beast who hunts all mankind, while her eyes to us are blind. Make keen our vision, our minds, our hearts so the clouds within this ball will part.

Shield us and show us what we seek to see. As we will, so mote it be."

Mists and light swirled within the gla.s.s.

For an instant he thought he could see worlds inside it. Colors, shapes, movement. He heard it beat, as his heart beat. As Glenna's heart beat.

He knelt as she did. And saw, as she did. A dark place, mazed with tunnels and washed by red light. He thought he heard the sea, but couldn't be sure if it was within the gla.s.s or just the roaring of power in his own head.

There were bodies, bloodied and torn and stacked like cordwood. And cages where people wept or screamed, or simply sat with dull and deadened eyes. Things moved within the tunnels, dark things that barely stirred the air.

Some crawled up the walls like bugs.

There was horrible laughter, high, hideous shrieking.

He traveled with Glenna through those tunnels where the air stank of death and blood.

Down, deep down in the earth, where the stone walls dripped with wet and worse. To a door scribed with ancient symbols of black magicks.

He felt the breath go cold in his body as they pa.s.sed through.

She slept on a bed fit for a queen, four- posted and wide with sheets that had the sheen of silk and were white as ice. Droplets of blood stained them.