“That answers my next question, why him. Why have you been hiding him? How good is he?”
“Well, I haven’t actually been hiding him; he just likes to study a lot. And yet, sometimes I despair of teaching him anything he seems so dense. Then he’ll find a whole new insight into a spell and I’m in awe.”
I noticed the shine in her eyes as she talked about teaching. Perhaps Master Vollont was right, it was her next step. I dreaded the thought that he would show up on my doorstep with an apprentice I didn’t have time to teach.
Chapter Thirteen
I opened the door to my workroom and ushered Cate through. She came to a complete stop in the middle of the stairs and I almost knocked her over before I noticed.
“What in hell’s name is that?” She pointed to my couch.
“Ah, I forgot to mention that.”
She turned to me fury blazing in her eyes. “I hope you haven’t taken up necromancy. I will report you to every authority I can find, and the Sidhe can do as they please.”
I explained why Princess was immobile on my sofa. Cate hurried to her and ran her hands over the length of Princess’s body. I saw her shoulders relax as she finished her investigation. “She’s barely holding on. I think she can hear what we say and it’s sapping her energy. Do you want me to reinforce your spell?”
“If it will keep her alive longer, go ahead. I want her to survive so her clan to forgive her. If we can stop this madness, I will gladly give her enough credit so she can get more than forgiveness.”
Cate smiled at me and laid her hand on Princess’s forehead. “In comfort I send you deeper in sleep. You will not hear; you will not feel until awakened by my call or Quinn’s.” Golden light seeped from Cate’s hands into the fine skin under her fingers. The fairy seemed to respond to Cate’s power by settling deeper into the cushions of the sofa.
Cate stood and joined me at the bench. “You did a good job on that spell, Quinn. I only had to deepen it a touch to distance her enough for full stasis. Now she will be fine for a few months.”
“Thanks that should be more than enough. If we are still trying to solve this problem in a week, we won’t win.”
“Okay, what have you got here?” She touched the three books I’d laid out on the bench. “Hmm, fifth level spells. Anything that you can cast?”
“Funny, witch. I’m casting higher level spells than this.” Okay, in reality I had cast two sixth level spells and no fifth level ones. “I thought we could start with a seeker spell, and tailor it to just notify us when and where an event happened rather than pull a subject to us.”
“Okay, do you have enough power to cast the spell over the whole city?”
“I have some power sinks we can use.” It occurred to me that The Morrigan might notice that we used one of her feathers to power a spell but there was no other way. “Can you tailor the spell?”
“I won’t know until I see it. If it’s a spirit spell no, but I can tell you how to change it.”
I was afraid of that. My finesse was still crude and I only had spirit spells. “My seeker spell will activate when something comes within a hundred yards of either my location or something I’ve focused the spell on.”
“We need time to get to the scene, so if you set the spell to notify us when a fairy comes into contact with Iain, we could be too far away to act.”
“If we have it coded to a fairy saying his name?”
“What if they don’t say his name?”
This was getting crazy. I hated the details even though I knew they were important.
Cate sat on the edge of the bench and flipped through my spell book. “Let me think for a while. Do you have any coffee?”
I went upstairs and started brewing my best Columbian. I searched the cupboards and found some gingersnaps behind the container of boiled acorns. I knew it would be better if I stayed out of her way while she thought but having a witch unattended in my work room was making my skin jump.
As soon as the pot finished brewing, I put everything on a tray and went back downstairs. I made sure to create enough noise so Cate would know I was coming. I really didn’t want to find her digging into something I wanted to keep secret.
“I have an idea,” she announced as I put the tray on the bench. “We don’t really care when a fairy talks to Iain, if we did, we’d just follow him around.”
“But that’s the first step for Fionuir’s plan. They go to Iain and he sets up the meeting with the Sidhe who takes the power. I mean…”
She stared at me until I stopped talking. “Quinn, I would have thought you had learned by now to wait until someone finished speaking.”
“Sorry, go on.” I knew better than to try to hurry her. She’d talk me through her reasoning so I wouldn’t have to interrogate her after the fact. I leaned against the bench and sipped coffee.
“You better not be just waiting for me to finish, Quinn Larson.”
I grinned. “No, I promise I’m listening. I will only interrupt to ask a question if I don’t understand what you mean. I will listen patiently while you explain everything to me as if I were somehow mentally compromised. Carry on.”
She laughed. “I’ll try not to ramble.” She poured cream into her coffee and looked at the ginger snaps before shaking her head. “Okay, what we need to do is catch a fairy before they poison a human. It doesn’t matter if we catch them when Iain talks to them or just before they slip the human a dose.”
She paused but I had no questions, I gestured for her to continue.
“We started by thinking we should track Iain and then catch a fairy who talks to him. That won’t work because we can’t set the spell clearly enough to give us time to get to them. And the fairy might be talking to Iain about anything. He’s a liaison so it’s not just this plan he is involved in.”
She paused and I took advantage of the opportunity. “Okay, but if we can catch a Sidhe it will be as good as a fairy, right?”
She cocked her head and frowned. After a minute she nodded. “The only thing is, a Sidhe who is on Fionuir’s side will be harder to get information from than a fairy. And he or she might not know anything. Do you have enough energy to squander it on a Sidhe?”
She was going to be surprised because I had actually thought this through. “Yes, but what if we asked the Sidhe who Fionuir’s rival was?”
“That seems like something everyone would know.”
“I can’t seem to get the information.” I hadn’t actually done a lot of asking.
Cate frowned. “Are people hiding the information, or is it secret? It could be that the rival hasn’t revealed herself. Interesting if true, Fionuir must be really frightened if she doesn’t know who she’s up against.”
“Go on with your plan.” I felt all warm from her approval. I really needed to forget this crush.
“What if we cast a spell out to alert us when a fairy who has met with Iain comes into contact with a human?”
“That could work. And if we had two ways to go from there we might get more than we expect. I see it this way. We get notified and I have a spell ready to get a fairy to talk and you have one to get a Sidhe to talk.”
She looked down at the table. “I will only be able to cast a spell to get one answer from a Sidhe.”
“It’s okay, we just ask who Fionuir’s rival is. If they don’t know they can’t answer. If they do, we have what we need.”
“Not bad, Quinn. We need a third spell, and I think we both need to hold it ready.”
“What spell?”
“Something to make the human forget what they saw and heard.”
Chapter Fourteen
We agreed to meet at Bank’s by one in the afternoon to wait for the call. If it didn’t come by morning we’d go back to my place to wait and hope we weren’t too far away. Fifteen minutes fast walk from my place downtown seemed too long to me, but Cate was confident we could do it.
I got to the bar first and ordered lunch, boar stew with fresh bread; better than anything I could whip up myself. Olan hadn’t shown his beak since he left last night. I hoped he wasn’t in trouble with The Morrigan again. I guess it’s not really my problem. He was much older than me and had been handling his troubles long before we met.