“Okay. So the fairies know how to contact Iain. It must be something fairly straightforward otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do it.”
“Do you think catching a fairy will be the best way to get the information we need?”
“No, I think the best way to get that is to find Fionuir’s rival. She’ll know something, or know someone who knows something.”
Maybe this would get easy once we got the information we needed, but getting the first piece of information was going to be a killer. “I think I can craft a spell that will track Iain without him knowing.” I said.
“Okay. I can add something that will make a fairy talk.” She pulled a notebook out of her pocket. “When we get the fairy, we find the information that gets us to other Sidhe. They will probably be on Fionuir’s side. But we can try to get information out of them about the rival.”
I saw where this was leading, we made a good team. “Shall we go to your place or mine?”
“Quinn, I didn’t know you cared.”
I blushed. “I mean to put the spells together.”
“Yeah, I know.” I thought I heard a twinge of regret in her voice. “Your place will be better. It wouldn’t be fair to Lionel to kick him out just as he was getting into the second level spells.”
“Yeah, about him.” I couldn’t contain my curiosity. “Why did you take on an apprentice? I thought you said you would never burden yourself that way.”
“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, you should try it. I find myself stretching to keep ahead of his appetite for learning. I remember the feeling that Master Vollont was holding me back. It’s about keeping pace not keeping secrets.”
“Okay, but why did you take one on?”
“Master Vollont said I should. He brought Lionel to my door a month ago. He said it was the next step in my development.”
“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
