feeling?”
She came into the kitchen pulling her hair into a ponytail and yawning. “Yes, please. I feel fine. Before you put the coffee on, do you have any food? If not, we should go out for breakfast. We need to get a good meal in us or we’ll collapse at the first sign of resistance.”
I opened the cupboards and took down a tin of steel-cut oatmeal. “This will do it. I’ll make the coffee, will you make the oatmeal?”
Cate took the tin from me and poured water in a pot. I measured out the coffee and put the espresso maker on the stove. I could tell the oatmeal would be heavy so I checked the fridge. “Here’s some cream. And I think there’s some dried fruit in that container.”
Between us we got breakfast on the table without any injuries, but I realized she was right. Just getting food on the table had made me tired and more than a little dizzy.
“I’ve never used up so much of myself. How long will it take us to get back to normal?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. And, even if I did know, what if I said a week? We can’t wait. I think if we just eat every few hours, we can keep our energy high enough to do what needs to be done.”
I marked a luck rune on the table. If we ran out of energy, then we might as well give up now. There was no point in annoying the Sidhe if we couldn’t bring the point home.
“What did you put in that tea? It healed my shoulder like a miracle.”
“It wasn’t the tea. I just put you to sleep so I could examine your shoulder.” She held her coffee cup up to me in salute. “I’m impressed you managed to get home. Your shoulder was dislocated. No permanent damage but it must have been a lot of pain. I popped it back in while you were asleep.”
“Thanks.” I felt like a big he-wizard.
“Olan is gone.” Cate picked a sliced of dried apple out of her oatmeal and chewed it.
“He does that. I remember him raking the face of the Sidhe but I don’t remember anything after that.”
“How do you know when to worry about him?”
“I don’t worry about him. Nothing can hurt him for long.” I was starting to feel the benefit of the coffee and oatmeal.
“But he can be hurt, right. Can we do this without him?”
“You don’t know Olan. He can be as much hindrance as help.” I felt mean saying that, he’d saved my life after all. “I mean he has his own agenda, like everyone.”
“I’m still worried.” Cate finished her oatmeal and put the bowl in the sink.
“Okay if he doesn’t show up soon, we can try to seek him. I’ve got some good seeker spells I haven’t tried.”
Cate smile at me and I felt warm all over. “I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“I’m impressed; I thought you were going to pass out in my lap last night.”
“Well, your bed is very comfortable.” She blushed and I thought about making my big move, wasn’t now the right time? She’d just called me a hero after all. Before I could say anything, she spoke again. “What if we looked at this from a different point of view? We have been trying to stop Fionuir, right?”
“Well, she is the one responsible for this problem.”
She shook her head. “Actually, the problem is the fairies not having babies.”
“That’s a symptom of what Fionuir is doing.”
“No, I mean what if the fairies started having babies again? It would at least buy us some time. If Fionuir has to change the spell on the amulet, we might be able to get it away from her.”
“But they aren’t.” She was right we needed a way to get the amulet, but the fairies were stuck.
She rolled her eyes at me and started tidying up the kitchen. “Are you sure you didn’t get hit in the head? Look, what I’m saying is, what if I found a way to at least temporarily get the fairies fertile again?”
“I didn’t think that was possible.”
“It occurred to me when I made your willow bark. What if I combined a few things then distilled the spell down to strengthen it?”
It felt like this was one of those things that in retrospect seem like a good idea at the time. “And what if you go overboard and we find ourselves knee deep in baby fairies. Do you have any idea how much trouble a baby fairy can be?”
“I would be very careful.” She twisted her lips in thought. “I could test it on something. I could make the potion for something short lived and then adjust it if we find it’s too strong or too weak. What about on fruit flies?”
“Crap, I don’t want an infestation of fecund fruit flies.”
“Very mature.” Cate poked my shoulder. “Keep that up and I’ll dislocate it again, buster.”
I dug for a good idea. “We can do it in a jar. That way we know we can keep control of the population.”
Cate went back to the bedroom and came out pulling on her coat. “I’ll have to do this at home, all my stuff is there and you don’t have what I need downstairs.”
“Just make sure you don’t let your apprentice help. Remember when we helped Vollont with that snow spell.”
She laughed. “Yes, we were digging the house out from the blizzard for a week. I think that’s why he had such a remote house; a blizzard in July would raise more than eyebrows in any town in California.”
Chapter Eighteen
Cate called me when she got home to let me know she’d seen Olan flying over the house as she left. And that I didn’t have to worry about the bird any more. I tried to reassure her that I wasn’t worried but she just laughed.
I cleaned up the breakfast dishes and tossed the coffee grinds on the garden. I went downstairs and checked to see if Princess was still okay, she was, and then scribed a seeking circle inside my power circle. If Cate was going to find a fertility spell, the least I could do was try to find some information.
I put three stones and a wren feather in the seeking circle. Then I sat outside it before closing my larger power circle. I took a deep breath and tried to empty my mind. Unfortunately a vision of Cate in my bed filled the space as quickly as I emptied it. I tried again. Deep breath, think of leaves falling, exhale blow the leaves away. There was Cate covered in leaves. Okay that was not going to work.
I hated to work under the influence of a spell but I wasn’t going to get Cate out of my mind without help. I pulled down a jar of mint leaves and a box of ground cricket. Placing a pinch of the cricket powder in a mint leaf I placed between my teeth. I thought the word calm and bit down. The weight of everything I’d experienced in the last three days drifted off my shoulders. Then the worries about what could happen floated after them. My mind cleared and I was ready to seek.
I held my list of spirits and looked at the section on procreation. I didn’t spend a lot of time with procreative spirits. Most were both birth and death type, like The Morrigan. They were a bit crazy. I figured I could ask one about how the fairies normally make sure they get a baby when they want one. Like most Real Folk the fairies didn’t have to produce kids if they didn’t want to. The trick was to make sure you got the baby when you did want it.
There were two spirits who seemed to be in charge of fairy, kobol and troll procreation. One I knew from the past, and we didn’t have a good parting. The other I’d heard of but never met.
“Ezeral. Please come to my circle. I offer you a stone or a feather for news.” I decided to try the unknown spirit first.
Five minutes later, nothing had happened. “Ezeral, I beseech you, it is vital we speak.”
A small dust devil started building in the center of the circle. I saw the feather lift and then spin away. The three stones rolled over twice before settling in place.”
“The feather is useless to me. I need more than a wren to feed my needs.” The voice echoed from deep in the earth, as though my cellar were a well.
“And the stones?”
“Two are adequate. I will take them now.” The stones lifted from the earth and I slapped my open palm on the floor beside me. The stones dropped back onto the ground.
