Ilianna said, “I would not be so sure of that —”
“Ilianna,” I warned yet again.
She sighed, then pushed open the door and ushered me through. The twin scents of curry and baking bread hit, making my mouth water and my stomach rumble even louder than before.
The room itself was a kitchen bigger than our entire apartment. The country-style cabinets wrapped around three of the four walls, providing massive amounts of storage and preparation space, and there were six ovens and four stovetops. A huge wooden table that would have seated at least thirty people dominated the middle of the room, and it was at this that Sable, Mirri, and two other women sat.
They glanced around as we entered. Sable smiled and rose. In either human or horse form she was stunningly beautiful, with black skin and brown eyes that missed very little. Mirri, a mahogany bay when in horse form, had taken after her dad.
“Risa, so glad you’re recovered.” Sable kissed both my cheeks, then stood back and examined me somewhat critically. “Although you do need some condition on you. You, my girl, are entirely too thin.”
I smiled. “Werewolves do tend to be on the lean side.”
“Not this lean, I’ll wager. The ladies and I are just about to go out, but there’s a curry in the oven and the bread should be done in about five minutes.”
“Thank you —”
She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Ilianna is family now, and her family is my family. So please, don’t be thanking me for something we’d do for anyone in the herd.”
I smiled. At least Mirri’s mom had accepted her relationship with Ilianna. The same couldn’t be said of Ilianna’s parents – although I personally thought they would come round if they actually knew about it. But Ilianna refused to even tell them she was gay.
Sable collected her coat and bag from the back of one of the chairs; then she and the two women retreated out the glass sliding door.
I raised an eyebrow and glanced at Mirri. “That felt like a deliberate retreat.”
Mirri grabbed a couple of tea towels and rose. “I told them you and Ilianna need some alone time for a war council when you woke up.”
“War council? Sorry, but whatever I do next —”
“You’re not doing alone.” Ilianna began setting the table for the three of us. “Azriel may be gone, but Tao and I are still here. And we’re a part of this now, Risa, whether you like it or not.”
I didn’t like. Not at all. She and Tao had been through enough because of me and this damn quest. I wasn’t about to put them through anything else. But I also knew that tone of voice. It was no use arguing – not that that ever stopped me from trying.
“The first thing I have to do is find the damn sorcerer who stole the key, and that’s not something I want you involved with. It’s too dangerous, Ilianna.”
“Maybe.” Ilianna gave me a somewhat severe look. “But the Brindle is more than capable of taking care of a dark sorcerer. There aren’t that many in Melbourne, you know, and they’d be aware of all of them.”
The Brindle was the home of all witch knowledge, both ancient and new. Ilianna’s mom was one of the custodians there, and Ilianna was powerful enough to have become one – and in fact had started the training when she was younger. She’d walked away for reasons she refused to discuss, but if the predictions of the head witch, Kiandra, were to be believed, Ilianna would one day not only finish that training, but her daughter would save the Brindle itself.
“Yeah,” I said, “but given Lucian was probably working with him, he’ll know about my connection to both you and the Brindle.” I grimaced, then added, “I’d bet my ass he’s taken steps to ensure you – and they – can’t find him.”
“But it would take major magic to achieve something like that, and it would create a ‘hot spot’ that could be traced.”
Maybe that sort of ruling would apply to Earth-based magic, but would it apply to magic that was Aedh sourced? And even if it did, that still meant dragging more people into the search, and I really didn’t want to do that unless absolutely necessary. It was just too damn dangerous.
“It’s an option.” I sat down. “But it wouldn’t be my first.”
Ilianna placed the hot bread on the table. “Why not? There’s no easier way to find a sorcerer than to trace his magic.”
“A normal sorcerer, perhaps. But this one has been working with an Aedh, remember, and has probably acquired much of his knowledge.” Which was another reason to be glad Lucian was dead. At least the bastard couldn’t pass anything else on to our ever-elusive sorcerer. “Besides, our best option right now is to go through Lucian’s things and see if he left any clues behind.”
Mirri snorted as she began dishing out the huge chunks of curried vegetables – which wasn’t normally a favorite of mine, but it smelled incredible. “Forgive me for stating the obvious, but you’ve been on a bender for three days. That would have given our sorcerer plenty of time to go through Lucian’s things and ditch whatever evidence there might have been.”
“Lucian was clever enough not to leave such information in easy reach. If there is incriminating evidence to be found, then it would be somewhere ultimately safe from everyone but him.”
And that, I realized suddenly, could mean the gray fields. They might be the unseen division between worlds, but they were as filled with life as anyplace in this world. And given Lucian had once been an Aedh priest under my father’s tutelage, then maybe the first place I should look was in temples near the gates of heaven and hell. I had no idea whether they still stood now that the priests had all but disappeared – or if someone like me would even be able to see them – but what better place would there be to secure information? It was doubtful whether the reapers or the Raziq would bother to look through ruins in an effort to find information on a dark sorcerer.
Of course, that was presuming Lucian could get onto the fields. The ability to attain full Aedh form had apparently been ripped from him by the Raziq, but that hadn’t stopped him from shoving his fist into my mother’s chest and blowing her apart.