“Shadows fade in the light.” Meara lifted her wine. “That’s something to consider. I may not be able to conjure a spell, but I know basic physics. Is it physics? Ah, well, action, reaction, yes? And I know it’s always better to take the enemy by surprise, on ground of your choosing.”
“You’d go?” Iona asked. “I mean if we could, and would.”
“Well now, unless I had a hot date lined up.”
“It’s not a joke, Meara.”
Meara reached over, rubbed a hand on Branna’s arm. “You’ve carried the weight long enough. Time to spread it around. Saying we’re a circle and really meaning it are different matters, Branna. You can’t protect us all, so let’s protect each other.”
“We could think on it. On how to find that time and place, and block him from knowing it. And how to make the time and place here and now—or here and when we’ve found the answer to destroying him once and for good.”
* * *
“SHE’LL STUDY AND THINK AND WORK,” IONA SAID QUIETLY to Boyle as they cleared the table. “And worry. I wonder sometimes if there’d be less work and worry all around if I hadn’t come.”
“It’s been an axe dangling over their heads long before that. And you did come. I don’t think much about what’s meant, but it seems you were meant to come. It needs to end sometime, doesn’t it? Why not now? And with us?”
“I’m not a big fan of procrastination.” She thought it over as she wiped the table clean, kept her voice down under the clatter of dishes being loaded into the washer. “I just like plowing through to whatever’s next. But I think I could happily push all this into a box in a corner for a couple hundred years.”
“Someone’s got to shovel the shit.”
“And we’ve got the shovels. Yeah,” Iona conceded. “Might as well put our backs into it. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, and not just to get out and see the world beyond a two-mile radius of Ashford.”
“It’s kilometers here.”
“I’ve a feeling I’ll master Irish easier than the metric system. I think getting a better sense of the area beyond our little core of it might be helpful. Plus, I have an exceptional guide.”
“We’ll be seeing about that.”
Take the moments, she thought. Every moment of normal, of happiness and ease. “I want ruins and old cemeteries and green hills. And sheep.”
“You don’t have to ramble far for any of that.”
“But I’ll be rambling with you.” Turning, she wrapped her arms around his waist.
She felt him shift, that subtle move of embarrassment, though the clatter and chatter continued around them. And because she found it endearing, she added to it by raising to her toes and giving him a quick kiss. “I could drive for a while. Practice the on-the-left thing before I buy a car.”
“I think no, most firmly.”
“I know how to drive a truck.”
“You know how to drive a truck on the right when you’re counting the miles. But you don’t know how to drive a lorry on the left when you’re clicking off kilometers.”
He had her there. “That’s the point. You could teach me.”
“Best you try that with someone less . . . volatile,” Branna suggested.
“She means someone less likely to shout blue murder if you clip a hedgerow or veer off the wrong direction on a roundabout,” Meara explained. “You’re better off with Connor, as he’s long on patience.”
“I’d need be no longer than a thumbnail to have more patience than Boyle. I’ll take you out on the road, cousin, first chance we have for it.”
“Thanks.”
“And if you’re after buying a car, I’ve a friend in Hollymount in the trade who’d make you a fair deal.”
“Connor’s friends everywhere.”
He merely smiled at Meara. “Sure I’m a friendly sort.”