Risking having an accusation of arrogance tossed at him, Connor shrugged. “And though I think Fin’s right, if he tires of going for Meara, he’ll turn his attentions on Branna, knowing that doesn’t speak to what we do, when we do it, and how we send him on to hell for all and done.”
“He’s right. Protecting ourselves, that’s defense—and it’s essential,” Iona added. “But it’s our offense that needs to be perfected.”
“She’s been watching matches with me.” Boyle gave her a quick grin. “We were close the last we went for him, sent him off bleeding and howling. But it wasn’t enough. What will be?”
“The potion’s stronger than it was, and that makes it a risk. One we’ll have to take.” Fin flicked a glance at Branna, got her nod.
“We thought to take him by surprise on the solstice,” Connor pointed out, “and he took us. Even then, as Boyle said, we got close to it. If we make our stand at Sorcha’s cabin, he’ll have the advantage of shifting the time, and we couldn’t know when he’d take us, or if he could, as he did, manage to separate us so we’d end up scattered, using power to reform again.”
“If not there,” Meara asked, “where?”
“It’s a place of power, for us as well as him. I think it must be there. But you’re right, Connor,” Branna added. “We can’t be separated. I’m thinking the three as a unit, and Fin, Boyle, and Meara as another—and those joined in a way that can’t be broken. This we can do—and this we will do this time.”
“Can we block him from the time shift?” Iona wondered.
“We could, I think, if we knew how he does it. But to counter such a spell, we’d need the elements of it. It’s working blind there,” Branna said in frustration.
“We shift first.” Connor leaned forward, took a biscuit. “You’re not the only one who can study and ponder and plot.” He gestured toward Branna with the biscuit, then bit in. “But you’re the only one who can make such brilliant gingerbread. We take the offensive, and shift from the start.”
“And how, scholar, should we find the way to do that—which will take considerable doing—would we lure him to when we are?”
“We know the way to do it already,” he reminded his sister. “Iona did it herself when she’d no more than gotten her toe dipped in her own magickal waters.”
“I did?” After a blink, Iona pumped her fist in the air. “Go, me.”
“I’ve done it myself,” he added, “alone and with Meara, and met our long-ago cousins.”
“Dream travel?” Branna put down her teacup. “Oh, Connor, that’s a reckless thing.”
“It’s reckless times, and we’d have to be smart about it.”
“It’s bloody brilliant,” Fin said, and earned Connor’s grin, Branna’s scowl.
“He’s talking of casting a dream net over the six of us at once.”
“I know it. That’s what’s bloody brilliant. He’d have to be on the same level, wouldn’t he, to come at us? And it would be in the time and place of our choosing.”
“He couldn’t turn it on us,” Connor pointed out, “as he wouldn’t know the elements of the spell we cast, any more than we know the elements of his. It’s him who’d have to come to us, and he’d lose the power to shift our ground.”
“Give me a moment.” Boyle lifted a hand, then used it to scratch his head. “Are you saying we’d go against Cabhan in our sleep?”
“A dream spell’s different from natural sleep. It’s not like you’re lying there snoring them off. You’ve done a bit of it yourself,” Connor recalled. “Pulled in with Iona into her dream—and didn’t you give the bastard a good punch in the face while you were at it?”
“I did, and woke with his blood on my knuckles. But a dream battle? I’ve accepted all the lot of you can do as I’ve lived with it most of my life, but this strains the tether.”
“He’d never expect it,” Meara speculated. “Can it really be done?”
“All six at once, and with no one left behind at the wheel you could say.” Struggling to look at the pros, the cons, the balance of them, Branna shoved both hands through her hair. “Sure it’s nothing I’ve ever done. I’d be easy trying it with the three, facing him off that way, and the three of you back here—Fin at that wheel for certain to steer us back should we lose balance or direction.”
“It’s the six of us,” Meara said decisively, “or not at all.”
“Meara, I’m not talking this through in the way of insulting you. Any of you. But dream casting six together, and two of them without powers.”
“Not so cocksure now?” Fin asked, with just a little bite.
“Oh, feck off,” Branna snapped.
“And back at you, darling, for suggesting that I or Boyle or Meara would stay back like obedient pups while you waged the war.”