Page 189 of A Winding Wave of Magic
The liquid bubbled and turned slightly blue, and the black strand began to glow, suddenly ten times thicker than it had before.
“I was just a lad when she left, of course,” he continued in a conversational tone. “But she was tiny and red, was she not?” Heheld up the vial containing Gran’s hair. “Not a black beast of a girl like you, more like a selkie than a seer.”
I frowned. I was really starting to dislike this little man.
“What’s your point, Fallon?” Jonathan asked sharply.
“Only that looks don’t mean much when it comes to heritage, and genetics even less so, especially with the likes of you around,” Fallon replied, gesturing at Robbie and Jonathan, the two sorcerers in the room who could easily disturb the function of a DNA test with just a few words. “Lucky for us. We’ve got one of these.”
“What is it?” I couldn’t help but wonder.
Fallon delivered an ugly smile in my direction. “The potion tests for magical energy. The kind that’s carried through the generations, no matter how many in between. Developed, as it were, by your father, Lynch. Something to be proud of, is it not?”
Jonathan said nothing, but I could feel the waves of tension vibrating from his stiff posture.
Fallon swished the vial around, then removed the cork from the vial containing Gran’s hair and tipped the contents of it into the one with the liquid and my hair. We all watched the liquid start to roll. The hairs now glowed, twisting and dancing around each other until the bubbles gradually calmed.
“Care to tell her the results, Lynch?” Fallon held the vial up so everyone could see it. “What does it indicate?”
But no one had to answer. The color of the vial had settled into bright blue now—the color of a seer’s energy. Where there were once two strands of hair, there was now one, suspended in the liquid and pulsing with an easy, common beat to which every cell of my body seemed to respond. If there was any doubt whose kind I was before now, it was completely gone. I was one hundred percent Penelope O’Brien’s granddaughter.
“Still unsure who Cassandra Whelan is, Robert?” Fallon asked.
“She’ll go,” Robbie relented immediately. “But she’ll not be taking the plane.”
“Now just wait, I’ve orders?—”
“Air sickness,” Jonathan interrupted. “And severe anxiety. You don’t want to know what it took to get her here in the first place.”
He didn’t dare look at me, and I knew without checking that my adherence to the charade was critical, even if I didn’t know why. I focused all my energy on the thought so that Fallon, with his animal instincts, wouldn’t be able to sniff out the truth. Robbie’s eyes twinkled with sorcery, and I didn’t have to look at Caitlin to know she was working her own magic to obscure the truth.
So, I shrugged and said what I could. “I have to take drugs to withstand air travel.” It was true for public travel, anyway.
“And we can’t have that if the Council wants to examine her, can we?” Robbie continued as if we had all practiced it.
Fallon glanced critically between the three of us for what seemed like several minutes. “If you’re lying…”
“Bloody hell, Fallon,” Jonathan blustered. “Robbie and I will be with her. She’ll be bubble-wrapped in a first-class carriage all the way to Dublin and then the boat to Manchester, and we’ll drive from there. We’ll be there in two, maybe three days if we leave tomorrow. Unless you would prefer to anesthetize her for a flight.”
I froze. There was no way I was allowingthatto happen.
Thankfully, Fallon shook his head. “No, she mustn’t have her abilities compromised in any way,” he recited, probably from a list of orders. “All right, then. Three days. And not a minute later, or else the Council will have your heads.”
My stomach flipped. Three days. I was supposed to have four moreyears, and now I had only a matter of days before I had to face a literal inquisition.
Thank the goddess for Robbie. And Jonathan.
Fallon brushed the remaining crumbs from his shirt, and Caitlin followed their progress to her immaculate floor with a grimace. I could all but See her disdain for the man, but she said nothing and avoided my touch.
“I’ll be off then, to report back.” Fallon hopped off his stool and trotted in jagged steps to the door. Before leaving he gave us all a crumb-speckled salute. “Three days.”
And in a blink, he had transformed back into the lark that was obviously his more familiar state and disappeared into the twilight.
“Three days,” I breathed aloud.
“Three days,” Caitlin repeated, although in a far more foreboding tone.
Robbie and Jonathan’s expressions matched her dread.
