The three, united in purpose, focused all they had to be sure life did go on.
Hours every day centered on combat training where they fought dozens of Mallick’s ghosts. If they defeated one, he sent three more, sent darker ones, more vicious ones.
Every night they nursed bruises, rattled bones, sprains, wrenched joints.
“They can’t go into this weakened and exhausted,” Lana argued.
Mallick watched as Fallon fought five at once, as Duncan pushed back the sweeping flame of a ghost dragon, as Tonia leaped off the back of an enemy to shoot for the eye. And when her arrow went wide as the slashing tail struck her, the force sent her tumbling to the ground.
“They can’t win unless they’re prepared for whatever comes. We can’t know what form it might take, how many forms. They have to be ready.”
“It’s too much.” Lana pushed out power, destroyed two ghosts. “It’s enough. Enough!” Slicing her hands down, she shattered all of Mallick’s ghosts.
“All you see are warriors,” she snapped. “I see my daughter bleeding, the children of my friend bleeding. Again. When does it end? When will we stop watching our children bleed?”
Fallon pushed up from her knees, but Duncan was already walking to Lana. He put his arms around her.
“It’s all right. We’re all right. Nothing the old man can come up with is going to take us down. Nothing in Scotland’s going to take us down. We need you to believe that.”
Tears in her eyes, she eased back, stroked her hand over his cheek. “Look at your face,” she said, and healed raw bruises.
“Scary handsome, right?”
She stroked his other cheek. “You always were.”
“My mom could use some company. She’s pretty upset about all this, too.”
“You just want to get rid of me.”
“She’s scared. She and Hannah are both scared. They could use you. Especially if you could get Arlys and Fred and Rachel. You’re her circle, Lana. She needs her circle.”
“All right.” She sighed, stepped back. “I’ll get Fred, we’ll go into town.” She looked at Fallon. “Stop holding back your power. Use it.” She flashed away.
“I am using it,” Fallon muttered, wincing as she rubbed her throbbing shoulder. “Judiciously. It’s called tactics. Anyway, thanks,” she said to Duncan.
“No problem, and straight truth.”
“He’s right.” Tonia walked off the stiffness in her knee, in her hip. “Mom’s wrecked over this. Trying not to show it—so’s Hannah—but they’re wrecked.”
“In a couple of days, they won’t have to worry.” She looked back at Mallick. “Again.” And swung her sword to meet the first strike.
* * *
The night before her birthday, Fallon prepared herself. She bathed in candlelight in water infused with sage, rosemary, hyssop, to purify her body for the battle to come.
She drank a cup of faerie wine from grapes harvested during a blue moon, offered another to the mother goddess. She lit the candle Mallick had given her, set it in the window, in the moonlight, and dressed by the twin glows.
“For this I was born. This is the path I chose to take, of my own will. For this I opened the book.” She carried the Book of Spells to the candle, set it in that light. “For this I took up the sword and shield.”
She hooked on the shield, strapped on the sword.
“By the heart of the sire, the heart of the mother, the heart of the father, I will not return here until I have done what I was born to do. Should I fail, I ask your care for my family. I ask that someone else open this book, take up the sword and shield, and fight on.”
She hooked on her knife in the sheath Travis had made her so long before. Thinking of it, she got a pouch, added the painted tulip, the wind chimes Ethan and Colin had made her for that seminal birthday. A copy of The Wizard King with Max’s words inside, his photo on the back, the stone she’d taken from Laoch’s hoof that Mick had carved with her face. And the pink teddy bear.
Around her neck she wore the ring and medal—both worn by her fathers.
Talismans, she thought as she packed another bag with the tools of magick. Gifts given from the heart.
Duncan and Tonia packed their tools and weapons. Each performed their own private rituals and met outside their rooms.
“Ready?”
Tonia nodded. “Revved up and ready to go.” She glanced toward the stairs. “This part might be harder than Scotland.”
“Yeah. Let’s get it done.”
Katie and Hannah waited downstairs.
“I was thinking French toast for breakfast,” Duncan began.
“And bacon,” Tonia added. “Lots of bacon.”
Hannah gripped Katie’s hand tight. “I’ll even do the dishes.”
“Now we’re talking. We’ve got this, Mom.”
Katie held up her free hand to stop Duncan. “First, I have something for the three of you. Lana and Fred helped make them, so they’ve got magick from that, but what went into the making, I think that’s magick too.”
She squeezed Hannah’s hand before releasing it, then drew three small pendants on chains from her pocket. “I used the wedding ring your father gave me.”
“Oh, but, Mom—”
Katie shook her head at Tonia’s objection. “He would have loved his three children so much. And I used the earrings Austin gave me his last Christmas. He loved you so much, too. So these are from the three of us—magickal number—to the three of you.
“My babies. I’m so proud of all of you. Hannah. Dr. Parsoni,” she corrected.
Hannah took the offered pendant. “A caduceus. It’s beautiful. It means so much.”
“Duncan.”
He took the sword pendant, held her eyes as he slipped the chain over his head. “You’re the real warrior, Kathleen MacLeod Parsoni. Always have been, always will be.”
“Tonia.”
Tonia blinked at tears as she took the pendant of a bow with arrow already nocked. “You’re the glue, Mom. You’re the reason all of us are here.”
They surrounded her, her three children.
* * *
Fallon hoped to say good-bye at home, but her family—including Colin—insisted on going with her to the community gardens to meet Duncan and Tonia. So they rode to New Hope together, as they had years before.
She nudged Laoch over to Colin. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone. Could be a couple hours, could be days. It’d be good if you could hang around until I get back.”
She didn’t say if she got back, didn’t allow herself to think it.
“Arlington’s secure. I don’t have to be magickal to know where I’m needed.”
“Okay. How’s the arm?”
He bent it at the elbow, managed to bring it to about a forty-degree angle. “Give it a few more months, we’ll go some rounds.”
“You’d still lose.”
“Not unless you cheat.”
“Not a chance. Just like you’re still not president.”
“Given that up,” he said easily. “I’m thinking Supreme Global Commander. SGC Swift.”