“Spellcasting,” he clarified and I nodded.
Spellcasting. Of course that's what he meant. Not that I wasn't a natural at kissing, too. Some things required no memories, they were just ingrained in your soul. Or body too, I guessed.
“Is it always like that? Your magic?” I asked, realizing he'd ended up kissing me after healing my wounds, too. “I don't remember seeing you kiss Arlo after healing him?”
A broad, somewhat wicked grin split Killian's face and his tongue ran over his lower lip, like he was savoring the taste of me.
“Why, would you have liked to?” he teased and my mind went to dirty places.
“Mo Dhia, Ciarah he is taking liberties. His magic don' require dat, his cock does.” Reece snorted a laugh and even Arlo snickered.
My gaze dropped down, peering at the appendage in question and I shrugged. “Good.”
“So what did you have to tell us about this seer, Keeper?” Arlo prompted, still standing at the end of the dock with his legs spread wide and his muscular arms folded.
“That's what the old guy was?” Amelie asked, raising her eyebrows at me. “I could smell the magic on him but couldn't for the life of me work out what he was. Hmm. Seer. How curious.”
My wings flexed as a cool breeze teased at them, and I noticed how sore my back was getting. If nothing else, it showed me I needed to keep them out more often if I wanted to build those muscles up. Or, back up. I had to assume that the Veil Keeper had always had wings, and the amputation was a recent thing.
“Reece, if I sit, will the gators have a go?” I indicated to the bubbles on the surface of the water, a promise that there was more than just Reece's Meme down there.
“Naw, dere ain’t enough meat on you, sweet t’ang.” He winked, and sat down himself before tugging me down to sit with him.
My feet dangled over the edge of the dock, but I was so short in this body I was still nowhere near the water.
“'sides,” he continued, “even gators know better dan chewin' on da Keeper, ya know?”
Amelie sat her ass down beside me and flipped her long braids over her shoulder. The many glass beads made a pleasant clicking sound as they moved and I smiled.
Something about this wolf girl … she felt kind.
Which was odd, given Rafe had introduced her as his enforcer.
“So, spill it Veil Keeper.” She bumped me with her shoulder. “What did the old creeper say?”
“He wasn't creepy,” I defended the old seer, “and he didn't say much that I didn't already have a feeling about. He just helped me catch some bubbles.”
“Catch … bubbles?” Arlo asked, having come closer. He and Kill were now standing just behind us, looming over me like gargoyles … or knights.
“Yes.” I nodded, glancing up at them briefly before turning back to the swamp. “I have these … thoughts. Memories, I think. They're like soap bubbles, and every time I try to catch one, they slip just beyond my reach, or else they burst.”
“So, dis seer … he helped you catch a bubble?” Reece repeated and I nodded.
“My … her memories. The knowledge of the Veil, it was taken from her … me … whatever. But it was taken for safe-keeping by her knights.” My teeth worried at my lower lip while I clung to this one scrap of information that the seer had helped me regain. “They split it amongst themselves and then stored their individual pieces for safe keeping.”
“Do you know where?” Killian questioned, but I shrugged again, my heavy wings shifting with the movement.
Yes, no, maybe? I should know the answer to his question. The knights had left valuable pieces of information in the last Veil Keeper's memory that should have made it easy to recover all the shards.
“No …” I murmured.“Or, not exactly. The breadcrumb memories that were left … whatever happened to me after I took this body …” I trailed off with a sigh. Chasing this bubble hurt. It radiated pain and anguish, desperation and fear, and I just wasn't all too sure I really wanted to catch that one.
“Whatever happened … it's broken me. Her. Us. We're fractured in a way the Veil Keeper never should have been.” My fingers picked at a splinter on the dock beside me, and I flicked the little bits of wood into the water as I spoke. “But I know this … it all begins with the Spear.”
As I said this, I glanced back up to Arlo, and found his blazing green gaze locked on me, full of emotion I just couldn't read.
“It's gone,” he repeated himself, saying the same thing he'd said when I first asked where the Spear was. I hadn't known, then, what the significance was.
His words still rang true but …
“Gone doesn't always stay gone, brother,” Killian said quietly.
Amelie made a noise in her throat, flipping her braids to the other side and peering up at Arlo. “You want to tell me you're Cernunnos?” Her voice was flavored heavily with disbelief. “And that you lost the Spear of Lug? Oh, Rafe is going to lose his shit over this.”
“I didn’t lose it,” Arlo snapped, taking a step forward like maybe he wished he could snap Amelie’s neck and feed her to Meme. “It was either the father or the fucking sage.”
“The father or the sage …” I began carefully, closing my eyes and humming.
“The three aspects of the horned god,” Amelie explained carefully, reaching down to the dock and putting her hand over mine. Arlo growled again, but she ignored him. “Just like there are three aspects of the goddess—the maiden, the mother, and the crone. We don’t worship the horned god back home …” she began, glancing over one shoulder as though Arlo was the sole reason for that. “For obvious reasons,” she added, and I almost smiled. “But we do pray to the goddess.”
“I thought you crazies howled at the goddamn moon,” Arlo said, and when I followed Amelie’s gaze back over to him, I found him scowling.
“Yeah, dumb shit, as a physical manifestation of the goddess — the waxing, full, and waning moon, the three aspects.” Amelie turned her attention back to me and smiled. “So, figures it’d be the masculine aspect of nature that lost the spear, right? A woman would never make that mistake.”
“You little bitch,” Arlo grumbled, but as I kept staring at him, he simply pulled out a cigarette and started smoking again. I turned back to the water and watched the fireflies hovering lazily over the surface. As I stared at them, one drifted closer and closer, increasing in size until it was at least double or triple that of the others.
I held my palms up and it settled above them with a sigh, like it was coming to rest.
“Will-o-the-wisp,” Reece said from beside me and Arlo let out yet another snarl. The man was, quite frankly, bestial as all hell. I loved it. “She got an invitation from the sage.”
“Speak of the devil,” Arlo said with a tired … and an almost frightened? … sort of sigh.