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I wished I were back home, where I could get to my bottle of sangria. This clearly counted as a dire emergency.
As if reading my thoughts, Aunt B rose, took a small bottle from a cabinet, and poured me a shot. I took it, and drained it in one gulp, letting tequila slide down my throat like liquid fire.
“Feel better?”
“It helped.” Curran had driven me to drinking. At least I wasn’t contemplating suicide.
I SLID THE BEAT-UP VOLUME OF MYTHS AND LEGENDSclose and flipped to the index. If I was going to see Bran, it was best to go prepared. I needed a better grasp on this situation.
Unfortunately my brain insisted on replaying the memory of Curran offering me soup.
Raphael wrinkled his nose. “Your books smell like chicken.”
“They’re not mine.”
“If you’re going to look for Julie, I’ll help.” Andrea brushed Raphael’s hands off her shoulders. “She’s my responpsibility.”
I shook my head. “No, she’s mine. There is nothing I can do for her right now. But I can find Morrigan’s bowman.” I explained the coven and Esmeralda’s books, and reeves, and needing Bran’s blood, although I didn’t go into what it was for. “When the reeves attacked us, the Shepherd mentioned the Great Crow. Let’s see…”
I ran my finger down the index. No Great Crows. Loads of Fomorians but no Bolgors or Shepherds.
What else? Something had to connect them all. Let’s see, what did I have? A Hound of Morrigan, bow, covens, missing cauldron…
I found the entry on cauldron: “Cauldron of Plenty, see Dagda.” Dagda was Morrigan’s main squeeze for a while. “Cauldron of Rebirth, see Branwen.” I flipped to the right page. “I will give you a cauldron, with the property that if one of your men is killed today, and be placed in the cauldron, then tomorrow he will be as well as he was at his best, except that he will not regain his speech.”
“Any luck?” Raphael asked.
“Not yet.”
That was certainly interesting. The reeves were partially undead…Maybe they came out of the cauldron of rebirth, somehow. I went back to the index. “Cauldron of Wisdom, see Birth of Taliesin.” Anybody with a drop of education on Celtic mythology knew of Taliesin, the great bard of ancient Ireland, the druid who succeeded Merlin. I knew the myth as well as anybody but found the right page anyway just to be thorough. Blah-blah-blah, Goddess Ceridwen, blah-blah…
If it was a cobra, it would’ve struck me.
“What?” Andrea wanted to know.