Shadow Spell: Book Two of the Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy by Nora Roberts Page A

tonight. How long ago for you since we met?”
    “Three weeks and five days more. For you?”
    “Less. So the time doesn’t follow. Are you well, Eamon? You and your sisters?”
    “We went to Clare, and we made a little cabin in the woods.” His eyes gleamed as he looked toward his home again. “We used magick. Our hands and backs as well, but we thought if we used magick we’d be safer. And dryer also,” he added with a ghost of a smile. “Brannaugh’s done some healing as we traveled, and now that we’re there. We have a hen for eggs, and that’s a fine thing, and we can hunt—all but Teagan, who can’t use the arrow on the living. It hurts her heart to try, but she tends the horses and the hen. We’ve traded a little—labor and healing and potions for potatoes and turnips, grain and such. We’ll plant our own when we can. I know how to plant and tend and harvest.”
    “Come to me if you can, when you have need. It might be I can get you food, or blankets, whatever you need.”
    Some comfort, Connor thought, for a sad young boy so far from home.
    “Thank you for that, but we’re well enough, and have coin Ailish and Bardan gave us. But . . .”
    “What? You’ve only to ask.”
    “Could I have something of yours? Some small thing to take with me? I’ll trade you.” Eamon offered a stone, a cobble of pure white cupped like an egg in his palm. “It’s just a stone I found, but it’s a pretty one.”
    “It is. I don’t know what I have.” Then he did, and reached up to take the thin leather strap with its spear of crystal from around his neck.
    “It’s blue tiger eye—but also called hawk’s eye or falcon’s eye. My father gave it to me.”
    “I can’t take it.”
    “You can. He’s yours as I am. He’ll be pleased you have it.” To settle it, he put it around Eamon’s neck. “It’s a fine trade.”
    Eamon fingered the stone, studied it in the firelight. “I’ll show my sisters. They were full of wonder and questions when I told of meeting you, and how we drove Cabhan away. And a bit jealous they were as well. They want to meet you.”
    “And I them. The day may come. Do you feel him?”
    “Not since that day. He can’t reach us now, Brannaugh said. He can’t go beyond his own borders, so he can’t reach us in Clare. We’ll go back when we’re grown, when we’re stronger. We’ll go home again.”
    “I know you will, but you’ll be safe where you are until the time comes.”
    “Do you feel him?”
    “I do, but not tonight. Not here. You should rest,” he said when Eamon’s eyes drooped.
    “Will you stay?”
    “I will, as long as I can.”
    Eamon curled up, wrapped his short cloak around him. “It’s music. Do you hear it? Do you hear the music?”
    “I do, yes.” Branna’s music. A song full of heart tears.
    “It’s beautiful,” Eamon murmured as he began to drift. “Sad and beautiful. Who plays it?”
    “Love plays it.”
    He let the boy sleep and watched the fire until he woke in his own bed with the sun slipping into the window.
    When he opened his fisted hand, a smooth white stone lay in his palm.
    He showed it to Branna when she came down to the kitchen for her morning coffee. The sleep daze vanished from her eyes.
    “It came back with you.”
    “We were both there, solid as we are standing here, but both in our own time. I gave him the hawk’s-eye stone Da gave me—do you remember it?”
    “Of course. You used to wear it when you were a boy. It hangs on the frame of your bedroom mirror.”
    “No longer. I wasn’t wearing it, or anything else, when I got into bed last night. But in the dream, I was dressed and it was around my neck. Now it’s around Eamon’s.”
    “Each in your own time.” She went to the door to open it for Kathel, returned from his morning run. “Yet you sat together, spoke together. What he gave you came through the dream with you. We have to learn how to use this.”
    She opened the fridge, and he saw as she pulled