Fingers mentally crossed, she tried the toilet, pulled the chain. She heard no expected whoosh or creaky flush, but when she stood the bowl was empty and sparkling clean.

“Okay, we’ll call that practical magicks.”

She used the bowl and pitcher to wash up, then used the iron framed wall mirror to study her face.

“Might as well say it. You’re not in Kansas anymore.”

She went out, followed the scent of cooking into the kitchen.

The table held three place settings—crockery bowls, bread plates, white cloth napkins rolled into copper rings. Sedric stood at the little stove; Marg sliced brown bread on a board.

The easy domesticity told Breen they’d been together—not as witch and familiar, but as a couple—for, as she’d thought, a long time.

“It smells wonderful.”

“Sedric’s a fine cook.” Marg carried the bread and a crock of butter to the table. “I can promise you won’t go hungry. The bread I baked this morning before you arrived, as I’m a good cook myself. And the butter comes from the farm. The dinner wine is of Finola and Seamus’s making, and you won’t find better even in the Capital.”

“I’m not a very good cook,” she said, and sat when Marg did. “I’m trying to get better at it, as there’s no easy takeout near the cottage, and Marco’s not here to put something together. He’s a really good cook.”

“He’s a good friend to you. Finola was particularly taken with him.”

“She has an eye for handsome lads.” Sedric set the pot on the table, then began to ladle stew into the bowls.

“She does that. I’m told he’s musical, as you are.”

“Oh, I’m not like Marco. He’s what you’d call a natural. My father called him that, and taught us to play—the piano, the violin, the flute. But when—when he had to leave, Marco took more lessons. I . . . didn’t.”

Because it wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have, she sampled the stew. “Oh, it’s just wonderful. You grow your own vegetables.”

“The soil is for growing. You have a talent there as well.”

“I think I do. It’s something I want to learn more about. We live in an apartment, so there really isn’t anywhere to plant, and before . . . There wasn’t time with my job and all the rest for a real hobby or interest.”

“Your time is yours now,” Sedric commented.

“I’m getting used to that. I want to ask—and if you don’t want to answer or talk about it now, it can wait, but you’ve given me a lot of money. For me, it’s a fortune. Where did it come from?”

“Well now, money is easy enough to come by. We have no currency here, but—”

“No currency? None?”

“And no need. We barter and trade, and tribes, communities, take care of those who fall into the hard times. Others may appeal to the taoiseach and his council for help—a death, a sickness, or some other misfortune that causes them troubles.”

She had to say it again. “No money?”

“It’s metal or paper or some other form that has no real value above what a people ascribe to it.” Sedric shrugged, buttered some bread.

“But you gave me money.”

“In the world you’ve lived in you require it for safety, security, for food, a roof, a bed. I am your grandmother. Your father and I agreed to see to your needs. We have things of value here that can be sold outside. So it was done.”

“Thank you. Having the money changed my life, it gave me a freedom I didn’t have before. It sounds shallow sitting here, saying that, but it’s true.”

“Every world has its own rules and laws and cultures.”

“Sedric told me you have people who live outside.”

“Of course. Some may find a life outside more suitable, or happier. All are free to choose. Some from the outside choose Talamh; some from Talamh choose the outside.”

“When they choose to leave, they take an oath? You were explaining before.”

“Most sacred,” Marg agreed. “The most sacred of all is to cause no harm, to take no life except to defend life, not with magicks or without. Even then, if it’s done to protect or defend life, it must be judged. The taking of a life, the causing of harm in any other circumstance is punished by a stripping of power and banishment.”

“Banished to where?”

Sedric laid a hand on Marg’s and answered. “There is a world where the single portal opens only from the outside. Those who break the oath and are judged to have done so are taken there, where they must live without magicks.”

A kind of prison, Breen realized. “How do you know if they broke the oath?”

“We have Watchers, and their gift is empathy. They know, and must tell the council. We are people of the land, we are artists and craftsmen, storytellers, but we are also a world of laws. Most are not unlike the laws you know. To take a life, to take what is not yours or not given freely, to force another to lie with you, to neglect a child or animal. All of these acts cause harm, and our first law is to cause no harm.”

The answers had more questions buzzing in her brain, but a glance from Sedric had her holding them back.

Enough, she thought again, for one day.

“I want to thank you for the paper, and the pen. I’m looking forward to trying to write with them.”

“I hope you’ll enjoy them, and work well. But also take time from the work to see more of Talamh. To let me teach you, to help you wake.”

“To wake what I had that broke the glass when I was little.”

“That and more.”

“I’d like to see more, and learn more. I could start with you showing me how you deal with dishes. I’ve figured out there’s no running water.”

“We have a fine well, but you’ll do no dishes tonight. Tonight you’re a guest as well as family. You enjoy your walks, and it’s a lovely evening for a walk.”

“All right. If I wanted to use the tub later, how do I fill it?”

Marg smiled. “The pitcher will fill it, and the water will stay warm until you’re done.”

“Saves on plumbing bills.” She needed the walk, she realized. Needed the air, the evening, the quiet to organize her thoughts, and reconcile them with what she’d come to know.

“Thank you for dinner. Everything was, well, perfect.”

She hesitated, then went with instinct. She leaned down, kissed Marg’s cheek. “Thank you, Nan.”

When Breen went out, Marg pressed a hand to her heart. “There’s so much, Sedric, so much left to give her, so much left to ask of her.”

“One world struggles with the other inside her yet.”

“And may always. Go, watch over her. Odran may have spies closer than we know. I’ll see to the dishes.”

He rose, bent down, kissed her lips gently.

As a man, he turned away. As a cat, he slipped out the door.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Breen spotted the cat slinking along in the grass on the side of the road, sinuously silver among the green. And realized almost immediately she wouldn’t have seen him unless he’d wanted her to.

While she wasn’t sure exactly what she thought of Sedric yet, clearly her grandmother trusted him—and just as clearly, they loved each other.

Breen would tolerate him. She was, kinship aside, a guest here. A visitor.

Stranger in a strange land, she thought.

The sun set fire to the western sky. Automatically she reached for the phone still in her pocket, tapped for the camera. It took her a minute, staring at the blank screen, to remember.

“Devices won’t work here,” she muttered. “No technology.”

She stuck the phone away again, and ignored the cat. She imagined he snickered.

Instead, she enjoyed the long, slow setting of the sun, the spread of that fire over the waters of the bay, the lingering flames of it against the distant hills.

What lay behind the hills? she wondered. More of this—fields and farms, water and woods? Magickal people who tilled and planted, cooked stew, made music?

Because she heard music, something light and bright carried on the evening air. A fiddle, maybe a harp, a flute, all blending, lively and quick.

Like another kind of dream, she thought. The perfect music for a late summer evening with sheep and cattle huddled in the fields, the air smelling of grass and peat smoke.

And a were-cat keeping pace with her like a feline bodyguard.

A lot of good a cat would do her if some maniac faerie swooped down to try to grab her again.

Remembering it, she looked up, and just froze.

The dragon, riderless, glided over the dusky sky like a golden ship over the sea. Nothing, nothing she’d seen or would see in this fantastic place could be as magnificent, as glorious as that silent, gilded flight.

Awestruck, she followed that flight, and saw in that dusky sky two moons. Both pale yet as a single star woke to shine, and both half-moons—one waxing, one waning.

“But . . . there are two moons.”

“As there always have been.”

Ready to run, scream, fight, she spun around.

She hadn’t seen him as dusk crept in, leaning back against the stone post of the gate. All in black, he blended into the oncoming night. He probably meant to.

The taoiseach, the leader, the rider of the gold-and-emerald dragon.

“How do the tides work with two of them?”

“They come in, go out, come in, go out. I’ll see to her, Sedric,” he called to the cat. “Unless she plans on wandering about half the night.”

“I just wanted a walk before . . .” Explaining herself, she thought. She had to stop feeling obliged, always, to explain herself. “I don’t want to be seen to.”

“Want and need are different things, aren’t they now? And Marg won’t worry if she knows you’re not alone.”

That stopped her from arguing. “I haven’t really thanked you for what you did today.”