Kate Daniels 02 - Magic Burns

dear.”
    â€œBut I didn’t know what it meant!”
    Aunt B frowned. “Doesn’t matter. You need to be very careful right now. When Curran wants something, he doesn’t become distracted. He goes after it and he doesn’t stop until he obtains his goal no matter what it takes. That tenacity is what makes him an alpha.”
    â€œYou’re scaring me.”
    â€œScared might be too strong a word, but in your place, I would definitely be concerned.”
    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.
    â€œFeel better?”
    â€œIt helped.” Curran had driven me to drinking. At least I wasn’t contemplating suicide.
    Â 
    I SLID THE BEAT-UP VOLUME OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS close 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.”
    â€œThey’re not mine.”
    â€œIf you’re going to look for Julie, I’ll help.” Andrea brushed Raphael’s hands off her shoulders. “She’s my responπsibility.”
    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.”
    â€œAny luck?” Raphael asked.
    â€œNot 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.
    â€œWhat?” Andrea wanted to know.
    I turned the page and showed them the illustration. “Birth of Taliesin. The goddess Ceridwen had a son of incredible ugliness. She felt sorry for him and brewed a potion of wisdom in a huge cauldron to make him wise. A servant boy stirred the potion and accidentally tasted it, stealing the gift of wisdom. Ceridwen chased him. He turned into a grain of wheat to hide but Ceridwen turned into a chicken, swallowed him, and gave birth to Taliesin, the greatest poet, bard, and druid of his time.”
    Andrea frowned. “Yes, I see that the boy was reborn through the cauldron, but so what?”
    â€œThe name of the Goddess’s ugly son. Morfran: from the Welsh mawr , ‘big,’ and bran , ‘crow.’ The Great Crow.”
    â€œThis is the guy?” Raphael asked. “The guy in charge of the Fomorians?”
    â€œLooks that way. And more, he is a crow just like Morrigan. Very similar names plus very uneducated witches equals…”
    â€œDisaster,” Raphael supplied.
    The Sisters of the Crow. It was a terrible name for a coven.
    Andrea shook her head. “Those idiot Sisters couldn’t actually be that ignorant. Fumbling spells—yes, but screwing up enough to accidentally pray to the wrong deity? Morfran and Morrigan aren’t even of the same gender.”
    â€œMaybe they started