Page 33 of Cathmoir’s Sons (Bad Boys of Bevington #5)

Chapter 33

Eye Tooth

RHODES

B efore Kellan’s moronic team leader can bitch at me about cutting the dive short, I tell him, “I want to research the Shadow Sisters and that cave and know what we’re going up against. We’re going into a potential fight in a tight space. Only Gabe and I have our full powers underwater. It’s too risky.”

Caileán immediately nods. Arch looks annoyed but flops onto the invisible raft Caileán creates. We skim back through the half-frozen surf back to shore.

Once we’re on land again, I collar Law. “The tritones gave us a warning about guardians of the mound. Make everyone go back to the villa so we can do some research and arm ourselves. I don’t know if Arch’s powers work at all underwater. Kellan’s limited to spells that don’t have a breath or verbal component. I want some fucking weapons before we go in again.”

Law nods. “We have an issue.” He points back out at the ocean. A black-hulled boat, tiny in the distance, bobs on the white-tipped waves. “I’m not sure if they saw you surface, but if they did, they now know where to dive.”

“Who are they?” Caileán asks, coming up beside me and tucking her shoulder against mine. I slide my arm around her and squeeze her into the warmth of the heated towel she’s wrapped around her shoulders.

“Your tech mage says it’s the team out of Madavar. Something about internet signatures and ping rate,” Law answers. “I didn’t follow it all, just gathered that the competition has arrived.”

Caileán shrugs, her shoulders rolling against my arm. “It was only a matter of time, and this won’t be the first hunt where we’ve had stiff competition. You watch, Arch’s leadership will improve. He rises to a challenge.”

Law mutters something that sounds like, “he couldn’t get much worse.”

Caileán rolls her eyes. “Play nice.”

Law rolls his right back. “Give me incentive. Hearing you beg me to come, that was so hot. Five ruined orgasms tonight.”

“Benighted Mother, no. One, Law.”

“Six.”

She swats him. “That’s not the way you negotiate. I say one, you say three.”

“Seven,” he responds before she swats him again.

Caileán’s right about Arch rising to a challenge. Instead of having to chivvy him back to the mainland, he’s the one rounding everyone up, making sure all the equipment left on the beach is warded to the eye-teeth. Once we return to the villa, he delegates efficiently. He sends half of the team into the town to ensure rumors aren’t spreading about the dive site and to buy more groceries. He disperses the other half to collect material on mythological “Shadow Sisters.” The tech-mage holes up in the library Caileán and Luca have created. Within an hour, the house is filled with the burning copper scent of his magic.

Caileán and Teddy return, unsurprisingly, to the kitchen, with Teddy’s husbands and the two demons.

“I had no idea pregnancy would turn me into a hobbit,” Caileán tells Teddy as they assemble a fruit, meat, and cheese board big enough to feed twenty. “What’s the afternoon equivalent of elevensies?”

“Afternoonsies. And ugh, not that,” Teddy says, pinching her nose and pointing at a packet of cold cuts Caileán’s holding. “Garlic. I can smell it from here.”

Caileán sniffs at the packet, shrugs, and tucks it back into the refrigerator.

“Food and sex, best parts about being pregnant,” Teddy continues as she cuts apples into slices. “When I don’t want to hurl, all I want to do is eat and have multiple orgasms. Oh, and clean. That part came later with Carrie, but by the Mother, Thistlemist has never been as clean as when I was carrying the twins. Callan used to joke that I walked around with a cleaning cantrip in one hand and a bottle of bleach in the other.”

Caileán, who is in the middle of casting a cleaning cantrip at the three whole crumbs on the counter, shifts her eyes right and left before finishing the cantrip.

Law chortles from his vantage-point in the doorway. “Cats are fastidious anyway.”

Caileán points her finger at him. “Be useful. I saw dried apricots in the pantry earlier and now I can’t find them. Sniff out the dried apricots and grab the honey. If I can’t have nightbells, I want apricots drizzled in honey.”

Law lifts his eyebrows but when Caileán continues to glare, he holds up his hands and disappears into the pantry.

While he’s rummaging, a jar of dried apricots and a pot of honey appear on the counter at Caileán’s elbow.

None of us call Law back from his quest. I circle around the island, grab a knife, and start cutting up the apricots to pile on the platter.

“Should I save questions about the Shadow Sisters until after you’ve eaten?” I ask Caileán while Teddy’s diverted by arguing with the demons about whether the artichoke hearts they want to add to the board have been marinated in garlic.

“Ask away,” Caileán says. “But if I get to eat sooner, I’ll volunteer what I think. There are a lot of shadowy figures in the same mythology that spawned Charybdis, but sisters? Not too many shadowy sisters. Shadowy sisters associated with the sea? Shadowy sea sisters who guard a resting place?”

“The Graeae,” Teddy says, breaking off from her argument with Jou. “Sea hags who shared a tooth and an eye between them.”

“I thought that was the Fates,” I say, remembering Disney.

Teddy and Caileán scoff.

“That’s the Greek myths told by Hollywood,” Luca says, strolling into the kitchen with a book in hand. He stayed in bed when we left for Torre Faro. Although I volunteered for this morning’s dive, I was a little jealous of his lazy morning. He’s looking absurdly hot in a deconstructed sweater open over his abs and dark camos slung low on his hips. I toss a dried apricot at his smug face. He snaps it out of the air with his teeth and chews contentedly.

“What else do we know about the Graeae?” I ask.

“They weren’t happy bunnies,” Teddy says, scooping soft cheese out of folds of butcher paper and piling it on the platter. She scrapes the rime of cheese left off the paper with her forefinger and pops it into her mouth, smiling blissfully. “Great Mother, why is the cheese here so good? I could eat it all day. If Dar hasn’t already bought us a house here, I’m going to make him buy one next door to the cheese shop. Anyway, the Graeae were not friendly. They demanded something precious from anyone who tried to bargain with them. Like first-born child precious. So they could have first-born child stew.”

Law stalks out of the pantry, wraps himself around Caileán, and cups his hands over her belly. “No,” he says.

Caileán elbows him. “That wasn’t ever on the table.”

“I see you found the apricots,” Law observes, propping his chin on the top of Caileán’s head.

“Magic,” I say gravely. Luca sniggers.

“Ha-ha,” Law grumbles. “I violently object to any plan that involves human sacrifice to sea hags. How do we kill them?”

Caileán tips her head back on his shoulder. “I don’t want to kill them. Please?”

He sighs hugely. “Remind me why we’re not killing the cannibalistic sea hags?” he asks.

Caileán exchanges glances with Teddy.

“For every queen or princess or Helen in the ancient world,” Teddy says, “there were three hags or crones who got shafted, usually literally, by an Olympian dick-swinger. They got tossed into the wine-dark sea or the underworld or somewhere equally unpleasant to spend their days being harassed by dick-swinging heroes who wanted their wombs or apples or golden fleece. They rarely did anything to deserve their fate other than being unfortunate enough to be born with a vagina. We make it a policy not to kill other vagina-bearing individuals if vagina-ownership is their only crime.”

Law looks at Teddy, his eyebrows nearly disappearing in his hairline. “That’s, uh, an interesting mishmash of mythology and feminism. Who is we ?”

“Despite Teddy’s hyperbolized stroll through Greek and Roman myth,” Caileán says. “We includes me. I don’t want to kill ancient creatures unless they try to kill me first. The Graeae have been around for a long time if they are Charybdis’ guardians. Surely they’re bored of their gatekeeper roles? Maybe we could offer them freedom?”

Luca hums, flipping through the book he’s holding. “Mmm, that’s worth pursuing. They’re very attached to their eye and tooth in legend.”

“Tethers?” asks Teddy. “The eye and the tooth?”

Gabe leans his elbows on the counter across from his wife. “Binding them to the mortal world and the will of those more powerful?”

Teddy nods.

“What does that mean in practical terms,” Caileán asks. “Is there an unbinding ritual?”

“Maybe,” Luca says. “The Roman witch Simaetha wrote about the Graeae in response to Hesiod. There’s a poem in her Fons Aquarum that has the rhythm of a ritual. Here it is, ‘Deino, Enyo, and Pemphredo, sisters three / In caverns deep, their lair be / Ageless watchers of the western isle / Guard their sisters with unending guile’.”

To nods all around the kitchen, Luca continues:

“‘Their burdens heavy, eternity’s cruel chain

They long for rest, yet bound to remain

But lo, the Fates themselves do turn

To weave anew destiny’s term

From immortal coil at last unbound

Their spirits rise, to heavens crowned

No more the weight of endless years

But freedom found amongst the spheres

Three stars they gleam in night’s embrace

The sisters’ final resting place’.”

Caileán and Teddy are humming by the time Luca finishes the poem. I feel a deep tugging, the pull of magic, as it alters the currents of my body, lifting me free of my mortality. I reach across the corner of the kitchen island and clasp Caileán’s hand. Her magic swirls around me, kissing my cheeks, tugging at my hair. She pulls me around the counter and wraps her arm around me. Heat flushes through me with the flow of combined magic: Air and Fire. It warms me, grounds me.

I realize for the first time why Law is so important to our foursome. It’s not because he’s Cait or because he might someday be king. It’s because he’s our touchstone. He’s our connection with the Earth. Against three Air and Water powers, Law’s what keeps us anchored.

Luca flips a few more pages in his book. “I suggest a golden knife to cut the sisters’ tie to the mortal realm. In most legends, Perseus steals their shared eye and threatens to stomp on it, but in Hesiod, there’s a mention of a golden knife.”

“An athame,” Teddy says. “Do you have a gold one?”

“I’ll take care of that,” Law says, his voice slightly muffled by Caileán’s hair. “We have several family athames. A few are gold. I’ll bring them from Cait House for you to choose from.”

Caileán reaches back with her free hand to caress Law’s nape. “Thank you, my love.”

“Not to throw a spanner in the works, but what’s Plan B?” I ask. “What if the Graeae don’t want to be unbound from the mortal world?”

Caileán sighs. “Then we steal their eye and tooth, but I really don’t want to do that.”

“Okay, well, that’s Plan B. Just call me Perseus.”

Luca closes his book with a snap and winks at me. “You’ll always be my hero.”