“Anyone who says that hasn’t had their baby taken by fairies,” Jane snapped back, but her eyes were a little warmer.
Something occurred to me. “There was a horseshoe over Connor’s bed.”
“Yes,” Jane said. “How did you know that?”
Guilt flushed my skin as I remembered that I’d been snooping in Jane’s house. Before I could confess, Corbin piped up. “An iron horseshoe should have deterred the fae. Climbing into the room and taking Connor would have been extremely painful to them. So why did they do it?”
Jane slammed the book shut and dug for the next one. “You guys are the experts. You tell me.”
“You said they seemed listless,” I remembered. I pulled a book from Corbin’s stack and settled into the corner of the sofa. “That might have been the effect of the iron.”
“And what was with that pumpkin?” Jane wrinkled her nose. “With the scrawled-on face?”
“Fae leave behind an object that they charmed with glamour to look just like the child,” Corbin said, flipping through another folklore book. “There’s stories from Ireland of mothers realizing their children had been taken only when their baby suddenly turned into a vegetable and by then it was too late. I wonder if you distracted them before they could finish the glamour spell and they decided just to take Connor and run for it.”
“Why choose Connor, though?” I asked. “Surely there would have been other children without horseshoes who’d be easier to kidnap? Do you think there was a reason they specifically wanted Connor?—”
“That’s them,” Jane said suddenly. She jabbed her finger at an image in Corbin’s book. “That’s the creatures who took Connor.”
“Spriggens,” Corbin read. “I’ve never seen these guys before. Something as small and delicate would usually not be able to penetrate the doorway between our worlds.”
“These are Seelie,” I said, pointing to the description. “I guess that confirms it. The Seelie and Unseelie are working together, just like Blake said.”
“Say I believe this is true,” Jane said. “Say I’m shit out of options and all the wild fae talk is starting to sound like the only reasonable explanation of what happened. How does this help us get Connor back?”
In response, Corbin dumped a bunch of books in Jane’s arms. “That’s what we’re doing here,” he said. “Somewhere in these books and diaries is a clue to the spell the fae are trying to perform with these children. If we can find it, we can figure out a way to stop it.”
“So I’m going to save my son by reading?” Jane asked, raising an eyebrow incredulously.
“Well…” Corbin shrugged. “Yeah. You don’t have to help if you don’t want?—”
“No.” Jane dropped down into Corbin’s wingback chair behind the desk and opened the first book on the stack. “I’m a fast reader.”
Corbin looked like he was about to say something about his chair, but he snapped his mouth shut and plonked down on the other end of the sofa.
Silence prevailed, the only sounds in the room the rustle of pages and the slurp of hot chocolate. I skimmed through two folklore volumes written by previous residents of Briarwood and a dull-as-dishwater herbal manual before my hand fell upon a small book.
Principles of Spirit Magic, the title declared in faded gothic script.
My heart thudded in my chest. The guys said I was a spirit user like my mother. But I knew very little about what that actually meant. Apart from the dreams, I hadn’t really doneanything particularly magical. Not that I really believed any of this. But maybe the book would have something useful.
I opened it up, flipping through the pages until I came to a section called DREAMWALKING.
The power of dream walking manifests itself in different ways, depending on the witch and how he/she chooses to wield it. It is one of the rarest types of spirit magic and is not well understood.
A witch may use her powers to enter the dreams of another, to bring people into her own dreams, or to transport her body through the dream-realm to other places, times, or spiritual planes.
“Guys,” I cried excitedly, leaping up so fast that Obelix, who’d settled himself between Corbin and I on the sofa, shot me a filthy look and returned to licking his bollocks.
Bollocks. Such a multi-faceted word.
“Watch out!” Corbin steadied his mug of hot chocolate. “Did you find something?”
I grinned. “I think I know a way we could get Jane’s baby back.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CORBIN
