“Oh god,” Boudica said with a laugh. “This conversation is starting to sound like thatFriendsepisode.”
“Where Chandler and Monica try to hide their relationship from everyone,” Saoirse added with agrin.
Saoirse and Boudica exchanged a very enthusiastic high-five.
Brows arched, I continued. “Right. Now that we have this wholeFriendsthing settled, can we move back to Saoirse’s prophecy? We need to figure out how to trick Quentin into thinking we’re not going after the cauldron but also for real go after the cauldron. Any ideas? And please don’t tell me we need topivot.”
Boudica and Saoirse grinned at each other, shouting simultaneously. “Pivot!”
Warin groaned and dropped his head into hishands.
“To be fair,” Boudica said, “we’re not far off the mark. Saoirse’s prophecy said we should go left instead of right, which is pretty damn close to what I’d callpivoting.”
“Pivot,” I muttered to myself as I stalked across the Great Hall once again. “How can wepivot?”
“Why don’t we start with something easier?” Uisnech suggested. “What would the honourable warrior do if she wished to track down thiscauldron?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’d probably pay a visit to A Knight’s End and demand that arsehole bartender tell me everything he knows about our mysterious nemesis. In fact, that sounds like a damn goodidea.”
“Which is why you can’t do that,” Warin added smoothly. “None of us can, regardless of how much we want to nail his balls to the wall. Anythingelse?”
“I would also probably be tempted to go back and question Jezebel. She knew more than she let on. Of course, that’s where we got trapped the first time, so I’d be more cautious this time. Take some morebackup.”
“I’m sensing a pattern,” Boudica said with a smile. “Aggressive questioning techniques. Rushing in, swords ablazing.”
“It’s my skill,” I said with a shrug. “It’s where I do my best work. Would you lot approach it a different way thanthat?”
They all looked at each other, murmuring slightly, and then finally agreed that yes—they were just as impulsive and aggressive as me. Even Saoirse. She might not go in swinging steel, but she’d happily put the bartender through some uncomfortablequestioning.
“So, if the aggressive tactic is out of the question, what do we do?” Iasked.
Uisnech clapped his hands. “Nothing! You donothing!”
We all looked at the goblin andfrowned.
“While that will no doubt throw Quentin for a loop, I don’t see how that will solve our massive, massiveproblem.”
“He expects you to go on the attack. He will set a little trap and wait for you to rush toward the only contacts you know about. Instead, you rush towardLugh.”
“Rush towardLugh?”
The goblin nodded vigorously. “Lugh will make some attacks on the humans. We need to stop him. He will also attempt to return to Faerie, to reunite with the nightmare wraiths. We also need to stop him from doingthat.”
“Trap Lugh first. Go left,” I repeated after him. “Andthengo after thecauldron.”
Warin had paled. “You want us to trap a nightmare wraith? That’simpossible.”
Uisnech grinned. “We will use Lugh to draw the enemies out of their lair. Threaten whatever they are planning. They will want to destroy him themselves. And then and only then…we go get thatspear.”
14
Uisnech’s planwas one hundred percent blooming mad, of course. The problem with trapping a nightmare wraith was…trapping a damn nightmare wraith. He would not go quietly into the night. He would not vanish without a fight. He would twist our minds upon us and put our thoughts through purehell.
We wouldn’t even remember why we were fighting him. The only thing we’d want would be to curl up into a ball anddie.
And that was just approaching him. If we did manage to trap him—against all odds—we’d then somehow have to cart him back to the castle and stash him somewhere far enough away from the rest of the fae, somewhere he couldn’t escape from—and nightmare wraiths were strong as hell. Otherwise, the Court would be full of endless screaming as he filled each and every fae’s mind with horrors they had never evenimagined.
Add the human element on top of that, and the whole thing was beyond impossible. It was impossibletimes amillion.
