A long and shady history meant she was better at getting caught than getting away. Surely if the people behind all this were going to hire a thief, they’d have hired a good one. There were plenty of dark elves out there who subcontracted their services.

“So why haven’t they made another attempt to steal it?”

He shrugged. “For all we know, they decided it was easier to bribe one of the librarians to either scan or jot down the poem. Thing is, they might not have been able to do much with the information afterward. Not everyone can read Old Welsh.”

“Why? It’s not that different to the modern stuff, surely?”

“Old Welsh differs in both the way they use some words and the alphabet. Middle Welsh is closer to today’s usage.”

“The things you learn.” I took another bite of toast. “They’ve had plenty of time to find someone who could read it, though.”

“Yes, but they’d have to be extremely careful. The dark elves would have put an alert out on anything relating back to the Claws the minute they realized what was going on.”

“Cynwrig never mentioned that.”

Lugh snorted. “He’s a dark elf—he’s never going to tell someone he barely knows something like that.”

I grinned. “I would hardly say he ‘barely’ knows me, brother mine.”

He rolled his eyes. “I meant in the character sense, not physical.”

I laughed. “Hopefully Sgott can grab the investigation report and we can see where it’s at.”

“It’s probably precisely nowhere. These people seem to be rather good at leaving little in the way of leads.”

“They’ll make a mistake sooner or later. We just have to have patience.”

“Says the woman who has none.”

I grinned but didn’t reply as my phone rang; the tone told me it was Ingrid. I hit the answer button and said, “There’s a problem?”

“You could say that.” Her voice was dry. “There’s a rather raggedy-looking woman here who’s refusing to move and is loudly proclaiming to all and sundry that she needs to speak to you as a matter of urgency.”

My eyebrows rose even as my pulse rate skipped and raced on. “Did she say why?”

“No, but she did give me a name and said you’d recognize it.”

“And that name is?”

But even as I asked that question, I knew.

“Castell,” Ingrid said. “And she’s claiming she’s got an urgent message from your father.”

Chapter Three

“My father?”

“What’s going—”

I held up a finger to silence Lugh as Ingrid said, “Yeah, that was my reaction too, given the wastrel hasn’t been sighted around these parts since he left your mom some sixty-odd years ago.”

“You knew him?” I couldn’t help my surprise. In all these years, she’d never said anything, but maybe that was at Mom’s request.

“Sighted him once. Had an odd energy around him.”

“Does this woman?”

“No.”

Which didn’t preclude the possibility of her being another hag. While Beira was surrounded by a stormy and rather electric energy field, she was the goddess of winter and storms, so that was to be expected.