Drustan, ’tis me, Dageus, and I’m sorry I lied, but I’m dark and I need to use the library.

Aye, that would go over well.

Drustan, I failed. I broke my oath and you should kill me.

Nay, not that, not yet.

Och, brother, help me.

Would he?

Bletherin’ hell, you should have let him die! his da had shouted when, back in the sixteenth century, Dageus had summoned the courage to confide what he’d done.

How? How could I do that? Dageus had shouted back.

In saving him you destroyed yourself! Now I’ve lost both my sons—one to the future, the other to the black arts!

No’ yet, he’d protested.

But the look in his da’s eyes . . . it had said he’d believed there was no hope. Horrified, Dageus had fled through the stones, determined to find a way to save himself.

And now he’d come full circle, back to asking his clan for aid. He hated it. He’d not asked for help, not once in his life. ’Twas not his way.

Exhaling sharply, he accepted the scotch he’d requested from the flight attendant, and downed it in a single swallow. As the heat exploded inside him, the tightness in his chest first intensified, then eased. What could he say? How to begin? With Gwen, mayhap? She could work her feminine miracles with his brother. God knew, she’d been a miracle for Drustan.

He pondered various ways to approach him, but it was more than he could stand thinking on, so he forced his attention back to the text, needing something tangible to work with.

An hour later, just before landing, he paused, hand poised above his notebook. He’d finally found something worthwhile. The only mention he’d yet discovered about the fateful war that had occurred after the Tuatha Dé Danaan had left. Naught but a brief paragraph, it spoke of thirteen outcast Druids (so that was how many were inside him!) and of some heinous punishment they’d suffered. Though it did not elaborate further, beneath it was a notation that referred to the fifth Book of Manannán, as he’d suspected.

And if memory served him, the fifth volume was in the Keltar library.

Chloe mumbled softly in her sleep, drawing his gaze again. Reminding him that someone had tried to kill her—because of him.

He glanced at her bandaged hand and fierce protectiveness flooded him. He would let nothing harm her ever again.

He needed answers, and he needed them fast.

Chapter 11

11

For the second time in as many days, Chloe had the strange and immensely irritating experience of walking down a crowded street with Dageus MacKeltar. The first time had been in Manhattan yesterday, and the same thing had happened there.

Men got out of his way.